et OF 2 ip eS Fe Pate teee see Hinde 6, woe BS: she > Orgel Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/pulpitpowereloqu01 bart Pulpit Power and Eloquence OR One Hundred Best Sermons of the Nineteenth Century. INTRODUCTION BY ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D. ® Compiled by FREDERICK BARTON from the recommendations of the following: JF. H. BARROWS, President Oberlin College. F. W. BASHFORD, President Ohio Wesleyan University. A. H CURRIER, Professor of Exegesis. FRANCIS E. CLARK, President United Society C. E. RUSSELL H. CONWELL, President Temple College. ADDISON P. FOSTER, American S. S. Union. F. W. GUNSAULUS, President Armour Institute. FAMES M. GRAY, Author Synthetic Bible Studies GEO. C. LORIMER, Recently, Tremont Temple, Boston. F.B. MEYER, London, Eng. H. C. G. MOULE, Bishop of Durham. Ff. S. MILLS, Bishop U. B. Church. F. G. K. McCLURE, President Lake Forest University. W. G. MOOREHEAD, Xenia Theological Seminary. Div.Sch. Si ata Seigirckee Leer . . KERR BOYCE TUPPER, First Baptist Church, Phila. AND OTHERS. .B3 ‘ ® Published by F. M. BARTON, Cleveland, O. - Copyrighted toot ; by F. M. BARTON. a Index According to Author’s Name. Page Abbott, Lyman—God’s Workshop............... 805 Arnot, William—The Lost Sheep........ aaa ake aaa Banks, L. A.—Radiant Personality............. 9 Beecher, H. W.—What is Christ to Me?........ 13 Behrends, A. J. F.—I Know Whom I have Be- MENG GNOy ie ade Rds cc onje's dena aeciaees ncdulon ei tele . Black, Hugh—Duty of Forgetfulness............ 30 Bradford, Amory H.—Christ the Center........ 810 Broadus, John A.—Character Building.......... 34 Brooks, Phillips—The Candle of the Lord...... 37 Buchanan, Claudius—The Star in the East..... 46 Burrell, David J.—Non-Christian Religions.... 60 Bushnell, Horace—Unconscious Influence...... 69 Cadman, S. Parkes—St. Paul’s Apology........ 78 Caird, John—Religion in Common Life......... 85 Campbell, Alexander—Justification and Coro- RUNMEERT Ele ws On & 0a rides dy Rind dh Gow s0se.tuiciccce'et ea 97 Carey, William—An Enquiry.................... 109 Chalmers, Thos.—Expulsive Power of a New Affection 114 Channing, W. E.—Christianity a Rational Re- ligion Chapman, J. Wilbur—Grieving the Spirit...... 139 Christlieb, Theo.—The Lord that Healeth Thee.143 Conwell. Russell—The Jolly Earthquake....... 152 Cook, Joseph—The Atonement.................. 159 Cuyler, Theodore—Christ the Restorer......... 815 D’Aubigne, H. M.—Cross of Jesus Christ...... 170 Dixon, A. C.—The Dying Grain of Wheat...... 179 Dods, Marcus—The Sowe’P..........sscecessevess 184 | Drummond—The Changed Life.................. 191 Duff—Chief End of the Christian Church...... 204 Dwight, Timothy—Sovereignty of God.......... 215 Evans, Christmas—Fall and Recovery of Man.225 Farrar, F. W.—What God Requires............ 231 Finney, Charles—God’s Love for a Sinning SEE EL id n't, o dy.n' eR aeiniseede eh cosa ea voraiols aisle 3% Fowler, C. H.—Divine and Human Co-partner- SUEEMERM RE iteo'y Foti. oa vd) d'c-6.0 cue aiawiaiet piaicleie tie sia Gordon, A. J.—Christ the Light and the Glory.253 Gordon, S. D.—Jesus’ Habits of Prayer... Guinness, H. G.—‘‘Watch’’...............-. os Gunsaulus, F. W.—The Uplifted Christ........ Hall, Charles Cuthbert—Spiritual Unity Hall, Robert—Modern Infidelity Considered.. Haven, Gilbert—Two Greek Books on the Life Beyond Hillis, Newell Dwight—The Uses of EE > Hitchcock, Roswell D.—Final Triumph of SAMA AEMNUO SA Riedie Wass c's ei cla'vs'siea deutete veatembeiaea Hopkins, Mark—Choice and Service............ 351 Hurst, John F.—The Gospel a Combative FATS REMC Sa aita'estpiara anon /ciace we ce ameter a 5 Hyacinthe, FNC MG Py Sivicacite daa stbiok.saooam ow ate cght neon Irving, Edward—The Oracles of God Jordan, David Starr—The Strength of Being - 803 SICALE oO ain dee Sea Vee: VCs ve bUvc ebenwuebaus 82 Krummacher—The Crucifixion ..............0005 393 Lanceley, John E.—The New Song.............- 399 Leland, John—The Jarrings of Heaven Recon- ciled by the Blood of the Cross............. 405 Liddon, Canon—Influences of the Holy Ghost.411 Lorimer, Geo. C.—The Old Faith and the New.420 MacArthur, R. S.—The Masticated Word....... $22 McClintock, John—Import of the Lord’s Sup- RELI alpine cwit'vstiéd ss ruc Mable «itv c-sp 9 Usiemaeles 433 Page. Mcllvaine, C. P.—The Believer’s Portion in CREO sac eats cess cum eecleenies.s és Swi be aearmies 446 McKenzie, Alexander—The Little Faith........ 440 McLaren, Alexander—An Old Preacher on PP RSS AINE Bd cinina ae eicio winea'Vid ad a Aniap aiaiors ee 61 McNeil, John—What David Said in His Heart.454 Sa Ih W. F.—Separation of the Soul from AOR Oa er rent ClO er Cee bee ee eae ya | Martineau, James—Parting Words.............. 477 Mason, John H.—The Gospel to the Poor...... 482 Melvill, H.—The Natural Man...............008+ 494 Meyer, F. B.—Spiritual Life and Growth...... 501 Moody, D. L.—No Difference..............0.e0e0+ 517 Moorehead, W. G.—Ecclesiastes, or Under the SSTUM | denie.a. ists ecainfelacic visa. « dulwann meas outs soumkinadeee 526 Morgan, G. Campbell—I am With You all ie. DIGG: ccicuicianivingavaecsaciacts «slwatnisoateieuye ews vis Moseley, Canon—Reversal of Human fie: ENE |» a.c'e' nip danawatsaitnn nh alee eulp tie di calee ik Meeesiks 543 Moule, H. C. G.—Walking in Christ............538 Murray, Andrew—The Life is the Light........554 Newman, John Henry—Communion with God..557 ~ Newman, John P.—The Only Hope of the World 564 Nicholson, Wm. R.—Priesthood of the Churck of God 576 Nicoll, W. Robertson—Rose Garden of God....579 Park, Edwards A.—Prominence of Atonement.589 Parker, Joseph—To him that is weary, A word AN, SCHSON: TOcsy cn cicoeeedannoam nice ks eda ay 601 Pearse, Mark Guy—The God that Answereth DY. WEG" x, ose civics Sa dot deta aerosols ig Ae POTION 616 Pickard, W. B.—God’s Child—the Criminal. .. .625 Pierson, A. T.—Believer’s Union with the THONG wells sieiona gohan tanian naniesscaeee ici ee eae 633 Potter, Henry C.—The Individual and the SEALE) seine se W ancl a» ncmslguiaca hak yuen aya ewented 641 Punshon, Wm. Morley--Healing Waters.......646 Robertson, F. W.—Loneliness of Christ........ 655 Schauffler, A. F.—Money........s:ccescvccenscnns 652 Sheldon, Chas. M.—Christian Discipleship, or Follow Me 666 Simpson, Matthew—The Resurrection of the EQUUL vicacetcevbarscstanen Nia ie b Mealats av ofl. see ahd O fiat 672 Smith, Geo. Adam—Ritual, False Peace of..... 681 Spreng, S. P.—Not Ashamed of the Gospel..... 690 Spurgeon, Chas. H.—Paul the Ready........... 695 Stalker, James—Heaven, a Funeral Sermon... .699 Stanley, Dean—Jesus of Nazareth.......... wee T04 Stockton, Thos. H.—The Song of the Angels or Glory GO) AOS caycuc a Rie oud edeter use batec monks 707 Storrs, Richard S.—The Permanent Motive in_ Missionary Work Talmage, T. DeWitt—Christ Over All.......... 723 Taylor, Hudson—Blessed Prosperity and Ad- WREHILY Spancumrepumnecme acted deaee acurimes 728 Tholuck, F. A, G.—Jesus in Gethsemane....... 739 Tomkins, Floyd W.—Christian Warfare........ 746 Tupper, Kerr Boyce—The Central Theme...... 751 Var DYKO» Elon y-—Saltises sviviaucvecccavsb ce seine 762 Vaughan, C. J.—God Calling to Man............ 768 Warren, W. F.—The Gospel Invitation......... 774 Watson, John (lan Maclaren)—Peter, the BACKANer see cuavainct tastes bcicesh Wont kwell 782 Wayland, Francis—A Day in the Life of Jesus.786 Webb-Peploe, H. W.—Under Authority.........794 Whyte, Alex.—Paul as a Pastor..........+++ .». 800 Index According to Subject. Page. Page. Adversity and Prosperity—Taylor............... 728} Jesus of Nazareth—Stanley ...........+..00+++++104 Affection, Expulsive Power of a New—Chal- Justification and Coronation—Campbell......... 97 MILOKH Eve ser iin estan pate clots aiash wicible’ «ia \alain lela @ alalnpimsiacaiaia 114| Life Beyond, Two Greek Books on the—Haven.225 Atonement, Prominence of the—Park........... 589 | Life of Jesus, A Day in the—Wayland......... - 786 Atonement, the, in the light of self-evident Life, The Changed—Drummond Pe ARE Naialoc aaa: cabin clncren apis Selnae'sieieiag a 159 ight, The Life is the—Murray 5 Believed, I Know Whom—Behrends............. 24] Lord’s Supper, Import of the—McClintock.. . 433 Believer’s Portion in Christ, The—Mcllvaine..446/ Lorg, the, that healeth thee—Christlieb........143 - Candle of the Lord—Brooks..........ceeeeeeeeee ‘Loneliness of Christ, The—Robertson........ 655 Central Theme, The—Tupper.............. : Love, God’s, for a Sinning World—Finney.....236 Character Building—Broadus ........ oeens Loveth, Every one that—Parkhurst..... sa eesees 606 Choice and Service—Hopkins.............. a Missionary Work, Permanent Motive in— Christ Over All—Talmage ..........ccsseeccseees s Storrs: ..c.seses senee een eee SAP OADE a! § Christ, The Light and the Glory—Gordon...... Modern Infidelity Considered—Hall...... veeenten 303 /-Christ, the only hope of the world—J. P. New- oney—Schauffler ..)..\..acsenieeeeeenee ee TET Nas eh ocr cae inieamialeins clelstalaaiaio th aisie.els 564} Natural Man, The—Melvill............. Aeoape ine 494 Christ, Walking in—Moule..............s.ees08 Obligations, An Enquiry as to—Carey........... 104 Christ, What is Christ to Me—Beecher Oracles of God, Preparation for Compas the Christianity, A Rational Religion—Channing. .124 —Irving ....2250s0sseenanen eee Christianity, The Final Triumph of—Hitch- Parting Words—Martineau ..... RCRA IRAN HEE a faa arate take ines afin 's nln 'niale! eto leu tale nnynie, 341| Paul as a Pastor—Whyte, Alex............. Church, Chief End of the Christian—Duff..... 204| Paul the Ready—Spurgeon...............++ + aeesis89B. Clean, The Strength of Being—Jordan.......... 382 | Personality, Secret of a Radiant—Banks. Per Coronation and Justification—Campbell......... 97| Peter, the Backslider—Watson ....... ite Sco; vata 782 Criminal, The, God’s Child—Pickard........... 625 | Preaching, An Old Preacher on—McLaren...... 461 Cross, the, of Jesus Christ—D’Aubigne ....... 170} Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. .576 Crucifixion, The—Krummacher .............++-- Prosperity. and Adversity—Taylor..............728 Difference, There is no—Moody........ Reformation of the Family, The—Pere Hya- Discipleship, Christian—Sheldon ... cinthe ....56... 5.00 soeeteneeemenaens cousin sw OOD Divine and Human Co-partnership—Fowler ..245| Religion in Common Life—Caird..... tb afo.cja's ero jeteeenl Earthquake, The Jolly—Conwell..............-- 152 | Religions, Non-Christian—Burrell .............. 60 Ecclesiastes or Under the Sun—Moorehead..... 526| Restorer, Christ the—Cuyler..... ose foe enne'eei Je SLD Faith, The Little—McKenzie..............+00+6+ 440 | Resurrection of our Lord, The—Simpson.......672 Faith, The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. .420! Ritual, The False Peace of—Smith..............681 Fall and Recovery of Man—Evans............-- 225! St. Paul’s Apology—Cadman.. Fire, The God that Answereth by—Pearse..... 616 | Salt—Van Dyke ............++. Forgetfulness—Duty of—Black.............0-+++ 20| Separation of the Soul from God—Mallalieu...471 Gentleman, Definition of a—Newman..........- 562| Sheep, The Lost—Arnot............. aire clales lia aneel Gethsemane, Jesus in—Tholuck.............-.-- 739 | Song, The New—Lanceley....... see seeeoneeeees B09 Gethsemane, the Rose Garden of God—Nicoll..570| Sovereignty of God, The—Dwight.......... con cvele Glory to God, or the Song of the Angels— Sower, The—Dods...........++++ oo ccleaner ee MEO CREO osetia misitc ae riaaletelalcialelpja leleraalefelefeca 707 Titual Life and Growth—Meyer..............001 * God Calling to Man—Vaughan...............++-- 76S ' Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. (om God, Communion with—Newman..............+- 55) EPA 5 ci ciate: eletera seed cte neat AC scion Sawaielatee Gospel a Combative Force, The—Hurst........ 358} Star in the East—Buchaman..............+++---. 46 Gospel Invitation, The—Warren ............+++: 774) Strong, Be—Parr...........cssese:: welanlone tewereis 612 Gospel, Not Ashamed of the—Spreng........... 690| Suffering, The Uses of_—HiHis ae Narre one en dO4 Gospel to the Poor, The—Mason............-- ...482| The Uplifted Christ—Gunsaulus..............+.- 278 é-Grieving the Spirit—Chapman.................6. 139 | Under Authority—Webb-Peploe ..........-++++- 794 Heaven Reconciled, The Jarrings of—Leland..405| Union with the Lord, The Believer’s—Pierson. od REA ON —SEALCOT |. raiela asic aia eicwsiniale aie cial mgatetoiclera aiaalara 699 | Warfare, Christian—TomKims ...........-..+++-- Tioly Spirit, Influences of the—Liddon.......... 411 Watch—Guinness + volclel alo ce tetateat oie Aulworeteattels “ae Human Judgment, The Reversal of—Moseley..543 | Waters, The Healing—-Punshon.. nia cea eaters AIS 646 #-T am with you all the days—Morgan............ 532] Weary, A Word in Season to Him that wax -601 Individual and the State—Potter................ 641} What David Said in His Heart—McNeil... 454 Influence, Unconscious—Bushnell .............- 69} What God Requires—Parrar.......++.++ss+s00+ «281 Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S. D. Gordon.........2614-Wheat, the dying grain of—Dixon. Soon heeee een te ‘ Page. Page. Gen. 2:9, God Calling to Man—Vaughan....... 768| Ps. 27:4, Communion with God—Newman..... 557 Exod. 15: 22, 26, The Lord that Healeth Thee— Prov. 1:10, The Strength of Being Clean— & ORAISH TOD ica s cictuidln ae Kcininieteloeieln beh acaidactete Gs cals 143 JOTOAN 02. sae ve ewe es ciee eine diam ete oeieeeieneaane +. 082 Se pe “Exod. 34:35, A Radiant Personality, Secret of. 9| Prov. 20: 27, Candle of the Lord—Brooks....... 37 ™ Josh. 24:15, Choice and Service—Hopkins..... 350| Eccl. 1-12, Ecclesiastes, or Under the Sun— 1 Sam. 3:10, Individual and the State, The— Moorehead) 22.0. c aswe ded eee eee sbaies «ee DED EOLECM te caitin dion sae sari sien aermiaeen a ten cenie renran 641| Isa. 50:4, Weary, A Word in Sena to Him 1 Sam. 27:1, What David Said in His Heart— that is—Parkers..:.s0ccckoueueeee ciecbrertaheete .. 601 UMC TRU RICAE siesta stored te capo a ite eneioi ed miatalaleesy oval orebaaer als 454; Isa. 54:4, Forgetfulness, Duty of........... Ape) 1 Kings 18:24, The God that Answereth by Isa. 59: 1-2, Separation of the Soul from God— __ BOGE PGATSE sv cusicnic a eisidactisistein meine aeeladts ss eie 616 Mallalieu.....0.scseus+cut es occ keeee eee 471 ao Prosperity and Adversity, PRCHEE eee Jer. Ma 26, The Old Faith and the New OT wrale's sono cviccesdwcdbiciuccle sind daenaunssesecacse (Z Ps. 23:3, Christ, the Restorer—Cuyler ......... 815} Jer. "0: 23, The Sovereignty of God—Dwight.. 1214 5 ief End of the Christian Church Jer. 15:16, Word, The Masticated—MacArthur.822 ote a ae aay Se ssbae 204|} Ezek. 47:9, Healing Waters, The—Punshon.... gy Ps. 103: 13, 14, God’s Ghild, the Criminal— Micah 6: 6-8, What God Requires—Farrar..... S PiCKAra ane nies Ms) osfis c= ca waidaalsitew tes /s e25%,Amos 4: 6. Ritual. The False Peace of—Smith.681 Index According to Text.—(New Testament.) Page. Matt. 2: 2, The Star in the East—Buchanan.... 46 Matt. 56: 13, Salt—Van Dyke ...........-..2eceers 762 Matt. 6: 9, God’s Child, the Criminal—Pickard.625 Matt. 8: 8-10, Authority, A Man Under—Webb- PEN cin divecens ke SAE He So luuase deed =m es 2 7 Matt. 10: 34, The Gospel a Combative Force— UNIO rd SaIU en ioit Cale punialebeivee cope cbwas ape 359 Matt. 13: 1-9, 18-23, The Sower—Dods........... 184 Matt. 14: 31, The Little Faith—McKenzie....... 441 yatt 17: 2, Secret of a Radiant Personality 9 Matt. 19:30, Reversal of Human Judgment, TO oO, Co a cciarace ec dsas desea beledec’s Matt. 26: 36-46, Gethsemane, Jesus in—Tho- MEN s s pees « rape aan tnersaucrwas dvcnve se 739 Matt. 27: 33-35, The Crucifixion—Krummacher.393 .Matt. 28:20, I am With You all the Days— CTE Wate gian Tauern denna 24 2 Tim. 2:12, The Uses of Suffering—Hillis..... 334 Heb. 2:9, Justification and Coronation— Campbell) vncy sas os adaedabesccannoswedse rs Heb. 9:22, Gethsemane, the Rose Garden of God—Nicoll 570 1 Pet. 2:5, Priesthood of ‘the Church of God— Nicholson 576 2 Pet.-1:3, 8, Character Building—Broadus.... 34 1 John 2:15, Expulsive Power of a New Affec- tlon—Chalmers ...5.....ccceecreecccereccecees 1 John 3: 2, God’s Workshop—Abbott........... 805 1 John 4:7, Everyone that Loveth—Parkhurst.606 Rev. 14:3, The New Song—Lanceley........... 399 Rev. 22:17, Gospel Invitation—Warren........ .T74 Addresses having no particular Texts. Re MRM STURNT 01 o5d Se anh-onc cobs cee waveee Non-Christian Religions—Burrell .............. 60 Acts 6: 15, Secret of a Radiant Personality..... 9] The Jolly Earthquake—Conwell...............-152 Acts 20: 31, Paul as a Pastor—Whyte ..... seeeee 800| The Atonement in the Light of Self-evident Rom. 1:15, Paul the Ready—Spurgeon......... 695 Pruthi—-O00M ooo on swsivoust- sa teepieewalrs aiken y pene og 1: 16, Gospel, aise Ashamed of i ed The Changed Life—Drummond ......... ty Ge 191 em 18 Christianits "s. Rational Religt eats Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S. D. Gordon..... ++ +261 Channing... ty eoonn nena cca uns--+l4 | Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hom, 8:22, Dilference, There ia no—_Moody..... 517 | Hal eee eeeevereeceeeceeeeecceencerectceceseees + Rom. 5:15, Fall and Recovery of on eae ee - The et of the Family—Pere Hya- Rom. 9: 5, Christ over all—Talmage ores & | CEC! c Goie'n se Repu usw wduleucamis ccls tien ie og PV emaeuee Rom. 10:12, 15, An Enquiry—Carey ..........+: ee An Old Preacher on Preaching—McLaren SgoMe - A461 Rom. 12:1, Religion in Common Life—Caird.. 85 | Money—Schauffler ...........+..000- vee Meteo seer 1 Cor. 2:2, Christ Crucified, The Central Missionary Work, Permanent Motive in— Theme—Tupper ........ BD da data bier aah ae 751 Storrel i cazecesb ainaed Wausau Weave On aoneloped an aM 714 Index According to Character. BACCALAUREATE SERMONS. Page. CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE.—Continued. Pave bt ws steecereecceceeece meer Believed, I Know Wht Bitetatin. th slants 24 MUC—Van DYKE .....0.02.0000eeseeeeee ++++eee+++-%62| Christianity a Rational Religion—Channing. ..124 BIBLE STUDY. eee ee The Final Triumph ation Masticated Word—MacArthur ...........e.see- COCK cccvececcccwocasescsices svccoascue eanenes Oracles ot S04 Preparation for Consulting a Only Hope of the World—J.’P. Sl i ee nirvaveu naeuon canadien 372 Christ, The Uplifted—-Guonaulus... eeeeneer CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE. Cross, The, of Jesus Christ—D’ Aubigne. op euaeayaue Atonement, Prominence of the—Park........... 589 | Ecclesiastes, or Under the Sun—Moorehead. ..526 Atonement, The, in the Light of Self-evident Faith, The Old and the New—Lorimer.........420 TREN —O00K «avs supe swsblewsswssnee viectdadan 159| Fire, The God that Answereth by—Pearse..,...616 radia ng se F we Bw oma hed ind Index According to Character.—-Continued. CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE.—Continued. Gospel a Combative Force, The—Hurst........ Gospel, Not Ashamed of the—Spreng........... Gospel to the Poor, The—Mason Holy Spirit, Influences of the—Liddon.......... 411 Infidelity, Modern, Considered—Hall............ 303 Jarrings of Heaven Reconciled—Leland........ 405 Justification and Coronation—Campbell ....... 97 Religions, Non-Christian—Burrell ........ Rravateie (OO Resurrection of our Lord, The—Simpson..... . 672 Sovereignty of God, The—Dwight..............- 214 CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. Adversity and Prosperity, Blessed—Taylor..... 728 Affection, Expulsive Power of a New—Chal- AMET a raped cha taco aia tsteictovelele fetal nia’ aieivfejalaistarstarayetsl si ... 114 Backslider, Peter the—Watson Candle of the Lord—Brooks.............ee-eees Character Building—Broadus ........... Choice and Service—Hopkins..............0.e00> Common Life, Religion in—Caird............... 85 Communion with God—Newman ....... Day in Life of Jesus, A—Wayland.............. Discipleship, Christian—Sheldon ............... Faith, The Littleh—McKenzie.......... daetsiaiaeens Forgetfulness, Duty of—Black.............+0.0-- Gethsemane, the Rose Garden of God—Nicoll..570 Healing Waters, The—Punshon ..............+. 646 Influence, Unconscious—Bushnell ...... GRACE 69 Jesus of Nazareth—Stanley ............ Light, The Life is the—Murray................. Loneliness of Christ, The—Robertson Loveth, Every one that—Parkhurst............. Wroney—Schawiler iis. c cece. sven csnew nes csawnie nen Natural Man, The—Melvill ........... Parting Words—Martineau ............eeeeeenees Prosperity and Adversity, Blessed—Taylor..... 728 Restorer, Christ the—Cuyler ................05, , 815 St. Paul’s Apology for His Ministry—Cadman. 78 Salt—Van Dyke ........... Wein siavelen aie mateielslerele ate 762 MtHONS. Be PA erie reac as healers inate aanesielecorstete acaiate Suffering, The Uses of—Hillis........... The Changed Life—Drummond MRE SOWE— DOS! telasamienehiaslelelie sieves ac rcsmaeie clere Warfare, Christian—Tomkins ................0.. Weary, A Word in Season to Him that is.....601 What David Said in His Heart—McNeil........454 What God Requires—Farrar ............ ejeininis nieces CHRISTMAS. Glory to God—Stockton ........ mloleiaintaisteisie eyaicisintern 707 Star in the East—Buchanan ....... atetaleinlstateia's wee 46 COMMUNION. Lord’s Supper, Import of the—McClintock..... 433 DEATH AND HEAVEN. Pi eaven——S talker) afc hcicisseeieisia slew cicin eitia/aim tleie tele vies = 699 Life Beyond, Two Greek Books on the—Hayven.325 Paul the Ready—Spurgeon .............eegeecees 695 EASTER AND GOOD FRIDAY. Gethsemane, the Rose Garden of God—Nicoll..570 Jesus in Gethsemane—Tholuck ............ 22-739 eee ie our Lord, The—Simpson....... 672 “EVANGELISTIC OR EXHORTATIVE,—Cont’d. Page Christ the Center—Bradford........ baabasckatch lac 810 Christ the only hope of the world—J. P. New- MAI) ace es ater ABH OOBNS sce eppeaieier 564 Christ the Restorer—Cuyler ................- oo es 8LD Fall and Recovery of Man—Eyans.......... vee e220 God Calling to Man—Vaughan..............-+00: 768 God’s Love for a Sinning World—Finney......236 Human Judgment, Reversal of—Moseley..... 543 Invitation, The Gospel—Warren................. 774 Separation of the Soul from God—Mallalieu....471 The Lost Sheep—Arnot ...........ceseeeees There is no Difference—Moody.... Unconscious Influence—Bushnell ............... 69 HIGHER CHRISTIAN LIFE. - Authority, Under—Webb-Peploe ............. «2 194 Believer’s Portion in Christ, The—MclIlvaine. .446 Christ, What is Christ to me?—Beecher........ 18 Co-partnership, Divine and Human—Fowler...245 Crucifixion, The—Krummacher ................+ 393 Grieving the Spirit—Chapman.............. seeaced I am with you all the days—Morgan..... ieee .532 Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S. D. Gordon......... 261 Paul as a Pastor—Whyte ................- Bat ee 800 Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson...576 Radiant Personality, Secret of—Banks.......... 9 Song, The New—Lanceley...........cseeeeeeees 2399 Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer..............501 Spinel Unity in the Name of Christ—C. Cc. o b6v.e ws ew a6 «0 oy alls /els nisl otal atete ee 287 Union with the Lord, The Believer’ s—Pierson .633 Walking in Christ—Moule.............. Avlew eal Watch—Guinness ...........00eeee a «aie je. « nisi shale ciaal el eee eee 0300 The Strength of Being Clean—Jordan...........382 MISSIONARY. An Enquiry as to Obligations—Carey...........109 Chief End of the Christian Church—Duff.......204 Gethsemane, the Rose Garden of God—Nicoll..570 Money—Schauffler ...........eeceeeee a a'gueanale toem 662 Non-Christian Religions—Burrell slclceleer atetolcineate 60 Permanent Motive in Missionary Work—Storrs.714 Star in the Bast—Buchanan.............c0.+.--. 46 PARABLES. The Lost Sheep—Arnot ......... = ieforatéa falteteometdie’e The Sower—Dods ........... slp:irio(a/stalalelaishatetatelaieiatatats PROPHECY. Christ, The Light and the Glory—Gordon.. Healing Waters, The—Punshon ................646 Human Judgment, Reversal of—Moseley.......543 Ritual, False Peace of, The—Smith.............681 Watch—Guinness .:...........006. BporiCc i ronscage 7) SOCIAL AND POLITICAL. Criminal, God’s Child—Pickard...............+.-625, Individual and the State—Potter ........ «641 20 253 ee eeee (v1) INTRODUCTION. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D. Man has yet to learn fully the majesty and might of the tongue. We have never yet adequately weighed the value of words nor measured their power for good or evil. Hobbes tersely said that the difference between man and the lower animals consists “‘rationale et orationale’”—in the gifts of reason and speech. “The words of the wise are as goads;” and God has singularly used the tongues and pens of wise and good men, during the century past, to urge His people on to new, higher, holier endeavor. The volume which these words introduce is an attempt to select some hundred sermons or addresses of the nineteenth century, each by a different speaker, which the compiler deems worthy to rank among the words which, spoken on great themes and grand occasions, have moved the Church and the world, and influenced the great onward march of God’s elect host toward the goal of history. In making this selection there has been an unusual endeavor to be fair, impartial, and liberal in spirit. Some eighteen or twenty scholars and divines on both sides of the sea have been consulted, as well as practical preachers, and the list is the result of this consensus of opinion. It covers for the most part discourses in the English tongue, because mainly for English readers. All may not agree with the compiler and his counsellors in their selection, and probably no two, even of the most intelligent of the readers of the volume, would make the same choice and form the same list. But, taken as an approximation to the best hundred, which is all that any such compilation couid be, there is something worth careful study in this group of sermons. It may not be improper for the writer to premise that, of the hundred names here mentioned, he has himself known forty; and that, of the hundred discourses here men- tioned, he has heard more than thirty and read about double that number; so that there is the better opportunity of forming at least a fairly intelligent judgment upon their merits and desert as to the high rank here accorded them, One of the most conspicuous features of this list is that it presents the greatest variety alike of topic and of talent; and it is particularly helpful and encouraging to observe how power is both awakened and exercised in different ways. These hundred sermons might be classified under perhaps twenty heads in order to bring out this unique and interesting characteristic of variety. First, we have a class of sermons, suggested by great occasions, such as a mission- ary anniversary, or a political agitation, or a world crisis—like Robert Hall’s discourse on “Modern Infidelity,” prompted by the French Revolution that shook the very fabric of society, or Edward Irving’s, before the London Missionary Society. Henry Ward Beecher was never so great as when a great crisis in affairs moved him to exert all his strength. Some men are like Sampson—they shew their full gianthood only when there are gates of Gaza to be lifted from their hinges, or pillars of Dagon’s temple to be thrown down. A second class of sermons were begotten of a great theme. Some mighty concep- tion of truth and duty, some overwhelming vision of God and grace, of history and destiny—had the framing of the structure of speech; as in John M. Mason’s mind when he saw in the preaching of the Gospel to the Poor, the crowning work and proof of VIII Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Messiah’s mission and of the Church’s imitation of her Master, or as when Matthew Simpson discoursed of the Resurrection, or Roswell D. Hitchcock forecast the Final Triumph of Christianity. A third class of sermons exemplifies, on the contrary, the fact that a great discourse may owe its origin to a seemingly trivial incident; as when Chalmers, riding on a stage coach, asked the driver why, as he turned a sharp curve in the road he whipped up his leading horse, and was told that it was to “give Jim something to think on till he got by a big white stone at which he always shied.” Chalmers went home and wrote that marvellous exposition of the “Expulsive Power of a New and Mightier Affection” which shews every man that what he needs is something better to think of till he gets past the temptation which lies in his path. Doubtless John Caird’s “Religion in Common Life” owed its suggestion to some little incident which revealed the need of piety in the most minute and commonplace matters. ‘ A fourth class of sermons illustrate how a wide range of learning, theological and literary, may prepare a man to use pen and tongue with the power of a skilled master. Take as examples, Edwards A. Parks, who, in discoursing of the Atonement, brought the accumulated treasures of a life of study to his enrichment of thought and style. Joseph Cook, on the same theme, revealed the vast resources of a big brain in which the learning of ages was stored like honey in cells. Canon Liddon, in his sermon on the Holy Ghost, likewise condensed into an hour the researches of a lifetime. Another group of sermons illustrate the genius of intellectual and spiritual insight. Some men are seers. They look at the Word of God and it opens before them as though they had some strange secret key that unlocks apartments closed to others. Horace Bushnell was a man of this sort. His “Unconscious Influence” was suggested by the simple incident of Simon Peter’s saying “I go a fishing,” and the others saying, “We also go with thee.” How few would ever have seen that suggestion behind that brief, commonplace dialogue! Who ever equalled Frederick W. Robertson, however, for his wonderful power of reading deep meaning into sacred words? John McNeil is not much behind in the same line. Yet again there is another class of sermons which shew what power attends inten- sity of conviction and emotion. No man of the century more richly exemplified this than Alexander Duff. He swayed others because he himself was so profoundly moved. Even reporters ceased to take notes and found themselves leaning on their arms and looking up at the man who burned and glowed with his theme. They forgot their pencils in the charm and fascination of a speaker who was logic, rhetoric, and ethics—all on fire. It was so, at times, with Charles G. Finney, who held men in the white heat of his own ardor and fervor and moulded them like iron, out of the furnace, on the anvil of his purpose. Pere Hyacinthe in the same way swayed the great crowds at Notre Dame. ‘ Other sermons owed their power to their extensity. From a wide field of facts they marshalled a host of witnesses that swept like a victorious army against both the prejudices and the apathy of hearers. Claudius Buchanan’s “His Star in the East” was a mighty presentation of what the gospel was doing in the Orient in drawing even sages to Christ’s cradle and cross. Krummacher could discourse on The Cruci- fixion in a like strain, and Mark Hopkins impelled men to a right choice and a holy service by showing that the whole history of infidelity presents one series of disastrous disappointments and failures. Garfield said of him that to sit on one end of a log with Mark Hopkins on the other would be to any man a liberal education. An eighth class of sermons illustrate the permanent attraction of the gospel mes- sage. Nothing else wears. Spurgeon played on this one theme as Paganini did on his violin, but other preachers felt like going home and burning their sermons, as the Campsie fiddler smashed his violin when he heard the great Italian bring out of one cae as, Introduction. IX string music that he could not, out of four. Punshon proved that the Healing Waters always draw a great multitude of impotent folk to the porches of God’s Bethesda. And Theodore L. Cuyler, in a long life, has vindicated the claim of the cross to its universal and perpetual drawing power. Yet, again, this list of a hundred sermons shows us the power of a child-like simplicity of thought and utterance. J. Hudson Taylor rarely uses a word of more than one syllable. He has few if any of the arts of the rhetorician, speaks in a mono- tone, and uses a few gestures. Yet how he stirs men! Drummond was so simple and unaffected that he seemed only talking; his manner so quiet that he never raised his voice above a conversational tone, and betrayed no excitement. Yet few essays in English have ever commanded attention like his brief portrait of Love. Some of these sermons evince again the wonderful effects of long brooding over a subject. It takes some men years to get ready, but when they are ready, they shake the world. William Carey was ten years preparing to preach that sermon at Notting- ham which taught the Church to “Attempt great things for God, and expect great things from Him.” When one hears W. G. Moorehead, the impression is made that the materials of his sermon have been wrought in the quarry and the shops, before they are brought to the place of building, and one hears no sound of tools in fitting them to their place. And so of Canon Melville and Canon Moseley. The prepara- tion seemed always careful and slow. Some sermons exhibit the effectiveness of a concealed art. We are not to despise the graces of style. It is worth something to set forth truth in a forceful and winning way. Dr. A. J. Gordon was a man of singular fidelity to the gospel and of marked singleness of aim. Yet one can but notice how he brought to his aid all the resources of language. He was especially master of antithesis. The most notable illustration is his contrast between legal conviction and evangelical conviction. The former, wrought by law and conscience, alarms the sinner by’suggesting: 1. Sin as committed. 2. Righteousness as impossible. 3. Judgment as impending, But the latter, the fruit of the Spirit and the Gospel, convinces of: 1. Sin as pardoned. 2. Righteousness as imputed. 3. Judgment as abolished. F. W. Farrar’s style exhibits every subtle attraction of the rhetorician; and R. S. Storrs was, in America, the master of every device that adorns 4 discourse, though he followed the architectural maxim, not to “construct ornament,” but to “ornament construction.” Some men exhibit the startling, the abrupt, the spectacular, the grotesque—what, for want of a better term, is called the sensational. Joseph Parker heads this school. He has eccentricity mixed with genius. His idiosyncrasy borders on idiosyncraziness. Pathos at one moment, and something akin to bathos the next. T, De Witt Talmage, in America, astonishes an audience by scintillations that remind one of pyrotechnics. And Russell H. Conwell belongs to the same class. Witness his “Jolly Earthquake!” God has a place and sphere for all types of men. Other preachers rise to a high level of dignity and majesty of utterance, and never descend from this high level. Above all men I have heard, this is true of Alexander Maclaren, the greatest living preacher, who in his long life of magnificent models of preaching has never uttered a frivolous word. There is always something that reminds one of an eagle’s lofty, calm, imperial flight. When he perches it is on the mountain top. Dr. Storrs, in America, was his nearest counterpart, always dignified and stately, yet never affected or self-conscious. Timothy Dwight was a mighty advocate and od Pulpit Power and Eloquence. loved great themes like the Sovereignty of God, and they befitted his massive mind. So of Tholuck, in “Gethsemane” seeking to enter into the sorrows of the Son of Man. Not a few of these sermons owed their power to the great character behind them— the gigantic man behind the message. Phillips Brooks was not only a large man physically, but there was the mark of a great soul on all his utterances. Magnanimity’ is stamped upon them. John A. Broadus might well discourse of character building, for he was an illustration of his theme. And H. G. C. Moule, the new bishop of Durham—is a man whose every utterance is fragrant with the manhood of the man, who practices what he preaches. Some others owe their power simply to the practical helpfulness of their messages. They are not great in learning or logic and are not masters of oratory. Yet they are most useful men. F. B. Meyer has had a wide ministry, and his discourse on “Spiritual Growth” is a good index of the work he does and why he is so acceptable. He is one of the Keswick speakers whose great mission seems to be to help men and women to be more holy. Dr. L. A. Banks studies to bring men practical truth in illustrative forms. He is a great illustrator and master of anecdote. The same is true of G. Campbell Morgan, who loves to talk to men on matters that touch daily life, though he is by no means an inferior man in mind or culture. This reminds us of a class of sermons that owe their unique power to their timeli- ness. They are made and meant for the times. They have no odor of antiquity—no dead orthodoxy. They live and breathe with present-day messages. Theodore Christlieb studied men and their deepest wants and his words had a strange freshness, like bread just from the oven. Charles H. Parkhurst is the great preacher of citizen- ship. He is largely studying the city life and the remedy for its corruption. As Christlieb met German rationalism, he grips the greed and vice of city politics. C. M. Sheldon aims to show how Christ’s ethics fit today’s moral and spiritual needs, and how men can follow “in his steps.” So of J. Wilbur Chapman. A few preachers have illustrated the tremendous power of concentration. Alex- ander Maclaren has exemplified his-own motto—‘place one foot of your compasses in the Cross as a center and you may sweep over as wide a circumference with the other as your instrument allows.” D’Aubigne was great because he kept close to the “Cross of Jesus Christ,” like Paul. Christmas Evans, for the same reason, led the Welsh pulpit. He was always treating the ‘Fall and Recovery of Man.” So-of H. Grattan Guinness and Mark Guy Pearse and Francis Wayland. Mastery of the Bible is the grand secret of Prebendary Webb-Peploe. Beyond any other man I have known he knows God’s Book and can, without a note of any sort, give you an analysis of its contents. He is like a lawyer who has at his fingers’ ends his authoritative court decisions, or like the physician who knows every nook and corner where disease hides. J. H. Brookes of St. Louis was a like master of his inspired Text Book and could give chapter and verse unerringly. Alexander Whyte is a deep student of Bible portraits and has rare power in reproducing them. ’ Mr. Moody represents “self-made men,” if indeed all true men are not in the best sense self-made. He-stands for the class who, from the plow and anvil and loom and shoemaker’s bench—‘‘apostates of the trades’—as Sydney Smith called them, are summoned to be apostles of Christ to humanity. There are not many such. But Carey, Spurgeon, McNeil, like Moody, prove that God chooses men from common callings, and without a formal training in the schools, to sway great masses of man- kind. When God wants a vessel He knows how to shape it and use it, though it may not have felt the moulding hands of the master potters of this world. We turn to one more class of preachers—those who owe power to that inde- scribable quality—unction. We have heard men, who wielded supernatural weapons, Introduction. XI like George Miiller, the elder Thomas H. Skinner, C. G. Finney, Charles Inwood, Bishop Moule, Hudson Taylor, A. J. Gordon; but, beyond any man we have known, William Arnot was invested with this nameless charm. He could discourse on that “lost sheep” in Luke fifteenth, and hold a great audience in tears, and sway them as a field of wheat waves before the wind. Not an attempt at rhetoric! Everything homely, simple, unstudied, but such depths of emotion; such quietness and repose, yet the calm- ness of a deep stream; such noiseless movement, yet such carrying power in the current; such clearness and transparency, yet such volume and strength. He was saturated with the Word, but above all with the Spirit that gives it meaning. It was a great heart that beat in his speech and through it you felt the greater heart of God. Once only we heard Arnot, but then we went away with the feeling that we had been listening to a voice from Heaven. Of all pulpit types of power, this is the most enviable; but, as Dr. Maclaren aptly says, “this divine investment of power is sought by but few, because so few are willing to be made invisible by the investiture.” Paul Veronese called painting, ‘‘a gift from God.” And so is true preaching, and, like the poet, the real preacher “is born, not made.”’ Nevertheless, there are high models that help to make preachers, or to perfect them in their sacred art, and we can ask no greater mission for this volume than to be as the mallet and chisel that sculpture out of the rude, crude material, a nobler realization of the artist’s conception. “Ideals” are still “the world’s masters,” and perfection is reached only through a painstaking attention even to trifles. Let him who aspires to be one of God’s masters in that foremost of fine arts, the preaching of the Gospel, give careful study to this volume, and learn some of the secrets of true pulpit power—learn especially how the best sermons owe their value to the message, the occasion and the man. ee ee re ey ee. xii Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE COMPILER’S STORY. The making of a collection of sermons first occurred to me when considering features for Current Anecdotes, a monthly publication, where I thought a series of the one hundred best sermons of the century would run three years, but on account of the length of the discourses of the earlier part of the century it would have required five years. Then it was decided to make them into a book, and here is the book. I do not pretend to the exalted position of even Ian Maclaren’s sermon-taster, and as for judging the relative value of several hundred sermons, the great majority of which I had never heard or read, it was beyond me. Therefore I asked the men, whose names appear on the title page, if they would not give me of their wisdom, as to which were the ten best sermons of the century. They were gracious, and for this selection, or the greater part at least, you are indebted to them. A number of the remaining sermons were suggested by preachers, and some by personal friends, so that the com- piler’s story should really be signed by a list of names. The few who take the trouble to read prefaces, unless written by famous persons, may be interested in some of the correspondence of the men whose advice I sought. It follows: President Barrows of Oberlin College wrote: “T would suggest as among the greatest sermons of the century, Professor E. A. Park’s sermon on ‘The Prominence of the Atonement’; Professor Park’s sermon on ‘Conscience,’ a recent sermon by Dr. Gunsaulus on ‘Having Therefore this Ministry, We Faint Not’; a recent sermon by Dr. Charles E. Jefferson on ‘Eternal Punish- ment’; Edward Caird’s sermon on ‘Religion in Daily Life. I would pick out two or three of Mr. Beecher’s sermons, if I had the volumes here. I would also include Dr. Richard S. Storrs’ sermon before the Congregational Council in New Haven in "74 on “The Evidences of the Divine Existence.’ I would include one of Joseph Parker’s sermons, and one of Father Hyacinth’s.” Following is the reply of President Bashford of Ohio Wesleyan University: “T regard Frederick Robertson as the greatest preacher of the nineteenth century. His sermon upon ‘The Loneliness of Christ’ is a characteristic one. Phillips Brooks’ ‘Candle of the Lord’ is, in my judgment, his greatest sermon. I think this was Mr. Brooks’ judgment, from the frequency with which he preached it. I am inclined to think that you ought to have one sermon by Henry Drummond, one by Bishop Simpson, one by Henry Ward Beecher, and one by Mr. Spurgeon in your collection. I am in greater doubt in regard to Mr. Spurgeon than in regard to the others. I am quite sure your volume should include a sermon by Canon Liddon; perhaps his ser- mon on ‘Humility.’ It seems to me, also, that you should have a sermon by Mar- tineau; perhaps the one entitled ‘Parting Words,’ or else the one on ‘Worship in Spirit,’ or on ‘The God of the Living.’ I think, also, you ought to have a sermon by John Henry Newman. I base these suggestions on the fact that I judge you_are aiming to make a collection of the most representative sermons of the 19th century.” President J. G. K. McClure of Lake Forest University said that among the ten best sermons of the century with which he was familiar, are: ‘‘Canon Moseley, ‘The Reversal of Human Judgment’; F. W. Robertson, ‘Obedience, the Organ of Spiritual The Compiler’s Story. iii Knowledge’; Horace Bushnell, ‘Every Man’s Life a Plan of God, or His Unconscious Influence’; Thomas Chalmers, ‘The Expulsive Power of a New Affection’; President Woolsey, ‘The Self-propagating Power of Sin’; Canon Liddon, ‘The Doubt of Thomas’; Dr. J. W. Worcester, Jr., ‘Christianity a Virile Religion.’ ” “Frank W. Gunsaulus, president of Armour Institute: Robert Hall, “Modern Infidelity’; Canon Liddon, “Holy Spirit’; Robertson, ‘“‘Caiaphas”; Beecher, “What is Christ to Me”; Bushnell’s “Our Loving God is Letting God Love Us’; Martineau, “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God”; Moody, “Faith”; Hitchcock, “Eternal Atone- ment”; Brooks, “Withheld Completion of Life’; Munger, “God, Our Reward.” He said he would also add one sermon from each of the following men: Spurgeon, Maurice, Simpson, Channing, Park, Storrs and Joseph Parker. Kerr Boyce Tupper gave the following: Robert Hall, “Modern Infidelity Con- sidered”; Christmas Evans, “Fall and Recovery of Man”; John Leland, “Heaven Reconciled by the Blood of the Cross”; Chalmers, “Expulsive Power of a New Affection’; John Mason, “The Gospel for the Poor’; Francis Wayland, ‘““The Apos- tolic Ministry’; F. W. Robertson, “Obedience the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge”; Beecher, “Love, the Fulfilling of the Law’; W. E. Channing, “Christianity a Rational Religion.” W. G. Moorehead, Xenia Theological Seminary: Chalmers, ‘““Expulsive Power of a New Affection’’; President Nott, ‘“Dueling—Occasion of Duel of Burr and Hamil- ton”; Canon Liddon, “Divinity of Christ”; Spurgeon, “Luther Memorial’; Carey, “Tsaiah 54: 1, 2”; Mason, “The Gospel to the Poor’’; Robert Hall, “Modern Infidelity.” Prof. A. H. Currier, Professor of Exegesis: Chalmers, “Expulsive Power of a New Affection”; Bushnell, ‘Unconscious Influence”; Phillips Brooks, “The Opening of Eyes”; Alexander McLaren, “The Living Dead”; W. M. Taylor, “Who is this?”; John Henry Newman, “The Invisible World”; F. W. Robertson, “The Illusiveness of Life”; Robert Hall, “Death of Princess Charlotte.” Frances E. Clark, president of the United Society of Christian Endeavor: “The sermons that have most helped me have been those of Horace Bushnell, Alexander McLaren, Canon Liddon, Phillips Brooks, Charles H. Parkhurst, Andrew Murray and F. B. Meyer, among modern writers, though it is difficult to draw the line where so many of my brethren have written helpful and worthy sermons.” A. T. Pierson, editor Missionary Review of the World: Carey, “Isaiah 54:1, 2”; Buchanan, “Star in the East”; Robert Hall, “Modern Infidelity”; Mason, “To the Poor the Gospel is Preached”; Arnot, “Luke 15:1”; Christlieb, “Modern Unbelief’; Alexander Duff, as moderator of the Scotch Assembly; Alex. McLaren at the French Jubilee; Wayland, “Apostolic Ministry’; Phillips Brooks on “Foreign Missions.” F. B. Meyer, the English preacher most widely known in America: Carey, “Isaiah 54:1, 2”; Hall, Modern Infidelity’; Parker, “The Dying Thief’; Mc Laren, “Time for Thee to Work”; Spurgeon, ‘‘Deep Calling to Deep’; Moody, “Sowing and Reaping’; Brooks, “‘The Pattern in the Mount’; Irving, “London Missionary Society Sermon.” Bishop J. S. Mills of the United Brethren Church: Adolph Monod, “God is Love”; Tholuck, “Christian Life a Glorified Childhood”; Krummacher, “The Be- liever’s Challenge”; Julius Muller, “Relation of Religion to Business.” Lecture ser- mons—Joseph Cook, “Does Death End All”; Punshon, “Daniel in Babylon”; Christ- lieb, “Modern Unbelief’; Wendling, “Ingersoll from a Secular Standpoint.” The greatest preachers in English—Spurgeon, Joseph Parker, McLaren, F. W. Robertson, Beecher, Phillips Brooks, Matthew Simpson and Moody. xiv Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Bishop Mills also gave the following list of sermons of past ages, which are by general concensus of opinion regarded as the best: “The Sermon on the Mount.” By Christ. “The Smali Number of the Saved.” By Massillon. “Passion of Christ.” By Bourdalone. “Funeral Sermon of Turenne.” By Bossuet. “The Nature and the Control of the Passions.” By Saurin. “The Crucifixion of Christ.” By Barrow. ? “The Image of God in Man.” By South. “The Foolish Exchange” and “The Marriage Ring.’ By Jeremy Taylor. “The Redeemer’s Tears.” By John Howe. { “Modern Infidelity.” By Robert Hall. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” By Jonathan Edwards. “Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” By Chalmers. “The Compassion of Christ to Weak Believers.” By S. Davies. “The Gospel for the Poor.” By J. M. Mason. “The Great Assize.”’ By John Wesley. “God is Love.” By A. Monod. “And There Shall be no Night There.” By Melville. “Glorying in the Cross.” By McLaurin. ey H. C. G. Moule, bishop of Durham, England: Thomas Chalmers, “Original Sin”; Charles Simeon, ‘““The Watchman’s Duty’; Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (of Oxford), “Future Punishment’; C. I. Vaughan, “I Have Been Young and Now Am Old”; McNeil, “Vain Excuses’’; Moody, ‘Consequences of Sinning’’; Spurgeon, “Supposing Him to be the Gardener”; Adolph Monod, “Four Sermons on St. Paul.” Russell H. Conwell, pastor of the Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, suggested the following: H. W. Beecher’s, on “Ideal Christianity,” II Peter 1:11; D. L. Moody’s, on “Watch and Fight and Pray’; Hugh McMillans, “Leviticus, 14: 34’; Spurgeon’s “Traivailing for Souls,” Isaiah 56:8; Alexander McLaren’s “The Bridal of the Earth and the Sky,’ Psalms 35:10; William Taylor’s “The Boy Jesus,” Luke 11: 48. George C. Lorimer, recently of Tremont Temple, Boston, and later of New York City, suggested only one, which he regards as the greatest preached in the nineteenth century: John Caird’s sermon entitled, ‘Religion of the ‘Commonplace.’ ” Joseph Cook, when he was suffering from what proved to be his last illness, very kindly dictated a reply to Mrs. Cook, saying that he endorsed Dr. A. T. Pierson’s list with the addition of Prof. Park’s discourses, especially the one on “Conscience,” «and Dr. Storrs on “Foreign Missions.” A chart of the subjécts of the sermons and those who selected them would show that some of the sermons were chosen by as many as four different men—a remark- able coincidence, considering the mental iatitude of the men consulted, and the fact that I suppose the world would not contain the sermons written. And the judgment as to the men who should be represented in such a collection was more unanimous than that on the particular sermons which should be used. As to those who should be represented, the choice fell on: Horace Bushnell, Phillips Brooks, Henry Ward Beecher, John Caird, Thomas Chalmers, Canon Liddon, D. L. Moody, John M. Mason, Henry Martineau, Alexander McLaren, F. W. Robertson, Charles H. Spur- ee and W. M. Taylor; entitled thus, as it were, to a position in a preachers’ hall OL fameoneg gure + The Compiler’s Story. XV The following sermons were regarded by three or more of the men consulted as the ten best sermons of the century: “Unconscious Influence,” by Horace Bushnell, recommended by President Mc- Clure, Addison P. Foster and Prof. Currier. Carey’s sermon on “Isaiah 54: 1, 2,” recommended by F. B. Meyer, W. G. Moore- head and A. T. Pierson. Chalmers’ “Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” by Kerr Boyce Tupper, Presi- dent McClure, Bishop Mills and W. G. Moorehead. Robert Hall’s ‘“Modern Infidelity,” by F. W. Gunsaulus, F. B. Meyer, Kerr Boyce Tupper and W. G. Moorehead. John M. Mason’s “To the Poor the Gospel is Preached,” suggested by A. T. Pierson, W. G. Moorehead and Kerr Boyce Tupper. A number of the sermons suggested were not used, for several reasons; their length, or the fact that a sermon on the same or nearly the same subject or text had been determined upon, or that, in the cases of living preachers, they personally ex- pressed a preference for some other than the one chosen. While men are not always the best judges of their own productions, they know their own repertoire best. Again, there are some of the sermons here chosen by the compiler, but in most cases after consultation with friends. The fact that the peculiar value of the book would consist in the selections being made by men of such known reputation and wide experience as those mentioned on the title page was kept in mind at all times. If the selection meets your approval tell them, if not, tell me, confidentially. For suggestions as to single sermons, I am indebted to many: W. B. Pickard, for suggesting a sermon of John Lanceley’s; G. B. Townsend, Christian Missionary Society, for Alexander Campbell’s “Justification and Coronation’; Rev. W. W. Barker, for Kerr Boyce Tupper’s “Central Theme of Christianity.” Bishop McCabe wrote me that when he had time to read a sermon he usually turned to one of Phillips Brooks or John Wesley. To publishers who have given me permission to use copyrighted sermons, I have given full credit in connection with the sermons. Librarian Root of Oberlin College Library and William H. Brett, Cleveland Public Library, I desire to thank for favors. One example of interest that particularly impressed me was that Mrs. Gordon personally wrote out from the manuscript of the late A. J. Gordon, the copy of the sermon which appears here, as she thought it more nearly represented his principal themes than the one that had been selected. One who has been especially kind as to suggestions and encouragement, was asked to write the introduction. If the readers of this volume, and those who refer to it, get as much pleasure as the compiler has gotten in reading proof, he will be very much pleased to have under- taken the work, which he trusts will prove, by reason of the selection having been made as the result of the concensus of opinions of so many able men, to be the most valuable collection of sermons thus far published. FREDERICK BARTON. PHE “LOST SHEEP. WILLIAM ARNOT. (Luke 15: 1-7.) Although by another saying of the Lord, it is rendered certain that hired, and even in a sinister sense “hireling,” shepherds were known at the time in the country, the presumption that the flock which this shepherd tended was his own property is favored both by the specific phraseology employed in the narrative, and the special circumstances of this particular case. The size of this flock, consisting of only one hundred sheep, points rather to the entire wealth of a comparatively poor man than to the stock of a territorial magnate. The conduct of the shepherd, moreover, is precisely the reverse of that which is elsewhere ascribed to the “hireling whose own the sheep are not.” The salient feature of the man’s character, as it is represented in the parable, constitutes a specific proof of his ownership—‘the careth for the sheep,” and that too with a peculiar and self-sacrificing tenderness. We assume, therefore, according to the terms of the narrative in their literal acceptation, that this is a man “having an hundred sheep”—that the sheep are his own. He is feeding them on pasture land far from cultivated fields and human dwellings. Hills impervious to the plough, and patches of vegetation interspersed through rugged stony tracts, have in all countries and ages constituted the appropriate pasture for flocks of sheep. These are indicated here by one word, “ the wilderness.” The term is obviously used not in a strict but in a free popular sense; it means simply the region of pasturage, consisting generally of hills and moors, not suitable for being ploughed and sown. A flock of a hundred sheep, although small, is yet sufficiently considerable to render it impossible for the shepherd to detect the absence of one by merely looking to them in the lump and from a distance; he must have minutely inspected them ere he discovered that one was missing. Knowing them all individually, he knows the one that has strayed; he loves them all as his children, and grieves when one goes out of sight. It was no mark of carelessress in the shepherd, as some have erroneously imagined, to leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness while he went to seek the one that was lost. The main body of the flock was left in its own proper place, where it is often left from morning till night by the most careful shepherd, even when he is not employed on the urgent duty of recovering wanderers. The shepherd knows the nature of the country in which the sheep is straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the solitary truant sheep; he divines accord- ingly what track it will take. He conjectures beforehand, with a considerable measure of accuracy, the pit in which it will be found lying, or the thicket in which it will be seen struggling. He follows and finds the fugitive. Wearied by its journey, and per- haps wounded by its falls, the sheep, when discovered, cannot return to the fold even under the shepherd’s guidance; he takes it on his shoulders and bears the burden home. He does not upbraid it for its straying; he does not complain of its weight. He is glad that he has gotten his own again, after it was “ready to perish.’ Happy 2 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. while he bears it homeward, and happy when he has gotten it home, he invites all his neighbors to share in his joy. Such is the simple and transparent outline of this ancient eastern pastoral scene; let us now endeavor to see in the symbol those lessons which it at once veils and reveals. The parable is spoken expressly for the purpose of determining and manifesting the character and work of the Son in the salvation of sinful men; it declares the design, the method and the terms of the incarnate Redeemer in His intercourse with the creatures whom He came to save. But in the fact of accomplishing this, its immediate object, it strikes also a chord which runs through the center—constitutes, as it were, the medulla of the divine government in all places and all times. The parable spoken in order to afford a glance into the heart of Jesus, incidentally at the same time sketches the outline of God's universal rule; as in drawing the figure of a branch you necessarily exhibit, in its main features and proportions, an image of the tree. This wider subject certainly and accurately outlined, although incidentally introduced, demands some notice at our hand. Eyer since the scientific observation discovered the true system of the material universe, and so, as it were, changed those twinkling sparks of light into central suns, the rulers of tributary worlds, philosophy apart from faith has been, more or less articulately, scattering the question, at once a fruit and a seed of unbelief, how could the Creator of so vast a universe bestow so much of His care on one small spot? Some have been disposed to say, and perhaps more have been disposed to think, with fear or joy, according to their predilection, that modern discovery is gradually putting the Bible out of date. A feeling, if not a judgment, has in some quarters arisen, that in view of the vastness of creation, the Scriptures ascribe to this globe and its con- cerns a share of its Maker’s interest disproportionately great. This phase of unbelief is refuted both by the necessary attributes of God and by the written revelation of His will. What relation, capable of being appreciated or calculated, subsists between material bulk and moral character? The question between great and small is totally distinct from the question between good and evil. Number and extensions cannot exercise or illustrate the moral character either of God or of man. We should ourselves despise the mischievous caprice which should give to the biggest man in the city the honors that are due to the best. Right and wrong are matters that move on-other iines and at higher levels than great and small, before both human tribunals and divine. There is, perhaps, as much reason for saying that this earth is too large, as for saying that it is too small, for being the scene of God’s greatest work. The telescope has opened a long receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss oi distance and magnitude; the microscope has opened another long receding vista of wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of nearness and minuteness equally beyond his reach. Between the great and the small, who shall determine and pre- scribe the center-point equi-distant from both extremes, which the Infinite ought to have chosen as a theatre for the display of His greatest glory? 4 In the divine government generally, as well as in revealed religion particularly, the aim is not to choose the widest stage, but on any stage that may be chosen to execute the Creator’s purpose, and achieve the creature’s good. A battle is fought, an enemy crushed, and a kingdom won on some remote and barren moor; no man suggests, by way of challenging the authenticity of the record, that a conflict waged between hosts so powerful, and involving interests so momentous, could not have taken place on an insignificant spot, while the continent contained many larger and more fertile plains; neither can the loss incurred by the sin of men and the gain gotten through redemption of Christ, be measured by the size of the world in which the : The Lost Sheep—Arnot. 3 events emerged. It is enough that here the first Adam fell and the second Adam triumphed—that here evil overcame good, and good in turn overcame evil. There was room on this earth for Eden and Calvary; this globe supplies the fulcrum whereon all God’s government leans. The Redeemer came not to the largest world, but to the lost world—‘‘even so, Father.” “He took not on Him the nature of angels.””’ In aggregate numbers they may, for aught we know, be the ninety and nine, while we represent the one that strayed; but though all these shining stars were peopled worlds, and all their inhabitants angels who kept their first estate, He will leave them in their places in the blue heaven afar, like sheep’ in the wide moorland, and go forth in search of this one shooting star, to arrest and bring it back. It is His joy to restore it to law and light again. Rejoice with great joy, O inhabitants of the earth! the Savior Almighty has passed other worlds and other beings, some of whom do not heed, and some oi whom do not get, salvation—has passed them and come to us. He has taken hold of the seed of Abraham, that we who partake of Abraham's sinful flesh may partake also of Abraham's saving faith. There is much in this mystery which we do not know, and in our present state could not comprehend; but we know the one thing needful regarding it—that ‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Having noticed cursorily that grand characteristic feature of God’s universal government to which the principle of the parable is applicable, we proceed now to examine more particularly the recovery of lost men by the Lord our Redeemer, to which the lesson of the parable is, in point of fact, specifically applied. 1. The shepherd misses one when it has strayed from the flock. The Redeemer’s knowledge is infinite; He looks not only over the multitude generally, but into each individual. When I stand on a hillock at the edge of a broad meadow and look across the sward, it may be said in a general way that I look on all the grass of that field; but the sun in the sky looks on it after another fashion—shines on every down- _spike that protrudes from every blade. It is thus that the Good,Shepherd knows the flock. Knowing all, He misses any one that wanders. He missed a world when it fell, although His worlds lie scattered like grains of golden dust on the blue field of heaven—the open infinite. When the light of moral life went out in one of His worlds, He missed its wonted shining in the aggregate of glory that surrounds His throne. With equal perfectness of knowledge He misses one human being who has been formed by His hand, but fails to hang by faith upon His love. The Bible speaks of falling “into the hands of the living God,” and calls it “‘a fearful thing” (Heb. 10: 31); but an equally fearful thing happened before it—we fell out of the bosom of the living God. He felt, so to speak, the want of our weight when we fell, and said, “Save from going down to the pit.” But the omniscience of the Savior does not stop when it passes through the multitude, and reaches the individual man; it penetrates the veils that effectually screen us from each other, and so knows the thoughts which congregate like clouds within a human heart, that He misses every one that is not subject to His will. When the mighty volume is coursing along its channel towards the ocean, He marks every drop that leaps aside in spray. It is a solemn thought, and to the reconciled a gladsome one, that. as the shepherd observed when one sheep left the fold, the Shepherd of Israel, who slumbers not nor sleeps, detects every wandering soul, and in that soul every wandering thought. The physician’s thorough knowledge of the ailment lies at the very foundation of the patient’s hope. 2. The shepherd cared for the lost sheep; although he possessed ninety and nine, he was not content to let a unit go. A species of personal affection and the ordinary interest of property, combine to cause grief when the sheep is lost, and to contribute the motive for setting off in search of the -wanderer. In attempting to apply the lesson at this point, we very soon go beyond our 4 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. depth. Our own weakness warns us not to attempt too much; but the condescending kindness of the Lord, in speaking these parables, encourages us to enter into the mystery of redeeming love on this side as far as our line can reach. In that inscrut- able love which induced the Owner of man to become his Savior when he fell, there must be something corresponding to both of the ingredients which constituted the shepherd’s grief. There was something corresponding—with such correspondence as may exist between the divine and the human—to the personal affection, and something to the loss of property. When we think of the Redeemer’s plan and work as wholly apart from self-interest, and undertaken simply for the benefit of the fallen race, we form a conception of redemption true, as far as it goes, but the conception is not com- plete. The object which we, from our view-point, strive to measure, has another and opposite side. For His own sake as well as for ours, the Redeemer undertook and accomplished His work. ‘‘For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame.’”” When He wept over Jerusalem, mere pity for the lost was not the sole fountain of His tears. Those tears, like some great rivers of the globe, were supplied from two sources lying in opposite directions. As the possession oi the ransomed when they are brought back affords the Redeemer joy, the want of the lost, while they are distant, must cause in His heart a corresponding and equiva- lent grief. It is true, that if we too strictly apply to the divine procedure the analogy of human affairs at this point we shall fatally dilute our conception of the generosity displayed in the gospel; but, on the other hand, if we do not apply this analogy at all, we shall inevitably permit some of our sweetest consolation to slip from our grasp. To be merely pitied does not go so kindly or so powerfully about our hearts as to be loved; Christ's regard for fallen men is not merely the compassion of one who is loftily independent. When an infant is lost in a forest, and all the neighbors have, at the mother’s call, gone out in search of the wanderer, it would be a miserably inade- quate conception of that mother’s emotion to think of it as pity for the sufferings of the child; her own suffering for want of her child is greater than the child’s for want of his mother; and by the express testimony of Scripture, we learn that the Savior’s remembrance of His people is analogous to the mother’s remembrance of her child. If you press the likeness too far, you destroy the essential character of redemption, by representing it as a self-pleasing on the part of the Redeemer; but if you take away the likeness altogether, you leave me sheltered, indeed, under an Almighty arm, but not permitted to lie on a loving breast. My joy in Christ’s salvation is tenfold increased, when, aiter being permitted to think that He is mine, I am also permitted to think that Iam His. If it did not please Him to get me back, my pleasure would be small in being coldly allowed to return. No, the longing of Christ to get the wanderer into His bosom again, for the satisfaction of His own soul, is the sweetest ingredient in the cup of a returning penitent’s joy. 3 3. The shepherd left the ninety and nine for the sake of the one that had wan- dered. I find no difficulty in the interpretation of the parable here. The doctrinal difficulty which some have met at this point, has been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the shepherd went out to seek the strayed sheep, implied no dere- liction of the shepherd’s duty—no injury to the body of the flock. In this transaction neither kindness nor unkindness was manifested towards those that remained on the pasture—it had no bearing upon them at all. Nor is it necessary, at this stage, to determine who are represented by the ninety and nine. Be they the unfallen spirits, or the righteous in the abstract, or those who, in ignorance of God’s law, count them- selves righteous, the parable is constructed for the purpose of teaching us that the mission of Christ has for its special object, not the good, but the evil. As the specific effort of the shepherd, which is recorded in this story, had respect not to the flock that 7 The Lost Sheep—Arnot. 5 remained on the pasture, but to the one sheep that had gone away, the specific effort of the Son of God, in His incarnation, ministry, death and resurrection, has respect not to the worthy, but the unworthy. Thus the Pharisees were entirely at fault in regard to the first principle of the Gospel. They assumed that, because the publicans and sinners had gone astray, Jesus, if He were the true Messiah, would not have any dealings with them; without either conceding or expressly denying their assumption of superior righteousness— that being precisely the point on which He determined that then and there He would give no judgment—He intimates that the strayed sheep is the peculiar object of His care, and that because it is the strayed sheep, and He is the Good Shepherd;—He intimates, taking the Pharisees and their own word, that the sinners are the objects whom a Savior should follow, and seek, and find, precisely because they are sinners. It concerns us more to know who are represented by the strayed sheep, than to know who are represented by the sheep that did not stray, for to the former class, and not to the latter, we most certainly belong. . 4. How does the shepherd act when he overtakes the wanderer? He does not punish it—he does not even upbraid it for straying; his anxiety and effort are con- centrated on one point—to get it home again. Would that guilty suspicious hearts could see through this glass the loving heart of Jesus, as He has himself presented it to their view! He takes no pleasure in the death of them that die. His ministry is general, and this lesson in particular, proclaim that Christ’s errand into the world is to win the rebellious back by love. You may suppose the truant sheep t6 have dreaded punishment when it was overtaken by the injured shepherd; but his look and his act when he came must have immediately dispelled the helpless creature’s fears. The Lord has held up this picture before us that in it we may behold His love, and that the sight of His love may at length discharge from our hearts their inborn obdurate sus- piciousness. 5. The shepherd lays the sheep upon his shoulders. This feature of the picture affords no ground for the doctrine which has sometimes been founded on it, that the Savior is burdened with the sinners whom He saves. His suffering lies in another direction, and is not in any form represented here. He weeps when the sinful remain distant and refuse to throw their weight on Him; He never complains of having too much of this work in hand. The parable here points to His power and victory, not to His pain and weariness. The representation that the shepherd bore the strafed sheep home upon his shoulder, instead of going before and calling on it to follow, is significant in respect both to this parable and its counterpart and complement, the Prodigal Son., In as far as the saving of the lost is portrayed in this similitude, the work is done by the Savior aione. First and last the sinner does nothing but destroy himself; all the saving work is done for him, none of it by him. This is one side of salvation, and it is the only side that is represented here. It seems hard to conceive how any converted man can be troubled by doubt or difficulty concerning this doctrine. Every one whom Christ has sought and found, and borne to the fold, feels and confesses that, if the Shepherd had not come to the sheep, the sheep would not have come to the Shepherd. If any wanderer still hesitates on the question, Who brought him home? it is time that he should begin to entertain another question, Whether he has yet been brought home at all? The acknowledgment of this fundamental truth, that salvation is begun, carried on and completed by the Savior alone, does not, of course, come into collision with another fundamental truth, which expatiates on another sphere, and is represented in another parable, that except the sinful do themselves repent, and come to the Father, they shall perish in their sins. 6 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. 6. Far from being oppressed by the burden of his strayed sheep, the shepherd rejoices when he feels its weight upon his shoulder. His joy begins not when the work is over, but when the work begins. While the lost one is on his shoulder, and because it is on his shoulder, the shepherd is glad. The doctrinal equivalent of this feature is one of the clearest of revealed truths, and yet it is one of the last that a human heart is willing to receive. The work of saving, far from being done with a grudge in order to keep a covenant, is a present delight to the Savior. This lesson falls on human minds like a legend written by the finger on dewy glass, which dis- appears when the sun grows hot; but when it is graven on the heart as by the Spirit of the living God, it is unspeakably precious. When I habitually realize not only that Christ will keep His word in receiving sinners, but that He has greater delight in bearing my weight than I can ever have in casting it on Him, I shall trust fully and trust always. There is great power in this truth, and great weakness in the want of it. Let even an experienced Christian analyze carefully the working of his own heart, not in the act of back-sliding towards the world, but in its best efforts to follow the Lord, and he will discover among the lower folds of his experience a persistent suspicion that the great draft which a sinner makes on the Savior’s mercy will, though hon- ored, be honored with a grudge because of its greatness. Look on the simple picture of His love which Jesus has in this parable presented—look on the words, “He layeth it on His shoulders rejoicing’—look till you grieve for your own distrust, and the distrust melt in that grief away. 7 7. The shepherd on reaching home not only himself rejoiced, but invited his neighbors to rejoice with him over his success. To this last intimation of the parable the Lord immediately adds an express exposition of its meaning—Ver. 7—"'I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.” In the parallel explanation an appended feature is expressed, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth;’’ both obviously refer to the same fact, and should be taken together as one announcement. The kingdom of God recognizes two successive homecomings in the history of every citizen. The exile discovered and borne back by the discriminating mercy of the Redeemer, comes home when through the regeneration he enters a state of grace; and he comes home under the leading of the same chief, when in the resurrection he enters a state of perfect glory. It is instructive and comforting to observe that, while both homecomings are joyful, it is of the first that the Lord expressiy speaks when He intimates that over it Himself and the hosts of heaven will rejoice. It is over the repentance of a sinner that a jubilee is held in heaven; they do not wait till the ran- somed one shall appear in bodily presence near the great white throne. There is no need; the entrance into grace ensures the entrance into glory. The children will all get home. No slip can come between the cup of the Redeemer’s glad anticipation when a sinner is renewed, and the lip of his complete satisfaction when He welcomes the ransomed at length into the mansions of the Father’s house. In this brief but lucid exposition of His own similitude which the Lord gave at the moment, and the evangelist has preserved for us, something is taught first regard- ing the companions, and second regarding the measure of His joy. Both present points of interest which require and will repay more particular attention. (1) In regard to the participation of the angels in the Redeemer’s joy over the salvation of the lost, the intimations bear that there is joy “in heaven,’ and “in the presence of the angels of God.’’ It seems unaccountably to those who look carefully into the terms of the record, to be universally assumed from these expressions that the angels, in the exercise of their inherent faculties, are in some way cognizant of conversion as it proceeds in human soul upon the earth, and that they rejoice accord- Pulpit Power and Eloquence. 7 ingly when another heart melts, and another rebel submits to God. Capital has even been made out of this passage by Romanists in support of prayers addressed to unseen created spirits. All this proceeds upon an exegesis, which is, I believe, demonstrably erroneous. In order to settle all questions that can arise here, nothing more is nec- essary than a simple straightforward examination of the terms. The rejoicing takes piace “in heaven,” and “in presence of the angels.” This is not the form of expression that would naturally be employed to intimate that the angels rejoiced. Expressly it is written, not that they rejoice, but that there is joy in their presence—before their faces. The question then comes up, Who rejoices there? In as far as the terms of : the exposition go, the question is not expressly decided; but its decision can be easily and certainly gathered from the context. Both in the case of the lost sheep and in J that of the Jost money the comparison is introduced by the term “likewise.” In this manner there is joy before the angels; in what manner? Obviously in the manner of 1 y : the rejoicing which took place after the strayed sheep was brought home, and the piece of money found. He who sought and found the lost rejoiced over his gain; but, not contented therewith, he told his neighbors about his happiness and its cause; he manifested his joy in their presence, and invited them to rejoice in sympathy with himself. It is after this manner that joy in heaven over a repenting sinner begins and spreads. We are not obliged, we are not permitted to guess who the rejoicers are, or how they came by the news that gladdens them. The shepherd himself, and himself alone, knows that the strayed sheep is safe in the fold again, for he has borne it back on his shoulder; his neighbors did not know the fact until he told them, and invited them to participate in his joy. It is expressly in this manner, and none other, that there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. The angels do not become aware of the fact by a species of subordinate omniscience. He who saved the sinner knows that the sinner is saved; rejoicing in the fact, he makes it known to his attend- ants and invites them to share in his joy. The gladness that thrills in the angels is a secondary thing, caught by sympathy from that which glows in the heart and beams in the countenance of Jesus. The Son of God the Savior having won a sinner by the power of his love, and brought the wanderer back forgiven and renewed, rejoices on His throne over this fruit of His soul’s travail. Ere the ransomed sinner has risen from his knees or wiped his tears away—ere he has had time to sing a hymn or sit down at the communion table on 1 earth, the Lord in heaven, feeling life owing from Himself into that living soul, __ rejoices already in the fact, and calls upon His friends, whether the spirits of just men or angels unfallen, or both in concert, to participate in His joy. The Apocalyptic witness saw no sun in the new heaven; “the Lamb is the light thereof;” from that sun the light streams down on the sea of upturned faces that surround the throne, and the sympathetic gladness that sparkles in the members is a reflection from the glad- ness that first glows in the head, as a separate sun glances on the crest of every wave- let, when the breeze is gentle and the sky is bright. (2) The intimation that there is greater joy in heaven over the return of a single wanderer than over ninety and nine who never strayed, presents indeed a difficulty; but here, as in many other similar cases, the difficulty lies more in the way of the scientific expositor, whose task is to express the meaning in the form of logical definitions, than in the way of the simple reader of the Bible, who desires to sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn the one thing needful from His lips. In this, as in many other portions of Scripture, a hungry laborer may live upon the bread, while it may baffle a philosopher to analyze its constituents, and expound its nutritive qualities. A devout _ reader may get the meaning of the parable in power upon his heart, while the logical ___ interpreter expends much profitless labor in the dissection of a dead letter. Who are the just persons who need no repentance? The suggestion that they are 8 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the members of the Old Testament Church, who really possessed the righteousness of the law, although they had not attained the righteousness of the Gospel, creates a greater difficulty than that which it proposes to remove. There is not any such essen- tial difference between the righteousness of Abraham, who looked unto Jesus ae, and the righteousness of Paul, who looked unto Jesus come. The true solution I apprehend to be that in the mind of the Lord this declaration had a double reference. It expressed an absolute and universal truth, known to Him- self and to His enlightened disciples; and also, at the same time, took the Pharisees on their own terms, condemning them out of their own mouth. The parable was spoken expressly to the Pharisees, and spoken specifically in answer to their objection, “This man receiveth sinners.’’ They meant to intimate that it became the Messiah to shun the evil and associate only with the good. From their own view-point He exposes their mistake; even granting their assumption that themselves were the right- eous, their sentence was erroneous. According to the principles of human nature, and the ordinary practice of men, they might have perceived that the chief care oi the shepherd must be bestowed on the sheep that has gone astray, and his greatest joy be experienced when it has been discovered and restored. The Savior’s delight over a publican’s return to piety should be more vivid than His joy over a Pharisee, who, by the supposition, has been pious all his days. Had the Lord then and there intimated to the Pharisees that they were deceiving themselves in regard to justifying righteousness—that they needed repentance as much as the publicans, His word would have been true, but that truth, He perceived, was not suitable in the circumstances. It pleased Him at this time not to fling a sharp reproof in their faces, but rather to drop a living seed gently into their ears, that it might find its way in secret to some broken place in their hearts. A certain portion of the truth He communicated to them; more they would not have received. The whole truth on this subject, if it had been biantly declared, would have driven them away in disgust. Elsewhere the Master expresses His mind very clearly nee your righteous- ness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven;’’ but it pleased Him on this occasion to teach another lesson, namely, that even although they were as righteous as they deemed themselves to be, the recovery of a lost one would afford the Redeemer a greater joy than the retention of the virtuous. Beyond expression precious is the doctrine unequivocally taught here that so far from receiving prodigals with a grudge, the Savior experi- ences a peculiar delight when a sinner listens to His voice and accepts pardon at His hand. This doctrine we learn is divine; we know it is also human; almost every family can supply an example of the familiar principle that the mother loves most fondly the child who has cost her most in suffering and care. [This sermon was included on the recommendation of A. T. Pierson, D. D. It is from a volume of Arnot’s sermons, published by Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, in 1874, under the title of “Parables of Our Lord.” William Arnot was born at Scone, Scotland, November 6, 1808; died at Edinburgh, June 3, 1875. A Scottish minister and theological writer. He was ordained minister of St. Peter’s Church in Glasgow in 1838, joined Dr. Chalmers’ Free Church move-~ ment in 18438, and became minister of a Free Church congregation in Edinburgh in 1863.] ) THE SECRET OF A RADIANT PERSONALITY. ALBERT LOUIS BANKS, D. D. “And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone.” —Exodus 34: 35. “And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.”—Acts 6: 15. “And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.”— Matthew 17: 2. j Christ has made it clear that it is our duty to be radiant and full of light. “Ye are the light of the world,” is Christ’s deliberate announcement concerning those who are His followers. None of us have a right to live darkened lives. It is not only our privilege, it is our duty, and we are under solemn obligation to live lives that shall be so cheerful and bright, so radiant with hope and courage, that the world looking on shall inquire the reason, and when they come to know it give glory to God. I wish to call your attention to these three cases of supreme radiance in person- ality, with the hope that from them we may learn the secret of the radiant life. The first is from the story of Moses. For forty days Moses had been on Mount Sinai with the Lord. He had talked face to face with God and the radiance of heaven was _ reflected from his face. When he came down the mountain and appeared before the people, though he was not conscious that there was any change in him, the people could not look upon his face, it was so radiant with the divine glory. Now in Moses’ case it was his divine associations which had given him this radiant personality. Here then is one of the secrets of the illuminated life. Associations will have their influence upon us. There is one kind of a diamond which aiter it has been exposed for some minutes to the light of the sun will when taken into a dark room emit light for a long time. The human heart is like that. The man who associates with God, who keeps in the divine fellowship of Jesus Christ, whose heart and soul rise in communion with all good and pure spirits, will gather the heavenly light, and it will shine forth from him in the walks of life. ‘In one of the old palaces the spaces between the windows of one of the rooms are hung with mirrors, and by this device the walls are made just as luminous as the windows, through which the sunshine streams. Every square inch of surface reflects the light. Our natures may be like that. If we are completely consecrated to God, walking in perfect fellowship with Jesus Christ, with all selfishness cast out, there will be no part in darkness anywhere, and the whole realm of the soul will be ablaze with moral illumination which will make the personality radiant and glorious. Some traveller says that the brightly colored soil of volcanic Sicily produces flowers of brighter tints than any other part of the earth. So it is true that the soil of Christian hearts, from which all the dullness and darkness of selfishness and evil has been expelled, a spiritual soil that is bright with the radiance of love and hope and faith, will produce deeds of brighter tint and sweeter fragrance than any other heart- soil possible to man. Henry Varley tells the story of Sybil, a negro slave, whose mistress said to her: “When I heard you singing on the housetop I thought you fanatical; but when I saw your beaming face, I could not help feeling how different you were to me.” Sybil 10 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. answered, “Ah, Missus, the light you saw in my face was not from me, it all came ‘flected from de cross, and there is heaps more for every poor sinner who will come near enough to catch de rays.” It is almost impossible for us to overestimate the power of associations on life. If we are to live bright and radiant lives our associations must be taken into account. An English writer recently related this incident: About a year ago a friend gave to a young man a lovely picture, and asked him to hang it up in his room for a year. The recipient of the picture was a lively young Oxford undergraduate, who cared much more for having a ‘good time” than he did for his studies, and who was not over particular as to the character of his good time. Calling upon him at his rooms one day, the writer found this picture hung in a prominent place, but surrounded by an incongruous medley of low sporting prints and questionable pictures. The young man himself did not seem to be conscious of the glaring contrast, but cheerfully called his visitor’s attention to the splendid picture which had been given him. Six months passed away, and the writer called again, and was startled by the change. The picture still hung in its old place, but its low companions had vanished, and their places were filled by other pictures in harmony with its beauty and purity. The face of the visitor expressed surprise, and in answer to a look the young man was quick to speak of the change. “You see,” he exclaimed, “I couldn’t leave them up with that. The contrast was too dreadful. I didn’t see it at first, but I suppose looking at the picture opened my eyes till I did see it, and then, I tell you, those cheap prints came down in a hurry! And it was the same way in putting up new pictures. That one set the standard, and I knew I couldn’t have, and didn’t want, anything that wasn’t in harmony with it.” Now that is the supreme glory of association with Jesus Christ. If we open the door of our hearts to Christ and He comes in and sits at the head of our table, His presence sets the standard for the guests at our soul feast. The rest must be in har- mony with him. If you would live a radiant, glorious life, let Christ become the central figure of your affection and friendship, and then there shall group about Him only those radiant, and hopeful, and beautiful spirits that are in harmony with Him. Our second picture brings before us that young and picturesque first martyr for Christ, Stephen. I have not time adequately to paint that wonderful picture. It is a court scene; the judges are grave and dignified men, full of bigotry and prejudice against the new religion. The mob gathered about are vindictive, and hate everything holy and good; and there before the council is Stephen, a young man with the glow of youth upon him, but a far more brilliant glow than any mere physical or youthful spirits or youthful strength can give. It is the glow that comes from a perfect loyalty to Jesus Christ. He does not seem to see the mob or the judges; his eye is on the throne of God; it pierces the veil, and he sees his glorified and risen Lord, and he bears witness to him with an utter fearlessness that astonishes and overwhelms the men who listen. As he thus loyally witnesses for Christ. those prejudiced men, who look on his face, are compelled to acknowledge that it is like the face of an angel. It is a tremendous truth that as life goes on the human face becomes the dial-plate of the soul, into which men may look and tell the time of day in character. As Dr. W. F. Crafts has said, the face is a bulletin-board that constantly indicates the working ofthe heart. Every day we see how anguish of heart “disasters the cheeks” and fur- rows the face, arfd writes upon it the epitaphs of buried hopes; every day we meet faces tramped as hard as a highway by the hoofs of pain and oppression, and sorrow as well as joy engraves its story on the countenance. Sin writes its record also on the face. There are places you may go in this city and look into faces that seem to con- tain, as some one has said, “the ruin of the ten commandments’’—faces that hurt you more than a blow, faces where “from the eyes the spirit wildly peeps,” faces like petri- , jae A Radiant Personality—Banks. a fied vices, not a finger-touch of God left whole upon them—and you will realize that vice as well as misery makes its trademark on the visage while it ravages the heart. Great soul-artists in fiction always recognize the fact that we are to see the mind in the face. Dickens makes even the dogs to lead their blind masters up side alleys to escape the cruel face of Scrooge, while on the other hand the little boy in the church- yard looks with tears into the face of “Little Nell” as her countenance is being trans- figured by approaching death, to see if she is already an angel, as the neighbors have said she will be soon. The teaching of all this is that whoever masters your soul will in the end make your personality bear witness to Him. Yow cannot escape the grip of your Master. If sin is your master, in the end you will be his living moving monument. But if Christ is your Lord, and from the profound depths of your soul you are loyal to him, out from that whole-souled loyalty to Christ there will come a glorious light on your face, and your whole personality will become radiant and bear witness to the Lord whom you serve. , _In our third picture we have the Christ accompanied by His three most intimate friends, Peter, James and John. They have gone up on the mountain, either Tabor or Hermon, and there while Jesus prays the fashion of His countenance is altered, and the astonished disciples, looking on, behold the face of Jesus shining like the sun and His raiment white as the light. Now in this case we have the radiance of a perfectly pure heart. Moses wore a veil when coming out from the presence of God, so that the people might look upon his face; and so Christ during all His earthly life was veiled, that He might live with men without the awiul glory of His perfect purity overwhelming the people with whom He associated. As some one has said, the transfiguration of Jesus was not a miracle, but a witness of the abiding presence of Christ’s divinity; His whole being shone. If He had been outwardly true to what He bore within Him He would have been seen always with His glory unveiled; it would have been about Him in the manger at Bethlehem—transfigured Babe! In His home at Nazareth—transfigured Boy! It would have shone about Him during His ministry in Galilee—transfigured Man! And, at the last, on Calvary’s cross—transfigured Sufferer! For our sake Christ veiled the _ outward glory that He might live among us as one of us; but for a moment on that mountain top, with these close friends about Him, the inner glory shone forth in His face, and the disciples fell to the ground before the radiance of that light. Here we have, then, three characteristics of a radiant personality, all of which are within our reach. A pure heart, divine associations, and a whole-souled loyalty to Jesus Christ. I say all of these are within our reach. If the heart is hard and selfish and sinful, bring it unto God at the mercy-seat, and He will take out of your breast the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Surrender yourself to do His will, to obey Him, and He will cleanse your heart of all unrighteousness. With sin banished you shall realize the promise of Christ, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Divine associations are also possible to us. We may always reach Christ and heaven through the gate of prayer. Down in Asheville, North Carolina, there is living a remarkable old saint, with a face as black as ebony, who is known as “Uncle Bar- ney.” A few weeks ago Uncle Barney was in attendance on a “quarterly meeting.” The presiding elder brought up the question of family prayers, and he began with one of the brethren and went round the circle, asking each brother if he had family prayers and requiring him to tell something about the worship that was daily held in his family. At last he came to Uncle Barney. Now Uncle Barney, like Paul, is an old bachelor, and so he said, “I cannot have family prayers, seeing that I have no family. But,” continued the old man with a shining face, “when I get up in the morning and PON Ay: Pulpit Power and Eloquence. wash my face, I say, ‘O Lord, wash my heart and keep me clean of sin this day.’ And when I put on my clothes, I say, ‘O Lord, clothe me today with the white garments of righteousness.’ And when I put on my shoes, I say, ‘O Lord Jesus, get into these shoes with me and make me to walk in Thy paths every step I take this day.” No wonder that this old man, a humble old black cook, has an influence which pervades the whole community, white as well as black, and is wherever he goes a radiant testi- mony for Jesus Christ. And so the perfect loyalty is possible to every one of us. Do not allow yourself to be discouraged because you are naturally timid and easily thrown into a panic. God can make the inner courage all the more glorious as it shines out through natural weakness. There is a moral courage which is far greater than physical courage. The Duke of Wellington once sent two officers on service of great hazard, and as they were riding, the one turning to the other saw his lips quivering and his cheeks blanched. Reining in his horse he said, ‘‘Why, you are afraid.” “I am,’”’ was the answer, ‘‘and if you were half as much afraid as I am you would relinquish the duty altogether.’’ With- out wasting a word the officer galloped back and complained bitterly that he had been sent in the company of a coward. “Off, sir, to your duty,’ was the Iron Duke’s reply, ‘or the coward will have done the business before you get there.” And Wel- lington was right. There was a physical timidity, perhaps the result of a highly wrought nervous organization, but there was a lofty regard for duty which bore the officer above his fears to triumph. Associate with Jesus and meditate upon His love; commune with Him, keep your heart pure in His sight, and there shall grow in your soul a moral courage so sublime and splendid that no trial or difficulty of life shall ever Overcome it. After all, everything that we have said is only saying in different ways, from different standpoints, that the secret of great and glorious life is in Jesus Christ. Our preparation, our fellowship, our reward, is all in Him. Paul’s ne comes back to us, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Wise and happy, then, are we when we can sing with Henry Lavely, “Enough for me to know “Enough for me to cast That Christ is God indeed; On Him my every care; Enough for me to feel Enough for me to wait, He shall supply my need. And all His crosses bear. “Enough for me to kneel “Enough for me to hear Close to His bleeding side; The tender Shepherd’s voice; Enough for me to seek Enough for me to trust, Him for my peace and guide. And in His love rejoice.” [This sermon was delivered on the occasion of Dr. Banks’ farewell to his congre- gation of over one thousand, whom he was leaving to accept a call to one of the two leading Methodist churches of New York City. At the conclusion he made this impressive statement: And this radiant personality is within the reach of every person in this audience. And I call you to witness this day that I have in the years past preached that to you which you could reach. I have not preached the impossible. Louis Albert Banks, D. D., was born at Corvallis, Ore., in 1855. Since his entrance to the Methodist ministry he has filled pulpits in Brooklyn, Boston, Cleveland and on the Pacific coast. He was Prohibition candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1893. He is the author of some thirty-five volumes of sermons, illustrations, etc.] (13) WHAT IS CHRIST TO MEr HENRY WARD BEECHER. “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.”"—Col. 1: 10. This is to be interpreted by such passages as that of the 27th verse: “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” One of the passages fitly interprets the other. We are to “walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing;” and Jesus Christ as formed in us, “the hope of glory,” inter- prets that God to us, and stands for Him. The command to grow in the knowledge of God requires only a few words; but the thing itself is the labor of ages; and, as in all sciences and in every school of philosophy, growth has been hindered by wrong methods, so that science began and went out almost, with Aristotle, because false methods were applied; and it waited for the days of Bacon and the modern school before any great advance was made. History was but clustering fables until the philosophic methods of history were developed. And, as the development of science in every department—for instance, physiology, the science of the mind, etc.—stumbled and blundered by wrong methods, coming continually short, and began to brighten and bear fruit sogsoon as right methods were found out and made use of; so the knowledge of God has waited through the ages for right methods. It has been pursued in various ways; and yet no other subject so important has received so little increment, compared with the time during which the world has existed and the human mind has been active, as this one matter—the knowledge of God. It is made the central and critical relation of Christ to every human soul. As we are to be saved by our faith in Jesus Christ, it becomes a matter of transcendent importance to each one of us to know Christ, to increase in our knowledge of Him and ‘therefore to know how to increase in that knowledge. The fact is that very few persons now have any view or experience in regard to the Lord Jesus Christ as the interpreter of God’s nature, which answers at all either to the experience of the apos- tles, or to that which they aimed at in their preaching. The question, therefore, comes up with emphasis: Is Jesus Christ so presented to men that they may reap the best fruits of faith? Are the methods of presentation the wisest and the best? Are the modes of study which are employed by the great mass of Christian people the best and the wisest? It is to the consideration of this ‘general subject that I shall devote this morning’s discourse. To His personal disciples the relation of Christ was one of intense admiration and love. With all the glow and enthusiasm which belongs to heroic friendship, they loved Jesus during His life. Not only that, but after the bewilderment of His cruci- fixion was over, and after His resurrection became an article of assured faith to them, they continued to have an intense personal love for Him. It was in each case the fidelity of a clansman to his chief. It was the enthusiasm of a man to some high and ‘noble friend. The expectation, doubtless, of soon seeing Him again increased the intensity of this feeling—for all the early years of Christendom were passed in the expectation of 14 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the immediate coming of Christ. It was the whole aim of the apostles to inspire in every man just this personal love and enthusiasm toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Does it exist? I do not ask whether men say “Lord, Lord,’ enough. I do not ask whether men say they are going to act thus and so “for Christ’s sake;” that they must “honor Christ;” that they must ‘glorify Jesus.” Of words there are enough. The question is far deeper than that. Is there an intense inward consciousness of the reality, the presence, the love, and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ which gives to many men such an impulse that they can say that their “life is hid with Christ in God?” Is there any such affection as this? Christ is the neighbor of a great many per- sons; does He abide in their households? Does He come into their midst? Does He dweil with them, and do they dwell with Him? An intense personal love for the Lord Jesus Christ being the germinant element, the beginning experience, so far as His relation with men was concerned, it was to this that the apostles directed all their exertion. Hence, the first argument was an argument to disabuse the Jewish mind of its prejudice and to show the serious-minded and moral men among the Jews that Jesus answered to the Old Testament description of the Messiah. Therefore, in the preaching and in the letters of the apostles, the views of Jesus Christ in relation to the prejudices and education of the Jews, in relation to the text of the Old Testa- ment, in relation to the Jewish sacrifices, and in relation to foregone history, figure largely; and much of modern theology has been similarly occupied in presenting views of Christ in relation to certain national Jewish prejudices or notions. Now, we have no such history as the Jews had; we have no such prejudices as they had; we have no such system as they had; we have no sacrifices; we have no altars; we have no priesthood; and to present Christ to us in the same way that He was presented to the Jews would be utterly void, unless by education you raised up an artificial] condition which should be equivalent to that of the Jewish system. To a cer- tain extent, this has been done. A most extraordinary thing is the artificial view into which men have been educated in order to make modern theology match with the relative arguments of the apostles on the subject of Christ’s relations to the old Jewish national system. If I wished to stimulate our people in New England to heroism, do you suppose I would talk to them of Marathon and Pultowa? I would talk to them of Bunker Hill and Lexington. If I were in Louisiana and wished to inspire patriotism in the people there, I would not talk to them of Waterloo or of Wagram; I would talk to them of the battle of New Orleans and of the defeat of Pakenham. It is not wise to attempt to inspire men with a heroic sense of the Lord Jesus Christ by preaching to them of an altar that for two thousand years has not existed; of a temple that was long ago in ruins; or of a ritual that they never saw, and that is a mere historical reminiscence. There must be an inspiration that shall open Christ up to our sympathy and reason as He was opened up to the sympathy and reason of the Jews. The genius of the phil- asophy of the apostles was peculiarly to develop the character of Christ in such a way as to meet the special national want which existed in their time; and the peculiar nature of our theology should be to meet the want which is the outgrowth of our national education. As the Christian religion went forth and began to take hold of and subdue the mind of the world, it fell naturally first into the Greek line of thought; and it was made a matter largely of mental philosophy. During the period of gestation of theology Christ’s nature, His relation to the Godhead, and His equality or non-equality with God—all these elements were profoundly discussed. Christ Jesus, when the Greek philosophy prevailed, was presented to the human mind in His dynastic relations, as a part of the reigning Deity—as belonging to the imperial God. More and more this What is Christ to Me?—Beecher. 15 took place, so that men had a psychological problem put to them instead of a solving process. They had an analyzed, arranged, classified God; and he was to them what, to a lover of flowers, is a hortus siccus—an herbarium in which last summer’s plants have been skillfully culled and dried and arranged with reference to their genera and species and varieties. There they all are; none of them are growing; they are all dried; but they are scientific. The work of the Greek mind on the character of God was to analyze it, to classify its relations and parts, and to present it to the world as a problem in mental philosophy applied to theology. Then, coming down still further, theology became Romanized. The Romans, introduced the legal element into it. Instead of having a simple personal Christ such as the Jews had; or instead of having psychological problems such as the Greeks had, they had a scheme of theology which treated of the moral government of God, of the Law-Giver, of the Atoner, of the Spirit, and of the Church. At length the administration of religion and theology fell into priestly hands, and became a power more universal and more imperious than any that was ever developed on earth in any other direction. The imagination, the reason and the conscience were all put into the hands of the priest, who exercised authority over the soul, and personal liberty died out. Men believed in God as the Church believed in Him, and the Church believed in God as they were taught to believe by the imperial view. Thus, in the third estate, Christ, instead of being simply a person standing in personal relation to each man that sought Him, had become the center of a great system of moral government; and away down to the early days of this generation we? almost never heard of Christ as a person. During all my early life I heard of sinful- ness—though that-I did not need to hear abeut. for my own soul, and my own poor stumbling life taught me enough on that subject. I also heard of the atonement oi Christ. But almost never did I hear of Christ. He was something that I was to find after I had got through certain enigmas; after I had, as it were, been initiated, and had gone through certain stages, and become a sort of mason. Religion was regarded as a kind of masonry, in which one passed in at a certain gate, giving a cer- tain signal, and took certain successive steps, and rose through certain gradations, and at last came to a point where Christ was opened up to him. After the law had been shown to me, and I had gone through a process of repentance, and become regen- erated, there was to be a Christ for me; but Christ was never presented to me when J was young as a great influencing power operating in advance of all other things. 1 had come to my majority before I had such a view of Christ. One of the most extraordinary epochs of my life was the hour (I never knew how or exactly why) in which I discovered, or in which it dawned upon me, that I had a personal Christ as something separable from problems of mental philosophy, from the Church, from any plan of salvation, and from any doctrine of atonement—a living, loving God, whom I had a right to approach on my own personality, and who had toward me such feelings as made me welcome to come to Him at any time. The opening of that conception to me was the beginning of the revolution of my life. I should not have been here today, nor through the last quarter of a century, but for that single view of Christ which rose upon me with healing in its beams. A personal Savior, to be studied and learned, must be presented in such a way that we can make Him personal to ourselves. This was done in part by that great revulsion called the Protestant Reformation. Salvation by faith was the glory of Luther. He unquestionably had in his own inward experience the right element; but it does not follow that the presentation of it was the one which was the best adapted to enlighten the whole world. Experience has shown that it was not. It was much covered with habits and prejudices and philosophies; for no man can throw off in a moment the opinions of the ages of which he is a child and product. Everywhere, 16 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. when a philosophy is renounced, it still lives. Its detritus remains. Men find a thou- sand prejudices and habits clinging to them after they have abandoned the beliefs which begot these incumbrances. When a philosophy has been set aside the fruit stays by, for good if it was good, and for bad if it was bad. In the main, by the Protestant system, Christ was presented as a part of theology in a certain way; and although the element Jesus Christ, as a living God, was the glory and the secret power of that system, yet it was not brought out and freed from the accumulations and incrustations of the ages. We come, now, to the truth that a personal Savior must be studied from the standpoint of one’s own soul. It 1s not the relation of the Lord Jesus Christ to God; it is not His relation to the divine government; it is not His relation to a system of theology, but it is His relation to you, as representing the very God that you are to study. His personal relation to your wants—to your understanding, to your imagina- tion, to your moral sense, to your vearnings, to your strivings—this is the only point at which you can come to any knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ that shall be avail- able to you. This will bring us back to the apostolic experience. It will bring us back to the interior element of Christianity as distinguished from those external elements. which have been thrown around about it. It will bring us from Jewish misconceptions, from the Grecized view, from the Roman view, and from the heterogeneous modern view, to the Lord Jesus himself, the Saviour of the world, by faith in Whom each soul is to he redeemed. : First, we are to understand that He is to be our thought God—by which I do not mean that any man can define God. No man can take a pencil and mark the features of Jehovah, and say, *“Thus far is God, and no farther.” How poor a God must that be whom I can understand! He would be no larger than the measure of my thought— and that would be small, indeed. No man can limit and define God. After all intel- lectual statements have been made, aiter all definitions have been given, immensely more is left untouched than has been touched. But the functions of divine nature, the quality of that nature and its moral essence, one may suspect or know without com- prehending all of God. Bring me but a glass of water and I know what water is. I may not know, if I am untraveled, what are the springs in the mountain, what are cascades, what are the streams that thunder through deep gorges, what are broadening rivers, what are bays, or what is the ocean; and yet I may know what water is. A drop on my finger tells me its quality. From that I know that it is not wood, that it is not rock, that it is not air, that it is not anything but water. I am not able by searching to find out God unto perfection; and yet I know that, so far as I have found Him out, and so far as He is ever going to be found out, what- ever there is in nobility, whatever there is in goodness, whatever there is in sweetness, whatever in patience: whatever can be revealed by the cradle, by the crib, by the couch, by the table: whatever there is in household love and in other loves; whatever there is in heroism among men; whatever there is of good report; whatever has been achieved by imagination or by reason; whatever separates man from the brute beast, and lifts him above the clod—I know that all these elements belong to God, the eternal and universal Father. Although I may not be able to draw an encyclopediac circle and say, “All inside of that is God, and anything outside of it is not God;” yet I know that everything that tends upward, that everything which sets from a lower life to a higher, that everything which leads from the basilar to the coronal, that everything whose results are good, is an interpretation of God, who, though he may be found to be other than we suppose, will be found to be not less, but more glorious than we suspect. — What is Christ to Me?—Beecher. 17 Every man, then, is to understand that Christ represents God, so far as the human mind is in a condition to understand and take Him in. I find no difficulty in saying that Christ is God, because I never undertake to weigh God with scales or to measure Him with compasses. There are men who have sat down and ciphered God out; they have figured up the matters of omnipotence, of omniscience and of omnipresence; they have marked the limits to which divine power can go; they can tell why God may do so and so, and why He may not do this, that or the other; and I can understand how they should raise objections to saying that Christ is God. To some extent we may comprehend to divine nature in certain points; but God is too large, not simply for the intelligence of individuals, but for the intelligence of the race itself, though it has been developed for many ages. If it should be developed through countless ages to come it would still be incapable of understanding God, so vast and voluminous is He; and yet I find no difficulty in saying, “Christ is God.” So far as the human mind is competent to understand the constituent elements of the divine nature they are in Jesps Christ, and He presents them to us. I draw out from my pocket a little miniature, and look upon it, and tears drop from my eyes. What is it? A piece of ivory. What is on it? A face that some artist has painted there. It is a radiant face. My history is connected with it. When I look upon it tides of feeling swell in me. Some one comes to me and says, “What is that?” I say, “It is my mother.” ‘Your mother! I should call it a piece of ivory with water colors on it.” To me it is my mother. When you came to scratch it and analyze it and scrutinize the elements of it, to be sure it is only a sign or dumb show, but it brings to me that which is no sign or dumb show. According to the law of my mind, through it I have brought back, interpreted, refreshed, revived, made potent in me, all the sense of what a loving mother was. So I take my conception of Christ as He is painted in dead letters on dead paper; and to me is interpreted the glory, the sweetness, the patience, the love, the joy- inspiring nature of God; and I do not hesitate to say, “Christ is my God,” just as I would not hesitate to say of that picture, “It is my mother.” “But,” says a man, “you do not mean that you really sucked at the breast of that picture?” No, I did not; but I will not allow anyone to drive me into any such min- ute analysis as that. Now, I hold that the Lord Jesus Christ, as represented in the New Testament, brings to my mind all the effluence of brightness and beauty which I am capable of understanding. I can take in no more. He is said to be the express image of God’s glory. He transcends infinitely my reach; for when I have gone to the extent of my capacity there is much that I cannot attain to. When, therefore, Christ is presented to me I will not put Him in the multiplica- tion table; I will not make Him a problem in mathematics; I will not stand and say, “How can three be one?” or “How can one be three?” I will interpret Christ by the imagination and the heart. Then He will bring to me a conception of God such as the heavens never, in all their glory, declared; such as the earth has never revealed, either in ancient or modern times. He reveals to us a God whose interest in man is inherent, and who through His mercy and goodness made sacrifices for it. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for it. What is the only begotten Son of God? Who knows? Who cares to know? That His only begotten Son is precious to Him we may know, judging from the experience of an earthly father; and we cannot doubt that when he gave Christ to come into life, and humble Himself to man’s condition, and take upon Himself an ignominious death, He sacri- ficed that which was exceedingly dear to Him. And that act is a revelation of the feeling of God toward the human race. There had sat and thundered Jupiter, striking the imagination of men; there had 18 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. been the Grecian deities, good and bad, reaching through the great mythological realm of the fancy; there had been the grotesque idols of the heathen; these things had given to the world a thousand strange phantasies and vagrant notions; but nothing had given men a true conception of God until Christ came, declaring that God so loved the world that He gave the best thing He had to save it. Now, measure what the meaning of that truth is. Away, ye Furies! Away, ye Fates! Away, ignoble conceptions of Greece, of Rome, and of outlying barbarous nations! Heaven is now made radiant by the Son of God, teaching us that at the center of power, of wisdom and of government, sits the all-paternal love, and that it is the initial of God. It is the Alpha and the Omega; and the literature and lore of divinity must be interpreted according to its genius. God so loved the world, before it loved Him, knowing its condition, that He gave His only Son to die for it. This is the interpretation of the everlasting sacrifice of the divine nature in the way of loy- ing. Jesus Christ epitomizes, represents, interprets God to us as the central fountain, source and supply of transcendent benevolence and love in the universe. This intense interest and love in God works to the development of every soul toward Him. It is not divine indifference. It is not divine good nature. It is not divine passivity. It is a parent’s desire for a child’s development from evil toward goodness, toward pur- ity, toward sweetness, toward godliness. God is one who is laborious and self-sacri- ficing, seeking the race, not because they are so good, but to make them good, stimu- lating them, and desiring above all things else that they shall be fashioned away froin the animal toward His sonship. That is the drift and direction of the divine govern- ment. It is said that to preach God’s love effeminates the mind. It is said that it makes men careless and indifferent. It is said, ‘If God is a great central love, why, then, it does not make much difference how men live.” Ah! the truth as it is set forth in the Bible is, that God loves in such a way as to urge men forward to that which is high and ennobling. Through love he chastens and pierces by way of stirring men up. By joy and by sorrow, by pleasure and by pain, by all means, God seeks to make the objects of His love worthy of Himself.’ He that loves only to degrade is infernal. He that loves so that the object of his love withers under his influence loves as fire loves, consuming to ashes that which he loves. No one has true love who does not know that it is the inspiration of nobility; that it is a power which is carrying its object upward, being willing to suffer for the sake of lifting it higher and higher. That is the test of man’s love, because God has given it to us as the test of His own love. Every man, then, is to seek Jesus Christ personally. The way of salvation is the way of heart-faith in Christ. He represents God, and God represents love, and love represents development from sinfulness toward righteousness. And every man is to seek this Christ as interpreting God to us for his own sake. The perception of Christ’s relations to one’s own salvation is a thousand times more important than a percep- tion of His relation to the Old Testament, or to the Godhead, or to theology, or to the history of the church. It is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory” that the apostle was to preach. Your own want—the want of your character and of your whole nature— that is to be the starting point in every investigation in this direction. “What is Christ to me?” is to be the question. When for ten days the Java had sailed without an observation, and when, at last, there came an opportunity to take one, did the captain take it for the sake of naviga- tion at large? No; he took it to find out first of all where the good ship was on her voyage. Not that navigation was of no account, not that astronomy was of no account; but that observation was taken for the particular ship on that particular voyage. I do not undertake to say that there is nothing else to be thought of in the world What is Christ to Me?—Beecher. 19 but one’s own spiritual condition; but I do say that the prime consideration with every man is, ‘What is Christ to my soul?” How does your soul need Christ? How does He interpret Himself as being the outlet of every want in your nature? These are the all-important inquiries which concern you. No man can have another man’s Christ—if you will not misunderstand my words and pervert my meaning. As a physician is who stands over you in sickness, so is Christ Jesus. What to your thought a teacker is who labors with you according to your ignorance, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. When, during the famine in Ireland, the benevolent people of this country sent provisions to the thousands who were starving there, a government ship—a man-of- war—was appointed to take it over; and never was there an armament that slew prejudices and animosities as did the cargo which was discharged out of the sides of that old frigate. But when the vessel arrives in Ireland, we will suppose that one set of the inhabitants go down to the shore where she lies at anchor, and say, “This thing is to be looked at in the light of naval architecture.” Another set go down, and say, “A government vessel! What is the relation of government to the wants of people who are suffering from hunger? What business has a government to send provision in a warship?” They are disposed to discuss the question in the light of civil polity. Another set go down and say, “Wheat and potatoes; what is the excellence of wheat compared with that of potatoes, chemically considered?” The suffering men stand on the shore and cry, “Our fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters are dying for the want of food—unload! unload! unload!’ But those who are standing by inter- _ pose and say, “You do not believe in chemistry; you do not believe in civil govern- ment; you do not believe in architecture!” I preach Christ as every man’s Savior; as his strength, as his bread, as his water; as his life, as his joy, as his hope. I say everything is trash as compared with that; and men exclaim, ‘‘Loose theology! He does not care for the church, nor for ordinances, nor for the Trinity, nor for the atonement, nor for a plan of salvation!” When men are starving it is not the time to talk of ships, of navigation, or of what government may or may not do; it is the time to talk of wheat and meat. Corn and beef are better than politics under such circumstances. Now, when men are under heavy burdens that they do not know how to bear, is there a burden-bearer anywhere? When men are unillumined, is there any light in this world? When men are in trouble, and cannot see their way out of it, and they say, in despair, ‘The day of my birth be cursed, and the day of my death be blessed!” is there any hope that shines forth and makes the darkness of the future bright as a morning star in the horizon? Is there anything in the Lord Jesus Christ that you need? Is there anything for you, who are sorrowing for your companion that has been smitten down; for you, whose affection has been disappointed; for you, who are heartsick from hope deferred; for you, whose affairs are all in a tangle; for you, whose prosperity is like pasture ground which the plow has turned upside down to prepare for new and unknown harvests? Is there anything in Him for me—for me, that am poor; for me, that am desolate; for me, that am stripped and peeled of all that makes life desirable; for me, that am smitten and cast down; for me, that am struggling to perform a task that I do not understand; for me, who am aiming at that which I can- not reach; for me, whose days are well-nigh spent; for me, a little child; for me, a boy: at school; for me, an apprentice; for me, a pauper; for me, that am to be hanged? That is the soul’s cry through life. What does it matter to me that the Jews had a system, that the Greeks had a system, or that the Romans had a system? Let their systems go to the dust. What do I care for such things when I am rolling in pain that I cannot endure? Then, if there is anything in the universe which will relieve my suffering, I want it, 20 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Have you ever had a fever? Have you ever tossed all night with hateful dreams, and waked in the morning parched and well-nigh perishing with thirst? Have you ever felt as though you would give the world for a drop of water? Go to a person who is in that condition, and read to him the ‘“‘Midsummer’s Night Dream,” or “Romeo and Juliet.””’ What does he care for them? ‘‘Oh, for a drop of water!” is his cry. Read to him Bacon’s Maxims. What does he care for Bacon’s Maxims? He cries, “Water!’’ Read to him the most exquisite literature the world has known. He will not listen. ‘“‘Give me water! Give me water!” he says. The whole sum of his being is concentrated in that one want, and it dominates. The way to give him other things is to supply first that overmastering want. When men are in their sins, and they wander, wayward, in the dark, longing for something—they know not what, Christ says, “I am the way; I am the light.” Art thou the way out of this tangle? Art thou my unclouded light which no storm can -dissipate or blow out? When’men are hungering, art thou, Jesus, the soul’s food? Is there something in God as interpreted by Christ that shall meet every want in the human soul? Yes, there is just that. Are you a little child? The glory of the incarnation is that Christ was a little child. There is no little child in whose path Jesus has not walked, or one that was exactly like it. He knows every child’s experience—his hopes and fears; his expec- tations and disappointments; his pleasures and pains; his joys and sorrows. It may not help Him that He knows your troubles; but it helps you to know that He knows them. Christ was in His early life subject to His parents, even after He was filled with divine efflatus, so that He disputed with the doctors in the temple; He went back home, and submitted Himself to the control of His father and mother. With con- scious power and glory, He put Himself under the direction of those who were in- ferior to Him, willingly and cheerfully. If you are toiling in an unrequited way in life, think how Christ labored. Old Galilee was mixed up with all manner of detritus. People from every nation under the Roman banner had flocked thither. A vast cosmopolitan population was gathered there. And there Christ was brought up as a Jew. He learned the trade which His father followed. He worked at the bench. When a young man, by laboring with His hands He scraped up a small competence with which to buy His daily bread. Every man that toils, then, has in Christ one that has been like Him. Are you turmoiled and driven hither and hither, not knowing where to lay your head? The Son of Man had not where to lay His head. The birds had nests; the foxes had holes; the very sea was allowed to rest at times; but Jesus almost never rested. By day and by night, and everywhere, He was a man of sorrow and of toil. Are you abiding at home? Are you happy and contented? There are no sweeter pictures in the Bible than those which portray the joys of Christ at the festivities which He attended, and in the thousand ways in which He made others happy. In creating so much happiness He could not but have been happy Himself. Christ stands for men in all their relations. He stands for them in their crimes. I do not know why it should be so, but it seems to me there is nothing else—not even the scene of the cross itself—that touches me so much as the incident which took place when He came back to Capernaum and was surrounded by rich men, and was invited to go to a feast in a nobleman’s house. As He entered, a crowd, among whom were publicans and harlots, pressed in after Him, and actually sat down at the table with Him, unbidden, and ate with Him. Those who were looking on stood, and pointed, and said, ‘See, He eateth with publicans and sinners!” Eating with another is a sign of hospitality and friendship and fidelity. Christ’s conduct towards these poor creatures awoke a ray of hope in their most What is Christ to Me?—Beccher. at desperate depravity. It is this light which dawns in the midnight of the human soul that touches me. That which affects me is the voice that goes far down to the depths below, where hope usually goes, and says to the child of sin and sorrow, “There is salvation for you.” God does not cast away even the most depraved. The man who lies right by the lion’s head; the man who is half brother to the wolf; the man who slimes his way with the worm—even he has One who thinks kindly of him, and says to him, ‘‘Thee, too, have I called; for thee I have a refuge and a remedy.” There was but one single class that Christ had no mercy for, and that was the class who had no mercy for themselves. I mean those men whose intellects were cultivated, whose imaginations were cultivated, whose moral sense was cultivated, but who turned all their talents into selfishness. They were dissipated by the top of the brain. Christ did not disregard dissipation of the passions; He regarded it as evil in the extreme; but He regarded the dissipation of the top of the brain as worse still. He said to these proud proprietaries, those men who had outward and not inward morals, those men who knew so much, and used their knowledge to oppress others with; who were so scrupulous about themselves, but did not care for anybody else— He said to them, pointing at those miserable harlots and those extortionate publicans, “You never do such things as they are guilty of doing, oh, no; and yet they have a better chance of going to heaven than you have.” Even in the case of Zaccheus, when he said, “Lord, I am trying to do right,” Christ said, “Come down; I will go to thy house.” There was not a creature on earth who felt the need of a Savior to whom Christ did not at once open the door of His heart; and the beauty of it was that Christ’s heart stood open for all that were behind Him, or before Him, or on either side of Him. When Christ came from the eternal sphere He brought with Him as much of God as He could put into the conditions which He was to assume; as much as the human mind could comprehend; and though He laid aside that part of His being by reason of the circumstances in which He was to be placed, yet having entered upon our estate, when He spake, God spake; and when He showed mercy, it was an exhibition of God’s mercy. Now, have any of you, interested in the texts of Scripture, considered the sub- ject of your own want; of your own hope; of your own fear; of your own strivings; of your own unworthiness; of your own longings of soul; and have you said, “Lord, being what I am, what canst Thou do for me?” Have you said, ‘What canst Thou do for one who is slow and lethargic? What canst Thou do for one who is always behind his conception?” There is a Christ for just such a one as that. Have you said, “Lord, what canst Thou do for a fiery nature?” There is a divine power for those that are fiery. Have you said, “Lord, what canst Thou do for me that am proud and hard?” There is a God of love and mercy for such as you are. Have you ever said, ‘What canst Thou do for dispositions that are cold and selfish?” There’is a medicine for just such dispositions. Have you said, “Lord, what canst Thou do for those who are self-seeking?” There is provision for them, too. Oh, come, ye that are weary and heavy laden; oh, come, all ye that are sinful; oh, come, all ye who feel the burden of your sin to you, today, I preach a risen Christ. I preach today no plan and no atonement, although there is a plan and there is au atonement. But that which you want is a living Savior. What you want is a person that your mind can think about as you think about your father and mother, your brother and sister, your friend, your physician, your deliverer, your leader, your guide. Such is Christ. Such is He—ready to be over against every want. Being the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Alphabet, He is the sum of the whole literature. He is the highest of all. He is broader than the earth. He is uni- versal in sympathy. He says to every man, “I am the Sun of Righteousness.” What art thou, O Sun? Thou that bringest back from captivity the winter day; 22 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Thou that teachest all the dead things in the earth to find themselves again; Thou that dost drive the night away from the weary eyes of watchers; Thou that art the universai bounty-giver; Thou that dost travel endlessly carrying benefactions immeasureable, illimitable, beyond want and conception of want—Thou art the figure that represents God; and God is as much greater in bounty and mercy and power than Thou art as spirit is greater than matter. For the Sun is a spark. Around about the brow of Him that reigns are suns sparkling as jewels in a crown. What, then, is that God who is accustomed to speak of Himseli to us as the Sun of Righteousness that arises with healing in His beams? li there are those who have been accustomed to judge of their hope by their life alone; by whether they are living right or wrong; by whether they are living in a constant state of self-condemnation, and under a perpetual state of bondage to their conscience or not, then they only know one thing—that they are striving, with a greater or less degree of earnestness. And they mourn, saying, “I am so insincere! Iam so cold! I so often promise and do not fulfill!” Why that it is to be man. The doctor has come. He has taken charge of the patient that has been near to the border of death. The crisis is past; and he says to the child, “You are going to get well. I have got the upper hand of the disease.” The next day, in the afternoon, the physician comes again, and the poor child lifts up its hands and says, “Doctor, I know that I am not going to get well. Not long after you went away yesterday, a pain shot through me here;-and I am sure I am not going to get well. I cannot sleep; I am very, very tired; and I can see no hope.” ‘“Well,’”’ says the doctor, “if you did not have pain you would not be sick. To be sick is to have poor digestion; it is to have that kingdom of the devil, the liver, the scent of all manner of impish tricks; it is to have various signs of weakness and disease; but I have begun to get the ascendency, and you are going to recover. Today you may walk across the room.” The child walks feebly, and is faint, and goes back to the couch, and says, “It is just as I thought—I am not going to get well.” The very weakness clouds the sight of a beginning of strength, and makes hope hang heavily. The despondency is a portion of the disease. So it is with people in spiritual things; and, oh, if the continuity of your fight against evil, and your salvation, depended on your strength and fidelity, you might feel discouraged; but who is He that has called you? Who is He that has said, “I carry your lineaments on the palm of My hand, as one carries the portrait of a friend in his hand, and you are ever in My memory. A mother may forget her sucking child, but I will not forget thee.” The eternal God, who bears up the orbs of the universe, with whom is no weariness, no variableness, no shadow of turning, has bowed down His love, and has shown Himself to be God, in that He has had com- passion on you; and your hope lies in Him. It is because of the fidelity and grandeur of His continuing love, and not because you are virtuous and strong and skillful and wise, that you are to hope. Sleep, child, though the storm rages. But suppose the little passenger, tossed about by the waves on the good staunch ship, should go on deck to see if he could not do something? What can a child do with the Atlantic ocean? What cana child do with a scowling, howling northern storm? What can a child do with a ship that he does not understand? But there is the old sturdy captain, who is gruff to the passengers, and gruffer yet to nature. He weathers the storm, and brings the ship safe into harbor. Then, when all the smiles and glory of the continent seem to light up the great bay, how grateful everybody is! How willing the passengers all are to sign a letter congratulating the good captain! God is the Captain who directs the great world-ship; and though He will not always speak when you want Him to, yet He carries you, night and day, safely on What is Christ to M 2f—Beecher. 23 _the stormy sea; and ere long He will bring you safely into port; and when He has brought you in, and you see Him as He is, no word can describe, no experience can interpret, nothing that has entered into the heart of man can conceive, the rapture and joy which we shall feel. When we are lifted up out of this lower realm, and we stand in the celestial sphere and behold our Deliverer, we shall be satisfied. O, word of wonder, to one wandering through the earth among men, and finding no home-- satisfied! We do not yet know what that means; but you and I and all of us are rushing fast towards the day when we shall stand, without spot or blemish, and shall see Him as He is, and shall be like Him. We shall be satisfied; and that will be heaven! Sermon by Henry Ward Beecher, Dec. 21, 1873. [This sermon is from the Plymouth Pulpit Notes, which is now published by the Pilgrim Press, Boston, Mass. It was selected as one of the ten best sermons of the nineteenth century by F. W. Gunsaulus, D. D. Henry Ward Beecher was born at Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813; died, at Brook- lyn, N. Y., March 8, 1887; Congregational clergyman, lecturer, reformer, and author, son of Lyman Beecher. He was graduated at Amherst College in 1834; studied the- ology at Lane Theological Seminary; and was pastor in Lawrenceburg, Indiana (1837-39), of a Presbyterian church in Indianapolis (1839-47), and of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn (1847-87). He was one of the founders and early editors of the Independent, the founder of the Christian Union and its editor (1870-81) ; and_one of the most prominent of anti-slavery orators. He delivered Union addresses in Great Britain on subjects relating to the Civil War in the United States in 1863. He published Lectures to Young Men (1844), Star Papers (1855), Freedom and War (1863), Eyes and Ears (1864), Aids to Prayer (1864), Norwood (1867), Earlier Scenes, Lecture Room Talks, Yale Lectures on Preaching, A Summer Parish, Evolution and Preaching (1885), etc.] 24 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ‘*T KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED.”’ ANE. BEER ENDS, DEE The man who wrote that sentence was not far from sixty-five years old when he penned it. He wrote it in a Roman dungeon, and under sentence of death. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a blue-blooded Jew, and a Pharisee of the Pharisees. But in spite of its nationality his family had been honored with Roman citizenship; for he tells us himself that he was free born. He belonged to the aristocracy of Tarsus, no mean city. He had been sent to Jerusalem, to sit at the feet of Gamaliel, the most famous rabbi of his time. There is good ground for believing that as soon as his age permitted he was chosen to a seat in the Sanhedrim, the highest judicial court among the Jews; for he tells us himself that when Christians were put to death he cast his vote against them. When one reads the story of his journey to Damascus and of his sudden conversion, it seems as if this man must have been carried away by a whirlwind of emotional excitement, likely to be followed by an equally violent reaction. There is no evidence of any prolonged and painful mental conflict. The change came with the swiftness of a bolt of lightning. No wonder that Ananias was incredulous. No wonder that the Christians in Damascus were amazed. They could not believe their eyes and ears. No wonder that the Christians “in Jerusalem were afraid of. him, and did not believe that he had been converted. Barnabas alone gave him his hand and his heart; and Barnabas was not an apostle. James and John and Peter were in Jerusalem at the time, but not one of them, so far as we know, gave him their apostolic welcome. James he met three years afterward, upon his return from Arabia, where he spent two weeks with Peter in Jerusalem. For some time he labored in comparative obscurity, until a great revival broke out among the Grecians in the metropolis of Syria, when Barnabas hastened to Tarsus and brought Paul to Antioch. Such testimony cannot be gainsaid. The weight of thirty years’ experience is in it. Time is the fiercest sifter of systems and of men. And hence it is that in all the con- troversies which have raged about the origin and the divine authority of Christianity, Paul has had to be taken into account. His conversion and apostolic ministry, crowned with martyrdom, are as great a miracle as the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Neither can be resolved into myth or legend. Within a year of the crucifixion, Saul of Tarsus casts in his lot with the despised and hated Nazarene. He glories in the Cross. He knows only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. The earliest literature of the New Testament, and the greater part of it, issued from his hands. The cry has been raised, “Back to Christ, and to the Gospels!” But the Gospels are of later date than the Epistles. Three of the Gospels are anonymous; the Pauline Epistles are not. The earliest Christian documents in circulation were the letters of Paul. You cannot get to Christ except through Paul. You cannot know the contents of the primitive Gospel unless you consult Paul, and. he proclaims it with so fierce an intensity of personal conviction that he pronounces an anathema upon an angel from heaven who should dare to preach any other message. The ardor which suffers no abatement through more than thirty years of challenge and of criticism. in the great cities of the Roman Empire, and which, in prospect of impending death, declares: “I know whom I have believed,” cannot be discredited. No wonder that I Know Whom I Have Believed—Behrends. 25 every great Christian teacher, since that time, has been an ardent and admiring pupil in the school of Paul. But while Paul is conspicuous in the weight which more than thirty years of Christian experience give to his testimony, he does not stand alone. John, in his old age, writing the Gospel which bears his name, declares that sixty years had not shaken his faith. Polycarp of Smyrna, when summoned to swear by the fortune of Caesar and to reproach Christ, replied: ‘Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury. How, then, shall I blaspheme my King and my Savior?” And they gave him up to the fire. So the story rums, repeated through sixty gener- ations, down to our own day, and always with the same result—the weight of years is with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With this great array of witnesses I want this day to take my stand. Forty-three years have nearly passed since Jesus Christ laid His hand upon my heart and gave me His peace. Nearly thirty-five years have gone since I assumed the duties of the Christian ministry. Nearly half of that time has been spent in the service of this church, for this day completes seventeen years of my present pastorate. These years have been years of searching and of sifting. They have been years of mental stress and strain. But at the end of forty-three years of Christian discipleship, after thirty- five years of ministerial activity, after seventeen years of pastoral service among you, I can say with Paul, and I am glad that I can say it, “I know whom I have believed.” After all these years my faith in the Holy Scriptures, as the divinely authenticated and authoritative record of God’s redeeming action remains undisturbed. I have not been ignorant of, nor have I been indifferent to, the critical debate of these years. I have listened to all that friend and foes have had to say, and I have not been con- sciously or intentionally unfair. Cautious I have been, and for accurate knowledge cautien is imperative. I am free to say that the assumptions and the methods of the critics have not appealed to my confidence. There is so much that is fanciful and artificial in their procedure, that I cannot regard them as safe guides. And in all the sharpness of the debate, one fact has remained fixed, namely, that Jesus Christ and Paul used exactly the same Old Testament which I read. For them it was already old and authoritative. Tradition is not infallible. But a uniform tradition carries more weight in it than a literary guess. I cannot believe that Deuteronomy is a pious forgery of a late age; I cannot believe that the Pentateuch is a collection of legends and of manufactured history to give sanction to late priestly legislation; I cannot believe that the Psalter contains few, if any, of David’s hymns. I can understand that the critical and literary judgment of Christ’s day may not have been infallible in all details, but I cannot believe that He and His contemporaries were the victims of wholesale fraud and deception. Certainly, so far as the New Testament is concerned, the trustworthiness and truthfulness of the record is beyond successful impeachment. Zahn’s great work, just from the press, makes that clear. And that indirectly guaran- tees the trustworthiness and truthfulness of the older record. In both of them we may trace the story of what God has done for the salvation of fallen men. Let me hasten to add, that the Scriptures impress men most profoundly when I withdraw from all critical questions, when I let them speak to my waiting heart in their own way. There is in them a moral earnestness which makes me tremble. There is in them an emphasis of righteousness which fills me with awe. There is in them a passion for holiness which makes me cry out in agony. There is in them a fearless honesty and completeness of confession of moral weakness and wickedness which compels my assent. I am what they picture me. I ought to be what they summon me to be. And there is in them so clear a revelation of the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ that my heart responds to it with an unutterable eagerness. They shine in their own light. They speak in their own tongue. When I deal with them in this 26 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. simple, straightforward way, I am sure that they are able to make me wise unto salva- tion, that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. I can say, with even greater emphasis, that these years have wrought in me an ever deepening conviction of what constitutes the essence of the Gospel message. On many points, critical and theological, I am densely ignorant, where once I thought that I had some knowledge. On many other points I am not so sure of my ground as in earlier years. But I know what God has done to save man, and that God’s way is the only way in which men can be saved. This is a faithful saying and worthy otf all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And what He did to save sinners is clearly stated when it is said that He died for our sins and rose again for our justification, that by His death sinners have been reconciled to God, of our sins. The incarnation and the atonement. These are the pillars of our Chris- tian confidence and hope. These are the eternal piers upon which rests the bridge of salvation. They have not given way and they cannot be shaken. With an ever increasing boldness of certainty do I confess that Jesus Christ is very God and very man, and that His atoning death is the procuring cause or ground of our forgiveness. I cannot make Paul say less than that. I cannot understand Christ to claim less than that. And what John says in his Gospel has no meaning for me unless these thing: be true. The New Testament collapses when these foundations are loosed. Dr. Henry B. Smith was right when he summed up the Gospel in this: “Incarnation in order to atonement.’’ The Gospel is interpreted by what Christ is and by what Christ has done. I cannot understand the dogmatism which tells me that man has been upon this planet two or three hundred thousand years, that there never was an Eden nor a Fall; and then adds that neither the Church fathers nor Paul nor Christ Himselt believed that “God came down and was incarnated and suffered and died” to work out ‘an atonement for lost humanity.” That was the one thing which they all believed and taught with the utmost clearness. We have a letter from Clement of Rome, writ- ten near the close of the first century, to the Church of Corinth, in which he writes: “Let us look steadfastly to the blood of Christ and see how precious that blood is to God, which, having been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the whole world. On account of the love He bore us Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God, His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our soul.” Inthe Epistle to Diognetus, written about the year 130, Christ is spoken of as the “holy and incomprehensible Word, the very Creator and Fashioner of all things, by whom He made the heavens, by whom He inclosed the sea, whom the moon obeys and whom the stars also obey, who was given as a ransom for us, the holy one for transgressors, the blameless one for the wicked, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible one for the corruptible, the immortal one for them that are mortal. Oh, sweet exchange! Oh, unsearchable operations! Oh, benefits surpassing all expectations; that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous one, and that the righteousness of one should justify many transgressors.” Polycarp suffered martyrdom about the year 150. He speaks of Christ as the “Son of God, our everlast- ing High Priest, who for our sins suffered even unto death, to whom all things are subject, the judge of the living and the dead.’’ When the old man was being bound to the stake and before the torch was applied, he prayed, closing the prayer with these words: “I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom to Thee and the Holy Ghost be glory, now and to all coming ages.’ Ignatius of Antioch suffered martyrdom under Trajan, at Rome, about the year 107. From him we have seven genuine epistles. These letters contain such sentences as these: ‘There is one physician, who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary I Know Whom I Have Belicved—Behrends. 27 and of God—even Jesus Christ our God. For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived in the womb of Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was with the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed; who died for us in order, by believing in His death, ye may escape from death.” The so-cafled Epistle of Barnabas belongs to the first century. In it Christ is declared to be “not the Son of man, but the Son of God, who was manifested and came into the flesh, who endured to give up His flesh to corruption that we might be sanctified through the remission of sins, which is effected by His blood of sprinkling.”’ Justin Martyr died in 165. He speaks of Christ as “the Word, who took shape and became man; who is the only proper Son who has been begotten of God, born of a virgin; being crucified and dead, He rose again, and having ascended into heaven, reigned. He became man for our sakes, that becoming a partaker of our sufferings He might also bring us healing. Christ, the Son of God, who was before the morning star and the mvon, submitted to become incarnate and be born of a virgin of the family of David, in order that by this dispensation the serpent and the angels like him may be destroyed. He existed as God before the ages, and submitted to be born, to be crucified and to die; after which He rose again and ascended into heaven. And as the blood of the Passover saved those who were-in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed.”’ Irenzus of Lyons died in 202. From his voluminous writings I select a few representative sentences: ‘The only begotten Word, who is always present with the human race, united to and mingled with His own creation, accord- ing to the Father’s pleasure, and who became flesh, is Himself Jesus Christ, our Lord, who did also suffer for us, and rose again in our behalf, and who will come again in the glory of His Father to raise up all flesh and for the manifestation of salva- tion, and to apply the rule of just judgment to all who were made by Him. He is the only begotten of the Father, the Word of God who became incarnate when the fullness of time had come, at which the Son of God had to become the Son of man. For the creator of the world is truly the Word of God; and this is our Lord, who in the last time was made man, existing in this world, and who, in an invisible manner, contains all things created, and is inherent in the entire creation; and therefore He came to His own in a visible manner, and was made flesh, and hung upon the tree that He might sum up all things in Himself.” One fragment I venture to quote in full: “With regard to Christ, the law and the prophets and the evangelists have pro- claimed that He was born of a virgin, that He suffered upon a beam of wood, and that He appeared from the dead; that He also ascended to the heavens, and was glorified by the Father, and is the Eternal King; that He is the perfect intelligence, the Word of God, who was begotten before the light; that He was the founder of the universe, along with it (the light), and maker of man; that He is all in all, patriarch among patriarchs, law in the laws, chief priest among priests, ruler among kings, the prophet among prophets, the angel among angels, the man among men, Son in the Father, God in God, King to all eternity; the Shepherd of those who are saved and the Bride- groom of the Church; the chief also of the cherubim, the Prince of the angelic powers, God of God, Son of the Father, Jesus Christ.” What now, in the face of this testi- mony, becomes of the claim that the “belief that God came down and was incarnated in man and suffered and died to save men” first took shape in the Nicene Creed? ' That creed dates from 325 a hundred and twenty-three years after the death of Irenzus, the latest Church father whom I have quoted. I might have summoned Origen and Tertullian, and Cyprian, the last of whom died in 258, nearly seventy years before the Council of Nice. But the voices to which I have asked you to listen proclaim, with one consent, that in Christ God was incarnate, suffered, died and rose again, for our salvation. That was the Gospel seventeen hundred, and eighteen hundred, years ago, in Syria, in Asia Minor, in Northern Africa, in Italy, in France. What these men 28 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. preached is still preached. What these men believed is still believed. I will not spend time in proving that this is the ancient Gospel, fully expounded by Paul and deeply rooted in the sayings of Christ. What Paul taught Christ to be, you may learn from the first eleven verses of the second chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians. What Paul © believed concerning the death of Christ you may learn from the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. What Jesus Christ believed Himself to be, you may learn from the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John. What Jesus Christ regarded as the meaning of His life on earth you may learn from the first eighteen verses of the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, from the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and from the account of what Christ said when He instituted the holy supper. There never has been any other Gospel than this, that in Jesus Christ God was incarnate, for the eternal redemption of a lost humanity. These years have confirmed my faith in the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, and in Jesus Christ as God Incarnate, dying for us sinners and for our salvation. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, Comforter and Guide of Souls, revealing to men the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the divine agent in conviction, regeneration and sanctification. The Holy Spirit is the executive oi the Godhead. He makes known and applies the finished work of Jesus Christ, just as Christ made actual in history-the eternal purpose of God. And this simply means that God Himself is making effective the means of grace which He has provided. By their faithful use we draw near to God. But the more blessed fact is, that in them God draws near to us. Through them we influence our children and neighbors to come to God, and through our use of them for that purpose God Himself is drawing our children and neighbors to Himself. There is this difference between the Scrip- tures of Christ on the one hand and the Holy Spirit on the other; there is no con- tinuous production of Holy Scriptures. The Bible is complete. Nor is there any- thing to be added to the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Our redemption is com- plete in Him. But the work of the Holy Spirit in the minds and hearts of men is continuous. It cannot for a moment be suspended. He must touch the lips of the speaker, else His words will be as sounding brass. Holy Ghost preaching, as our Methodist friends call it, is the only preaching that tells. And He must touch the ears and the heart of the hearer, if the message is to provoke penitence and faith. Paul plants, Apollos waters; God gives the increase. That conviction masters me more and more. I survey the history of 1900 years, and I see great men inaugurating new epochs of religious life, conspicuous for their zeal, devotion and success—Augus- tine, Bernard, Luther, Wesley, Edwards, Finney, Moody. One feature is common to them all. They are anointed of the Holy Ghost. They are His messengers and agents. God is conspicuously in them and their human influence incarnates the divine energy. But, conspicuous as they are, they do not possess the monopoly of the Spirit’s indwelling. He dwells in all believers. He inspires all prayer. He provokes all praise. He directs and makes effective all service. Now and then a voice is needed to stir us all from our slumbers. But that voice is always intended to direct us to the ever present and ever active power of the Holy Ghost, in whom alone is our strength and hope. Such voices, too, are needed to call us away from the refinements of speculation, of which we are in as great danger as were the Nicene Christians and the centuries of scholasticism, to the simplicity of the Gospel, the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. An earnest soul like Moody makes short, sharp work with scholarly pretensions and perplexities. The tone is defiant, the manner is brusque, the scorn is withering. It seems the coronation of ignorance. But it is not. It is the seizure of the deeper, vital truth, bursting away from artificial and suffocating bandages. The letter still killeth, I Know Whom I Have Believed—Behrends. 29 whether it be the letter of scholastic theology or the letter of minute criticism. In both directions you can make dissection end in death. The Spirit maketh alive, and the quickening spirit is what we want; the Spirit who makes the face of Christ so luminous that we see only Him, and all things in Him. It was a true note which Moody struck when he said that all the theology and religion he wanted was in Christ’s own words: “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’ In that simple and sweet message the Holy Ghost speaks and works; and the more closely we adhere to the simple majesty of the Gospel, the better will it be for us, and for all. -This doc- trine of the Holy Ghost, leading us into all truth, and by it convicting the world, has come to mean, for me, that Jesus Christ is the Gospel of salvation, and that whenever Christ is preached God is at work saving men. Our sole anxiety should be to make Christ known. That is our whole duty. We do not need to act as His advocates. The Holy Spirit will take care of that. And when we make Christ known we may rest in the assurance that the Holy Spirit is owning and enforcing our message. Men are not argued into religion. But Christ wins them. We are in danger of forgetting that. An iron logic leaves me hard and cold as steel. But when you tell me who Jesus is, and what He has done for you and for me, my heart dissolves in thankfulness and tears. In that message the Holy Spirit works. And that is always the message which monopolizes our speech, when the Holy Spirit has his way. We pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It may be a selfish and ambitious prayer. Simon asked for that, and Peter denounced him. He wanted the gift for personal gain. And we may be as selfish as he. The gift is bestowed where mind and heart are captive to Jesus Christ. Let us continue to tell the story of His love, and never grow weary of it! For to be able to say with Paul, “I know whom I have believed,” though we be ignorant of all else, is better than to have all other knowledge and not be able to say this. For this is the faith that overcometh the world. [This sermon, which is reproduced from Christian Work, was preached (February 25, 1900) by Dr. Behrends upon the completion of his seventeenth year in the pulpit of the Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., and the thirty-fourth year of his entire ministry. He was a prominent figure in the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, and shortly after his death was announced. A. J. F. Behrends was born in Holland in 1839, ordained to the ministry in 1865. He is author of several well-known works, The World for Christ, Socialism and . Christianity, etc.] 30 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE DUTY OF FORGETFUERES REV. HUGH BLACK, A. M.,,OF EDINBURGH. “Thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth.”’—Isaiah 54: 4. The miserable years of the exile had almost run out, with their terrible sense oi being forsaken by God, and the prophet here in announcing the joyful release tells them that the release is the sign of God's forgiveness. This prophecy, then, is a mes- sage of peace, the promise of redemption. The voice that came to the exile was a voice of hope and consolation. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.” The good tidings was not only that the sore captivity of Israel would be turned, but that the turning would be that God remembered and forgave, and smiled on them again. Through all the darkness of exile the prophet was convinced that God’s love was still the same, still true and tender and gracious as in the early days. Israel was united to God in a bond so close that not even a temporary alienation would break it. A favorite figure of speech to describe that bond by the prophets was the figure of marriage. God was the husband of Israel, Israel was the bride of God; the nation’s sin was unfaithfulness, punished by separation, with its shame and sorrow. And this is the figure which is used here to tell the good tidings. Israel, says the prophet, will be taken back by her offended husband, and will become again the bride of him; the stain of divorce will be taken away, and the sin will be forgiven. The music of the marriage song is in the prophet’s heart as he predicts the glad time when the Lord of Hosts will again be Israel’s husband, having redeemed her with His great love. Babylon’s slave will become Jehovah's bride. The dark years of separation are forgotten as he sings the joyful epithalamium. It was just a hideous night- mare, that separation from God; Israel will awaken from her sin to learn how pure and true and strong is the love of her husband. “In a little wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” There is nothing petty in this love, nothing to mar the perfect joy of the reconciliation. When God gives, He gives without reserve; when God forgives, He forgives utterly. There is no going back on the past; there is no recounting former injuries, no reproaches and recriminations; it is a full reconcilement, wiping out the past, blotting the handwriting against them. God’s forgiveness is so complete that it is forgetfulness, casting transgressions behind His back, remembering their sins no more. And, further, the prophet promises such a complete reconciliation that even they, he says, even they will forget the evil past; it will be swallowed up in joy and sweet content. The unfaithful bride that had been left in worse than widowhood will be received back with such a perfect love that the painful memory will be past. What a wonderfui figure of divine love this is! “Thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of Hosts is His name.” Is that not too much for even God to promise? He might out of His abundant mercy promise to forgive so freely and fully, that the thought of their sin may be said to be cast away from Him, but how can He give to them self-forgetfulness and save them from self-reproach and kill the memory of their shame? Will it not come back to them in lonely hours, and The Duty of Forgetfulness—Black. 31 sting with regrets? What waters of Lethe can bring complete oblivion? A word, a thought, a moment of brooding can bring back all the past again, with all its mem- ories, be they buried ever so deep. If remorse is bound up in remembrance, if recol- lection means sorrow, how can God save them from that? When vain desire at last, and vain regret, Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain, And teach the unforgetful to forget? The explanation which the prophet gives only makes the promise more beautiful. Painful memory can only be obliterated by the full flood of joy. When happiness is complete there is no room for sad recollection; when there are no brooding moments the past is kept at bay; where there is no cause for remembrance there is no oppor- tunity for remorse. And the joy which the prophet thus announces has its source in the full consciousness of God's love. The recovered happiness is the fruit of the recovered love. Held in the clasp of that wonderful love, the burden of the past disappears, “thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.” This is the prophet’s promise if they will but live in the light of God’s love. To many religious people the burden of the past about which we have spoken is “the heaviest burden of their lives.” No difficulties and trials of the present can match it for bitterness. They can see through faith some of the purpose of their heavenly Father in their present trials; they see something at least of the meaning of discipline, and they can at least school their hearts to learn, and, if not learn, to bear; they know that His grace is sufficient for them, and in the strength of that they find it easy to bear even a heavy load; and their faith is potent enough, not only to lighten the burdens of the present, but to lighten the burden of the future. They look forward calmly and hopefully to whatever the years may bring. Faith panoplies them against fate; they have no unworthy fears, no nervous anxiety about tomorrow. Even the valley of the shadow has little terror for them, believing as they do that they will be shepherded through that to the eternal fold. And yet they to whom the burden of the present and the burden of the future are so little are often weighted by a sore burden of the past; they are hag- ridden by shadows of dead days. Sometimes it is the very greatness and success and joy of the past which induce this constant recollection. To men of a certain tempera- ment there is a temptation to live too much in the past, and so to weaken life for the duties of today. In reviewing times that are gone memory has a hallowing, softening power, setting things in a soft and tender light for us. Thus it is an infirmity of old age, though it is not confined to old age, to glorify the past, and to think that the former times were better than these. It is often a harmless sentiment, but it carries with it a very real temptation which sometimes robs life of its full power. But the burden of the past about which I desire especially to speak, and which is more in keeping with the thought of our text, is not the recollection of some joy or success of the past, but of some failure, some sorrow, some loss, some sin, some shame. And to some who live ever under the shadow of this memory it would mean new life to them if the promise came to them with the meantng it had in the prophet’s lips, “Thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remem- ber the reproach of thy widowhood any more.” Of course, there is a certain sense in which we cannot forget and are not meant to forget. Experience has its lessons to teach, and everything that happens to us leaves its mark, which it is folly for us to cover up till at least we understand the markings. There is a levity of mind, a childish thoughtlessness, which makes no account of what happens, and which finds es Pulpit Power and Eloquence. it easy to forget, for there is not depth enough in the mind for events to leave any mark at all. It is not any such levity, a light-headed, shallow enjoyment in the pres- ent, which can be set forth here or in any part of the Bible as a religious ideal. To such the word is not Forget, but Remember. All religion begins with repentance, and the appeal to repentance is an appeal to memory. ‘‘Remember” is the ethical method of all ages; probing men to the roots of life, excavating into the past, laying bare the sins and faults of youth, revealing the secret things to a man’s own aston- ished soul, tearing his very heart with the despair of memory. Not by any easy facile optimism can true peace and true forgetfulness be achieved. The gate of repentance ~ stands at the entrance of the way of life, and repentance implies the very terror of remembrance; godly sorrow for the past, an enlightened conscience reviewing all that is gone, till the heart is sick and would give the world for a nepenthe that could bring oblivion. This burden of the past, which is the burden of moral existence, cannot be relieved by merely turning the back on what is uncomfortable, uncomfortable to think about, and concerning one’s self with the details of present life. But I speak to those whose captivity has been turned, who are home from the exile of the far country, at least to those who believe in the forgiveness of sin, who accept the love of the Father, and who therefore know that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. And yet some of these still are oppressed by some shadow of the past, they are still weakened by the old sorrow or haunted by the old shame, and have never realized that the love of God carries with it this sweet promise, “Thou shalt forget.” It is quite true, as we have seen, that the past cannot be altogether undone, cannot be just as though it had never been. Many men who have emerged out of the struggle into peace, and who are not tormented any more by despairing remorse, have still, and will ever have as long as they live, the sad feeling that they are not what they might have been, that they are not the fine, true, perfect instrument for God’s purpose, which they would have been but for the evil of the past. Even when good now reigns in the heart, to many a man the past has ruined the instrument for good their lives might have been, and the sting has not quite been taken out of the past so long as they feel they must stand as mute as one with full strong music in his heart whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. But the promise of our text is a tacit condemnation of the senti- mental brooding on the past, whatever that past may be, which weakens the present life, which keeps a man from gathering up the fragments of his life that remain, keeps him from doing his duty calmly and giving himself to whatsoever things are true and pure and lovely and of good report. In the Christian life St. Paul tells us that progress towards perfection is attained just by forgetfulness of the past. Forgetting the things which are behind and reaching forward to the things which are before, I press towards the goal, to the mark of the prize.” It does not mean, as we have seen, that we should forget everything even if we could, the blessed hallowed memories which are our best angels still, the events and passage of our pilgrimage. Some of the sorrow of the past we cannot rid ourselves of, and some of its joy clings about us like sweet per- fume. We are expected to remember the lessons of the past, lessons both of failure and success, of sorrow and joy, of moral defeat and moral victory. The principle is a simple one. All that would hinder us from running the Christian race, all that would impede, must be put behind us, as we bend to our present tasks and face our future. The past must not be a burden which clogs and weights us at every step. Indulgence in the retrospective, self-complaining, self-accusing temper, which is so common, must be seen by us to be a temptation. If we believe in the eternal love of God -we must not let any pale ghost of the past, spectral figures of the night, chill our blood and keep us from our pilgrimage. If even your sorrow weakens you, if it is not making you truer and stronger, you must forget it. Forget not, forget The Duty of Forgetfulness—Black. 33 never, the love which was yours and which you have lost, but forget what of self is in your sorrow, what hinders you from present duty. You believe in God, then let the memory of your love rather inspire you. Look not backward for it, look forward, it is there; all true love is there, to be found again in God. If even your sin—the shame of your youth, the reproach of your past—if even your sin weakens you, if it is not bracing you to redeem the time, you must forget it. This is the Gospel, the goodness of the love of God, the Gospel of forgiveness full and free and without reserve. Christ frees us from the past, from that thraldom of the things that are behind. A man who had lived for many years the Christian life told me how there was a place in a street in Edinburgh which was associatéd with a sin. Every time in his early life he passed it, it brought back again the keen remorse and shame. It seemed to stain his life afresh whenever he saw the very place. But when he came to God and gave his heart and life to Christ, the first time he passed that place afterwards his soul, he told me, was filled by a great transport of joy that all that was done, that it was no longer part of his life, that God had forgiven and forgotten and cast it behind His back. And he entered, he told me, for a moment at least in foretaste, into the perfect joy of soul, and he forgot the shame of his youth and remembered the reproach no more. It is pagan teaching, common though it be, that sin is inexpiable and must hang on you to the end and shroud your life with its blackness. Do not fear that this Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sin will make sin easy; it is the only thing that can make sin impossible—the light that drives out the darkness, the love of God that fills the heart and leaves no room for evil, not even for evil memory. And God offers to man a reconciliation so complete, a communion so close, that nothing, neither things past, nor things present nor to come, can separate the believer from the love of God in Christ Jesus his Lord. Thou shalt forget, thou shalt forget, is part of His blessed promise. Surely we must forget what He has forgiven. We must forget all that hinders as we press towards the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. [This sermon was selected because it is on a subject not often used for a sermon. Ten sermons are preached on remembering to one on forgetfulness. It was delivered in the City Temple, London, and is the verbatim report made for the British Weekly, from whence it is reproduced. Rey. Hugh Black, M. A., minister of St. George’s Free Church, Edinburgh (1900), was born at Rothesay in 1868, and was ordained in 1891. After five years’ ministry at Sherwood church, Paisley, was called to Edinburgh in 1896. He is best known, generally, as the author of Friendship.] 34 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. CHARACTER BUILDING. JOHN A. BROADUS, D. D. Text: 2 Peter 1: 3, 8; more especially commencing at fifth: verse. I suppose we will all agree that the important work we have to do in this life, as regards ourselves, is the building of our characters. The business man knows how important it is for him to understand the character of his subordinates. A large part of the capital in trade of some men is this power to look into the hearts of others. How important is this gift to the politician. Have you never got a letter from a stranger proposing some great thing, and wished to look that man in the face for five minutes that you might be able to know him? MHave you looked the letter over and over again, in hopes that it might reveal something about the character of the sender? Have you never observed a skilled physician at the bedside of a very sick patient, endeavoring to draw the sick man into a conversation, talking on things unimportant, until you have wondered what it all meant? That physician, so quiet, seemingly indifferent in his talk, knew what he was about. He wished to understand the character of his patient. You, parents, all know how necessary it is that you find out the nature of your children. And pastors know how essential it is for them to look into the hearts of their parishioners. But important as it is to know the character of others, it is still more important that you understand your own. What a man is is more essential than his possessions or standing in the world. We have almost a morbid desire to know about our fellow- men. The press seeks to gratify this curiosity by its publication of what others are doing. We should look to ourselves—at the revelations our actions make of our own natures. Then, character is the only thing which we shall carry away from this fast fleeting life. Our body, touched by death, shall soon drop from us, then what we are will remain, will pass on. Z The Apostle, in the passage, is speaking of the building of character. He treats: 1. Of some reasons for this work. 2. Of lessons as to the way it is to be done. 3. The motives for doing the work. First—The Reasons or Encouragements. 1. The Apostle says that God’s divine power has given us all things which are necessary for the development cf life and piety. He does not say that we will, unaided, be able to build up ourselves. We all know, who have tried it, how hard this work is. All things we need God gives us. Can we think of anything God has failed to give— donate—to us when we were earnestly desiring to perfect ourselves? 2. Then the Apostle adds, as another reason, that God has given us exceeding great promises for the future. ‘As the day is, so shall thy strength be.” This cheers us in our greatest trouble. We do not know, when in the severest trial, but what God is just then, in this, fulfilling some promise. A wise father does not give at once to his son a large capital. It might be ruinous to him. He gives him capital and responsibility and power as he is able to bear it. “Exceeding great and precious Character Building—Broadus. 35 promises.” How these words give us courage in our battle of life! Have you not walked out with a child in the darkness, where, if alone, it would be terror-stricken? It tightly grasps your hand. It wishes to assure itself that it has hold of your hand. Thus assured, it is not afraid. Why? It has confidence. So we walk in dark places with God. We have a confidence that relieves us from fear. We need to be assured that God is with us. His promises, great, exceeding, and precious, give us this assurance. 3. Then we have an inspiring ideal. He has given us a nature that partakes of the divine nature. It is true, we are animal. How the animal in us does assert itsel!! It is no wonder that many scientific men come to the conclusion that man is nothing but animal; that there is only a difference of degree. When you stop and think, shake yourselves, and listen to the voices in you, you will know there is a difference. Beasts reason a little, but exhibit no sign of a moral nature. They have no conscience. They know nothing whatever of right and wrong—of the word ought—a word a little child may utter, but which can shape the universe. Now, with this moral nature, which brings into kinship with the divine nature, we have an inspiring reason for building up a right nature in us. Second.—Next, the Apostle shows how we are to proceed in the work. 1. To your faith add virtue. He starts with faith, the foundation of all. He assumes that you believe. Without believing, you would not be a Christian. But you are not to stop with belicving. He who stops there is no Christian. He mus: exercise his faith. And in the exercise of it virtue will be furnished. That is the meaning of the passage, “To your faith” supply “virtue;” that is, try to be good. The mother says to the child, “Try to be good.” The learned philosopher, the poet, with his mighty word-power, angels, God Himself, cannot say anything better than “try to be good.” 2. To virtue supply knowledge. It is not enough that you simply desire to do what is right. You are to know what is right. You must get light. How often we say, had we known what we do now, we would not have done this or that. Even those who try the hardest to be good stumble in the darkness. Then there are very many who don’t more than half try. How these do go astray! Very important is it that the Apostle has said, supply knowledge to thy faith. In the whirl of our daily life, when everything is so confusing, we need light as well as a desire to be good. 3. To your knowledge supply a good degree of self-control. That is the meaning of temperance. Passion and prejudice blind knowledge. We must control ourselves, or the light will be put out. Men often cheat themselves more than they do others. _ You say we are speaking about simple things, as if to children. True, these things are simple, but they are the very essence of right living. The greatest things, the things that lie right near the foundations of life, are simple. Do some of you think that to gain’self-control is easy? If you think so, you have never made a real effort at it. Do some of you think it hard? Remember God works with and in him who tries to be right and to do right. 4. Then, in your exercise of self-control, have a good supply of patience. You _ have seen how sometimes those who have succeeded in gaining control of themselves are impatient with others who lack in this respect. Persons may obtain this mastery of themselves by heroic effort; or, it may be, they lack temptation. One has no _ patience with a drunkard—and it is hard enough to have patience with such an one. The impatient man is cold and narrow, and could hardly be a drunkard if he tried. Did you never hear a drunkard, ashamed of himself, say, “Well, I ain’t stingy and mean, as that fellow.” Says the Apostle, let your self-control supply patience. In 36 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. this mad, rushing age of ours how needful is this injunction! There are some who think patience to be a weak thing. It is no sign of strength that through lack of self-control we give vent to temper and passion. A horse that runs away does not prove that it is strong, but that the driver is weak. 5. Then, lest that we should think that this life is all, the Apostle continues, To patience supply piety. Piety controls all the other graces. Then, says he, See that in this piety is brotherly kindness; and in this brotherly kindness is charity— love. Where there is so much to bear, so much roughness, so much that is selfish and hard, that worries and irritates, as in this world, how essential that the Christian should have patience and brotherly kindness and love. Third.—Observe some additional motives to this work— 1. Through these things we will make progress in the life of a Christian, “For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful,”’ etc. If you are teaching a clerk his duties, you tell him to do this and that, and then he will understand how to do these other things. So with children; so with scholars at school. We learn duty through the discharge of duty. Christianity is a practical thing. If these truths be in you and abound, then will you know more of Christ and of His sustaining sympathy, and of the whole round of Christian truths. All this will be wrought through the atonement and intercession of Christ. So there will be no place for boasting. He who has developed the most, done the most, will be the most humble. " 2. Another reason is given in verse 10: You will make “your calling and election sure; for if you do these things, you will never fall.’ I remember when a boy how those words, “calling and election,” often sent a shiver through my soul. How many stumble over them. What does the Apostle say? If you do these things, if you-will supply to your faith, virtue, etc., you will never fall, and so you will make your calling and election sure. There is a divine side to this doctrine of election; but with that we have nothing to do. If aman wishes to know whether he is a Christian, one of the elect, let him try to do these things. How we are constantly brought back to the practical! 3. But a crowning motive is given in verse 11: “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” The word ministered may be rendered supplied. Is not this motive enough that we give all diligence to perfect our characters? Brethren, I have tried to preach you a practical sermon, one that would = me in my troubles, and I pray God it may help you. (37) 7 Pe on Owe OF THE: LORD. PHILLIPS BROOKS. Copyrighted E. P. Dutton & Co., 1881. By permission. “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.”—Prov. 20: 27. The essential connection between the life of God and the life of man is the great truth of the world; and that is the truth which Solomon sets forth in the striking words _which I have chosen for my text this morning. The picture which the words suggest is very simple. An unlighted candle is standing in the darkness and some one comes to light it. A blazing bit of paper holds the fire at first, but it is vague and fitful. It flares and wavers and at any moment may go out. But the vague, uncertain, flaring blaze touches the candle, and the candle catches fire and at once you have a steady flame. It burns straight and clear and constant. The candle gives the fire a mani- festation-point for all the room which is illuminated by it. The candle is glorified by the fire and the fire is manifested by the candle. The two bear witness that they were made for one another by the way in which they fulfil each other’s life. That fulfilment comes by the way in which the inferior substance renders obedience to its superior. The candle obeys the fire. The docile wax acknowledges that the subtle flame is its master and it yields to his power; and so, like every faithful servant of a noble master, it at once gives its master’s nobility the chance to utter itself, and its own substance is clothed with a glory which is not its own. The disobedient granite, if you try to burn it, neither gives the fire a chance to show its brightness nor gathers any splendor to itself. It only glows with sullen resistance, and, as the heat increases, splits and breaks but will not yield. But the candle obeys, and so in it the scattered fire finds a point of permanent and clear expression. : Can we not see, with such a picture clear before us, what must be meant when it is said that one being is the candle of another being? There is in a community a man of large, rich character, whose influence runs everywhere.. You cannot talk with any man in all the city but you get, shown in that man’s own way, the thought, the feeling of that central man who teaches all the community to think, to feel. The very boys catch something of his power, and have something about them that would not be there if he were not living in the town. What better description could you give of all that, than to say that that man’s life was fire and that all these men’s lives were candles which he lighted, which gave to the rich, warm, live, fertile nature that was in him multiplied points of steady exhibition, so that he lighted the town through them? Or, not to look so widely, I pity you if in the circle of your own home there is not some warm and living nature which is your fire. Your cold, dark candle-nature, touched by that fire, burns bright and clear. Wherever you are carried, perhaps into regions where that nature cannot go, you carry its fire and set it up in some new place. Nay, the fire itself may have disappeared, the nature may have vanished from the earth and gone to heaven; and yet still your candle-life, which was lighted at it, keeps that fire still in the world, as the fire of the lightning lives in the tree that it has struck, long after the quick lightning itself has finished its short, hot life and died. So the man in the counting-room is the candle of the woman who stays at home, making her soft influence felt in the rough places of trade where her feet never go; and so a man who lives like an inspiration in the city for honesty and purity and 38 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. charity may be only the candle in whose obedient life burns still the fire of another strong, true man who was his father, and who passed out of men’s sight a score of years ago. Men call the father dead, but he is no more dead than the torch has gone out which lighted the beacon that is blazing on the hill. And now, regarding all this lighting of life from life, two things are evident, the same two which appeared in the story of the candle and its flame: First, there must be a correspondency of nature between the two; and second, there must be a cordial obedience of the less to the greater. The nature which cannot feel the other nature’s warmth, even if it is held close to it; and the nature which refuses to be held where the other nature’s flame can reach it—both of these must go unlighted, no matter how hotly the fire of the higher life may burn. I think that we are ready now to turn to Solomon and read his words again and understand them. “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,’ he says. God is the fire of this world, its vital principle, a warm pervading presence everywhere. What thing of outward nature can so picture to us the mysterious, the subtle, the quick, live, productive and destructive thought, which has always lifted men’s hearts and solemn- ized their faces when they have said the word God, as this strange thing—so heavenly, so unearthly, so terrible, and yet so gracious; so full of creativeness, and yet so quick and fierce to sweep whatever opposes it out of its path—this marvel, this beauty and glory and mystery of fire? Men have always felt the fitness of the figure; and the fire has always crowded, closest of all earthly elements, about the throne on which their conception of Deity was seated. And now of this fire the spirit of man is the candle. What does that mean? If, because man is of a nature which corresponds to the nature of God, and just so far as man is obedient to God, the life of God, which is spread throughout the universe, gathers itself into utterance; and men, aye, and all other beings, if such beings there are, capable of watching our humanity, see what God is, in gazing at the man whom He has kindled—then is not the figure plain? It is a wondrous thought, but it is clear enough. Here is the universe, full of the diffused fire of divinity. Men feel it in the air, as they feel an intense heat which has not broken into a blaze. That is the meaning of a great deal of the unexplained, myster- ious awfulness of life, of which they who are very much in its power are often only half aware. It is the sense of God, felt but unseen, like an atmosphere burdened with heat that does not burst out into fire. Now in the midst of this solemn, burdened world there stands up a man, pure, God-like, and perfectly obedient to God. In an instant it is as if the heated room had found some sensitive, inflammable point where it could kindle to a blaze. The vague oppressiveness of God's felt presence becomes clear and definite. The fitfulness of the impression of divinity is steadied into perma- nence. The mystery changes its character, and is a mystery of light and not of dark- ness. The fire of the Lord has found the candle of the Lord, and burns clear and steady, guiding and cheering instead of bewildering and frightening us, just so soon as a man who is obedient to God has begun to catch and manifest His nature. I hope that we shall find that this truth comes very close to our personal, separate lives; but, before we come to that, let me remind you first with what a central dignity it clothes the life of man in the great world. Certain philosophies, which belong to our time, would depreciate the importance of man in the world, and rob him of his centralness. Man’s instinct and man’s pride rebel against them, but he is puzzled by their speciousness. Is it indeed true, as it seems, that the world is made for man, and that from man, standing in the center, all things besides which the world contains get their true value and receive the verdict of their destiny? That was the old story that the Bible told. The book of Genesis with its Garden of Eden, and its obedient beasts waiting until the man should tell them what they should be called, struck firmly, at the beginning of the anthem of the world’s history, the great note of the centralness The Candle of the Lord—Brooks. 39 of man. And the Garden of Eden, in this its first idea, repeats itself in every cabin of the western forests or the southern jungles, where a new Adam and a new Eve, a solitary settler and his wife, begin as it were the human history anew. There once again the note of Genesis is struck, and man asserts his centralness. The forest waits to catch the color of his life. The beasts hesitate in fear or anger till he shall tame them to his service or bid them depart. The earth under his feet holds its fertility at his command, and answers the summons of his grain or flower-seeds. The very sky over his head regards him, and what he does upon the earth is echoed in the changes of the climate and the haste or slowness of the storms. This is the great impression which all the simplest life of man is’ ever creating, and with which the philosophies, which would make little of the separateness and centralness of the life of man, must always have to fight. And this is the impression which is taken up and strengthened and made clear, and turned from a petty pride to a lofty dignity and a solemn respon- sibility, when there comes such a message as this of Solomon’s. He says that the true separateness and superiority and centralness of man is in that likeness of nature to God, and that capacity of spiritual obedience to Him, in virtue of which man may be the declaration and manifestation of God to all the world. So long as that truth stands, the centralness of man is sure. ‘The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” This is the truth of which I wish to speak to you today, the perpetual revelation of God by human life. You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts— purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any person- ality except as the fulfilment of these two qualities—the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty. Then ask yourself how any knowledge of these qualities—of what they are, of what kind of being they will make in their perfect combination—could exist upon the earth if there were not a human nature here ir which they could be uttered, from which they could shine. Only a person can truly utter a person. Only from a character can a character be echoed. You might write it all over the skies that God was just, but it would not burn there. It would be, at best, only a bit of knowledge; never a Gospel; never something which it would gladden the hearts of men to know. That comes only when a human life, capable of a justice like God’s, made just by God, glows with His justice in the eyes of men, a candle of the Lord. I have just intimated one thing which we need to observe. Man’s utterance of God is purely an utterance of quality. It can tell me nothing of the quantities which make up His perfect life. That God is just, and what it is to be just—those things I can learn from the just lives of the just men about me; but how just God is, to whar unconceived perfection, to what unexpected developments of itself, that majestic quality of justice may extend in Him—of that I can form no judgment, that is worth anything, from the justice that I see in fellow-man. This seems to me to widen at once the range of the truth which I am stating. If it be the quality of God which man is capable of uttering, then it must be the quality of manhood that is necessary for the utterance; the quality of manhood, but not any specific quantity, not any assignable degree of human greatness. Whoever has in him the human quality, whoever really has the spirit of man, may be a candle of the Lord. A larger measure of that spirit may make a brighter light; but there must be a light wherever any human being, in virtue of his humanness, by obedience becomes luminous with God. There are the men of lofty spiritual genius, the leaders of our race. How they stand out through history! How all men feel as they pass into their presence that they are passing into the light of God! They are puzzled when they try to explain it. There is nothing more instructive and suggestive than the bewilderment which men feel when they try to tell what inspiration is—how men become inspired. The lines which they draw 40 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. through the continual communication between God and man are always becoming unsteady and confused. But in general, he who comes into the presence of any power- ful nature, whose power is at all of a spiritual sort, feels sure that in some way he is coming into the presence of God. But it would be melancholy if only the great men could give us this conviction. The world would be darker than it is if every human spirit, so soon as it became obedient, did not become the Lord’s candle. A poor, _ meagre, starved, bruised life, if only it keeps the true human quality and does not become inhuman, and if it is obedient to God in its blind, dull, half-conscious way, becomes a light. Lives yet more dark than it is, become dimly aware of God through it. A mere child, in his pure humanity, and with his easy and instinctive turning of his life toward the God from whom he came—it is one of the commonplaces of your homes how often he may burn with some suggestion of divinity, and cast illumination upon problems and mysteries whose difficulty he himself has never felt. There are great lamps and little lamps burning everywhere. The world is bright with them. You shut your book in which you have been holding communion with one of the great souls of all time; and while you are standing in the light which he has shed about him, your child beside you says some simple, childlike thing, and a new thread of shining wisdom runs through the sweet and subtle thoughts that the great thinker gave you, as the light of a little taper sends its special needle of brightness through the pervasive splendor of a sunlit world. It is not strange. The fire is the same, whatever be the human lamp that gives it its expression. There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meagre that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at all at what sudden moment it may flash forth with the life of God. And in this truth of ours we have certainly the key to another mystery which sometimes puzzles us. What shall we make of some man rich in attainments and in generous desires, well educated, well behaved, who has trained himself to be a liglit and help to other men, and who, now that his training is complete, stands in the midst of his fellow-men completely dark and helpless? There are plenty of such men. We have all known them who have seen how men grow up. Their brethren stand around them expecting light from them, but no light comes. They themselves are full of amazement at themselves. They built themselves for influence, but no one feels them. They kindled themselves to give light, but no one shines a grateful answer back to them. Perhaps they blame their fellow-men, who are too dull to see their radiance. Perhaps they only wonder what is the matter, and wait, with a hope that never quite dies out into despair, for the long-delayed recognition and gratitude. At last they die, and the men who stand about their graves feel that the saddest thing about their death is that the world is not perceptibly the darker for their dying. What does it mean? If we let the truth of Solomon's figure play upon it, is not the meaning of the familiar failure simply this: These men are unlighted candles; they are the spirit of man, elaborated, cultivated, finished to its very finest, but lacking the last touch of God. As dark as a row of silver lamps, all chased and wrought with wondrous skill, all filled with rarest oil, but all untouched with fire—so dark in this world is a long row of cultivated men, set up along the corridors of some age of history, around the halls of some wise university, or in the pulpits of some stately church, to ‘whom there has come no fire of devotion, who stand in awe and reverence before no wisdom greater than their own, who are proud and selfish, who do not know what it is to obey. There is the explanation of your wonder when you cling close to some man whom the world calls bright, and find that you get no brightness from him. There is the explanation of yourself, O puzzled man, who never can make out why the world does not turn to you for help. The poor blind world cannot tell its need, nor analyze The Candle of the Lord—Brooks. 41 its instinct, nor say why it seeks one man and leaves another; but through its blind eyes it knows when the fire of God has fallen on a human life. This is the meaning of the strange helpfulness which comes into a man when he truly is converted. It is not new truth that he knows, not knew wonders that he can do, but it is that the unlighted nature, in the utter obedience and self-surrender of that great hour, has been lifted up and lighted at the life of God, and now burns with Him. But it is not the worst thing in life for a man to be powerless or uninfluential. There are men enough for whom we would thank God if they did no harm, even if they did no good. I will not stop now to question whether there be such a thing possible as a life totally without influence of any kind, whether perhaps the men of whom I have been speaking do not also belong to the class of whom I want next to speak. However that may bé, I am sure you will recognize the fact that there is a multitude of men whose lamps are certainly not dark, and yet who certainly are not the candles of the Lord. A nature furnished richly to the very brim, a man of knowledge, of wit, of skill, of thought, with the very graces of the body perfect, and yet profane, impure, worldly, and scattering scepticism of all good and truth about him wherever he may go. He is no unlighted candle. He burns so bright and lurid that often the purer lights grow dim in the glare. But if it be possible for the human candle, when it is all made, when the subtle components of a human nature are ali mingled most carefully—if it be possible that then, instead of being lifted up to heaven and kindled at the pure being of Him who is eternally and absolutely good, it should be plunged down into hell and lighted at the yellow flames that burn out of the dreadful brimstone of the pit, then we can understand the sight of a man who is rich in every brilliant human quality, cursing the world with the continual exhibition of the devilish instead of the godlike in his life. When the power of pure love appears as a capacity of brutal lust; when the holy ingenuity with which man may search the character of a fellow-man, that he may help him to be his best, is turned into the unholy skill with which the bad man studies his victim, that he may know how te make his damnation most complete; when the almost divine magnetism, which is given to a man in order that he may instil his faith and hope into some soul that trusts him, is used to breathe doubt and despair through all the substance of a friend’s reliant soul; when wit, which ought to make truth beautiful, is deliberately prostituted to the service of a lie; when earnestness is degraded to be the slave of blasphemy, and the slave’s reputation is made the cloak for the master’s shame—in all these cases, and how frequent they are no man among us fails to know, you have simply the spirit of man kindled from below, not from above, the candle of the Lord burning with the fire of the devil. Still it will burn; still the native inflammableness of humanity will show itself. There will be light; there will be power; and men who want nothing but light and power will come to it. It is wonderful how mere power, or mere brightness, apart altogether from the work that the power is doing and the story that the bright- ness has to tell, will win the confidence and admiration of men from whom we might have expected better things. A bright book or a bright play will draw the crowd, although its meaning be detestable. A clever man will make a host of boys and men stand like charmed birds while he draws their principles quietly out of them and leaves them moral idiots. A whole great majority of a community will rush like foolish sheep to the polls and vote for a man who they know is false and brutal, because they have learned to say that he is strong. All this is true enough; and yet while men do these wild and foolish things, they know the difference between the illumination of a human life that is kindled from above and that which is kindled from below. They know the pure flames of one and the lurid glare of the other; and however they may praise and follow wit and power, as if to be witty or powerful were an end sufficient 42 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. in itself, they will always keep their sacredest respect and confidence for that power or wit which is inspired by God, and works for righteousness. There is still another way, more subtle and sometimes more dangerous than these, in which the spirit of man may fail of its completest function as the candle of the Lord. The lamp may be lighted, and the fire at which it is lighted may be indeed the fire of God, and yet it may not be God alone who shines forth upon the world. I can picture to myself a candle which should in some way mingle a peculiarity of its own substance with the light it shed, giving to that light a hue which did not belong essentially to the fire at which it was lighted. Men who saw it would see not oniy the brightness of the fire. They would see also the tone and color of the lamp. And so it is, I think, with the way in which some good men manifest God. They have really kindled their lives at Him. It is His fire that burns in them. They are obedi- ent, and so He can make them His points of exhibition; but they cannot get rid of themselves. They are mixed with the God they show. They show themselves as well as Him. It is as when a mirror mingles its own shape with the reflections of the things that are reflected from it, and gives them a curious convexity because it is itself convex. This is the secret of all pious bigotry, of all holy prejudice. It is the candle, putting its own color into the flame which it has borrowed from the fire of God. The violent man makes God seem violent. The feeble man makes God seem feeble. The speculative man makes God look like a beautiful dream. The legal man makes God look like a hard and steel-like law. Here is where all the harsh and narrow part of sectarianism comes from. The narrow Presbyterian or Methodist, or Episcopalian or Quaker, full of devoutness, really afire with God—what is he but a candle which is always giving the flame its color, and which, by a disposition which many men haye to value the little parts of their life more than the greater, makes less of the essential brightness of the flame than of the special color which it lends to it? It seems, perhaps, as if, in saying this, I threw some slight or doubt upon that individual and separate element in every man’s religion, on which, upon the contrary, I place the very highest value. Every man who is a Christian must live a Christian life that is peculiarly his own. Every candle of the Lord must utter its peculiar light; only the true individuality of faith is marked by these characteristics which rescue it from bigotry; first, that it does not add something to the universal light, but only brings out most strongly some aspect of it which is specially its own; second, that it always cares more about the essential light than about the peculiar way in which it utters it; and third, that it easily blends with other special utterances of the universal light, in cordial sympathy and recognition of the value which it finds in them. Let these char- acteristics be in every man’s religion, and then the individuality of faith is an inestimable gain. Then the different candles of the Lord burn in long rows down His great palace-halls of the world; and all together, each complementing all the rest, they light the whole vast space with Him. I have tried to depict some of the difficulties which beset the full exhibition in the world of this great truth of Solomon, that “the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” Man is selfish and disobedient, and will not let his life burn at all. Man is wilful and passionate, and kindles his life with ungodly fire. Man is narrow and bigoted, and makes the light of God shine with his own special color. But all these are accidents. All these are distortions of the true idea of man. How can we know that? Here is the perfect man, Christ Jesus! What a man He is! How nobly, beautifully, perfectly human! What hands, what feet, what an eye, what a heart! How genuinely, unmis- takably a man! I bring the men of my experience or of my imagination into His presence, and behold, just when the worst or best of them falls short of Him, my human consciousness assures me that they fall short also of thebest idea of what it is to bea man. Here is the spirit of man in its perfection. And what then? Is it not The Candle of the Lord—Brooks. 43 also the candle of the Lord? “I am come a light into the world,” said Jesus. “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” So wrote the man of all men who knew Him best. And in Him where are the difficulties that we saw? where for one moment is the dimness of selfishness? O, it seems to me a wonderful thing that the supremely rich human nature of Jesus never for an instant turned with self-indulgence in on its own richness, or was beguiled by that besetting danger of all opulent souls, the wish, in the deepest sense, just to enjoy himself. How fascinating that desire is. How it keeps many and many of the most abundant natures in the world from usefulness. Just to handle over and over their hidden treasures, and with a spiritual miserliness to think their thought for the pure joy of thinking, and turn emotion into the soft atmosphere of a life of gardened selfish- ness. Not one instant of that in Jesus. All the vast richness of His human nature only meant for Him more power to utter God to man. And yet how pure His rich life was. How it abhorred to burn with any fire that was not divine. Such abundant life, and yet such.utter incapacity of any living but the holiest; such power of burning, and yet such utter incapacity of being kindled by any torch but God’s; such fulness with such purity was never seen besides upon the earth; and yet we know as we behold it that it is no monster; but only the type of what all men must be, although all men but Him as yet have failed to be it. And yet again there was intense personality in Him without a moment's bigotry. A special life, a life that stands distinct and self-defined among all the lives of men, and yet a life making the universal God all the more universally manifest by its distinct- ness, appealing to all lives just in proportion to the intensity of the individuality that filled His own. O, I think I need only bid you look at Him, and you must see what it is to which our feeble lights are struggling. There is the true spiritual man who is the candle of the Lord, the light that lighteth every man. It is distinctly a new idea of life, new to the standards of all our ordinary living, which this truth reveals. All our ordinary appeals to men to be up and doing, and make themselves shining lights, fade away and become insignificant before this higher message which comes in the words of Solomon and in the life of Jesus. What does the higher message say? “You are a part of God! You have no place or meaning in this.world but in relationship to Him. The full relationship can only be realized by obedience. Be obedient to Him, and you shall shine by His light, not your own. Then you cannot be dark, for He shall kindle you. Then you shall be as incapable of burning with false passion as you shall be quick to answer with the true. Then the devil may hold his torch to you, as he held it to the heart of Jesus in the desert, and your heart shall be as uninflammable as His. But as soon as God touches you, you shall burn with a light so truly your own, that you shall reverence your own mys- terious life, and yet so truly His that pride shall be impossible.” What a philosophy of human life is that. “O, to be nothing, nothing!” cries the mystic singer in his revival hymn, desiring to lose himself in God. “Nay not that; O to be something, something,” remonstrates the unmystical man, longing for work, ardent for personal life and character. Where is the meeting of the two? How shall self-surrender meet that high self-value without which no man can justify his living and honor himself in his humanity? Where can they meet but in this truth? Man must be something that he may be nothing. The something which he must be must consist in simple fitness to utter the divine life which is the only original power in the universe. And then man must be nothing that he may be something. He must submit himself in obedi- ence to God, that so God may use him, in some way in which his special nature only could be used, to illuminate and help the world. Tell me, do not the two cries meet in that one aspiration of the Christian man to find his life by losing it in God, to be himself by being not his own but Christ’s? 44 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. In certain lands, for certain holy ceremonies, they prepare the candles with most anxious care. The very bees which distil the wax are sacred. They range in gardens planted with sweet flowers for their use alone. The wax is gathered by consecrated hands; and then the shaping of the candles is a holy task, performed in holy places, to the sound of hymns, and in the atmosphere of prayers. All this is done because the candles are to burn in the most lofty ceremonies on most sacred days. With what care must the man be made whose spirit is to be the candle of the Lord! It is his spirit which God is to kindle with Himself. Therefore the spirit must be the precious part of him. The body must be valued only for the protection and the education which the soul may gain by it. And the power by which his spirit shall become a candle in obedience. Therefore obedience must be the struggle and desire of his life; obedience, not hard and forced, but ready, loving, and spontaneous; the obedience ot the child to the father, of the candle to the flame; the doing of duty not merely that the duty may be done, but that the soul in doing it may become capable of receiving and uttering God; the bearing of pain not merely because the pain must be borne, but that the bearing of it may make the soul able to burn with the divine fire which found it in the furnace; the repentance of sin and acceptance of forgiveness, not merely that the soul may be saved from the fire of hell, but that it may be touched with the fire of heaven, and shine with the love of God, as the stars, forever. Above all the pictures of life—of what it means, of what may be made out of it— there stands out this picture of a human spirit burning with the light of the God whom it obeys, and showing Him to other men. O, my young friends, the old men will tell you that the lower pictures of life and its purposes turn out to be cheats and mistakes. - But this picture can never cheat the soul that tries to realize it. The man whose life is a struggle after such obedience, when at last his earthly task is over, may look forward from the borders of this life into the other, and humbly say, as his history of the life that is ended, and his prayer for the life that is to come, the words that Jesus said—‘‘I have glorified Thee on the earth; now, O Father, glorify Me with Thyseli forever.” [When this sermon was preached in Westminster Abbey, on the evening of Sunday, the Fourth of July, 1880, the following sentences were added:—] My Friends:—May I ask you to linger while I say to you a few words more, which shall not be unsuited to what I have been saying, and which shall, for just a moment, recall to you the sacredness which this day—the Fourth of July, the anni- versary of American Independence—has in the hearts of us Americans. If I dare— generously permitted as I am to stand this evening in the venerable Abbey, so full of our history, as well as yours—to claim that our festival shall have some sacredness for you as well as us, my claim rests on the simple truth that to.all true men the birthday of a nation must always be a sacred thing. For in our modern thought the nation is the making-place of men. Not by the traditions of its history, nor by the splendor of its corporate achievements, nor by the abstract excellencies of its constitution, but by its fitness to make men, to beget and educate human character, to contribute to the complete humanity, the “perfect man” that is to be—by this alone each nation must be judged today. The nations are the golden candlesticks which hold aloft the candles of the Lord. No candlestick can be so rich or venerable that men shall honor it if it holds no candle. “Show us your man,” land cries to land. In such days any nation, out of the midst of which God has led another nation as He led ours out of the midst of yours, must surely watch with anxiety and prayer the peculiar development of our common humanity of which that new nation is made the home, the special burning of the human candle in that new candlestick; and if she sees a hope and promise that God means to build in that new land some strong and The Candle of the Lord—Brooks. 45 free and characteristic manhood which shall help the world to its completeness, the mother-land will surely lose the thought and memory of whatever anguish accom- panied the birth, for gratitude over the gain which humanity has made, “for joy that a man is born into the world.” It is not for me to glorify tonight the country which I love with all my heart and soul. I may not ask your praise for anything admirable which the United States has been or done. But on my country’s birthday I may do something far more solemn and more worthy of the hour. I may ask you for your prayer in her behalf. That on the manifold and wondrous chance which God is giving her—on her freedom (for she is free, since the old stain of slavery was washed out in blood); on her unconstrained religious life; on her passion for education, and her eager search for truth; on her jealous care for the poor man’s rights and opportunities; on her countless quiet homes where the future generations of her,men are growing; on her manufactures and her commerce; on her wide gates open to the east and to the west; on her strange meetings of the races out of which a new race is slowly being born; on her vast enterprise and her illimitable hopefulness—on all these materials and machineries of manhood, on all that the life of my country must mean for humanity, I may ask you to pray that the blessing of God the Father of man, and Christ the Son of man, may rest forever. Because you are Englishmen and I am an American; also because here, under this high and hospitable roof of God, we are all more than Englishmen and more than Americans; because we are all men, children of God, waiting for the full coming of our Father’s kingdom, I ask you for that prayer. [Phillips Brooks was born at Boston, December 13, 1835, and died there January 23, 18938. He graduated at Harvard in 1855, and at the Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria, Va., in 1859, and was rector of Philadelphia churches for eleven years, and of Trinity church, Boston, in 1870. He was elected bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Massachusetts in 1891. He was the author of a number of books, his published sermons numbering four volumes. He was one of the leading pulpit orators of the country. This sermon is from the volume of sermons of Phillips Brooks, published by E. P. Dutton & Co., and is reproduced here by their permission, as well as that of William G, Brooks, executor.]} 46 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. - THE STAR IN THE EASi CLAUDIUS BUCHANAN, LL. D. Preached Sunday, Feb. 26, 1809. “For we have seen His Star in the East, and are come to worship Him.’’—Matt. 2: 2. When, in the fulness of time, the Son of God came down from heaven to take our nature upon Him, many circumstances concurred to celebrate the event, and to render it an illustrious epoch in the history of the world. It pleased the Divine Wisdom that the manifestation of the deity should be distinguished by a suitable glory: and this was done by the ministry of angels, by the ministry of men, and by the ministry of nature itself. First, this was done by the ministry of angels; for an angel announced to the shepherds “the glad tidings of great joy which should be to all people;” and a multi- tude of the heavenly host sang ‘Glory to God in the highest, on earth, peace, good- will toward men.” Secondly, it was done by the ministry of men; for illustrious persons, divinely directed, came from a far country, to offer gifts and to do honor to the new-born King, Thirdly, it was done by the ministry of nature. Nature herself was commanded to bear witness to the presence of the God of nature. A star or divine light pointed out significantly from heaven the spot upon earth where the Savior was born. Thus, I say, it pleased the Divine Wisdom by an assemblage of heavenly testi- monies to glorify the incarnation of the Son of God. All these testimones were appropriate; but the journey of the eastern sages had in it a peculiar fitness. We can hardly imagine a more natural mode of honoring the event than this, that illustrious persons should proceed from a far country to visit the child which was born Savior of the world. They came, as it were, in the name of the Gentiles, to acknowledge the heavenly gift, and to bear their testimony against the nation which rejected it. They came as the representatives of the whole “.eathen world; not only of the heathens of the east, but also of the heathens of the west, from whom we are descended. In the name of the whole world, lying “in darkness, and in the shadow of death,” they came inquiring for that light which they had heard was to visit them in the fulness of time. ‘And the star which they saw in the east went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. And when they were come into the house, they fell down and worshipped Him; and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh;” and they departed into their own country. Do you ask how the star of Christ was understood in the east? Or why Provi- dence ordained that peculiar mode of intimation? Christ was foretold in old prophecy, under the name of the “star that should arise out of Jacob;” and the rise of the star of Jacob was notified to the world by the appearance of an actual star. We learn from authentic Roman history, that there prevailed “in the east,” a constant expectation of a prince, who should rise out of Judea and rule the world. The Star in the East—Buchanan. 47 That such an expectation did exist, has been confirmed by the ancient writings of India. Whence, then, arose this extraordinary expectation, for it was found also in the Sybiline books of Rome? The Jewish expectation of the Messiah had pervaded the east long before the period of His appearance. The Jews are called by their own prophet the ‘expecting people,’ (as it may be translated, and as some of the Jews of the east translate it) the “people jooking for and expecting One to come.” Wherever, then, the ten tribes were carried throughout the east, they carried with them their expectation. And they carried also the prophecies on which their expectation was founded. Now one of the clearest of these prophesies runs in these words: “There shall come a star out of Jacob.” And as in the whole dispensation concerning the Messiah, there is a wonderful fitness between the words of prophecy and the person spoken of, so it pleased the Divine Wisdom that the rise of the star in Jacob should be announced to the world by the appearance of an actual star (for by what other means could the great event be more significantly communicated to the remote parts of the earth?), and this actual star, in itself a proper emblem of that ‘Light which was to lighten the Gentiles,’ conducted them to Him who was called in a figure the star of Jacob, and the “glory of His people Israel; and who hath said of Himself (Rev. 22:16), “I, Jesus, am the bright and morning star.” But, again, why was the east thus honored? Why was the east, and not the west, the scene of these transactions? The east was the scene of the first revelation of God. The fountains of inspiration were first opened in the east. And, after the flood, the first family of the new world was planted in the east; I mean the east, in relation to Judea. Besides, millions of the human race inhabit that portion of the globe. The chief population of the world is in these regions. And in the middle of them the star of Christ first appeared. And, led by it, the wise men passed through many nations, tongues and kindreds, before they arrived at Judea in the west; bearing tidings to the world that the Light was come, that the “Desire of all Nations” was come. Even to Jerusalem herself they brought the first intimation that her long- expected Messiah was come. Now, my brethren, as the east was honored in the first age, in thus pointing out the Messiah to the world, so now again, after a long interval of darkness, it is bearing witness to the truth of His religion; not indeed by the shining of a star, but by affording luminous evidence of the divine origin of the Christian faith. It affords evidence, not only of the general truth of its history, but of its peculiar doctrines; and not of its doctrines merely, but of the divine power of these doctrines in con- vincing the understandings and converting the hearts of men. And in this sense it is that ‘“‘we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him.” And when these evidences shall have been laid before you, you will see that the time is come for diffusing His religion throughout the world: you will ‘‘offer gifts” in His name for the promotion of the work; and you will offer up prayers in its behalf, “that God would be pleased to make His ways known, His saving health unto all nations.” In this discourse we propose to lay before you, First. Evidences of the general truth of the Christian religion existing in the east. Secondly. Evidences of the divine power of that religion, exemplified in the east. I. The general truth of the Christian religion is illustrated by certain evidences in the east. Of these we shall mention the following: 1. Ancient writings of India, containing particulars of the history of Christ. 2. Certain doctrines of the east, shadowing forth the peculiar doctrines of Chris- tianity, and manifestly derived from a common origin, 48 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. 3. The state of the Jews in the east, confirming the truth of ancient prophecy. 4. The state of the Syrian Christians in the east, subsisting for many ages a separate and distinct people in the midst of the heathen world. These subjects, however, we must notice very briefly. 1. Hindoo history illustrates the history of the gospel. There have lately been discovered in India certain Sanscrit writings containing testimonies of Christ. They relate to a Prince who reigned about the period of the Christian era, and whose history, though mixed with fable, contains particulars which correspond in a surprising manner with the advent, birth, miracles, death and resurrection of our Savior. The event mentioned in the words of the text is exactly recorded, namely, that certain holy men, directed by a star, journeyed toward the west, where they beheld the — incarnation of the deity. These important records have been translated by a learned orientalist, and he has deposited the originals among the archives of the Asiatic Society. From these, and from other documents he has compiled a work entitled “The History of the Intro- duction of the Christian Religion into India; Its Progress and Decline;” and at the conclusion of the work he thus expresses himself: “I have written this account of Christianity in India with the impartiality of an historian; fully persuaded that our holy religion cannot receive any additional luster from it.” Thus far of the history of the gospel. 2. We are now to notice certain doctrines of the east, shadowing forth the doc- trines of Christianity. The peculiar doctrines of the Christian religion are so strongly represented in certain systems of the east, that we cannot doubt the source whence they have been derived. We find in them the doctrines of the Trinity, of the incarnation of the Deity, of the atonement for sin, and of the influence of the Divine Spirit. First, the doctrine of the Trinity. The Hindoos believe in one God, Brahma, the creator of all things; and yet they represent him as subsisting in three persons, and they worship one or other of these persons throughout every part of India. And what proves that they hold this doctrine distinctly is, that their most ancient representation of the Deity is formed of one body and three faces. Nor are these representations confined to India alone, but they are to be found in other parts of the east. Whence, then, my brethren, has been derived this idea of a Triune God? If, as some allege, the doctrine of the Trinity among Christians be of recent origin, whence have the Hindoos derived it? When you shall have read all the volumes of philosophy on the subject you will not have obtained a satisfactory answer to this question. Secondly, the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Deity. The Hindoos believe that one of the persons in their Trinity (and that, too, the second person), was “manifested in the flesh.” Hence their fables of the incarnations of Vishnoo, of which you may have heard. And this doctrine of the incarnation of the Deity is found over almost the whole of Asia. : Whence, then, originated this idea that “God should become man, and take our nature upon Him?” The Hindoos do not consider that it: was an angel merely that became man, but God himself. The incarnation of God is a frequent theme of their discourse. We cannot doubt whence this peculiar tenet of religion has been derived. We must believe that all the fabulous incarnations of the eastern mythology are derived from the real incarnation of the Son of God or from the prophecies which went before it. Thirdly, the doctrine of Atonement for Sin, by the shedding of blood. To this The Star in the East—Buchanan. 49 day in Hindostan, the people bring the goat or kid to the temple, and the priest sheds the blood of the innocent victim. Nor is this peculiar to Hindostan. Throughout the whole east the doctrine of a sacrifice for sin seems to exist in one form or other. How is it then, that some of you in this country say that there is no atonement? For ever since ‘Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain;’ ever since Noah, the father of the new world, “offered burnt offerings on the altar,”’ sacri- _fices have been offered up in almost every nation, as if for a constant memorial before the world that ‘without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” Fourthly, the doctrine of the influence of the Spirit of God. In the most ancient writings of the Hindoos, some of which have been lately published, it is asserted that the ‘divine Spirit, or light of knowledge” influences the minds of men. And the man who is the subject of such influence is called the “man twice born.” Many chapters are devoted to the duties, character and virtues of ‘the rman twice born.” If, then, in the very systems of the heathen world, this exalted idea should have a place, how much more might we expect to find it in the revelation of the true God! We could illustrate other doctrines by similar analogies, did time permit. If these analogies were merely partial or accidental they would be less important. But they are not casual, as every man who is versed in holy scriptures and in oriental mythology well knows. They are general and systematic. Was it ever alleged that the light of nature could teach such doctrines as these? They are all contrary to the light of nature. These, my brethren, are the doctrines which exist at’ this day in the midst-of the idolatry and moral corruption of the heathen world. Everywhere there appears to be a counterfeit of the true doctrine. The inhabitants have lost sight of the only true God, and they apply these doctrines to their false gods. For these doctrines are relics of the first faith of the earth. They are, as you see, the strong characters of God’s primary revelation to man, which neither the power of man nor time itself hath been able to destroy, but which have endured from age to age like the works of nature, the moon and stars, which God hath created incorruptible. 3. Another circumstance, illustrating the truth of the Christian religion in the east, is the state of the Jews. The Jews are scattered over the whole face of the east and the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning them is far more evident in these regions than it is here among Christian nations. The last great punishment of the Jewish people was inflicted for their last great crime—their shedding the blood of the Son of God! And this instance of divine indignation has been exhibited to all nations, and all nations seem to have been employed by the ordinance of God in inflicting the punishment. By express prophecy the Jews were sentenced to become “the scorn and reproach of all people;” and “a proverb and by-word among all nations.” Now, that their stubborn unbelief should be a reproach to them among Christian nations here in the west, is not so strange; that they should be a proverb and a by-word among those who had heard the prophecy concerning them is not so remarkable. But to have seen them (as I have seen them) insulted and persecuted by the ignorant nations in the east; in the very words of the prophecy, “trodden down of the heathen;” trodden down by a people who never heard the name of Christ, who never heard that the Jews had rejected Christ, and who, in fact, punished the Jews without knowing their crime; this, I say, hath appeared to me an awful completion of the divine sentence. 4. Another monument of the Christian religion in the east is the state of the Syrian Christians, subsisting for many ages a separate and distinct people in the _ midst of the corruption and idolatry of the heathen world. They exist in the very 50 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. midst of India like the bush of Moses, burning and not consumed; surrounded by the enemies of their faith and subject to their power and yet not destroyed. There« they exist, having the pure word of God in their hands and speaking in their churches that same language which our Savior Himself spake in the streets of Jerusalem. We may contemplate the history of this people, existing so long in that dark region, as a type of the inextinguishable light of Christ’s religion; and in this sens it may be truly said, ““We have seen His star in the east.” The probable design of the Divine Providence in preserving this people, appear: to be this: That they should be a seed of the church in Asia; that they should be special instrument for the conversion of the surrounding heathen when God's ap pointed time is come; a people prepared for His service, as fellow laborers with us a people, in short, in the midst of Asia to whom we can point as an evidence to the test, of the truth and antiquity of the Christian faith. And this shall suffice as to the testimonies of the general truth of Christianit; existing in the east. II. We proposed in the second branch of the discourse to lay before you some evidences of the divine power of the Christian religion exemplified in the east. To say that Christianity has been propagated in the east, as other religions hav been propagated, is to say nothing. It is little to say that thousands have adoptec the name, and that it pervades populous provinces. For three centuries past th Romish church has diffused the name of Christianity throughout the east; and thi success demonstrates how practicable it is to “propagate our religion,” (in the com mon sense of that expression) throughout all nations of the world. Providence: seems to have ordained this previous labor of the Romish church to facilitate th preaching of the true gospel at the appointed time; for Christianity is found, even ii its worst form, to possess a moral and civilizing efficiency. But it is in the east as it is in the west—all are not Christians who are callec Christians. “He is not a Christian who is one outwardly; neither is that baptisn which is outward in the flesh.” The fact was, the Romish church preached Chris tianity in the east without the Bible. Let us now inquire what has been the consequence of sending the Bible to th east. It is nearly one hundred yearsysince the Bible was sent to the Hindoos; but no by our country. This honor was given to the Protestant churches of Denmark am Germany. It was sent to a certain nation in the south of India, for there are many nations in Hindostan. What, then, was the effect of giving them the Bible? It wa: the same as that which followed the giving the Bible to us, while we lay in almos Hindoo darkness, buried in the ignorance and superstition of the church of Rome It gave light and knowledge; God blessed His own word to the conversion of th: heart, and men began to worship Him in sincerity and truth. That province in India which was blessed with the Bible hath since “seen a grea light.” During nearly the whole of the last century multitudes of Hindoos (bot heathens and Roman Catholics) became members of the Protestant church, one generation after another; and amongst them there has ever been found, according to the records of the mission, such a proportion of serious piety as you might expec to find when the gospel is preached with faithfulness and zeal. During the whole of the last century Providence favored them with a successiot of holy and learned men, educated at the universities of Germany, among whom wa: the venerable Swartz, called the Apostle of the East, and others not much inferio: to him—men whose names are scarcely known in this country, but who are a: famous among the Hindoos as Wickliffe and Luther are amongst us. The ministry} of these good men was blessed in many provinces in the south of India, and th The Star in the East—Buchanan. 51 bounds of their churches are extending unto this day. The language of the country is called Tamul, and the first translation of the Bible in that language was made, as we said, about a hundred years ago. Like Wickliffe’s Bible with us, it became the father of many versions, and, after a succession of improved editions, it is now con- sidered by the Bramins themselves (like Luther's Bible in German) as the classical standard of the Tamul tongue. A jubilee has lately been celebrated in India in honor of the gospel. In the monti of July, 1806, a jubilee was observed by these Hindoo churches in commemoration of the arrival of the two first Protestant missionaries on the 9th of July, 1706. The year 1806 being the hundredth year (or the second fiftieth) since the gospel first visited their land, was to them “the year of jubilee.” The happy occasion had been long anticipated and was marked with demonstrations of joy and gladness. The people, as we were informed, walked in procession to their churches, carrying palms in their hands and singing the 98th Psalm; and, after offering up praises and thanksgivings to the Most High, they heard a sermon suitable to the day. The sermon at the jubilee of Tritchinopoly was preached by their aged minister, the Rev. Mr. Pohle, from these words: “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations; baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” These were the effects of sending the Bible to the east. Men were “brought to a knowledge of the truth;’’ and at the end of a hundred years the natives kept the jubilee of the Bible. Such, my brethren, was the light in the south of India. And now a light has . sprung up in the north, of which you have heard. Our own country hath begun, though late, to dispense ‘the Word of Life.” And although the time has been short, the success has been great. In the north, in the west, and in Ceylon, translations of the Scriptures are going on in almost all the languages of oriental India. Our own country hath at length assumed an interest in diffusing the gospel. “In the fulness of time,’ we trust, her different societies have come forth as with one consent, to begin the work of evangelizing the east. ‘In the fulness of time,” we trust, hath this country begun, by these instruments, to employ her great power and her enlightened zeal in extending the knowledge of the true God throughout the world. We ought not to regret that the work is carried on by Christians of different denominations; for if they teach the religion of the Bible, their labor will be blessed. We have no contentions in India like those in Britain between Protestants and different names. There they are all friends. The strife there is between light and darkness, between the true God and an idol. So liberal and catholic is the Christian in Asia (while he looks over the map of the world, and can scarcely find where the isle of Britain lies), that he considers even the term ‘Protestant’ as being in a certain degree exclusive or sectarian. “The religion of the Bible,” or “the religion of Christ,” is the name by which he would describe his creed. For when the idolater once abjures his own cast for the gospel, he considers the differences of Protestants (if he ever hear of them) as being very insignificant. Indeed he cannot well under- stand them. In the great revolution that takes place in his mind (if his conversion be real) he cannot contemplate these minute objects. We ought not, then, I say, to regret that different classes of Christians are employed in the work. For the case is an exact parallel of that recorded in the Gospel (Mark 9: 38), “And John answer- ing said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us; and we forbade him, because he followeth not us. And Jesus said, Forbid him not.” On my arrival from India, a few months ago, I learned that a controversy had engaged the attention of the public, for some time, on the question of sending missions 52 : Pulpit Power and Eloquence. to the east. In the future history of our country it will scarcely be believed, that in the present age an attempt should haye been made to prevent the diffusion of the blessed principles of the Christian religion. It will not be believed that an attempt should have been made to prove, by argument, that it was wrong to make known the revela- tion of the true God to our fellow men; or if, in some instances, it might be permitted (as in the case of remote nations) that we ought not to instruct that people who were affirmed to be the most superstitious, and most prejudiced; and who were our own subjects. We scarcely believe ourselves that, twenty years ago, an attempt was made to defend the traffic in slaves, and that books were written to show that it was humane in its character, just in its principle, and honorable to our nation. The discussion, therefore, that has taken place on the civilization of the east, has been of important use. Men in general were not informed. The scene of action was remote, and the subject was new in almost all its relations. Even to some of those persons who had been in India, the subject was new. Just as in this country, if you were to ask certain persons whether they had any acquaintance with the religious world, they would say they had never heard there was such a world; so some from India hazarded an opinion concerning the “inveterate prejudices” of certain tribes in the east, who scarcely knew the geography of the country where they lived; what their religion was, or whether they had any religion at all. They had seen no star in the east; they had heard of no jubilee for the Bible. Like the spies of Israel, who brought back an “evil report” from Canaan, they reported that India was no “land of promise” for the Gos- pel; that the land was barren, and that the men were Anakims. But the faithfui Swartz gave another testimony. He affirmed that it is “exceedingly good land;” and his ‘record is true.” He who was best qualified to give an opinion on the subject, who preached among the Hindoos for nearly fifty years, founded churches among them in different provinces, established schools for their children, disseminated reli- gious tracts in their own tongue, and intimately knew their language, manners, pre- judices and superstitions; he who restored the Christian character to respect, after it had fallen into contempt; who was-selected by the natives as an-arbiter of their dif- ferences with the English, and whom both Hindoos and English loved and feared in his life and honored in his death; this good man, I say, differed in opinion from some, who have lately ventured to give a judgment in this matter; he affirmed that it was England’s duty to make known the revelation of the true God to her Indian subjects. In the meantime, while men hold different opinions on the subject here, the great work goes on in the east. The Christians there will probably never hear of our dis- sensions; nor, if they should hear of them, would they be much interested about them. And on this point I judge it right to notice a very singular mistake, which appears to have existed on both sides of the question. It seems to have been understood that we have it in our power to prevent the progress of Christianity in India, if we wish to do so; if such a measure should be recommended by what is called ‘ta wise policy.” But we have no power to prevent the extension of the Christian religion in India. We have it in our power, indeed, greatly to promote it, but we have no power to destroy it. It would be as easy to extinguish Christianity in Great Britain as in India. There are thousands of Christians in India—hundreds of thousands of Christians. And while we are contending here, whether it be a proper thing to convert the Hindoos, they will go on extending the bounds of their churches, keeping their jubilees, and enjoying the blessings of the Gospel, regardless of our opinions or authority. The dispute in this country relative to the efficiency of preaching the faith of Christ to the heathen world, is not unlike the dispute of the Jewish doctors in the Gospel, concerning our Savior’s power “to forgive sins.” We read that our Lord had healed a woman, who was a sinner. And he said unto her, “Daughter, thy sins The Star in the East—Buchanan. 53 are forgiven; thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” Then began the Pharisees to say within themselves, “Who is this that forgiveth sins also?” But she felt in herself that she was. healed, and, leaving the doctors to dispute whether “her faith could save her or not,” she departed in peace and joy. So, while we are disputing here, whether the faith of Christ can save the heathens, ‘tthe Gospel hath gone forth “for the healing of the nations.” A congregation of Hindoos will assemble on the morning of the Sabbath, under the shade of a Banian tree, not one of whom, perhaps, ever heard of Great Britain by name. There the _ Holy Bible is opened; the word of Christ is preached with eloquence and zeal; the affections are excited; the voice of prayer and praise is lifted up; and He who hath promised His presence “‘when two or three are gathered together in His name, 1s there in the midst of them to bless them, according to His word.’’ These scenes [ myself have. witnessed; and it is in this sense in particular I can say, “We have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him.” f Thus far we have spoken of the success of the Gospel in Asia, by means of Euro- pean preachers. But we shall now exhibit to you evidence from another source, from % a new and unexpected quarter. We are now to declare what has been done, inde- _ pendently of our exertions, and in regions where we have no laborers and no access. _ And this I do to show you that whether we assist in the work or not, it is God's will i. that it should begin. You have hitherto been contemplating the light in India. We are now to announce to you that a light hath appeared in Arabia and dawned, as it were, on the Temple of Mecca itself. e- Two Mahometans of Arabia, persons of consideration in their own country, have been lately converted to the Christian faith. One of them has already suffered martyr- _ dom, and the other is now engaged in translating the Scriptures, and in concerting { plans for the conversion of his countrymen. The name of the martyr was Abdallah; _ and the name of the other, who is now translating the Scriptures, is Sabat, or, as he y, is called since his Christian baptism, Nathaneal Sabai. Sabat resided in my house Ny some time before I left India, and I had from his own mouth the chief part of the account which I shall now give to you. Some particulars I had from others. His __ conversion took place after the martyrdom of Abdallah, “to whose death he was con- _ senting,” and he related the circumstances to me with many tears. Abdallah and Sabat were intimate friends, and being young men of family in Arabia, they agreed to travel together, and to visit foreign countries. They were both zealous Mahometans. Sabat ‘s the son of Ibrahim Sabat, a noble family of the line of Beni-Sabat, who trace their pedigree to Mahomet. The two friends left Arabia, _ after paying their adorations at the tomb of their prophet at Mecca, and travelled _ through Persia, and thence to Cabul. Abdallah was appointed to an office of state _ under Zemaun Shah, King of Cabul; and Sabat left him there, and proceeded on a tour through Tartary. 7 While Abdallah remained at Cabul, he was converted to the Christian faith by the _ perusal of a Bible (as is supposed) belonging to a Christian from Armenis, then resid- ing at Cabul. In the Mahometan States, it is death for a man of rank to become a _ Christian. Abdallah endeavored for a time to conceal his conversion, but finding it no longer possible, he determined to flee to some of the Christian churches near the Caspian sea. F He accordingly left Cabul in disguise, and had gained the great city of Bochara, in Tartary, when he was met in the streets of that city by his friend Sabat, who im- _ mediately recognized him. Sabat had heard of his conversion and flight, and was filled with indignation at his condugt. Abdallah knew his danger, and threw himself at the feet of Sabat. He confessed that he was a Christian and implored him by the sacred tie of their former friendship to let him escape with his life. “But, sir,’”’ said 54 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Sabat, when relating the story himself, “I had no pity. I caused my servants to seize him, and I delivered him up to Morad Shah, King of Bochara. He was sentenced to die, and a herald went through the city of Bochara announcing the time of his execu- tion. An immense multitude attended, and the chief men of the city. I also went and stood near to Abdallah. He was offered his life if he would abjure Christ, the execu- tioner standing by him with his sword in his hand. ‘No,’ said he (as if the proposi- tion were impossible to be complied with), ‘I cannot abjure Christ.’ Then one of his hands were cut off at the wrist. He stood firm, his arm hanging by his side with but little motion. A physician, by desire of the king, offered to heal the wound if he would recant. He made no answer, but.looked up steadfastly towards heaven, like Stephen, the first martyr, his eyes streaming with tears. He did not look with anger towards me. He looked at me, but it was benignly, and with the countenance of for- giveness. His other hand was then cut off. ‘But, sir,’ said Sabat, in imperfect Eng- lish, ‘he neyer changed, he never changed.’ And when he bowed his head to receive the blow of death, all Bochara seemed to say, ‘What new thing is this?’ ”’ Sabat had indulged the hope that Abdallah would have recanted when he was offered his life, but when he saw that his friend was dead, he resigned himself to grief and remorse. He travelled from place to place, seeking rest and finding none. At last he thought that he would visit India. He accordingly came to Madras about five years ago. Soon after his arrival he was appointed by the English government a Muiti, or expounder of Mahometan law; his great learning, and respectable station in his own country, rendering him eminently qualified for that office. And now the period of his own conversion drew near. While he was at Visagapatam, in the north- ern Cirears, exercising his professional duties, Providence brought in his way a New Testament in Arabic. He read it with deep thought, the Koran lying before him. He compared them together, and at length the truth of the Word of God fell on his mind, as he expressed it, like a flood of light. Soon afterwards he proceeded to Madras, a journey of 300 miles, to seek Christian baptism; and having made a public confession of his faith, he was baptized by the Rev. Dr. Kerr, in the English church at that place, by the name of Nathaneal, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. Being now desirous to devote his future life to the glory_of God, he resigned his secular employ, and came by invitation to Bengal, where he is now engaged in trans- lating the Scriptures into the Persian language. This work hath not hitherto been executed for want of a translator of sufficient ability. The Persian is an important language in the east, being the general language of western Asia, particularly among the higher classes, and is understood from Calcutta to Damascus. But the great work which occupies the attention of this noble Arabian is the promulgation of the Gospel among his countrymen; and from the present fluctuations of religious opinion in Arabia, he is sanguine in his hopes of success. His first work is entitled (Neama Besharatin lil Arabi), “Happy News for Arabia,’’ written in the Nabuttee, or common dialect of the country. It contains an eloquent and argumentative elucidation of the truth of the Gospel, with copious authorities admitted by the Mahometans themselves, and particularly by the Wahabians. And prefixed to it, is an account of the conversion of the author, and an appeal to the members of his well-known family in Arabia, for the truth of the facts. The following circumstance in the history of Sabat ought not to have been omitted. When his family in Arabia had heard that he had followed the example of Abdullah and become a Christian they dispatched his brother to India (a voyage of two months) to assassinate him. While Sabat was sitting in his house at Visagapatam his brother presented himself in the disguise of a faqueer, or beggar, having a dagger concealed under his mantle. He rushed on Sabat, and wounded him. But Sabat seized his arm, and servants came to his assistance. He then recognized his brother. Bt The Star in the East—Buchanan. 55 q The as$assin would have become the victim of public justice, but Sabat interceded for “his brother, and sent him home in peace, with letters and presents to his mother’s house in Arabia. And these, my brethren, are the instances I wished to lay before you, of the divine power of the Christian religion recently exemplified in the east. The conver- ‘sion of Abdallah and Sabat seem to have been as evidently produced by the Spirit of ‘God, as any conversion in the primitive church. Other instances have occurred in Arabia of a similar kind, and on the very borders of Palestine itself. These are like “the solitary notices which, in other nations, have announced the approach of general ‘illumination. John Huss, and Jerom of Prague, were not, perhaps, more talked of in “Europe than Abdallah and Sabat are at this day in Bucharia and Arabia. What conclusion, then, shall we draw from these facts? It is this: That the time for difiusing our religion in the east is come. We shall notice some other particulars which encourage us to think that the time is come. ‘ 1. The minds of men seem everywhere to be impressed with the duty of making the attempt. Nearly fifteen years have elapsed since it began, and their ardor is not abated. On the contrary, they gather strength as they proceed; new instruments are found, and liberal contributions are made by the people. Indeed, the consciences of “men seem to bear witness that the work is of God. | The rapid success of this undertaking must appear almost incredible to those who are not acquainted with the fact. Translations of the Scriptures are carried on, nor only in the languages of India, Persia and Arabia, but in those also of Burmah and China. Mount Caucasus, in the interior of Asia, is another center of translation for the east, particularly for the numerous nations of the Tartar race. The Scriptures are "preparing for the Malayan isles, and for the isles of the Pacific sea. The great con- tinent of Africa has become the scene of different missions and translations. North and South America are sending forth the Scriptures. They are sent to the uttermost "parts of the earth. They have been sent to Greenland, Labrador and Australasia. We might almost say, “There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.” And this spirit, for the diffusion of the truth, is not confined to Britain. It is found among good men of every Christian nation. Perhaps on this day prayers are “offered up in behalf of the work, in Europe, Asia, Africa and America. We are | encouraged then to believe that the time is come, in the first place, by the consent of good men. When I say good men, I mean religious and devout men, whose minds are ‘not entirely occupied with the politics and affairs of this world, but who are “looking for the consolation of Israel’—as it is expressed in these words, “Thy kingdom come.” 2. Another circumstance indicating that the time is at hand, is the general con- templation of the prophecies. The prophecies of Scripture are at this time pondered as seriously in Asia as in Europe. Even the Jews in the east begin to study the “oracles of their prophet Isaiah. And what is more important, the prophesies begin to be published among heathen nations; and we may expect that every nation will soon be able to read the divine decree concerning itself. 7 8. The Holy Scriptures are translating into various languages. When the Gospel was first to be preached to all nations it was necessary to give a diversity of tongues; a tongue for each nation; and this was done by the divine power. But in this second omulgation, as it were, of the Gospel, the work will probably be carried on by a diversity of translations, a diversity of Scriptures; a translation for each nation. Instead of the gift of tongues’ God by His Providence, is giving to mankind a gift of Scrip- tures. _ 4, Another circumstance, which seems to testify that this work is of God, is the | commotion in the bands of infidelity against it. ‘Herod is troubled, and all Jerusalem 56 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. with him.” A spirit hath issued from the mouth of infidelity, which rageth against Him whose star appeared in the east, and would destroy the work in its infancy. It rageth not against the Romish church in the east, though that be Christian; nor against the Armenian church in the east, though that be Christian; nor against the Greek church in the east, though that be Christian; but it rageth against the religion of the New Testament, that vital religion which aims at the conversion of the hearts of men. 4 Our Savior hath said, ‘The Gospel shall be published among all nations.” But these resist the Divine Word and say it cannot be published in all nations. Our Lord hath said, ‘‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” But these allege that the Gospel cannot be preached to every creature, for that “the bond of superstition is too strong, or that the influence of Christianity is too weak.” These are unguarded words, and ought not to be heard in a Christian country. These are presumptuous words, arraigning the dispensation of the Most High. Suen words as these were once spoken by the philosophy of Greece and Rome, but the Gospel prevailed, and first erected its dominion among them. In process of time the barbarous nations of Europe yielded to its sway, of which we are evidences at this day. And the nations of Asia will yield to the same power, and the truth will prevail, and the Gospel shall be preached over the whole world. 5. The last circumstance which we shall mention, as indicating that the period is come for diffusing the light of revelation, is the revolution of nations, and ‘“‘the signs of the times.” Men of serious minds, who are erudite in Holy Scripture, and in the history of the world, look forward to great events. They judge of the future from the past. They have seen great events; events which twenty years ago, would have appeared as incredible as the conversion of the whole world to Christianity. At no former period have the judgments of heaven been so evidently directed against the nations which are called Christian at this day. It is manifest that God hath a controversy with His people, whatever be the cause. The heathen world enjoys a comparative tranquility. But Christian nations are visited in quick succession by His awful judgments. What, then, is the cause of the judgments of God on His Christian people? - If we believe the declarations of God, in His Holy Word, we shall ascribe the judgment of Christian nations, at this day, to their rejecting so generally the testimony of Christ. That nation which first ‘“‘denied His name before men” was first given up to suffer terrible judgments itself, and is now permitted to become the instrument of inflicting judgments on others. And this is agreeable to the ordinary course of God’s just and retribute Providence. That kingdom which first seduced others by its infidelity is now become the instrument of their punishment. The same retributive Providence is ‘making inquisition for the blood of the saints.” The massacres, fires and anathemas of a former day filled the minds of men with dismay. We forget these scenes, but all things are present with God. And as a nation cannot be punished as a nation in the next world for its iniquity, it must be punished in this world; and its “sins will be visited to the third and fourth generation.” For a long time (as men count time) God kept silence; but the day of retribution is come at last, and the seats of the inquisition must be purged with blood. From the fury of these desolating judgments we have hitherto been preserved. “Righteousness exalteth a nation.”—Prov. 16:24, It would appear as if God would thus do honor to a church holding pure doctrine, and to a state united to that church which hath defended the true faith amidst the superstitions and corruptions which have so long reigned in the Christian world. Latterly, indeed, it should seem as if God had selected this nation as formerly His chosen people of Israel to preserve among men a . The Star in the East—Buchanan. 57 knowledge of the true religion; for we have been called to stand up, as it were, “between the living and the dead,” in defence of Christian principles. And although it be true that we have fought rather for our country than for our religion, yet it is also true that religion is, in present circumstances, identified, in a certain degree, with the existence of our country. And we trust that it is in the purpose of Provi- dence, by saving the one to save the other also. Let this nation, then, weigh well what it is, in God’s moral administration of the world, which saves her at this period. Let her beware of infidelity, and of that moral taint which ever accompanies it. Is it true that any of our chief men begin to “laugh at vice,” like Voltaire. Let us recall to view the experience of France. We beheld infidelity gradually infecting the nation, even as poison passeth through the human frame, till the whole body of the great was saturated. Then was their iniquity full, and God’s judgment began. Now, though it be true that the faith of our church is pure, that ‘she holdeth the head,” that she is founded on the prophets, evangelists and apostles; though it be true, that there is in the midst of her a large body of righteous persons, men possessing sound learning, enlightened zeal and pure charity; men who are called by our Savior “the light of the world,” and ‘the salt of the earth,” yet it is equally certain that the greater part of her members are not of that description. It is certain that the spot of moral disease begins to be visible at a distance. And we know not but that the true state of the nation may be this, that there is just “salt” enough, to use the figure of the Gospel, to preserve the body from corruption. Let us then weigh well what it is which, in the present circumstances of the world, saves this nation. If it be the divine pleasure to save us, while other nations are destroyed, it cannot be on account of the greatness of our empire, or of our dominion by sea, or of our extended commerce. For why should the moral Governor of the world respect such circumstances as these? But if we are spared it will be, we believe, on account of our maintaining the pure religion of Christ as the religion of our land, and of our promoting the knowledge of that religion, and of the blessed principles which accompany it throughout the rest of the world. This may be a consideration worthy of divine regard. And this, though it be no pledge of our duration, is the chief assurance of our perpetuity. On this chiefly (viz., our being an instrument of good to the world) must depend our hope of surviving the shocks and convulsions which are now overwhelming the other nations of Europe. Let us now recapitulate the evidences, noticed in this discourse, which encourage us to believe that the time is come for disseminating the knowledge of Christianity in the heathen world. 1. The facility with which Christianity is propagated generally in Asia, wherever the attempt has been made. 2. The peculiar success that has attended our own endeavors to promote the Teligion of the Bible. 3. The conversion of illustrious persons in Asia, by means of the Bible alone. 4. The translation of the Bible into almost all the languages of Asia, promising as it were a second promulgation of Christianity to the east. 5. The general contemplation of the prophecies in Europe and Asia. 6. The general commotion among the bands of infidelity, who are hostile to the design both in Europe and Asia. 7. The consent of good men, in all Christian nations, to promote the design. 8. The preservation of our own country, to carry on the work, amidst the ruin or infidelity of other nations. Behold, then, my brethren, the great undertaking for the promotion of which you e : 58 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. are now assembled. If it were in the power of this assembly to diffuse the blessings of religion over the whole world, would it not be done? Would not all nations: be blessed? You perceive that some take a lively interest in this subject, while others are less concerned. What is the reason of this difference? It is this: Every man who hath felt the influence of religion on his own heart will desire to extend the blessings to the rest of mankind; and no one who hath lived without a concern about religion will be solicitous to communicate to others a gift which he values not himself. At the same time, perhaps, he is not willing to be thought hostile to the work. But there is no neutrality here. ‘“‘He that is not with Christ” in maintaining His kingdom on earth “is against Him.” And so it appeareth to “God, who searcheth the heart.” Every one of us is now acting a part in regard to this matter, for which we must give an account hereafter. There is no one, however peculiar he may reckon his situation or circumstances, who is exempted from this responsibility. For this is the criterion of obedience in the sight of God, even our conduct in receiving or rejecting the “rec- ord which God hath given of His Son.” And no man “receiveth this record” in sin- cerity and truth, who will not desire to make it known to others. You have heard of the conversion of Mahometans and Hindoos. Yes, our Lord hath said, “Many shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out.” Begin, then, at this time, the solemn inquiry, not merely into the general truth of Christ’s religion, but into its divine and converting power. You observe that in this discourse I have distinguished between the name of Christianity and the thing. For it seems there are some who have departed from the ancient principles of our reformation, who admit the existence of the Spirit of God, but deny His influence; who agree not with the Apostle Paul that the “Gospel cometh to some in word only,” and to others in power, and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance, and who seem to forget what our Savior hath said of the “broad road” and the “narrow way.” Begin then, the important inquiry; for “the time is short,’ and this question will soon be brought to issue before an assembled world. In the meantime I shall offer to you my testimony on this subject. The operation of the grace of God, in “renewing a right spirit within us” (Ps. 51) is a doctrine professed by the whole faithful Church of Christ militant here on earth. The great author of our religion hath Himself delivered the doctrine in the most solemn manner to the world. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he carnot see the kingdom of God.” Verily, verily, it is an undoubted truth, an unchangeable principle of the heavenly dispensation, that except a man be renewed in mind by the Spirit of God, he shall not have power even to see or behold the Kingdom of God. What though many in our day deny this doctrine? A whole nation denied a doctrine greater if possible than this. The very name and religion of Christ have been denied in our time. But if our Savior hath declared any one doctrine of the Gospel more clearly than another, it is this of a spiritual conversion; and the demon- stration of its truth is found in all lands where His Gospel is known. Christians, differing in almost everything else, agree in this. Differing in language, customs, color and in country; differing in forms of worship and church government, in exter- nal rights and internal order, they yet agree in the doctrine of a change of heart, through faith in Christ; for this hath been the grand characteristic of Christ’s religion among all nations, tongues and kindreds, where the Gospel hath been preached through all ages down to this day. This is, in fact, that which distinguishes the religion of God in Asia, from the religions of men. In every part of the earth where I myself have been this doctrine is proclaimed, as the hope of the sinner and the glory of the Savior. And again, in every place it is opposed, in a greater or less degree, by The Star in the East—Buchanan. 56 the same evil passions of the human heart. In rude nations, the same arguments are brought against it, in substance, which are used here in a learned country. Among ignorant nations a term of reproach is attached to serious piety, even as it is here among a refined people; thereby proving what our Lord hath taught—that the supe- rior goodness inculcated by His Gospel would not be agreeable to all men; and that some “would revile and speak evil of His disciples, for righteousness’ sake’’—thereby proving what the Apostle Paul hath taught, that “the Cross of Christ is an offence” to the natural pride of the human heart; that “the carnal mind is enmity against God;” and that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned.” I have thought it right, my brethren, to deliver to you my testimony at this time; to assure you that the Gospel which begins to enlighten the east, is not “another Gospel,” as the Apostle speaks, but the same as your own. There is one sun; there is ‘one Gospel. “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and there is one judg- ‘ment. May we be all prepared to give our answer on that day! _ My brethren, you are now invited to contribute some aid toward the extension of the religion of Christ. You are now called on to give your testimony to its truth. You are now, as it were, to present “your gifts’ before Him who was born Savior of the ‘world; and to send back those “glad tidings” to the east, which the east once sent to you, namely, that the light is come, that “the desire of all nations is come.” Let everyone who prays with his lips, “Thy kingdom come,” prove to himself at this time his own sincerity, that he really desires in his heart that the Kingdom of Christ should ‘come. Blessed is the man who accounts it not only a duty, but a privilege, to dispense “the word of life’ amongst his fellowmen. It is, indeed, a privilege, and so you will account it hereafter, when you shall behold all nations assembled before the judgment ‘Seat of Christ. You will then reflect with joy that you are enabled, at this time, ‘to confess His name before men,” and to afford some aid for the “increase of His gov- ernment” and glory upon earth. And let everyone who lends this aid accompany it with prayer, that the act may be blessed to himself in awakening his mind more fully to the unutterable importance of the everlasting Gospel. | [Concerning this sermon, which is taken from the works of Rev. Claudius ‘Buchanan, LL. D., published by Samuel Armstrong in 1812, D. L. Leonard says in ‘Missionary Annals of the Nineteenth Century: “Just in nick of time Claudius Buchanan’s star in the east appeared from the press, and produced a surprising sen- sation. Missionary sermons were now preached in numbers and with unction hitherto unknown.” It may be considered an inspirer of missionary sermons. . Claudius Buchanan, a Scottish divine, vice-provost of the College of Fort William ‘in Bengal, distinguished by his zeal for the propagation of the Gospel in India, was born near Glasgow in 1766; died in 1815. He wrote Christian Researches in Asia.] é : f" ‘ 60 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS INADEQUATE TO. MEET THE WORLD'S) NEED OR) Dae SUPREMACY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, REV. DAVID J. BURRELL, D. D. I am so profoundly impressed with the thought of the possibility of power in this great convention that I find it difficult to immediately approach my theme. Who will undertake to estimate the vast potencies that are in the clear eyes and the warm hearts of the young men and young women in this convention here? I am reminded of one of the Roman poets, who tells of a wounded soldier bleeding to death upon his couch, who heard afar off by the Alban hills the hurtling of great stones from the catapult, and the sound of clashing steel; and, though his eye was filming with death, he stag- gered from his couch and tottered on his staff along the way to the Alban hills, pray- ing only that the gods would spare him long enough to lend a hand in yon great battle for the golden eagle. Christian friends, there are great things before us. We are on the verge of mighty happenings. “God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night; Wake thou and watch— The world is gray with morning light!” It is right that I should be asked to address you on the first night of this mar- ‘velous assemblage, for my theme lies at the basis of all Christian endeavor and of all missionary enterprise. I am told that one-half of this audience will presently enter on foreign missionary work, and the other half on the kindred work of home evangeliza- tion. But what is the use? Why enlist as missionaries at all? If one religion is as good as another, you had better go to shoemaking or any other honest handicraft rather than to spend an earnest life in trying to displace influences that have power to save. Do you believe this: “‘There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved but the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?” There is your only franchise for missionary service. If one-religion is as good as another you have no business here. But if the Gospel is spes unica, then in God’s name make all possible haste to tell the world of it. The constant factor, the one constant factor, in the problem of human life and experience and destiny is sin. There are variable quantities in the problem and all sorts of equations along the way, but the one constant factor is sin. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” There is no difference; “all are concluded under sin.” The word “concluded,” there means shut up as in a dungeon; we are all im- prisoned under sin. And, by the same token, everybody knows that the penalty of sin is death. Don’t try to prove that; it is carrying coals to Newcastle. A man has the guoad erat demonstrandum in his own conscience. “The soul that: sinneth, it shall die.” And everybody knows that there is no such thing as self-deliverance. So all Non-Christian ‘Religions Inadequate—Burrell. 61 the people are asking, “Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?”"—that is, from the shame and the penalty and the bondage of sin. You can always count on this —the deepest want of the average man, the world over, is a spiritual want; and the question that throbs in the bosom of every son and daughter of the race is the old question, “What shall I do to be saved?” We ministers are inquiring how we may get hold of “the lapsed masses,” the unchurched multitudes who have a quarrel with the church, and, alas! a quarrel with God. There is only one way to win them; that is to answer the question of their deepest hearts. When we preachers get down to bed-rock and give the people what they expect to get in the Church of Jesus Christ they will come again. The Lord Jesus said: “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” He is the great lode- stone. He alone can draw the people to truth and righteousness and eternal life. This is the touchstone that I wish to apply here. For I am going to try to show that all other religions fail; and that the religion of Jesus Christ is adequate to meet this deep, earnest, consuming need of the immortal soul. The word “religion” I suppose is from veligare, meaning to bind back. Religion is the thing that finds a man, when he is torn loose, alienated, and binds him back to God. The true religion is the power which is destined ultimately to realize the Platonic dream of which Tennyson sang; when “the whole round world” shall be “bound with gold chains about the feet of God.” I want to make a brief survey of the more important of the false religions, and I select those that have been brought into closest contact or collision with prophetic or historic Christianity. It would be impossible to canvass all, for the religions of the world have been many and diverse. There is nothing more melancholy to contemplate than a dead or moribund religion. It is worse than a shipwreck; it is worse than a battlefield the night after the conflict, with the faces of the dead looking up toward the sky; it is worse than the tottering of thrones and the crumbling of dynasties. The death of a religion means death to a multitude of souls; it means the crushing of unspeakable, innumerable, illimitable hopes. I. We begin with the religion of Egypt, the oldest of all. Our knowledge of it is chiefly derived from the papyrus and byssus bands which are unrolled from the mummies. We are enabled thus to form a somewhat clear conception of the sacred book known as “The Book of the Dead.” The god of this religion was Ammon-Ra; that is, the sun, as center and source of life. He is represented as a hawk-headed man, his forehead encircled with the solar disk. He was worshiped by the priests in “mysteries,” but to the people all forms of life were objects of devotion. The ibis, the crocodile, the scarabaeus, the lizard and the snake—all these were worshiped as proceeding from Ammon-Ra, the mystic origin of life. The Egyptians believed in immortality. They carved upon their mummy crypts the image of the Phoenix rising from its ashes, and the lotus flower opening with the early sun. The dead were embalmed in the hope that, in the fulness of time, Ammon- Ra would revive them. The coffin itself was Called “the chest of life.” They also believed in a final judgment. On many of their tombs the god Anubis is represented with balances in hand; a human heart in one scale, a feather in the other. Alas! the heart is lighter than a feather! The teaching of the “Book of the Dead” is as clear with respect to final retribution as that of our own Scriptures: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of God, that every one may receive according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” But what has the religion of Egypt to say in answer to the crucial question, “What shall I do to be saved?” ‘The only preparation for judgment was obedience to the 62 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Maat, or rule of right living. It cannot be determined with precision what were the precepts in this elaborate code. This, however, is clear: In case of failure to obey the Maat there was no remedy for sin. It is this that stamps the Egyptian system as “the religion of despair.” It contains no suggestion oi forgiveness. Thus, while the Egyptians were the most mirthful people on earth, they were the saddest of wor- shipers. It is written, “They offered tears upon the altars of their gods.” An illus- trious lady, the wife of Pasherenptah, is represented as thus addressing her husband from the grave: ‘O my beloved, forbear not to eat and drink and drain the cup oj pleasure while you live; for here is the land of slumber and darkness. We weep for the pleasures that have passed by.” II. The religion of the Greeks. They were, as Paul said, “exceedingly devout.” In their pantheon we observe the exaltation of nature. Zeus, the all-father, was the deification of ether. He reigned on the heights of Olympus; the lightning was ‘the flash of his eye; and with his javelin, the thunderbolt, he hurled his foes down the mountain side. The minor gods and goddesses who assembled about him were per- sonifications of natural forces. Apollo curbed “the fierce, flame-breathing steeds of! day.”” Athene was the spirit of the morning, rising from the brow of the sky. A god was here for every river, a nymph for every brooklet. Troops of sirens came from the mossy clefts, and Oreads from the hills to claim their tribute of devotion; while dryads brought with them oracular secrets from the rustling oaks. It was a beautiful system, and should have been quite satisfactory and ultimate if it were possible for natural theology to satisfy the cravings of the immortal soul. But the Greek deities, though made after a large pattern and endowed with extraordinary gifts, were only mortals projected on the skies. In their Olympiar life they ate and drank, made war and love, quarreled and sinned, reveled and slept. Hermes, was a thief; Aphrodite, a drab; Athene, an adept at billingsgate; Hera, ne better than she ought to be; and Zeus, their worthy sire, a base deceiver who ofttime:s drank too deeply of the mirth-inspiring nectar and was faithless to his wife, whom he “hung up in midheaven with anvils tied to her heels.” The festivals in honor of these gods were a magnificent display of utter sensua abandon. There were dances, tourneys, athletic sports, processions and chariot races There were dramatic representations of the adventures of the Olympian gods in whick lewd dancers, flushed with wine, ministered to the basest passions of men. The failure of such a religion was a mere question of time. Doubt and inquiry arose. Lucian and the other satirists began to write ruthlessly against the gods. Or went the unmasking of the tricksters. The shrines were abandoned; the altar-fire: were extinguished; and from the deep recesses of the forests the winds came wailing “Eleleu! Eleleu!—Great Pan is dead!” Then came the philosophers, lovers of wisdom. They were the Protestants o their time, who fearlessly approached the stalking ghosts and specters of the nationa religion and laughed them out of court. Plato founded the Academy and discourse on virtue as the most desirable thing. Epicurus in his garden exalted the emotions above the intellect; leaving to posterity the strange maxim, “Let us eat and drink, fo: tomorrow we die.’’ Zeno, in his painted porch, founded the school of the Stoics making expediency the highest rule of action. The Cynics, led by Diogenes, taught < philosophy steeped in gall. The skeptics glorified doubt; they were the ancestors o our modern agnostics, their chief dictum being, ““We assert nothing; no, not ever that we assert nothing.” The peripatetics, with Aristotle as their illustrious tutor originated the inductive method of reasoning; and, drifting into practical materialism rejected as unsubstantial all the great verities of the eternal life. It will be observed that the philosophers failed, as utterly as the priests, to answe: _ Non-Christian Religions Inadequate—Burrcll. 63 the great question, ‘““What shall I do to be saved?” The earnest youths who walked amid the palm trees by the Ilissus had much to say of the cardinal virtues and the symmetry of a noble life; but they suggested no escape from the mislived past and left the doorway of the tomb shrouded in unbroken night. Socrates, the noblest of them all, with the fatal hemlock at his lips, could only say, “I take comfort in the hope that something may remain of man after his death.” The priests and the phil- osophers gave no real comfort or positive assurance to those who longed for the endless life. Ixion was left bound to the wheel. The vultures still gnawed at the vitals of Prometheus, the prisoner of death and despair. Tantalus still abode in hell with the ever-receding waters close to his thirsty lips. III. Brahmanism. An army of pilgrims coming from the great table-lands of the Caspian—so long ago that in our endeavor to trace them we lose ourselves in prehistoric mists—crossed the Hindu-Kush Mountains and took forcible possession of the banks of the Indus, announcing themselves as the superior race. In order to sustain this assumption they invented the fable of Brahm issuing from the primeval egg, and creating from his head the Brahmans; from his breast the soldiers; from his loins the merchants; and from his feet the laboring class. Here was the beginning of that iron-banded system of caste which has prevailed in India for thirty centuries, crushing its best energies like the mountain resting on Typhon’s heart. The sacred book of the Brahmans is the Rig-Veda. As to its character we may safely accept the judgment of Max Muller, who apologizes for the deficiencies of his own translation by saying that a complete rendering would have made him liable to prosecution under the English law against the publication of obscene literature. The three fundamental doctrines of the Veda are as follows: 1. Brahm, the inconceivable One. He is so far removed from all human under- standing that “it cannot be asserted that he is known nor yet that he is unknown.” 2. Hence the doctrine of Maya, or illusion. Nothing really exists except Brahm. Men are merely sparks from the central fire, separated for a time, to be absorbed at last. Our life with all its varied experiences is but “an illusory phantom such as a conjurer calls up.” 3. Apavarga, the supreme good. This is to lose self-consciousness, in being finally merged into the ineffable one. The soul is like a drop of water, exhaled by the sun, floating for a time in vapor, at length falling into the sea. What, then, shall the Brahman do to be saved? His only salvation is extinction. This is to be reached “by faith;” that is, by an unreserved yielding up of self to the contemplation of Brahm. If you would find a Hindu saint, search for him by the roadside. You will find him there crouching upon his knees, naked, with hair un- combed, the Vedas before him. His body is smeared with ashes and dung. His countenance wears a look of utter stupidity. He is intently contemplating one of his long finger-nails. This is “the twice-born Yogi,’ the consummate fruit of Brahmanism. And this is the answer the Vedas give to the question, “What shall [ do to be saved?” The twice-born Yogi is losing himself in the Soul of the Universe. He has no longer any consciousness of guilt, no passion nor appetite. He moves not, speaks not, except when, with a spiritual pride which would be grotesque were it not so unspeakably pathetic, he lifts his dreamy eyes, and mutters, “I am God! I am God!” IV. Buddhism. A child was born about 500 B. C. in the royal city of Oude, who, as the oracles say, was destined for great things. At the moment of his birth he walked three paces and in a voice like thunder proclaimed himself the Fulfillment of Hope. The air was instantly filled with perfume, songs were heard in the distance, 64 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. and lotus flowers dropped from the sky. The life of this wonderful child was thence- forth a continuous tale of marvels, until at length, in early manhood, he found himself under the sacred bo-tree. While meditating there, the great truth—which indeed no living man can define—came to him like a sunburst; and he went forth to work deliverance. At Benares he gathered a company of disciples about him, and, with their aid, compiled the sacred book known as Tripitika, or “The Three Baskets.” It contains an amount of literature almost bewildering—about three hundred volumes folio. It is chiefly devoted to the importance of self-culture, or the development of the intellectual as distinguished from the carnal life. Its three fundamental doctrines are as follows: 5 1. Buddh; that is, the all-pervading Mind. “An immense solitary Specter stands, It hath no shape, it hath no sound, It hath no place, it hath no time. It is, and was, and will be; It is never more nor less, nor glad, nor sad; Its name is Nothingness. Power walketh high, and Misery doth crawl, And the clepsydron drips, And the sands fall down in the hour-glass; Men live and strive, regret, forget, And love, and hate, and know it. The Specter saith, ‘I wait!’ And at last it beckons, and they pass; And still the red sands fall within the glass, And still the water-clock doth drip and weep; And that is all!” The God of the Buddhists is indeed a specter; he has no eyes to see, no heart to pity, no arms to save. He is represented as sitting aloft in an imperturbable calm, unmoved by the pain and struggle of mankind—an inactive, impersonal, valueless ghost of a god. 2. Karma, or the Law of Consequences. As a mat soweth, so shall he also reap. There is no escape. There is no pardon, no averting the doom. The law is automatic, administering itself; constant as one’s shadow. The mills grind slow, But they grind woe. 3. Nirvana. This is the Buddhist’s only heaven. It is defined as “the harbor of never-ending rest.” It is indeed but another term for total annihilation. The path of Nirvana is through endless transmigrations. The Buddhist’s noblest wish is to shorten the period of these successive cycles of existences, and lose his personality at last. To accomplish this he must conquer all feeling and attain to a sublime indif- ference to everything in life. The moral code of Buddhism is contained in the Noble Eight-fold Path, which is: Right belief, right feelings, right speech, right action, right means of livelihood, right endeavor, right memory and right meditation. To observe this Eight-fold Path will bring one to a final absorption of self in the soul of the universe. This is the answer which the Buddhist gives to the great question. His only conception of salvation is an utter loss of personal being, and even this is to be reached only by an absolute observance of law. In default of obedience, he must continue on the weary pilgrim- age. The best that he can hope for is to breathe at last the odor of the lotus flower, and sink into oblivion like a raindrop in the sea, Non-Christian Religions Inadequate—Burrell. 65 V. Confucianism. Just outside the capital city of China stands an image, with a memorial tablet bearing this inscription, “Kung-foo-Tse, A king without a kingdom, yet reigning in hearts innumerable.” The religion of the Chinese Empire, with its five hundred millions of people, is little more than a personal reverence for this illus- trious man. He was superintendent of parks in the province of Lu, and, being brought into contact with much official corruption, was, as his biographer says, “frightened at what he saw.”’ The times were out of joint; the empire seemed hasten- ing to its fall. Kung Fu-tse, or Confucius, stood forth, saying: “I show you a more excellent way. It is foolish to speak of God and heaven and incomprehensible things. One thing we know; that is, present life and present duty. There is a region lying at our doors, where each may put forth his best energies for the public good.” It will be seen that his purpose was not to originate a religious system, but to reform the present order. The sacred book is ‘the “Analects of Confucius.” Its central thought is the kingdom. Christ also spoke of a kingdom; by which He meant the kingdom of truth and righteousness, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. But the kingdom of which Confucius dreamed was of a far more material sort; it was the Chinese Empire. His “religion” is merely a system of civil economics. The Confucianist looks forward to no heaven; he dreams of no tabernacle descending from above in millennial glory. His Celestial Empire is China here and now. The three duties pre-eminently set forth in the Analects are as follows: 1. Filial Piety. The kingdom is regarded as a large family in which the Em- © peror is father of all. The prime duty of every citizen is reverence for his political father; after that for civil functionaries; then for his father in the flesh; finally for all his ancestors. In no other country are the obligations that flow from the filial relation more thoroughly respected than in China. There is no sentiment in this, however; its object is the conservation of the state. 2. Veneration for Learning. The scriptures of the Celestial Empire are a com- pilation of the wise sayings of the sages. These are purely secular. “When we know so little about life and its duties,” said the great teacher, “how can we be expected to say anything about death or what comes after it?” 8. Reverence for the Past. China has been at a standstill for twenty centuries. The older order changeth not. The ideas of the Chinese are musty and mildewed and—like their faces, their houses and their junks—all made after one pattern. As to the question, “What shall I do to be saved?” there is no voice nor answer nor any that regardeth. The word “Salvation” was rubbed out of their vocabulary by Con- fucius. They are a race of materialists, dull, plodding, heedless of eternity as moles. “To be content’s their natural desire; They ask no angel’s wings nor seraph’s fire.” VI. Islam. The camel-driver of Mecca seems to have been at the outset a pure- minded and kindly-disposed dreamer of dreams; but in the year of the Hejira, A. D. 622, when he was driven out of his native city, his spirit was changed. As he issued from the gates of Mecca he unsheathed his sword and became a red-handed sensualist. The call to prayer was mingled with the summons to the Holy War. No quarter must be given to unbelievers. “Fight against them,” said the prophet, “until not one shall be left to oppose us and the only religion shall be that of Allah the true God.” He gathered his disciples about him and produced the Koran. It is regarded as more than an inspired book, being “the uncreated Word of God.” The angel Gabriel brought him the silken scro!l on which it was inscribed, commanding him to read. ~ He said, “I cannot read.’”’ Thereupon the angel shook him thrice and lo! the inscrip- tion became as clear as light. He forthwith caused it to be transcribed on white 66 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. stones, leather, palin leaves, the shoulder blades of camels and the breasts of men. The Koran consists of one hundred and fourteen surahs or chapters, each of which begins with the words, “In the name of the merciful and compassionate God.” The most succinct statement of Mohammedan belief is found in the Kalima, or creed; which is as follows: La-tlaha-tl-Allah,; wa Mohammed er rasool Allah— ‘There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” The two propositions of this creed are called by Gibbon “‘The eternal truth and the eternal lie.” The eternal truth is this, “There is no god but God.” It must be explained, how- ever, that the God of Islam is the apotheosis of pure will. There is no love, mercy or sympathy in him. He is called by ninety-nine names in the Koran, but ‘‘Father” is not among them. The closest relation which a believer can sustain to this god is expressed in Islam; that is, submission to the supreme will. Out of this conception grows the Moslem’s belief in fate, or Kismet. All things being controlled by an infinite will, what is to be must be, and there is no resisting it. Hence the desperate valor of the Moslems in battle. The day of a man’s death is inscribed on his fore- head and he can do nothing to avert it. The creation of the race is described as fol- lows: Allah took into his hands a mass of clay, and dividing it in two equal portions, he threw one-half into hell saying, ‘“These to eternal fire and I care not!” and, tossing the other upward, he added, ‘‘These to Paradise and I care not!” This is predestina- tion with a vengeance. The eternal lie is this, “And Mohammed is his prophet.” The camel-driver of Mecca has come down through the centuries grasping a sword crimson with blood; he is atterided on one side by the master of the harem, on the other by the Arab slave- driver. Thus in spirit he leads the Moslem host today as they push their conquests downward from the northern coasts of Africa among the barbaric tribes. In this Holy War the three historic evils of savagery are perpetuated—war, polygamy and slavery. Put over against this figure of the false prophet, the Christ of Calvary lead- ing on His militant church with no weapon save the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God; and His word is ever, ‘“‘Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” : We have finished our survey of the six greatest of the false religions. There are some conclusions which we must have reached: First, there is a measure of truth in each of the false religions. How could it be otherwise? God never has left Him- self without 2 witness in any generation or in any land. But, unfortunately, the truth is like gold. There is gold in quartz, in old red sandstone, in the granite of the moun- tains, in auriferous sand, in every wave that rolls along the shore; but the trouble is to get it out. The question is whether it is in paying quantities and can it be separated from the dross? And, second, there is somewhat of sound morality in each of the false systems. How could it be otherwise? It is a mistake to suppose that the Decalogue was orig- inally written in the Bible. It was first written in the constitution of the race. It is interwoven 4vith the nerves and sinews of our human nature; and every man is con- scious of right and wrong by reason of the conscience within him. But there is no religion that has such an ethical system as Christianity. It is absolutely perfect. Did ever a thinking man find fault with the Decalogue? Did ever an infidel venture to criticise the morality of the Sermon on the Mount? These two are the great mono- graphs of Christian ethics and in between them stands Jesus, a perfect illustration of both and the only man that ever lived who was as good as the law. For this reason He stands forth solitary and pre-eminent as our example of right living, the Ideal Man. Thus it appears that the moral code of Christianity is perfect; there is .nothing to be added to or taken from it. Our third conclusion is this: The false religions give no answer to the question, Non-Christian Religions Inadequate—Burrell. 67 “What must I do to be saved?” Here is the glorious pre-eminence of Christianity; it points out the way of escape from a mislived past. There is not another religion on earth, and never has been one, that has proposed any rational plan of justification. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scar-- let, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Find me anything like the cross in any other religion. Find me an answer to the question, ‘How can a man be just before God?” or ‘“‘How shall God be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly?’ Here is the word of the gospel: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” My friend, Dr. Chamberlain, who has just returned to his beloved India to spend the remainder of his life, told me recently of a strange thing that happened while he was once preaching at Benares. Among the devotees who came to bathe in the sacred river was a man who journeyed wearily on his knees and elbows from a great dis- tance, with the pain of conviction at his heart. He hoped, by washing in the Ganges, to be relieved of his “looking for of judgment.’’ Poor soul! he dragged himself to the river's edge, made his prayer to Gunga and crept in. A moment later he emerged, with the old pain still tugging at his heart. He lay prostrate on the bank in his despair, and heard the voice of the missionary who was preaching nearby under a banyan tree. He raised himself and crawled a little nearer. He listened to the simple story of the cross; he was hungry and thirsty for it. He rose upon his knees and hearkened; then upon his feet; then clapped his hands and cried, “That’s what I want! That’s what I want!” It is what we all want. Oh, young man and young woman, it is what the world wants. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until now for this word of everlasting life: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” to die for it. It is spes unica. I maintain that in this exclusive and dogmatic claim of Christianity you have your only sanction as missionaries of Christ. If other religions are true there is no room for our religion on the earth. If there are other plans of salvation then the death of Christ was an awful waste of divine resource. But, indeed, there is none other name given under heaven or among men whereby we must be Saved. Here, then, is our commission. Here is the franchise of our ministry. Let us preach Christ; let us live Christ; let us know nothing but Christ and Him crucified; let us make Christ first, last, midst, and all in all. It is because we believe in the saving power of this gospel and of this alone that we have faith in its ultimate triumph. Jesus shall reign from the rivers unto the ends of the earth. The words yonder, on the front of the gallery, are the most preposterous that ever were written: ‘The Evangelization of the World in this Generation.” I think them the most preposterous until I turn to the other inscription yonder: “Thy People Shall Be Willing in the Day of Thy Power.’ Then I remember how it is written: “All things are possible with God.” “Nothing is too hard for Him.” If a man had said to Peter, as he came down the outer stairway with the eleven, that night before the crucifixion, ““What do you propose to do?” and if Peter had replied, “We are going to the conquest of the world,” how he would have laughed at him. But that was the.truth. We haven't come to the end of the nineteenth century yet, and the eleven are nearly 500,000,000 who revere the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, young men and young women, believe in the triumphing Christ. Let Him be alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, of every noble purpose and aspiration. Believe the word that is written, “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break His bands asunder and cast away His cords from us;’ He that sitteth in the heavens é 68 Pulpit Power and Eloquence: shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision!’ Nothing can withstand the divine purpose. ‘Ask of Me,” said the Father to the Son, “‘and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession,” Did ' Jesus ever ask? Behold Him on the cross, with His hands stretched out! This is His great prayer: ‘Give Me the heathen for My inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for My possession!” And his great manifesto is like unto it: “Look unto Me all ye ends of the earth and be ye saved!” Jesus shall reign where’er the sun Doth his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more. [This address was taken from “The Student Missionary Appeal,” which is the “report of the International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for For- eign Missions, held in Cleveland in 1898. As the author of “The Religions of the World,” he speaks with authority and ability. The introduction has not been changed, but remains as delivered to that great convention. David James Burrell was born at Mt. Pleasant, Pa., in 1849, and graduated from Yale and from Union Theological Seminary. He engaged in four years mission work in Chicago, and filled pastorates in Dubuque, Ia., and Minneapolis. In 1891 he was called to the Marble Collegiate Church (the oldest church on the continent, founded in 1628). He is the author of The Gospel of Gladness, The Religion of the Future, The Early Church, and several volumes of sermons.] (69) UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. HORACE BUSHNELL. John 20: 8—“Then went in also that other disciple.” Tn this slight touch or turn of history, is opened to us, if we scan it closely, one of the most serious and fruitful chapters of Christian doctrine. Thus it is that men are ever touching unconsciously the springs of motion in each other; thus it is that one man, without thought or intention, or even a consciousness of the fact, is ever leading some other after him. Little does Peter think, as he comes up where. his doubting brother is looking into the sepulchre, and goes straight in, after his peculiar manner, that he is drawing in his brother apostle after him. As little does John think, when he loses his misgivings, and goes into the sepulchre after Peter, that he is following his brother. And just so, unaware to himself, is every man, the whole race through, laying hold of his fellow-man, to lead him where otherwise he would not go. We overrun the boundaries of our personality—we flow together. A Peter leads 2 John, a John goes after a Peter, both of them unconscious of any influence exerted or = received. And thus our life and conduct are ever propagating themselves, by a law of social contagion, throughout the circles and times in which we live. There are, then, you will perceive, two sorts of influence belonging to man; that which is active or voluntary, and that which is unconscious—that which we exert ° purposely or in the endeavor to sway another, as by teaching, by argument, by persua- sion, by threatenings, by offers and promises—and that whi ws out from us, unaware to ourselves, the same which Peter had over John when he led him into the -sepulchre. The importance of our efforts to do good, that is of our voluntary influence, and the sacred obligation we are under to exert ourselves in this way, are often and seriously insisted on. It is thus that Christianity has become, in the present age, a principle of so much greater activity than it has been for many centuries before; and we fervently hope that it will yet become far more active than it now is, nor cease to multiply its industry, till it is seen by all mankind to embody the beneficence and the living energy of Christ himself. But there needs to be reproduced, at the same time, and partly for this object, a more thorough appreciation of the relative importance of that kind of influence, or beneficence which is insensibly exerted. The tremendous weight and efficacy of this, | compared with the other, and the sacred responsibility laid upon us in regard to this, are felt in no such degree or proportion as they should be; and the consequent loss we suffer in character, as well as that which the church suffers in beauty and strength, is incalculable. The more stress, too, needs to be laid on this subject of insensible influence, because it is insensible; because it is out of mind, and, when we seek to trace it, beyond a full discovery. If the doubt occur to any of you, in the announcement of this subject, whether we are properly responsible for an influence which we exert insensibly; we are not, I reply, except so far as this influence flows directly from our character and conduct. \ And this it does, even much more uniformly than our active influence. In the latter + we may fail of our end by a want of wisdom or skill, in which case we are still as meritorious, in God’s sight, as if we succeeded. So, again, we may really succeed, . K Ni7 tt spiTTay [Mt istry A The *aatts! mgs We | ohn WHE aX : | ; | | | . | ) | } | . ~ 46 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. and do great good by our active endeavors, from motives altogether base and hypocritical, in which case we are as evil, in God’s sight, as if we had failed. But the influences we exert unconsciously will almost never disagree withour_real character. They are honest influences, following our character, as the shadow follows the sur. And, therefore, we are much more certainly responsible for them, and their effects on the world. They go streaming from us in all directions, though in channels that we do not see, poisoning or healing around the roots of society, and among the hidden wells of character. If good ourselves, they are good; if bad, they are bad. And, since they reflect so exactly our character, it is impossible to doubt our responsibility for their effects on the world. We must answer not only for what we do with a purpose, but for the influence we exert insensibly. To give you any just impressions of the breadth and seriousness of such a reckoning I know to be impossible. No mind can trace it. But it will be something gained if I am able to awaken only a suspicion of the vast extent and power of those influences, which are ever flowing out unbidden upon society, from your life and character. In the prosecution of my design, let me ask of you, first of all, to expel the common prejudice that there can be nothing of consequence in unconscious influences, because they make no report, and fall on the world unobserved. Histories and biographies make little account of the power men exert insensibly over each other. They tell how men have led armies, established empires, enacted laws, gained causes, sung, reasoned, and taught—always occupied in setting forth what they do with a purpose. But what they do without a purpose, the streams of influence that flow out from their persons unbidden on the world, they can not trace or compute, and seldom eyen mention. So also the public laws make men responsible only for what they do with a positive purpose, and take no account of the mischiefs or benefits that are communicated by their noxious or healthful example. The same is true in the discipline of families, churches, and schools; they make no account of the things we do, except we will them. What we do insensibly passes for nothing, because no human government can trace such influences with sufficient certainty to make their authors responsible. But you must not conclude that influences of this kind are insignificant, because they are unnoticed and noiseless. How is it in the natural world? Behind the mere show, the outward noise and stir of the world, nature always conceals her hand of control, and the laws by which she rules. Who ever saw with the eye, for example, or heard with the ear, the exertions of that tremendous astronomic force, which every moment holds the compact of the physical universe together? The lightning is, in fact, but a mere fire-fly spark in comparison; but, because it glares on the clouds, and thunders so terribly in the ear, and rives the tree or the rock where it falls, many will be ready to think that it is a vastly more potent agent than gravity. The Bible calls the good man’s life a light, and it is the nature of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. Not that the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, and has the precedence in its power over the world. And yet, there are many who will be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless, An earthquake, for example, is to them a much more vigorous and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering through the solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man—cities, monuments, and temples—are in a moment leveled to the ground, or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire. Little do they think that the light of every morning, the soft, and genial, and silent light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let the light of the morning cease and return no more, let the Unconscious Influence—Bushnell. ™t ‘hour of morning come, and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness audible. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The vegetable growths turn pale and die. A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder, and yet colder, is the night. The vital blood, at length, of all creatures, stops congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth’s center. The heart of the sea is frozen; nay, Fire the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, under their fiery caverns. The very globe(-35 tory itself, too, and all the fellow planets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light, which revisits us in the silence of the morning. It makes no shock or scar. It would not wake an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates the world, rescuing it, each morning as a prey, from night and chaos. So the Christian is a light, even “the light of the world,” and we must not think that, because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere lumin- ous object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those which lie back of the little stirs and commotion of nature; and I verily believe that the insen v sible influences of good men are much more.potent than what I have called their \\ Ve voluntary, or active, as the great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little disturbances and tumults. The law of human influences is deeper than many suspect, and they lose sight of it altogether. The outward endeavors made by good men or bad to sway others, they call their influence; whereas, it is, in fact, but a fraction, and, in most cases, but a very small fraction, of the good or evil that flows out of their lives. Nay, I will even go further. How many persons do you meet, the insensible influence of whose manners and character is so decided as often to thwart y Gmarsehn whaf te their voluntary influence; so that, whatever they attempt to do, in the way of controll- ~™“:* “y ing others, they are sure to carry the exact opposite of what they intend! And it will generally be found that, where men undertake by argument or persuasion to exert a power, in the fact of qualities that make them odious or detestable, or only not entitled to respect, their insensible influence will be too strong for them. The total ° effect of the life is then of a kind directly opposite to the voluntary endeavor, which, of course, does not add so much as a fraction to it. I call your attention, next, to the twofold powers of effect and expression by which man connects with his fellow man. If we distinguish man as a creature of language, and thus qualified to communicate himself to others, there are in him two sets or kinds of language, one which is voluntary in the use, and one that is involun- tary; that of speech in the literal sense, and that expression of the eye, the face, the look, the gait, the motion, the tone or cadence, which is sometimes called the natural language of the sentiments. This natural language, too, is greatly enlarged by the conduct of life, that which, in business and society, reveals the principles and spirit of men. Speech, or voluntary language, is a door to the soul, that we may open or shut at will; the other is a door that stands open evermore, and reveals to others constantly, . and often very clearly, the tempers, tastes, and motives of their hearts...Within, as we may représent, is character, charging the common reservoir of influence, and through these twofold gates of the soul pouring itself out on the world. Out of one it flows at choice, and whensoever we purpose to do good or evil to men. Out of the . other it flows each moment, as light from the sun, and propagates itself in all. beholders. ‘ Then if we go to others, that is, to the subjects of influence, we find every man /hlals of endowed with two inlets of impression; the ear and the understanding for the reception iUnpresta' of speech, and the sympathetic powers, the sensibilities or affections, for tinder to those sparks of emotion revealed by looks, tones, manners, and general conduct. And these sympathetic powers, though not immediately rational, are yet inlets, open on all sides, to the understanding and character, They have a certain wonderful 72 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. capacity to receive impressions, and catch the meaning of signs, and propagate in us whatsoever falls into their passive molds from others. The impressions they receive do not come through verbal propositions, and are never received into verbal pro- positions, it may be, in the mind, and therefore many think nothing of them. But pre- cisely on this account are they the more powerful, because it is as if one heart were thus going directly into another, and carrying in its feelings with it, Beholding, as ina na glass, the ‘feelings of « our ‘neighbor, we are changed into the same image, by the assimilating power of “sensibility and fellow-feeling. Many have gone so far, and not without show, at least, of reason, as to maintain that the look or expression, and even the very features of children, are often changed by exclusive intercourse with nurses and attendants. Furthermore, if we carefully consider, we shall find it scarcely possible to doubt, that simply to look on bad and malignant faces, or those whose expressions have become infected by vice, to be with them and become familiarized to them, is enough permanently to affect.the character of persons of mature age. I do not say that it must of necessity subvert their character, for the evil looked upon may never be loved or welcomed in practice; but it is something to have these bad images in the soul, giving out their expressions there, and diffusing their odor among the thoughts, as long as we live. How dangerous a thing is it, for example, for a man to become accustomed to sights of cruelty? What man, valuing the honor of his soul, would not shrink from yielding himself to such an influence? No more is it a thing of indifference to become accustomed to look on the manners, and receive the bad expression of any kind of sin. The door of involuntary communication, I have said, is always open, Of course we are communicating ourselves in this way ‘to others at ev ery moment of our inter- course or presence with them. But how very seldom, in comparison, do we under- take by means of speech to influence others! Even the best Christian, one who most improves his opportunities to do good, attempts but seldom to sway another by volun- tary influence, whereas he is all the while shining as a luminous object unawares, and communicating of his heart to the world. But there is yet another view of this double line of communication which man has with his fellow-men, which is more general, and displays the import of the truth yet more convincingly. It is by one of these modes of communication that we are constituted members of voluntary society, and by the other, parts of a general mass, or members of involuntary society. You are all, in a certain view, individuals, and separate as persons from each other; you are also, in a certain other view, parts of a } common body, as truly as the parts of a stone. Thus if you ask how it is that you and Jndivitde/ an men came without your consent to exist in society, to be within its power, to be and 3 FOUP under its laws, the answer is, that while you are a man, you are also a fractional Spirit element of a larger and more comprehensive being, called society—be it the family, the church, the state. In a certain department of your nature, it is open; its sympathies and feelings are open. On this open side you will adhere together, as parts of a larger nature, in which there is a common circulation of want, impulse, and law. Being thus made common to each other voluntarily, you become one mass, one consolidated social body, animated by one life. And observe how far this involuntary communica- tion and sympathy between the members of a state or family is sovereign over their character. It always results in what we call the national or family spirit; for there is a spirit peculiar to every state and family in the world. Sometimes, too, this national or family spirit takes a religious or an irreligious character, and appears almost to absorb the religious self-government of individuals. What was the national spirit oi France, for example, at a certain time, but a spirit of infidelity? What is the religious spirit of Spain at this moment, but a spirit of bigotry, quite as wide of Christianity and destructive to character as the spirit of falsehood? What is the family spirit in many Unconscious Influence—Bushnell. 73 a house, but the spirit of gain, or pleasure, or appetite, in which every thing that is warm, dignified, genial, and good in religion, is visibly absent? Sometimes you wili almost fancy that you see the shapes of money in the eyes of the children. So it is that we are led on by nations, as it were, to good or bad immortality. Far down ir the secret foundations of life and society there lie concealed great laws and channels of influence, which make the race common to each other in ail the main departments or divisions of the social mass—laws which often escape our notice altogether, but which are to society as gravity to the general system of God’s works. But these are general considerations, and more fit, perhaps, to give you a rational conception of the modes of influence and their relative power, than to verify that conception, or establish its truth. I now proceed to add, therefore, some miscellane- ous proofs of a more particular nature. And I mention, first of all, the instinct of imitation in children. We begin our mortal experience, not with acts grounded in judgment or reason, or with ideas received through language, but by simple imitation, and, under the guidance of this, we lay our foundations. The child looks and listens, and whatsoever tone of feeling or manner of conduct is displayed around him, sinks into his plastic, passive soul, and 777/72 torr becomes a mold of his being ever after. The very handling of the nursery is signifi- He Children : cant, and the petulance, the passion, the gentleness, the tranquility indicated by it, are all reproduced in the child. His soul is a purely receptive nature, and that, for a considerable period, without choice or selection. A little further on, he begins voluntarily to copy every thing he sees. Voice, manner, gait, every thing which the eye sees, the mimic instinct delights to act over. And thus we have a whole genera- tion of future men, receiving from us their beginnings, and the deepest impulses of their life and immortality. They watch us every moment, in the family, before the hearth, and at the table; and when we are meaning them no good or evil, when we are conscious of exerting no influence over them, they are drawing from us impressions and molds of habit, which, if wrong, no heavenly discipline can wholly remove; or, if right, no bad associations utterly dissipate. Now it may be doubted, I think, whether, in allthe active influence of our lives, we do as much to shape the destiny of our fellow- men as we do in this single article of unconscious influence over children. Still further on, respect for others takes the place of imitation. We naturally desire the approbation of good opinion of others. You see the strength of this feeling in the article of fashion. How few persons have the nerve to resist a fashion! We yc,pz, ee : have fashions, too, in literature, and in worship, and in moral and religious doctrine, Nhie- foe: almost equally powerful. How many will violate the best rules of society, because it 27// 12 is the practice of their circle! How many reject Christ because of friends or acquaint- -7U.L vate ance, who have no suspicion of the influence they exert, and will not have, till the last | day shows them what they have done! Every good man has thus a power in his | person, more mighty than his words and arguments, and which others feel when he little suspects it. Every bad man, too, has a fund of poison in his character, which-is tainting those around him, when it is not in his thoughts to do them an injury. He is read_and understood. His. sensual tastes and habits, his unbelieving spirit, his Suppressed leer at religions, have all a power, and take hold of the hearts of others, whether he will have it so or not. Again, how well understood is it that the most active feelings and impulses of mankind are contagious. How quick enthusiasm of any sort is to kindle, and how -Tapidly it catches from one to another, till a nation blazes in the flame! In the case of the crusades you have an example where the personal enthusiasm of one man put all the states of Europe in motion. Fanaticism is almost equally contagious. Fear and “superstition always infect the mind of the circle in which they are manifested. The spirit of war generally becomes an epidemic of madness, when once it has got —— CONTAALO A | YA. Voy ” Pulpit Power and Eloquence. _ possession of a few minds. The spirit of party is propagated in a similar manner, Pe / How any slight operation in the market may spread, like a fire, if successful, till trade runs wild in a general infatuation, is well known. Now, in all these examples, the effect is produced, not by active endeavor to carry influence, but mostly by that insensible propagation which follows, when a flame of any kind is once kindled. Is it also true, you may ask, that the religious spirit J propagates i itself_or tends to propagate itself in the same way? I see no reason to question that it does. Nor does anything in the doctrine of spiritual influences, when rightly understood, forbid the supposition. For spiritual influences are never separated from the laws of thought in the individual, and the laws of feeling and influence in society. If, too, every disciple is to be an “‘epistle known and read of all men,” what shall we expect, but that all men will be somehow affected by the reading? Or if he is to be a light in the world, what shall we look for, but that others, seeing his good works, shall glorify God on his account? How often is it seen, too, as a fact of observation, that one or a few good men kindle at length a holy een in the community in which they live, and become the the leaven of a general reformation! Such men give a more vivid proof in their persons of the reality of religious faith than any words or arguments could yield. They are active; they endeavor, of course, to exert a good voluntary influence; but still their chief power lies in their holiness, and the sense they produce in others of their close relation to God. It now remains to exhibit the very important fact, that where the direct or active influence of men is supposed to be great, even this is due, in a principle degree, to that insensible influence by which their arguments, reproofs, and persuasions are secretly invigorated. It is not mere words which turn men; it is the heart mounting. uncalled, into the expression of the features; it is the eye illuminated by reason, the look beaming with goodness; it is the tone of the voice, that instrument of the soul, which changes quality with such amazing facility, and gives out in the soft, the tender, the tremulous, the firm, every shade of emotion and character. And so much is there in this, that the moral stature and character of the man that speaks are likely to be well represented in his manner. If he is a stranger, his way will inspire confidence and attract good will. His virtues will be seen, as it were, gathering round him to minister words and forms of thought, and their voices will be heard in the fall of his cadences. And the same is true of bad men, or men who have nothing in their character corresponding to what they attempt to do. If without heart or interest you attempt to move another, the involuntary man tells what you are doing in a hundred ways at once. A hypocrite, endeavoring to exert a good influence, only tries to convey by words what the lying look, and the faithless affectation, or dry exaggeration of his manner perpetually resists. We have it for a fashion to attribute great or even prodigious results to the voluntary effects and labors of men. Whatever they effect is commonly referred to nothing but the immediate power of what they do. Let us take an example, like that of Paul, and analyze it. Paul was a man of great fervor and enthusiasm. He combined, withal, more of what is lofty and morally commanding in his character, than most of the very distinguished men of the world. Having this for his natural character, and his natural character exalted and made luminous by Christian faith, and the manifest indwelling of God, he had of course an almost superhuman sway over others. Doubtless he was intelligent, strong in argument, eloquent, active, to the utmost of his powers, but still he moved the world. more_by. ter were ever adding to his a RS efforts an element of silent power, which was the real and chief cause of their efficacy. He convinced, subdued, inspired, and led, because of the half divine authority which appeared in his conduct, and his glowing ll _ wield with the most persuasive and subduing effect. It is the grandeur of his charac-__ Unconscious Influence—Bushnell. "5 spirit. He fought the good fight, because he kept the faith, and filled his powerful nature with influences drawn from higher worlds. ‘And here I must conduct you to a yet higher example, even that of the Son of \o God, the light of the world. Men dislike to be swayed by direct, voluntary influence. They are jealous of such control, and are therefore best approached by conduct and. feeling, and the authority of simple worth, which seem to make no purposed onset. If goodness appears, they welcome its celestial smile; if heaven descends to encircle them, they yield to its sweetness; if truth appears in the life, they honor it with a secret homage; if personal majesty and glory appear, they bow with reverence, and acknowledge with shame their own vileness. Now it is on this side of human nature that Christ visits us, preparing just that kind of influence which the spirit of truth may _ ter which constitutes the chief power of his ministry, not his miracles or teachings apart from his. character, Miraclés were useful, at the time, to arrest attention, and His doctrine is useful at all times as the highest revelation of truth possible in speech; but the greatest truth of the Gospel, notwithstanding, is Christ himself—a human body becomes the organ of the divine nature, and revealing, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of God! The Scripture writers have much to say, in this connec- tion, of the image of God; and an image, you know, is that which simply represents, not that which acts, or reasons, or persuades. Now it is this image of God which makes the center, the sun itself, of the Gospel. The journeyings, teachings, miracles, and sufferings of Christ, all had their use in bringing out this image, or what is the same, in making conspicuous the character and feelings of God, both toward sinners and toward sin. And here is the power of Christ—it is what of God’s beauty, love, truth, and justice shines through Him. It is the influence which flows unconsciously and spontaneously out of Christ, as the friend of man, the light of the world, the glory of the Father, made visible. And some have gone so far as to conjecture that God made the human person, originally, with a view to its becoming the organ or vehicle by which He might reveal His communicable attributes to other worlds. Christ, they believe, came to inhabit this organ, that He might execute a purpose so sublime. The human person is constituted, they say, to be a mirror of God; and God, being imaged in that mirror, as in Christ, is held up to the view of this and other worlds. It certainly is to the view of this; and if the Divine nature can use th organ so effectively to express itself unto us, if it can bring itself through the looks, tones, motions, and conduct of a human person, more close to our sympathies than by any other means, how can we think that an organ so communicative, inhabited by us, is not always breathing our spirit and transferring our image insensibly to others? I have protracted the argument on this subject beyond what I could have wished, but I cannot dismiss it without suggesting a few thoughts necessary to its complete practical effect. One very obvious and serious inference from it, and the first which I will name, is, that it is impossible to live in this world and escape responsibility. It is not they alone, as you have seen, who are trying purposely to convert or corrupt others, who exert an influence; you cannot live without exerting influence. The doors of your soul are open on others, and theirs on you. You inhabit a house which is well nigh transparent; and what you are within, you are ever showing yourself to be without, by Signs that have no ambiguous expression. If you had the seeds of a pestilence in your body, you would not have a more active contagion than you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence—an influence, too, compared with which mere language and persua- Sion are feeble. You say that you mean well; at least, you think you mean to injure no one. Do you injure no one? Is your example harmless? Is it ever on the side Pa ad y Any ss 76 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. of God and duty? You can not reasonably doubt that others are continually receiving impressions from your character. As little can you doubt that you must answer for _ these impressions... If the influence you exert is unconsciously exerted, then it is only the most sincere, the truest expression of your character. And for what can you be “held responsible, -if not for this? Do not deceive yourselves in the thought that you ““f are at least doing no injury, and are, therefore, living without responsibility; first, /make it sure that you are not every hour infusing moral death insensibly into your children, wives, husbands, friends, and acquaintances. By a mere look or glance, not unlikely, you are conveying the influence that shall turn the scale of some one’s immor- tality. Dismiss, therefore, the thought that you are living without responsibility; that is impossible. Better is it frankly to admit the truth; and if you will risk the influence of a character unsanctified by duty and religion, prepare to meet your reckoning manfully, and receive the just recompense of reward. The true philosophy or method of doing good is also here explained. It is, first of all and principally, to be good—to have a character that will of itself communicate good._ There must and will be active effort where there is goodness of principle; but the latter we should hold to be the principal thing, the root and life of all. Whether it is a mistake more sad or more ridiculous, to make mere stir synonymous with doing good, we need not inquire; enough, to be sure that one who has taken up such a notion of doing good, is for that reason a nuisance to the church. The Christian is called a light, not lightning. In order to act with effect on others, he must walk in the Spirit, and thus become the image of goodness; he must be so akin to God, and so filled with His dispositions, that he shall seem to surround himself with a hallowed atmos- “phere. It is folly to endeavor to make ourselves shine before we are luminous, If the sun without his beams should talk to the planets, and argue with them till the final day, it would not make them shine; there must be light in the sun itself; and then they will shine, of course. And this, my brethren, is what God intends for you all. It is the great idea of His gospel, and the work of His spirit, to make you lights in the world. His greatest joy is to give you character, to beautify your example, to exalt your principles, and. make you each the depository of His own almighty grace. But in order to do this, something is necessary on your part—a full surrender of your mind to duty and to God, and a perpetual desire of this spiritual intimacy; having this, having a participation thus of the goodness of God, you will as naturally communicate good as the sun communicates his beams. 4 Our doctrine of unconscious and undesigning influence shows-how it is, also, that the preaching of Christ is often so unfruitful, and especially in times of spiritual coldness. It is not because truth ceases to be truth, nor, of necessity, because it is preached in a less vivid manner, but because there are so many influences preaching against the preacher. He is one, the people are many; his attempt to convince and persuade is a voluntary influence; their lives, on the other hand, and especially the lives of those who profess what is better, are so many tnconscious influences ever streaming forth upon the people, and back and forth between each other. He preaches the truth, and they, with one consent, are preaching the truth down; and how can he prevail against so many, and by a kind of influence so unequal? When the people oi God are glowing with spiritual devotion to Him, and love to men, the case is different; then they are all preaching with the preacher, and making an atmosphere of warmth for his words to fall in; great is the company of them that publish the truth, and proportionally great its power. Shall I say more? Have you not already felt, my brethren, the application to which I would bring you? We do not exonerate our- selves; we do not claim to be nearer to God or holier than you; but, ah! you know how easy it is to make a winter about us, or how cold it feels! Our endeavor is to preach the truth of Christ and His cross as clearly and as forcibly as we can. Some- Unceiiscious Influence—Bushnell. 77 times it has a visible effect, and we are filled with joy; sometimes it has no effect, and then we struggle on, as we must, but under great oppression. Have we none among you that preach against us in your lives? If we show you the light of God’s truth, does it never fall on banks of ice; which if the light shows through, the crystal masses are yet as cold as before? We do not accuse you; that we leave to God, and to those who may rise up in the last day to testify against you. If they shall come out of your own families; if they are the children that wear your names, the husband or wife of your affections; if they declare that you, by your example, kept them away from Christ’s truth and mercy, we may have accusations to meet of our own and we “leave you to acquit yourselves as best you may. I only warn you, here, of the guilt which our Lord Jesus Christ will impute to them that hinder His gospel. [Horace Bushnell was born at Litchfield, Conn., April 14, 1802, and died at Hart- ford, Conn., February 17, 1876. He served as minister of a Congregational church at Hartford from 1833 to 1859. Among his literary works are God in Christ, Nature and Supernatural and Vicarious Sacrifice. We are indebted to the publishers of the volume of “Sermons on the New Life” for this sermon by Bushnell. It is, no doubt, his best known sermon. President McClure, Professor Currier and Addison Foster each included it in their list of the ten best sermons of the century.] > I a =< <<< =< ———. ee. 72 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. — ST. PAUL’S APOLOGY FOR HIS MINISTRY. S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D. “For the love of Christ constraineth us.”—II Cor. 5: 14. This letter to the Corinthian Church was written by St. Paul after an almost miraculous escape from deadly peril. His deliverance causes him to break forth into a strain of thanksgiving; a solemn joy descends upon his heart, and he sets himself, in his imagination, before the judgment seat of Christ. In this light, the light of the unerring throne, he exercises his high office as one who must give an account, and in this spirit, “knowing the fear of the Lord,” he persuades men. A motive so high, so stern in its purifying power, cannot be dispensed with by any minister of Christ. It prevents immoral compromises and superficial estimates. The reckonings of his hearers are here revised by St. Paul. Some are quite irrelevant to character, and for these he cared nothing; whether they liked his voice, his gestures, his manners, or even his message. What he did yearn for in the solici- tude of his Master was to be able to appeal to their consciences so that he could later appeal to God, to whom all things were open, that in the discharge of his duty he had been simple and sincere. A number of his converts were disposed to be factitious, and to these he addresses himself in words of tenderness and beauty. He shows them the difficulty and danger, the rapture and the sanctity of the life he lived. But behind its joy and sorrow, its glory and offense, its heights and depths, abides its motive power—the love of Christ. So forcibly are these things set forth and after the lapse of nineteen centuries we can hear the beating of St. Paul’s heart on:every page. An unearthly flame burned in his bosom, and he refers to those ecstasies on the Damascus road and in the Arabian deserts, which his foes sought to discredit, as tokens of the truest wisdom. Small wonder is it that he was misunderstood, for he lived a life of fastidious purity in an age of riotous excess; the truths he held held him in a passionate grip, and the maxims of an ethical selfishness were rebuked by his abandonment to the service of his Master. The contemptuous leer of the fleshly vision glanced harmlessly upon this veteran of the cross, this man of mysterious moods, transcendent ideas, and utter scorn of consequence. What his critics deemed the babblings of a distressed mind were in reality the words of truth, the pledges of a life of honor and immortality, which Nero and his satellites could not destroy. This habitual attitude was a startling rebuke to men whose eyes had not seen “‘the orb of glory,’’ whose hands clutched, with feverish intensity, the fleeting treasures of a passing world, but it revolutionized St. Paul’s view of the proportion of life, it reformed his character, and reinvested his influence. And though enthusiasm and sobriety varied in him, today a paradisicai vision, tomorrow a mighty argument, the one thing that never intrudes or troubles his single-eyed endeavor is the thought of private ends. THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE. It is hazardous to give definitions here, to shut within the boundaries of human conception that love of Christ which passeth knowledge. But in the fifteenth verse of this chapter is the Christian interpretation of life. The apostle tells us that his Lord St. Paul’s Apology for His Ministry—Cadman. 716 both died and rose again in order that our living may be subordinated to the sacrifice of the cross and its infinite meanings. 7 Gone forever are the ruling ideas men hitherto had held concerning the race. The lust of blood, the thirst for power, the savage ferocities, the undue estimates of mere intellectualism and of mammon, all the despotism of the fleshly vision, alike died at Calvary. These delusions were potentially destroyed by our victor-victim, and when His sacrifice hath power, as it hath authority, it will banish them from the world. Henceforth we know no man after the flesh. Even the Incarnated God has dis- appeared that the earthly life might be replaced by the heavenly reign. We adore the universal risen Lord, and are not to be misled (though ancient churches have been and are) into a sensuous worship. A FITTING WORD. This marvelous language is difficult for us to appreciate, leave alone understand, in its fullness and depth. But I have brought this message to you today, my beloved people, because I find no better word in this blessed book bearing upon our new relationships. It bespeaks the ultimate law of our being, it is the secret of a greatly noble and useful life for this church and pastorate, it throws the light of another world upon the dreariest duties of tomorrow. There are several chosen and effectual methods of presenting the claims of our religion, but I count this the premier. It justifies itself again and yet again, for it is the heart and center of the Gospel of God, its genius and its all. I need not remind you that love and faith depend upon their object for their value. To whom we devote ourselves, to whom we are united in the hidden depths of the spirit, by them are we determined, after them are we patterned. Now Christ was, to Paul the center of his growing love. One word from him became a universal law. His very life in mysterious and far-reaching senses was in the life of Paul, a vital union reigning through the Blessed Spirit. If there was aught of purity and sweetness, strength and serviceableness, it was due to the indwelling Christ. Even society, as the apostle views it, through the individual and his consecration, is to be constrained by omnipotent grace, until it is the domain of the Lord, and the Kingdom of Heaven, as effectual in the divine program as is your right arm to your body. PERSONALITY. Let us deal for a space with the love of Christ in its relation to personality. How it has enlarged and ennobled the ideas we have of God and of ourselves! It is not too much to say that very man of very man in all selfless devotion and highest aban- donment to good has been the outflow of the Christ’s historic position in the race. His universal person has given us universality. He has discovered God to man as the Father of all, and He transferred to himself by one vast act of clemency the endless expiations and sacrifices of men. In his death, God and not man made a perfect offering. These are the organic truths which in Him awoke, to perish never, and which have won His widening way upon the earth. They have set a surpassing value upon human life, they have placed its destiny upon an enduring foundation. Now this enforces the very center of being, where help is most needed. For as persons, we are identical in the midst of change, and this identity gives us a practical infinity, for in our progress all things and all influences are appreciated and absorbed by us, and our limitations, through this absorption, become transformations, yea, even manifestations of ourselves. Man may conquer alien forms and forces as also those in sympathy with himself. He thus gradually makes the world his own, and the real center of its movement is within us. If this interpretation be correct, then what a kingdom the Christian mind . 80 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. becomes; over how great an empire does regenerated man reign! If our moral im- press determines nature’s course, if she hopes and waits in piteous helplessness for the fullness of the sons of God that her redemption may be accomplished, then in enabling men to be morally free God keeps the most ancient star from wrong and takes away cruelty from the earth. The Redeemer himself knew this was the pivotal strategy of his enterprise, and he laid his claim at the root when he cried out, in full view of the cross, ‘All souls are Mine.” He taught us to call upon God as our Holy Father, and in that common father- hood we are the vital products of God’s own being. Our reason, our freedom, our responsive capacities have their origin and sequel in the Blessed One. They are the adumbrations of the central sun whose light enwraps us all. His relation to us is not social nor legal, but first and last a natural one; it cannot be broken. The cross was a necessary process of this unfaltering fatherly affection. Such an offering can never be accounted for by purely intellectual estimates. Sacrifice is always the highest proof of love, and, more, it is the one, the only, the indisputable method by which any beneficent passion works among the ruined and sinful conditions of human life. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLE. The practical outcome of these revelations of love is best seen in St. Paul, the writer of this text. Jesus created a new type of man, and the apostle is the highest example of that creation. The contrast between the two natures in the one man is so great as to be startling. His conversion ranks as an apologetic for the faith. In the Ephesian letter he tells us how he reached the goal of enlarged personality, and that our souls may be amplified, rooted and grounded in the same love. The bigoted zealot was later the generous apostle, the persecutor of the saints became their spirit- ual parent, the hard, steely temper of religious frenzy gave place to womanly tender- ness, the encircled purblind view of life was lifted and there came a width of outlook commensurate with God’s universal purpose. THE APOSTLE’S FIRST VISION OF JESUS. Christ’s love thus constrained Paul’s life. His first glimpse of Jesus was not as the Son of God, but as the Son of Man. He beheld him as the Lamb in the midst of the throne. In Arabia’s desert solitudes the apostle was permitted for a moment to gaze through the uplifted veil, and he heard the voice which will one day shake the heaven and the earth. He thus reversed the order of Christian experience; we rise from earth, he descended from heaven. By successive stages, in strict obedience to the heavenly vision, he came down and found the deepest ground of sympathy and toil. And he grew as he descended, he grew in apostolic breadth and proportion as he cov- ered all the space between the throne on its glistening mount of light and the dark dungeon under Nero’s sated and lustful palace. Each stage was an expansion, the tragedy was lost in the triumph, and St. Paul was never so great, so blessed, so instrumental as when, at the eventide of life and in the declining light, with the axe waiting at the door, he bore his last testimony. He knew by divine instinct that the heart of paganism was shattered; that Christ, not the Roman Emperor, had won the fight for supremacy. And in such an hour with clamant joy he declared he was ready to be offered up and the time of his departure was at hand. Thus he fell, smitten unto victory, and in his death he was glorified. ENLARGEMENT. Brethren, the secret of such a conquest as that is worthy of our effort. One man’s career became the history of the commonwealth of God among the Gentiles for the first hundred years of its existence. And I am speaking to those in whose lives St. Paul's Apology for His Ministry—Cadman. 81 there are undiscovered provinces of power. They may be known and made to rejoice “and blossom as the rose. Jean Paul tells us how the conscious self passes and repasses into the unconscious, that further country which enables you to enlarge your boun- daries and thus your influence. The dignity, the order, the triumph of life is in the constraint of this divine love. For nearly twenty centuries it has filled the bead roll of apostles, martyrs, prophets and saints who got the start of ihis majestic world and bore the palm alone. Some one has said of Mr. Giadsione that his magnificent char- acter would outlive his services, that he was first and last, and in the core of his being, an evangelical, clinging with the strong and simple assurance of a childlike faith to the central realities of personal sinfulness and personal salvation through the cross of Christ. In this trust he lived for nearly eighty years, a career Spent in the most en- grossing and distracting of secular occupations. This remarkable testimony needs no enforcement. You know that life is to us what we are ito life, it reflects faithfully, as in a mirfror, the image of ourselves. The enterprises of men in any sphere hang upon the worth of character, the disinterestedness of aim, the purity of motive, without which there is no value and no permanency. There came to St. Peter this blessing of enlargement upon the shores of the ee Se See lL, Ul Lake of Galilee. While the dawn was yet gray, Christ drew near as His disciple plunged into the sea to meet the Master, and lay at His feet in seli-abasement and " tears. His follies and caprices were cleansed away, and the sorry sf denial and dl curses was followed by the sermon at Pentecost. So may we be readjusted and inspired, filled with spiritual insight and att ess, not by might, nor power of man, but by yielding ourselves unto the obedience of Christ, as they that are alive from the dead. THE LOVE OF CHRIST HAS DOMINATED THE HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. men. The persuasive words of His affection have outrun the deductions of earthly #3 Wisdom, and nowhere so conspicuously as in the doctrine of God. I am glad to say 4 that this conception has grown in influence and become richer in meaning during . Merecent years. Men are nearer to God, as Christ revealed Him, than ever before, and H because nearer to God, they are nearer to each other. Whom do we name when we i Mame God? ‘3 It had and continues to have a most significant hold upon the reasoned beliefs of The answer is in the words of the ercatest Congregatio nalist England had in the e Mater Victorian reign, Dr. R. W. Dale of Birmingham: “That name stands for One of whose greatness it seems presumptuous to speak and in whose presence silence # Seems the truest w Mace t He lives from eternity to eternity. He is here; He is Meeverywhere; there is no rem: otest region where He is not. To say that He created all things, and that, after sustaining all things through co oe Ree s ages, He fainteth not, Weneither is weary, is to say nothing concerning His infinite strength. He lives, has fever lived and will live forever in the power of His own life. He dwells in light that MO man can approach unto. Clouds and darkness are round about Him. God is great and we know Him not.” How can this awful God be our’s, our Father and our Friend? How can He so temper the light of His radiance that we may meet it and not die? We need a God who meets us heart to heart, who is nigh at hand and not afar off. Legendary incarnations are rude, but sure, witnesses to this craving. A remote God of inaccessible majesty and glory does not satisfy us. Here is the most wonder- ful and glorious revelation of God. Christ shows His infinitudes by accepting our limitations. He came once in the flesh, He comes forever in the spirit, daily, every- where, into human life, penetrating the abysmal depths of personality, and forever ~~ a ee eS ee Eee eC ee eemcleremclerelhleeereleeeeeee 82 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. determines our questionings and solves our problems. Under the forms of humar righteousness appeared a divine perfection; through sharpest pain and deepest joy bitter suffering and cruel death, Christ’s love took our life into the everlasting life o| God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and thus, so strangely and yet so really, did we behold His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, He showed us that Father, afar off, yet ever nigh, overwhelming and yet comforting us, just and still our justifier. His absolute holiness and restless power were indelibl; stamped upon our minds. But the voice from out of this glory was a human voice articulate with our highest good, crying out to struggling, sinful men: “O heart I made, a heart beats here, Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself. Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of Mine, But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, . And thou must love Me who have died for thee.” THE THOUGHT OF GOD IS THE BASIS OF RELIGION. Now your thought of God makes or unmakes you as men. It controls every feature of your intellectual and religious life. When the writers of the New Testamen had grasped this revelation from Christ, they became the literary masters and spirit- ual sovereigns of the ages. Even so devoted a medievalist as Cardinal Newman con fesses that the chief characteristic of the apostolic era was not churchly allegiance but love for the Master. In their efforts to interpret Him they caused an outbreak which, led by the Spirit of God, ameliorated brutal conditions and emancipated man Think of their organic ideas of sin and retribution, of the duties and privileges o the new city of God, of St. Paul’s kindling rapture, St. John’s depth of simplicity, anc St. James’ practical ethics. The unique contribution centered in Christ, and ever and anon the flow of an argument is checked, the story or the prophecy laid aside that they may pour at the feet of Jesus a pent-up flood of praise, gratitude, ascriptior and homage. THE ATTITUDE OF MODERN THOUGHT. We have seen a return to God in these last years. Theologians have become mort obedient to the constraint of the text, and have rendered great service to the truth: which make men free. When, under overwhelming traditionalism, they wanderec from it, their contributions were distractions from the heart of the Gospel. Ane throughout the realms of thought today there has come a felt and deep need of God and an answering sense of His presence, which, rebuking the more militant form: of agnosticism, has moved forward to help and enfranchise human life and to correc’ the materialistic bias which predominated a few years ago. As the slow process of the ages moves forward, this sense of God’s presence, anc the need of it, will grow, in spiritual essence and in range of influence. Periods o} doubt are Saharas of useless struggle, and the chief service of much which is wrong in metaphysics is to provoke us afresh to seek God. Let us cling to the weapon forget in love; there is none like unto it. We shall conquer by these great ideas, whicl are the peculiar property of the Christian revelation. They will rob no system of any real merit, but rather sanction it, and the overlordship of that persuasive thought o God, which is our chief glory, is due to the love of Christ which revealed the Father The love of Christ has constrained men toward the behests of conscience; it has made them obedient to the call of duty, For it is a benevolent affection, ever seeking the highest good of its object. Christ went forth from the arms of Mary to the arms of death, and he did this voluntarily, save that He was carried forward to the crimsor height by His own great love. Herein is ethical compulsion. for us, and when we aré led on to suffer and to die with Him, there falls upon mankind the awe of silent tribute St. Paul’s Apology for His Ministry—Cadman. 83 and the power of the world to come. Such constraint is the apologetic which cannot be denied. Livingstone bowed in agony in the African jungle, the tumult of fever running high in his wasted body, writing his last word, and determined not to die _ until he could plead Ethiopia’s cause once more, is one of those living epistles read * eh and known of all men, whose value to the Christian church is beyond comparison. The age is ethical or it is nothing; it demands proof of sacrifice at our hands. How can we be capable of response except in our hearts there is shed abroad the all-victor- ious love of God? THE FIGHT WITH DEATH. George Eliot cried out to Mr. F. W. Myers in the Fellows’ Garden of Trinity College, Cambridge: “Three great words are in our language—God, immortality and duty,” and then she added, pathetically, “How inconceivable the first, how unbeliev- able the second, yet how peremptory and absolute the third.” We must meet such statements on their positive side. The fight with death must be waged through the latter trumpet call. Men scorn our theology and reject our message, but they cannot dispute the value of a noble life, full of gravity and virtue, lived to the last in the right and for it, always and at any hazard. For that kind of living our scanty veins do pant, and if we would renew the faith of alienated men in the supernatural, we must show more of the supernatural in our lives. In the life of today political propagandism of virtue is a signal failure, and the churches of the earlier times which attempted to control men’s souls through state influence must revoke their policy or perish. Democracy will not and should not submit to such legislation; it is foreign to the liberty which is in Christ. The only way to avoid these difficulties is by a complete submission to the love of our Elder Brother, who was obedient as a Son unto his Father. In His life there is a com- plete translation of the rule of absolute right out of the abstract into the concrete. It is the objective standard of God's will for our guidance, and it is the cleansing and guiding power for our life. St. Paul went beyond the plane of reason and philosophy, beyond relations and the moral order, that he might sit in willing bondage at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him. Let us, my brethren, accept this precious gift of God in Christ, heeding no false standards nor perplexing counsels. Here is our form, in motive and in action, supplied by Him who “Wrought With human hands the crest of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.” A FINAL WORD. I have come, in obedience to the call of God and of this church, to stand in this holy place and give utterance to such truths as our Heavenly Father shall deem me worthy to impart to you. The master in Israel who preceded me here was for many years a great light in this city, shedding grateful radiance upon darkened hearts and troubled minds, giving comfort and strength to sad and weary spirits. Could he but _ speak again, and he is very near us this morning, his message from that Sabbath a keeping of inviolable peace in which he is forever established would be a confirmation of the everlasting Gospel it was his joy to proclaim while he was yet with us. But we turn our wistful eyes away from the reward given to those saints of God _ who rest from their labors, and whose works do follow them. This reward must come to us when God willeth; it is coming continually to the worn and the aged who fall in the fight. For us there is a future in which disasters must be avoided, wrongs 84 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. righted, and achievements won. Our work is for the defense and enlargement of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The wages of virtue are not in quiet isles of indisturbance, in golden groves and summer skies. Give her endurance by fight, by travail, by conscious indestructibility. “Give her the wages of going on and not to die.” To this end Christ both died and rose again, and to this end we live. For being made free from sin, and become servants unto God, we have our fruit unto holiness and in the end everlasting life. [This is one of Dr. Cadman’s most powerful sermons. It was preached in the Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, March 3, 1901. It is reproduced as revised by the author for The Christian Work. S. Parkes Cadman was born in England in 1865, graduating from Richmond College of London University, taking a post-graduate course in philosophy. Coming to America he was assigned to the Central Methodist Church, Yonkers, N. Y., thence to the Metropolitan Temple, New York, the membership increasing in six years from sixty to over 1,300. In 1900 he accepted a call to the Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, succeeding the late A. J. F. Behrends, Henry Martyn Scudder and others. ] RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. JOHN CAIRD, M. A. “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.’’—Romans, 12: 11. To combine business with religion, to keep up a spirit of serious piety amid the stir and distraction of a busy and active life—this is one of the most difficult parts of a Christian’s trial in this world. It is comparatively easy to be religious in the church— to collect our thoughts, and compose our feelings, and enter, with an appearance of propriety and decorum, into the offices of religious worship, amid the quietude of the _ Sabbath, and within the still and sacred precincts of the house of prayer. But to be religious in the world—to be pious, and holy, and earnest-minded in the counting- room, the manufactory, the market-place, the field, the farm—to carry out our good and solemn thoughts and feelings into the throng and thoroughfare of daily life— this is the great difficulty of our Christian calling. No man not lost to all moral in- fluence can help feeling his worldly passions calmed, and some measure of seriousness stealing over his mind, when engaged in the performance of the more awful and sacred rites of religion; but the atmosphere of the domestic circle, the exchange, the street, the city’s throng, amid coarse work and cankering cares and toils, is a very different atmosphere from that of a communion-table. Passing from the one to the other has often seemed as if the sudden transition from a tropical to a polar climate—from balmy warmth and sunshine to murky mist and freezing cold. And it appears sometimes as difficult to maintain the strength and steadfastness of religious principle and feeling, when we go forth from the church into the world, as it would be to preserve an exotic alive in the open air in winter, or to keep the lamp that burns steadily within doors from being blown out if you take it abroad unsheltered from the wind. So great, so all but insuperable, has this difficulty ever appeared to men, that it is but few who set themselves honestly and resolutely to the effort to overcome it. The great majority, by various shifts or expedients, evade the hard task of beir g good and holy, at once in the church and in the world. In ancient times, for instance, it was, as we all know, the not uncommon expedient among devout persons—men deeply impressed with the thought of an eternal world, and the necessity of preparing for it, but distracted by the effort to attend to the duties of religion amid the business and temptations of secular life—to fly the world alto- gether, and, abandoning society and all social claims, to betake themselves to some hermit solitude, some quiet and cloistered retreat, where, as they fondly deemed, “the world forgetting by the world forgot,” their work would become worship, and life be uninterruptedly devoted to the cultivation of religion in the soul. In our own day the more common device, where religion and the world conflict, is not that of the super- Stitious recluse, but one even much less safe and venial. Keen for this world, yet not willing to lose all hold on the next—eager for the advantages of time, yet not prepared to abandon all religion and stand by the consequences, there is a very numerous class who attempt to compromise the matter—to treat religion and the world like two creditors whose claims can not both be liquidated—by compounding with each for a share—though in this case a most disproportionate share—of their time and thought. “Everything in its own place!” is the tacit reflection of such men. “Prayers, sermons, { { y t tart 86 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. holy reading”—they will scarcely venture to add, ‘““God’’—“are for Sundays; but week- _days are for the sober business, the real, practical affairs of life. Enough if we give the } Sunday to our religious duties; we cannot be always praying and reading the Bible. | Well enough for clergymen and good persons who have nothing else to do, to attend | to religion through the week: but for us, we have other and more practical matters to mind.’ And so the result is, that religion is made altogether a Sunday thing—a robe too fine for common wear, but taken out solemnly on state occasions, and solemnly put past when the state occasion is over. Like an idler in a crowded thoroughfare, religion is jostled aside in the daily throng of life, as if it had no business there. Like } a needful, yet disagreeable medicine, men will be content to take it now and then for their souls’ health; but they can not, and will not, make it their daily fare—the sub- stantial and staple nutriment of their life and being. Now, you will observe that the idea of religion which is set forth in the text, as elsewhere in Scripture, is quite different from any of these notions. The text speaks as if the most diligent attention to our worldly business were not by any means incom- patible with spirituality of mind and serious devotion to the service of God. It seems to imply that religion is not so much a duty, as a something that has to do with all ’ duties—not a tax to be paid periodically and got rid of at other times, but a ceaseless, all-pervading, inexhaustible tribute to Him, who is not only the object of religious. worship, but the end of our very life and being. It suggests to us the idea that piety” is not for Sundays only, but for all days; that spirituality of mind is not appropriate to one set of actions and an impertinence and intrusion with reference to others, but like the act of breathing, like the circulation of the blood, like the silent growth of the | , Stature, a process that may be going on simultaneously with all our actions—when we - are busiest as when we are idlest; in the church, in the world, in solitude, in society; 'in our grief and in our gladness; in our toil and in our rest; sleeping, waking; by day, | by night—amid all the engagements and exigencies of life. For you perceive that in one breath—as duties not only not incompatible, but necessarily and inseparably blended with each other—the text exhorts us to be at once ‘‘not slothful in business,” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” I shall now attempt to prove and illustrate | the idea thus suggested to us—the compatibility of Religion with the business of Com-_ mon Life. : We have, then, Scripture authority for asserting that it is not impossible to live a | life of fervent piety amid the most engrossing pursuits and engagements of the world. We are to make good this conception of life—that the hardest-wrought man of trade, ) or commerce, or handicraft, who spends his days “’mid dusky lane or wrangling marl,” may yet be the most holy and spiritually-minded. We need not quit the world and abandon its busy pursuits in order to live near to God— “We need not bid, for cloistered cell, Our neighbor and our work farewell: | The trivial round, the common task, | ’ : * ams May furnish all we ought to ask— Room to deny ourselves, a road To bring us, daily, nearer God.” It is true indeed that, if in no other way could we prepare for an eternal world than by retiring from the business and cares of this world, so momentous are the | interests involved in religion, that no wise man should hesitate to submit to the sacri- fice. Life here is but a span. Life hereafter is forever. A lifetime of solitude, hard- | ship, penury, were all too slight a price to pay, if need be, for an eternity of bliss: and the results of our most incessant toil and application to the world’s business, could they secure for us the highest prizes of earthly ambition, would be purchased at a | tremendous cost, if they stole away from us the only time in which we could prepare \ id . CC Religion in Common Life—Caird. 87 to meet our God—if they left us at last rich, gay, honored, possessed of every thing the world holds dear, but to face an eternity undone. If, therefore, in no way could you combine business and religion, it would indeed be, not fanaticism, but most sober wisdom and prudence, to let the world’s business come to a stand. It would be the duty of the mechanic, the man of business, the statesman, the scholar—men of every secular calling—without a moment’s delay to leave vacant and silent the familiar scenes of their toils—to turn life into a perpetual Sabbath, and betake themselves, one and all, to an existence of ceaseless prayer, and unbroken contemplation, and devout care of the soul. : But the very impossibility of such a sacrifice proves that no such sacrifice is de- manded. He who rules the world is no arbitrary tyrant prescribing impracticable bors. In the material world there are no conflicting laws; and no more, we may rest ssured, are there established in the moral world, any two laws, one or the other of which must needs be disobeyed. Now one thing is certain, that there is in the moral world a law of labor. Secular work, in all cases a duty, is, in most cases, a necessity. God might have made us independent of work. He might have nourished us like “the fowls of the air-and the lilies of the field,” which “toil not, neither do they spin.” He might have rained down our daily food, like the manna of old, from heaven, or caused nature to yield it in unsolicited profusion to all, and so set us free to a life of devotion. But, forasmuch as He has not done so—forasmuch as He has so constituted us that without work we cannot eat, that if men ceased for a single day to labor, the machinery of life would come to a stand, and arrest be laid on science, civilization and progress— on every thing that is conducive to the’welfare of man in the present life—we may safely conclude that religion, which is also good for man, which is, indeed, the supreme good of man, is not inconsistent with hard work, It must undoubtedly be the design of our gracious God that all this toil for the supply of our physical necessities—this incessant occupation amid the things that perish, shall be no obstruction, but rather a help to our spiritual life. The weight of a clock seems a heavy drag on the delicate movements of its machinery; but so far from arresting or impeding those movements, it is indispensable to their steadiness, balance, accuracy: there must be some analogous action of what seems the clog and drag-weight of worldly work on the finer move- ments of man’s spiritual being. The planets in the heavens have a two-fold motion, in their orbits and on their axes—the one motion not interfering, but carried on simul- taneously, and in perfect harmony, with the other: so must it be that man’s two-fold activities—round the heavenly and the earthly center, disturb not, nor jar with, each other. He who diligently discharges the duties of the earthly, may not less sedulously —nay, at the same moment—fulfill those of the heavenly sphere; at once “diligent in business” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” And that this is so—that this blending of religion with the work of common life is not impossible, you will readily perceive, if you consider for a moment what, accord- ing to the right and proper notion of it, Religion is. What do we mean by “Religion?” Religion may be viewed in two aspects. It is a Science, and it is an Art; in other words, a system of doctrines to be believed, and a system of duties to be done. View it in either light, and the point we are insisting on may, without difficulty, be made good. View it as a Science—as truth to be understood and believed. If religious truth were, like many kinds of secular truth, hard, intricate, abstruse, demanding for its study not only the highest order of intellect, but all the resources of education, books, learned leisure, then indeed to most men the blending of religion with the necessary avocations of life would be an impossibility. In that case it would be sufficient excuse for irreligion to plead, “My lot in life is inevitably one of incessant care and toil, of busy, anxious thought, and wearing work. Inextricably involved, every day and hour as I am, in the world’s business, how is it possible for me to devote myself to this high \ 88 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. and abstract science?” If religion were thus, like the hizher mathematics of meta- physics, a science based on the most recondite and elaborate reasonings, capable of being mastered only by te acutest minds, after years of study and laborious investiga- tion, then might it well be urged by many an unleitered man of toil, “I am no scholar —I have no head to comprehend these hard dogmas and doctrines. Learn:== and religion are, no doubt, fine things, but they are not for humble and hard-wrought folk like me!” In this case. indeed, the gcspel would be no gespel at all—no good news of heavenly love and mercy to the whole sin-ruined race of man, but only a gospel for scholars—a religion, like the ancient philosophies, for a scanty minority, clever enough to grasp its principles, and set free from active business to devote themselves to the development and discussion of its doctrines. But the gospel is no such system of high and abstract truth. The salvation it offers is not the prize of a lofty intellect, but of a lowly heart. The mirror in which its grand truths are reflected is not a mind of calm and philosophic abstraction, but a heart of earnest purity. Its light shines best and fullest, not on a life undisturbed by business, but on a soul unstained by sin. /The religion of Christ, while it affords scope for the loftiest intellect in the contemplation and development of its glorious truths, is yet, in the exquisite simplicity of its essential facts and principles, patent to the simplest mind. Rude, untutored, toil-worn you may be, but if you have wit enough to guide you in the commonest round of daily toil, you have wit enough to learn to be saved. The truth as it is in Jesus, while, in one view of it, so profound that the highest archangel’s intellect may be lost in the contemplation of its mysterious depths, is yet, in another, so simple that the lisping babe at a mother’s knee may learn its meaning. Again: view religion as an Art, and in this light, too, its compatibility with a busy and active life in the world, it will not be difficult to perceive. For religion as an art differs from secular arts in this respect, that it may be practiced simultaneously with other arts—with all other work and occupation in which we may be engaged. A man can not be studying architecture and law at the same time. The medical prac- titioner can not be engaged with his patients, and at the same time planning houses or building bridges—practicing, in other words, both medicine and engineering at one and the same moment. The practice of one secular art excludes for the time the practice of other secular arts. But not so with the art of religion. This is the universal ! art, the common, all-embracing profession. It belongs to no one set of functionaries, to no special class of men. Statesman, soldier, lawyer, physician, poet, painter, trades- man, farmer—men oi every craft and calling in life—may, while in the actual discharge of the duties of their varied avocations, be yet, at the same moment, discharging the duties of a higher and nobler vocation—practicing the art of a Christian. Secular arts, in most cases, demand of him, who would attain to eminence in any one of them, an almost exclusive devotion of time, and thought, and toil. The most versatile genius can seldom be master of more than one art; and for the great majority the only calling must be that by which they can earn their daily bread. Demand of the poor tradesman or peasant, whose every hour is absorbed in the struggle to earn a com- petency for himself and his family, that he shall be also a thorough proficient in the art of the physician, or lawyer, or sculptor, and you demand an impossibility. If religion were an art such as these, few indeed could learn it. The two admonitions, “Be diligent in business,” and “Be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” would be reciprocally destructive. But religion is no such art, for it is the art of being, and of doing, good: to be an adept in it, is to become just, truthful, sincere, self-denied, gentle, forbearing, pure in word and thought and deed. And the school for learning this art is not the closet, But the world—not some hallowed spot where religion is taught, and proficients, when duly trained, are sent forth into the world—but the world itself—the coarse, profane, Religion in Common Life—Caird. 89 common world, with its cares and temptations, its rivalries and competitions, its hourly, ever-recurring trials of temper and character. This is, therefore, an art which all can practice, and for which every profession and calling, the busiest and most absorbing, afford scope and discipline. When a child is learning to write, it matters not of what words the copy set to him is composed, the thing desired being that what- ever he writes, he learn to write well. When a man is learning to be a Christian, it matters not what his particular work in life may be; the work he does is but the copy- line set to him; the main thing to be considered is that he learn to live well. The form is nothing, the execution is everything. \It is true indeed that prayer, holy reading, meditation, the solemnities and services cf the Church are necessary to— religion, and that these can be practiced only apart from the work of secular life. But it is to be remembered that all such holy exercises do not tefminate in themselves. They are but steps in the ladder of heaven, good only as they help us to climb. They are the irrigation and enriching of the spiritual soil—worse than useless if the crop be not more abundant. They are, in short, but means to an end—good, only in so far as they help us to be good and do good—to glorify God and do good to man; and that end can perhaps be best attained by him whose life is a busy one, whose avocations bear him daily into contact with his fellows, into the intercourse of society, into the heart of the world. No man can be a thorough proficient in navigation who has never been at sea, though he may learn the theory of it at home. No man can become a soldier by studying books on military tactics in his closet: he must in actual service acquire those habits of coolness, courage, discipline, address, rapid combination, without which the most learned in the theory of strategy or engineering will be but a ‘school-boy soldier after all. And, in the same way, a man in solitude and study may become a most learned theologian, or may train himself into the timid, effeminate piety of what is technically called “the religious life.” But never, in the highest and holiest sense, can he become a religious man until he has acquired those habits of daily self- denial, of resistance to temptation, of kindness, gentleness, humility, sympathy, active benificence, which are to be acquired only in daily contact with mankind. Tell us not, then, that the man of business, the bustling tradesman, the toil-worn laborer, has‘, little or no time to attend to religion. As well tell us that the pilot amid the winds arid storms has no leisure to attend to navigation—or the general on the field of battle, to the art of war! Where will he attend to it? Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books—religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances; these are necessary to religion—no man can be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life. Away, then, with the notion that ministers and devotees may be Teligious, but that a religious and holy life is impracticable in the rough and busy world! Nay rather, believe me, that is the proper scene, the peculiar and appropriate field for religion—the place in which to prove that piety is not a dream of Sundays and solitary hours; that it can bear the light of day; that it can wear well amid the rough jostlings, the hard struggles, the coarse contacts of common life—the place, in one word, to prove how possible it is for a man to be at once not “slothful in busi- ness,” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Another consideration which I shal! adduce in support of the assertion that it is ot impossible to blend religion with the business of common life, is this: that reli- ion consists not so much in doing spiritual or sacred acts, as in doing secular acts rom a sacred or spiritual motive. There is a very common tendency in our minds to classify actions according to iL 66 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. their outward form, rather than according to the spirit or motive which pervades them. Literature is sometimes arbitrarily divided into “sacred” and “profane” literature, . history into “sacred” and “profane” history—in which classification the term “profane” is applied, not to what is bad or unholy, but to every thing that is not technically sacred or religious—to all literature that does not treat of religious doctrines and duties, and to all history save Church history. And we are very apt to apply the same principle to actions. Thus, in many pious minds there is a tendency to regard all the actions of common life as so much—an unfortunate necessity—lost to religion. ‘Prayer, the reading of the Bible and devotional books, public worship—and buying, — SOE ain sewring,_bertering-Mmoney-makine are separa eller Zping, sowing,—bartering; money-making, are separated into two distinct, and almost hostile, categories. The religious heart and sympathies are thrown entirely into the former, and the latter are barely tolerated as a bondage incident to our fallen state, but almost of necessity tending to turn aside the heart from God. But what God hath cleansed, why should we call common or unclean? The ten- dency in question, though founded on right feeling, is surely a mistaken one. For it is to be remembered that moral qualities reside _not in actions, but in the agent who performs them, and that it is the spirit or motive from which we do any work that constitutes it base or noble, worldly or spiritual, secular or sacred. The actions of an automaton may be outwardly the same as those of a moral agent, but who attri- butes to them goodness or badness? A musical instrument may discuss sacred melodies better than the holiest lips can sing them, but who thinks of commending it for its piety? It is the same with actions as with places. Just as no spot or scene on earth is in itself more or less holy than another; but the presence of a holy heart may hallow—of a base one, desecrate—any place where it dwells; so with actions. Many actions, materially great and noble, may yet, because of the spirit that prompts and pervades them, be really ignoble and mean; and, on the other hand, many actions, externally mean and lowly, may, because of the state of his heart who does them, be truly exalted and honorable. It is possible to fill the highest station on earth, and go through the actions pertaining to it in a spirit that degrades all its dignities, and renders all its high and courtly doings essentially vulgar and mean. And it is no mere sentimentality to say, that there may dwell in a lowly mechanic’s or household servant's breast a spirit that dignifies the coarsest toils and ‘‘renders drudgery divine.” Herod of old was a slave, though he sat upon a throne; but who will say that the work of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth was not noble and kingly work indeed? And as the mind constitutes high or low, so secular or spiritual. A life spent amid holy things may be intensely secular; a life, the most of which is passed in the thick and throng of the world, may be holy and divine. A minister, for instance, preaching, praying, ever speaking holy words and performing sacred acts, may be all the while doing actions no more holy than those of a printer who prints Bibles, or of the bookseller who sells them; for, in both cases alike, the whole affair may be nothing more than a trade. Nay, the comparison tells worse for the former, for the secular trade is innocent and commendable, but the trade which trafics and tampers with holy things is, beneath all its mock solemnity, “earthly, sensual, devilish.” So, to adduce one other example, the public worship of God is holy work: no man can be living a holy life who neglects it. But the public worship of God may be—and with » multitudes who frequent our churches is—degraded into work most worldly, most unholy, most distasteful to the great Object of our homage. He ‘to whom all hearts be open, all desires known,” discerns how many of you have come hither today from the earnest desire to hold communion with the Father of spirits, to open your hearts to Him, to unburden yourselves in His loving presence, of the cares and crosses that have been pressing hard upon you through the past week, and by common prayer and praise, and the hearing of His holy word, to gain fresh incentive and energy for the Religion in Common Life—Caird. , ot prosecution of His work in the world; and how many, on the other hand, from no better motive, perhaps, than curiosity or old habit, or regard to decency and respect- ability, or the mere desire to get rid of yourselves and pass a vacant hour that would hang heavy on your hands. And who can doubt that, where such motives as these prevail, to the piercing, unerring inspection of Him whom outwardly we seem to reverence, not the market-place, the exchange, the counting-room, is a place more intensely secular—not the most reckless and riotous festivity, a scene of more unhal- lowed levity, than is presented by the house of prayer? But, on the other hand, carry holy principles with you into the world, and the world will become hallowed by their presence, A Christ-like spirit will Christianize everything it touches. A meek heart, in which the altar-fire of love to God is burning, will lay hold of the commonest, rudest things in life, and transmute them, like coarse fuel at the touch of fire, into a pure and holy flame. Religion in the soul will make all the work and toil of life—its gains and losses, friendships, rivalries, competitions, its manifold incidents and events—the means of religious advancement. Marble or coarse clay, it matters not much with which of these the artist works, the touch of genius transforms the coarser material into beauty, and lends to the finer a value it never had before. Lofty or lowly, rude or refined as life’s work to us may be, it will become to a holy mind only the material for an infinitely nobler than all the creations of genius—the image of God in the soul. To spiritualize what is material, to Chris- tianize what is secular—this is the noble achievement of Christian principle. If you are a sincere Christian, it will be your great desire, by God’s grace, to make every gift, talent, occupation of life, every word you speak, every action you do, subservient to Christian motive. Your conversation may not always—nay, may seldom, save with intimate friends—consist of formally religious words; you may perhaps shrink from the introduction of religious topics in general society: but it demands a less amount of Christian effort occasionally to speak religious words, than to infuse the spirit of religion into all our words; and if the whole tenor of your common talk be pervaded by a spirit of piety, gentleness, earnestness, sincerity, it will be Christian conversation not the less. If God has endowed you with intellectual gifts, it may be well if you directly devote them to His service in the religious instruction of others; but a man may be a Christian thinker and writer as much when giving to science, or history, or biography, or poetry, a Christian tone and spirit, as when composing sermons or writing hymns. To promote the cause of Christ directly, by furthering every religious and missionary enterprise at home and abroad, is undoubtedly your duty; but remember that your duty terminates not when you have done all this, for you may promote Christ’s cause even still more effectually when in your daily demeanor—in the family, in society, in your business transactions, in all your common intercourse with the world—you are diffusing the influence of Christian principle around you by the silent eloquence of a holy life. Rise superior, in Christ’s strength, to all equivocal practices and advantages in trade; shrink from every approach to meanness or dishonesty; let your eye, fixed on a reward before which earthly wealth grows dim. beam with honor; let the thought of God make you self-restrained, tem- perate, watchiul over speech and conduct; let the abiding sense of Christ’s redeeming love to you make you gentle, self-denied, kind, and loving to all around you; then indeed will your secular life become spiritualized, while at the same time your spiritual life will grow more fervent; then not only will your prayers become more devout, but when the knee bends not, and the lip is silent, the life in its heavenward t will “pray without ceasing;” then from amid the roar and din of earthly toil the ear of God will hear the sweetest anthems rising; then, finally, will your daily expe- rience prove that it is no high and unattainable elevation of virtue, but a simple and 92 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. natural thing to which the text points, when it bids us be both “diligent in business” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” As a last illustration of the possibility of blending religion with the business of common life, let me call your attention to what may be described as the Mind’s power of acting on Latent Principles. In order to live a religious life in the world, every action must be governed by religious motives. But in making this assertion it is not, by any means, implied, that in all the familiar actions of our daily life religion must form a direct and conscious object of thought. To_be always thinking of God, and Christ, and eternity amid our worldly work; and however busy, eager, interested we may be in the special business betore us, to have religious ideas, doctrines, beliefs, present fo the thi mply Gmpossible. ‘The mind can no more consciously Think —Ot-heaven Ral canta ae ene same moment than the body can be in heaven and earth at the same moment. More- over, there are few kinds of work in the world that, to be well done, must not be done heartily; many that require, in order to excellence, the whole condensed force and energy of the highest mind. But though it be true that we can not, in our worldly work, be always consciously thinking of religion, yet it is also true that, unconsciously, insensibly, we may be acting under its ever-present control. As there are laws and powers in the natural — orld, of which, without thinking of them, we are ever availing ourselves—as I do not think of gravitation when, by its aid, I lift my arm, or of atmospheric laws, when, by means of them, I breathe, so in the routine of daily work, though comparatively seldom do I think of them, I may yet be constantly swayed by the motives, sustained by the principles, living, breathing, acting in the invisible atmosphere of true religion. There are under-currents in the ocean which act independently of the movement of the waters on the surface; far down too in its hidden depths there is a region where, even though the storm be raging on the upper waves, perpetual calmness and stillness reign. So there may be an under-current beneath the surface-movements of your life— there mayrdwell in the secret Tepihs of yOuF DEE Ihe abiding peace of God, the repose ‘of a holy mind, even though, all the while, the restless stir and commotion of worldly DSS Ey Or er soy And, in order to see this, it is to be remembered that many of the thoughts and motives that most powerfully impel and govern us in the common actions of life are latent thoughts and motives. Have you not often experienced that curious law— a law, perhaps, contrived by God, with an express view to this its highest application— by which a secret thought or feeling may lie brooding in your mind, quite apart from the particular work in which you happen to be employed? Have you never, for instance, while reading aloud, carried along with you in your reading the secret impression of the presence of the listener—an impression that kept pace with all the mind’s activity in the special work of reading; nay, have you not sometimes felt the mind, while prosecuting without interruption the work of reading, yet at the same time carrying on some other train of reflection apart altogether from that suggested by the book? Here is obviously a particular “business” in which you were “diligent,” yet another and different thought to which the “spirit” turned. Or, think of the work in which I am this moment occupied. Amid all the mental exertions of the public speaker—underneath the outward workings of his mind, so to speak, there is the latent thought of the presence of his auditory. Perhaps no species of exertion requires greater concentration of thought or undividedness of attention than this: and yet, amid all the subtle processes of intellect—the excogitation or recollection of ideas— the selection, right ordering, and enunciation of words, there never quits his mind for one moment the idea of the presence of the listening throng. Like a secret atmos- phere it surrounds and bathes his spirit as he goes on with the external work, And Religion in Common Life—Caird. 93 _ have not you, too, my friends, an Auditor—it may be, a “great cloud of witnesses’”— but at least one all-glorious Witness and Listener ever present, ever watchful, as the discourse of life proceeds? Why then, in this case too, while the outward business is diligently prosecuted, may there not be on your spirit a latent and constant impres- sion of that awful inspection? What worldly work so absorbing as to leave no room in a believer’s spirit for the hallowing thought of that glorious Presence ever near? Do not say that you do not see God—that the presence of the divine Auditor is not forced upon your senses, as that of the human auditory on the speaker. For the same _ process goes on in the secret meditations as in the public addresses of the preacher— the same latent reference to those who shall listen to his words dweils in his mind when in his solitary retirement he thinks and writes, as when he speaks in their immediate presence. And surely if the thought of an earthly audiiory—oi human minds and hearts that shall respond to his thoughts and words—can intertwine itself wit all the activities of a man’s mind, and flash back inspiration on his soul, at least as potent and as penetrating may the thought be, of Him, the great Lord of heaven and earth, who not only sees and knows us now, but before whose awful presence, in the last great _ congregation, we shall stand forth to recount and answer for our every thought and _ deed. Or, to take but one other example, have we not all felt that the thought of anticipated happiness may blend itself with the work of our busiest hours? The laborer’s evening release from toil—the schoolboy’s coming holiday, or the hard- wrought business-man’s approaching season of relaxation—the expected return of a long absent and much-loved friend—is not the thought of these, or similar joyous _ events, one which oiten intermingles with, without interrupting, our common work? When a father goes forth to his “labor till the evening,” perhaps often, very often, in _ the thick of his toils, the thought of home may start up to cheer him. The smile that is to welcome him, as he crosses his lowly threshold when the work of the day is over, the glad faces, and merry voices, and sweet caresses of little ones, as they shall gather round him in the quiet ev Sees h se a pousht of all this may dw ell a latent j a hidden motive j a secre ; v TE FON € olen eet ae oer precious to be _ parted with even for a moment. And why may not the highest of all hopes and ossess the same all-pervadin _ influence? ave we, if Our religio on be real, no anticipation of happiness in the Blorious future? Is there no “rest that remaineth for the people of God,” no home and loving heart awaiting us when the toils of our hurried day of life are ended? What i is earthly rest or relaxation, what that release from toil after which we so often sigh, but the faint shadow of the saint's everlasting rest—the repose of eternal purity— the calm of a spirit in which, not the tension of labor only, but the strain of the moral ‘Strife with sin, has ceased—the rest of the soul in God! What visions of earthly bliss can ever—if our Christian faith be not a form—compare with “the glory soon to be revealed;” what joy of earthly reunion with the rapture of the hour when the heavens ‘shall yield our absent Lord to our embrace, to be parted from us no more forever! _ And if all this be not a dream and a fancy, but most sober truth, what is there to except e joyful hope from that law to which, in all other deep joys, our minds are subject? y may we not, in this case, too, think often, amid our r worldly work, of the Home to which we are going, of the true and loving heart that beats for us, and of the sweet and j joyous welcome that awaits us there? And, even when we make them not, of set pie “ L 94 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. purpose, the subject of our thoughts, is there not enough of grandeur in the objects of a believer’s hope to pervade his spirit at all times with a calm and reverential joy? Do not think all this strange, fanatical, impossible. If it do seem so, it can only be because your heart is in the earthly hopes, but not in the higher and holier hopes— because love to Christ is still to you but a name—because you can give more ardor of thought to the anticipation of a coming holiday than to the hope of heaven and glory everlasting. No, my friends! the strange thing is, not that amid the world’s work we should be able to think of our Home, but that we should ever be able to forget it; and the stranger, sadder still, that while the little day of life is passing—morning, noontide, evening—each stage more rapid than the last, while to many the shadows are already fast lengthening, and the declining sun warns them that “the night is at hand, wherein no man can work,” there should be those among us whose whole thoughts are absorbed in the business of the world, and to whom the reflection never occurs’ that soon they must go out into eternity—without a friend—without a home! Such, then is the true idea of the Christian life—a life not of periodic observances, or of occasional fervors, or even of splendid acts of heroism and self-devotion, but of quiet, constant, unobtrusive earnestness, amid the common-place work of the world. This is the life to which Christ calls us. Is it yours? Have you entered upon it, or are you now willing to enter upon it? It is not, I admit, an imposing or an easy one. There is nothing in it to dazzle, much in its hardness and plainness to deter the irresolute. The life of a follower of Christ demands not, indeed, in our day, the courage of the hero or the martyr, the fortitude that braves outward dangers and sufferings, and flinches not from persecution and death. But with the age of persecution the diff- culties of the Christian life have not passed away. In maintaining a spirit of Christian cheerfulness and contentment—in the unambitious routine of humble duties—in pre- serving the fervor of piety amid the unexciting cares and wearing anxieties—in the perpetual reference to lofty ends amid lowly toils—there may be evinced a faith as strong as that of the man who dies with the song of martyrdom on his lips. It is a great thing to love Christ so dearly as to be “ready to be bound and to die” for Him; but it is often a thing not less great to be ready to take up our daily cross, and to live for Him. But be the difficulties of a Christian life in the world what they may, they need not discourage us. Whatever the work to which our Master calls us, He offers us a strength commensurate with our needs. No man who wishes to serve Christ will ever fail for lack of heavenly aid. And it will be no valid excuse for an ungodly life that it is difficult to keep alive the flame of piety in the world, if Christ be ready to supply the fuel. To all, then, who really wish to lead such a life, let me suggest that the first thing to be done—that without which all other efforts are worse than vain, is heartily to devote themselves to God through Christ Jesus. Much as has been said of the infu- sion of religious principle and motive into our worldly work, there is a preliminary advice of greater importance still—that we be religious. Life comes before growth. The soldier must enlist before he can serve. In vain, directions how to keep the fire ever burning on the altar, if first it be not kindled. No religion can be genuine, no goodness can be constant or lasting, that springs not, as its primary source, from faith in Jesus Christ. To know Christ as my Savior—to come with all my guilt and weak- ness to Him in whom trembling penitence never fails to find a friend—to cast myself at His feet in whom all that is sublime in divine holiness is softened, though not obscured, by all that is beautiful in human tenderness; and, believing in that love stronger than death, which, for me, and such as me, drained the cup of untold sorrows, and bore without a murmur the bitter curse of sin, to trust my soul for time and eternity into His hands—this is the beginning of true religion. And it is the reverential love with which the believer must ever look to Him to whom he owes so much, that constitutes e Religion in Common Life—Caird. 95 _ the main-spring of the religion of daily life. Selfishness may prompt to a formal reli- gion, natural susceptibility may give rise to a fitful one, but for a life of constant fervent piety amid the world’s cares and toils, no motive is sufficient save one—self- devoted love to Christ. But again, if you would lead a Christian life in the world, let me remind you that that life must be continued as well as begun with Christ. You must learn to look to Him not merely as your Savior from guilt, but as the Friend of your secret life, the chosen Companion of your solitary hours, the Depositary of all the deeper thoughts and feelings of your soul. You can not live for Him in the world unless you live much with Him apart from the world. In spiritual, as in secular things, the deepest and strongest characters need much solitude to form them. Even earthly greatness, much more moral and spiritual greatness, is never attained but as the result of much _ that is concealed from the world—of many a lonely and meditative hour. Thought- fulness, self-knowledge, self-control, a chastened wisdom and piety, are the fruit of habitual meditation and prayer. In these exercises heaven is brought near, and our exaggerated estimate of earthly things corrected. By these our spiritual energies, shattered and worn by the friction of worldly work, are repaired. In the recurring seasons of devotion the cares and anxieties of worldly business cease to vex us; exhausted with its toils, we have, in daily communion with God, “‘meat to eat which the world knoweth not of;’” and even when its calamities and losses fall upon us, and our portion of worldly good may be withdrawn, we may be able to show, like those holy ones of old at the heathen court, by the fair serene countenance of the spirit, that we have something better than the world’s pulse to feed upon. But, further, in availing yourself of this divine resource amid the daily exigencies of life, why should you wait always for the periodic season and.the formal attitude of prayer? The heavens are not open to the believer’s call only at intervals. The grace of God’s Holy Spirit falls not like the fertilizing shower, only now and then; or like the dew on the earth’s face, only at morning and night. At all times, on the uplifted face of the believer’s spirit, the gracious element is ready to descend. Pray always; pray without ceasing. When difficulties arise, delay not to seek and obtain at once the Succor you need. Swifter than by the subtle electric agent is thought borne from earth to heaven. The Great Spirit on high is in constant sympathy with the spirit beneath, and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the thrill of aspiration flashes from the heart of man to God. Whenever anything vexes you—whenever, from the rude and selfish ways of men, any trials of temper cross your path; when your spirits are ruffled, or your Christian forbearance put to the test, be this your instant resource! Haste away, if only for a moment, to the serene and peace-breathing presence of Jesus, and you will not fail to return with a spirit soothed and calmed. Or when the impure and low-minded surround you—when, in the path of duty, the high tone of your Christian purity is apt to suffer from baser contacts—O, what relief to lift the heart to _ Christ! to rise on the wings of faith—even for one instant to breathe the air of that _ fegion where the infinite Purity dwells, and then return with a mind steeled against _ temptation, ready to recoil with the instinctive abhorrence of a spirit that has been beside the throne, from all that is impure and vile. Say not, then, with such aid at _ your command, that religion can not be brought down to Common Life! 2 In conclusion, let me once more urge upon you the great lesson upon which we a have been insisting. Carry religious principle into every-day life. Principle elevates _ whatever it touches. Facts lose all their littleness to the mind which brings principle _ and law to bear upon them. The chemist’s or geologist’s soiled hands are no sign of _ base work; the coarsest operations of the laboratory, the breaking of stones with a _ hammer, cease to be mechanical when intellectual thought and principle govern the _ mind and guide the hands. And religious principle is the noblest of all. Bring it to __ bear on common actions and coarse cares, and infinitely nobler even than the philo- _ Sophic or scientific, becomes the Christian life, Live for Christ i zS , a 96 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. and all your work will bec i E As in the temple of old, it was holy work to hew wood or mix oil, because it was done for the altar-sacrifice or the sacred lamps; so all your coarse and common work will receive a consecration when done for God’s glory, by one who is a true priest to his temple. Carry religion into common life, and your life will be rendered useful as well as noble, There are many men who listen incredulously to the high-toned exhortations ofthe pulpit; the religious life there depicted is much too seraphic, they think, for this plain and prosaic world of ours. Show these men that the picture is not a fancy one. Make it a reality. Bring religion down from the clouds. Apply to it the infallible test of experiment, and, by diffusing your daily actions with holy principles, prove that love to God, superiority to worldly pleasure, spirituality, holiness, heavenly-mindedness, are something more than the stock ideas of sermons. Carry religion into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. ‘““The world passeth away!” The things that are seen are temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties—the whcle ‘unprofitable stir and fever of the world”—will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better i ch and muse over the perishableness of earthly things: it finds in them the s No work done for Christ perishes; no action that helps to mold the deathless mind of a saint of God is ever lost. Live for Christ in the world, and you carry out with you into eternity all of the results of the world’s business that are worth the keeping. The river of life sweeps on, but the gold grains it held in solution are left behind, deposited in the holy heart. ‘‘The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.’”” Every other result of our “diligence in business” will soon be gone. You can not invent any mode of exchange between the visible and invisible worlds, so that the balance at your credit in the one can be transferred, when you migrate from it, to your account in the other. Worldly sharpness, acuteness, ver- satility, are not the qualities in request in the world to come. The capacious intellect, stored with knowledge, and disciplined with admirable perspicacity, tact, worldly wisdom, by a lifetime devoted to politics or business, is not, by such attainments, fitted to take a higher place among the sons ci immortality. The honor, fame, respect, obse- quious homage that atiend worldly greatness up to the grave’s brink, will not follow it one step beyond. These advantages are not to be despised; but if these be all that, by the toil of our hand, Or the sweat of our brow, we have gained, the hour is fast” coming when we shail discoi that» we have labored in vain, and spent our strength for naught. But while thes: ese are other things that remain. The world’s gains and losses may soon c: us, but not the gratitude or the patience, the kindness or the resignation ‘orth from our hearts. The world’s scenes of t; the ne cf its restless pursuits may fall no more upon our ear, when we pass £0 meet our God; but not one unselfish thought, not one kind and gentle word, not one act of sell-sacrincing love done for Jesus’ sake, in the midst of our common work, but wi! ielible impress on the soul, which will go out with it to its eternai de that this may be the result of your labors; so live that your wo urch or in the world, may become a discipline for that is rious he Cl Oo Ht 6 rk, whether i state of being in which the Church and the world shall become one; where work shall be w ae and labor shall be rest; where the worker shall never quit the temple, nor the worshiper the place of work, because “there is no) temple therein, but the iia God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof.” [John Caird was born at Greenock, Scotland, 1820, and came to be known as one) of the leading pulpit orators. In 1862 he was projessor of ' divinity in the University of Glasgow, and became principal of the University in 1873. His liter ary work consists” principally of Religions oi India, an Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, ete: This sermon is the one preached before the Queen, and print aa at her “command. Many thousands of copies of it were sold in Engiand. His Union with God is sai to be equal to it, but not so well-known.] ON THE JUSTIFICATION AND CORONA- TION OF THE MESSIAH. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL. “Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified by the spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up to glory.”” I Tim. 3:16. “But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made less than the angels, that by the grace of God He might taste death for all, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.” Heb. 2: 9. _ The destiny of a man, a nation, an empire, a world, is sometimes suspended on a single event. On one act of one man, God, in His infinite wisdom and benevolence, suspended the entire destinies of the world. There is but one center in every circle, one center in the solar system; one center in the universe; and one central idea in nature, providence and redemption. Around that idea the physical, the intellectual, the moral, the spiritual universe revolves. If God delights in number, in variety, in magnitude, as the universe attests, He also delights in simplicity, in individuality, and in unity. Hence, one law is but the result of the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the universe. And from the continual antagonism of these forces arise all the order, the beauty, the life and happiness of all the empires of creation. But to man—fallen, ruined man—to his dim vision in this murky atmosphere, notwithstanding all its order, harmony, and beauty, the universe, at this peculiar angle of observation, appears as a “maze without a plan.”’ He sees an alternation of light and darkness, of good and evil, of beauty and deformity, of pleasure and pain, of life and death. Jaundiced with sin, to his moral vision, the evil transcends the good; corruption and decay luxuriate on youth and beauty; adversity treads upon the heels of prosperity; death and the grave triumph over all; while to the enlightened eye of faith and hope, God, in nature, in providence, in grace, is only “from seeming evil still educing good, and better still, and better thence again in infinite progression.” Sin, indeed, has reigned even to death, and to the desolation of the grave; but grace reigns to eternal life, and the glory and blessedness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank God there were two Adams. Adam the first, and Adam the second. Ii by Adam the first came sin and death into our world, by Adam the second have come righteousness and life. If in our relation to the first, we toil, and sicken, and die, in our relation to the second we repose, convalesce and live forever. If by the first we have lost Eden and life, by the second we gain heaven and immortality. If through 'man “sin has reigned even to death,” through another man grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. ‘lruly, then, with Paul, in our text, we exclaim, “Great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifested in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, attended by angels, announced by Prophets and Apostles to the nations, eved on in the world by Jew and Greek, and finally glorified in heaven.” Of the few predicates in the passage concerning the Messiah, so distinctly enunciated by the apostle, as constituting the great mystery of godliness and of redemption, we select but one for the present consideration, edification and comfort. Before stating _— bt 98 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. our present theme, we must premise a remark or two, on the term mystery, or the mystery of godliness. The term mystery does not always, in its broadest sense, indicate something incomprehensible. If that were its uniform acceptation, Paul spoke amiss when he said, “Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” etc. This was once a mystery, but it is not now a mystery. In other words, it was once a secret, but is not now a secret. Formerly, the condition of those living on the earth, when the Lord would come, was not known. It was then incomprehensible; but it is not now. The Gospel itself was a mystery, while indicated only in types, and figures, and prophecy, but now it is a mystery revealed. The calling of the Gentiles, in the same sense, was a mystery, hid and kept secret for ages, but is no longer a mystery. “It was given to the Apostles to know the mysteries of God’’—secrets hid from ages and generations, but now divulged. Mark 4: 2. ; There are yet mysteries unrevealed, concerning “the Man of Sin,” and the fortunes of the world, but in Christianity and the Gospel, what were formerly mys- teries, are mysteries no more. To call things that are simply incomprehensible mysteries, is to extend the word beyond our text, and to make everything a mystery; for, indeed, there is nothing that we can fully comprehend. Rom. 11; I Cor. 15. We cannot comprehend the union of body and soul in our own person, much less the union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one God. But the mystery of godliness is not a mystery of that class. It is a mystery developed and revealed by the Holy Spirit. If, then, any one be ignorant of this mystery, the sin lies upon himself. As Paul says, “Let him be ignorant,” presuming it to be voluntary. To many, I fear, this single item embraced in my subject is still a mystery unre- vealed, or a secret unknown. Let me, then, ask, and let every one who hears ask himself, what means the declaration, “‘Jesus was justified in the spirit.” I am told that it is not the Spirit, but spirit in contrast with flesh, as both these terms, flesh and spirit, are found in the original Greek text, without the definite article. Literally, it is alleged, the orginal reads, ““God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels,’ and it might be added, in the same style of criticism, “preached in nations, believed in world, received up in glory,” or in a world and in glory. This is in truth, hypercriticism, as unsound, as uncouth. When, and in what manner was God justified in Spirit—by whom, or by what spirit? Griesbach gives another reading, which sound criticism and the context approve. It has now, indeed, a majority of ancient manuscripts, now known, to sanction it; but some other genuine and approved readings have not. It is, however, one which the context and the facts of the case approve. It is read “He who was manifest in the flesh” [Hos for Theos; namely, God in the person of Jesus] “was justified by the Spirit.” The work of the Holy Spirit, primarily, is to testify of Christ, or that “Jesus is the Christ,” to sustain His pretensions, to prove His mission; and thereby to convict (not merely to convince) the world of sin, in rejecting Him, and to convince (not to convict) the world of righteousness—His righteousness—against the calumnies and the condemnation of His enemies. It was not the human or the personal spirit of Jesus that justified Him. It was the Spirit of God that justified all His pretentions against all the false charges and calumnies of the world. But the task we now assume is to develop the most important item of the mystery of godliness, namely, that the subject of this proposition, whether read, “God was manifest in the flesh,” or ‘““He who was manifest in the flesh,’ was justified by the Holy Spirit: In any case there are but five predicates of the subject of the proposition, b } ery. Justification and Coronation of the Messiah—Campbell. 99 inless we suppose that the mystery of godliness itself was the subject of the proposi- ion. Should this be assured, then we have six predicates—*God manifest in the lesh,”” would be the first; “Justified by the Spirit,” the second. But does the term ustify apply to a person, or a proposition? “Seen by angels,” is the third predicate. But was a mystery or a person seen by angels! ‘“Preached to the Gentiles,” the ourth; “Believed on in the world,” the fifth. These scarcely apply to a mystery; ather to a person “Received up to glory,” the sixth item. But was the mystery of yodliness taken up into heaven! It must, then, be conceded that the words, “God nanifest in the flesh,” are the subject of the proposition. Of the five grand predicates concerning Him, we have selected the first named as essentially fundamental to His avorable reception on earth, and ultimately to His coronation as Lord of All in leaven. The present inquiry is, What is the impert of the fact affirmed in the words, “Justi- ied by the Spirit?” To develop this fact in its scriptural import and bearings, is of ranscendent importance. Its standing at the head of the sublime predicates of the “ord Jesus, and if any one please, at the head of the grand mystery of godliness, ybviously suggests its primary importance. In conducting the mind of a Bible student in such an inquiry as that proposed, it vould seem expedient: First, to indicate the meaning of the word justify; second, to nquire into its appropriateness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Third, to ascertain the time, lace and the circumstances of His justification. Fourth, the consequences thence esulting in His coronation as Lord of All, and the commencement of His reign. To indicate the meaning of the term justify, it must be observed that it is in a orensic term. It implies that a person has been accused; that an issue has been ormed; and that the allegations have been heard, examined, and satisfactorily refuted yefore a competent tribunal. In consequence of which, the accused is officially pro- lounced not guilty, legally righteous, and absolved from all blame in the affair. But there is evangelical as well as legal justification. There is a justification by grace, as well as justification by law. It is, therefore, important in this case to ippreciate fully the difference between legal, or forensic justification by grace or favor. in the latter, there must have been the guilt of transgression, else the accused ‘ould not have been justified by favor. In legal justification, the accused nust have been proved to be innocent. In evangelical justification, the ustified must have been proved to be guilty. It follows, then, that justification Dy grace is only equivalent to pardon or forgiveness. It is called justi- ication, merely because the party thus justified is treated as though he were nnocent of the guilt alleged and proved. Hence, it is said, “To him that believeth on im who justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness.” But vho dare say that He who was “God manifest in the flesh” was justified by grace: He vas holy, harmless, and undefiled by sin, and purer than the heavens, that only itnessed sin. But there is besides the legal and evangelical sense of the term justify, a figurative ise of the word. Jesus was accused of hypocrisy, as pretending to be God, while, as ey alleged, He was no more than man. He was accused of imposture, and being ed with “the prince of demons.” He assumed to be the Son of God, in its true, teral, and unfigurative sense. And because He was audibly and visibly recognized His baptism by a voice from heaven, declaring Him to be truly and literally God’s y begotten and well-beloved Son, and, by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon His d, identified and visibly marked out as the person to whom the oracles of Jehovah plied, it may be alleged that He was justified from such imputations by the Holy irit. But at most, this was only private and figurative, being without formal trial accusation, and while He was merely acting out the duties of a prophet. It does 100 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. not meet the case of legal evangelical justification, indicated by Paul, when the Lord Jesus had passed a final and formal trial. Paul makes the declaration in our text, after He had been accused, tried and condemned to die, by both the ecclesiastical or sacredotal, and the political tribunals under whose supervision and eo oat He had spent His life. This will appear more striking and conclusive from a careful perusal of His vale- dictory address to His disciples, immediately before His trial and condemnation to death. In that discourse, He intimates to His disconsolate friends, that it was expedient, nay better, for them, that He should return to heaven, and send a third person, of equal power and glory, to plead His innocence and His cause, than that He, in His own person, should continue with them, and plead His own cause, ‘“When,” said He, “My special advocate, the Paraclete, shall come, he will convict the world of its sin in repudiating Me; convince the world of My righteousness, because I will be honorably received into heaven. I will return to the bosom of my Father, and your Father, to my God, and to your God. And He will convince all men of a future and final judgment alter death, and of an eternal reward.” To this effect He spoke to His friends and confidants, before entering upon the last scenes of His superlatively eventful life. And here we are led more appropriately to the second item of importance necessary to our just conception of the grand fact, asserted in our text: namely, the appropriateness of the declaration that ‘‘He was justified by the Spirit.” When we reflect that His sun had set beliind a dark and portentous cloud—con- demned to the cross of a Roman slave, and that too by God’s own vicegerent, the high priest of His own nation, and by the civil powers that God had ordained, over His own country and people, it would seem expedient, if not for contemporaries, at least for posterity in all coming time, that His character should be more than rein- stated, indeed glorified above all rivalry and competition with any aspirant that ever had sought or obtained a miter or a crown. This view of the premises. suggests to us the propriety of formally inquiring, in the second place, into the appositeness of the term justify as here applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. Such an inquiry naturally leads us to the closing scenes of His life, especially during His trial and condemnation. It was, indeed, literally true, according to ancient peo “that He was numbered with transgressors,’ that *He died with the wicked;” and that too, as though He had been convicted of blasphensy against God and treason against the government of Rome. It is well for us that this last trial and condemnation occupy so large a space in the four Gospels, and one given to us with so much circumstantiality and detail. The trial of Jesus does not, I fear, occupy a corresponding space in the minds and hearts of our contemporaries. The great palpable facts are, however, all that we can at present note. The sum of the allegations against Him is that He claimed two thrones—the throne of God and the throne of Czesar—the government of earth and heaven. He claimed to be the son of David, according to the flesh, to whom the world belonged; and the Son of God, according to a Divine nature, to whom not only the authority of earth, but also that of heaven belonged. This was, indeed, often hinted at, alluded to, and, indeed, assumed by Himself and His friends, some of whom looked with a single eye, not merely to the loaves and fishes, but to provincial crowns and scepters under His administration. These assumptions had some way reached the ears of both Herod and Pontius Pilate and other contemporaries of note at that day. But the narrative of His trial and condemnation will place the subject more fully before our minds. I is as follows: In consequence of His doctrine and miracles, and especially of His developments of the hypocrisy, arrogance and perversity of the Pharisees and Scribes and the rulers Justification and Coronation of the Messiah—Campbell. tot of the nation, they machinated His murder and the annihilation of His party. At their great paschal anniversary during the last year of His jubilee ministry, while they were concerting measures for His apprehension, the devil tempted Judas to embrace the opportunity of betraying Him into the hands of His enemies. From his native cupidity he readily yielded to temptation; and soon finding an opportunity, he deliv- ered Him up into their hands. The chief priests, the Scribes and the elders imme- diately became His accusers in the court of Caiphas, assisted by his father-in-law, Annas, to whom they first tendered Him. False witnesses were sought with great avidity and diligence. And such, it appears, was the popular opinion of the Savior and awe of His person, that they had almost failed in finding the least number which the law required in such cases. “At the last,’’ says Matthew, “they found two false witnesses.” Yet, all they could allege against Him was that on one occasion He had said, ““Destroy this temple of God, and I will rebuild in three days.” This He had not said in the sense which they desired to give it. But it answered the purpose of the high priest’s court in any way to prove that, being a mere man, He had blasphem- ously assumed omnipotence or co-equality with God. But the witnesses disagreed so much in their other misrepresentations, that it was'in form as well as in substance, illegal evidence. Most unwarrantably in all our conceptions of law and evidence imperilling character or life, He was compelled, under a solemn oath or adjuration, to Swear against His own life. But He gave them a response, under that solemnity, in ‘the affirmative that He was Christ, the Son of the Blessed, which in their sense was Bpesphemy, being, as they alleged, “making Himself equal with God.” But instead of mitigating His offense, He adds, “that they should yet see Him on the right hand of the Almighty, coming in the clouds of heaven, to judge the world.” This, in their construction, was blasphemy against God. In their judgment, as | the Supreme Court of the Jewish nation, they pronounced Him “guilty of death.” Imme- diately on pronunciation of His sentence, the mob, aided and abetted by His accusers and the court of the high priest, proceeded to show Him every form of indignity, to degrade and insult Him in every conceivable way. They spit in His face, buffeted Him, blindfolded Him, smote Him with the palms of their hands, and in derision said: “Prophecy to us who it was that smote Thee.” But although condemned by this court “to be worthy of death,” being tributary to the Roman government and under civil polity, they had not power to enforce their decision, and, therefore, resolved to have Him arraigned before Czxsar’s court, and under the administration of Pontius Pilate. _ That blasphemy or assumed divinity was not a mortal sin under the Roman law, Ognizing the worship of many gods, was essentially polytheistical in its spirit and cter. A new crime must be alleged against Him. He is, therefore, accused of son against that government, because He talked of establishing a new kingdom; , therefore, by implication, assumed to be a king. As a traitor, a treasonable person, aiming at the supremacy of the state—in fact a rival of Cesar—he is indicted and delivered up to Pontius Pilate. No sooner had Pilate’s wife heard of the commo- in among the people, and of her husband being called to judge His case than she ent to him her ominous dream with her warning not to decide against Him. _ Pilate, himself, well knew that on the part of the Jews, it was wholly a work of c Nevertheless, time- -serving and unprincipled Pagan that he was, despite of her ie f | principle but his own political aggrandizement, in mockery of ‘all justice, washing hands before the people instead of purifying his conscience, he commanded Him 102 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. into whose custody he was committed even in the Governor’s court, arrayed him in an old scarlet robe, crowned him with a wreath of thorns, and put a mock-scepter into His hands, bowing the knee in derision and hailing Him as King of the Jews. Amid all this contumely and insult “‘as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, He opened not His mouth.” During this reign of darkness in His humiliation, His condemnation having been extorted from His own lips, while witnessing a good confession before many spec- tators, may we not exclaim with the prophet, ‘Who can describe the character of His contemporaries, by whose counsels and hands He was betrayed, condemned, insulted and crucified?” Yet in all this, as testifies one of His aspostles, ““When He suffered He threat- ened not,’ but committed His cause and made His appeal “to Him who judges righteously.” He is crucified between two of the vilest malefactors, in the presence of a world’s convention, composed not of Gentiles only, but of Jews assembled from every nation under the skies. No son of man ever possessed a sensitiveness so delicate as His; and, therefore, no one can conceive of the intense agonies which He endured. Forsaken by His Father, deserted by His friends, mocked and insulted by His enemies, nailed to a Roman cross, suspended between heaven and earth He expired. The earth trembled, the rocks were rent, but He dies a sin-offering, as the ‘Lamb of God” bearing away the sin of the world. The agonies He endured were not mere physical pain, though even that was beyond all our conception. His Father hid His face from Him, and His soul felt the bitterness of His indignation and desertion. Even the anticipation of it was a burden that covered Him with a sweat of blood, while in Gethsemane He groaned in horror at the approaching scene, and praying said, “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from Me; but, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” No sinful man familiar- ized with guilt can ever fathom the depth of that agony indicated in the utterance of these words, “My God! my God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” After His resurrection from the dead, at different intervals, He frequently held interviews with His disciples, and gave them many infallible proofs of His resur- rection and personal identity; and on His own assignation they were present to witness His ascension into heaven. , To Luke we are chiefly indebted for the narration of this glorious scene, and to David for our knowledge of His triumphant entrance into heaven. The former, in his Acts of the Apostles, records the manner of His ascension; and the latter, in his prophetic Psalms, makes the scene of His entrance into heaven and His reception there pass before us in all the splendors of the richest imagery. To these we can only make a brief allusion. , Having delivered His last instructions to His disciples, the Apostles, and led them out of Jerusalem as far as to Bethany, and thence again ascending the Mount of Olives, while in the act of pronouncing upon them a final benediction, in a chariot of angels He slowly and sublimely ascends to heaven. He does not suddenly vanish from their sight as a gleam of light or a vivid coruscation of lightning, but slowly and sublimely mounts in a chariot of angels, a fair vision of which Israel had when, from his pillow at Bethel, on a ladder, in a climax of glory, the angels of God were returning to their heavenly throne from a special visit to Him concerning the “Desire of Nations,” the light and “Morning Star” of Jacob. Enrapt in beatific vision, gazing on the wake of glory reflected from His celestial train while He approaches the heaven of heavens, absorbed even to an oblivion of themselves, of earth and all its glory, they stood breathless gazing, awaiting His return. But in condescendin sympathy He sends back a portion of His retinue to inform them that they need 0 Justification and Coronation of the Mcssiah—Campbell. 103 longer wait for His descent again. David, speaking by the Spirit, in solemn vision of this long anticipated scene, after informing us that God’s chariots are myriads of angels, opens to our contemplation His reception at the gates of the Celestial City. From him we learn that His. preceding heralds as soon as they approach the heavenly gate address the sentinels of the Eternal City in such words as these: “Lift up your heads, you towering gates, you heavenly doors give way that the King of Glory may enter in.” The sentinels demand “Who is this King of Glory? Who?” His heralds respond, ‘The Lord Messiah, the Almighty Hero who vanquished death and broke the scepter of the grave.” The sentinels in triumph shout, “Lift up your heads, you towering gates, you heavenly portals wide expand that the King of Glory may enter in.” Thus He enters the presence—the chamber of the Everlasting King. Soon as He approaches the Divine Majesty arising from His eternal throne and addressing Him says, “Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thy foes Thy footstool. Reign Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.” “I will extend the rod of Thy great empire over all the earth, and make Thy foes Thy footstool.” Thus was He crowned Lord of All. The angels from all the worlds above, from all the worlds of Jehovah, with all the principalities, authorities and powers of heavenly spheres, are summoned to the scene; and having presented to them “the First Born from the dead, the beginning of the new creation,” the Eternal Father who in the days of the Messiah’s humiliation once spoke from the excellent glory, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I delight; obey Him;” now addressing the heads of all the celestial departments of spiritual hierarchies, commands their allegiance to Him saying, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” “To Him let every knee bow; to Him let every tongue swear alle- giance.” The choral triumph rises. The universal hallelujah echoes through all the realms of glory. The four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat upon the throne, and worship Him that liveth forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and authority; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” Thus was the Messiah crowned Lord of All. And here we shall return to Jerusalem where He had been degraded and crucified asafelon. There we find the twelve Apostles in full assembly met; the chair vacated by the apostacy of Judas, the traitor, having been filled by an appeal to heaven. They were according to the command of the risen Lord, waiting for a new message from Him as the Supreme Sovereign of earth and heaven; and waiting too under the public reprobation consequent upon the condemnation and crucifixion of their leader. Under such a load of infamy how could they presume to say one word in His favor! They were, therefore, both kindly and wisely commanded by their Leader “to tarry in Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high.” It passed into a proverb, that wherever character or reputation is lost, there only can it be found or regained. As, therefore, He had been dishonored in Jerusalem, and before a national convention, in Jerusalem alone, before a similar national con- vention could He be successfully and triumphantly justified from all the charges alleged against Him. Hence the annunciation of what had transpired in heaven during the week intervening between His ascension and the day of Pentecost, was deferred till the next national convention. Meantime, as already observed, a grand revolution, or rather, perhaps, we should say, new order of things, had been consummated in heaven. All authority, legislative, judicial and executive, is irrevocably lodged in His hands. The Father now judges no man, and will not judge the world at the final judgment. He is ordered by God, His Father, to judge the living and the dead at His second coming. Moreover, the Holy Spirit Himself is given to Him, not as it 104 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ; was upon Him and in Him, during His personal ministry, qualifying Him as the Son of Man, for the grand mission on which He came; but it is now given Him to dis- pense in whatever gifts or measures He pleases. The convention annually succeeding the Passover week was called the Pentecost, or the commemoration of the giving of the law to Israel from Mount Sinai on the fiftieth day after the institution of the Passover sacrifice. Then God condescended to meet Moses on Mount Sinai, in Arabia, and, through ranks of angels, put into his hands the moral constitution, or law of ten commands. Most apposite, then, according to the symbolic institution, it was that the day which commemorated that event should be the day on which the Holy Spirit would descend from heaven to Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, at the opening of the new dispensation of remedial love. And as the descent in the presence of a grand convention of the seed of Abraham, so this, also, should be in the presence of a similar convention of the same people, present from every nation under heaven. When, therefore, the whole Christian church was con- vened in one place, and the nation, also, by its numerous representatives from all kingdoms and tribes, was assembled at their metropolis; the Gospel trumpet was heard; a sound from heaven equally significant of the Divine presence, affrighted and summoned all Jerusalem to the spot where the new community of the true Israel of God was solemnly waiting the advent of the promised Advocate—Paraclete—to empower them to proceed in the work given them in solemn charge. His arrival, or descent from heaven, was not only heard rending the heavens, but He was also seen in tongues resembling fire, separate from each other glowing in heaven’s own brightness, on the heads of the Holy Twelve. On seeing the concourse, simultaneously they arose as one man,-and opening their mouths in all the dialects of the earth there assembled, they solemnly and sublimely announced that the Mes- — siah was justified before God from all the allegations of blasphemy and treason preferred against Him; that He was, in fact, crowned ‘‘Lord of All,” and constituted the reigning Sovereign of the universe—angels, authorities and powers being subject to Him. Suffice it to say, that just as many Jews were saved that day as were killed at the giving of the law on the first Jewish Pentecost. Thus commenced the new kingdom or reign of heaven. An analysis of the incidents and events of that day, most memorable in the annals of Christianity, is fraught with many blessings to those who sincerely and with a single eye investigate its sublime details. Peter’s speech on that occasion is the grand opening of the new dispensation of divine grace. To him, in honor of his early confession of the true faith in the person, mission and office of the Lord Jesus at Ceesarea Phillippi, in attestation of its truthfulness and importance, were the keys of the kingdom of heaven granted. He, therefore, primarily and emphatically opened the kingdom of heaven to the Jews, and afterwards to the Gentiles convened at Cesarea in the house of the Roman centurion, Cornelius. The Holy Spirit on both occasions confirming his word with unequivocal attestations. If there was a revolution or change of government in heaven, a shaking of heaven, a change of administration, pursuant upon the ascension, trial, justification and coro- nation of the Lord Jesus Christ, there was also a new era—a new dispensation of divine government, evangelical and not legal, pursuant upon the descension of the Holy Spirit, to remain always in the Church, as its quickening, animating, sanctifying and soul-inspiring life. In the former case, its termination was an incarnation of | Divinity in humanity in the person of the Lord Jesus (for such was the consummation of the legal and typical age): but in the latter case, it is not an incarnation, but an inhabitation of God through the Holy Spirit, now the holy guest in the members of © that spiritual community called the body of Christ, or the house of God, the pillar and 4 support of the truth in the world. We are thus led farther into the arcana of the | Justification and Coronation of the Messiah—Campbell. 105 house that Jesus built, in contrast with the house, or rather tent, that Moses built. But to develop this would lead us far beyond our present limits and design, and, therefore, we undertake no such task at present. We can only add, as consonant with our theme and the occasion, the justification of the Lord Jesus both in heaven and on earth, from the specifications against Him on the part of His enemies, does not, in the least, mitigate against this fact that He did profess to be equal with God His Father in His supreme Deity, and the real and rightful King of earth and heaven; for this He virtually affirmed, while witnessing a good confession, both before Annas and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate. During His trial He admitted that He was emphatically “the Son of God;” that God was as really and literally His Father as Mary was His mother; and that He was born of her to be a king, and was a king, born of an heiress to the throne of David, and was her first-born, and consequently had a right to both the throne of David and the throne of God, both of which were symbolized in the throne of God’s annointed or Christed David. In aiming at and in claiming these honors and this sovereignty over the earth and heaven, in affirming that ali authority—legislative, executive and judicial—was rightfully His, and was given to Him by His Father and His God,.He was not in so doing guilty of either blasphemy against God or treason against Cesar. He admitted the indictment to be literally true and just in the facts on which it was based, but denied that in His case it was either blasphemy or treason so to assume. There is no stronger evidence or proof of the true, proper, and real Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, than that derived from His trial and conviction. He confessed, against His own life, that he was in the peculiar sense of the indictment, the “Son of the Blessed, the only Begotten of the Father.” They only proved it constructively and by implication, but He affirmed it boldly and explicitly. He denied not that He had said that He could “rebuild the temple of His own body in three days,” a greater miracle far than the building of Solomon’s temple. To give life to the dead is the superlative of all power. To be reanimated by a power inherent in one’s own self is the unequivocal assumption of real Divinity. And so the High Priests, the Rabbis, Scribes and the people understood it. What a silly excuse has any one for his lifeless, soulless Unitarianiism, who under- stands the trial, the confession, and the condemnation of the Messiah! Had He assumed Divinity in the Unitarian sense, the Jews would have had no argument against Him with the people of that day, who admitted the inspiration and Divine mission of so many eminent persons, some of whose Divine attestations were as unquestionable as those of Jesus, the Messiah. The last confession of Jesus, and His condemnation thereupon by the priesthood of His own nation, is to an enlightened and well-balanced mind free from prejudice, an all-sufficient argument in attestation of His true and proper Divinity, else He had died a martyr to a lie. It is also irre- fragably an evidence and proof that His death was a true, proper and real sacrifice for sin, or an atonement for sin, as it is of His personal and proper Divinity. For whose sins did He die? Death is the wages of sin. God had decreed that he who sins shall die, but He has not decreed that the innocent and unoffending shall die. Tf, then, an innocent, pure and holy man should die, death would cease to be the wages of sin, unless we suppose that his death was voluntarily tendered and accepted in the room or for the sake of another. The conclusion seems to be inevitable that Jesus ‘was a rank impostor, or that He was really, truly and properly, a divine person; and that His death was a true and real sacrifice for sin. These conclusions may, indeed, be approached, and have often been most satisfactorily approached and confirmed in many a well-beaten and well-established path of reasoning, and evidence; but, as it appears to me, in none more clear, direct and satisfactory than this. : But this, though an important aim, and a chief point in this discourse, is not the 106 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. cardinal object. These great facts and developments, though historical, are also doctrinal. They are, indeed, premises of transcendent significance. They teach the true, real and proper divinity and humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. They also teach His full and satisfactory sacrifice for sin, by which He magnified the divine law and government, and justified God’s character in forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. His resurrection from the dead, His ascension into heaven, His coronation as Lord of the universe, having all power and authority over angels, men and demons, given unto Him, are indeed, ample evidence of the divine approbation of what He had done and suffered for us. They are, when contemplated in their evangelical import and bearings, supremely interesting and soul-absorbing themes—the very basis of what is called “the kingdom of heaven,” or the reign of God in man. This reign of grace within men, under the style of “the kingdom of heaven,” was the antitype of many a figure; the burthen of many a prophecy; the theme of many a discourse on the part of John the Harbinger, of the Messiah Himself, and of the Holy Twelve, after they had been plenarily inspired by the descent of the Holy Spirit. It is regarded as the grand ultimatum of sovereign and almighty love, and is emphatically styled the ‘‘Philanthropy of God, our Savior,’ shining forth from the full-orbed face of the Sun of Righteousness and Mercy, the contemplated design and consummation of the greatest of all events, the investiture of the Lord Jesus with absolute sovereignty, as the one only reigning monarch of God’s whole creation— “angels, authorities, principalities and powers” of all ranks and orders, “having been subjected to Him.””’ Amongst men it would be called a “revolution in the universe;” a term, however, wholly inappropriate. It is, indeed, a grand epoch, a new era in eternity, ‘“‘the consummation of ages.”’” When announcing it in Jerusalem, on Pente- cost, after he had received an unction from above, Peter made the proclamation consequent upon the coronation of his Master, ‘Let all the house of Israel most assuredly know that God has constituted that same Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ,” the anointed sovereign of all. This christening, or anointing, of Jesus as autocrat of the universe was, indeed, the most grand, august and sublime event that ever transpired; and the proclamation of it the most thrilling and soul-subduing annunciation ever uttered on earth. This honor Peter had, and Jerusalem witnessed. It was indeed, the proper place. It was the capital of the only kingdom on earth especially related to God. It was “the city of the Great King,” and the theater of the temple of God. It was that Zion upon which Isaiah and Micah foretold the new law—the last message of Jehovah—should go forth; ‘‘For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Hence it was that the Lord, in giving His last directions to the apostles, commanded them to begin at Jerusalem. Christianity was never clearly understood by any man who did not begin at Jerusalem and fully learn the meaning of the events that transpired there at the time of the first annunciation of the coronation of the Lord Messiah. It was, indeed, ‘‘the holy city,” the consecrated theater of all the grand scenes of human redemption. In its environs Jesus was born of Mary, the virgin, providentially summoned there from Nazareth, under a decree of Cesar Augustus. There, too, he was dishonored. There he was crucified, died, was buried and rose again. In its precincts after his return from Galilee,and from the Mount of Olives He ascended to heaven. There, too, the Holy Spirit personally descended from heaven to animate, sanctify and dwell in the church during His absence till He return to it again, or to His church mysti- cally so denominated. In Jerusalem the first Gospel sermon was. preached. There were the first three thousand penitents forgiven, and thence has been diffused over the broad earth “the Word of Life.’ Christianity is not a new addition of patriarchal or of Jewish institutions. It is not a reiterated allegory. It is a clear development of > << Justification and Coronation of the Messiah—Campbell. 107 mysteries, “hid from ages and generations” that pass away before its promulgation. Many rénowned patriarchs and prophets desired to understand the institution which they ministered and the oracles which they uttered. But they did not. Their insti- tutions, their rites and ceremonies, their holy terms and holy things were but worldly and temporary adumbrations of good things then future; “God having provided some better things for us, that they without us, should not be made perfect.” Abel’s, Noah’s and Abraham’s lambs, the Paschal lamb, the millions of lambs “on Jewish altars slain,” the tabernacle and its worship, the temple and its more splendid ceremonies were, one and all, but shadows of the true Lamb of God, and His mission. He is the Lamb provided by God Himself, slain, only type “from the found- ation of the world” down to the crucifixien of the true “‘Lamb of God” that took away the sins of the world. . It was his harbinger, John the Baptist, that first pointed Him out as “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world.” The Abrahamic and Jewish covenants were only covenants of promise. Their circumcisions, bloody offerings, washings and legal ablutions, were all but ‘“‘shadows of good things to come,” the substance of which was Christ and His evangelical institutions. The Jews were circumcised, ‘baptized into Moses, in the cloud, and in the sea;” ate the mystic manna, drank the mystic rock, yet feli in the wilderness, and fell short of Canaan. The sacrifices, purifications, pardons, were only types, symbols, of a real sacrifice, a real purification, a real pardon through faith in the blood of the true Lamb of God, whether by them prospectively or by us retrospectively contemplated. The heavens came down in the person of Jesus, and in that of the Holy Spirit on the first Pente- cost after the sacrifice of Christ and His coronation in heaven. “For a little while,” as Macknight translated it, “He was made lower than the angels, that, by the grace of God, He might taste of death for all; but now, being crowned with glory and honor, He is exalted a Prince and a Savior to grant (the benefits of) repentance to Israel—even the remission of sins.” Upon a review of our subject, indeed, of all the promises of the Bible we may say, that “as the path of the just shineth more and more from the sacrifice of Abel to the descent of the Holy Spirit to be the guest of the Christian temple on the first Pentecost after the Lord’s ascension; we, therefore, contemplate the patriarchal dispensation as the starlight; the Jewish dispensation as the moonlight; the mission of John as the twilight; the Chris- tian dispensation, beginning with the exaltation of the Lord Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit, as the sunlight of the world. The Son of Righteousness has, accord- ing to Malachi, the last of the ancient prophetic line, risen upon the world “with healing in his wings.” Let us “go forth, then, and grow up like calves of the stall.” The holy patriarchs had but the bud; the Jews had but the blossom; we have the mature fruit of Divine grace. But alas! how few, very few of us realize and enjoy the fullness of the blessings of the Gospel of Christ contained in the rich promises and the holy ordinances of Christ’s reign! Yet we are not straightened in Him, but in our own low, imperfect and inade- quate conceptions of Him in all His personal and official fullness and glory. Many of us are still serving under the oldness of the letter rather than in the newness of the Spirit. We have carnalized and secularized rather than spiritualized the Gospel and its institutions. We seem to prefer the husks that envelop the Gospel fruit rather than eat and enjoy the ripe corn in the ear—the weak and beggarly elements of a hoary tradition, even in its dotage, than the bread and water of life of the new kingdom of grace. We have created our metaphysical and theological idols, and after them we will go. One will have his faith alone, that is, his opinion, another acts as though 108 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. he believed in watet alone; another in his works alone. One changes water into wine; another wine into water. One fights for the word alone; another for the Spirit alone. One converts his god into a wafer and eats him; another fattens upon new dreams and visions of some spirit which he mistakes for the Spirit of God. But the small remnant, the true elect of God, believe all that God says; hope for all that God promises; obey in aim and in heart all that God commands, and endeavor to keep themselves pure from all the idols of the world. As many as thus walk we will say and pray with the Apostles, “Peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon all the Israel of God.” [This sermon was requested by Mr. Townsend of the Christian Missionary So- ciety. It is from “The Home Life of Alexander Campbell,’ which is copyrighted and published by the Christian Publishing Co., St. Louis, Mo., and it is reproduced here with their permission. It was written by Mr. Campbell in 1850, to be used in a collec- tion of sermons, and was considered the most suitable for this work. Alexander Campbell was born near Ballymena, county Antrim, Ireland, and died at Bethany, W. Va., in 1866. He came to America in 1809, establishing a paper called the Christian Baptist, in 1823. Some four or five years later his labors crystal- lized into the formation of the Disciple or Christian church. ] Perera cies ws een Bg — 09) : AN ENQUIRY. WILLIAM CAREY. Romans 10: 12-15. An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, are considered by William Carey. Then follows the great conclusion of Paul in his letter to the Romans (10:12-15): ‘For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. . . . How shall they preach except they be sent?” He happened to be in Birmingham in 1786 collecting subscriptions for the rebuilding of the chapel in Moulton, when Mr. Thomas Potts, who had made a fortune in trade with America, discovering that he had prepared the manuscript, gave him £10 to publish it. And it appeared at Leicester in 1792, “price one shilling and sixpence,” the profits to go to the proposed mission, The pamphlet form doubtless accounts for its disappearance now; only three copies are known to be in existence. This Enquiry has a literary interest of its own, as a contribution to the statistics and geography of the world, written in a cultured and almost finished style, such as few, if any, University men of that day could have produced, for none were impelled by such a motive as Carey had. In an obscure village, toiling save when he slept, and finding rest on Sunday only by a change of toil, far from libraries and the society of men with more advantages than his own, this shoemaker, still under thirty, surveys the whole world, continent by continent, island by island, race by race, faith by faith, kingdom by kingdom, tabulating his results with an accuracy, and following them up with a logical power of generalization which would extort the admiration of the learned even of the present day. Having proved that the commission given by our Lord to His disciples is still binding on us, having reviewed former undertakings for the conversion of the heathen from the Ascension to the Moravians and “the late Mr. Wesley” in the West Indies, and having thus surveyed in detail the state of the world in 1786, he removes the five impediments in the way of carrying the Gospel among the heathen, which his con- temporaries advanced—their distance from us, their barbarism, the danger of being killed by them, the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of life, the unintelligibleness of their languages. These his loving heart and Bible knowledge enable him skillfully to turn in favor of the cause he pleads. The whole section is essential to an apprecia- tion of Carey’s motives, difficulties, and plans:— “First, As to their distance from us, whatever objections might have been made on that account before the invention of the mariner’s compass, nothing can be alleged for it with any color of plausibility in the present age. Men can now sail with as much certainty through the Great South Sea as they can through the Mediterranean or any lesser sea. Yea, and providence seems in a manner to invite us to the trial, as there are to our knowledge trading companies, whose commerce lies in many of the places where these barbarians dwell. At one time or other ships are sent to visit places of more recent discovery, and to explore parts the most unknown; and every fresh IIO Pulpit Power and Eloquence. account of their ignorance or cruelty should call forth our pity, and excite us to concur with providence in seeking their eternal good. Scripture likewise seems to point out this method, ‘Surely the Isles shall wait for me; the ships of Tarshish first, to bring my sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord, thy God.’—Isaiah 60:9. This seems to imply that in the time of the glorious increase of the church, in the laiter days (of which the whole chapter is undoubtedly a prophecy), commerce shall subserve the spread of the Gospel. The ships of Tarshish were trading vessels, which made voyages for traffic to various parts; thus much therefore must be meant by it, that navigation, especially that which is commercial, shall be one great mean of carrying on the work of God; and perhaps it may imply that there shall be a very considerable appropriation of wealth to that purpose. “Secondly, As to their uncivilized and barbarous way of living, this can be no objection to any, except those whose love of ease renders them unwilling to expose themselves to inconveniences fer the good of others. It was no objection to the apostles and their successors, who went among the barbarous Germans and Gauls, and still more barbarous Britons! They did not wait for the ancient inhabitants of these countries to be civilized before they could be christianized, but went simply with the doctrine of the cross; and Tertullian could boast that ‘those parts of Britain which were proof against the Roman armies, were conquered by the gospel of Christ.’ It was no objection to an Eliot or a Brainerd, in later times. They went forth, and encountered every difficulty of the kind, and found that a cordial reception of the gospel produced those happy effects which the longest intercourse with Europeans without it could never accomplish. It is no objection to commercial men, It only tequires that we should have as much love to the souls of our fellow-creatures, and fellow-sinners, as they have for the profits arising from a few otter-skins, and all these difficulties would be easily surmounted. “After all, the uncivilized state of the heathen, instead of affording an objection against preaching the gospel to them, ought to furnish an argument for it. Can we as men, or as Christians, hear that a great part of our fellow-creatures, whose souls are as immortal as ours, and who are as capable as ourselves of adorning the gospel and contributing by their. preachings, writings, or practices to the glory of our Redeemer’s name and the good of His church, are enveloped in ignorance and bar- barism? Can we hear that they are without the gospel, without government, without laws, and without arts and sciences, and not exert ourselves to introduce among them the sentiments of men and of Christians? Would not the spread of the gospel be the most effectual means of their civilization? Would not that make them useful members of society? We know that such effects did in a measure follow the afore-mentioned efforts of Eliot, Brainerd, and others among the American Indians; and if similar attempts were made in other parts of the world, and succeeded with a divine blessing (which we have every reason to think they would), might we not expect to see able divines, or read well-conducted treatises in defence of the truth, even amongst those who at present seem to be scarcely human? “Thirdly, In respect to the danger of being killed by them, it is true that whoever does go must put his life in his hand, and not consult with flesh and blood; but do not the goodness of the cause, the duties incumbent on us as the creatures of God and Christians, and the perishing state of our fellow-men, loudly call upon us to venture all, and use every warrantable exertion for their benefit? Paul and Barnabas, who hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, were not blamed as being rash, but commended for so doing; while John Mark, who through timidity of mind deserted them in their perilous undertaking, was branded with censure. After all, as has been already observed, I greatly question whether most of the barbarities practiced by the savages upon those who have visited them, have not originated in An Enquiry—Carey. III some real or supposed affront, and were, therefore, more properly acts of self-defence than proofs of ferocious dispositions. No wonder if the imprudence of sailors should prompt them to offend the simple savage, and the offence be resented; but Eliot, Brainerd, and the Moravian missionaries have been very seldom molested. Nay, in general the heathen have showed a willingness to hear the word; and have principally expressed their hatred of Christianity on account of the vices of nominal *Christians. “Fourthly, As to the difficulty of procuring the necessaries of life, this would not be so great as may appear at first sight; for, though we could not procure European food, yet we might procure such as the natives of those countries which we visit, subsist upon themselves. And this would only be passing through what we have virtually engaged in by entering on the ministerial office. A Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his own; he is the servarit of God, and therefore ought to be wholly devoted to Him. By entering on that sacred office he solemnly undertakes to be always engaged, as much as possible, in the Lord’s work, and not to choose his own pleasure or employment, or pursue the ministry as a something that is to subserve his own ends, or interests, or as a kind of bye-work. He engages to go where God pleases, and to do or endure what He sees fit to command, or call him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids farewell to friends, pleasures and comforts, and stands in readiness to endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord and Master. It is inconsistent for ministers to please themselves with thoughts of a numerous auditory, cordial friends, a civilized country, legal protection, affluence, splendor, or even a competency. The slights and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy prisons and tortures, the society of barbarians of uncouth speech, miserable accommodations in wretched wildernesses, hunger and thirst, nakedness, weariness, and painfulness, hard work, and but little worldly encouragement, should rather be the objects of their expectation. Thus the apostles acted, in the primitive times, and endured hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ; and though we, living in a civilized country where Christianity is protected by law, are not called to suffer these things while we continue here, yet I question whether all are justified in staying here, while so many are perishing without means of grace in other lands. Sure I am that it is entirely contrary to the spirit of the gospel for its ministers to enter upon it from interested motives, or with great worldly expectations. On the contrary, the commission is a sufficient call to them to venture all, and, like the primitive Christians, go everywhere preaching the gospel. “It might be necessary, however, for two, at least, to go together, and in general I should think it best that they should be married men, and to prevent their time from being employed in procuring necessaries, two or more other persons, with their wives and families, might also accompany them, who should be wholly employed in pro- viding for them. In most countries it would be necessary for them to cultivate a little spot of ground just for their support, which would be a resource to them, whenever their supplies failed. Not to mention the advantages they would reap from each other’s company, it would take off the enormous expense which has always attended undertakings of this kind, the first expense being the whole; for though a large colony needs support for a considerable time, yet so small a number would, upon receiving the first crop, maintain themselves. They would have the advantage of choosing their situation, their wants would be few; the women, and even the children, would be necessary for domestic purposes: and a few articles of stock, as a cow or two, anda bull, and a few other cattle of both sexes, a very few utensils of husbandry, and some corn to sow their land, would be sufficient. Those who attend the missionaries should understand husbandry, fishing, fowling, etc., and be provided with the necessary implements for these purposes. Indeed, a variety of methods may be thought of, and when once the work is undertaken, many things will suggest themselves to us, of which we at present can form no idea, 112 : Pulpit Power and Eloquence. “Fifthly, As to learning their languages, the same means would be found neces- sary here as in trade between different nations. In some cases interpreters might be obtained, who might be employed for a time; and where these were not to be found, the missionaries must have patience, and mingle with the people, till they have learned so much of their language as to be able to communicate their ideas to them in it. It is well known to require no very extraordinary talents to learn, in the space of a year, or two at most, the language of any people upon earth, so much of it at least as to be able to convey any sentiments we wish to their understandings. “The missionaries must be men of great piety, prudence, courage, and forbear- ance; of undoubted orthodoxy in their sentiments, and must enter with all their hearts into the spirit of their mission; they must be willing to leave all the comforts of life behind them, and to encounter all the hardships of a torrid or a frigid climate, an uncomfortable manner of living, and every other inconvenience that can attend this undertaking. Clothing, a few knives, powder and shot, fishing-tackle, and the articles of husbandry above mentioned, must be provided for them; and when arrived at the place of their destination, their first business must be to gain some acquaintance with the language of the natives (for which purpose two would be better than one), and by all lawful means to endeavor to cultivate a friendship with them, and as soon as possible let them know the errand for which they were sent. They must endeavor to convince them that it was their good alone which induced them to forsake their friends, and all the comforts of their native country. They must be very careful not to resent injuries which may be offered to them, nor to think highly of themselves, so as to despise the poor heathens, and by those means lay a foundation for their resentment or rejection of the gospel. They must take every opportunity of doing them good, and laboring and traveling night and day, they must instruct, exhort, and rebuke, with all long suffering and anxious desire for them, and, above all, must be instant in prayer for the effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the people of their charge. Let but missionaries of the above description engage in the work, and we shall see that it is not impracticable. “Tt might likewise be of importance, if God shall bless their labors, for them to encourage any appearances of gifts amongst the people of their charge; if such should be raised up many advantages would be derived from their knowledge of the language and customs of their countrymen; and their change of conduct would give great weight to their ministrations.” This first and still greatest missionary treatise in the English language closes with the practical suggestion of these means—fervent and united prayer, the formation of a catholic or, failing that, a Particular Baptist Society of “persons whose hearts are in the work, men of serious religion and possessing a spirit of perseverance,” with an executive committee, and subscriptions from rich and poor of a tenth of their income for both village preaching and foreign missions, or at least, an average of one penny or more per week from all members of congregations. He thus concludes:—“It is true all the reward is of mere grace, but it is nevertheless encouraging; what a treasure, what a harvest must await such characters as Paul, and Eliot, and Brainerd, and others, who have given themselves wholly to the work of the Lord. What a heaven will it be to see the many myriads of poor heathens, of Britons amongst the rest, who by their ‘labors have been brought to the knowledge of God. Surely a crown of rejoicing like this is worth aspiring to. Surely it is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our might, in promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ.” [The ministers’ meeting of 1792 came round, and on the 3lst of May Carey seized his opportunity. The place was Nottingham, from which the 1784 invitation to prayer had gone forth. Was the answer to come just there after nine years’ waiting? Hus Enquiry had been published; had it prepared the brethren? Ryland had been always OS An Enquiry—Carey. 113 loyal to the journeyman shoemaker he had baptized in the river, and he gives us this record:—‘‘Tf all the people had lifted up their voices and wept, as the children of Israel did at Bochim, I should not have wondered at the effect. It would only have seemed proportionate to the cause, so clearly did he prove the criminality of our supineness in the cause of God.” The text was Isaiah’s (54: 2, 3) vision of the widowed church’s tent stretching forth till her children inherited the nations and peopled the desolate cities, and the application to the reluctant brethren was couched in these two great maxims written ever since on the banners of the missionary host of the kingdom:— EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD. ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD. The service was over; even Fuller was afraid, even Ryland made no sign, and the ministers were leaving the meeting. Seizing Fuller’s arm with an imploring look, the preacher, whom despair emboldened to act alone for his Master, exclaimed: “And are you, after all, going again to do nothing?’ What Fuller describes as the “much fear and trembling” of these inexperienced, poor, and ignorant village preachers gave way to the appeal of one who had gained both knowledge and courage, and who, as to funds and men, was ready to give himself. They entered on their minutes this much: “That a plan be prepared against the next ministers’ meeting at Ketering for forming a Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.” The first purely English Missionary Society, which sent forth its own English founder, was thus con- stituted as described in the minutes of the Northampton ministers’ meeting.] [William Carey was born at Paulerspury, Northamptonshire, August 17, 1761, died at Serampore, India, June 9, 1834. His missionary labors commenced in India in 1794. He prepared grammars or dictionaries of Mahratta, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Telinga and Bengali. Had he done nothing more, this service would have been of incalculable value to the missionary cause. D. L. Leonard, the authority on missions, does not remember ever seeing Carey’s sermon, Isaiah 54: 2-3, which we had expected to use, so a summary of Carey’s Enquiry is used, from George Smith’s Life of Carey, published by John Murray, London. ] 114 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF GAR AFFECTION. THOMAS CHALMERS. “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.”—I John 2: 15. There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world—either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment; so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon, not to resign an old affection which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old aftec- tion for a new one. My purpose is to show, that from the constitution of our nature, the former method is altogether incompetent and ineffectual—and that the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it. After having accomplished this purpose, I shall attempt a few practical observations. Love may be regarded in two different conditions. The first is when its object is at a distance, and when it becomes love in a state of desire. The second is when its object is in possession, and then it becomes love in a state of indulgence. Under the impulse of desire, man feels himself urged onward in some path or pursuit of activity for its gratification. The faculties of his mind are put into busy exercise. In the steady direction of one great and engrossing interest, his attention is recalled from the many reveries into which it might otherwise have wandered; and the powers of his body are forced away from an indolence in which it else might have languished; and that time is crowded with occupation, which but for some object of keen and devoted ambition, might have driveled along in successive hours of weari- ness and distaste—and though hope does not always enliven, and success does not always crown this career of exertion, yet in the midst of this very variety, and with the alternations of occasional disappointment, is the machinery of the whole man kept in a sort of congenial play, and upholden in that tone and temper which are most agreeable to it. Insomuch, that if through the extirpation of that desire which forms the originating principle of all this movement, the machinery were to stop, and to receive no impulse from another desire substituted in its place, the man would be left with all his propensities to action in a state of most painful and unnatural abandonment. A sensitive being suffers, and is in violence, if, after having thoroughly rested from his fatigue, or been relieved from his pain, he continue in possession of powers without any excitement to these powers; if he possess a capacity of desire without having an object of desire; or if he have a spare energy upon his person, without a counterpart, and without a stimulus to call it into operation. The misery of such a condition is often realized by him who is retired from business, or who is retired from law, or who is even retired from the occupations of the chase, and of the gaming-table. Such is the demand of our nature for an object in pursuit, that 2 a a4 : —— SS —— The Expulsive Power of a New Affection—Chalmers. 115 no accumulation of previous success can extinguish it—and thus it is, that the most prosperous merchant, and the most victorious general, and the most fortunate gamester, when the labor of their respective vocations has come to a close, are often found to languish in the midst of all their acquisitions, as if out of their kindred and rejoicing element. It is quite in vain with such a constitutional appetite for employ- ment in man, to attempt cutting away from him the spring or the principle of one employment, without providing him with another. The whole heart and habit will .. rise in resistance against such an undertaking. The else unoccupied female, ‘atine = spends the hours of every evening at some play of hazard, knows as well as you, that the pecuniary gain, or the honorable triumph of a successful contest, are alto- gether paltry. It is not such a demonstration of vanity as ‘this that will force her away from her dear and delightful occupation. The habit can not so be displaced as to leave nothing but a negative and cheerless vacancy behind it—though it may so be supplanted as to be followed up by another habit of employment, to which the power of some new affection has constrained her. It is willingly suspended, for example, on any single evening, should the time that is wont to be allotted to gaming, required to be spent on the preparations of an approaching assembly. The ascendant power of a second affection will do what no exposition, however forcible, of the folly and worthlessness of the first, ever could effectuate. And it aa ee the same in the great world. You never will be able to _arrest any of its leadings pursuits by a naked d_ demonstration ¢ of their vanity. It is quite in vain to think of stopping one of these pursuits in any way else, but by stimulating to another. In attempting to bring a worthy man, intent aaa busied with the prosecution of- his objects, to a dead stand, you have not merely to encounter the charm which he annexes to these objects—but you have to encounter the pleasure which he feels in the very prosecution of them. It is not enough, then, that you dissipate the charm by your moral and eloquent and effecting exposure of its illusiveness. You must _ ad e.eye of his mind another object, with a charm powerful enough to pspossess the first of its influence, and to engage him in some other prosecution as f interest and. hope and con cenial activity, as the former. It is this which . an impotency on all moral and pathetic declamation about the insignificance of the world. A man will no more consent to the misery of being without an object, because that object is a trifle, or of being without a pursuit, because that pursuit ter- minates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, than he will voluntarily submit himself to the torture, because that torture is to be of short duration. If to be with- Out desire and without exertion altogether, is a state of violence and discomfort, then the present desire, with its correspondent train of exertion, is not to be got rid of simply by destroying it. It must be by substituting another desire, and another linz or habit of exertion in its place—and the most effectual way of withdrawing the mind — one object, is not by turning it away upon desolate and unpeop!ed vacancy— but by presenting to its regards another object still more alluring, “These remarks apply not merely to love considered in its state of desire for an object not yet obtained. They apply also to love considered in its state of indul- gence, or placid gratification, with an object already in possession. It is seldom that any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning. It may be done by excessive pampering—but it is almost never done by the mere force of mental determination. But what can not be thus destroyed, may be dis- possessed—and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind. It is thus that the boy ceases, at length, to be the slave of his appetite, but it is because a manlier taste has now brought it into subordination—and that the youth ceases to idolize pleasure, but it “Banunciation nina r 116 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. is because the idol of wealth has become the stronger and gotten the ascendency— and that even the love of money ceases to have the mastery over the heart of many a - thriving citizen, but it is because drawn into the whirl of city politics, another affec- tion has been wrought into his moral system, and he is now lorded over by the love of power. There is not one of these transformations in which the heart is left with- out an object. Its desire for one particular object may be conquered; but as to its desire for having some one object or other, this is unconquerable. Its adhesion to that on which it has fastened the preference of its regards, can not willingly be over- come by the rending away of a simple separation. It can be done only by the appli- cation of something else, to which it may feel the adhesion of a still stronger and more powerful preference. Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must haye.a.something.to lay hold of—and which, | if wrested away “without ‘the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as __ painful to the mind as hunger is.to the natural system. It may be dispossessed of one object, or of any, but it can not be desolated of all. Let there be a breathing and a sensitive heart, but without a liking and without affinity to any of the things that are around it, and in a state of cheerless abandonment it would be alive to nothing but the burden of its own consciousness, and feel it to be intolerable. It would make no difference to its owner, whether he dwelt in the midst of a gay and goodly world, or placed afar beyond the outskirts of creation, he dwelt a solitary unit in dark and unpeopled nothingness. The heart must have something to cling to—and never, by its own voluntary consent, will it so denude itself of all its attachments that there shall not be one remaining object that can draw or solicit it. The misery of a heart thus bereft of all relish for that which is wont to minister enjoyment, is strikingly exemplified in those, who satiated with indulgence, have been so belabored, as it were, with the variety and the poignancy of the pleasureable sensations that they have experienced, that they are at length fatigued out of all capacity for sensation whatever. The disease of ennui is more frequent in the French metropolis, where amusement is more exclusively the occupation of higher classes, than it is in the British metropolis, where the longings of the heart are more diversi- fied by the resources of business and politics. There are the votaries of fashion, who, in this way, have at length become the victims of fashionable excess—in whom the very multitude of their enjoyments has at last extinguished their power of enjoyment —who, with the gratifications of art and nature at command, now look upon all that is around them with an eye of tastelessness—who, plied with the delights of sense and of splendor even to weariness, and incapable of higher delights, have come to the end of all their perfection, and like Solomon of old, found it to be vanity and vexation. The man whose heart has thus been turned into a desert can vouch for the insupport- able languor which must ensue, when one affection is thus plucked away from the bosom, without another to replace it. It is not necessary that a man receive pain from anything, in order to become miserable. It is barely enough that he looks with distaste to everything—and in that asylum which is the repository of minds out of joint, and where the organ of feeling as well as the organ of intellect has been im- paired, it is not in the cell of loud and frantic outcries where you will meet with the acme of mental suffering. But that is the individual who outpeers in wretchedness all his fellows, who throughout the whole expanse of nature and society meets not an object that has at all the power to detain or to interest him; who neither in earth beneath, nor in heaven above, knows of a single charm to which his heart can send forth one desirous or responding movement; to whom the world, in his eye a vast and empty desolation, has left him nothing but his own consciousness to feed upon—dead to all that is without him, and alive to nothing but to the load of his own torpid and useless existence. The Expulsive Power of a New Affection—Chalmers. i1? ft will now be seen, perhaps, why it is that the heart keeps by its present affec- ~ tions with so much tenacity—when the attempt is to do them away by a mere process of extirpation. It will not consent to be so desolated. The strong man, whose dwelling-place is there, may be compelled to give way to another occupier—but tinless another, stronger than he, has power to dispossess and to succeed him, he will keep his present lodgment inviolable. The heart would revolt against its own emptiness. “It could not bear to be s0 left in a4 state Of waste and cheerless insipidity, The moralist who tries such a process of dispossession as this upon the heart is thwarted at every step by the recoil of its own mechanism. You have all heard that Nature abhors a vacuum, Such at least is the nature of the heart, that though the room which is in it may change one inmate for another, it can not be left void without pain of most intolerable suffering. It is not enough then to argue the folly of an existing affection. It is not enough, in the terms of a forcible or an affecting demonstration, to make good the evanescence of its object. It may not even be enough to associate the threats and terrors of some coming vengeance with the indulgence of it. The heart may still resist the every application, by obedience to which it would finally be con- ducted to a state so much at war with all its appetites as that of downright inanition. So to tear away an affection from the heart, as to leave it bare of all its regards, and of all its preferences, were a hard and hopeless undertaking—and it would appear as if the alone powerful engine of dispossession were to bring the mastery of another affection to bear upon it. ‘ _ We know not a more sweeping interdict upon the affections of Nature, than that which is delivered by the apostle in the verse before us. To bid a man into whom there is not yet entered the great and ascendant influence of the principle of regenera- | tion, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his heart. The world is the all of a natural man. He has not a taste, nor a desire, that points not to a something placed within the confines of its visible horizon. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it; and to bid him love not the world is to pass a sentence of expul- | sion on all the inmates of his bosom. To estimate the magnitude and the difficulty of such a surrender, let-us only think that it were just as arduous to prevail on him not to love wealth, which is but one of the things in the world, as to prevail on him to set willful fire to his own property. This he might do with sore and painful reluctance, if he saw that the salvation of his life hung upon it. But this he would do willingly if he saw that a new property of tenfold value was instantly to emerge from the wreck of the old one. In this case there is something more than the mere displacement of an affection. There is the overbearing of one affection by another. But to desolate his heart of all love for the things of the world without the substitution of any love in its place, were to him a process of as unnatural violence, as to destroy all the things he has in the world, and give him nothing in their room. So that, if to love not the world be indispensable to one’s Christianity, then the crucifixion of the old man is not too strong a term to mark that transition in his history, when all old things are done away, and all things are become new. We hope that by this time, you understand the impotency of a mere demonstration of this world’s insignificance. Its sole practical effect, if it had any, would be to leave the heart in a state to which every heart is insupportable, and that is a mere state of nakedness and negation. You may remember the fond and unbroken tenacity with which your heart has often recurred to pursuits, over the utter frivolity of which it sighed and wept but yesterday. The arithmetic of your short-lived days may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding—and from his fancied bed of death may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness—and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of y 118 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. men, with the absorbing grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, you may, touched and solemnized by his argument, ‘feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from the 'scene of so much vanity. But the morrow comes, and the business of the world, and the objects of the world, the moving forces of the world come along with it—and the ‘machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp, or some- thing to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be actuated just as ‘before—and in utter repulsion toward a state so unkindly as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire, does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its wonted | solicitations—nor in the habit and history of the whole man can we detect so much as one symptom of the new creature—so that the church, instead of being to him a _school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and ‘theatrical emotion; and the preaching which is mighty to compel the attendance of | multitudes, which is mighty to still and solemnize the hearers into a kind of tragic _ sensibility, which is mighty in the play of variety and vigor that it can keep te around | the imagination, is not mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. The love of the world can not be expunged by a mere demonstration of the world’s worthlessness, But may it not be supplanted by the love of that which is more worthy eigen P= =: than itself? The heart can not be prevailed upon to part with the world, b by a simple act of resignation, But may not the heart be prevailed upon to admit into its prefer- ence another, who shall subordinate the world, and bring it down from its wonted ascendency? If the throne which is placed there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has occupied it wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom which would rather detain him than be left in desolation. But may he not give way to the lawful sovereign, appearing with every charm that can secure his willing admittance, and taking unto Himself His great power to subdue the moral nature of man, and to reign over it? Ina word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object is to fasten it in positive love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all old things are to be done away, and _ al things are to become new. ~ To obliterate all our present affections, by simply expunging them, and so as to leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character, and to sub- ' stitute no new character in its place. But when they take their departure upon the \ ingress of other visitors; when they resign their sway to the power and predominance of new affections; when, abandoning the heart to solitude, they merely give place to a successor who turns it into as busy a residence of desire, and interest, and expecta- tion as before—there is nothing in all this to thwart or to overbear any of the laws of our sentient nature—and we see now, in fullest accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great moral revolution may be made to take place upon it. This, we trust, will explain the operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual, preaching of the Gospel. The love of God, and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity—and that ‘so “irreconcilable that they can not dwell together in the same bosom... We have already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart, by any innate elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from it, and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The heart is not so constituted, and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed ‘the 1e magnitude of the required change in a man’s character—when bidden as he is in the New Testament, to love not the world; no, nor any of the things that are in the world—for this so compre- hends all that is dear to him in existence as to be equivalent to a command of seli- annihilation. But the same revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience places The Expulsive Power of a New Affection—Chalmers. 119 within our reach as mighty an instrument of obedience. It brings for admittance, to the very door of our heart, an affection which, once seated upon its throne, will either subordinate every previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the world it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world, and with this peculiarity, which is all its own—that in the Gospel do we so behold God as that we may love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners —and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed ye Mediator. It is the bringing in of this better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God— / and to live without hope is to live without God, and if the heart be without God the | world will then have all the ascendency. It is God apprehended by the believer as | God in Christ who alone can dispost it from this ascendency. It is when He stands \ dismantled of the terrors which belong to Him as an offended lawgiver, and when we are enabled by faith, which is His own gift, to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, ve and to hear His beseeching voice, as it protests good-will to men, and entreats the return of all who will to a full pardon, and a gracious acceptance—it is then that a love paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive of it, first arises in the regenerating bosom. It is when released from the spirit of bondage, with which love can not dwell, and when admitted into the number of God’s children, through the Taith that isin Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is poured upon us—it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is de- livered from the tyranny of its former desires, and in the only way in which deliveranc2 is possible. And that faith which is revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to a sinner’s justification in the sight of God, is also the instrument of the greatest of all moral and spiritual achievements on a nature dead to the influence, and beyond the reach of every other application. Thus may we come to perceive what it is that makes the most effective kind of preaching. It is not enough to hold out to the world’s eye the mirror of its own \ imperfections. It is not enough to come forth with a demonstration, however pathetic, of the evanescent character of all its enjoyments. It is not enough to travel | the walk of experience along with you, and speak to your own conscience, and your / own recollection of the deceitfulness of the heart, and the deceitfulness of all that the heart is set upon. There is many a bearer of the Gospel-message, who has not shrewd- ness or natural discernment enough, and who has not power of characteristic descrip- ' tion enough, and who has not the talent of moral delineation enough, to present you with a vivid and faithful sketch of the existing follies of society. But that very cor- ruption which he has not the faculty of representing in its visible details, he may practically be the instrument of eradicating in its principle. Let him be but a faithful ‘expounder of the Gospel testimony. Unable as he may be to apply a descriptive hand to the character of the present world, let him but report with accuracy the matter _ which revelation has brought to him from a distant world—unskilled as he is in the work of so anatomizing the heart, as with the power of a novelist to create a graphical or impressive exhibition of the worthlessness of its many affections—let him only deal in those mysteries of peculiar doctrine on which the best of novelists have thrown the wantonness of their derision. He may not be able, with the eye of shrewd and. satirical observation, to expose to the ready recognition of his hearers the desires of worldliness—but with the tidings of the Gospel in commission he may wield the only engine that can extirpate them. He can not do what some have done, when, as if by the hand of a magician, they have brought out to view, from the hidden recesses of our nature, the foibles and lurking appetites which belong to it. But he has a truth in his possession, which into whatever heart it enters, will, like the rod of Aaron, swallow up them all; and unqualified as he may be, to describe the old man in all the nicer ae 120 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. shading of his natural and constitutional varieties, with him is deposited that ascend- ant influence under which the leading tastes and tendencies of the old man are de- stroyed, and he becomes a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us not cease, then, to ply the only instrument of powerful.and positive operation, to do away from you the love of the world. Let us try every legitimate method of finding access to your hearts for the love of Him who is greater than the world. For this purpose let us, if possible, clear away that shroud of unbelief which so hides and darkens the face of the Deity. Let us insist on His claims to your affection—and whether in the shape of gratitude, or in the shape of esteem, let us never cease to affirm that in the whole of that wondrous economy, the purpose of which is to reclaim a sinful world unto Himself—He, the God of love, so sets Himself forth in characters of endearment that naught but faith, and naught but understand- ing are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of your hearts back again. And here let me advert to the incredulity of a worldly man when he brings his own sound and secular experience to bear upon the high doctrines of Christianity— when he looks on regeneration as a thing impossible—when feeling, as he does, the obstinacies of his own heart on the side of things present, and casting an intelligent eye, much exercised perhaps in the observation of human life, on the equal obstinacies of all who are around him, he pronounces this whole matter about the crucifixion of the old man, and the resurrection of a new man in his place, to be in downright opposition to all that is known and witnessed of the real nature of humanity. We think that we have seen such men, who, firmly trenched in their own vigorous and home-bred sagacity, and shrewdly regardful of all that passes before them through the week, ‘and upon the scenes of ordinary business, look on that transition of the heart ‘by which it gradually dies unto time, and awakens in all the life of a new-felt and ever-growing desire toward God, as a mere Sabbath speculation; and who thus, with all their attention engrossed upon the concerns of earthliness, continue unmoved, to the end of their days, among the feelings, and the appetites, and the pursuits of earthliness. If the thought of death, and another state of being after it, comes across them at all, it is not with a change so radical as that of being born again, that they ever connect the idea of preparation. They have some vague conception of its being quite enough that they acquit themselves in some decent and tolerable way of their relative obligations; and that, upon the strength of some such social and domestic moralities as are often realized by him in whose heart the love of God has never entered, they will be transplanted in safety from this world, where God is the Being with whom, it may almost be said, that they have had nothing to do, to that world where God is the Being with whom they will have mainly and immediately to do throughout all eternity. They admit all that is said of the utter vanity of time, when taken up with as a resting-place. But they resist every application made upon the heart-of man, with the view of so shifting its tendencies that it shall not henceforth ~ find-in the interests of time all its rest and all its refreshment. They, in fact, regard such an attempt as an enterprise that is altogether aerial—and with a tone of secular -wisdom, caught from the familiarities of everyday experience, do they see a visionary ‘character in-all that is said of setting our affections on the things that are above; and ‘of walking by faith; and-of keeping our hearts in such a love of God as shall shut out ftom-them the-love of the world; and of having no confidence in the flesh; and of so renouncing earthly things as to’ have our conversation in heaven. ~~“ Now, it is altogether worthy of being remarked of those men who thus disrelish ‘spiritual Christianity, and, in‘ fact, deeti it an impracticable acquirement, how much of a piece their incredility about the ‘demands 5-8 39 ogg eae See ~ > Grieving the Spirit—Chapman. 141 In the second place we grieve the Spirit by failing to keep our hearts clean. John McNeil of Australia says, that a new heart is not necessarily a clean heart, but many of us have been thinking that it was. David committed a great transgression and was pardoned and prayed, ‘Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” But Paul says, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” John McNeil uses the illustration of a mother who puts a clean dress on her child in the morning, and tells her to keep it unspotted all day long. When night comes the child’s dress is so soiled that it is hard to tell whether it is white or black; but the mother cleanses it. The child had the will to keep it clean, but the nature of the child made her get it soiled. The same thing takes place every day, but if that mother could only impart some of her own spirit into that child, so that the child would not only have the will but the ability to keep clean, would not that be wonderful? That is exactly what God wants to do for us. He wants to put Himseli in us, and, while we have the old nature of the flesh, He wants to give us, in all its fullness, His own blessed nature, to keep us free from sin. Some say, that is perfec- _ tion. As an old minister once said to me, “I wish that people were as much afraid of imperfection as of perfection.” But we may forsake every known sin and still be very _ imperfect in God’s sight. In I Corinthians 4:4, Paul says, “I find nothing against myself.” “We receive that which we ask of Him, because we keep His command- ments and do the things that are well pleasing in His sight.” It is not a question as to whether I can keep from sin or not—I know that I cannot, for I have tried it for many years—but the question is as to whether Jesus Christ can keep me. Who am I that I should limit the power of the Almighty? “He is able to save unto the utter- most.” Has He not told us in Jude that He is “able to keep us from stumbling?” “Ts anything too hard for the Lord?” What must we do to be filled? You are the temple of God, and the Spirit dwelleth in you, so that if you want Him to fill you, the first thing to do is to get the temple clean. God does not require golden vessels or silver vessels, but He must have clean vessels. In the days of Hezekiah, when the temple was filled with things that had no place there, it had to be cleansed before God would manifest Himseli there. Again, when the court was filled with money changers, Christ had to drive them out. Too many of us have allowed ourselves to be soiled by contact with the world. We may not be grossly inconsistent, and yet many times we have lost our power. A man can never be filled with electricity so long as he stands on the ground; he may touch the current, but it will pass away from him; but if he stands on an insulated stool he will be filled. But if he touch the earth with one finger, he will lose the power. Now Paul says, “Come out from among them and be ye separate,—and touch not the unclean thing.” We have been told that if we would be filled with the Spirit, we must weep, pray, agonize, but it is all to no purpose. One minister said to me, “I believe this filling is only for a few elect persons.” Another said, “I have fulfilled every command of God, and still I am not filled.” Brethren, the thing to do is to stop weeping, agonizing, and to get down before God and say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me.” When you have become cleansed and set right then God will be ready to fill you. Then we may grieve the Spirit of God by practically denying His word. Was there not much of pathos in Jesus’ words when He said (John 8:43), “Why do ye not understand My speech?” Christ has promised to be with us “alway, even unto the end of the world.” With us in disappointment and trial. Dr. Dixon has said that a Christian should spell dis-appointment, His-appointment. When the oculist told Thane Miller that he would never see again in this life did he turn against God? No. For he said, “When the doctor whispered in my ear that my sight was gone, the Lord whispered, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end,’ and He has been better than 142 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. His word.” When trials come to you, and you rebel against them, you grieve the Holy Spirit of God. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” But we grieve the Spirit more perhaps in matters of doctrine than in anything else. It must grieve Him when we embrace one truth to the exclusion of another. Some people think that as soon as a man begins to study prophecy, he becomes a fanatic. We grieve Him in the matter of assurance. John says, ‘‘But this is written that ye may know ye have eternal life,” and yet Christians are continually praying, “Save us at last.” Do you not think that grieves the Spirit of God? We know that we are saved, not by feelings, for they change like the waves of the sea, but because the word of the Lord hath spoken it. To say anything elise, to believe anything else, to act as if you believed anything else, grieves the Spirit. I am thankful that I believe things not because I feel them, not because I understand them, not because I can reconcile them with science, nor because other men believe them, but because the Lord has spoken them. A man has no right to advance his views, unless he has compared scripture with scripture, and has reached his conclusions from the Word of God. Blessed book! Laughed at, scorned at, railed at; it is sweeter, more powerful than ever. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but this word, never, never, never! One word in closing. In Ephesians 4:31, the apostle says: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice.” This is a practical thought with which to close. Paul would seem to indicate that we grieve the Spirit by yielding to any of these things. The Spirit of God is grieved whenever we allow our old nature to triumph. [J. Wilbur Chapman was born in Indiana in 1859, studying at Oberlin College and Lake Forest University, and Lane Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1882. The year following he went to the Reformed Church at Schuylerville, N. Y., where a revival resulted in bringing into the church some of the leading men of the place. He was called to the First Reformed Church, Albany, which had in two years listened to one hundred and ten different candidates. In 1889 he was called to succeed A. T. Pierson at Bethany Church, Philadelphia. In three years over eleven hundred persons were added to the membership, over half of them being men. Four years later he resigned to enter more fully into evangelistic work, and now divides his time between the pastorate of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, New York, evangelistic work, and his summer Bible conference at Winona Lake, Ind., where he has built what is known as the Moody Memorial Home, at which preachers having a salary less than $1,000 per year are entertained during vacation months, practically free of charge. This sermon is on Dr. Chapman’s most effectual theme, the Holy Spirit. One who has heard him preach on this subject will never forget it. The report is from the Northfield Echoes, as delivered at East Northfield, Mass., in 1896.] re cRE er ee em ren ew (143) THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE. THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D. D., Ph. D. Exodus 15: 22-26, especially the last clause of the 26th verse—‘‘I am the Lord, thy healer.” (From Luther's version.) Here, beneath the very shadows of Sinai, we have the Gospel already in the Old Covenant, as truly comforting and supporting as anywhere in all the Bible. Weil could the Lord in after ages say, “When Israel was a child I loved him; I led them with bands of love.” Hosea 11: 1-4. For here, at the very threshold of the wilderness, He meets them with the gracious assurance, I am thy healer. How grandly was this Gospel promise verified! At every step they took in their onward journey, the divine helps multiplied. The triumphant song over their miracu- lous deliverance at the Red Sea had scarcely died away, and their first sad experience of life in the wilderness had hardly been realized, when the Lord heals the bitter waters of Marah. Thence He leads them to the palm grove and refreshing fountains of Elim; thence on to Sin, “where the people asked, and God brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.” With unseen hands He had stretched “the bands of love” throughout the wilderness, along which He guides them in “The fiery, cloudy pillar;” seeking to heal them of their youthful arrogance and stubbornness. And in order that they might clearly perceive that His mercies and His judgments alike aimed at the healing of their spiritual maladies, He gives them at the very outset of their pilgrimage, if they would but obey His voice, the abiding, comforting assur- ance, “I am the Lord, thy healer.” As if He would say: My child, in this wearisome journey thou wilt often be footsore; but I am thy healer. Often thou wilt suffer from hunger and thirst; the sun will smite thee by day, and the moon by night; but I am thy healer. Enemies, mighty and many, will assail to wound and bruise thee; but I am thy healer, thy hope, thy help. How well, beloved, was this wilderness adapted to train, as in a school, a young, arrogant nation into obedience to God, and trust in His word. Here, without the intervention of second causes, they were absolutely thrown upon God’s mercy, and had to derive, each morning, their daily subsistence from the dew of His love. Is it otherwise with us, beloved? Do not we realize the same gracious inter- positions of the Almighty? Has not the same unseen hand stretched “the bands of love” along our paths? At the very entrance of our life-pilgrimage, does He not meet us with His grace, in holy baptism, and say: “I am the Lord, thy healer?” In all the loving as well as the chastening dispensations of His providence, does He not aim to heal the maladies of our hearts? O, that we might never forget, when we come to our Marahs, and taste their bitter waters, this consoling truth, that He is our healer! But is this truth, that we are really being healed, manifested in our lives? Do we, in our needs, hasten at once to this healing Lord? Are His disciplines of “goodness and severity” restoring us to spiritual health? Alas! Alas! Look out upon the present Israel in the wilderness—Christendom; how sick, how very sick, the whole yet appears. How many have hewed them out numerous cisterns in the wilderness, who, never- theless, with Israel of old, still ery, “What shall we drink?” They quaff one cup of 144 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. pleasure after another, and perceive not the poison in the chalice. Their thirst is only aggravated; their condition becomes increasingly more hopeless and helpless, whilst—strange delusion!—they regard themselves as perfectly sound. Surveying our times and the world at large—Christendon and heathendom, church and state, home and family, ourselves and others—one may well exclaim with Isaiah: ‘“The whole head b is sick, and the whole heart faint.” j % , Listen, then, ye ailing, though pretending hale ones; ye pilgrims in the wilderness, whether your sojourn in it has only been three days or forty years; and ye, too, my countrymen, who have tasted something of the bitterness of exile in the land of strangers, listen today to the Gospel of Marah: “I am the Lord, thy healer.” Every ~ word of this Gospel is full of grace, and power, and comfort. The Lord will Himself } be our healer; is today; is your and my special healer; is in very truth the healer, who is fully adequate to all our maladies. Let us then refresh and strengthen ourselves, as we meditate on Marah’s Gospel: “T am the Lord, thy healer.’”’ We consider— I. That here all other help is excluded; “I am the Lord, thy healer.” II. That this help is of perpetual continuance: “I am the Lord, thy healer.” III. That it is both of universal and special application: “I am the Lord, thy healer.” IV. That it is irrevocably pledged, and demands, therefore, our fullest confidence: “T am the Lord, thy healer.” Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this precious truth! Preach it here today, as first at Marah, and may this Gospel, like the breath of life, penetrate and permeate all ailing hearts and homes. Lord, our complaints are so many and grievous, that Thou canst make Thy name renowned in our midst. Thou knowest them all better than we do ourselves. O, produce within us the conviction that we need a physician, and enable us to seek and find our remedy in Thee and Thy dear Son, that we may exultingly say, “Through His wounds we are healed!” Amen. 1. “I am the Lord, thy healer.” If we place the emphasis here, where God Himself, because of His incomparable- ness, has placed it, we shall at once perceive that all other help or healing is here excluded. Israel had probably sought and expected help from Moses. And no wonder. A three days’ journey in the wilderness, beneath a scorching sun and over burning sand, with waning strength of man and beast, was no ordinary trial; when, lo! they came to Marah. Water! water! is the tumultuous exclamation that echoes through Israel’s camp. All rush to the fountain, then—O, cruel disappointment!— “the people could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.” Sadness succeeds gladness—disappointment, transport. With murmurs long and loud the people turn to Moses, and despairingly ask, “What shall we drink?” ‘““Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” and the Lord, in answer to Moses’ cries, sweetens the bitter waters by means of a tree. The Lord was the healer, and the Lord exclusively. This is the first truth taught in the Gospel of Marah; a truth, by the way. not easily learned. For how many and various are the contrivarices to which men resort—and even Christian men—before they learn this divine exclusiveness of help asserted in the text. No man is without some healer or helper. Somehow, somewhere, he seeks for deliverance and comfort, be it in himself or in others. And to what sorry helpers he often resorts with his heart troubles! How little, after all, has the world learned to go directly to the living God for help. When men come to their Marah in any need or bitterness of life, what do they do? Just see. Yonder kneels the besotted heathen before his dumb idol, and that shall help him; or he runs to some priest, or wizard, oi juggler, and they shall help him; or he plunges into some sacred stream, tortures The Lord That Healeth Thee—Christlieb. 145 _ or lacerates his body, or “offers his first born for the sins of his soul;” and all this shall deliver him from guilt and perdition! 7 And how is it in Christian lands? Alas! Here the ointment for their wounded hearts is sought in haunts of pleasure, in convivial clubs, in diverting comedies, in amusing stories, in art galleries, in operatic entertainments; these shall divert, deliver, help, heal! Men everywhere act as though it had never been proclaimed, “I, the Lord ¥ am thy healer.” In the lazar-house of this world one plague-patient seeks help of _ another, and if any one essays to deliver himself, it only proves that self-help is self- destruction. And why? Because all these helps and helpers are not adequate to the terrible malady that afflicts the race. So men have found it. So God has declared it, “Thus saith the Lord: Thy bruise is incurable, thy wound grievous. There is none to plead thy cause, that thou mayest be bound up; thou hast no healing medicines.” Jer. 30: 12. The whole world contains not within itself a single drop of cooling water to quench the thirst of the soul, or to penetrate to the burning conscience. The incessant cry, therefore, continues: ‘‘What shall we drink?” Marah’s sad experience is daily renewed. Water is at hand, but it quenches no thirst. Moses is near, but Moses alone is helpless. Self-upbraiding and murmurs abound, but deliverance comes not. World-help, human-help, self-help—all are inadequate. By what right, now, can God claim this exclusive title of helper or healer? His mame already, “the Lord,” implies it. “I am Jehovah’—i. e., not only the Almighty, to whom nothing is impossible; nor simply the Omniscient, who thoroughly under- stands the nature and extent of all human complaints; but also the ‘‘Faithful and True,” who will reveal Himself to thee—set thee apart for His people, and who is, even now, ready to enter into covenant with thee. But His deeds, as well as His name, entitle Him to this exclusive right as helper or healer. With an outstretched arm He had just delivered Israel from Pharaoh’s hand. Through the healing of the waters at Marah He had renewedly demonstrated that he controlled the forces of nature; and that in special needs he could provide special helps. And who, we may well ask, had, from the beginning, cared for the fallen race? Who was, even now, gradually developing the great redemptive scheme, by the selection and training of a particular race and people? Was it not He alone? But how much greater is God’s right now to this exclusive title in the text? After the bitter waters of sin had flooded the earth, and one generation after another had drank its death-draught from the polluted stream, then he selected another tree and put that into the waters, and the curse and wrath-producing waters of sin were con- verted into the streams of salvation. It was the cross of Christ, the only green branch on the dead tree of humanity. This did He and He alone, the Holy, the Triune God. Now the invitation, sweet as angel music, resounds through this wilderness world: “Tf any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink.” Whenever now a soul drinks of this fountain, opened in Christ the Lord, so that it thirsts not again—i. e., is truly | healed—there God has been the physician through His Son, His Word, and His Spirit. In administering the saving means, God employs, indeed, human instrumentality, as Moses at Marah, but the specifically efficacious healing power is always He, His Word, His Spirit, His Grace, His Peace.. So that, in view of all this, God can now, with infinitely greater reason than at Marah, stand before mankind, and assert with tnwonted emphasis: “I, I alone, am your healer;” and century after century of redemptive history responds with one loud, prolonged Yea and Amen. Have we learned this, and do we fully appreciate it? Physicians dislike, when, along with them, we secretly call in others for consultation. "The Heavenly Physician dislikes it as well, And yet so many “halt between two opinions;” so many human 146 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. devices are resorted to, that the divine remedy is either greatly impeded, or rendered nugatory altogether. It is, therefore, no matter of astonishment that so much spiritual ailment abounds everywhere, and also here among you. O, my countrymen! You who seek deliverance by so many whom the Lord has not appointed as healers of your deepest sores, would that I could publish it in all your homes and hamlets, along all your hills and valleys, that One is your helper. High above all controversial strifes and animosities, He stands today before you, beholding all your secret woes and unmollified wounds, saying: “I am thy physician.’”” Acknowledge Him at last as your exclusive Savior; flee with all your sufferings and sorrows to His peace-bestowing wounds, and your entire restoration is accomplished. 2. But there are yet many other springs of truth and comfort issuing from this Gospel of Marah. A new one is indicated in the perpetual continuance of this divine help. “I am,” says the Lord, “thy healer; am it always, and will continue to be it forevermore. Human physicians come and go for awhile, and then either death or — recovery ends their visits. The malady of the human race, however, as it has existed — from the beginning of time, and will continue to the consummation of all things, needs an eternally abiding help. Here all things change, except sin; it has an obstinately tenacious existence, and transmits its blighting life from generation to generation. © Hence has this little word, “I am,” not yet passed away. High above all times and changes, thrones, He who uttered it; before whom is no past nor future, but who surveys all in one eternal “‘now;’’ who was, and is, and is to come, and who, therefore, can always continue to say: “I am the Lord, thy healer.’”’ He was it from the begin- ning, is it now, and ever shall continue to be it, world without end. He continued to be Israel’s helper. Else why does He not say, Behold I was thy healer; was it just now. Why, “am?” Because He wishes to intimate that He pur- poses to remain such. And this our text specially confirms. There He made for them a statute and an ordinance; and then He proved them and said: “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, then will I put none of these diseases upon thee, which I brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, thy healer.” It was, you perceive, to be an ordinance and a statute forever, including on the one hand the leading them fo the bitter waters from which nature recoils; but, on the other hand, also, the sweetening, the restorative efficacy of this water, redemption. That shall be a statute for God’s Israel of all times, for all His children of all ages, “who diligently hearken to the voice of their Lord,” so that BES may definitely reckon on the divine help. How often was this firm and unalterable statute verified in Israel’s history. Marah was but the beginning of the wilderness, not the end. And how faithfully did God continue their physician in all their wanderings! His face shone upon them from the pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night; it was the visible pledge of His ever gracious presence. And O! how comforting for them in all their needs to see and to | say: Yonder, in the front of the long, long procession, is the pledge of our help, the | Angel of the Covenant! j Kings and princes usually take their family physician with them on their journeys. Israel had its physician along, both for body and soul. It was led and accompanied by Him who has said, “I am and remain the Lord, thy physician.” And whenever, in its subsequent history, even after long-continued faithlessness and monstrous iniquity, Israel cried unto the Lord in its sorest needs and greatest oppressions, hecoming 7c obedient unto Him, the sweet truth was renewed by: “I am thy healer.” Is the case different at present? This holy sanctuary, this quiet Sabbath hour, thigl sacred volume, which, thank God, shines today like “the fiery, cloudy pillar” all along | our pilgrimage through this wilderness world, all demonstrate the perpetually endunng The Lord That Healeth Thee—Christlieb. 147 force of this word “am.” It is felt in the healing power of the Cross today, and it will continue to be felt to the end of time. And when time shall be no more, this self-same power shall stand out in all its fullness and majesty, in glory everlasting. In all the history of the past, where is there a single soul that humbly sought and believingly applied its healing efficacy, was either disappointed or rejected? Who can count the hearts it has quieted, the tears it has dried, the consciences it has unburdened, the soul-hunger and thirst it has satisfied? Ah yes! This joyous news is still true. The Gospel of Marah still sounds forth its glad tidings. It has been clearly interpreted, graciously extended, mightily strengthened, amazingly deepened, and_unshakingly established by the Gospel of Calvary. Its expiring victim, despite thy waywardness, is still “thy Healer,” thy Savior. And He remains such as long as “repentance and forgiveness of sin are preached in His name among all nations.” His power is not limited. His arm is not shortened, that it cannot help. His kingdom increases, and with it the means of help. And mark! whether thou recognizest the fact or not, He, unseen, has attended, with His gracious aid, each step of thy life-journey. As in Israel’s case, thou had Him ever near thee. And this day thou mayst come to Him; and having been accepted, thou mayest come again and again. After each sin, each misstep, run to Him at once and say: Now Lord, more than ever, Thou, and Thou alone, art my healer. O, neglect not the day of grace. It lasts long, but it has its limits for each one; else thou mayest knock in vain for admission when once the door is shut. Only to those that obey His voice it lasts forever; to such it is continued through the dark valley of the shadow of death, and will be perpetuated in the city of our God, when the mighty Helper and Healer, Jesus Christ, shall lead His flock “unto living fountains of water,” and “unto the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.” 8. Or does any doubt in the ability of this physician to heal just your sickness hinder you? Then let me disclose to you a new spring of comfort in the Gospel of Marah. You have always seen how copiously the streams of salvation flow from “Tam;” but richer, fuller still, they issue from the little word, “thy healer,’ “I am the Lord, thy healer;’”—a word as comforting in its general as in its specific application. In its general application. For whom is it intended? Beyond all controversy for the entire Israel of God, of both the Old and the New Testament; for all, therefore, who are willing to obey the voice of the Lord their God. Let me ask: What are your ailments from which Israel did not suffer? Insta- bility? Who was more unstable than Israel? Is it the diabolical trinity of this world: | The lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life? Who has ever excelled Israel in all these? Is it covetousness? Who has ever paid greater devotion at Mammon’s shrine than ancient or modern Israel? Is it pride, or self-righteousness? | Where has that bitter root ever produced more offensive blossoms and fruits than in ithe heart of Israel? Look only at the Pharisees of ancient time, or at the self-con- ceited, knowledge-inflated, culture-puffed Jew of the present. Or is it ingratitude and unbelief? Who fell away from God so easily and so often; and where, in all this wide, ide world, did the basest ingratitude of man to God ever reach such towering heights as when Israel led forth the Lamb of God, the embodied light of the world, 0 be crucified? And yet it was to this people—so wayward, so lustful, so proud, so, hankless, so base, all the thoughts of whose heart the omniscient God knew so well— hat He said: “I am thy healer.” What an amazing revelation here of mercy and ruth, of wisdom and grace, of long suffering and infinite forbearance, in order that might proclaim Himself to such a people and for all time to come: “I am thy ealer.” And how much grace and truth, love and compassion, might and light, are ontained, too, in that announcement for you! Call your ailments what you please— € your sins of deepest dye and blackest hue, of personal or relative nature, of family 148 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. | or business character, today God announces Himself as your physician, and invites you thereby to become His patients; to commit yourselves to His treatment. Ye, then, whose hearts are becoming petrified in the service of mammon and through the deceit- fulness of riches; ye whom appetite and lust have bound as with chains of iron; ye whom the inveterate canker of self-righteousness and pride is consuming; ye whom Satan is beguiling with indifference, from whose faith he is stealing its strength, from whose love its ardor, from whose hope its brightness; who are becoming spiritual consumptives, being cold nor hot—lukewarm; ye, of whatever state, shade, or condi- tion of ailment, who are ‘full of wounds and bruises and putrifying sores; ye are the ones to whom the heavenly physician says: “I can and will heal you.” Oh, blessed amplitude! Oh, glorious universality! contained in the promise, “I am thy healer.” q Not less comforting, however, is the specific application of it. Not every physician is adequate to every disease. Often a patient must hear: “I am in this instance not your man; go to another, who has made your particular class of com- plaints a specialty.’ And when, then, that other can say: “Yes, I am your man; I understand your case thoroughly;” how comforting! 8 This comfort, too, is contained in Marah’s gospel. “I am thy healer;” specie and particularly THINE. Sin, the great malady of the race, is in its essence and nature the same; but its developments are different in different men. There is, therefore, a certain degree of propriety in the sinner’s question: ‘‘Can this physician help me? Because He has helped others, does it follow thence that I can be restored by Him?” To this question the text replies: Yes! “Iam thy healer.” I know all about thy case. Like a faithful family physician, I have watched thee from infancy. I know thy constitution and all the mischief that lurks within thee, as no one else. Just thy peculiarity is My specialty. And My treatment of thy case shall demonstrate over again, that I right fully claim to be ‘‘The Lord, thy healer.” He surely was the right physician for Israel’s complaints. His wonderful display of wisdom, of long-suffering and loving kindness, of severity and lenity, of faithfulness and compassion, which characterize the whole history of Israel, furnish the competent demonstration that God thoroughly understood their case. \ And so it is with all. He knows precisely what to do and when to do it. One) heart He melts with love, another He breaks with severity; here He rouses one slum- bering conscience with the terrors of the law; there, like the good Samaritan, He, pours into its burning wounds the oil of the Gospel; here He subdues a haughty spirit with the rod of affliction; there He raises up a weeping Magdalene with tender com- passion. And as He fully understands the seat, compass, and virulence of the disease, | so He thoroughly comprehends the symptoms of its inner crises—the moment of conversion; and in the process of convalescence He selects, with infinite precision, the most approved means for the complete restoration of the patient. And as the| omniscient Lord of all, He knows what influence surrounding circumstances exert upon each one of us; He selects and orders them in such a way as may be most con- venient and helpful to all that have committed themselves to Him for treatment. Hence the checkered scenes, otherwise often inexplicable, that characterize their history. And just here, He shows Himself the master in helping and healing, that, ami the vast concerns of universal empire, He bestows His special care, skill, and attention upon every single individual that has employed Him as his physician. O, thou ailing, anxious, troubled soul, He that knows thee as no one else; that bruises and wounds, but also heals and comforts, as no one else; He is thy helper, thy healer. And notwithstanding all thy waywardness and infidelities, thy heedlessness and insults, The Lord That Healeth Thee—Christhieb. 149 has never left thee, remains thy physician still, and will continue to be until He has placed thee beyond all danger. B _ 4 For He pledges Himself, in the last word of the text, to your complete restora- tion, when He says: “I am the Lord, thy HEALER.” And herewith I open to you €ll the sluices of comfort contained in Marah’s Gospel. God’s help is irrevocably pledged, and demands therefore otit fullest confidence. As a sinner, fear might naturally deter a man from committing himself to this ‘daily care and nursing attention of God. But bear in mind, He announces Himself here not as Judge, but as physician. A physician comes to the patient, even though his disease should have been contracted by utter wantonness; he comes not to chide ‘hor to punish, but to heal. So our Lord; as the parable of the prodigal son abund- -antly shows. To him, therefore, who is wont to think of God only as a Sovereign and Judge, He says, today: ‘My child, think of Me first as a physician. I must heal the mighty malady that afflicts the race; therefore, I go after the lost sheep until I find it; and when found, it is not to pelt and abuse it, but to bind up its wounds, and to lay it on my shoulders and carry it back to the fold.” Dwell upon this picture until your tuned heart exultingly exclaims: “My Lord and my God! Thou wilt not destroy, "but save me.” And to this fact He :s irrevocably pledged. He is the “faithful and true’ God, who cannot lie. And He has established this Statute or ordinance for all time to come. Israel found Him faithful and true in all its history. And this truth is even more firmly pledged in Christ Jesus, whose very name is Savior of His people. And the first great comfort contained in this announcement is, Help is possible. All other physicians may despair of your case; He does not. When He says, “I am thy healer,” He pledges, in that statement, His word, His honor, His saving name. Nor can your fears, or the inveteracy and imminent danger of your complaint, weigh aught against this. Dangerous cases are sometimes coveted by able physicians, for in them their skill and name can be made illustrious. Granted, then, | that yours is a desperate case; His skill and ability are equal to it. “Though your Sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Today he says: As Moses healed the waters of Marah by means of a tree, so I heal thee by My cross. Only acknowledge thy transgressions; only come unto Me for help; and through My wounds thou mayest be made whole. To the blessed assurance that help is possible, the Lord adds a second comfort, namely: The means of help are already prepared. And this fact gives to the little word, “healer,” such deep significance, and confirms the divine statute and ordinance $0 irrevocably, that any doubt in reference thereto becomes a flagrant wrong. _ Human remedies must first be provided; the Lord’s are already at hand, and they are thus set forth and offered us by the apostle: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. . . . We pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made righteousness of God in Him.” What countless souls have already been healed of their complaints by this precious truth of God’s grace in Christ Jesus! How many burdened, wounded consciences has it already healed, forever healed! And why not yours? The erected cross is the embodied will of God, that all men should be saved (I Tim. 2:4). And should you alone be excluded? The redeemed of all ages testify before the throne of God on high, that they have been healed and washed in the blood cf the Lamb; and should God and man, heaven and earth, history and experience, be H 150 Pulpit Poiwer and Eloquence. insufficient to satisfy you of the firm, irrevocable pledge of the Lord, that He is your helper, your healer, your Savior! To render this help, however, available, He, as is the case with human physicians, — demands your confidence and obedience. And why should this demand occasion you any difficulty? We put confidence in a phyiscian who devotes himself conscientiously and entirely to the duties of his profession. And is not this true of our heavenly Physician? Though exalted high above all principalities and powers, the great redemption work is the one controlling element in the government of His vast empire, and everything in it is made subservient to the recovery of the human race. Extended experience is another element of confidence in a physician. Our “Healer” has the = —— | experience of an hundred centuries on His side. Other physicians have often great — difficulty in ascertaining the seat and nature of a disease; they are frequently deceived, and select the wrong medicines, so that many a one, like the woman in the gospel, -suffers many things of many physicians, and is nothing better, but rather grows worse. But our Physician’s eye penetrates to the deepest recesses of the soul, and all things ; lie naked and open to His view. In His prolonged and widely extended practice, He has never yet lost a single case, where the patient himself did not wilfully withdraw | from His treatment. Is not such a physician entitled to the fullest confidence? More still. Ifa physician were at the same time master over the lives and deaths of his patients, what could be more agreeable to him or them? How would the whole world run after such a man! Now the Healer of Marah can say, “I am the Lord, thy healer.” The question of life and death is at His disposal. Says Job: “Thou hast granted me life, and Thy visitation preserveth my spirit.’ He holds the keys of death and the grave in His hands. Should not He have our implicit confidence? Nor can His willingness to help be questioned any more than His power. Sup- pose a physician, in order to save his patient, should transfer the disease of the ailing one to himself, and die in his stead, could anyone doubt his willingness to save his” patient? That is just what the Lord, thy healer, has done. “Surely, He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and by His stripes we are healed.’’ Such was His interest in your recovery, that He submitted to death itself for your sakes. Besides, in the employment of human physicians the rule is: the longer the | services the greater the bill; and no little anxiety is often occasioned by this fact. But how stands the case here? ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; cous ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price.” I ask, with great emphasis: Does not the “Lord, your i healer,’ with such ability and with such a disposition, deserve your confidence? O, why does not all the world run after Him? Why? Because there is something in His method of treatment which men dislike—the obedience which He demands. Confidence in a physician is tested by following his orders; and this for many a patient is not an easy matter; because so many things are prohibited to which he was accustomed, and in their stead so many bitter medicines are prescribed. Thus, too, the physician at Marah first led to the bitter waters and then to the sweet. He first probes the wound, then heals it. “He maketh sore, and then bindeth up; He woundeth, and His hands make whole.” First the bitter tears of repentance, then the | sweet experience of grace and peace. First into the Valley of Humiliation, then to the Delectable Mountains. Thus the very beginning of the Divine restorative method is offensive to the natural heart, and demands unquestioned confidence and obedience, without any consultation with the flesh and blood. a The Lord That Healeth Thee—Christlicb. 151 And then the convalescent is further instructed to avoid everything that would cause a relapse—to walk in the new life, upon the narrow way, to crucify the flesh, to deny the world; all which demands steadfastness in obedience to and confidence in the Divine Healer, in order that, as He has commenced the good work in him, He may also complete it. Hence says God to His people at Marah: “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the yoice of the Lord, thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians.” What dire calamities and sufferings would Israel have avoided had it heeded this counsel and walked in the ways of its God. This, too, beloved, is the rule for each one of us today, who has committed himself to the Divine Healer for treatment; only we see clearly that the way we have to take is Christ and His example; the support on which we rely is Christ and His spirit; and the aim and object of our way is Christ and His glory. And, therefore, all the com- mandments to be obeyed by us are compressed into this one: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.” My dear hearers, would you be entirely healed? Then remain in Christ’s treat- ment. The beginning may be bitter; the progress will become increasingly easier, sweeter, happier; so that, by-and-by, you will be able to say: “His commandments are not grievous.” Love makes them easy and clear. Should you at times not under- stand the mysterious ways He leads you, nor comprehend His methods of healing many of your complaints, run not away from Him to other physicians. Be assured that He knows. Should His hand seem sometimes against you, His heart is always for you. Your whole course of life will only become intelligible to you in the light of the Gospel of Marah, when, with all your heart, you have learned to believe. The Lord is my healer, and He seeks by all He sends me to cure my sin-sick soul. Humbly and confidingly submit to His direction; nor seek to restrain His hand should He reach for the knife to prune the branch, that it may bring forth more fruit. Try not, secretly, to associate with Him the world as a subordinate helper. Remember, He is thy healer exclusively. Many physicians are often death to the patient. To serve two masters is the clearest proof of the unfitness of the servant. Give Him not only a part, but your entire confidence. For He has irrevocably pledged to you complete restoration. After the waters of Marah had been sweetened, the invitation echoed through the whole camp: “Come and drink!” Doubtless, it was cheerfully, gratefully accepted. Let the Gospel of Marah, today, blend in the Gospel of Christ: “Whosoever thirsteth, let him come unto Me and drink.” For all your complaints, here is the Physician. I place Him before you, that He Himself may preach to you as at Nazareth, His home: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath annointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised.” “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’ And whosoever has come to this fountain, and has drunk from it life and health, let him say, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, who healeth all my diseases,” AMEN, i \ 152 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE JOLLY EARTHQUAKE, RUSSELL H. CONWELE. There is a curious old tradition in Japan of a great earthquake which visited and transformed the little Japanese island of Oshima in the year 1605 A. D. Previous to the earthquake this island had been a barren rock; not a green thing grew upon it, not a blade of grass and no fruit trees had ever been known to come forth even from the crevices of its mighty peaks. Its towering rocks shot high into the air, and upon that desert island lived only wild beasts, wild birds, and wild men—men exiled there because they were criminals or sent there because of some contagious disease. This fearful island, the abode of all that was wretched and horrible, was so changed by the earth- quake of 1605 as to become the very garden of all the East. Many of the wonderful botanics in our greenhouses, and our variegated roses, came from the same island of Oshima. This earthquake was called the “jolly” or laughing earthquake, because its coming was heralded by an awful laughter underneath the sea. Not only so, but up from the openings in the earth when the volcano burst forth there came nitrous oxide, or —_— ee ee ee a ee i le “laughing gas,’ and amid all these wonderful changes of nature,—when mountains ~ were thrown high into the skies and islands were swallowed up by the seething sea; when the continent changed its face, and all nature seemed in rack and ruin,—all man- kind laughed, not one person who did not take in the breath of the volcano, and who did not laugh. This crude and curious tradition illustrates an important thought to which I wish to bring your attention. This tradition says that there was a fisherman who lived on the shore of that — island and that he went out that day to fish. Suddenly sounds of demoniac laughter were heard to come from under the sea and little spits of steam began to rise from the waves. In affright he turned his boat toward the shore, but before he reached it, a mighty tidal wave rolled in between him and the island and hid it from view. As the awiul changes of nature began to be wrought around him he turned through the clouds of steam toward the mainland, thinking that his island was entirely destroyed. After the earthquake had passed and the clouds once more lifted, and the setting sun threw its rays across a calm sea, he looked across the waters and found that island there still, but the barren rocks were all gone, and in their place was an extended bank of sand. He turned his boat towards it with no hope of finding his loved ones; but on reaching the shore he found them all alive and well, and rolling over and over in the 4 sand, convulsed with laughter, as though they had met with some absurd joke, rather than having passed through the fires of a fearful volcano. The fisherman gathered his | family and tried to find his possessions. He now discovered that a great bank of sand had been washed up in front of the place occupied by his cottage, and back of this the | low rocks had opened and revealed a vein of gold on his own private land. The government purchased the vein of him, gave him a title of nobility, and called his family to dwell at the capital, with the highest of the land. When I read tnat curious, weird tradition I saw in it an illustration of an everyday | truth that made me lie back in my chair and laugh, and laugh, far into the night. I have seen men like that. This fisherman had come home after an expedition, and a_ The Jolly Earthquake—C onwell. 153 jolly earthquake had struck his home, and of course it had enlarged his possessions. How many a man has a vein of gold because a jolly earthquake has struck his house! Let me illustrate my thought, for perhaps you cannot catch it yet. I went to market one day with a basket on my arm, thinking I would buy some potatoes. I approached the first stall in the market and said to the young man there, “How much do you ask for those potatoes?” He looked at me as if I had insulted him and answered snappishly, ‘‘Sixty cents!” I went on. I wouldn’t have those pota- toes on my table; every one of them was stuffed full of yellow fever and hydrophobia, and every other form of contagion, and I wouldn’t poison my children. At the next stall I found a man perfectly indifferent; neither cross nor jolly. I said, “How much do you ask for those potatoes?” He replied with a drawl, “Sixty cents,” and turned away to attend to something else. I walked on, because I did not care for those potatoes. While they were not poisonous, I didn’t want to put sawdust before my children. In the third stall, there was a German woman, with a face like a moon in the last quarter. She was jolly and happy and laughed, and said, ‘Good morning!” | When I said, “I would like to know how much you ask for those potatoes,” the good German woman said, ‘‘This basket is sixty cents, and that one is eighty cents, and the sixty cent ones are just as good as the others, and I advise you to take the sixty cent potatoes.” Said I, “Madam, I will take both of them; I will take all you have.” Every time those potatoes came on my table every eye winked at me and suggested the good old German woman’s face; we ate those potatoes with happiness and digestion, and we have been happy ever since. I went to that same market but two years after- wards, and that same old German woman owned all three stalls! She bought out the cross young man first, and the indifferent man next, and now owns all three. Of course she would! George William Curtis was right in saying that some farmers would go up to the fence and look over at the cabbages with a face so sour that the cabbages would wilt right down, and some other people would go up and look at the corn fields with faces so bright that the corn stalks clapped their hands for joy. Ifa man desires to prosper in this world it is of the greatest advantage to be struck by a jolly earthquake, in the sense toward which I am trying to lead your minds. A Massachusetts cashier told me that his bank had indorsed notes for factories on the Connecticut, and the factories had failed. The cashier saw that if the public should find out how great was their indorsement there would be a run on the bank, and it would be obliged to close. He worried about it all night, and early in the morning went down to the bank, fearing terribly lest some person should get a hint of the matter. Pretty soon a farmer came in and presented a check for eight dollars. The cashier was cross, sleepy, and tired, and here, the first thing he met, was a call for money, while he wanted to keep all the money. He took the check, with a scowl, and looked at the farmer as though it was a miserable insult for him to come there for money. Finally he stuck the check on a spindle, drew out the bills and pushed them through at the farmer, as though he would like to shoot him with them. The farmer counted his money very carefully,—always count your money carefully when you deal with a man who never laughs. The man that is so pious that he: never smiles, is too pious to be honest. When the farmer found, to his surprise, that the money was al! tight he said, “What's the matter? Is the bank going to fail?” The very thing the cashier desired to conceal he was conspicuously revealing, When the farmer had gone out, this cashier walked up and down that bank, and fought one of the greatest battles that men ever fight in this world. He fought to get possession of himself. A man must ever keep himself in control. He can never control others until he first controls ° himself. The cashier made up his mind that he must be cheerful, and that he couldn’t be hypocritical about it. At last he gained the victory, and said, “I will laugh until everything is gone; I will laugh until they move my family into the street, until the 154 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. mob drives me out of town. I will laugh, anyhow, whether we fail or don’t fail.” Soon a manufacturer from down the river came in to present a check for money. The cashier met him with a cheerful good morning, joked with him, paid him the amount, and asked him to come in and read the morning paper. While the manufacturer was reading, the cashier joked with him and he joked with the cashier, and at last the manufacturer said, “I have been thinking of transferring my account from Springfield to this bank. This bank is nearer to me, and then you are all so good-natured and cheerful, I like the atmosphere around this bank.” He filled out a check for $48,000, which the cashier cashed in Springfield, and came home with a great basket full of one, two, and five dollar bills. He stuck them up all along the front of the bank, prepared for any siege that might be made. At two o’clock in the afternoon the Boston paper came in, announcing, with great black lines, that the factories had failed, and that this bank was likely to fail, because of its indorsement of their notes. It wasn’t twenty minutes before every man in that town was running to his neighbor and saying, “Have you any money in that bank? If you have, get it out!’ And the rush for the bank was so great that the mob packed the room full. But the cashier met them with a smile and a joke, and passed out the money as fast as he could. When about twenty had received their money, and the crowd saw this great stack of bills, they said, “Tf you have this money, of course we don’t want it; but we thought you didn’t have it!’ Some of them tried to pass their money back, but the cashier wouldn’t take it, and then he called for the rest to come up and get theirs. Finally one man jumped upon a railing and called out to the crowd, ““You better get back to your work before they dock your pay for being absent. They’ve got more than a million of dollars stacked up here on the counter; this bank can buy out a dozen towns like this!” The cashier laughed and joked with people, and everybody was laughing at the absurd idea of making a run on a bank that was so strong. “Why,” they said, “you could see by the way the cashier acted that they had plenty of money; that was enough, just to see him.” They do not know in that community to this day how near that bank came to failure. The cashier saved the community, and saved the bank, and saved his own business, by getting such possession of himself as to compel himself to be cheerful under those severely trying circumstances. The tradition of the jolly earthquake stated that there was a little insane asylum— a one-horse insane asylum for one man—a poor maniac had been confined there for a long time. The earthquake tore this rocky island all to pieces; but when they came from the mainland searching for the survivors, they found the lunatic rolling over and over in the sand and laughing, but in his right mind. ’Tis a solemn thing to laugh; ’tis a sacred thing to smile. When God made man a little lower than the angels he endowed him with that crown of laughter. God denied it to the animals and gave it only to man; and when a man ceases to laugh he becomes a beast. Twenty-five years ago Americans all laughed, but now a German will laugh away beyond the memory of a Yankee—although, of course, he does not see the joke until the next week; and an Englishman will laugh, and laugh, and enjoy his roast beef, and laugh again— though, of course, he doesn’t see the point until the next day; but he gets a great deal of benefit out of it after all. But these swift-going, busy Americans are ceasing alto- gether to laugh, and consequently in this land of ours mighty insane asylums are ris- ing on every hill and are seen in almost every green valley. And the greatest physi- cians of this land have said to me, in answer to my question, that they believe the great increase in insanity in this country is due to the fact that the people are getting so busy that they have ceased to laugh. In one asylum which I visited a man was actually cured of insanity by being induced to laugh. The importance of laughter in the healing of disease, however, is more clearly demonstrated than its healing of mental diseases. Dr. Clark, of the Bellevue Hospital, i) r) ————_——— —— The Jolly Earthquake—Conwell. 155 New York, in a pamphlet published in 1867, for the benefit of the Medical Society of New York, says that many lives might be preserved through years of usefulness if the medical fraternity would only give more attention to the scientific study of laughter. There comes to my mind a visit which I made upon a man in Philadelphia. The physicians said that he couldn’t possibly recover, and the first day I called he was delirious, but the next day I was allowed to see him. I went upstairs into a room, where they had not opened the blinds because they thought he was so near his end. I ' went to the window and opened the shutters. Then I saw on the bed, his eyes still open, but so pallid, as if near to death, a man about forty-five years old. At first he could not speak to me at all. He struggled to whisper and at last I made out that his friends were all in Cromarty, Scotland, and none in this country. Something that I had heard occurred to me, and I said, “If you are a Scotchman from Cromarty, and make up your mind to get well, you will get well, in spite of all that the doctors have said.” He whispered, “Do you really believe I can get well when the doctors have given me up?” I said, “There is not a Scotchman living but what, if he makes up his mind, would defy all the doctors in the city.” He looked up at me doubtfully at first, but he soon became convinced that I meant it, and he seemed to grow stronger from that instant. I told him a story I had heard of a sailor who lost his oars and sculled himself ashore by turning the boat over and over. Every Scotchman from that town laughs at that story, and I felt the bed shake under me. When a man can laugh there is hope. So I told him two or three other Scotch stories I had heard, and then this dying man wanted to tell mea story, but I thought he would die before he finished it. He told me of a woman from Cromarty who moved to Glasgow, who was very aris- tocratic. When she was dying she called her husband and said, “Jamie, dinna ye bury me with the common people, but bury me with the gentle folk at Stravon. If ye bury me down with the ordinary people I canna lie still in my grave.” Her husband thought of the additional expense, and said, ‘Well, we'll bury ye first with the common people, and then if ye dinna lie still we'll bury ye at Stravon.” By that time he could speak quite strong. I gave him some stimulant and told him anothér story; then he told me another. He said there was a sailor from Cromarty who had been away many years, and came home very poor and picked rags for a living. One day he found a great mass of rags, whalebones and buttons. Such a find was a great thing for him, and he piled them into his bag as fast as he could. Just then a gentleman came along and said to him, “Sandy, what do you suppose happened here?” The beg- gar and sailor looked around a minute, and said, “Well, I dinna ken, but I think some wumman was wrecked around here!” By the time he had told me that story he spoke quite loud, and I said to him, “‘Made up your mind to get well, haven’t you?” He said, “Well, I feel wonderfully better.” I said, “Make up your mind to get well and you will get well.” He looked up at me and said, “You're a queer minister.” I thought I was myself, and I felt the rebuke very keenly. I went home and said to my wife, “I don’t know how I can ever enter my pulpit again if that man does not get well, after the way I have talked to him.” The next morning the man was better, and on the fourth day he was out driving, and is alive and well today. There are a great many valuable lives that would be saved if the minister were to teach people how to live, instead of trying to teach them only how to die. Never, never need he fear death who is always ready for the duties of life. Now when they tell me that a man is dying I tell him I want him to get ready to live; that he has been brought down to teach him a lesson which he is to get well and teach others; and in that way a great many live whom I should otherwise scare to death. Be more cheer- ful in the sick room, and you will help your loved ones to recover. On this island of Oshima, on that afternoon of the jolly earthquake, there was a 156 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. government office vacant because of the death of its military ruler. A new ruler was on his way to the island when the earthquake came and drove him back to the shore. He refused the office. It is said that no other military governor would accept the office. Even the form of government changed when the jolly earthquake struck the island. The people now elect their own officers; before they were ruled by military dictators. Friends, did you ever know that liberty and laughter are twins? They go together. Laughter makes men free; freedom makes men laugh. Is there a brighter star in our American firmament than the name of the joker statesman, Abraham Lincoln? The last thing at which President Lincoln laughed, Senator Hoar has told us, was an illustration of the influence of laughter upon political reforms, and espe- cially on the advancement of human liberty. In Washington a great majority were in favor of the improvement of the city; but the taxpayers, the old men, were against it. At that time there was a society there called the Democratic Jacksonian Association which sent up a protest to the Senate against these improvements. A number of young men, finding that they could join the society by paying $1.50 a head, joined it in sufficient number to be a majority; then they voted the old men out of office and reversed the resolution and sent it with the same name to the Senate. They thought that now they were sure to get the large appropriation, so they ordered a great parade, to make a demonstration in front of the White House. The Democratic Jacksonian Association fell in with an immense transparency, on which they had directed the name of their society to be printed. But the artist found that he could not put in the whole of those names—The Democratic Jacksonian Association—and so he painted the first syllable of each word; and with that absurd transparency they took their place in the procession and marched out in sight of President Lincoln, who was leaning out of his window and laughing. As they marched up Pennsylvania avenue a lot of colored people made a break upon the parade and overturned the transparency, the police arrested several, there was a trial in the courts; and Senator Hoar said that the laughter at that abbreviated transparency, and consequently at the society, was so great that it set back the improvements in Washington for eight full years. If a man desires to be elected to an office he would better look very sharp. They told me down at Martha’s Vineyard of a “town crier” who wanted to be elected to office. Before the election day some people who went to his house found a notice on his door, “No crying for three weeks on account of death of wife.”” When they saw that notice they began to laugh. A joke, like dynamite, will bring death to the joker, if cracked too near him. That man was laughed out of office, as many another man has been. On this island of Oshima, when the earthquake came, there was a joss house, and on the rock where it stood there was a priest making offerings to an idol. The earth- quake came and tore the island asunder, destroyed the joss house, overturned the brick god, and after the earthquake they found the priest rolling over in the sand and laughing amid the debris of his offerings and his broken idol. I believe that the time has come in which, if men will smile more in their religious discussion, and smile in greater sincerity and purity of thought at their sectarian differences, we shall have one great denomination, and the world shall indeed come to the feet of the Savior Christ. Persecution builds up good and bad alike, but laughter kills the bad and builds up the good. The following incident is an illustration of the truth: ' There was in Boston a young man who loved to preach politics—and partisan politics in the pulpit is a false religion. He held a caucus one Sunday night after the service, and got his church to vote for his party. He was worshiping a false god, not clearly in accord with the principles of Christianity. He thought that a full church made a successful one, but the devil never taught a bigger lie. But this young preacher’s party was defeated, and the following Sunday he announced, “Tonight I ¥ ‘ — < The Jolly Earthquake—Conwell. 157 shall preach on the awful fate of the wicked.’ The people knew that he meant the opposing party, so that night the house was packed full. It would have been a sensa- tional address but for an incident providentially thrust in. He gave out one of the most awful texts in the Bible, and then began in his peculiar way: ‘‘Every man that. voted that ticket that won last Tuesday, and every woman that encouraged a man to vote that ticket, and every person that sympathizes with that ticket is going down to everlasting death!’ and he began to storm around the pulpit. Just as he said that, there came an alarm of fire; the bells rang, the steam engine rushed by, and people became very uneasy and looked at each other, and a few went out. Then this preacher’s father-in-law rose and said, “Brethren, please keep quiet. I will go out and see where the fire is, and if it is near your homes I will let you know when I come in, and my son can go on with his sérmon.” So the young man gathered himself up and began again: ‘Every man that voted that ticket, and every woman that encour- aged a man to vote that ticket, and every one who sympathizes with that party, that won last Tuesday, is going down to everlasting death!” Just then his father-in-law put his head in at the door of the church and shouted, “It’s a false alarm!” The people all laughed so heartily that it broke up the sermon, and the young man told me that he had never again dared to preach on politics, even indirectly, because as soon as he made even a reference to politics a smile went over the congregation which defeated entirely any attempt to move them along that line. He was laughed out of a wrong position, when persecution or opposition would only have strengthened him in it. I close with a most beautiful thought, which I find it impossible to secure the language fitly to express. In a prison on the island when the earthquake struck it, there was the last of the persecuted Christians. She was a widow. With her two little children she was condemned to death by being thrown from the rocks. That after- noon the cruel jailer demanded that she come forth from the prison. She hid herself in the darkness. He rushed in and dragged her forth by the hair, her little children clinging to her skirts. This rough, cruel giant caught her by the arm, lifted her up, and half carried her, as the children clung to her, from peak to peak, away up to the highest rock, and was about to throw her down from the cliff, when he saw the boats approaching in which were those coming to witness the execution. This very curious and strange tradition says that the executioner allowed this poor girl to kneel down upon the rock, and she lifted her hands toward the skies. Her two little children knelt beside her. The boats drew nearer. Suddenly there came the sound of fearful laughter from under the sea, and it was echoed back from the sky. Then came the sound of a rumble, and then a roaring, and the hot steam, and amid the bursting of the volcano, crashing rocks, breaking mountains, the sun turned to red as though it were blood, and then the clouds enveloped this whole island. Those rocks were lifted higher and higher, with each repeated throb of the earthquake’s throes, until at last the peak on which these three knelt, and on which the executioner lay prone, was carried far above those whirling white clouds. The setting sun gleamed across the clouds and transfigured them with all the hues of the rainbow. There they knelt, and people watching from the mainland could see these strange figures, with their hands raised to the sky. Then the watchers saw the cliff divide between the executioner and the widow. One half swung out and back again several times, and then rolled, and tumbled, and thundered, and crashed down into the depths of the hot volcanic sea. The other half was lifted one throb higher into the sky. It rested there for a moment, and then the receding throbs of the earthquake let that giant rock back, down into the white clouds, utterly out of sight. Down it still sank, deeper, until only thirty-two feet above the level of the sea, it rested on some firm foundation. When the sea became calm and the clouds were blown away, and the setting sun threw its last rays eS , ; ) | | 158 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. over the great ocean, men came from the mainland to see if any person lived; and as they approached they heard the sound of childish laughter. Nearer they came, and they heard the widow laughing in prayer. I believe that there never went up to heaven a more acceptable tribute of praise than went up from those voices as they praised God for his great gift of liberty, his great blessing of life. If I knew a heart that was filled with gloom, if I knew a family that was divided by a quarrel, if I knew a town that was afflicted with great poverty, if I knew a state that was being oppressed by tyranny, or a nation that was still heathen, I believe that it would help wonderfully to make that sad heart bright, to unite that divided family, to bring prosperity to that poverty-stricken town, to break the shackles from the enslaved of that state, and to bring Christian freedom and Christian life to that heathen nation, if there were turned into the heart, into the family, into the town, into the state, into the nation, a jolly earthquake like that of Oshima, in Japan. [This sermon-lecture was reported for the Northfield Echoes as delivered at East Northfield, Mass., in 1896. Russell H. Conwell was born at Worthington, Mass., in 1842, studied law at Yale, was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the civil war, practiced law in Minneapolis, immigration representative of Minnesota to Germany, foreign correspondent, and in 1870-1879 practiced law in Boston. Ordained to the ministry in 1879, and for ten years was pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Philadelphia. Founded the Temple College in 1888, Samaritan Hospital in 1890, pastor of the Baptist Temple since 1891, and con- sidered one of the most entertaining lecturers in the United States.] * (159) THE ATONEMENT IN THE LIGHT OF SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH. JOSEPH COOK, D. D. When a man has wilfully violated the radiant moral law, it is instinctive, if the eyes are open to its light, to feel that something ought to be done to bring about sat- isfactory relations between the rebellious spirit and the author of that insufferably resplendent moral enactment. What ought to be done? The soul should acquire similarity of feeling with God. Without that its peace is scientifically known to be a natural impossibility. But is that enough? Face to face with self-evident truths can an unfettered human spirit, which has behind it a record of disloyalty, find intelligent and wholly tremorless peace, even after it is delivered from the love of what ought not to be? When an evil man has reformed, does he have a scientifically justifiable right to feel that his own excellence, taken wholly alone, ought to secure his entire har- mony with the nature of things? What do the organic and ineradicable human instincts, scientifically interpreted, say on this point? Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare tells us, could not wash her hands white, although she had learned to hate her crime so as to be made insane by the memory of it. Doctor—Look how she rubs her hands! Gentleman—It is an accustomed action with her to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her to continue in this a quarter of an hour. Lady Macbeth—Yet here’s the spot. Doctor—Hark! she speaks. I will set down what comes from her. Lady Macbeth—Out, damned spot! out, I say! . . . Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Doctor—More needs she the divine than the physician. God, God, forgive us all! (Macbeth, Act 5, sc. 1.) Is your Shakespeare a partisan, when, describing in Macbeth the laws of human nature, he makes him say: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.” “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep, —the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast. Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep; and therefore Cawdur Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more,’” 160 Pulpit Power and Eloquence: “T could not say ‘Amen’ When they did say ‘God bless us.’” Lady Macbeth—Consider it not so deeply. Macbeth—But wherefore could I not pronounce “Amen”? I had Most need of blessing, and “Amen” Stuck in my throat. Lady Macbeth—These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad. —Ibid., Act 2, sc. 2. These deeds must not be thought of after these ways; so, it will make us wise. Not Plato, not Aristotle, not Voltaire, not Strauss, not Renan, not Parker, can wash Lady Macbeth’s red right hand. Shakespeare describes the laws of your sleep and mine. Instead of great literature, do you prefer actual life to illustrate the laws of human nature? A schoolmate of mine lately committed murder. He was a foremost man in a church. He was nearly fifty years of age. Through thirty years he had suffered through an unhappy marriage. God knows what his trials had been. But the man was sane. He was in health. Not a whisper has been raised in his defense, although he is to be tried for his life in a few weeks. Coming home from an evening gather- ing, his wife and he passed into their house together, apparently at peace with each * aa ’ other. Half an hour later, when she was asleep, the monster with an axe took his © wife’s life. Do not avert your gaze, my friends, from this lurid point of light. The narrative is of a piece with much else that has actually happened in the nights and days of our softly rolling globe; and yet you say it is not philosophy. I affirm that events like these are facts, and that philosophy must face facts of every description, or once for all cease to call itself scientific. This piercing gleam out of experience is blue fire, indeed; but not a little radiance of that sort has crept before now through the vol- canic crevices of the world. When by this ominous but actual lamp you gaze intently upon the glitter of this axe, and upon the flashing of the afterward dripping blood, you will find that many problems as to the peace of the soul are here exposed to view, under a flame intense enough to permit their scientific examination. Both these persons were my schoolmates. I knew each of them well, and think I have some reason to say that I understand what, probably, the whole interior sky was in this man. One of the things that proved his guilt, aside from his confession, which he made at the end of a week, was a remark which he curiously enough repeated to his neighbors months before his crime: ‘Can I not repent, even if I do a great wrong, and so repent as to go to heaven? Is it not taught that a man may repent and be saved, although he does something very bad?””’ The man was not well educated. He had in his mind the query, whether one might not commit some atroc- ity, and yet repent, and by the good grace of Almighty God, who is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity, be saved through the Atonement. Perhaps he thought heaven was a place rather than a state. Confucius said on the Yellow Sea, ‘‘Heaven means principle.” What if a man permanently loses principle, must he or must he not lose heaven? Under the law of judicial blindness, is it possible for a man to lose principle permanently? This man, befogged but not insane, took up the theory—this was proved before the jury—that he might commit murder, and yet afterward repent, and go to heaven. And he committed murder; and I think his chief temptation, aside from vexatious married life, was that lie whispered to him out of the very bowels of Gehenna, that the Atonement is enough to save a man who makes a bargain of it, and tries to cheat God, That man did on a large scale what it is possible you and I haye been trying A | t The Atonement in the Light of Self-Evident Truth—Cook. 161 to do on a small scale. We do not commit murder; but we would, if we had our own _ way, very gladly cheat God of half our life at least, because we remember that we can repent at last, and all will come out well. Some men think that, if they repent after they go out of this life, all will be well; that is rather a large application of this principle. ¥ Pardon me, gentlemen; but you must be shocked into due attention to the mon- strous caricatures of religious truth which often exist in half-educated minds, and Betich underlie a large part of the infidel attack on Christianity in this latest age, as ey have underlaid every attack in every past age. ‘ In this kind of analysis of the actual and typical experiences of men, I find more philosophy that I can put into an hour’s declamation. Here is a gleam right out of q human nature, and from our day; and I wish you to look at it while we ask how far self-evident truth can teach us what the Atonement can do. I affirm that the Atone- ‘ment must be something that does not bargain with God for a piece of life or the “whole of it. It must not undermine the principle. We are assured by self-evident truth that the Atonement, if it is to be effectual, must in some way provide for similarity of feeling with God. Conscience, with all its great operations, exists in us, and is going on into the Unseen Holy with us; and we must be at peace with all its multiplex lines of activity. 3 _ This man committed murder deliberately. Perhaps he now has had grace given ) him to loathe his crime. In his cell he sings hymns, it is said; is glad to receive religious solace; hopes that his execution may be the gateway to heaven; and his feliance is all in the Atonement. He really has come to hate, let us suppose, all that _ God hates, and to love all that God loves. He has, let us grant, what is called the new birth. Does that erase or cover the record of the murderer? Let us be mercilessly E Straightforward in our answer to this question; for it touches your case and mine too. I am approaching a fundamental self-contradiction of the lawless and sharply mischievous dreaming of many, as to the nature and sequences of our refusal to say “TI will” when the Divine Voice says “I ought.” This man has learned to loathe the murder; but the record of his crime is behind him. Do you think that he is, or ought to be, at peace, simply because he really loathes everything that leads to murder? Here is a question which I put before you in the name of the scientific method, begging you to look on it with a love of clear ideas, and wholly apart from any conclu- ‘sions in religious science. Do you think that human nature, with the great opera- tions of conscience in it, and especially with that prophetic office which anticipates | the continuance of the approval and disapproval which we know inevitably follow our acts, good and bad; that sees that this approval or disapproval is not only from our- Selves, but from a Somewhat and Some One who is in us, but not of us, is likely to allow this man, in the name of his own excellence alone, to be wholly at peace about ‘this record of murder, even after he has reformed? Let us fasten our thoughts on this one phase of human experience, typical of range after range of human crime, and let us, if possible, attain clearness on the subject, whatever theory stands or falls. ' “Was klar ist, wahr ist,” the Germans say—‘‘what is clear is true.” There is a whole range of liberal thinking which asserts that, when a man reforms, he has done enough; and that style of thought I wish to test—by what? By the street; by the axioms of self-evident truth applied by the scientific method. My schoolmate who has murdered his wife repented, let us say; and he is at the edge of death itself. It may be that the first spirit he will meet in the Unseen Holy will be that which he sent thither before its ' time. No, not the first spirit; he will meet God there. He meets God now. In con- / science, the still small voice is God’s voice. He listens to that; he remembers the past; he knows that he has learned to loathe his crime; but is that enough? Was it enough for Macbeth? Was it enough for Lady Macbeth? aS ve 162 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. When a great question concerning the organization of human nature comes up," the best way to decide it is to notice not only the deepest literatures of the world, but a long range of experience in history, and see how man has acted age after age. Have the nations acted as if they thought reform was enough to give peace after a great crime has been committed? We know that heathen religions of the world have given large space to penance and sacrifice. I do not wish to exaggerate the amazing record; but there is enough to show that more than much has been done age after age, in history, by this desire to be at peace with conscience and with what is to be met behind the veil. These heathen religions have indicated in unspeakable ways | that peace is not attained even after reformation, The devotees of those religions have desired to be calm before God; and many deep teachers have taught, with more or less distinctness, the necessity of loving what God loves, and hating what God hates. But how has the human heart acted? The whole history of the race, I claim, has" proved that men in general have not felt ready to go before God in their own right- eousness even after they have reformed. My schoolmate here has learned to hate his murder; and now he must go before God. He has the righteousness, let us hope, of loving and hating what God loves and hates; but there is that past behind him. Conscience is in him; and now, when the operations of conscience have their free course, is that man, as he steps into the Unseen Holy, ready to depend on nothing but his own righteousness? Gentlemen, the greatest question in religious science is before you, and, I hope, in such a concrete form as to be intelligible. Keeping now your unpartisan and fathom~ less Shakespeare open, and not removing your thoughts from this concrete case of today, will you allow me to recite analytically a few self- evident truths concerning the Atonement? 1. It is self-evident that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same sense. If transcendentalism has a cornerstone of adamant, it is this axiom—that a thing cannot be and not be at the same instant and in the same signification. When will a philosophy arise that will undermine a certainty without which philosophy itso cannot exist? 2. It is, therefore, self-evident that we cannot be at once at peace and at vari- ance with conscience. 3. That we cannot be at once at peace and at variance with the necon of our past. 4. That we cannot be at once at peace and at variance with God. The supremely terrific and supremely alluring cans and cannots of the nature of things are all implied in the words, “God cannot deny Himself.” Here we put our feet upon adamant which Thor’s hammer cannot pulverize, without, at the same time, reducing itself to powder. The nature of things has in it no fate at all, but is the total outcome of God’s free choice; and His free choice is the total outcome of His infinite perfection. He cannot deny Himself; and so forever and forever it will be true that the axioms of the nature of things are adamant, not only for this world, but alsa for the next. 5. It is self-evident that, while we continue to exist as personalities of the same plan we now exhibit in our natures, conscience will be something we cannot escape from. “The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” 6. It is self-evident that our past is irreversible. Do you say that when I assert in the name of the nature of conscience, and of the irreversibleness of the past, that there will be regret in the universe forever and for- The Atonement in the Light of Self-Evident Truth—Cook. 163 ever on account of the losses sin has occasioned, and when I affirm that some part of the shadow will fall on the sea of glass, and will not be invisible from the Great White Throne, I come near uttering blasphemy? Does the Bible utter blasphemy when it says there is a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world? My proposition is only that biblical proposition in scientific shape. No doubt all the losses sin has caused were foreseen; and no doubt the plan for the rescue of men existed in the councils _ of Omnipotence from eternity. No doubt there was, therefore, as the unsearchable depth of that metaphor asserts, a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He whom we dare not name had sympathy from the first, for the distress He foresaw would result from the abuse of that gift of free will, without which there can be no virtue. _ Forever and forever the losses caused by what ought not to have been will continue. _The Scriptures, therefore, speak of a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, or of a shadow that is not invisible, and never has been invisible, and never b will be invisible,from the Great White Throne. Before you accuse scientific 4 -spéech of blasphemy instead of biblical depth of metaphor on this theme, remem- o ber that the Atonement is not an afterthought. The plan of redemption is no insertion “4 into the universe to correct mistakes. It is a part of the perfect purpose of Him who + was, and is, and is to come, who, in all eternities past and in all eternities future, will _ be faithful to the plan which was, and is, and is to come. a 7. It is self-evident that we cannot escape from our record. } 8. That we cannot escape from God. 9. That harmonization with our environment is the indispensable condition of _ peace of soul. 10. That our environment in this world and the next consists unalterably of God, _ conscience and our record. ® 11. That we must be free from the love of what ought not to be before we can _ be at peace with the moral law which requires what ought to be. 2 “Si vis fugerea Deo; fuge ad Deum,” says the Latin proverb. “If you wish to flee from God, flee to God;” for the only way to flee from Him is to flee to Him. 4 12. It is scientifically incontrovertible that conscience produces in us a sense of ill-desert whenever we say “I will not” to the Divine “I ought.” 9 13. That conscience produces in us this sense of ill-desert whenever we accurately _temember the record of our intelligent refusal to say “I will” to the Divine “I ought.” t 14. That no lapse of time lessens this sense of ill-desert, if the memory of such ‘Tefusal is vivid and thoughtful. + J Forty-eight hours ago we were passing through the anniversary of the assassina- tion of President Lincoln. Some years have elapsed since that atrocity; but have : our opinions changed as to the blameworthiness of the principal actor in it? If the assassination in 1865 ought not to have been, it will be true forever that it ought not to have been. It is a long time since the world had fixed opinions about Nero and Caligula; but we do not think of changing our opinions simply because of the passage of time. Do we not disapprove all that ought to be disapproved, and do so once for all? It is a terrible certainty that Judas Iscariot, if he ever blamed himself once justly Must continue to blame himself forever and forever. There is a noose that a man may put about his own neck and tie, but which he cannot untie. There is a irreversi- bility in the past; and the action which ought not to have been will always be regarded as such when we vividly and faithfully remember its character. It will be impossible for us not to disprove such an action; for conscience is a part of our nature, and its natural operation is to disapprove all that ought not to be. Murder Ought not to have been; and Macbeth will never think that it ought to have been, or make it ought to have been. You were born in Boston; can Omnipotence make it true you were not born in Boston? You have done what ought not to have becn; ‘ 164 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. can Omnipotence make it true that what ought not to have been ought to have been? Conscience is so fearfully and wonderfully made, that you must forever and forever disapprove what ought not to have been. When a man has had an arm amputated it cannot be put back; it is gone once for all. How evident it is that, under natural law, a man may drift on in careless esthetic ways till he loses the perception of the beautiful! He learns to love that which zsthetically ought not to be; and he blunts his esthetic sense until you say he could, by a long process of culture, be brought back perhaps, but never will be. You say his probation is over esthetically.. On every conceivable side, except the moral and religious, character is subject to probations, and attains permanence; but on these sides a whim of the luxurious ages forbids you to hear the truth which all great and strenuous ages have asserted, namely, that probations of course exist there as they do elsewhere. Undeniably there are esthetical probations, physical probations and intellectual probations. But now you affirm, you who assert the unity of law, that there are no moral probations. Do you perceive any self-contradiction in that intel- lectual proceeding? 15. It is a scientifically verifiable fact of experience, that conscience, when we keep our eyes open to light, produces in us, besides the sense of ill-desert, a feeling that something ought to be done to satisfy the rightly resplendent majesty and the plainly unconditional and eternal authority of the violated law which says “I ought.” If we have agreed up to this proposition, we shall not part here. Will you remember who committed the murder? What were we thinking a few minutes ago, when I outlined before you a typical human atrocity? The man has learned to loathe ‘his crime. Were you ready to say that he had done enough? Something ought to be done besides his learning to be sorry that he had murdered his wife. You were very sure of this face to face with the concrete case. You say that this piece of current history is a fact, but that I am now leading you into vapor. Well, go back to that scrap of red-hot iron out of the pit and touch it. It is not fog. It burns up fog. It is. although blue flame, destructive of all vapor. And you, face to face with the concrete © example, are not likely, in that man’s case, to believe that the perfumes of Arabia witt sweeten the hand that has driven the axe through the skull of the nearest and dearest. That man is not authorized to be at peace, even after he has reformed, if he depends only on his own excellence. That alone cannot give him peace of soul; and the question is, whether anything else can. One of the sceptical late schools of thought asserts that science knows nothing of Atonement for sin. All causes that are once put in action produce effects which become causes, and which must take their course. If we bring into existence evil causes, they will produce their natural effects; and we cannot erase or cover the past. The idea of a man being relieved from the natural results of his sin is in conflict with clear thought. These are propositions which just now are receiving indorsement from infidelity itself. Your old style of doubt is slowly undermined by the newer, I had almost said by that more Christian style, which is prepared to be amazed if it can be shown clearly that any great arrangement can deliver us from the terrors of the past. “Plato, Plato,” said Socrates, “perhaps God can forgive deliberate sin; but I do not see how.” aT 16. It is scientifically clear from the facts of personal and general experience that, ¢ in the absence of satisfaction, conscience forebodes punishment. 1 17. It forebodes this with such pertinacity and force, that the prophetic action of conscience, or presentiment of penalty, according to the confession of all great literature and philosophy, makes cowards of us all. 18. That it forebodes punishment, not only in this life, but in time to come beyond death. The Atonement in the Light of Self-Evident Truth—Cook. 165 s To and fro behind the veil, conscience, in anticipation, paces up and down, oftener than over any path in this life. It would not thus by organic instinct pace up and down behind the veil, if there were nothing there. Did we anticipate nothing behind the veil, conscience could not make cowards of us all; for death would be release. 19. This foreboding has done as much work in the history of religion among _men as any other instinct, and this has proved its strength. 20. The foreboding does not cease when we become free from the love of sin. Remember Lady Macbeth’s fruitless use of water; look back to my schoolmate. When the hoofs of the horses of his pursuers were rattling after him on the old Roman pavements, Nero caused himself to be put to death; he passed out of the world by virtual suicide; and history says that his look was not a look, but a glare. He had not been misled by a Christian education. A distinguished infidel had trou- bles of conscience; but he attributed them to a nervous shock he received in his youth. Nero did not receive any nervous shock in his youth; Caligula did not. Boston may probably have men in it who never had a nervous shock in youth, but who have ‘illustrated all the great laws of conscience, and who have been made afraid before a Somewhat or a Some One in whom it has been said there is nothing to fear. “Since was seven years old,” Parker affirmed, “I have had no fear of God.” 21. It is a scientifically verifiable fact of experience, therefore, that the absence of the love of sin in the present does not bring us to peace when we vividly and thoughtfully recall our record of sin in the past, and allow our native instincts free What! Sin not taken off us, and put upon our Lord? Our guilt not borne by our Savior? No; not in the sense in which you understand guilt. Blameworthiness is ae transferred from us to Him, and cannot be. We know that our Lord had no sin, he utting it upon another. That word “guilt” is a sae unless you remember that behind it lie two meanings. WN 23. Guilt signifies, first, personal blameworthiness; second, liableness to suffer in order to preserve the honor of a violated law. hl In the former sense guilt cannot be transferred from person to person; in the latter it can be. Our Lord is no murderer, no perjurer. There is no divergence of theological opinion from self-evident truth when self-evident truth declares that per- ‘sonal demerit is not transferable from personality to personality. Ghastliest of all misconceptions ever put before this city or any other is the assertion that the doctrine of the Atonement implies—first, that an innocent being is made guilty in the sense of ng personally blameworthy; and, secondly, that that innocent being is punished in the sense of suffering pain for personal ill-desert. Both these propositions all lear thought discards, all religious science condemns. We have no doctrine of the Atonement which declares that personal demerit is laid upon our Lord, or that, in blameworthiness. He had no personal blameworthiness; He was an innocent being, as te always will be, and never did, can, or will suffer punishment in the strict sense of 24. Guilt in the second sense, or liability to suffering in order to preserve the penor of a violated law, may be removed when the Author of the law substitutes His 166 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Redeemer and Sanctifier of the universe, that arrangement meets with exactness the deepest wants of man. It is the highest possible dissuasive from the love of sin; it is the only possible deliverance from the guilt of sin, in the sense, not of personal blame- worthiness, but of liability to suffering in order to preserve the honor of the violated law, which says “I ought.” 27. Such a great arrangement may, therefore, with scientific exactness, be known to be needed, and so needed as to be called properly the desire of all nations. 28. The Atonement which reason can prove is needed Revelation’ declares has been made. p On the slope of Beacon Hill, a New England author, who ought always to be named side by side with Pestalozzi, once made it a rule, in a school full of subtle thought, that, if a pupil violated its regulations, the master should substitute his own voluntary sacrificial chastisement for that pupil’s punishment. Bronson Alcott will allow me to say here and now, in his presence, that he has told me that this one regulation almost Christianized his school. The pupils were quite young, and for that reason the measure was effective among them. He was no dreamer. He would never have adopted this measure except with the sensitive. Never- theless, the operation of these untutored, hardly unfolded, and therefore spontaneously natural hearts, indicates what man is. “One day,’ says Bronson Alcott, “I called up before me a pupil eight or ten years of age, who had violated an important regula- tion of the school. All the pupils were looking on, and they knew what the rule of the school was. I put the ruler into the hand of that offending pupil; I extended my hand; I told him to strike. The instant the boy saw my extended hand and heard my command to strike I saw a struggle begin in his face. A new light sprang up in his countenance. A new set of shuttles seemed to be weaving a new nature within him. I kept my hand extended, and the school was in tears. The boy struck once, and he himself burst into tears; and I constantly watched his face and he seemed in a bath of fire, which was giving him a new nature. He had a different mood toward the school and toward the violated law. The boy seemed transformed by the idea that I should take chastisement in place of his punishment. He went back to his seat, and ever after was one of the most docile of all the pupils in that school, although he had been at first one of the rudest.” My friends, you know that I believe that law is a unit throughout the whole extent of time and space, and that, if you can measure a little arc of the moral law as exhibited in this school of the Concord philosopher, you will obtain some glimpse of the principle on which the Atonement operates. 29. The definition of the Atonement is the substitution of the voluntary sacrifi- cial chastisement of Christ for man’s punishment. Why do I make a distinction between chastisement and punishment? Because the facts require me to do so. In this example was Bronson Alcott punished? Not at all. Was Bronson Alcott guilty? Not at all. Was the personal demerit of that pupil transferred to Bronson Alcott? Not at all. Such transference of personal demerit is an impossibility in the nature of things. Nevertheless, we have in Boston a school of theology and preaching, and a wide range of popular sentiment, which regards Christianity as teaching, in the doctrine of the Atonement, a self-contradiction, an absurdity; namely, the idea that personal demerit is transferred from one individual to another. James Martineau says that the idea of a vicarious Atonement is abhorrent to him, because it includes the idea that Christ, an innocent being, was punished. I wish to admit that Orthodoxy has been careless in her phrases again and again. I do not know how many have been thrown into the lawless license of liberalism by that mis- conception of the Atonement which asserts that in it an innocent being was punished, and personal demerit was transferred. But law is one through the universe; and I wr ; The Atonement in the Light of Self-Evident Truth—Cook. 167 have a perfect right to stand on this example of Alcott’s school. I affirm that you know perfectly well that Bronson Alcott, in the strict sense, did not suffer punishment. “He was innocent. What did happen? Bronson Alcott voluntarily accepted chastise- ‘ment, not punishment. What is the definition of punishment? Pain inflicted for rsonal blameworthiness. What is chastisement? Pain suffered for the one who ‘suffers it, or for the benefit of those who witness it. Does the latter imply guilt? Not ‘at all. A mother has a vicious son, and she has done her duty by him, let us suppose. She has no remorse; for I assume she is free from all guilt for her son’s bad habits; but she suffers terribly. Is that pain punishment? No, chastisement. We must make this distinction, in Boston at least, where so long the caricature has been placarded on ‘the highest walls, asserting that, in the Atonement, punishment is inflicted on an ‘imnocent being and personal demerit transferred. I never was taught that Christ ‘suffered punishment. I had to learn out of books that anyone made it an objection to Christianity that an innocent being was punished. If religious science will begin the fashion, and never use a term of importance without defining it, I for one will try to keep step with that fashion as one of the most blessed of all modern improvements, and one I should like, by the contagion of general acceptance, to force upon all who differ from Christian views. In defining saving faith we must distinguish chastise- ment from punishment: the chastisement of our offences was laid upon our Lord. It is nowhere presumed in the Scriptures that personal demerit. can be transferred from individuality to individuality. What happened further in the school? Suppose that boy had been called up and punished a second time, after the master had been chastised, would that have been right? Would the school have said that was right? The master has accepted chas- tisement voluntarily; and now you cannot call that boy up, and punish him a second time. The school would say that is wrong, It is against all human nature to do that. Why? Because justice is satisfied? No; but because it has been sufficiently honored. Distributive justice is waived, while general justice is satisfied. What has the master done? He has so substituted his own chastisement for the pupil’s punishment as to remove the liableness of the pupil to suffer in order to preserve the honor of the law of the school. But the master is not to blame? No. The master has not been | punished? No. Assuredly this case, on the human side, looks intelligible: I think I can understand that side. But do you mean to say that in the arc of that little example are involved principles that sweep the whole curve of the Atonement, or show in part how God’s chastisement was substituted for our punishment? Yes, by more than a glimpse; for the law is the same everywhere. The master paid the debt of that boy, you say. He did not pay it in the sense of Temoving the pupil’s ill-desert, but only in that of removing his liableness to suffer to preserve the honor of the law of the school. The illustration is, of course, imperfect On many points; but on a few it is serviceable, and I present it only to throw light on these. It is perfectly clear that the pupil by his own act made himself liable to suffer in order to preserve the honor of the law he violated. If that liableness was to be removed, it was necessary something should be done; and the school would have gone to ruin if nothing had been done to preserve the honor of its law. I understand perfectly, too, that, when this boy goes back, a motive has been brought to bear upon him that will transform him, if anything can. Nothing can take hold of human nature like such condescension, justice, and love. Would the boy have acted so if he had been a Greek boy? Any sensitive free being, man or angel, would have been affected as that boy was by the command to substitute the chastisement of the master for his own punishment. A new set of | shuttles would have sprung into action in an Esquimaux or a Greek boy in a similar case. I have seen a Greek boy whirl his top among the ruins of the Parthenon, and ee ee SS ee e———EEEEE—E—E—— 168 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the Roman boy his top upon the old pavements that the chariot-wheels of Czsar had scarred; and I think that any boy from any quarter of the globe would have felt, in the case supposed, that the master had not lowered the dignity of the law of the school at all; that the law which had been violated had not been treated lightly; and that, if this boy wanted motives for loyalty, what he would need to do would be to remember vividly the chastisement of the master in place of his own punishment. In the case of that scholar, guilt meant two things—first, his own personal blameworthiness; second, his liability to suffer to preserve the honor and vindicate the authority of the law of the school. Now, guilt in the first sense never is removed (Hodge’s Theology, passim). It is not the doctrine of the Atonement that personal demerit is taken off a man by saving faith. It was always true of that scholar that he violated the law. His personal demerit had not been transferred to Bronson Alcott at all. The record of rebellion is always behind that boy. Only his liableness to suffering for the preservation of the honor of the law of the school has been removed. That latter sense of guilt is the meaning of the word when we say the Atonement removes man’s guilt. It is scientifically certain that, in the sense of removing his liableness, Bronson Alcott had power to pay the debt which that boy owed, and that he paid it by substituting his own chastisement for that boy’s punishment. That is a straight-forward, plain case, and you can teach any honest man to see that distinction. Hereafter, when scepticism with its long-eared hallelujahs comes to you, and says that the Atonement is a doctrine outgrown by all clear thought, because it teaches — that an innocent being was punished, and that personal demerit was transferred from one individual to another, and that therefore advanced thought must abandon the central idea of Christian culture as plainly barbaric, the result of some Platonic inter- fusion of thought in the early centuries, or some heathenish inheritance from Judaism, in short, that this scheme is self-contradictory,.or at war with, axiomatic truth, please ask that singer of empty anthems to be clear himself; to state what he would say in a human case such as I have supposed; and then whether he dare affirm, in the name of the unity of law, which he proclaims as the first truth of science, that, if there has — been any such Atonement made in the universe, it is not what we infinitely need. My friends, exact and cool science knows with precision that we want just this more than unspeakably, if anything like this has been done for us. We want it first, to pay our debt to the school of the universe, in the sense of removing liableness to suffering to preserve the honor of violated law; and, next, to give us immeasurable motives to loyalty. There is surely nothing that really changes the heart so quickly as a sight of this substitution of chastisement for punishment, whether it be in the human case of a school, or in the revealed case of the school of the universe. Lift this feeling of the poor boy into all the dignity it naturally assumes when you take it as a type of the moral law, a unit throughout the universe; lift that law until the are we can measure has become the segment of a circle large enough to reach from here to the galaxies; and then let all the constellations shine on the circle as you carry its line far past the spot over which Bootes is driving his hunting-dogs in their leash of sidereal fire; carry on that arc until stars fade out, and galaxies, and all the infinities and eternities of time past and time to come are embraced within it, and then what have you? One little point of light—the whole of it is no more—to hold up before the moon of Christ’s chastisement substituted for man’s punishment. You wish to be born anew? Look on the Cross. You wish to take God gladly as your Lord? Look on him as your Savior. You wish to drop all the heart burdens of slavishness, and you desire to come into the obedience of delight? Look on the Cross. You want glad allegiance to God as King? Look on the Cross, There is ’ i nothing that frees us from the love of sin like looking on Him who has delivered us 4 from the guilt of it. ‘ i, The Atonement in the Light of Self-Evident Truth—Cook. 169 Speaking philosophically, addressing you in the mood of cool precision, I affirm, that if the great things man wants are riddance from the love of sin, and deliverance from the guilt of it, we can obtain the first best, and the latter only, by looking on the Cross. Those old words have unfathomable depth; and he who is to be born anew must sit beside that pupil in Bronson Alcott’s school, must imagine the benches to be ‘galaxies, and his human companions the angels and archangels who bow down on the golden floor, and on the shore of the sea of glass, and in the presence of the Great White Throne, and cry out, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty; Thou art worthy, for Thou didst so love the world that Thou gavest Thine only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” May I summarize the scientific truths contained in this discussion by asserting, in the name of the axioms of the nature of things, that it is clear?— 1. That the master of the school was not guilty. 2. That he suffered, in the strict sense, not punishment, but chastisement. 3. That he had power to remove from the pupil the liability to suffer to preserve the honor of the law of the school. 4. That the pupil’s peace before the law of the school is the result not of his own work, but of the master’s work; and not of the master’s moral influence and general character merely, but of his substitution of chastisement for punishment. 5. That, nevertheless, the pupil must be loyal to the master, and thus, though not saved by works, cannot be saved without works, 6. That it is not simply the moral influence, or character and general example of the master, which transforms the boy into the mood of loyalty. 7. But that this substitution of voluntary sacrificial chastisement for punishment is the force which throws the shuttles that weave a new characer in the soul thus delivered from punishment; and that, although the record of disobedience cannot be changed, and must be remembered with regret, such memory, when loyalty is once - made so perfect in love and trust as to cast out fear, will be but a spur to adoration of the condescension shown to the released soul; and, in the multitudinous anthem of its gratitude, this shadow on the sea of glass will, for that spirit only, be by contrast an enchantment of the glory of the light on the sea of glass. On a summer evening, it has often been to me, on both sides of the Atlantic, a | solemn joy to lie down alone at a grove’s edge by the side of the ocean, and look into the infinite azure until the stars appear. In the rustle of the grove one may hear thus all the forests of all the zones of the thrifty, jubilant, wheeling world; the soul may touch all shores with the howling, salt, uneasy sea. As the stars come out, I love to lift above my thoughts Richter’s apologue, which represents an angel as once catching aman up into the infinite of space, and moving with him from galaxy to galaxy, until the human heart fainted, and called out, ‘End is there none of the Universe of God?” And the constellations answered, “End is there none that ever yet we heard of.” _ Again the angel flew on with the man past immeasurable architraves, and immensity after immensity, sown with rushing worlds; and the human heart fainted again, and cried out, “End is there none of the universe of God?” And the angel answered, ' “End is there none of the universe of God: lo! also, there is no beginning.” But if, while I, thus entranced, look into the sky, you bring above my gaze the page of the _ gospel recording the fact of the Atonement, all other revelations of the divine glory appear in contrast but chaff and dust. [A lecture by Joseph Cook, delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, April 16, 1878. This sermon is taken from the Volume of Monday lectures on Orthodoxy, by | permission. It is considered one of the strongest of the course of lectures that attracted the keenest intellects of America, and were held in high reputation all over the world. | Joseph Cook was born at Ticonderoga, N. Y., in 1838, and died there in 1901. | He was a graduate of Harvard and Andover, and studied for several years in Europe, and made a lecture tour around the world. His Monday lectures continued 20 years.] (170) THE CROSS OF JESUS GHIRiSae J. H. M. DDAUBIGNE, D. D. “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” —Gal. 6:14. My brethren, God has not intended that men should be deprived of all boasting. A disposition to boast is one of the propensities most peculiar to our nature, and which we find in all classes of society and among all varieties of the human race. From him who stands on the highest elevation in the world down to the most unknown; from the inhabitant of our cities, whose spirit towers on high, down to the very savage, whose reason is scarcely observable; all find something of which they believe that they may boast. And what is it then?—a ridiculous plaything, of which they should blush, instead of making it the object of their pride. Oh! sad spectacle of our vanity, which proves with the greatest precision that the human race has lost that in which it could glory, that it has come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3: 28); and that in this great need it stretches out its hand to the first plaything that it finds to put it in the place of the reality which it wants. Thus the inhabitant of a city in the utmost state of famine seizes with desire the loathsome food, from the very sight of which at another time all his senses would have revolted. God would give men an object in which they could better glory. He has given them the cross of Jesus Christ. “God forbid that I should glory,” says St. Paul in our text, “save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And through these words he pronounces the sentence of condemnation against all deceitful things, which are in general our idols; he com- mands all men to cease from their vain endeavors, and he exalts the cross of Jesus Christ, as the only object worth glorying in for all intelligent beings till the end of time. But when the apostle says in the cross of Christ, think not that he understands thereby the wood, the outward sign, the figure with which one meets so frequently in many regions of Christendom, and which has been so often abused by superstition. He intends to denote thereby the death of the Son of God, which took place when the fulness of the time was come for the remission of our sins. But he uses the expression the cross only to remind us that this kind of death was held as accursed among all people, that the death in which we ought to glory was full of humiliation, shame and ignominy, and even accursed of God. (Gal. 3: 13). See then here, my brethren, the glorying which’ God your Creator allows you, and which He himself would give you. The d&y which we now commemorate is the only ground of greatness which can be within the reach of the human race. Never would man have been really able to glory if the hill of Calvary had not 1800 years ago dis- played the spectacle which we see on it; if man had not there crucified this Jesus, who had previously been sent by Pilate to Herod and by Herod to Pilate; if he had not been there suspended on the tree, “a reproach of men, and despised of the people” (Ps. 22: 6); and if the terrible sentence had not fallen on the only innocent head that ever lived on earth. This is the day on which the great contest was engaged in, on which the great deed was finished which won for us honor and immortality. This is the day on which our eternal nobility was registered in the book of life. yj 5 The Cross of Jesus C hrist—D’ Aubigne. t7t h “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let the present meditation be devoted to the examination of this new object of glorying. _ There are two opinions concerning this object; one is the apostle’s; we will sup- ‘port it. The other is the world’s; we will refute it. Or, we will first state the dignity Be ihe cross of Christ, and then test our feelings thereby. When we have defended the truth and combatted error, our work is done. ___ And do Thou, Lord our God, what Thou hast to do! Give the beginning and the end, and thus all. Show us how in the cross of Jesus Christ there is hidden all the ‘wisdom of God and all the power of God! Amen. I. The Opinion of the Apostle.- The Apostle of the Gentiles proclaims, as we have seen, the cross of Jesus Christ as the only object of his boasting. And the first reason which moved him to do so iecctainly this, that he sees in the cross the mind and glory of God developed in their full splendor. St. Paul had learnt to know God in his early years; but the zeal which impelled him before his conversion so violently to persecute the disciples of the Nazarene, shows sufficiently of what nature this knowledge was. The cross of Jesus Christ had now been revealed to him, and it made him acquainted with a God of whom he had learnt nothing in the school of Gamaliel, and he boasts of that to which he owed this wonderful knowledge. Yes, this cross is the only teacher which reveals to us the living God. Ili we even exhaust our knowledge, we shall not truly know God if the cross of Jesus Christ have given us no instruction. Without it even ‘nature and conscience speak in dark sayings, and what is most important for us to know remains veiled from our eyes. Where will you come to the knowledge of God's holiness, His unutterable abhorrence of sin, which gives you such earnest warnings? Conscience says something to you; but if you would have quite a different idea of it, ‘come to the cross of Jesus Christ—see Him in whom awells all the fullness of the God- head bodily, fastened to the cross on account of sin, and because unrighteousness ‘dwells on the earth. Will you then still retain unsettled views of the holiness of God? Will you still doubt whether God has given the world a telling proof of His holiness? _ Where will you arrive at the knowledge of God’s love, this infinite mercy which ‘should be the ground of all your joy? Nature will teach you something here also; but if you would hear this subject spoken of with power, concerning which nature seems only to stammer, hasten to the cross of Jesus Christ; see the well-beloved Son of the Father humble Himself unto death, even the death of the cross, that the world might have life. Is that not a deed of love? ‘For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God lcommendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:7, 8.) _ Where will you discover the glory of God? What is the place, O my Lord and my God! where I can find Thee in all Thy glory? Shall I seek Thee in the midst of the worlds which Thou hast formed, or in an inaccessible light, surrounded afar off by all the angels bowing their heads to the ground? I can find no spot in the whole universe which would answer to Thy glory. Everything is so little in comparison with Thee, everything is so small side by side with Thy infinity! But no; I know a spot which answers to all Thy glory, and this is an accursed tree, on which Thou art fastened. There I recognize Thee in all thy sublimity, much more than when sur- ounded by those thousands of thousands who form the guard of Thy throne. (Dan. :10.) All these ideas of angels, archangels and cherubim, which bow their heads efore Thee, are but slight representations, borrowed from what man calls greatness; ut O Thou who was fastened on a cross for our sin! Thy glory is infinite. I see herein not even the slightest human feature; Thou hast there a splendor altogether eculiar to Thee; Thou appearest in a thoroughly divine light. Oh! I envy not the *y 172 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. angels and archangels who declare to Thee their unworthiness when Thou sittest on Thy heavenly throne. To us men is it given to worship Thee on a far more glorious throne—Thy cross. They forsook the heavens when Thou was fastened on the cross, because the earth presented to them a spectacle which had never been seen in heaven. Only and solely at the foot of this cross will I linger, recognizing Thee, and making my boast—‘‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ‘ But St. Paul glories in the cross of Christ not only because it reveals to him the glory of God, but also because it causes him to see his own wretchedness. What must man’s state be, when such a deed has to be accomplished in order to free him from it? Certainly there are voices enough as well outside of us as in us to remind us of our nothingness; but how skilfully we can reason away their decisions and withdraw our- selves from their judgments! In what a deceitful righteousness does man wrap himself up as long as the cross of Christ is a strange thing to him; on what a height he places himself until the cross abases him! The cross of Jesus Christ is the great writing of accusation which God hath set forth before the eyes of the whole earth. No one can fix his eyes on it without being at the same moment convinced. It is truly foolishness for a man to believe himself still guiltless, since the Son of God was offered up for his sin. Come, my brethren, for the cross of Jesus Christ shows you the wounds of your soul; it reveals to you your entire desert of condemnation, teaches you the — entire extent of your sin, and extinguishes in you the very last spark of pride. O thou who thinkest thou dost still possess so great worthiness in the sight of God, come, in order to have this idea destroyed, to the cross of Christ; come there in order to be able to know thine own deserts; the Son of God was obliged to shed His blood there in order to save thee from death. O thou who boastest of thy virtues, come and consider them a little in the light of this Cross, there they will pale away, there they will become obscured, and thou wilt find them all infected with a selfishness and with a pride which make them objects of the divine abhorrence. Let even the most excellent of men approach; I place him at the foot of that cross which was erected even for his salvation, and what will then become of his pride? The cross — breaks in pieces this deceitful glass through which we look upon ourselves as greater than we are; it annihilates us. And why then does St. Paul glory in it? Because he knows that in his state the sense of his wretchedness is his highest dignity. And to us, my brethren, it is not allowed to have another boast than that of the Apostle; none of us will be great before God if we have not felt our own nothingness before Him. Oh! blessed be this cross which has assigned us our right place, and which causes us to find in the feeling of our nothingness the commencement of our glory. But when Paul glories in the cross of Christ because it had hurled him down from his vain greatness, he boasts also chiefly of it because it raises him to true greatness. The great object of his glorying is that such a price has been paid for the salvation of : his soul, that the Son of God died even for the sin which he committed, that the blood shed on the cross made a full atonement for all his guilt, and procured for him immor- — tality. And what, my dear hearer, is thy glory if not the forgiveness of sins? How wouldst thou lift up thy head if One had not died for thee, if He who died for thee ~ were not He who made all things, and who preserves all things by the word of His © power. (2 Cor. 5:14; John 1:3; Col. 1:16, 17; Heb. 1:2, 3, 10.) Thou exertest thyself — to draw glory and honor out of the smallest offering which a dying man brings to thee, — and out of the smallest trouble which he puts himself to on thy account; and wilt thou not glory in this, that the Lord of all things, having appeared in flesh, has shed His blood on the cross for thee? It was not on account of His own sins that He was pierced, for “I find no fault in Him,” said even His judge. (John 19:4.) The power of men was not the cause of His death; for could He not have prayed His Father to ‘ See oe > Be — The Cross of Jesus Christ—D’ Aubigne. 173 send Him more than twelve legions of angels? (Matt. 26:53.) Why was He then fastened on the cross? It was necessary on thy account, my dear brother: this is the only way of accounting for it that is left to us. a Yes, the only cause which slew the Son of the living God on the cross was the love _ which He had for thy soul, the determination which He had formed to save thee. If He carried out his intention, if pain did not cause Him to waver, if He did not shun i _ the terrible hour: it was all in order to save thy soul. If He shed all His blood for % thee, if He had_to cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” if He endured an anguish of heart, which far exceeds our ideas: the only cause was the salvation of thy soul. If He fought out on the cross a great conflict, if He overcame sin, the world, death, and hell: He did it to win thy soul. Re He died—all is accomplished. He has cancelled with His own blood the debt i, which thou couldst never have paid; thou art reconciled; thy offences are taken away: Paice i is now, for all them that obey Him, the Author of eternal salvation, (Heb. 5: 9.) 0 wonderful death of the only Son of the Father! An event which will ever be unique b in the history of the world! Unsearchable depth of Deity, before which the angels _ bow their heads to the earth, without being able to sound its depths! And shouldst thou, my brother, for whom this took place, shouldst thou be the only one whom it did not move? Shouldst thou alone draw no glory from it? What more wonderful event : than this could proceed from heaven to earth? At what price wouldst thou be redeemed if this, which has been paid, does not suffice for thee? How high dost thou place thyself if thou slightest the blood of the world’s King? What kind of a gift _wouldst thou receive if an eternity of glory has so little value for thee? Oh! when - thou wilt stand before the judgment-seat of God, and when the eye of the Judge will , examine the transgression of thy soul, oh! what will be then thy hope? What will be then thy glory? What can then calm thy heart if thou canst not then say, in presence of the Judge and of all those who stand before Him: ‘Christ died for my sins.” | (1 Cor. 15: 3.) Yes, my brethren, only the unbeliever can fix his eye on this cross | without finding there his glory, because it has, indeed, none for him; but the believer : discovers therein an infinite glory. My Lord and Savior, it is truly so, the lower Thy cross is, the more we glory in it; for what must that dignity be which is shown to us | through such an humbling, what must that glory be which is promised to us by such an _ abasement? But observe especially the ground which the Apostle himself presents: “God ; forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” That is, indeed, an exceedingly great advantage which the cross of Jesus Christ bestows; for therein consists the great wretchedness of man, that he cannot free himself from the present world, to become a citizen of the future one; and the cross of Jesus Christ works this miracle. ‘It crucifies man to the world, and the world to man. What an expression of power! It crucifies you to the world, that is, it crucifies the sin in you which causes you to live for the world. Should you not hate sin, knowing that Christ died on account of sin? Will you not fight against all the motions which it begets in your heart? Yes, the Redeemer’s death is the only means of infusing into us a lively hatred of our sinful nature. It is the only medicine for our wounds. But what is still more, the cross of Jesus Christ will crucify the world to you; that is, it will annihilate all allurements to the vanities of the world. You cannot love Christ and the world at the same time. What can the pageantry of the present world be worth to him for whom the cross of Christ has won all the treasures of the world to come? Will he not hate the world violently; for if sin was the cause of his Redeemer’s death, the world with its passions and excesses was the instrument! The cross crucifying man to this world makes him a citizen of the world to come; killing in him the old man of this earth, it forms the 174 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. new man which is of heaven. Where Christ is, there is also His treasure and His heart; he is risen with Christ. (Col. 38:1.) In this manner the cross works the great change which man needed, and makes him whom it found in the dust a citizen of heaven. In this manner the cross accomplishes through its power what no law or human wisdom could perform. ‘'God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” But the last motive which moved St. Paul, as he travelled through Asia, Greece and Italy, and passed over all seas, to cry out that he desired to glory in nothing else, was certainly the thought of the power of this cross and the triumphs which await it, This great apostle knew that it is sufficient to bestow immortality even on those who have -already sunk into the deepest abyss. He knew what a large number it had already redeemed as well in the cities of Galatia to which he wrote, as those in Greece, and at Rome, and Jerusalem. He knew the future destiny of the cross; that kings and people would come and cast themselves down before it; that the nations would bring their sons in their arms; and that all the ends of the earth would become its inherit- ance. (Is, 49:22.) And we can see that in part fulfilled, which the apostle could only foreknow. This unknown cross has raised itself from Calvary, and rulés already over half the earth. The prediction of Him who was fastened on it has not ceased to be fulfilled: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” (John 12:32.) How many millions of souls in so many centuries have fixed their gaze upon it, as the Israelites of old did on the brazen serpent, and been saved (Num. 21: 5-9); what a great multitude, won out of the kingdom of darkness, celebrate now, before the throne, the salvation that has come to them through the Lamb! (Rev. 7:9, 10.) All old things have passed away, and everything has become new. A new breath of life has floated around this orb for 1800 years. The cross of Jesus Christ has already conquered multitudes of adversaries: slavery, barbarism and effeminacy have been obliged to give way before it; for in saving individuals it becomes the true power of nations. It accomplishes in its progress the redemption of the world; the powers of darkness fly before it, and let go their hold of us; at the same time, strug- gling with superstition which is bent on putting human wretchedness in its place or close by it, and with unbelief which is bent on annihilating it, and which would make men believe that heaven has not opened to save the earth; struggling with these, it direets"its blows right and left against those abominable enemies. Not content with extending its old conquests, it hastens through the midst of the heaveris to carry on the work of regeneration. It is the standard which the Lord of hosts set up to the people.” (Is. 49:22.) Its victories multiply; it assembles men from all sides, whose dispersion was caused by their sins; and we, trusting on its almighty power, can espy the time when it will be said: Now is the whole world our God’s and his Christ’s. Oh! God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If the world tread thee even under its feet, thou art nevertheless that by which it is saved. A drop of Thy blood, O Lord, is more precious to us than all the riches of the — universe. II. The Opinion of the World. Is this your language, my brethren? If that is the opinion of St, Paul, what is yours? There is scarcely a truth which could have more opponents in the world than : this, about which our text speaks to us. How many are there who practically say, I glory in all other things than in the cross of Jesus Christ. Are ye of this number? Oh, that your conscience testified to you on this day, the day of triumph for the cross, that you yourselves, since you entered this sacred house, and commenced to lend me 4 your attention, have neither in your understanding nor in your heart cherished feel- ings or thoughts which are opposed to those of St. Paul. q Perhaps you say:—Is it then necessary, to think so much about this cross? There — The Cross of Jesus Christ—D’ Aubigne. 175 la if 4! are so many other objects in religion which are much more important than this! More important than the cross? I could here point you back to what I have just now said, put I prefer to refute you by means of yourself. You would set the cross aside as a _ thing of small account, and yet you say almost at the same moment this cross, this atoning death of the only begotten Son of God is incomprehensible, and our reason is thereby brought to nought. How are such opinions to be reconciled? How can the "cross be considered at the same time so insignificant and yet so wonderful? If it thus vi surpasses your ideas, whence comes the low value which you assign to it? This must i be made clear to you. The cross of the Son of God cannot exist and yet be insignifi- _ cant; it is either credible or a lie. If it is deserving of credit and true, it is the greatest _ thing in the world, and you must come and recognize it, and in spirit bow before it. 4 If it is false and a lie, you must declare it to be the greatest of all cheats, with all our - sacred books which proclaim it, and with the whole of Christianity of which it is the _ substance. You must, like the first apostates of the Church, trample it under your feet, and then swear by the gods of the world. One of the two the cross must be to you, _ either divine wisdom or hellish lies. It must either be your ruin or your salvation. _ There is no middle way; you cannot be indifferent about it. But that is just what holds us back from it, you will say. If the cross is true, all ’ other things fall at once, and we can then seek our glory only in Him. But is it true? Is it true that the Son of God shed His blood on the tree to procure for us eternal : life? Yes, my brethren, and the witness which should convince us is God Himself, who is the truth, and who, through His apostle (Eph. 2: 16), declares that Jesus Christ : reconciled both in one body by the cross. But without seeking testimony in heaven, _ will not the earth itself suffice for us? Call back to remembrance the greatest deeds of __ antiquity, there is no longer any trace of them in existence, and only the old historical books which relate them to us bear testimony that they have taken place. But it is __ mot so with the atoning death of Christ: this event lives in the world. The present __ condition of the earth gives evidence of it. From the blood which flowed down from the height of the cross, all the nations have proceeded which have exalted this holy banner upon the earth which they rule. Everything in these nations speaks to you of | the cross. Yes, the cross of Christ is beyond your reach, you cannot shatter it. This _ truth, on which eighteen centuries rest, cannot so easily be set aside, as if it were a short-lived dogma, which has been formed in the brain of him who preacKes it. _ Opposed in-all ages, and by all the power of men, it has nevertheless permeated ail : _ times without having been cast down. It has expressed itself by its own poWer, both against unbelief and against superstition. And this fact of an offering which once was finished for the sin of all is ever present in the world, and proclaimed as the greatest act of love to men. But could such an act have taken place? What astonishment does this doctrine cause us! What can we especially discover in it, if it is not foolishness? My brethren, let us not ask whether such a deed could have been completed when we know that it | did take place. To investigate whether what has actually happenéd could have taken place is a ridiculous play of men of reason; and those must keep silence when the cross of the Son of God is spoken of. You are astonished, you say. But according to what tules, then, should the plummet of your understanding search the depths of Deity? if God, in giving life to a plant, does something which surprises us, should we think that when He reconciles the world to Himself He should do nothing astonishing? Man is astounded at it, because he has never had an idea anything like it. In fine, know that God in this matter thinks as you do, and‘that He calls the cross foolishness. _ ( Cor. 1:21.) But should we not learn from this that if we dare to contend with Him, what we called wisdom would be proved foolishness, and what we considered foolishness would be declared wisdom. A little of the foolishness of the cross is - 176 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. sufficient to put to shame all our philosophy. This cross, which alone reveals all God’s attributes, and alone satisfies all man’s wants, is the real sum of the wisdom of the world. All buildings of human pride are thereby one after another annihilated. It has already rendered many defenceless, and will not cease to disarm others. He who is a stranger to it is mistaken, for a time will come when he will be astonished to have passed it by without paying attention to it; and when Christ, having spoiled the princi- palities and powers of human wisdom, which still rule in the present century, and having made a show of them openly, will triumph over them Himself in this cross. (Gols 15): ; But if this cross of Christ is not now your glory and your wisdom, what are you then? To what religion do you then belong? Are you Christians? Christians without the cross! What a new Christianity is that, in what school is it taught? Verily, you can even learn from unbelievers what you do not seem to know. Go to the children of Israel, make your way to a, follower of the false prophet; ask one of them what the Christianity is which you profess. Certainly he who does not believe, but for that very reason is free from prejudice, will tell you. He will say that Christians are a people who recognize Jesus of Nazareth born at Bethlehem as the only begotten Son of God, and believe that the death which He suffered under Pontius Pilate is the sacrifice which reconciles the sinful and rebellious human race to God! Do you then not know your religion even so well as those who live without it? They abuse this cross of Jesus, they who do not pretend to believe in it; and you who publicly. confess it, you are ashamed of it, like them! Not to glory in the cross, is not to belong to the Christian church. We see in every century all those who have followed the steps of St. Paul, and whose names are noted down in the Book of Life, glorying in the cross. In it the heroes of the Reformation especially gloried, whom we honor as our fathers in the faith. God keep you from being able to turn away from their example, and from glorying in anything else than in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! Ah, my brethren, shall we say why you do not glory in it alone? Because you believe that you do not need it. And that is just the last point to which everything comes back. We seize with joy a help which we consider necessary, but we despise it as soon as we believe that it is unnecessary. The cross of Jesus Christ professes to be what alone can give eternal salvation; but you believe you are able to secure it through yourself. The cross of Jesus Christ professes to be what alone can give holiness; but you imagine you are able to attain to it of yourself. What have you then still to do with it? Ifyou reject it, that appears to me intelligible. The question is just this, Which is right, the cross of Jesus Christ which places salvation in itself, or you who seek it in yourself? This is the question which, if not soon decided in your case, that day will answer which will determine and reveal all things. But you say, perhaps, and certainly there are many who can say it: “I deny not the cross of Christ.” Quite true, you believe it, but only the half of it. You deny not the event, but you shun it. You venture not with a full and free faith to persuade yourself that the Son of God was fastened on the tree for you; and hence it comes that, in respect of influence on your heart, this event is nothing. Ah, cast far away from you this littleness of faith, give up this half Christianity which precipitates you into destruc- ? tion. All Christianity in which the central point is not the crucified Messiah, to whom — everything runs, and from whom everything proceeds, is a false Christianity. Why will you not believe as St. Paul believed? The cross of Jesus Christ is just as nigh to you as it was to him. I offer you the Christ who was crucified for you, just as St. Peter offered Him to those who had fastened Him on the cross. (Acts 3:26). His blood is before your eyes as it was before theirs; you can wash yourselves therein from your ; misdeeds just as clean as they could. Oh, what day calls you to this, if the Present — - 7 j The Cross of Jesus Christ—D’ Aubigne. 177 ‘does not? What moment would you choose, if not this solemn moment when the Son ‘of God was slain on Golgotha for you? Yea, Lord and Savior! I raise myself this hour and approach Thy cross! Thou didst bring there an offering for me; I come and bring mine to Thee. I come, Lord, and strip myself of everything, and declare to Thee that there is nothing in the world of which I boast but only the cross, on which I see Thee fastened. At Thy feet TI cast all my pretended greatness; Thy cross eclipses and annihilates it. I offer up to ‘Thee all in which I have heretofore gloried. I tread my righteousness under my feet; because I know that what I called my righteousness was nothing but unrighteousness. I tread my holiness under my feet; because I know that what I called holiness was nothing but shame. I tread my meritorious works under my feet; because I know that ‘among them there is not one to be found pure, and that those things by which I believed life could be merited deserve for me only condemnation. There remains for me nothing, O Lord! See me here as Thou wilt have me, see me in the dust, see me wretched, poor, blind and naked before Thee. Give me Thy gold, purified in the fire, that I may be rich! Give me the white robes of Thy righteousness, that I may clothe myself, and that the shame of my nakedness may not appear. (Rev. 3:17, 18.) Oh! Thy cross gives me again all that I have lost, and in a quite different degree. For me, my Lord! for me Thou wast fastened on the cross. Thy blood, which Thou didst shed, is my peace; I wash myself therein diligently from all spots; it atones before my Judge for all my offences; it brings me nearer to Him again; it unites me with Him afresh; it speaks better than the blood of Abel. (Heb. 12:24.) Thy cross becomes my wisdom, my righteousness, my holiness, my redemption. Behold, I am now rich, Lord! I have found this ground of glorying which will open to me the gates of heaven and set me upon an eternal throne. “God forbid that I should glory, $ave in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ah! how do all these bonds of unbelief now discover themselves to us which century after century have poured out their blasphemies against the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! We fear them in no wise. We repeat it, to them: It is this cross, this crucified Lord, that we worship, and in whom we glory. Ah! wretched and proud | world! Ah! wisdom, greatness and folly of this time! We know that at the foot of the | cross of Jesus Christ thy reproach awaits us! But, clothed with this reproach, we despise thy glory, we make a mock of thy splendor, and point with the finger at thy | greatness. We esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. (Heb. 11:26.) Every word of thy reproach is a title of honor to our glory, and crushing under our feet everything that can produce thy pride, we still repeat with the apostle: “God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” I have yet only a word to say to you: Abide by this cross. You have responded | to our voice, you have come and placed yourselves at the foot of the cross of Christ; | give thanks to him who has led you there; but this is still not enough, you must not in future leave it; nothing in the world should be able to separate you from it. Abide by this cross. Lament there the time of your ignorance; regret with a | bitter pain every moment that you have lost through not discovering its power and | glory. And having lived so many years in the world without it and without God, repeat, in the enjoyment of a present salvation, these words of one of His old servants: “I have too late come to a knowledge of Thee, I have too late come to love Thee.” (Augustine. ) Abide by this cross, because you find there true greatness; sacrifice there all false glory; sacrifice there with joy this pride, which is infused into you by the superiority of your mind, or the knowledge which distinguishes you, or your envied reputation in society, or your worldly calling, or the riches that you are in possession of, or your — ———- -$ — 178 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. course of life which exalts you above others, or the admiration which surrounds you this splendor which is extended over you, or by the ridiculous praises which are pre- sented to you. How can I reckon up all the sources of this childish pride which yot have to sacrifice before the cross? Abide by this cross. Abide there in your trials. Take comfort; the cross has rescued you, salvation is procured for you, eternal life awaits you; not even all the storms of life united can sadden the peace which has been won for you. Yes, the view of the punishment which fell upon the Holy and Righteous One in your stead, wil! cause you to find the burden which you bear light. Rejoice to be led on the way of pain which led Jesus to glory. Abide by this cross. And when sin is again stirred up in your flesh, when the world begins to entice you, and the fiend to spread his nets, when your soul has begur to reel like a drunken man, then consider Jesus, in order that the view of what He suffered for your sins may fill your soul with a holy horror of them, and kindle agair in your heart the extinguished flames of love. Abide by this cross. And even should everything unite against it, yea, shoul¢ men afresh surround it, blaspheming and shaking their heads (Matt. 27: 39); then be this your glory, boldly to confess this cross before all; “For whosoever shall confess Me before men,” saith the Lord, “him will I confess before My Father who is ir heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 10: 32,33.) The day will come when the veil whic still covers it will be entirely removed, and when its light and its glory will stream forth upon every one who has not been ashamed of it. May God give us grace to be confessors of the cross of Christ in our lives. May God give us grace to become confessors of the cross of Christ in our death. “I will not blot out his name out of the Book of Life,” saith the Lord. (Rev. 3:5.) Amen, [Through the kindness of Porter & Coates, Philadelphia, this sermon is repro: duced from ‘Sunday Half Hours With the Great Preachers,” the most valuable collec: tion of sermons the editor has found in his researches for the present work. Jean Henri Merle D’Aubigné, D. D., came from a French Huguenot stock, thai accounted life well spent in upholding evangelical religion. His great-grandfather hac to fly to Geneva at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and his grandfather was exiled to the same city in old age. Here Jean was born, August 16th, 1794. Hi: theological studies, commenced at Geneva, were completed at Berlin, under the cele brated Neander. After a pastorate in Hamburg, and later in Brussels as chaplain te King William, he returned to Geneva in 1830. At once he was appointed president o its new theological seminary, and vice-president of the Evangelical Society. His grea work is, “History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century,” of which nearly a hal million copies have been sold. His appearance was noble and commanding; hi vivacity keen, and energy exhaustless. He died in Geneva, October 21st, 1872.] ———— eee (179) / : : . THE DYING GRAIN OF WHEAT. ' REV. A. C. DIXON, D. D. $ x “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.”—John 12: 24. The Greeks came to Philip, saying, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Philip and Andrew tell Jesus of their desire, and the words of the text form a part of His reply. He did not say, “Bring the Greeks along, that they may see me,” but He answered, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone.” In other words, if the Greeks had seen Jesus as He then was, they would not have seen the real Jesus at all; they would have seen the perfect man according to the flesh, truly divine, but only the one of whom Paul afterward said, “I will know Him no more after the flesh.” The real Jesus can be seen only as He is seen in the process of dying; until we behold the Lamb of God, we have not really seen Jesus at all. A grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying is a true picture of the real Jesus, and this gives us the process and principle of Christian growth. _ The process is death by means of life. After the grain of wheat has fallen into the ground, the life in it hastens its death. It was the life of Christ (only another word for love) which prompted Him to die. He gave himself a willing sacrifice. It was death through life. So, in every Christian, there is a process of mortification by means of the Christ-life which he receives at the new birth. We must mortify the deeds of the body, crucify the works of the flesh. Paul said, “I die daily,” and in proportion as we live in Christ we die to sin, self, and the world. Death means failure; physical death a failure of the body. After the grain of wheat has fallen into the ground and dies, it is worthless. A week after a hundred bushels have been sown, if you were to dig it up, you could not sell it for five cents, but the failure is in order to success ; it must fail, that it may bring forth a harvest. So every Christian must fail in himself before he can succeed in God; he must truly die to his own strength, mental, oral, or spiritual, in order that Jesus, who is the real life, may live in him. Such lure, like the death of the wheat, is prophetic of success, and, until we have failed , we shall never truly succeed. The second step in the process of dying through life is aetupranur As soon s the wheat begins to die, because it has begun to live, it appropriates everything ithin reach for which it has a taste; it takes in the sunlight, heat, air, moisture, earth; hile it rejects foreign substances for which it has no taste. Whatever else the new irth may be, it is certainly the imparting of a new taste. “If so be ye have tasted hat the Lord is gracious.” This taste may be cultivated or vitiated. The Israelites the wilderness did not like the manna; they said it was light food. Now, I believe at manna was the best dish this world ever saw. God made it and He knows how make a good thing. It was a whole bill of fare in one dish, nutritious and whole- me, just what the Israelites needed in their open air journey. Nevertheless they }ad no taste for it. The trouble with them was that down in Egypt their taste had een vitiated by eating leeks, garlic, and onions. When a man likes onions, he is rtain not to like manna, When one of my members absents himself from prayer wet . 180 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. meeting and ceases to take delight in Christian worship and work, I take it for granted that he has been to Egypt and had a square meal of onions, and, of all the distasteful dishes that can be imagined, a mixture of manna and onions is the worst. An Egyp- tian dog would hardly eat it, and yet, that is the kind of fare with which some Chris- tians are vitiating their tastes. Instead of keeping to the manna of God’s word and work, which really satisfy the soul, they would mix with it the onions of worldly indulgence, and the result is that their experience is insipid and joyless. ‘The Christ- life in us gives us taste for what is Christly, and it should be our constant care to cultivate this taste, so that it may appropriate to the fullest extent the light of God’s Word. The third step in the process of the dying and living is assimilation. The dying grain not only takes in light, heat, air, water, and earth, but it makes all these a part of itself. It weaves them into the very texture of its being. So every Christian should not only appropriate the truth, but live the truth; he should be like Christ, incarnate truth. The Christ-life within him makes truth into character. The fourth step in the process is transformation. As the grain of wheat dies, appropriating and assimilating everything for which it has taste, there goes on a process of transformation. The golden harvest field is transformed earth, light, heat, air, and water. ‘“‘Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renew- ing of your minds.” As we mortify the bad, appropriate and assimilate the good, we are transfigured into the image of Christ. The fifth step is multiplication. As a result of its death with the life that appro- priates, assimilates, and transforms, the grain of wheat is multiplied, “some thirty, some sixty, some an hundredfold.” A farmer keeps a bushel of wheat with great care for many years. It is good wheat and he doesn’t want to injure it, so he protects it from wind and weather, but it does not increase in weight or quantity—some seeds have been preserved in the catacombs of Egypt for thousands of years. But another farmer takes a bushel of wheat into the field and sows it broadcast, then harrows it in, and after a few days his wheat, in the process of dying and living, is worthless; but he is the wise farmer, he waits until the harvest and then he receives it back many fold He loses his wheat, that he may gain it in larger measure. Every grain of it has laid down its life that it may live in a hundred other grains. It is the mission of every Christian to multiply himself by winning another to Christ. “The good seed are the children of the kingdom.” No child of God should be willing to abide alone. The sixth step in the process of the grain of wheat dying, while it lives, is glorifi. cation. The harvest is the glory of the seed sowing. The yellow grain in the autumr is the golden crown of spring and summer. “Herein is my Father glorified that y: bear much fruit.” Christ said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” The vine bear: fruit only through the branches. The glory of God can shine only through our fruit fulness. In praying that we may glorify God, as we so often pray, we are simply asking for the privilege of yielding a harvest of souls. The mortification of the flesh the appropriation and assimilation of truth, the transformation of character and th multiplication of converts, are all for the glorification of Christ in fruit bearing. The principle which underlies the process of mortification, appropriation assimilation, transformation, multiplication, and glorification is self-sacrifice. “Excep a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone.” If we truly “presen our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonabl service,” we have fulfilled the condition. A complete surrender of all that we hav and are to Jesus Christ is the one essential. Are you striving to mortify some fleshh appetite like the thirst for drink? You can sot do it by will power; your resolution will amount to little. I have heard of a man who, in order to keep himself from drinl while the thirst was burning within him, locked himself in a room and threw the ke; ; The Dying Grain of Wheat—Dixon. i8t olit of the window. Before the day closed, he kicked the door down and went for i his drink. That same man became interested in saving other drunkards, and gave his life to that work. It has been easy for him to keep sober while sacrificing himself for the good of others. Our friend, S. H. Hadley of New York, could never have - conquered his thirst for drink by remaining locked up in a station house cell. He has conquered by giving himself to Christ with all his strength, time, and money to the saving of other drunkards. / So with appropriation and assimilation of the truth; we do not gain a heart knowledge of God’s Word by simply reading it; we must put it into practice. If we would know the will of God, we must do it. The truth becomes a part of us only as _we die to self and live to Christ. Doing is knowing, and without the doing, which comes through self-surrender and self-sacrifice, there can be no real knowledge. Retaining the word in the memory is one thing; making it a part of the character is another. The Scripture memorized must be translated into life by obedience. With- out self-sacrifice there can be no transformation of character. The man who has no Calvary in his life will never have a Mount of Transfiguration. The glory of the harvest cannot come, unless the grain of wheat goes through the repulsive process of dying. The men and the women whose characters shine through darkness of selfishness in this world, like the body of Christ on the Mount, are those who have truly put themselves on God’s altar for self-sacrificing service. Multiplication also comes through self-sacrifice. Jesus, by His death on the cross, has multiplied Himself a million fold, and every one who manifests the spirit of Christ on Calvary cannot fail to win others to trust and love Him. A young man by the name of Westrup went as a missionary to Mexico, and was murdered while on a journey, and his body thrown upon a cactus plant to decay in the sun. A student in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, hearing of this, wrote to the missionary _ secretary, saying that he did not have much strength of mind or body, but all that he had he would like to give to the cause, and if God wanted some one to go to Mexico and take Westrup’s place, he was ready to go, though it might be to give his life for ‘Christ. Thus, through the death of Westrup, W. D. Powell was led to Mexico, and through the sacrificing spirit of Powell hundreds have been won to Christ. If Westrup had gone to Mexico and spent his time in self-seeking, no one would have desired to be like him or to take his place. : There is nothing in this world more beautiful than self-sacrifice; we admire it wherever we see it. Grasping greed is ugly. The ugliest thing I ever saw was a devil fish in an aquarium at Naples. It had tentacles for taking in everything within reach, but no hands for giving out. I could but say as I saw the ugly thing reaching out for the fish and bread which the guide had thrown down to it, “I have seen you before, but in America you walk on two feet, with hands only to grasp and take in, but no hands to give out.”” The monster in the aquarium and the man on two feet are equally ugly and repulsive, because they have nothing of the significance of Calvary in their mature. As you look at the Dead Sea you think of perdition, of which it is the symbol, because it has a hand to take in the Jordan but no hand to give it out. It is the octopus of geography. As you look at the Sea of Galilee nestling among the hills, filled with life and beauty, you may think of Paradise, of which it is a fitting symbol, because it takes in the Jordan with one hand and pours it out with the other. The Dead Sea is ugly and repulsive because it has in it nothing of Calvary; the Sea of Galilee is beautiful and attractive because it sacrifices for the country below it what it has received from above. A little boy said, “I love to give mamma the largest piece of candy.” Now, that is beautiful, isn’t it? “Because,” he continued, “she always Says, ‘thank you,’ and hands it back,” and by one stroke the picture of beauty is turned into ugliness, Self-sacrifice is always beautiful and attractive; self-seeking is 183 Puipit Power and Eloquence. always ugly and repulsive. At the World’s Fair there was a picture entitled, “Breaks ing Home Ties.” There was always a crowd gathered about it; it seemed to be the most attractive picture in all the gallery, and the secret of its attraction was the self- sacrifice which was portrayed; the father and mother giving up their boy to go from home to school or to business; the boy sacrificing home comforts that he might do what was thought to be best; the dog standing by seemed to show in his features self-sacrifice in giving up his young master. That picture drew the people to it, because it had in it something of the spirit of Christ on the cross. We can understand now more clearly the words of our Lord, “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” Jesus on the cross is magnetic with the self-sacrificing love which touches all hearts by its beauty. The externals of the crucifixion, its blood, broken flesh, agony, dying, are repulsive, just as the externals of the battle of Bunker Hill, with its blood and torn flesh, agony and dying, are repulsive, but a grateful nation has erected a granite monument on the spot where this repulsive battle took place. Beneath the repulsion there is the attraction of self-sacrifice. The men who died there gave their lives for others, and we forget the external repulsion while we gaze at the beauty of patriotic self-sacrifice which the monument commemorates. As you walk Broadway near the postoffice in New York City you come in view of a bronze statue; the arms are pinioned, the feet are tied, the shirt collar is thrown open, and, as you look into the handsome, sad face, you are reminded of an execution when a human being was hanged, and there is nothing attractive in the thought; but read on the pedestal: “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country—Nathan Hale;” and now you forget the repulsion of the hanging while you gaze at the beautiful picture of patriotic loyalty unto death. And beauty tends to multiply itself. It is the beautiful paintings and statues in the galleries that are copied, beautiful music that is reproduced, beautiful character that is imitated. Put into one picture all the beauty of painting, statuary, and music, add to it everything else on earth that is beautiful, and you will not excel in attractive beauty the picture of Jcsus Christ dying upon the cross for His enemies. We are truly beautiful only as we are like Him in His self-sacrifice, and people will desire to be like us in proportion as they see the beauty of self-sacrifice in our character. Christ on the cross is the glory of this age, as Christ on the throne will be the glory of the age to come. ‘God forbid,” says Paul, “that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Time was when I urged people to go beyond the cross. I shall never use that expression again. In heaven itself they do not get beyond the cross. ‘‘The Lamb as it has been slain’ is in the midst of the throne, and the redeemed saints sing, ‘‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” Jesus said: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” We do not go beyond or leave behind what we take up. It is our glorious privilege to believe in the risen Lord and to walk with Him day by day, but even that risen Lord carries in His hands, feet, and side the marks of the cross. Amid the glory of the Transfiguration, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus talked together of His death; Paul preached at Athens, “Jesus and the resurrection.” “Jesus” means a suffering Savior. The death of Christ and His resurrection are married in Scripture, “and what God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” My heart is cheered by the blessed hope of Christ’s second coming. I am not looking for death, nor desiring it. It is probable that I shall die in body, and, if death comes, I will take it as a dose, just as I crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York, paying for the privilege, though I knew that I should be sick most of the time, because on this side were home and loved ones whom I was anxious to see. On the other side of the waters of death are many who will welcome me, and I am willing to die if it be God’s will, that I may be with Christ and those I love. Nevertheless, I am not looking for death—I am i The Dying Grain of Wheat—Dixon. 183 ¥ | looking up into the sky for the coming King. While I am looking up, I may fall into a grave but, like Dr. Gordon, I will shout “Victory” as I fall. While, however, I am king for the coming of Christ, I would not allow the glory of that coming to make e forget the glory of His cross. What this world needs most now is to know Jesus rist and Him crucified. Calvary projected into the lives of all men would settle ery question that now agitates the public mind, make every home happy and every church prosperous. If employer and employee were both filled with the self-sacrificing spirit of Jesus the cross, a strike would be impossible, and the war between capital and labor ould come to an end. If husband ministered to wife and wife to husband, children to parents and parents to children, brother to sister, sister to brother, with the spirit Tren crucified Lord, domestic unhappiness would be at an end. If all our church ‘members had the cross of Jesus in its true meaning in their hearts, debt would never embarrass our missionary boards, for their self-sacrificing spirit would pour money ‘into the treasury of the Lord. The grain of wheat dying cannot abide alone; it must bring forth much fruit, & ' fy } ’ ee aaaaEEOEOEeeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeeEeeEeEeEeEeEeeEeE—EeEEEEEE—EOEEEeEeEeEEee ”, —_ . * 184 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE SOWER. MARCUS DODS, D. D. Matt. 13: 1-9, 18-23; Luke 7: 4-15. This parable had to be spoken. It gave expression to thoughts which burdened the mind of Jesus throughout His ministry. On the day he uttered it, He had left the house and was sitting by the seaside, “and there were gathered unto Him great multitudes.” He had no difficulty in finding an audience. It is one of the greatest pieasures to listen to a good speaker. It is a pleasure which attracts young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. A good speaker is always sure of an audience, and especially where he has not to encounter the rivalry of books. But as Jesus watched the crowd assembling, and perceived the various dispositions with which the people came, He could not but reflect how much of what He had to say must certainly be lost on many. He knew He had that to tell men which, if received, would change the face of society, and turn the wilderness into a garden. He was conscious of that in His own mind which, could it only be conveyed into the minds of those pressing around Him, would cause their lives to flourish with righteousness, beauty, love, usefulness, and joy. He had “many things to say” to them, things that never yet had fallen and never again could fall from human lips; and yet who, of the thousands that listened, would believe? They came, some out of curiosity, some saying within themselves, ‘‘What will this sower of words say?” some out of hatred, seeking occasion against Him; but all thinking themselves entitled to hold and express an opinion regarding the importance or worthlessness of what He said. They needed to have their critical faculty exercised upon themselves, and to be reminded that in order to benefit by what He had to say, they must bring certain capacities. The parabolic form of teaching is pleasant to listen to; it is easily retained in the memory; it stimulates thought, each man being left to find an interpretation for himself; and it avoids the offensiveness of direct rebuke. To the crowd Jesus speaks only of the sower in the fields, and makes no explicit reference to Himself or to them. The object of this parable, then, is to explain the causes of the failure and success of the gospel. Apart from experience, it might have been supposed that our Lord had only to proclaim His kingdom in order to gather all men to His standard. If it were so that God desired all men to enter into everlasting joy, did not this remove every difficulty, and secure the happiness of all? Conld such a messenger and such a message fail to move every one who came in contact with them? Alas! even after so many centuries Christianity is not the only religion men believe in; and even where it is professed, it is most inadequately understood and received. Why, then, is it so? Why, to so lamentable an extent does every agency for the extension of Christ’s kingdom fail? It fails, says our Lord, not because the claims of the kingdom are doubtful, not because they are inappropriately urged—these causes may no doubt sometimes operate—but the kingdom fails to extend because the fructification of the seed of the word depends upon the nature of the soil it fale peu aa a Soil is often impervious, often shallow, often dirty, The seed is not in fault, the sowing is not in fault, but the soil is faulty—a statement of the case as little accepted by those in our own day who discuss Christ’s claims, as it was by our Lord’s contemporaries. ; | | | : : The Sower—Dods. 185 1, The first faultiness of soil our Lord specifies in the words, “Some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up;” and the interpretation or spiritual analogue He gives in the words, ‘““‘When any one heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart.” The beaten footpath that crosses the corn field, and that is maintained year after year, or the cart-track along the side of the field, may serve a very useful purpose, but certainly it will grow no corn. The hard surface does not admit the seed; you might as well scatter seed on a wooden table, or a pave- ment, or a mirror. The seed may be of the finest quality, but for all the purposes of sowing you might as well sprinkle pebbles or shot. It lies on the surface. This state of matters then represents that hearing of the word which manages to keep the word entirely outside. The word has been heard, but that is all. It has not even entered the understanding. It has been heard as men listen to what is said in a foreign language. The mind is not interested; it is roused to no enquiry, provoked to no contradiction. You have sometimes occasion to suggest a different course of action to a friend; and, in order to do so, you mention a fact which should be sufficient to alter his purpose, but you find he has not apprehended its significance, has not seen its bearing—it has not fructified in his mind as you expected, and you say to yourself, “He does not take it in.” So says our Lord; there are hearers who do not take in what is said; they do not see the bearings of the word they hear; their understanding is impervious, impenetrable. Are there such hearers? Surely there are. There are persons on whom the seed of the word falls as by accident, and who have neither prepared themselves to hear it, nor make any effort to retain it. They are members of a church-going family, or they have formed a church-going habit of their own; they have perhaps their reason for being found side by side with those who hear with profit, but they do not come for the sake of hearing; they are not anxious to hear, thoughtful about what they hear, careful to retain it. There are careless persons who hear the word not as the result of a decision that it is to be heard; not as they would, on beginning the study of chemistry or of philosophy, seek out certain teachers and certain books; but as the hearing of the word happens to be the employment of the hour, they submit to this social convention, and they allow the seed of the kingdom to fall upon them with no more expectation than that with which they hear the passing salutation of a friend on the street, knowing that whether he says it is a fine day or not, it is equally without significance. This hearing of the word has come to be one of the many employments with which men fill up their time, and this hearer has never thought why, nor whether it does him any good or no. He has never considered why he personally should listen to this special kind of word, nor what he personally may expect as the result of it. They are, in short, persons who, either from preoccupation with other thoughts and hopes, have their minds beaten hard and rendered quite impervious to thoughts of Christ’s kingdom, or from a natural slowness and hard frostiness of nature, hear the word without admitting it even to work in their understanding. They do not ponder what is heard, they do not check the statements they hear by their own thought; they do not consider the bearings of the gospel on themselves. When you propose to a farmer who is paying too high a rent to go to some part of the country where rents are lower, the idea will probably find entrance into his understanding. He may not ultimately adopt it, but it will stir a great many hopes and thoughts of various kinds in him, and he will find his mind dwelling on it day after day, and hour by hour, so that he can speak of little else. But the proposals made to the wayside hearer suggest nothing at all to him. His mind throws off Christ’s offers as a slated roof throws off hail. You might as well expect seed to grow on a tightly-braced _ drum-head as the word to profit such a hearer; it dances on the hard surface and the slightest motion shakes it off. 186 . Pulpit Power and Eloquence. The consequence is, it is forgotten, When seed is scattered on a hard surface it is not allowed to lie long. The birds devour it up. Every hedge, every tree, every ' roof contributes its eager few, and shortly not a corn remains. So when not even the mind has been interested in Christ’s word, that word is quickly forgotten; the conversation on the way home from church, the thought of tomorrow’s occupations, the sight of some one on the street—anything, is enough to take it clean away. Insome persons the word is admitted though it does not at once bring forth the fruit. As in the old fable the words spoken unheard in the Arctic circle were thawed into sound and became audible in warmer latitudes; so when a man Passes into new circum- Stances and a state of life more congenial to the development of Christian discipline- ship, the word, which has apparently been lost for years, begins to stir and make itself heard in his soul. But it cannot be so with the wayside hearer, for in him the word has never found any manner of lodgment. 2. The second faultiness of soil our Lord enumerates is shallowness. What we commonly understand by “stony ground” is a field thickly strewn with small stones; not the best kind of soil, but quite available for growing corn. This is not the soil meant here. Our Lord speaks rather of rocky ground, where a thin surface of mould overlies an impenetrable rock. There is a mere dusting Of soil on the surface; if you put a stick or a spade into it, you come upon the rock a few inches below. On such ground the seed quickly springs, there being no deepness of earth to allow of its spend- ing time in rooting itself. And for the same reason it quickly withers when exposed to the fierce heats which benefit and mature strongly-rooted plants. Precocity and rapid decay. The oak that is to stand a thousand years does not shoot up like the hop or the creeper. an whose age is seventy years has a slowly growing infancy and youth, while the insect grows up in a day and dies at night or at the week’s end. The shallow hearer our Lord distinguishes by two characteristics; he~Straightway receives the Sic et tee word, and he receives it with joy. The man of deeper character receivés the word with deliberation, as one who has many things to take into account and to weigh. _He-receives it with seriousness, and. reverence, and trembling, forseeing the trials he “ will be subjected to, and he cannot show a light-minded joy. The superficial character responds quickly because there is no depth of inner life. Difficulties which deter men of greater depth do not stagger the superficial. While other men are engaged in giving the word entrance into all the secret places of their life, and are confronting it with their most cherished feelings and ways, that they may clearly see the extent of the changes it will work; while they are pondering it in the majesty of its hope and the vastness of its revelation; while they are striving to forecast all its results in them and upon them; while they are hesitating because they are in earnest, and would receive the word for eternity or not at all, and would give it entrance to the whole of their being, or exclude it altogether—while others are doing this, the superficial man has settled the whole matter out of hand, and he who yesterday was a known scoffer is today a loud-voiced child of the kingdom. | ~-—~~ These men may often be mistaken for the most earnest Christians; indeed they are almost certainly taken to be the most earnest; you cannot see the root, and what is seen shown in greatest luxuriance by the superficial. The earnest man has much of his energy to spend beneath the soil, he cannot show anything till he is sure of the root. He is often working away at the foundation while another is at the copestone. But the test comes. The very influences which exercise and mature the well-rooted character, wither the superficially rooted. The same. shallowness of nature which made them susceptible to the gospel and quickly responsive, makes them susceptible to pain, suffering, hardship, and easily defeated. It is so in all departments of life. The superficial are taken with every new thing. The boy is delighted with a new study or a new game, but becomes proficient in neither. The youth is charmed with volunteering, but one season of early rising is more than he can stand; or he is ‘ + ‘ ¥ The Sower—Dods. 187 fascinated with the idea that history is an extremely profitable kind of reading; but _ you know quite well when he asks for the loan of the first volume of Gibbon or Grote, - that he will never come to you for the last. The action of the shallow man is in every case hasty, not based on a carefully considered and resolutely accepted plan;_he is f ; ~fesults and “consequences. “Accordingly, when ‘consequences have to be faced, he is not prepared and gives way. But, how, then, carethe” shallow man be saved? Is there no provision in the Gospel for those who are born with a thin, poor nature? This question scarcely falls to be answered here, because the parable presents one truth regarding shallow natures, which is verified in thousands of instances. Men do thus deal with the word, and ‘thus make shipwreck of faith, and that is all we have here to do with. But passing beyond the parable, it may be right to say that a man’s nature may be deepened by the events, and relationships, and conflicts of life. Indeed, that much deepening of character is constantly effected, you may gather from the fact that while many young persons are shallow, the old persons whom you would characterize as shallow are comparatively few. 3. The third faultiness of soil which causes failure in the crop is what is tech- _nically known as dirt. The soil is not impenetrable, nor is it shallow; it is deep, good "land, but it has not been cleaned—there is seed in it already. Sometimes you see a field of wheat brilliantly colored throughout with poppies; or a field of oats which ' it is difficult to cut on account of the dense growth of thistles, and of rank grass. -But the soil can only feed a certain amount of vegetation, and every living weed _ means a choked blade of corn. This is a worse case than the others. No crop can ‘be looked for on a beaten road; not much can be expected from a mere peppering of soil upon rock; but here there is rich, deep, loamy mould, that must be growing - something, and would, if cared for, yield a magnificent harvest, and yet there is little or nothing but thorns. This is a picture of the preoccupied heart of the rich, vigorous nature, capable of _ understanding, appreciating, and making much of the word of the kingdom, but _ occupied with so many other interests that only a small part of its energy is available for giving effect to Christ’s ideas. These ideas are not excluded from the thoughts, _ they are welcomed; the mind is full of intelligent interest in Christian truth, and the _ heart has a real and profound sympathy with the work of Christ in the world and with _ His spirit, and yet, after all, little practical good proceeds from the man—Christian _ principle does not come to much in his case—the life shows little result of a specially Christian kind. The reason is that the man is occupied with a multitude of other views, and projects, and cares, and desires, and the peculiarly Christian seed does not get fair play. It influences him, but it is hindered and mixed up with so many other _ influences that the result is scarcely discernible. The peculiarity of a good field of wheat is not the density of the vegetation, but that the vegetation is all of one kind, ds all wheat. Leave the field to itself, you will in a short time have quite as dense a _ Vegetation, but it will be of a multifarious kind. That the field bears wheat only, is the result of cultivation—not merely of sowing wheat, but of preventing anything else from being sown. The first care of the diligent farmer is to clean his land. _ And as there is generally some one kind of weed to which the soil is congenial, nd against which the farmer has to wage a continual war, so our Lord‘ here specifies as specially dangerous to us “the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.” The care of this world has been called the poor man’s species of the deceitfulness of riches, and the deceitfulness of riches a variety of the care of this world. There are ‘poor men who have no anxiety, and rich men who are not misled by their riches either into dependence on their wealth, or desire to make it more. But among rich ‘men and poor men alike you will find some or many who would be left’ without any 5 pean = 188 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. subject of thought, and any guiding principle in action, if you took from them anxiety about their own position in life. It is this form which all the fruit they bear springs. Take the actions of a year, the annual outcome or harvest of the man, and how much of what he has produced you can trace to this seed—to a mere anxiety _about income and_position.. This is really the seed; this is all that is required to account for a large part of many men’s actions. Our Lord therefore warns us that if the word is to do its work in us, and produce all the good it is meant to produce, it must have the field to itself. It will not do merely to give attention to the word while it is preached; the mind may be clean on the surface, while there remain great knots of roots below, which will inevitably spring up, and by their more inveterate growth choke the word. This is the mistake of many. It is proper, they know, to hear the word—proper to give it fair play. They do make an effort to banish worldly and anxious thoughts, and to give their attention to divine things, but even though they succeed in putting aside for the time distracting thoughts, what of that if they have not the care of the world up by the roots? Cutting down won’t do; still less, a mere holding aside of the thorns till the seed be sown. What chance has the seed in a heart from which these eager thoughts and hopes are merely held back for the hour? The cares of the world will just swing over again and meet above the good seed, and shut out the day and every maturing influence. You receive today good impressions, you give the good seed entrance, and it begins to spring in you, it prompts you to reasonable generosity and self-denial. Tomorrow morning the tender blade of a desire to purify and prepare your spirit by some real and devout converse with God has sprung up in you, but the habitual craving to be at your work and lose no moment from business crushes and chokes the little blade, and it can no more lift its head. Or the seed has produced even the green ear of a growing habit of living under God’s eye, of walking with God and bringing all your transac- tions before His judgment—mature fruit seems on the point of being produced by you, when suddenly the promise of a rich harvest is choked by the old coarse thorn of a fondness for rapid profits, which leads you to ambiguous language, and reserva-— tions, and unfair dealings, such as you feel separate you from God, and dash your spiritual ardor, and make you feel like a fool and a knave both, when you speak of your citizenship being in heaven, It is vain, then, to hope for the only right harvest of a human life if your heart is sown with worldly ambitions, a greedy hasting to be rich, an undue love of comfort, a true earthliness of spirit. One seed only must be sown in you, and it will produce all needed diligence in business, as well as all fervor of spirit. These, then, are the three faulty soils to which our Lord chiefly ascribes the failure of the sowing. The question arises, does the result follow in the moral sowing and in the world of men as uniformly and inevitably as it follows in the sowing of corn in nature? In nature some soils are irreclaimable; vast tracts of the earth’s surface are as useless as the sea for the purposes of growing grain. They may indirectly contribute to the fruitfulness of corn lands by influencing the climate, but no one thinks of cultivating these tracts themselves, of sowing the sands of Sahara or the ice-fields of Siberia. But the gospel is to be preached to every creature, because in man there is one important distinction from material nature; he is possessed of free will, of the power of checking to some extent natural tendencies, and preventing _—- natural consequences. Accordingly, we cannot just accept the bare teaching of the © parable as the whole truth regarding the operation of the gospel in man’s heart, but — only as one part of the truth, and that a most important part. The parable enters into — no consideration nor explanation of how men arrive at the spiritual conditions here enumerated; but, given those conditions—and they are certainly common however arrived at—given those conditions, the result is failure of the gospel. In contrast, then, to these three faults of impenetrability, shallowness and dirt, — The Sower—Dods. 189 we may be expected to do something towards bringing to the hearing of the word a soft, deep, clean soil of heart, or, as Luke calls it, ‘tan honest and good heart.” There are differences in the crop even among those who bring good hearts; one bears thirty- fold, one sixty, one an hundred-fold. One man has natural advantages, opportunities of position, and so forth, which make his yield greater. One man may have had a larger proportion of seed; in his early days and all through his life he may have been in contact with the word, and in favoring circumstances. But wherever the word is received, and held fast and patiently cared for, there the life will produce all that God cares to have froin it. _Honesty is a prime requisite in hearing the word, and a rare one. Men listen honestly to a lecture on science or history, from which they expect information; but where conduct is aimed at, or a vote is concerned, men commonly listen with minds already made up. It is notorious that men vote as they meant to vote, no matter what is said. If a Liberal were found voting with Conservatives on any important point, some mistake would be supposed. The last thing thought of would be that his conviction had been altered by the speaking. But if we are to hear the word as we ought, we must bring an honest heart, we must not listen with a mind already made up against the gospel, with no intention whatever of being persuaded, cherishing purposes and habits, alongside of which it is impossible the word should grow. On the contrary we should consider that this is the seed proper to the human heart, and which can alone produce what human life should produce—the word of God, which we must listen to gratefully, humbly, sincerely, greedily, and with the firm purpose of giving it unlimited scope within us. But where is the attentive, painstaking scrutiny of the heart which this demands? Where is the careful husbandry of our souls, which would secure a kind reception for the word? Where is the jealous challenging of every sentiment, habit, influence, association, that begs for a lodging within us? For where this is, and not elsewhere, we may expect the fruit of the kingdom. But even this is not enough. The fruitful hearer must not only bring an honest and good heart, he must keep the word. The farmer’s work is not finished when he has prepared the soil and sown the seed. If pains be not taken after the sowing, the seed that has fallen on good soil may be taken away as utterly as that which has fallen on the beaten path. The birds scatter over the whole field. We must therefore set a watcher; we must send the harrow over to cover in the seed, and the roller to give the plant a better hold on the soil. The word must not be allowed to take its chance, once it has been heard. Mere hearing does not secure fruit; it goes for nothing. Your labor is lost unless your mind goes back upon what you hear, and you see that it gets hold of you. All of us have already heard all that is necessary for life and godliness; it remains that we make it our own, that it secure a living root and place in us and in our life. In order to do this we must keep the truth; we must bear it in mind, so that whatever else comes before the mind throws new light on it, and give it a further hold upon us. We must not let the events of the world and the occurrences of our day thrust it from our minds, but must confront it with these, and test it by these, so that thus it may become more real to us, and have a vital influence. One truth received thus, brings forth more fruit than all truth merely understood. It is not the amount of knowledge you have, but the use you put it to— it is not the number of good sayings you have heard and can repeat, that will profit you, but the place in your hearts you have given them, and the connection they have with the motives, and principles, and ruling ideas of your life. And, therefore, meditation has always been, and must always be, reckoned among the most indispensable means of grace. Since ever saints were, their saintliness has been in great part due to a habit of meditation. Without it, the other means of grace remain helplessly outside of us. The word does not profit except the mind be actively _ Bppropriating God’s message and revolving it. Prayer is but a deluding form, that 190 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. means nothing, expects nothing, and receives nothing, if meditation has not provided its material. Unless a man think upon his life and try his ways, his profession can but remove the scum from the surface, leaving the heart burdened and polluted; for the graver sins do not float, but sink deep and must be dragged for with patience and skill, if not descried through a very rare natural clearness and simplicity of character. It is in the stillness and quiet of our hours of reflection, when the gusts of worldly engagements and desires have died down, that the seeds of grace are deposited in our souls. It is then that our thoughts are free to recognize reasons of humility and causes of thankfulness. It is then that the thought of God resumes its place in our souls, and that the unseen world reasserts its hold upon us. It is then only that the soul, taking a deliberate survey of its own matters, can discover its position and necessities, can assert its claims and determine its future, can begin the knowledge of all things by knowing itself. So that, “if there is a person, of whatever age, or class, or station, who will not be thoughtful, who will not seriously and honestly consider, there is no doing him any good.” : But there is probably no religious duty so distasteful as meditation to persons whose habits are formed in a state of society like our own. We are, for the most Part, infected by the hastiness amd overdone activity of the business world. The rapidity and exactness of mechanical action rule and regulate all our personal move- ments. We are learning to value only what gives us speedily and uniformly achieved and easily appreciated results. We are civilized so nearly to one common level, and are in possession of so many advantages which hitherto have been the monopoly of one class, that competition is keener than eyer before; and all our time and energy are demanded for the one Purpose of holding our own in things secular. But the dissatisfaction with slow Processes, and the desire to get a great deal through our hands, must be checked when we come to the work of meditation. There are processes in nature which you can’t hurry. You must let your milk stand, if you wish cream. And meditation is a process of mind whose necessary element is the absence of hurry. We must let the mind settle and discharge itself of all irritating distractions and fevering remembrances or hopes; we must reduce it to an equable state, from which it can look out dispassionately upon things, and no longer see the one engrossing object, but all that concerns us in due Proportion and real position. The soul must learn to turn a deaf ear to the importunate requirements of the daily life, and turn leisurely ‘and with an unpreoccupied mind to God. Were it only to keep the world at bay, and teach the things of it their subordinate place, these meditative pauses of the soul were of the richest use. A third and last requisite for the fructification of the seed is, according to Luke, patience. The husbandman does not expect to reap tomorrow what he sowed today. He does not incontinently plough up his field again, and sow another crop, if he does not at once see the ripe corn. He watches’and waits, and through much that is disappointing and unpromising, nurses his plants to fruitfulness. We also must learn with patience to bring forth fruit; not despairing because we cannot at once do all we would; not sinking under the hardship, sacrifices, failures, sorrows, through which we must win our growth to true fruit-bearing, but animating and cheering our spirits with the sure hope that the seed we have received is vital, and will enable us to produce at last the sound and ripe fruit our lives were meant to yield. We must have patience both to endure all the privations, all the schooling, all the trial of various kinds which may be needful to bring the seed of righteousness to maturity; and also to go on zealousy yielding the perhaps despised fruits which are alone possible to us now, and striving always to strike our roots deeper and deeper into the true life. [This sermon is from Parables of our Lord, by Hodder & Stoughton. _ Marcus Dods, D. D., was Free Church professor of New Testament Theology, Edinburgh, since 1889. Extensive contributor to Expositors’ Bible and Encyclopedia Brittanica.] 4 193) THE CHANGED LIFE. * : HENRY DRUMMOND. a P THE GREATEST NEED OF THE WORLD. z God is all for quality; man is for quantity. The immediate need of the world at this moment is not more of us, but, if I may use the expression, a better brand of us. _ To secure ten men of an improved type would be better than if we had ten thousand more of the average Christians distributed all over the world. There is such ‘a thing. in the evangelistic sense as winning the whole world and losing our own soul. And _ the first consideration is our own life—our own spiritual relations to God—our own likeness to Christ. And I am anxious, briefly, to look at the right and the wrong way of becoming like Christ—of becoming better men; the right and the wrong way of sanctification. Let me begin by naming, and in part discarding, some processes in vogue already for producing better lives. These processes are far from wrong; in their place they __ may even be essential. One ventures to disparage them only because they do not turn out the most perfect possible work. 1. The first imperfect method is to rely on Resolution. In will power, in mere spasms of earnestness, there is no salvation. Struggle, _ effort, even agony, have their place in Christianity, as we shall see; but this is not ___ where they come in. ! In mid-Atlantic the Etruria, in which I was sailing, suddenly stopped. Something had gone wrong with the engines. There were five hundred able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think that if we had gathered together and pushed against the mast we could have pushed it on? When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said, “Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?” Put down that method forever as being futile. The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. 2. Another experimenter says: “But that is not my method. I have seen the folly of a mere wild struggle in the dark. I work ona principle. My plan is not to waste power on random effort, but to concentrate on a single sin. By taking one at a time and crucifying it steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all.” To this, unfortunately, there are four objections: For one thing, life is too short; the name of sin is legion. For another thing, to deal with individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature for the time untouched. In the third place, a single combat with a special sin does not affect the root and spring of the disease. If you dam up a stream at one place, it will simply overflow higher up. If only one of the channels of sin be obstructed, experience points to an almost certain overflow through some other part of the nature, Partial conversion is almost always accompanied by such 192 Pulpit Power und Eloquence. moral leakage, for the pent-up energies accumulate to the bursting point, and the last state of that soul may be worse than the first. In the last place, religion does not consist in negatives, in stopping this sin and stopping that. The perfect character can never be produced with a pruning knife. 3. But a third protests: ‘So be it. I make no attempt to stop sins one by one. My method is just the opposite. I copy the virtues one by une.” The difficulty about the copying method is that it is apt to be mechanical. One -can always tell an engraving from a picture, an artificial flower from a real flower. To copy virtues one by one has somewhat the same effect as eradicating the vices one by one; the temporary result is an overbalanced and incongruous character. Some one defines a prig as ‘‘a creature that is over-fed for its size.” One sometimes finds Christians of this species—over-fed on one side of their nature, but dismally thin and starved looking on the other. The result, for instance, of copying Humility, and adding it on to an otherwise worldly life, is simply grotesque. A rabid temperance advocate, for the same reason, is often the poorest of creatures, flourishing on a single virtue, and quite oblivious that his Temperance is making a worse man of him and not a better. These are examples of fine virtues spoiled by association with mean companions. Character is a unity, and all the virtues must advance together to make the perfect man. This method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in the true direction. It is only in the details of execution that it fails. 4. A fourth method I need scarcely mention, for it is a variation on those already named. It is the very young man’s method; and the pure earnestness of it makes it almost desecration to touch it. It is to keep a private note-book with the columns for the days of the week, and a list of virtues, with spaces against each for marks. This, with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a secret place, and for a time, at nightfall, the soul is arraigned before it as before a private judgment bar. This living by code was Franklin’s method; and I suppose thousands more could tell how they had hung up in their bedrooms, or hid in locked fast drawers, the rules which one solemn day they drew up to shape their lives. This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor. You bear me witness that it fails. And it fails generally for very matter-of-fact reasons—most likely because one day we forget the rules. All these methods that have been named—the self-sufficient method, the self- crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary method—are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and as they stand perfectly inadequate. It is not argued, I repeat, that they must be abandoned. Their harm is rather that they distract attention from the true working method, and secure a fair result at the expense of the perfect one. What that perfect method is we shall now go on to ask, I, THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION. A formula, a receipt for Sanctification—can one seriously speak of this mighty change as if the process were as definite as for the production of so many volts of electricity? It is impossible to doubt it. Shall a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly, and the one vital experiment of humanity remain a chance? Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice? If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain. And if we cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world’s religion, but the world’s conundrum. Where, then, shall one look for such a formula? Where one would look for any formula—among the text-books. And if we turn to the text-books of Christianity we ; FO The Changed Life—Drummond. 193 y 5 shall find a formula for this problem as clear and precise as any in the mechanical sciences. If this simple rule, moreover, be but followed fearlessly, it will yield the result of a perfect character as surely as any result that is guaranteed by the laws of nature. ne The finest expression of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in any literature, is _ probably one drawn up and condensed into a single verse by Paul. You will find it in a letter—the second to the Corinthians—written by him to some Christian people _ who, in a city which was a byword for depravity and licentiousness, were seeking the higher life. To see the point of the words we must take them from the immensely _ improved rendering of the Revised translation, for the older Version in this case Fs greatly obscures the sense. They are these: he “We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are trans- i formed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.” i Now observe at the outset the entire contradiction of all our previous efforts, in the simple passive: ‘We are transformed.” BA We are changed, as the Old Version has it—we do not change ourselves. No man can change himself. Throughout the New Testament you will find that wherever f these moral and spiritual transformations are described the verbs are in the passive. Presently it will be pointed out that there is a rationale in this; but meantime do not _ toss these words aside as if this passivity denied all human effort or ignored intelligible law. What is implied for the soul here is no more than is everywhere claimed for the body. In physiology the verbs describing the processes of growth are in the passive. _ Growth is not voluntary; it takes place, it happens, it is wrought upon matter. So _ here. “Ye must be born again’’—we cannot born ourselves. “Be not conformed to _ this world, but be ye transformed’’—we are subjects to transforming influence, we do _ not transform ourselves. Not more certain is it that it is something outside the thermometer that produces a change in the thermometer, than it is something outside the soul of man that produces a moral change upon him. That he must be susceptible to that change, that he must be a party to it, goes without saying; but that neither his aptitude nor his will can produce it, is equally certain. Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be to some an almost startling revelation. The change we have been striving after is not to be produced by any more striving. It is to be wrought upon us by the moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the co-operation of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature under invisible pressures from ‘without. The radical defect of all our former methods of sanctification was the attempt to generate from within that which can only be wrought upon us from without. According to the first Law of Motion, every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it may be compelled by impressed forces to change that state. This is also a first law of Christianity. Every man’s character remains as it is, or continues in the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled by impressed forces to change that state. Our failure has been the failure to put ourselves in the way of the impressed forces. There is a clay, and there is a Potter; we have tried to get the clay to mould the clay. Whence, then, these pressures, and where this Potter? The answer of the formula is—‘By reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord we are changed.” But this is not very clear. What is the “glory” of the Lord, and how can mortal man reflect it, and how can that act as an “impressed force’ in moulding him to a nobler form? The word “glory’—the word which has to bear the weight of holding those “impressed forces” —is a stranger in current speech, and our first duty is to seek out its equivalent in working English. It suggests at first a radiance of some kind, something dazzling or glittering, some halo such as the old masters loved to paint round the head of their 194 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Ecce Homos. But that is paint, mere matter, the visible symbol of some unseen thing. What is that unseen thing? It is that of all unseen things the most radiant, the most beautiful, the most divine, and that is Character.” On earth, in heaven, there is nothing so great, so glorious as this. The word has many meanings; in ethics it can have but one. Glory is character, and nothing less, and it can be nothing more. The earth is “full of the glory of the Lord,” because it is full of His character. The “Beauty of the Lord” is character. ‘The effulgence of His Glory” is character. “The Glory of the Only Begotten” is character, the character which is “fullness of grace and truth.” And when God told His people His name, He simply gave them His charac- ter, His character which was Himself: “And the Lord proclaimed the name of the Lord. . . . the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.” Glory then is not something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental. If it were this, how could Paul ask men to reflect it? Stripped of its physical enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infinitely near and infinitely communicable. With this explanation read over the sentence once more in paraphrase: We all reflecting as a mirror the character of Christ are transformed into the same Image from character to character—from a poor character to a better one, from a better one to a little better still, from that to the one still more complete, until by slow degrees the Perfect Image is attained. Here the solution of the Problem of Sanctification is compressed into a sentence: Reflect the character of Christ, and you will become like Christ. You will be changed, in spite of yourself and unknown to yourself, into the same image from character to character. (1.) All men are reflectors—that is the first law on which this formula is based. One of the aptest descriptions of a human being is that he is a mirror. As we sat at table tonight the world in which each of us lived and moved throughout this day was focused in the room. What we saw when we looked at one another was not one another, but one another’s world. We were an arrangement of mirrors. The scenes we saw were all reproduced; the people we met walked to and fro; they spoke, they bowed, they passed us by, did everything over again as if it had been real. When we talked, we were but looking at our own mirror and describing what flitted across it; our listening was not hearing, but seeing—we but looked on our neighbor’s mirror. All human intercourse is a seeing of reflections. I meet a stranger in a railway carriage. The cadence of his first words tells me he is English and comes from York- shire. Without knowing it he has reflected his birthplace, his parents, and the long history of their race. Even physiologically he is a mirror. His second sentence records that he is a politician, and a faint inflection in the way he pronounces The Times reveals his party. In his next remarks I see reflected a whole world of expe- riences. The books he has read, the people he has met, the companions he keeps, the influences that have played upon him and made him the man he is—these are all regis- tered there by a pen which lets nothing pass, and whose writing can never be blotted out. What I am reading in him meantime he also is reading in me; and before the journey is over we could half write each other’s lives. Whether we like it or not, we live in glass houses. The mind, the memory, the soul, is simply a vast chamber panelled with looking-glass. And upon this miraculous arrangement and endowment depends the capacity of mortal souls to “reflect the character of the Lord.” (2.) But this is not all. If all these varied reflections from our so-called secret life are patent to the world, how close the writing, complete the record within the soul itself! For the influences we meet are not simply held for a moment on the polished surface and thrown off again into space. Each is retained where first it fell, and stored up in the soul forever. This Law of Assimilation is the The Changed Life—Drummond. 195 second, and by far the most impressive truth which underlies the formula of sanctifi- _ cation—the truth that men are not only mirrors, but that these mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors of the fleeting things they see, transfer into their own inmost substance, and hold in permanent preservation the things that they reflect. No one knows how the soul can hold these things. No one knows how the miracle is done. No phenomenon in nature, no process in chemistry, no chapter in -mecromancy can ever help us to begin to understand this amazing operation. For, think of it, the past is not only focused there, in a man’s soul, it is there. How could it be reflected from there if it were not there? All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, believed, of the surrounding world are now plain within him, have become part of him, in part are him—he has been changed into their image. He may deny it, he may resent it, but they are there. They do not adhere to him, they are transfused through him. He cannot alter or rub them out. They are not in his memory, they are in him. His soul is as they have filled it, made it, left it. These things, these books, these events, these influences are his makers. In their hands are life and death, beauty and deformity. When once the image or likeness of any of these is fairly presented to the soul, no power on earth can hinder two things happening—it must be absorbed - into the soul and forever reflected back again from the character. % Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious psychological facts, Paul bases his _ doctrine of sanctification. He sees that character is a thing built up by slow degrees, that it is hourly changing for better or for worse according to the images which flit across it. One step further and the whole length and breadth of the application of Pi _ these ideas to the central problem of religion will stand before us. , II. THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE. | ' If events change men, much more persons. No man can meet another on the street without making some mark upon him. We say we exchange words when we f meet; what we exchange is souls. And when intercourse is very close and very ~ frequent, so complete is this exchange that recognizable bits of the one soul begin to _ show in the other’s nature, and the second is conscious of a similar and growing debt to the first. y Now, we become like those whom we habitually reflect. I could prove from _ Science that applies even to the physical framework of animals—that they are _ influenced and organically changed by the environment in which they live. F This mysterious approximating of two souls, who has not witnessed? Who has ‘Not watched some old couple come down life’s pilgrimage hand in hand, with such Geentle trust and joy in one another that their very faces wore the self-same look? ese were not two souls; it was a composite soul. It did not matter to which of the two you spoke, you would have said the same words to either. It was quite indifferent _which replied, each would have said the same. Half a century’s reflecting had told “upon them; they were changed into the same image. It is the Law of Influence that we become like those whom we habitually reflect; these had become like because they i habitually reflected. Through all the range of literature, of history, and biography this law presides. Men are all mosaics of other men. There was a savor of David ut Jonathan, and a savor of Jonathan about David. Metempsychosis is a fact. George Eliot’s message to the world was that men and women make men and women. iL Family, the cradle of mankind, has no meaning apart from this. Society itself is thing but a rallying point for these omnipotent forces to do their work. On the doctrine of Influence, in short, the whole vast pyramid of humanity is built. _ But it was reserved for Paul to make the supreme application of the Law of Influence. It was a tremendous inference to make, but he never hesitated. He himself was a changed man; he knew exactly what had done it—it was Christ. On the Damascus road they met, and from that hour his life was absorbed in His. 196 Pulpit Power and Eloquence: The effect could not but follow—on words, on deeds, on career, on creed. The “impressed forces” did this vital work. He became like Him whom he habitually loved. “So we all,” he writes, ‘reflecting as a mirror the glory of Christ, are changed into the same image.” Nothing could be more simple, more intelligible, more natural, more supernatural. It is an analogy from an every-day fact. Since we are what we are by the impacts of those who surround us, those who surround themselves with the highest will be those who change into the highest. There are some men and some women in whose com- pany we are always at our best. While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity. All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse, and we find a music in our souls that was never there before. Suppose even that influence prolonged through a month, a year, a lifetime, and what could not life become? Here, even on the common plane of life, talking our language, walking our streets, working side by side, are sanctifiers of souls; here, breathing through common clay, is heaven; here, energies charged even through a temporal medium with the virtue of regeneration. If to live with men, diluted to the millionth degree with the virtue of the Highest, can exalt and purify the nature, what bounds can be set to the influence of Christ? To live with Socrates— with unveiled face—must have made one wise; with Aristides, just. Francis Assisi must have made one gentle; Savonarola, strong. But to have lived with Christ must have made one like Christ: that is to say, a Christian. As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did produce this effect. It produced it in the case of Paul. And during Christ’s lifetime the experiment was tried in an even more startling form. A few raw, unspiritual, uninspiring men, were admitted to the inner circle of His friendship. The change began at once. Day by day we can almost see the first disciple grow. First there steals over them the faintest possible adumbra- tion of His character, and occasionally, very occasionally, they do a thing or say a thing that they could not have done or said had they not been living there. Slowly the spell of His life deepens. Reach after reach of their nature is overtaken, thawed, subjugated, sanctified. Their manner softens, their words become more gentle, their conduct more unselfish. As swallows who have found a summer, as frozen buds the spring, their starved humanity bursts into a fuller life. They do not know how it is, but they are different men. One day they find themselves like their Master, going about and doing good. To themselves it is unaccountable, but they cannot do otherwise. They were not told to do it, it came to them to do it? But the people who watch them know well how to account for it—‘‘They have been,” they whisper, “with Jesus.” Already even, the mark and seal of His character is upon them—‘‘They have been with Jesus.” Unparalleled phenomenon, that these poor fishermen should remind other men of Christ! Stupen- dous victory and mystery of regeneration that mortal men should suggest God to the world! There is something almost melting in the way His contemporaries, and John especially, speak of the influence of Christ. John lived himself in daily wonder of Him; he was overpowered; over-awed, entranced, transfigured. To his mind it was ea inte for any one to come under this influence and ever be the same again. “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not,’ he said. It was inconceivable that he — should sin, as inconceivable as that ice should live in a burning sun, or darkness coexist with noon. If any one did sin, it was to John the simple proof that he could | never have met Christ. “Whosoever sinneth,” he exclaims, “hath not seen Him, neither known Him.” Sin was abashed in this Presence. Its roots withered. Its sway and victory were forever at an end. Gc ea The Changed Life—Drummond. 197 But these were His contemporaries. It was easy for them to be influenced by Him, for they were every day and all the day together. But how can we mirror that which we have never seen? How can all this stupendous result be produced by a memory, by the scantiest of all biographies, by One who lived and left this earth eighteen hundred years ago? How can modern men today make Christ, the absent Christ, their most constant companion still? The answer is that friendship is a spiritual thing. It is independent of matter, or space, or time. That which I love in my friend is not that which I see. What influ- ences me in my friend is not his body but his spirit. He influences me about as much in his absence as in his presence. It would have been an ineffable experience truly to have lived at that time— “T think when I read the sweet story of old, How when Jesus was here among men, He took little children like lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with Him then. “T wish that His hand had been laid on my head, That His arms had been thrown around me, And that I had seen His kind look when He said, ‘Let the little ones come unto me.’” And yet, if Christ were to come into the world again, few of us probably would _ ever have a chance of seeing Him. Millions of her subjects in the little country of _ England have never seen their own Queen. And there would be millions of the sub- jects of Christ who could never get within speaking distance of Him if He were here. We remember He said: “It is expedient for you (not for Me) that I go away;” because by, going away He could really be nearer to us than He would have been if He had stayed here. It would be geographically and physically impossible for most of us to be influenced by His person had He remained. And so our communion with Him is a spiritual companionship; but not different from most companionships, which, when you press them down to the roots, you will find to be essentially spiritual. All friendship, all love, human and divine, is purely spiritual. It was after He was risen that He influenced even the disciples most. Hence, in reflecting the charac- _ ter of Christ, it is no real obstacle that we may never have been in visible contact with Himself. There lived once a young girl whose perfect grace of character was the wonder of _ those who knew her. She wore on her neck a gold locket which no one was ever Pu allowed to open. One day, in a moment of unusual confidence, one of her companions | _ was allowed to touch its spring and learn its secret. She saw written these words— id “Whom having not seen I love.” That was the secret of her beautiful life. She had been changed into the Same the difference in the process, as well as in the result, may be as great as that between a photograph secured by the infallible pencil of the sun, and the rude outline from a school-boy’s chalk. Imitation is mechanical, reflection organic. The one is occa- sional, the other habitual. In the one case, man comes to God and imitates Him; in the other, God comes to man and imprints Himself upon him. It is quite true that there is an imitation of Christ which amounts to reflection. But Paul’s term includes all that the other holds, and is open to no mistake. What, then, is the practical, lesson? It is obvious. ‘Make Christ your most constant companion”—this is what it practically means for us. Be more under His 1 | Image. | Now this is not imitation, but a much deeper thing. Mark this distinction, for 198 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. influence than under any other influence. Ten minutes spent in His society every day, ay, two minutes if it be face to face, and heart to heart, will make the whole day different. Every character has an inward spring—let Christ be it. Every action has a key-note—let Christ set it. Yesterday you got a certain letter. You sat down and wrote a reply which almost scorched the paper. You picked the cruelest adjectives you knew and sent it forth, without a pang to do its ruthless work. You did that because your life was set in the wrong key. You began the day with the mirror placed at the wrong angle. Tomorrow at day-break, turn it towards Him, and even to your enemy the fashion of your countenance will be changed. Whatever you then do, one thing you will find you could not do—you could not write that letter. Your first impulse may be the same, your judgment may be unchanged, but if you try it the ink will dry on your pen, and you will rise from your desk an unavenged, but a greater. and more Christian man. Throughout the whole day your actions, down to the last detail, will do homage to that early vision. Yesterday you thought mostly about yourself. Today the poor will meet you, and you will feed them. The helpless, the tempted, the sad, will throng about you, and each you will befriend. Where were all these people yesterday? Where they are today, but you did not see them. It is in reflected light that the poor are seen. But your soul today is not at the ordinary angle. “Things which are not seen” are visible. For a few short hours you live the Eternal Life. The eternal life, the life of faith, is simply the life of a higher vision. Faith is an attitude—a mirror set at the right angle. When tomorrow is over, and in the evening you review it, you will wonder how you did it. You will not be conscious that you strove for anything, or imitated any- thing. You will be conscious of Christ; that He was with you, that without compulsion you were yet compelled; that without force, or noise, or proclamation, the revolution was accomplished. You do,not congratulate yourself as one who has done a mighty deed, or achieved a personal success, or stored up a fund of “Christian experience’’ to ensure the same result again. What you are conscious of is “the glory of the Lord.” And what the world is conscious of, if the result be a true one, is also “the glory of the Lord.” In looking at a mirror one does not see the mirror, or think of it, but only of what it reflects. For a mirror never calls the attention to itself— except when there are flaws in it. Let me say a word or two more about the effects which necessarily must follow from this contact, or fellowship, with Christ. I need not quote the texts upon the subject—the texts about abiding in Christ. ‘He that abideth in Him sinneth not.” You cannot sin when you are standing in front of Christ. You simply cannot do it. Again: “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Think of that! That is another inevitable consequence. And there is yet another: “He that abideth in Me, the same bie forth much fruit.” Sinlessness—answered prayer—much fruit. But in addition to these things, see how many of the highest Christian virtues and experiences necessarily flow from the assumption of that attitude toward Christ. For instance, the moment you assume that relation to Christ you begin to know what the child-spirit is. You stand before Christ, and He becomes your Teacher, and you instinctively become docile. Then you learn also to become charitable and tolerant; because you are learning of Him, and He is ‘‘meek and lowly in heart,” and you catch that spirit. That is a bit of His character being reflected into yours. Instead of being critical and self-asserting, you become humble and have the mind of a little child. I think, further, the only way of learning what faith is is to know Christ and be in His company. You hear sermons about the nine different kinds of faith—distinctions drawn between the right kind of faith and the wrong—and sermons telling you how to a i \ The Changed Life—Drummond. 199 get faith. So far as I can see, there is only one way in which faith is got, and it is the same in the religious world as it is in the world of men and women. [I learn to trust you, my brother, just as I get to know you, and neither more nor less; and you get to trust me just as you get to know me. I do not trust you as a stranger, but as I come into contact with you, and watch you, and live with you, I find out that you are trustworthy, and I come to trust myself to you, and to lean upon you. But I do not do that to a stranger. The way to trust Christ is to know Christ. You cannot help trusting Him then. You are changed. By knowing Him faith is begotten in you, as cause and effect. To trust Him without knowing Him as thousands do, is not faith, but credulity. I believe a great deal of prayer for faith is thrown away. What we should pray for is that we may be able to fulfill the condition, and when we have fulfilled the condition, the faith necessarily follows. The way, therefore, to increase our faith is to increase our intimacy with Christ. We trust Him more and more the better we know Him. And then another immediate effect of this way of sanctifying the character is the tranquility that it brings over the Christian life. How disturbed and distressed and anxious Christian people are about their growth in grace! Now, the moment you give that over into Christ’s care—the moment you see that you are being changed— that anxiety passes away. You see that it must follow by an inevitable process and by a natural law if you fulfill the simple condition; so that peace is the reward of that life and fellowship with Christ. Many other things follow. A man’s usefulness depends to a large extent upon his fellowship with Christ. That is obvious. Only Christ can influence the world; but all that the world sees of Christ is what it sees of you and me. Christ said: “The world seeth Me no more, but ye see Me.” You see Him, and standing in front of Him reflect Him, and the world sees the reflection. It cannot see Him. So that a Christian’s usefulness depends solely upon that relationship. Now, I have only pointed out a few of the things that follow from the standing before Christ—from the abiding in Christ. You will find, if you run over the texts about abiding in Christ, many other things will suggest themselves in the same relations. Almost everything in Christian experience and character follows, and follows necessarily, from standing before Christ and reflecting His character. But the supreme consummation is that we are changed into the same image, “even as by the Lord the spirit” That is to say, that in some way, unknown to us, but possibly not more mysterious than the doctrine of personal influence, we are changed into the image of Christ. This method cannot fail. I am not setting before you an opinion or a theory, but this is a certainly successful means of sanctification. ‘We all, with unveiled face, reflecting in a mirror the glory of Christ (the character of Christ) assuredly—without any miscarriage—without any possibility of miscarriage—are changed into the same image.” It is an immense thing to be anchored in some great principle like that. Emerson says: “The hero is the man who is immovably centered.” Get immovably centered in that doctrine of sanctification. Do not be carried away by the hundred and one theories of sanctification that are floating about in religious literature of the country at the present time; but go to the bottom of the thing for yourself, and see the rationale of it for yourself, and you will come te see that it is a matter of cause and effect, and that if you will fulfill the condition laid down by Christ, the effect must follow by a natural law. What a prospect! To be changed into the same image. Think of that! ‘That is what we are here for. That is what we are elected for. Not to be saved, in the common acceptation, but “whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” Not merely to be saved, but to be conformed to . B adel 200 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the image of His Son. Conserve that principle. Arid as we must spend time in culti- vating our earthly friendships if we are to have their blessings, so we must spend time in cultivating the fellowship and companionship of Christ. And there is nothing so much worth taking into our lives as a profounder sense of what is to be had by living in communion with Christ, and by getting nearer to Him. It will matter much if we take away with us some of the thoughts about theology, and some of the new light that has been shed upon the text of the Scripture; it will matter infinitely more if our fellowship with the Lord Jesus become a little closer, and our theory of holy living a little more rational. And then as we go forth, men will take knowledge of us, that we have been with Jesus, and as we reflect Him upon them, they will begin to be changed into the same image. It seems to me the preaching is of infinitely smaller account than the life which mirrors Christ. That is bound to tell; without speech or language—like the voices of the stars. It throws out its impressions on every side. The one simple thing we have to do is to be there—in the right relation; to go-through life hand in hand with Him; to have Him in the room with us, and keeping us company wherever we go; to depend upon Him and lean upon Him, and so have His life reflected in the fullness of its beauty and perfection into ours. Ill. THE FIRST EXPERIMENT. Then you reduce religion to a common friendship? A common friendship—who talks of a common friendship? There is no such thing in the world. On earth no word is more sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing we know to what religion is. God is love. And to make religion akin to friendship is simply to give it the highest expression conceivable by man. But if by demurring to “a common friendship” is meant a protest against the greatest and the holiest in religion being spoken of in intelligible terms, then I am afraid the objection is all too real. Men always look for a mystery when one talks of sanctification, some mystery apart from that which must ever be mysterious wherever spirit works. It is thought some peculiar secret lies behind it, some occult experience which only the initiated know. Thousands of persons go to church every Sunday hoping to solve this mystery. At meetings, at conferences, many a time they have reached what they thought was the very brink of it, but somehow no further revelation came. Poring over religious books, how often were they not within a paragraph of it; the next page, the next sentence, would discover all, and they wotild be borne on a flowing tide forever. But nothing happened. The next sentence and the next page were read, and still it eluded them; and though the promise of its coming kept faithfully up to the end, the last chapter found them still pursuing. Why did nothing happen? Because there was nothing to happen—nothing of the kind they were looking for. Why did it elude them? Because there was no ‘“‘it.” When shall we learn that the pursuit of holiness is simply the pursuit of Christ? When shall we substitute for the “it” of a fictitious aspiration, the approach to a Living Friend? Sanctity is in character and not in moods; Divinity in our own plain calm humanity, and in no mystic rapture of the soul. And yet there are others who, for exactly a contrary reason, will find scant satis- faction here. Their complaint is not that a religion expressed in terms of friendship is too homely, but that it is still too mystical. To “abide” in Christ, to “make Christ our most constant companion,” is to them the purest mysticism. They want some- — thing absolutely tangible and absolutely direct. ‘These are not the poetical souls who 4 seek a sign, a mysticism in excess, but the prosaic natures whose want is mathematical — definition in details. Yet it is perhaps not possible to reduce this problem to much more rigid elements, The beauty of friendship is its infinity. One can never evacuate N i i i The Changed Life—Drummond. 201 life of mysticism. Home is full of it, love is full of it, religion is full of it. Why ble at that in the relation of man to Christ which is natural in the relation of man 9 man? If any one cannot conceive or realize a mystical relation with Christ, perhaps all How do I know Shakespeare or Dante? By communing with their words and Many men know Dante better than their own fathers. He influences them , who left great words behind Him, who has greater works everywhere in the world now, should not also instruct, inspire and mould the characters of men? I do not limit Christ’s influence to this: it is this, and it is more. But Christ, so far from resenting or discouraging this relation of friendship, Himself proposed it. “Abide in Me” was almost His last word to the world. And He partly met the difficulty of those who feel its tangibleness by adding the practical clause, “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you.” _ Begin with His words. Words can scarcely ever be long impersonal. Christ himself was a Word, a word made Flesh. Make His words flesh; do them, live them, “and you must live Christ. “He that keepeth My Commandments, he it is that loveth Me.” Obey Him and you must love Him. Abide in Him, and you must obey Him. sultivate His friendship. Live after Christ, in His spirit, as in His presence, and it is difficult to think what more you can do. Take this at least as a first lesson, as introduction. If you cannot at once and always feel the play of His life upon yours, watch for talso indirectly. ‘The whole earth is full of the character of the Lord.’ Christ is the ight of the world, and much of His light is reflected from things in the world—even clouds. Sunlight is stored in every leaf, from leaf through coal, and it comforts s thence when days are dark and we cannot see the sun. Christ shines through men, through books, through history, through nature, music, art. Look for Him there. ery day one should either look at a beautiful picture, or hear beautiful music, or a beautiful poem.” The real danger of mysticism is not making it broad enough. Do not think that nothing is happening because you do not see yourself grow, or the whir of the machinery. All great things grow noiselessly. You can see a ushroom grow, but never a child. Paul said for the conforming of all slowly ing souls that they grew ‘from character to character.” “The inward man,” says elsewhere, ‘“‘is renewed from day to day.” All thorough work is slow; all ie development by minute, slight and insensible metamorphoses. The higher the structure, moreover, the slower the progress. As the biologist runs his eye over the ong ascent of life, he sees the lowest forms of animals develop in an hour; the next ove these reach maturity in a day; those higher. still take weeks or months to ; but the few at the top demand the long experiment of years. If a child and an ape are born on the same day, the last will be in full possession of its faculties nd doing the active work of life before the child has left its cradle. Life is the cradle of eternity. As the man is to the animal in the slowness of his evolution, so is the biritual man to the natural man. Foundations which have to bear the weight of an ernal life must be surely laid. Character is to wear forever; who will wonder or ge that it cannot be developed in a day? To await the growing of a soul, nevertheless, is an almost divine act of faith. low pardonable, surely, the impatience of deformity with itself, of a consciously sspicable character standing before Christ, wondering, yearning, hungering to be e that! Yet must one trust the process fearlessly and without misgiving. ‘(The ord the Spirit” will do His part. The tempting expedient is, in haste for abrupt or ; 202 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. visible progress, to try some method less spiritual, or to defeat the end by watching for effects instead of keeping the eye on the cause. A photograph prints from the negative only while exposed to the sun. While the artist is looking to see how it i: getting on he simply stops the getting on. Whatever of wise supervision the soul ma} need, it is certain it ¢an never be over-exposed, or that, being exposed, anything els: in the world can improve the result or quicken it. The creation of a new heart, the renewing of a right spirit, is an omnipotent work of God. Leave it to the Creator, “He which hath begun a good work in you will perfect it unto that day.” No man, nevertheless, who feels the worth and solemnity of what is at stake wil be careless as to his progress. To become like Christ is the only thing in the worl worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly, and all lower achievement vain. Those only who make this quest the supreme desire and passion of their lives can ever begin to hope to reach it. If, therefore, it has seemed up to this point as if all depended on passivity, let me now assert, with conviction more intense, that all depends on activity. A religion of effortless adoration may be a religion for an angel, but never fora man. Not in the contemplative, but in the active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in reality lies true life; not in the realm of ideals, but among tangible things, is man’s sanctification wrought. Resolution, effort, pain, self-crucifixion, agony—all the things already dismissed as futile in themselves, must now be restored to office, and a tenfold responsibility laid upon them. For what is their office? Nothing less than to move the vast inertia of the soul, and place it, and keep it where the spiritual forces will act upon it. It is to rally the forces of the will, and keep the surface of the mirror bright and ever in position. It is to uncover the face which is to look at Christ, and draw down the veil when unhallowed sights are near. You have, perhaps, gone with an astronomer to watch him photograph the spectrum of a star. As you enter the dark vault of the observatory you saw him begin by lighting a candle. To see the star with? No; but to adjust the instrument to see the star with. It was the star that was going to take the photograph; it was, also, the astronomer. For a long time he worked in the dimness, screwing tubes and polishing lenses and adjusting reflectors, and only after much labor the finely focused instrument was brought to bear. Then he blew out the light, and left the star to do its work upon the plate alone. The day’s task for the Christian is to bring his instrument to bear. Having done that he may blow out his candle. All the evidences of Christianity which have brought him there, all aids to Faith, all acts of worship, all the leverages of the church, all prayer and meditation, all girding of the Will—these lesser processes, these candle- light activities for that supreme hour, may be set aside. But, remember, it is but for an hour. The wise man will be he who quickest lights his candle; the wisest he who never lets it out. Tomorrow, the next moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred soul, may need it again to focus the image better, to take a mote off the lens, to clear the mirror from a breath with which the world has dulled it. No readjustment is ever required on behalf of the Star. That is one great fixed point in this shifting universe. But the world moves. And each day, each hour, demands a further motion and readjustment for the soul. A telescope in an observa- tory follows a star by clockwork, but the clockwork of the soul is called the Will. Hence, while the soul in passivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the Will in intense activity holds the mirror in position lest the drifting motion of the world bear it beyond the line of vision. To “follow Christ” is largely to keep the soul in such position as will allow for the motion of the earth. And this calculated counteracting of the movements of the world, this holding of the mirror exactly opposite to the mirrored, this steadying of the faculties unerringly through cloud and earthquake, fire The Changed Life—Drummond. 203 nd sword, is the stupendous co-operating labor of the Will. It is all man’s work. It is all Christ’s work. In practice it is both; in theory it is both. But the wise man say in practice, “It depends upon myself.” _ Inthe Gallerie des Beaux Arts in Paris there stands a famous statue. It was the ast work of a great genius, who, like many a genius, was very poor and lived in a arret, which served as a studio and sleeping-room alike. When the statue was all ut finished, one midnight a sudden frost fell upon Paris. The sculptor lay awake in he fireless room and thought of the still moist clay, thought how the water would eeze in the pores and destroy in an hour the dream of his life. So the old man rose om his couch and heaped the bed-clothes reverently round his work. In the morn- ng when the neighbors entered the room the sculptor was dead, but the statue was ved! _ The Image of Christ that is forming within us—that is life’s one charge. Let y project stand aside for that. The spirit of God who brooded upon the waters housands of years ago, is busy now creating men within these commonplace lives of ‘Ours, in the image of God. “Till Christ be formed,” no man’s work is finished, no religion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task begun? When, how, are we to be different? Time cannot change men. Death cannot change men. Christ an. Wherefore put on Christ. _ [Henry Drummond was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851. He was appointed rofessor of natural history and science in the Free Church College, Glasgow, in 1879. is greatest work, and one that attracted a great deal of discussion, was Natural Law in the Spiritual World. ‘ This address has been printed in hundreds of editions, but we include it here for convenient reference, and for preservation. It is reproduced by permission of Fleming H. Revell Co.] . me ‘, 204 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. CHIEF END OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ALEXANDER DUFF. “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause His face to shine upon us. Tha Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all ‘nations.’ ’—Psaln 67: 1, 2. The royal Psalmist, in the spirit of inspiration, personating the ‘Church of th redeemed in every age, and more especially under its last and most perfect dispensa tion, here offers up a sublime prayer for its inward prosperity, and outward universa extension. All is in the order of nature and of grace. Knowing full well that he whi has not obtained mercy from the Lord, cannot be a fit bearer of it to others,—that h who has obtained no blessings himself, can dispense none,—that he who enjoys n light, can communicate none—he first of all, with marked and beautiful propriet: begins with the supplication of personal and individual blessings: “God be mercifu unto us,’ forgiving and pardoning all our sins: “and bless us,” conferring every gif and every grace really needful for time and eternity: ‘“‘and lift up the light of th countenance upon us,’ cheering us with the smile of reconciliation and love, an causing the Sun of Righteousness to arise on our darkened souls with healing in hi beams. But does the Psalmist stop here? Does he for a moment intend that he and hi: fellow-worshippers, as representatives of the visible Church of the Living God, shoul absorb all the mercy, all the blessing, and all the light of Jehovah’s countenance? Ol no! Having thus fervently prayed for evangelical blessings to descend upon himself and every member of the Church, he immediately superadds, in the true evangelisti: or missionary spirit, “That thy way,” or, as it is given in our metrical version, “Tha so thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.” How significant the connection here established between the obtainment and thi distribution of evangelical favors! ‘“‘God be merciful unto us, and bless us.”—Why only that we ourselves may be pardoned and sanctified, and thereby attain to tru happiness? No. There is another grand end in view, to the accomplishment of whicl our being blessed is but a means. “God be merciful unto us, and bless us, that so thy way may be known on earth,’—that so—that thus—that in this way—that by ow instrumentality—that by our being blessed, and having the light of thy countenance shining upon us, “thy way’—thy way of justification through the atoning righteous ness of the Redeemer,—thy way of sanctification by His Holy Spirit,—“may be made known on earth, and thy saving health among all nations.” And then; seized with true prophetic fire at the grandeur of the Divine design ir reference to “all nations,” and hurried away by the magnificence of the vision of the latter-day glory, does “the sweet singer of Israel” break forth into heroic a sublimer far than any ever strung on Grecian or Roman lyre:— “Let people praise Thee, Lord: “Then shall the earth yield her increase, Let people all Thee praise: God, our God, bless us shall; Oh let the nations be glad, God shall us bless, and of the earth f And sing for joy always. The ends shall fear Him all,” , 4 : Chief End of the Christian Church—Duff. 205 | Here the two grand characteristics of the true Church of God,—the evangelical, and evangelistic or missionary,—are written as in a sunbeam:—the evangelical, in the possession of all needful gifts and graces out of the plenitude of the Spirit's fulness: he evangelistic, in the instant and perpetual propension which that possession ought fo generate and feed, instrumentally to dispense these blessings among all nations. As f to confound lukewarm and misjudging professors throughout all generations, these haracteristics are represented by the Spirit of inspiration itself, as essential to the very existence and well-being of the Church, and in their very nature inseparable. The srayer of the Church, as dictated by the Divine Spirit, is directed to the obtainment of b essings, not as an end, merely terminating in herself, but as a means towards the promotion and attainment of an ulterior end of the sublimest description—the enlight- ment and conversion of all nations! Hence it follows, that when a Church ceases to e evangelistic, it must cease to be evangelical, and when it ceases to be evangelical, it es cease to exist as a true Church of God, however primitive or apostolic it may be n its outward form and constitution! There is no mystery here. If, in the common affairs of life, a servant besought and tained an increased portion of goods, that he might proceed to a distant city or reign nation, and lay out the whole for the advancement of his master’s interest; and ee of acting in the terms of his own requisition, and agreeably to the express design of his kind and munificent employer, he chose to remain at home, and appro- priate all for his own private ends, what judgment would the world pronounce on such a man? Would he not be condemned as an unprofitable servant, who dishonestly attempted to embezzle the property of another? And would not the master be more than justified in taking away from him even all that he had? t q] Precisely similar is the position and attitude of the petitioning Church, and con- uently, of all petitioning believers, as portrayed by the pencil of the Divine Spirit in the words of our text. Believers are there taught to pray, and all who have ever read _ or sung this precious psalm in a believing frame of mind have actually prayed, for the E spiritual blessings:—for what purpose? that they themselves may enjoy the ' comforts and consolations of piety in this life, and a meetness for the heavenly inheri- tance hereafter? Doubtless this is the first end, and must be implied and included in the object of the petition. But so little does this appear in the eye of the Spirit, to be the only or even the chief end, that it is actually left altogether unexpressed! There is another end present to his omniscient view, of a nature so transcendently exalted, that the former is, as it were wholly overlooked, because eclipsed by the surpassing glory of that which excelleth. And that other end of all-absorbing excellence is, the impar- tation of God’s saving health to all nations. So pre-eminent in importance does this end appear to the mind of the Spirit, that believers are taught to implore spiritual blessings, expressly, and even chiefly, that they may thereby have it in their power the more effectually to promote it throughout the world! If, then, in answer to such prayers, spiritual blessings should be conferred from on high; and if, instead of employing them for the promotion of their Divine Master’s interest, by causing his saving health to be made known to all nations, believers should sit down in ease, and appropriate all to themselves, and their own friends immediately around them,—what judgement must be pronounced upon them in the court of heaven? Must they not be condemned as guilty of a breach of faith—guilty of a dereliction of duty to their Lord and Master—guilty of a dishonest attempt to em- bezzle the treasures of His grace? And if so, must not their sin, if unrepented of, bring down its deserved punishment? And what can the first drop from the vial of Divine wrath do less than expunge from the spiritual inventory of such worthless _ stewards all that they have already so gratuitously and undeservedly obtained? What a resistless argument does the Spirit of God here supply in favor of the missionary 206 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. enterprise! Who can peruse the words of his own inspiration, without being over. whelmed with the conviction that, in his unerring estimate, the chief end for which the Church ought to exist—the chief end for which individual church-members ought te live, is the evangelization or conversion of the world? But lest any shade of dubiety should exist as to the incontrovertible legitimacy o| this conclusion, the same momentous truth may be established by other and inde- pendent evidence, The spirit of prophecy speaking, through Isaiah, had long announced the Messiah ~ Himself, not only as King and Priest, but as the great Prophet and Evangelist of the world. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” says the Divine Oracle, “because the Lord hath appointed me to preach good tidings to the meek: he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” And lest any might suppose that the exercise of the functions here described was to be limited to the Jews, the natural seed of Abraham, God’s chosen people; or the Zion here named was meant exclusively to denote the literal local Zion at Jerusalem, and not rather, in type and figure, the true Catholic Church throughtout the world—it is almost immediately added, “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake will I not rest until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth: and the Gentiles shall see Thy righteousnees, and all kings Thy glory.” The prophetic import and design of these words can admit of no doubt. For when, on one occasion, our blessed Savior stood up in the Synagogue, and, opening the book of the Prophet Esaias, read the former of these passages, He dis- tinctly appropriated the application of it to Himself, saying, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Again, if it was prophesied that the Messiah would “raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the prescribed of Israel,” it is immediately added, “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth.” And again, “Men shall be blessed in Him; all nations shall call Him blessed.” In strict accordance, not only with the substance, but almost the very words of these and many other prophecies, we find the announcement of the heavenly host to the shepherds of Bethlehem: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” The introductory salutation of the Baptist, the Messiah’s forerunner: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,’—And, lastly the solemn declaration of the Apostle John: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Now, during our Savior’s ministry, He conveyed many significant intimations to_ His disciples that He intended to transfer to them, and through them to the body of © believers in every age, those high functions which primarily and rightfully belonged to Himself as the world’s Evangelist. ‘Ye are,” said He, “‘‘the salt,’ not of Judea or Jerusalem, but ‘of the earth.’” One of the brightest of His own prophetic titles was “the light of the Gentiles:” or, in the paraphrase of the Apostle, “the light that lighteth © every man that cometh into the world.” And this very title He transfers to His disci- , ples, saying, “‘Ye are the light,’ not of Judea or Jerusalem, but ‘of the world.’ ” 3 And when about to withdraw His visible presence from the earth, He formally : transferred the whole of His visible evangelistic functions to His professing disciples f or Church, to be exercised and administered by it in His name and stead, till the end _ of time. “All power,” said He, “is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, — therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the { ‘ he Chief End of the Christian Church—Duff. 207 Son, and of the Holy Ghost—teaching them (i. e., all nations) to observe all things administration of gospel ordinances, and the exercise of spiritual authority. These high functions in the Royal Head were original and underived, as transferred to His body, the Church, they are, of necessity, derivative and vice-regal. As Christ, there- Dre, was proclaimed by prophets and apostles, as well as by Himself, in His appropria- tion of prophetic announcements, to be the world’s Evangelist; in His personal ab- ence during the present dispensation, He was pleased solemnly to appoint and con- Stitute the Church to be His delegated representative as the world’s Evangelist; and, along with the evangelistic functions, He conveyed the power and authority indis- pensable for their exercise. _ That this was the interpretation put upon this original gospel commission by the fimitive disciples, is evident, not only from the whole tenor of their conduct, but also from the most express declarations scattered throughout the book of the Acts, as well as the Apostolic Epistles. e It thus appears abundantly manifest from the multiplied Scripture evidence, that the chief end for which the Christian Church is constituted—the leading design for L re she is made the repository of heavenly blessings—the great command under which she is laid—the supreme function which she is called on to discharge—is, in the e and stead of her glorified Head and Redeemer, unceasingly to act the part of an evangelist to all the world. The inspired prayer which she is taught to offer for ‘spiritual gifts and graces, binds her, as the covenanted condition on which they are bestowed at all, to dispense them to all nations. The divine charter which conveys to her the warrant to teach and preach the gospel at all, binds her to teach and preach it to all nations. The divine charter which embodies a commission to administer gospel ordinances at all, binds her to administer these to all nations. The divine charter which communicates power and authority to exercise rule or discipline at all, inds her to exercise these not alone or exclusively, to secure her own internal purity and peace, union and stability, but chiefly and supremely, in order that she may hereby be enabled the more speedily, effectually and extensively to execute her grand vangelistic commission in preaching the gospel to all nations. If, then, any body of believers, united together as a Church, under whatever form external discipline and polity, do, in their individual, or congregational, or cor- porate national capacity, wilfully and deliberately overlook, suspend or indefinitely ostpone the accomplishment of the great end for which the Church universal, in- dhuding every evangelical community, implores the vouchsafement of spiritual Teasures—the great end for which she has obtained a separate and independent con- titution at all—how can they, separately or conjointly, expect to realize, or realizing, ct to render abiding, the promised presence of Him who alone hath the keys of he golden treasury, and alone upholds the pillars of the great spirtual edifice? If any hurch, or any section of a Church, do thus neglect the final cause of its being, and iolate the very condition and tenure of all spiritual rights and privileges, how can it xpect the continuance of the favor of Him from whom alone, as their divine fount nd spring-head, all such rights and privileges must ever flow? And if deprived of is favor and presence, how can any Church expect long to exist, far less spiritually o flourish, in the enjoyment of inward peace, or the prospect of outward and more xtended prosperity? _And what is.the whole history of the Christian Church but one perpetual proof and Illustration of the grand position,—that an evangelistic or missionary Church is a 208 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. spiritually flourishing Church; and, that a Church which drops the evangelistic o: missionary character, speedily lapses into superannuation and decay! The most evangelistic period of the Christian Church was, beyond all doubt, th primitive or apostolic. Then, the entire community of saints seemed to act under at overpowering conviction of their responsible duty, as the divinely appointed evange lists of a perishing world. No branch or offset from the apostolic stock at Jerusalen had, in those days, begun to surmise that, not only its first but chief, and almos exclusive duty, was to witness for Christ in the city, or district, or province, o1 kingdom, in which it was itself already planted—in other words, to surmise that th most effectual mode of vindicating its title to the designation of apostolic, was tc annihilate its own apostolicity! For what can be named, as the most peculiar anc discharge the functions of a missionary. All, all seemed moved and actuated towarc shining aspect of salvation which it held forth towards all nations? No, no. In thoss days, the Church’s prayer, as breathed by the inspired Psalmist, seemed to issue from every lip, and kindle every soul into correspondent action. The Redeemer’s parting command seemed to ring in every ear, and vitally influence every feeling and faculty of the renewed soul. Every man and woman, and almost every child, through the remotest branches of the wide-spreading Church seemed impelled by a holy zeal tc discharge the functions of a missionary. All, all seemed moved andgactuated towarc a guilty and lost world, as if they really felt it to be as much their duty to disseminate the gospel among unchristianized nations, as to pray, or teach, or preach to those within the pale of their respective churches—as much their duty to propagate the knowledge of salvation among the blinded heathen, as to. yield obedience to any com. mandment in the Decalogue. And were not those the days.of*flourishing Christianity: Has not the spiritual beauty and brightness of the primitive Church been the theme of admiration and praise to succeeding generations? But no sooner did the Church in any of its subdivisions, begin to-contract the sphere of its efforts in diffusing abroa¢ the light of the everlasting gospel—nomsooner did it begin to settle down with the view of snugly enjoying the glorious prerogatives conferred by its Great Head—for- getful of the multitudes that were still famishing for lack of knowledge, to all of whom it was bound by covenant to announce the glad tidings of salvation; in a word, ne sooner did the Church, in contravention of heaven’s appointed ordinance, begin te relax in the exercise of its evangelistic function towards the world at large, than its sun, under the hiding of Jehovah’s countenance, and the frown of His displeasure, began to decline and hide itself amid the storms of wrathful controversy, or sink beneath a gloomy horizon laden with freezing rites and soul-withering forms. It may be thought that the history of the Reformation tends to contradict this general view. So far from this, it is to that very period, as compared with the times immediately succeeding, that we would appeal for one of the most striking illustrations of its truth. Doubtless the Pagan world was not included within the immediate sphere of the Reformers’ labors. Its miserable condition was then scarcely, if at all, known in its real horror; the very existence of the great Western Continent was but recently discovered; and in comparison with present times the facilities of intercom- munion with distant parts of the globe were so circumscribed as to appear to us hardly conceivable. Still the work of the Reformation was itself a grand evangelistic work. God, by His Spirit, put it into the hearts of an enlightened few to arise and make an “aggressive movement” on the unenlightened many, by whom they were everywhere surrounded. Their first and paramount object was to rescue the Bible itself—the great instrument of the world’s evangelization—from the dormitory of dead and unintelli- gible languages; to emancipate its doctrines from the superincumbent load of Popish traditions and Aristotelian subtleties; to vindicate the rights of conscience in the Chief End of the Christian Church—Duff. 209 ' perusal and interpretation of that Magna Charta of all civil and religious liberty; and, finally, to bring out, and separate from idolatrous Rome, a true Church, that might forever protest against all doctrines, and rites whatsoever, that infringed, by one jot or tittle, on Christ’s supremacy, as the sole and all-sufficient Savior of lost sinners— a witnessing Church, that might reassume the great evangelistic function of preaching he gospel as a testimony to all nations. ; This struggle with anti-Christian Rome was, indeed, a long and terrible one—a struggle which, as regards the extent of the field, the might of the combatants, the imperishable interests contended for, apd the momentous consequences dependent thereon, has no parallel in history, except the dreadful. conflict of primitive Chris- a with Pagan Rome. But if the struggle was tremendous, proportionally Hf Look at the Biiestint Church of this land at the close of the Reformation era. It would seem as if the very windows of heaven had been opened, and the showers of grace had descended in an inundation of spiritual gifts and graces, converting the parched lands into pools of water, and the barren wilderness into gardens that bloomed and blossomed as the rose. Look at the same Church in less than a generation afterwards. What a poor, _torpid, shrunken, shrivelled thing! As if the heavens were of brass, and the earth of on, and no dew descending, the very waters of the sanctuary became stagnant, and red and sent forth a teeming progeny of heresies, schisms, and dissents. Ah, how is the beauty of Israel effaced in our high places! How are the mighty fallen! Whence the cause of so sad a discomfiture? * oe: . | : r “It was not in the battle; bi No tempest gave the shock.” hs No—it was the blight and mildew of Jehovah’s displeasure, on account of a ‘neglected and unfaithful stewardship! | 4 The active principle in man, which though often sluggish, and oftener still ‘strangely misdirected, is never wholly extinguished, was aroused by the Reformation into unwonted energy. And most legitimately was it then made to expend its force, in the awful struggle with anti-Christian Rome. But, on the total cessation of hostili- ties, and the restoration of general peace, how ought the awakened energy of the Reformed Church to have been directed and expended? Plainly, and incontrovertibly, it ought to have found its constant and determinate object—its divine intended employ—in extending the triumphs of Protestant, that is, primitive Christianity over the realms of Paganism. But, instead of this, the Church, soon casting aside her weapons of aggressive warfare, settled down, in inglorious ease, to enjoy the conquests she had won. What then? Did her active energy abate or sink into torpid quies- cence? No; as a proper outlet was denied to it, in assaulting the enemy without, it recoiled with a vehement rebound, on the heads of the negligent and slothful within. That mighty force which should have been rightfully exerted in demolishing the heathenism of the nations, soon found ample vent for itself in fomenting intestine discords and unhallowed speculation, idle impertinences and heretical controversy— thus proving, when left undirected to its proper object, through lukewarmness and treasonable neglect, at once the scourge of the faithless professor, and the unhappy instrument of the Church’s distraction and decay. We have comparatively little or no guilt, in this respect, to charge home upon the Reformers. The great work assigned to them by heaven they executed in a manner that far exceeds “all Greek, all Roman fame.’ It is at the door of their successors—for whom the battle had been fought and victory won—that the blame must be laid, for which we can find no palliation. _ When, after the Reformation, the Protestant Church arose, as by a species of 210 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. moral resurrection, with new-born energies, from the deep dark grave of Popish ignorance and superstition—then was she in an attitude to have gone forth in the spirit of her own prayers, and, in obedience to the Divine command, on the spiritual conquest of the nations—and, in the train of every victory, scatter as her trophies the means of grace, and as her plentiful heritage, the hopes of a glorious immortality. But instead of thus fulfilling the immutable law of her constitution—instead of going forth in a progress of outward extension and onward aggression, with a view to consummate the great work which formed at once the eternal design of her Head, and the chief end of her being—the Church seemed mainly intent on turning the whole of her energies inward on herself. Her highest ambition and ultimate aim seemed to be to have herself begirt as with a wall of fire that might devour her adversaries—to have her own privileges fenced in by laws and statutes of the realm—to have her own immunities perpetuated to posterity by solemn leagues and covenants. All well, admirably well, had she only borne distinctly in mind that she was thus highly favored, not for her own sake alone, but that, by her instrumentality, the glad tidings of salvation, through a crucified Redeemer, might be made known to the utter- most ends of the earth. All well, admirably well, had she only borne in mind that her candlestick was not rekindled solely for her own use—but that the light of the gospel might largely emanate therefrom, and be-diffused throughout the nations. All well, admirably well, had she only borne in mind that she possessed no exclusive proprietary right to the blessings of the covenant of grace—but that, like every other branch of the true Church of Christ, she held these in commission for the benefit of a whole world lying in wickedness. Ah, had the Church of these lands, in the day of her glorious triumph and undivided strength, gone forth in accordance with the letter and spirit of her own heaven-inspired prayers—as the Almoner of Jehovah's bounties to a perishing world—how different might have been her position now! Instead of being compelled to act on the defensive—instead of being reduced to the necessitous condition of a besieged city, around which the enemy is drawing his lines of circum- vallation, threatening to demolish her towers, dismantle her bulwarks, and erase her palaces—leaving her brave sons no alternative but that of raising the desperate war-cry of beleaguered valor, “No surrender! No surrender!”—she might all along have been acting on the offensive, against “principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places.” And, after having made the circuit of the globe, she might this day have been displaying her standard, engraven with a thousand victories, in front of some of the last strongholds of heathenism, and rending the air with the conqueror’s shout of “Unconditional submission!” Is it, then, too late to retrieve our past errors and criminal neglect? No; blessed be God, it is not yet too late. In answer to the prayers of a faithful remnant in this land, the Lord hath been pleased once more to regard with special favor that branch of the Holy Catholic Church to which we more immediately belong. He hath been pleased to look down from heaven, and visit this vine, and the vineyard which His own right hand once planted. And now, if ever, is the time to exhibit, not only the model of a Gospel Church, but a complete model in full operation. We are placed in very different circumstances from those of the early Reformers. We have not, like them, to begin anew. We have not, like them, to reckon up our Protestants by units. We have not, like them, to struggle on for years in attempting to new-create, as it were, a true Church from the dark womb of Popish superstition. We have not, like them, to resist unto blood for many years more in establishing the platform of a pure ecclesi- astical constitution. No. We at once count our hundreds of thousands of members united together as a Church, under one of the noblest, and purest, and most apostolic constitutions which the world has ever seen. We have the entire machinery ready made, We have only to arise, and, in the strength of our God, set all the parts of it Chief End of the Christian Church—Duff. 211 in motion—and thus, at once, and simultaneously, discharge all the functions, not ‘merely of an evangelic, but of an evangelistic Church. y That Church, which, notwithstanding many acknowledged weaknesses, and even alleged deformities, must be regarded as our venerable parent still, may already have passed through the different stages of existence. From the feebleness of infancy, she ay have speedily risen to the giant vigor of maturity—and, passing the meridian of 4 er power, may at length have sunk enervated under a load of years. But what of all ‘this, if, in answer to the prayer, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe “upon these dry bones, that they may live’—we behold everywhere a moving and a aking amongst them? And if, already, we behold her beginning to exhibit cheering ‘symptoms of a revival—to exchange the hoariness and withered features of age for the greenness and blooming freshness of youth—if, by the new quickening of all her powers, she has now resolved to roll back the dark tide of corruption, ‘which is said to have swollen to mountainous heights with the lapse of time; and begun to emulate the purity and ardor of her Reformation faithfulness— oh! let her not again be guilty of committing the egregious, the fatal, and it may be, the irremediable blunder and sin of attempting to grasp and appropriate all religious rights, blessings, and privileges; as if these were a special monopoly, exclusively intended for herself and her children, and not rather, what they truly are in the Divine purpose and design, a sacred deposit, committed to her for the enriching of the famished nations! On the contrary, let her newburnish all the lamps of her noble institutions; let her add to these by hundreds—not to dispel the darkness within her own territory alone, but for the kindling of a flame that shall rise, and spread, and brighten till it illumine the world. Let her revive the golden age of the Christian Church, when professing believers, not satisfied with showers of words that con- trast so ominously with barren practices, were ever prepared to testify, not only the sincerity, but the height and depth, and length and breadth of their gratitude and love for the blessed Redeemer, by submitting to the amplest sacrifices of comfort, and life, and all—when the Christian treasury was replenished to overflowing by the free- will offerings and self-denying, God-honoring people—and when a general assembly of apostles and prophets met at Jerusalem, to select and set apart, not the young and inexperienced, but the greatest and most redoubted champions to go forth and shake the strongholds of error to their basis, by sounding the gospel trump of jubilee. Let | the Protestant Church of these lands, in this day of her incipient revival, thus nobly | resolve to assume the entire evangelistic character, and implement the Divine con- | dition of preservation and prosperity, by becoming the dispenser of gospel blessings, not only to the people at home, but as speedily as possible to all the unenlightened nations of the earth. And, if there be truth in the Bible—if there be a certainty in Jehovah’s promises—if there be reality in past history—she may yet arise and shine, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. Again, we say, the field of Divine appointment is not Scotland or England, but “the world”—the world of “all nations.” The prayer of Divine inspiration is, “God bless and pity us”—not, that thy way may be known in all Britain and thy saving among all its destitute families—but, “that thy way may be known on all the earth, and thy saving health among all nations.” The command of Divine obligation is not, “Go to the people of Scotland, or of England,” but, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” And if we take our counsel from those blind and deluded guides, that would, in spite of the Almighty’s appointment, and in derision of our own Prayers, persuade us, altogether, or for an indefinite period onwards, to abandon the proper Bible field, and direct the whole of our time, and strength, and resources to home; if, at their anti-Scriptural suggestions, we do thus dislocate the Divine order f proportion; if we do thus invert the Divine order of magnitude; if we daringly | 212 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. presume to put that last, which God hath put first; to reckon that least which God hath pronounced greatest; what can we expect but that He shall be provoked, in sore displeasure, to deprive us of the precious deposit of misappropriated grace, and inscribe “Ichabod” on all our towers, bulwarks, and palaces? And if He do—then, like being smitten with judicial blindness, we may hold hundreds of meetings, deliver thousands of speeches, and publish tens of thousands of tracts, and pamphlets, and volumes, in defence of our chartered rights and birthright liberties—and all this we may hail as religious zeal, and applaud as patriotic spirit. But if such prodigious activities be designed solely, or even chiefly, to concentrate all hearts, affections, and energies, on the limited interests of our own, own land; if such prodigious activities recognize and aim at no higher terminating object than the simple maintenance and extension of our home institutions—and that, too, for the exclusive benefit of our own people—while, in contempt of the counsels of the eternal, the hundreds of millions of a guilty world are coolly abandoned to perish; oh! how can all this appear in the sight of heaven as anything better than a national outburst of monopolizing selfishness? And how can such criminal disregard of the Divine ordinance, as respects the evange- lization of a lost world, fail, sooner or later, to draw down upon us the most dreadful visitation of retributive vengeance? Thus it was with the Jews of old. Twice, after the creation and the flood, was the true religion universal; and if, subsequently, it was contracted in its sphere, and shut up within the narrow bounds of a favored locality, it was out of mercy and loving kindness to man. It was, that it might not be wholly swept away and lost in the swelling tide of an apostasy, which threatened to rise and overwhelm all the kindreds of the nations. But, in the Eternal decree, it was ordained—and by the mouth of the prophets who spoke in successive ages, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, it was clearly foretold that, in the fullness of time, the true religion should once more become universal—that out of Jerusalem the law should go forth to the ends of the earth. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, resolved that beyond the bounds of Judea, their own beloved home, it should not go—and thus dared the Omnipotent to hostile collision. And never, never did any people put forth efforts, of a nature so absolutely volcanic, in defence of their heaven-ordained institutions. But it was all in order that they might wholly monopolize the advantages of these to themselves. Calamitous monopoly! Insane opposition! Preservation of the types and shadows for their own exclusive benefit was the Jewish watchword. Preservation of the substance in new, extended, and remodelled forms for the benefit of the “world” was the Divine watch- word. Who could for a moment doubt which must in the end prevail? Surely the people that could not presume to contend, in unequal strife, with the full thunder of Jehovah’s power, must have been more than ordinarily infatuated! And seized they verily were with a judicial infatuation, out of which they were not, and would not, be awakened till the tempest of Divine wrath burst upon them with exterminating violence! | And thus, assuredly, will it be with us, if we do not arise, and speedily resolve to discharge all those high Catholic and evangelistic functions that. devolve upon us, as a Protestant Church and Protestant nation. Or, shall we blindly and perversely determine, alike to scorn the counsels of heaven, and brave the warnings of Provi- dence? Then let us only try the fatal, the disastrous experiment! Let us try, if we will, and overloo’ wholly, or in great measure, heaven’s irrevocable law, and our own plighted obligations to save a lost world—let us try, if we will, and maintain the war- fare in defence of our home institutions, altogether or chiefly, for our own benefit and that of our children—and as sure as Jehovah’s purposes are unchangeable our doom is sealed. By unparalleled exertions we may arrest, for a season, the day of national calamity. We may retard, but shall not be able finally to arrest, the progres§ 6 ; Chief End of the Christian Church—Duf. 213 f of national disorganization and decay. The chariot wheels of destruction may be _ made to drag more heavily as they roll along the fatal declivity. But nothing, nothing shall effectually prevent the ultimate awful plunge of all our institutions—social, civil, and religious—into the troubled waters, where they shall be dashed to pieces, amid ‘rocks and quicksands, in a hurricane of anarchy! ' To avert a catastrophe so fell and so terrible, oh! let us all imbibe into our inmost ‘souls the Church’s heaven-inspired prayer—‘‘Lord, bless and pity us, shine on us with Thy face.” In order to prove the sincerity wherewith the prayer is uttered, let us put forth the mightiest exertions in the endeavor to repair all the ancient channels, and open up hundreds of new ones, through wh‘ch the blessing may be expected to descend, in refreshing streams, into every congregation, every household, and every heart in our own land. But oh! let us not, in blind, and narrow-minded, and anti- Christian selfishness, forget the final cause and chief end for the furtherance of which the blessing must be mainly sought by us, and for the accomplishment of which it must be mainly conferred, if conferred at all, by a gracious God—as emphatically taught us in the ever memorable words of his own Holy Spirit, “That so thy way may be known upon earth, and thy saving health among all nations.” And let not our efforts in attempting to realize the glorious end for which evangelical mercies and favors are avowedly sought and bestowed, be either feeble or disproportionate—lest, by deficient or contradictory practices, our prayers should prove so many idle mock- eries of our God; and our petitions, so many provocations to the High and Holy One, _ to withdraw from us altogether those privileges which we already enjoy—if we enjoy them only with the selfish and dishonest intention of enriching ourselves by defrauding the world. Come and let us, with united heart and soul, adopt as our own, the fervid language f One who drank deep at the fount of inspiration—One whose presence once glad- dened these shores, and tended to chase the darkness from heathen lands—One who ‘is now of the happy number of glorified spirits that cease not to chant their hallelujahs “aro the Throne. And, while we appropriate His glowing words as the vehicle of ¢ “Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, Till o’er our ransomed nature, Ey And you, ye waters, roll, The Lamb for sinners slain, & Till, like a sea of glory, Redeemer, King, Creator, 4 It spread from pole to pole; In bliss return to reign.” _ {Alexander Duff was born at Moulin, Perthshire, Scotland, April 25, 1806, and "died at Edinburgh February 12, 1878. He went as missionary to India in 1829. He _at first belonged to the Church of Scotland, and later joined the Free Church. India and India Missions was*written in 1839. _____ This sermon was characterized by Dr. A. T. Pierson as Duff's “great sermon.” While his sermon or vindication before the Scotch Assembly was the greatest, still has so many local references that it would not have the permanent interest that the one given will maintain.] 214 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF jae TIMOTHY DWIGHT, S: I. D. Ea “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”—Jeremiah 10: 23. In this passage of Scripture, the prophet, after uttering a-variety of sublime declarations concerning the perfections and providence of God, and the follies and sins of men, exhibits the progress of life as a way. In this way all men are considered as travelling. We commence the journey at our birth; pass on through the several stages of childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, and finish it when we enter eternity. The accommodations, and the fare, are greatly varied among the various travellers. Some find their entertainment plentiful, and agreeable; and some, even luxurious and splen- ‘did. Others are slenderly provided with food, raiment and lodging; are almost mere sufferers; and literally, have not where to lay their heads. In the meantime, sorrow and disease, dangers and accidents, like a band of marauders, lie in wait for the travellers; and harass, and destroy, a great proportion of their number. Of the vast multitude, who continually walk in the path of life, almost all disappear long before they reach the goal at which it terminates. A very few arrive at the end. Of these every one, dragging heavily his weary feet over the last division of the road, teaches us, that this part of his progress is only labor and sorrow. A remarkable fact, universally attendant on our journey, is recited in the text. “O Lord,” says the deeply humbled prophet, “I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” The enterprise is not con- trived by ourselves. We are placed in it, and necessitated to accomplish it, by a superior and irresistible hand. It cannot but seem strange, that in such a journey we should originally be prevented from the ability to direct ourselves; and that, while we are compelled to the undertaking, we should be furnished for it in a manner so imperfect. Yet such if unquestionably the fact. Nor is the explanation so difficult, or so unsatisfactory, as we are prone to believe. God originally intended that all His creatures should be dependent on Him for aid, guidance and protection. Nor can it be rationally supposed that such a dependence on His perfections and providence is either unreasonable or undesirable. The Sovereignty of God which is so clearly and strongly visible in this interesting subject, has ever been questioned, and very often denied, by mankind. To establish this doctrine in the minds of my audience, is the peculiar design of the present discourse. In a sermon, lately delivered in this place on the decrees of God, I explained what I intend by the divine Sovereignty. It was then observed that “the conduct of God is sovereign, in this sense; that He does according to His will, independently and irresistibly, without giving an account of any of His matters any farther than He pleases; but that He wills nothing without the best reason, whether that reason be disclosed to His creatures, or not; that real glory to Himself, and real good to His creation, not otherwise attainable, are universally the object to which His pleasure is directed, whether it respects the existence and motions of an insect, or the salvation of a man.” It was remarked, also, at that time that, in the ordinary sense of the word, God never acts arbitrarily; and that to say, He wills a » The Sovereignty of God—Dwight. 215 _ thing because He wills it, is to speak without meaning. All His pleasure, all His _ determinations, are perfectly wise and good; founded on the best of all reasons, and directed to the best of all purposes. Were He to act in any other manner His provi- _ dence would be less wise, and less desirable. It will not be questioned, that this doctrine is deeply interesting to man. On this life is suspended that which is to come. Consequences, eternal and incomprehensible, will flow from those doctrines, which we adopt in the present world. All our conduct will then be examined; and will either be approved, or condemned, If we have chosen the straight and narrow way prescribed to us, the termination will be happy. If we _have preferred the broad and crooked road, it will be deplorable. Few of this audience will probably deny the truth of a direct Scriptural declaration. With as little reason can it be denied, that most of them apparently live in the very manner, in which they would live, if the doctrine were false: or that they rely, chiefly at least, on their own sagacity, contrivance and efforts, for success in this life, and that e which is to come. As little can it be questioned that such self-confidence is a guide ‘2B eminently dangerous and deceitful. Safe as we may feel under its direction, our safety is imaginary. The folly of others in trusting to themselves we discern irresistibly. The same folly they perceive, with equal evidence, in us. Our true wisdom lies in _ willingly feeling, and cheerfully acknowledging, our dependence on God; and in com- | mitting ourselves with humble reliance to His care and direction. With these observations I will now proceed to illustrate the truth of the doctrine. | The mode which I shall pursue will, probably, be thought singular. I hope it will be | useful. Metaphysical arguments, which are customarily employed for the purpose oi - establishing this and several other doctrines of theology, are, if I mistake not, less _ Satisfactory to the minds of men at large, than the authors of them appear to believe. _ Facts, wherever they can be fairly adduced for this end, are attended with a superior _ power of conviction; and commonly leave little doubt behind them. On these, there- fore, I shall at the present time rely for the accomplishment of my design. In the First place, the doctrine of the text is evident, from the great fact, that the birth | and education of all men depend not on themselves. . The succeeding events of life are derived, in a great measure at least, from our birth. By this event, it is in a prime degree determined whether men shall be princes _ or peasants, opulent or poor, learned or ignorant, honorable or despised; whether they __ Shall be civilized or savage, freemen or slaves, Christians or heathen, Mohammedans or Jews. i A child is born of Indian parents in the western wilderness. By his birth he is, - of course, a savage. His friends, his mode of life, his habits, his knowledge, his opin- ions, his conduct, all grow out of this single event. His first thoughts, his first instruc- tions, and all the first objects with which he is conversant, the persons whom he loves, - the life to which he addicts himself, and the character which he assumes. are all savage. He is an Indian from the cradle; he is an Indian to the grave. To say that he could not be otherwise, we are not warranted; but that he is not, is certain. Another child is born of a Bedouin Arab. From this moment he begins to be an Arabian. His hand is against every man; and every man’s hand is against him. _ Before he can walk, or speak, he is carried through pathless wastes in search of food; _and roams in the arms of his mother, and on the back of a camel, from spring to spring, and from pasture to pasture. Even then he begins his conflict with hunger and thirst; is scorched by a vertical sun; shrivelled by the burning sand beneath; and ‘poisoned by the breath of the Simoon. Hardened thus through his infancy and child- _ hood, both in body and mind, he becomes, under the exhortations and example of his father, a robber from his youth; attacks every stranger whom he is able to overcome; and plunders every valuable thing on which he can lay his hand. "i ‘ i‘ oa q —— a 216 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. A third receives his birth in the palace of a British nobleman; and is welcomed to the world as the heir apparent of an ancient, honorable and splendid family. As soon as he opens his eyes on the light, he is surrounded by all the enjoyments which opulence can furnish, ingenuity contrive, or fondness bestow. He is dandled on the knee of indulgence; encircled by attendants, who watch and prevent alike his neces- sities and wishes; cradled on down; and charmed to sleep by the voice of tenderness and care. From the dangers and evils of life he is guarded with anxious solicitude. To its pleasures he is conducted by the ever-ready hand of maternal affection. His person is shaped and improved by a succession of masters; his mind is opened, invyig- orated and refined, by the assiduous superintendence of learning and wisdom. While a child, he is served by a host of menials, and flattered by successive trains of visitors. When a youth he is regarded by a band of tenants with reverence and awe. His equals in age bow to his rank; and multitudes, of superior years, acknowledge his distinction by continual testimonies of marked respect. When a man, he engages the regard of his sovereign; commands the esteem of the senate; and earns the love and applause of his country. A fourth child, in the same kingdom, is begotten by a beggar, and born under a hedge. From his birth he is trained to suffering and hardihood. He is nursed, if he can said to be nursed at all, on a coarse, scanty and precarious pittance; holds life only as a tenant at will; combats from the first dawnings of intellect with insolence, cold and nakedness; is originally taught to beg and to steal; is driven from the doors of men by the porter or the house dog; and is regarded as an alien from the family of Adam. Like his kindred worms, he creeps through life in the dust; dies under the hedge, where he is born; and is then, perhaps, cast into a ditch, and covered with earth, by some stranger, who remembers, that, although a beggar, he still was a man. A child enters the world in China; and unites, as a thing of course, with his sottish countrymen in the stupid worship of the idol Fo. Another prostrates himself before the Lama, in consequence of having received his being in Thibet, and of seeing the Lama worshipped by all around him. A third, who begins his existence in Turkey, is carried early to the mosque; taught to lisp with profound reverence the name of Mohammed; habituated to repeat the prayers and sentences of the Koran as the means of eternal life; and induced, in a manner irresistibly, to complete his title to Paradise by a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Hindoo infant grows into a religious veneration for the cow; and perhaps never doubts, that, if he adds to this a solemn devotion to Juggernaut, the Gooroos, and the Dewtahs, and performs carefully his ablutions in the Ganges, he shall wash away all his sins, and obtain, by the favor of Brahma, a seat among the blessed. In our own favored country, one child is born of parents devoted solely to this world. From his earliest moments of understanding, he hears and sees nothing com- mended, but hunting, horse racing, visiting, dancing, dressing, riding, parties, gaming, acquiring money with eagerness and skill, and spending it in gayety, pleasure and luxury. These things, he is taught by conversation and example, constitute all the good of man. His taste is formed, his habits are riveted, and the whole character of his soul is turned to them, before he is fairly sensible that there is any other good. The question, whether virtue and piety are either duties or blessings, he probably never asks. In the dawn of life he sees them neglected and despised by those whom he most reverences; and learns only to neglect and despise them also. Of Jehovah he thinks as little, and for the same reason, as a Chinese or a Hindoo. They pay their devotions to Fo and to Juggernaut: he, his to money and pleasure. Thus he lives, and dies, a mere animal; a stranger to intelligence and morality, to his duty and his God. Another child comes into existence in the mansion of Knowledge and Virtue. From his infancy, his mind is fashioned to wisdom and piety. In his infancy he is ; } The Sovereignty of God—Dwight. 217 . taught and allured to remember his Creator; and to unite, first in form, and then in affection, in the household devotions of the morning and evening. God he knows almost as soon as he can know anything. The presence of that glorious being he is - taught to realize almost from the cradle; and from the dawn of intelligence, to under- stand the perfections and government of his Creator. His own accountableness as _ soon as he can comprehend it, he begins to feel habitually, and always. The way of life _ through the Redeemer is early, and regularly explained to him by the voice of parental _ love; and enforced and endeared in the house of God. As soon as possible, he is "enabled to read, and persuaded to “search the Scriptures.” Of the approach, the _ danger and the mischiefs of temptations, he is tenderly warned. At the commencement ch sin, he is kindly checked in his dangerous career. To God he was solemnly given in baptism. To God he was daily commended in fervent prayer. Under this happy | cultivation he grows up, “like an olive tree in the courts of the Lord;” and, green, beautiful and flourishing, he blossoms; bears fruit; and is prepared to be transplanted __ by the divine hand to a kinder soil in the regions above. 4 How many, and how great, are the differences in these several children! How 3 plainly do they all, in ordinary circumstances, arise out of their birth! From their i birth is derived, of course, the education which I have ascribed to them; and from this _ education spring in a great measure both their character and their destiny. The place, _ the persons, the circumstances, are here evidently the great things which, in the _ ordinary course of Providence, appear chiefly to determine what the respective men shall be; and what shall be those allotments which regularly follow their respective _ characters. As, then, they are not at all concerned in contriving or accomplishing either their birth or their education; it is certain that, in these most important par- ticulars, the way of man is not in himself. God only can determine what child shail spring from parents, wise or foolish, virtuous or sinful, rich or poor, honorable or ‘infamous, civilized or savage, Christian or heathen. I wish it to be distinctly understood, and carefully remembered, that “in the moral conduct of all these individuals no physical necessity operates.” Every one of them is absolutely a free agent; as free as any created agent can be. Whatever he does is the result of choice, absolutely unconstrained. Let me add, that not one of them is placed in a situation in which, if he learns _and performs his duty to the utmost of his power, he will fail of being finally accepted. Secondly. The doctrine is strikingly evident from this great fact also; that the course of life, which men usually pursue, is very different from that, which they have _ intended. Human life is ordinarily little else than a collection of disappointments, Rarely is the life of man such as he designs it shall be. Often do we fail of pursuing, at all, the business originally in our view. The intentional farmer becomes a mechanic, a sea- man, a merchant, a lawyer, a physician, or a divine. The very place of settlement, and of residence through life, is often different, and distant, from that which was originally contemplated. Still more different is the success which follows our efforts. All men intend to be rich and honorable; to enjoy ease; and to pursue pleasure. But how small is the number of those who compass these objects! In this country, the great body of mankind are, indeed, possessed of competence; a safer and happier lot than that to which they aspire; yet few, very few are rich. Here also, the great body of mankind possess a character, generally reputable; but very limited is the number of those who arrive at the honor which they so ardently desire, and of which they feel assured. Almost all stop at the moderate level, where human efforts appear to have their boundary established in the determination of God. Nay, far below this level, creep multitudes of such as began life with full confidence in the attainment of distinction and splendor. 218 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. The Lawyer, emulating the eloquence, business, and fame, of Murray or Dunning, and secretly resolved not to slacken his efforts, until all his rivals in the race of glory are outstripped, is often astonished, as well as broken-hearted, to find business and fame pass by his door, and stop at the more favored mansion of some competitor, in his view less able, and less discerning, than himself. The Physician, devoted to medical science, and possessed of distinguished powers of discerning and removing diseases, is obliged to walk; while a more fortunate empiric, ignorant and worthless, rolls through the streets in his coach. The Legislator beholds with anguish and amazement the suffrages of his coun- trymen given eagerly to a rival candidate, devoid of knowledge and integrity; but skilled in flattering the base passions of men, and deterred by no hesitations of con- science, and no fears of infamy, from saying and doing anything which may secure his election. ; The Merchant often beholds with a despairing eye his own ships sunk in the ocean; his debtors fail; his goods unsold, his business cramped; and himself, his family and his hopes ruined; while a less skilful but more successful neighbor sees wealth blown to him by every wind, and floated ‘on every wave. The crops of the Farmer are stinted; his cattle die; his markets are bad; and the purchaser of his commodities proves to be a cheat who deceives his confidence, and runs away with his property. Thus the darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are daily frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes; disap- pointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind. The designs of men, however, are in many respects not unfrequently successful. The lawyer and physician acquire business and fame; the statesman, votes; and the farmer, wealth. But their real success, even in this case, is often substantially the same with that already recited. In all plans, and all labors, the supreme object is to become happy. Yet, when men have actually acquired riches and honor, or secured to themselves popular favor, they still find the happiness, which they expected, eluding their grasp. Neither wealth, fame, office, nor sensual pleasure can yield such good as we need. As these coveted objects are accumulated, the wishes of man always grow faster than his gratifications. Hence, whatever he acquires he is usually as little satis- fied and often less than before. A principal design of the mind in laboring ior these things is to become superior to others. But almost all rich men are obliged to see, and usually with no small anguish, others richer than themselves; honorable men, others more honorable; voluptuous men, others who enjoy more pleasure. The great end of the strife is therefore unobtained; and the happiness expected never found. Even the successful competitor in the race utterly misses his aim. The real enjoyment existed, althoug it was unperceived by him, in the mere sirife for superiority. When he has outstripp all his rivals the contest is at an end: and his spirits, which were invigorated only by contending, languish for want of a competitor. Besides, the happiness in view was only the indulgence of pride, or mere anim: pleasure. Neither of these can satisfy or endure. A rational mind may be, and oite is, so narrow and grovelling, as not to aim-at any higher good, to understand its natu or to believe its existence. Still, in its original constitution, it was formed with 4 capacity for intellectual and moral good, and was destined to find in this good its onl satisfaction. Hence, no inferior good will fill its capacity or its desires. Nor can this bent of its nature ever be altered. Whatever other enjoyment, therefore, it may attai it will, without this, still crave and still be unhappy. The Sovereignty of God—Dwight. 219 No view of the ever-varying character’and success of mankind in their expecta- _ factorily than that of the progress and end of a class of students in this seminary. At _ their first appearance here they are ail exactly on the same level. Their character, _ their hopes and their destination are the same. They are enrolled on one list; and enter upon a collegiate life with the same promise of success. At this moment they are plants, appearing just above the ground; all equally fair and flourishing. Within a short time, however, some begin to rise above others; indicating by a more rapid _ growth a structure of superior vigor, and promising both more early and more - abundant fruit. , Some are studious, steadfast, patient of toil, resolved on distinction, in love with _ science, and determined with unbroken ambition never to be left behind by their com- -panions. Of these a part are amiable, uniform in their morals, excellent in their dis- _ positions, and honorable by their piety. Another part, although less amiable, are still decent, pleasant in their temper, uncensurable in their conduct, and reputable in their character. Others are thoughtless, volatile, fluttering from object to object, particularly from Others still are openly vicious, idle, disorderly; gamblers, profane, apparently infidels; enemies to themselves, undutiful to their parents, corrupters of their com- . i _panions, and disturbers of the collegiate peace. % When the class, which these individuals originally constituted, leaves this seat of science, a number of them will always be missing. Some of these have been sent away ‘ by the mandate of law; some have voluntarily deserted their education; and some not _ yery unfrequently have gone to the grave. Of those who remain, the character and _ the prospects have usually become widely different. The original level is broken, and broken for ever. How different from all this were their parents’ expectations and. their own! ‘ Still, when they enter the world, they all intend to be rich, honorable and happy. _ Could they look into futurity, and discern the events which it will shortly unfold; how _ changed would be their apprehensions! One, almost at his entrance into life, knowing but inexperienced, discerning but not wise, urged by strong passions, and secure in self-confidence, pushes boldly forward to affluence and distinction; but, marked as the prey of cunning and the victim of temptation, is seduced from prudence and worth to folly, vice, and ruin. His property is lost by bold speculation, his character by licentiousness, and the man himself by the disappointment of his hopes and the breaking of his heart. Another, timid, humble, reluctant to begin, and easily discouraged from pursuing, _insensible to the charms of distinction, and a stranger to the inspiration of hope, with- out friends to sustain and without prospects to animate, begins to flag, when he _ commences his connection with the world, creeps through life because he dares not attempt to climb, and lives and dies, scarcely known beyond the limits of his native village. + A third yields himself up a prey to sloth, and shrinks into insignificance for want of exertion. A fourth, possessed of moderate wishes, and preferring safety to grandeur, steers of design between poverty and riches, obscurity and distinction, walks through life without envying those who ride, and finds, perhaps, in quiet and safety, in an even course of enjoyment, and in the pleasure of being beloved rather than admired, the ~ 2. It was not a mere emotion or feeling. It was not a blind impulse, though many seem to suppose it was. It seems to be often supposed that God acted as men do when they are borne away by strong emotion. But there could be no virtue in this. A man might give away all he is worth under such a blind impulse of feeling, and be none the more virtuous. But in saying this we do not exclude all emotion from the love of benevolence, nor from God’s love for a lost world. He had emotion, but not emotion only. Indeed the Bible everywhere teaches us that God’s love for man, lost in his sins, was paternal—the love of a father for his offspring—in this case, for a rebellious, froward, prodigal offspring. In this love there must of course blend the deepest compassion. 3. On the part of Christ, considered as Mediator, this love was fraternal. “He is not ashamed to call them brethren.’ In one point of view He is acting for brethren, and in another for children. The Father gave Him up for this work and of course sympathizes in the love appropriate to its relations. 4. This love must be altogether disinterested, for He had nothing to hope or to fear—no profit to make out of His children if they should be saved. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of God as being selfish, since His love embraces all creatures and all interests according to their real value. No doubt He took delight in saving our race—why should He not? It is a great salvation in every sense, and greatly does * God’s Love for a Sinning World—Finney., 239 swell the bliss of heaven—greatly will it affect the glory and the blessedness of the infinite God. He will eternally respect Himself for love so disinterested. He knows so that all His holy creatures will eternally respect Him for this work and for the ‘ 5. This love was zealous—not that cold-hearted state of mind which some sup- pose—not an abstraction, but a love, deep, zealous, earnest, burning in His soul as a that nothing can quench. 6. The sacrifice was a most self-denying one. Did it cost the Father nothing to give up His own beloved Son to suffer, and to die such a death? If this be not self- ‘denial, what can be? Thus to give up His Son to so much suffering—is" not this the noblest self-denial? The universe never could have the idea of great self-denial but 7. This love was particular because it was universal; and also universal because ‘it was particular. {God loved each sinner in particular, and therefore loved all. Because He loved all impartially, with no respect of persons, therefore He loved each in particular. _ 8. This was a most patient love. How rare to find a parent so loving his child as never to be impatient. _Let me go round and ask, how many of you, parents, can say that you love all your children so well, and with so much love, and with love so wisely controlling, that you have never felt impatient towards any of them—so that you can take them in your arms under the greatest provocations and love them down, love ‘them out of their sins, love them into repentance and into a filial spirit? Of which of your children can you say, Thank God, I never fretted against that child—of which, _ if you were to meet him in heaven, could you say, I never caused that child to fret? Often have I heard parents say, I love my children, but oh, how my patience fails me! _ And, after the dear ones are dead, you may hear their bitter moans, Oh, my soul, how could I have caused my child so much stumbling and so much sin! But God never frets—is never impatient. His love is so deep and so great that He is always patient. Sometimes, when parents have unfortunate children—poor objects of compassion —they can bear with anything from them; but when they are very wicked, they seem to feel that they are quite excusable for being impatient. In God’s case, these are not unfortunate children, but are intensely wicked—intelligently wicked. But oh, His amazing patience—so set upon their good, so desirous of their highest welfare, that however they abuse Him, He sets Himself to bless them still, and weep them down, and melt them into penitence and love, by the death of His Son in their stead. 9. This is a jealous love, not in a bad sense, but in a good sense—in the sense of being exceedingly careful lest anything should occur to injure those He loves. Just as husband and wife who truly love each other are jealous with ever wakeful jealously over each other’s welfare, seeking always to do all they can to promote each other’s true interests. _ This donation is already made—made in good faith—not only promised, but actually made. The promise, given long before, has been fulfilled. The Son has come, has died, has made the ransom and lives to offer it—a prepared salvation to all who will embrace it. _ The Son of God died not to appease vengeance, as some seem to understand it, but under the demands of law. The law had been dishonored by its violation. Hence, ist undertook to honor it by giving up to its demands His suffering life and - 240. Pulpit Power and Eloquence. atoning death. It was not to appease a vindictive spirit in God, but to secure the highest good of the universe in a dispensation of mercy. Since this atonement has been made, all men in the race have a right to it. It is a se: open to every one who will embrace it. Though Jesus still remains the Father’s Son, © yet by gracious right He belongs in an important sense to the race—to everyone; so that every sinner has an interest in His blood if he will only come humbly forward and claim it. God sent His Son to be the Savior of the world—of whomsoever would believe and accept this great salvation. God gives His Spirit to apply this salvation to men. He comes to each man’s door and knocks, to gain admittance if He can, and show each sinner that he may now have salvation. Oh, what a labor of love is this! This salvation must be received, if at all, by faith. This is the only possible way. God’s government over sinners is moral, not physical, because the sinner is himself a moral and not a physical agent. Therefore, God can influence us in no way unless we will give Him our confidence. He never can save us by merely taking us away to some place called heaven—as if change of place would change the voluntary heart. There can, therefore, be no possible way to be saved but by simple faith. Now do not mistake and suppose that embracing the Gospel is simply to believe | these historical facts without truly receiving Christ as your Savior. If this had been the scheme, then Christ had need only to come down and die; then go back to heaven and quietly wait to see who would believe the facts. But how different is the real case! Now Christ comes down to fill the soul with His own life and love. Penitent sinners hear and believe the truth concerning Jesus, and then receive Christ into the soul to live and reign there supreme and forever. On this point many mistake, saying, If I believe the facts as matters of history it is enough. No! No! This is not it by any means. “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” The atonement was indeed made to provide the way so that Jesus could come down to human hearts and draw them into union and sympathy with Himself—so that God could let down the arms of His love and embrace sinners—so that law and government should not be dishonored by such tokens of friendship shown by God toward sinners. But the atonement will by no means save sinners only as it prepares the way for them to come into sympathy and fellowship of heart with God. Now Jesus comes to each sinner’s door and knocks. Hark! what’s that? what’s that? Why this knocking? Why did He not go away and stay in heaven if that were the system, till men should simply believe the historical facts and be baptized, as some suppose, for salvation? But now, see how He comes down—tells the sinner what He has done—reveals all His love—tells him how holy and sacred it is, so sacred that He can by no means act without reference to the holiness of His law and the purity of His government. Thus impressing on the heart the most deep and enlarged ideas of His holiness and purity, He enforces the need of deep repentance and the sacred duty of renouncing all sin. . REMARKS. 1. The Bible teaches that sinners may forfeit their birthright and put themselves beyond the reach of mercy. It is not long since I made some remarks to you on the manifest necessity that God should guard Himself against the abuses of His love. The circumstances are such as create the greatest danger of such abuse, and, therefore, He must make sinners know that they may not abuse His love, and cannot do it with impunity. ; 2. Under the Gospel, sinners are in circumstances of the greatest possible responsibility. They are in the utmost danger of trampling down beneath their feet the very Son of God. Come, they say, let us kill Him and the inheritance shall be ; God’s Love for a Sinning World—Finney. 241 _ ours. When God sends forth, last of all, His own beloved Son, what do they do? Add to all their other sins and rebellions the highest insult to this glorious Son! Suppose 8 something analogous to this were done under a human government. A case of rebel- lion occurs in some of the provinces. The king sends his own son, not with an army _ to cut them down quick in their rebellion, but all gently, meekly, patiently, he goes among them, explaining the laws of the kingdom and exhorting them to obedience. What do they do in the case? With one consent they combine to seize him and put $ him to death! But you deny the application of this, and ask me, Who murdered the Son of God? _ Were they not Jews? Aye, and have you, sinners, had no part in this murder? Has not your treatment of Jesus Christ shown that you are most fully in sympathy with the ancient Jews in their murder of the Son of God? If you had been there, would ~ anyone have shouted louder than you, Away with Him—crucify Him, crucify Him? Have you not always said, Depart from us—for we desire not the knowledge of Thy _ ways? 8. It was said of (Christ that, Though rich He became poor that we through His | poverty might be rich. How strikingly true is this! Our redemption cost Christ His life; it found Him rich, but made Him poor; it found us infinitely poor, but made us Tich even to all the wealth of heaven. But of these riches none can partake till they _ shall each for himself accept them in the legitimate way. They must be received on the | terms proposed, or the offer passes utterly away, and you are left poorer even than if no such treasures had ever been laid at your feet. | Many persons seem entirely to misconceive this case. They seem not to believe what God says, but keep saying, If, if, if there only were any salvation for me—if there were only an atonement provided for the pardon of my sins. This was one of the last things that was cleared up in my mind before I fully committed my soul to trust God. I had been studying the atonement; I saw its philosophical bearings—saw what it demanded of the sinner; but it irritated me, and I said—If I should become a Christian, how could I know what God would do with me? Under this irritation I said foolish and bitter things against Christ—till my soul was horrified at its own wickedness, and T said—I will make all this up with Christ if the thing is possible. \ In this way many advance upon the encouragements of the Gospel as if it were only a peradventure, an experiment. They take each forward step most carefully, with fear and trembling, as if there were the utmost doubt whether there could be any mercy for them. So with myself. I was on my way to my office, when the question came before my mind—What are you waiting for? You need not get up such an ado. All is done already. You have only to consent to the proposition—give your heart right up to it at once—this is all. Just so it is. All Christians and sinners ought to under- Stand that the whole plan is complete—that the whole of Christ—His character, His work, His atoning death, and His ever-living intercession—belong to each and every _ man, and need only to be accepted. There is a full ocean of it. There it is. You may | just as well take it as not. It is as if you stood on the shore of an ocean of soft, pure water, famishing with thirst; you are welcome to drink, and you need not fear lest you | exhaust that ocean, or starve anybody else by drinking yourself. You need not feel that you are not made free to that ocean of waters; you are invited and pressed to drink—yea, to drink abundantly! This ocean supplies all your need. You do not need to have in yourself the attributes of Jesus Christ, for His attributes become practically yours for all possible use. As saith the Scripture—He is of God made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. What do you need? Wisdom? Here itis. Righteousness? Here it is. Sanctification? Here you have it. All is in Christ. Can you possibly think of any one thing needful for your moral purity, or your use- 242 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. fulness, which is not here in Christ? Nothing. All is provided here. Therefore you need not say, I will go and pray and try, as the hymn,— $ “T’ll go to Jesus tho’ my sin Hath like a mountain rose, Perhaps He will admit my plea; Perhaps will hear my prayer.” There is no need of any perhaps. The doors are always open. Like the doors of Broadway Tabernacle in New York, made to swing open and fasten themselves open, so that they could not swing back and shut down upon the crowds of people thronging — to pass through. When they were to be made, I went myself to the workmen and told them by all means to fix them so that they must swing open and fasten themselves in that position. So the door of salvation is open always—fastened open, and no man can shut it— not the Pope, even, nor the devil, nor, any angel from heaven or from hell. There it stands, all swung back and the passage wide open for every sinner of our race to enter if he will. q Again, sin is the most expensive thing in the universe. Are you well aware, O | sinner, what a price has been paid for you that you may be redeemed and made an heir | of God and of heaven? O what an expensive business for you to indulge in sin! And what an enormous tax the government of God has paid to redeem tial province from its ruin! Talk about the poor tax of Great Britain and of all other nations superadded; all is nothing to the sin-tax of Jehovah’s government—that awful sin-tax! Think how much machinery is kept in motion to save sinners! The Son of. God was sent down—angels are sent as ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation; missionaries are sent, Christians labor, and pray, and weep in deep and anxious solicitude—all to seek and save the lost. What a wonderful—enormous tax is levied upon the benevolence of the universe to put away sin and to save the sinner! If the cost could be computed in solid gold, what a world of it—a solid globe of itself! What an array of toil and cost, from angels, Jesus Christ, the Divine Spirit, and living men! Shame on sinners who hold on to sin despite of all these benevolent efforts to save them! who instead of being ashamed out of sin, will say—Let God pay off this tax; who cares! Let the missionaries labor, let pious women work their very fingers off to raise funds to keep all this human machinery in motion; no matter: what is all this to me? I have loved my pleasures and after them I will go! What an unfeeling hea is this! Sinners can very well afford to make sacrifices to save their fellow sinners. Pat could for his fellow sinners. He felt that he had done his part toward making sinners, and now it became him to do his part also in converting them back to God. But see there—that young man thinks he cannot afford to be a minister, for he is afraid he shall not be well supported. Does he not owe something to the grace that saved his soul from hell? Has he not some sacrifices to make, since Jesus has made so many for him, and Christians too, in Christ before him—did they not pray and suffer and toil for his soul’s salvation? As to his danger of lacking bread in the Lord’s work, a him trust his Great Master. Yet let me also say that churches may be in great fault for not comfortably supporting their pastors. Let them know God will assuredly starve them if they starve their ministers. Their own souls and the souls of their children shall be barren as death if they avariciously starve those whom God in His providence sends to feed them with the bread of life. . How much it costs to rid society of certain forms of sin, as for example, slavery. How much has been expended already, and how much more yet remains to be expended ere this sore evil and curse and sin shall be rooted from our land! This God’s Love for a S inning World—Finney, 243 is part of God’s great enterprise, and He will press it on to its completion. Yet at what an amazing cost! How many lives and how much agony to get rid of this one sin! Woe to those who make capital out of the sins of men! Just think of the rum- ler—tempting men while God is trying to dissuade them from rushing on in the ways of sin and death! Think of the guilt of those who thus set themselves in array against God! So Christ has to contend with rumsellers who are doing all they can to Our subject strikingly illustrates the nature of sin as mere selfishness. It cares “not how much sin costs Jesus Christ—how much it costs the Church, how much it taxes the benevolent sympathies and the self-sacrificing labors of all the good:in earth heaven;—no matter; the sinner loves self-indulgence and will have it while he can. ow many of you have cost your friends countless tears and trouble to get you back f om your ways of sin? Are you not ashamed when so much has been done for you, that you cannot be persuaded to give up your sins and turn to God and holiness? The whole effort on the part of God for man is one of suffering and self-denial. Beginning with the sacrifice of His own beloved Son, it is carried on with ever newed sacrifices and toilsome labors—at great and wonderful expense. Just think d cost—yea, that very sin which you roll as a sweet morsel under your tongue! God ay well hate it when He sees how much it costs, and say—O do not that abominable thing that I hate! Yet God is not unhappy in these self-denials. So great is His joy in the results, 9y, SO intensely do ne love their children. Such is the labor, the joy, and the self-denial of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in their great work for human salvation. Often are they grieved that so many will refuse to be saved. Toiling on in a common sympathy, there is nothing, within onable limits, which they will not do or suffer to accomplish their great work. [t is wonderful to think how all creation sympathizes, too, in this work and its neces- oid sufferings. Go back to the scene of Christ’s sufferings. Could the sun in the vens look down unmoved on such a scene? O no, he could not even behold it— veiled his face from the sight! All nature seemed to put on her robes of deepest ring. The scene was too much for even inanimate nature to bear. The sun ed his back and could not look down on such a spectacle! The subject illustrates forcibly the worth of the soul. Think you God would have é all this if He had had those low views on this subject which sinners usually have? Martyrs and saints enjoy their sufferings—filling up in themselves what is lacking f the sufferings of Christ; not in the atonement proper, but in the subordinate parts the work to be done. It is the nature of true religion to love self-denial. The results will fully justify all the expense. God had well counted the cost before began. Long time before He formed a moral universe He knew perfectly what it cost Him to redeem sinners, and He knew that the result would amply justify all the cost. He knew that a wonder of mercy would be wrought—that the suffering d ed of Christ, great as it was, would be endured; and that results infinitely glorious would accrue therefrom. He looked down the track of time into the distant a where, as the cycles rolled along, there might be seen the joys of redeemed who are singing their songs and striking their harps anew with the everlasting i psa a 244 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. song, through the long, long, long eternity of their blessedness;—and was not this enough for the heart of infinite love to enjoy? And what do you think of it, Christian? Will you say now, I am ashamed to ask to be forgiven? How can I bear to receive such mercy! It is the price of blood, and how can I accept it? How can I make Jesus Christ so much expense? You are right in saying that you have cost Him great expense—but the expense has been cheerfully met—the pain has all been endured, and will not need to be : endured again, and it will cost none the more if you accept than if you decline; and moreover still, let it be considered, Jesus Christ has not acted unwisely; He did not pay too much for the soul’s redemption—not a pang more than the interests of God’s government demanded and the worth of the soul would justify. O, when you come to see Him face to face, and tell Him what you think of it— when you are some thousands of years older than you are now, will you not adore that wisdom that manages this scheme, and the infinite love in which it had its birth? O what will you then say of that amazing condescension that brought down Jesus to your rescue! Say, Christian, have you not often poured out your soul before your Savior in acknowledgment of what you have cost Him, and there seemed to be a kind of | lifting up as if the very bottom of your soul were to rise and you would pour out your whole heart. If anybody had seen you they would have wondered what had happened : to you that had so melted your soul in gratitude and love. Say now, sinner, will you sell your birthright? How much will you take for it? How much will you take for your interest in Christ? For how much will you sell your soul? Sell your Christ! Of old they sold Him for thirty pieces of silver; and ever since the heavens have been raining blood on our guilty world. If you were to be asked by the devil to fix the sum for which you would sell your soul, what would be the price named? Lorenzo Dow once met a man as he was riding along a solitary road to fulfill an appointment, and said to him, “Friend, have you ever prayed?” “No.” “How much will you take never to pray hereafter?” “One dollar.” Dow paid it over and rode on. The man put the money in his pocket, and passed on, thinking. Th more he thought the worse he felt. There, said he, I have sold my soul for on dollar! It must be that I have met the devil! Nobody else would tempt me so. Wit all my soul I must repent or be damned forever! How often have you bargained to sell your Savior for less than thirty pieces silver! Nay, for the merest trifle! Finally, God wants volunteers to help on this great work. God has given Himself, and given His Son, and sent His Spirit; but more laborers still are needed; and whi will you give? Paul said, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Do y aspire to such an honor? What will you do—what will you suffer? Say not, I have nothing to give. You can give yourself—your eyes, your ears, your hands, your mind your heart, all; and surely nothing you have is too sacred and too good to be devote to such a work upon such a call! How many young men are ready to go? and hoy many young women? Whose heart leaps up crying—Here am I! send me? § aA [Charles G. Finney was born at Warren, Litchfield County, Conn., August 29, 1792, and died at Oberlin, O., August 16, 1875. He was a revivalist and educator; president of Oberlin College, 1852-1866. Among his published work is Lectures on Revivals, Professing Christians, Theology and his sermons. * This sermon is from a volume published by E. J. Goodrich in 1876, entitled Sermons on Gospel Themes. Four different volumes were examined, and it w thought that this was as representative as any, and its value would be more lasting than some others.] 7 } i (245) DIVINE AND HUMAN COPARTNERSHIP. CHARLES HENRY FOWLER, D. D. ‘al “For ye are laborers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry: ye are God's ilding.”—I Cor. 3: 9. I like this passage that I have read in your hearing as a text, because there is so much in it—simple and plain, and familiar, yet full, and possibly profound—certainly ractical. It is an epitome of the divine economy; it is full of the richest and pro- foundest human philosophy; it is quivering all over with divine power. Like the nightly pillar in the camp of Israel, it stands in this epistle radiant and glorious with the divine presence. What an inlook it gives us, when we look carefully at it, into the ae of our living and into the dignity of our fellowships, and into the glory of our destiny ! ____ It is an entire income of divinity into humanity, with its mangers and its wilder- “messes, with its gardens and its Calvaries; and it is also a transfiguration—an exaltation _ of humanity under the divine commission, with its inspirations and its resurrections, 4 ‘with its ascensions and its enthronements, for we are “laborers together with God.” | a I suppose, in the exposition of this text, like the exposition of most other texts of : # Scripture, that which is best is that which is simplest and most manifest on the surface. - The critical putting of the passage is that you and I are workers together of or under God. The general application of the passage is that we are workers together with God, supported by the general Scripture teaching. The same truth is put in another ssage by the apostle when he says: “We are to work out our salvation with fear and an while God worketh in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure.” And he also exhorts these same Corinthians as laborers together with God. So, it "seems, we have a right to a joint application of the passage as it stands before us, that ‘God and we are in copartnership. Notice a moment the exceeding skill, almost amounting to a cunning perception Of the case—the skill with which the apostle brings out the kind of work to be done uus in the very words used to put it: “Ye are God’s husbandry’’—God’s farm, arm-making, farm-working. This rude Corinthian heart is to be brought in and subdued, so as to bear a gospel harvest. ‘‘Ye are God’s building’—an edifice erected, constructed—not an outgrowth, but here an erection, here a construction, here some- thing done by an outside power—God'’s building, a house in which God shall be at 1ome—a house built around the idea of God’s presence, characters in which we are to e with God, which shall have all the sacredness of the inner sanctuary, and all the familiarity of the home. “Ye are God’s building.” __ And pause now a moment to see how adroitly the apostle lets down these conceited Sorinthians in the putting of the text itself. The text, back of our English version, has this suggestive thing in it. In this short sentence there is no word at all to rep- Tesent these Corinthians who are contending about men and about their personal advancement, but the name of God is put in full three times, and the Corinthians are y drawn in by the person of the verb; these conceited men are left out, and the Imighty is made the controlling thought of the text, and yet the copartnership is maintained—a copartnership in which all the power is of God, and all the glory 246 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. belongs to God, and yet the power so adjusted that all—absolutely all—the respori- sibility rests with us. These are the conditions of our copartnership. This law of human and divine action—co-labor, laboring together—is a universal law. You cannot touch humanity anywhere but you strike this truth. It makes up the warp and woof of nature, of our lives, of society; it is everywhere divine power and human agency—it is a combination of these forces. One fact indicating that is this:— Either element, when left to itself fails. Men have blundered concerning this subject, as concerning all other subjects, and whenever they have left out the divine element in their calculations, they have failed. Mere humanitarian systems that did not or ought not to pretend to be religions, but only systems of philosophy, built not upon the divine Christ, but upon the human Jesus, have demonstrated that, leaving out the supernatural power, they have failed to accomplish the supernatural work. They move among men doing a kind of human work, but they do not move among men doing the divine work. They somehow demonstrate that their systems are circumscribed by the bounds of their nationalities, and their influence seldom survives the sexton who digs their unwilling graves; that which is born of the flesh proves to be flesh; the fountain not bubbling on the summit, the stream never rises there. Having no power from on high, they necessarily fail to lift up fallen humanity. And in accordance with this fact of the failure of the elements, when separated, we find this one thing in history: the richest and choicest peoples—the peoples who have most culture and thought and education and intellectual power, are the peoples who have utterly died out of history; so that the perfect languages are the dead languages. And parallel with this we find another fact as startling, that the low animal peoples who live a kind of sensual or animal life, who have no great outlook of thought, who mount to no summits of culture, who sink to no depth of philosophy—these are the peoples who live on and on through centuries. Humanity accepted as a fallen fact persists like an animal instinct through the ages; but whenever she undertakes to rise, she wears herself out by the endeavor. Leaving out the divine power, the elements fail because they are separated. ‘ ; And the divine element fails as utterly when separated from the human. It seems to inhere in the nature of the case that they cannot believe except they hear, and they — cannot hear except one be sent. And here is the human agency. The man who caa sit down in a leaky boat and fold his arms, thinking that if it is the Lord’s great will © that he should be saved he will be saved, will find that God’s great will will be done, and that it is His great will that he should go to the bottom, because God has no better use for such a man. And the churches which undertake to let the Lord do all their work are the churches whose work will never—no, never be done. The divine element in itself fails in the work. It seems to me conclusive, then, that, as the elements, when separated, fail, there is, in the purpose of God concerning it, this anticipated and necessary union. Take another fact. See how God works in things. It is one vast plan spread out before us in such a way that we may, by chance, avail ourselves of the energies of nature to do our work, to carry our burdens. God turns the great wheels always one way; so that we may see them and catch the secret, find how they move, and throw about them the belts of our creative and inventive thought, and thus, claiming our possible copartnership, cause things to come to pass. He gives us bodies, possible strength, time, opportunity, brain, but these, in themselves, are not enough. Left to themselves, they produce either the sloven or the savage—either the Bushman or the Sioux. Civilization means more than these. It means very much labor in the shop, very much weariness in the study, very much anguish in the closet, and very much ee es Divine and Human Copartnership—Fowler. 247 " patient on-going after the seers and the prophets. God gives soil, sunlight, moisture, "nourishment, germs, but these are not enough. Left to themselves, they produce a i. and noxious weeds. There is required also your thought and nerve and plan and skill, and then you and God can produce a loaf of bread. _ You wanted this church. God gave the stone and the clay, and the iron and the lumber, but not here. The stone was in the quarry, the clay was in the bank, the iron was, in the vein, the lumber was in the forest, and you know what it has cost to put them together. And this same old law holds as firmly over character as it does over materials. _ This poor man has fallen into bad habits, and staggered out of the way and gotten down into the street, until the filth is upon his garments. Now, there is no process by _ which he may come back to respectability that is not based on his individual struggle. _ Sometimes gold dust thrown into the air may dim or divert the public eye, but soon that is past, and the unfortunate victim is left to hew his way up to respectability at the hardest. These are but material and social applications of law that finds its first legitimate and original cause, the reason of its existence, back in our moral nature. If, then, we do actually find that, in the world about us, God does so work in the system of copart- nership with us, need we be alarmed, overwhelmed, if He requires us in His spiritual interest, in our spiritual lives, to obey the same rule? Take another fact that looks to this copartnership—the fact of destitution, any- where—poverty—poverty of purse or of spirits; all poverty is inexplicable, except on the supposition of this copartnership. There is a beautiful island—Erin, the island of the heart—and yet her children actually gnaw their bones in famine. No fault of ' God. He loves Erin; He loves all men. Yonder, in the great valley between the ' mountains, waves a harvest large enough for all men. It needs the human instrumen- talities to take yonder harvest to yonder starving ones. There, in the alley, comes up a boy, dandled on the lap of corruption, fed on vice, graduated in a brothel, trained | ‘up a thief, and turned out a cut-throat. He has no fair chance. No fault of God. (ge = =a SE God loves that little cut-throat as much as He does anybody else in the universe. Not His fault that he has no chance. Look, there are wide zones of fertile land, upon which all the cities may scatter their victims into freedom. God has provided for them. It needs the human intervention to make the right distribution. And then there are vast Christless empires which never heard of Him. But it is no fault of God. He loves them; He is no respecter of persons; He willeth not the death of him that dieth, but He would that all men would turn and live. No Christ has touched their shores; no prophet has cried in their ears; yet it is no fault of God. Fault there must be somewhere. It is only a demonstration of the human element in the copartnership. If God could have His way, tomorrow’s sun would not rise over an unsaved sinner in all the universe. If God’s way could be carried out, every lost profligate would be accepted of God; for “Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man.” Yea, more than that. If God could have His way, the very last prison-pen in all the universe would be open, and the very last mourning and sorrowing one would be lifted up into peace and purity and joy unspeakable. But there is in the way, the human element in the copartnership. There is a human will in the path, and human rebellion | inthe way. No fault of God. Take another fact looking to this copartnership. All our blessings come to us through human instrumentality. We have some elements—we have air and time and | life, a few things from God directly, or apparently directly; and yet when you come back to them you find that we are, after all, related to them through some human instrumentality. How crude they are as they come from the Almighty!—hardly worth having. Indeed, it is not possible for us to have them without human instrumentality. 248 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Life itself is such a little, helpless thing; yet little as tenderness of maternal love. We receive it through maternal agencies. And what a it is, it comes to us only by the long journey it is from the helplessness of that little babe, only a lump of possibilities on the lap of its mother, to that stalwart man! It is a long way, and much drilling and wearing along the way to realize the power. Take this revelation of God, God’s truth, His word, too grand for our invention and too vital for us to dispense with; and yet what ah uman thing it is! Here you can find full length portraits of the prophets and the seers. Here you can come in contact with living men—God-anointed, God-appointed, God to be the light of the world. This book, with the div the sculptor’s studio—full of statues, stone men; -smitten men; yet men sent out ine element left out of it, is like but when it accepts the divine element, these statues catch the inspiration of life, and go forth—not gods, but men, _ speaking to us God’s secret by human lips, and yet wi th human speech. The highest and the last demonstration of this is seen in the incarnation itself. It seems to me that when God would bring His salvation into the world—what He wanted was salvation—and when He would bring it into the world, He had to incarnate it in His own Son; He could come to us only in the Son of Man. It is the only salvation that could by any chance reach us at a ll, if you will think about it. It seems as if somehow the remedial agencies came down into our weakness and touched them into power, so that these weak and broken elements rise up apparently instead of being lifted up, lifted up in fact; yet not by an outside power, but by an inside power, that has been catalogued with the fallen forces of humanity, so that Jesus enters into our humanity, is born under the law, is made obedient unto death, that He may come even to us, and of us, yet supernatural. like unto His brethren, and is and give salvation that is in us Look at these terms a little. “Ye are God’s husbandry,” and the work there indicated shows a little something of what we are to do, and how much you need this divine help in the case. The old nature is to be grubbed out by a kind of clearing-up process. The old forest that occupies the soil and shuts out the light and prevents, the good seed from getting root or nourishment, is to through divine agencies, into a protection and defence for the heavenly crop; and this” be taken down and transformed, is no small work. This means earnest endeavor. Try it. Put yourself at the work. Stand against the flood. Run against the tempest. less you are without the divine power. And yet this work is to be done by you, and through you, God helping. I think the figure looks, a little farther on, to building your characters. And this to me seems the core of this whole question—the building up of your characters — See how weak and utterly help- into the likeness of God. Not by a mere human endeavor, but by the human strengthened and made out by the divine; not that you can do “it alone and unfold from within you that which shall be pleasing to God, but that, with the divine power, every one of you can build up your character God in our Lord Jesus Christ. This sweeps out over so that it shall be acceptable to the whole field of our character and destiny. And just here, let me say, we are liable, in touching any of these points and discussing questions of this kind, to go too far, or side of the question. The problem of a religious life is made up of many equations and as many factors. Your religious character is many-sided. The Gospel comes to you many-sided. Here, seen from this standpoint, lose sight too much of the other it is all divine; and seen from another, it is all human. Here it is all devotion; there it is all activity. Here it has the breath and the billow of emotion; there it glist intellections. Now we see it with the grip of a syllo the intellect; then it comes in among the intuitions, w tion. Now it stands erect, holding the reins of eterna ens in the cold serenity of the gism holding the convictions of arming by the breath of inspira- 1 obligation; next it settles upod f ‘ Divine and Human C opartnership—F owler. 249 t he soul with dew like peace of heaven, with the impleadings of divine mercy, and thus wins us to God. It is many-sided. It is—work out your faith, from your fingers’ nds. It is one perfect system. The foundation of our hope is salvation by faith only. It could not have been other- ise, even if God had not said: ‘‘By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God.” Yes, the fact that eternal life is an infinite gift puts it outside the possibility of our earning it. What we earn is limited and measured by day or hour; but God’s gift, eternal life, is infinite, and so necessarily a gift; and if a gift, necessarily to be taken by faith only, so that when the bond for the ten thousand talents is pressed for collection, then there is no footing at all left for works; it is only, “elieve—solely by faith. And this freeness makes it a gospel indeed. It would be mo gospel at all but for this. It is necessary that the system that meets us should be capable of delay, that we might put it off and off and off, even till life’s latest hour, ‘and then, by divine power, through faith, take life and live. Aye, if I didn’t believe that the very lowest mortal on earth—the vilest and lowest—even though he should stand on the very crumbling verge of time, falling hheadlong into the pit, if he would but look once toward Christ, and offer believing "prayer, might be saved, I would never enter the pulpit again. It is because we need something to repair all our failures that we must have a system that comes only by faith. Now, then, having the one point of our pardon settled by faith, it seems to me the ‘power of that faith must come out through works—divine aid, human activity. Com- ‘ing through our characters, then, it is not possible for God to save us without our activity. A salvation that would fall upon us from heaven would only crush us, not cure us. God slays not our power, but our sins; He saves us, not the remnants of us; He saves our forces, our humanity, our will, our ability to feel and act and be. He Saves us, not slays us, by a system with which we have nothing to do. It seems to me—though it is a startling fact, it is true—that a man, full grown, lost in the solitude of his sin, plunging on in the loneliness of his suffering, a dethroned king, yet a king crowned and enthroned above his own wretchedness and sin—that such a being is worth infinitely more in the universe of God than a whole army of shining puppets, polished by no purpose of their own. We are sometimes told that God might have sent saietls to do this work He has in our hands; that the work of saving men might have been committed to orders of life above us. I am not prepared to say that it is impossible, yet I am prepared to say that it is not thinkable to me. It is not possible in the light of thought. In the first _ place, it is not something to be put upon us, but something to be wrought within us; _ Rot an outside cloak covering over our old corruptions, but an inside life and power— _ something that takes the whole being and occupies every part and fibre; and so, to be anything at all, must be worked out through the man himself, and cannot be put upon the man from the outside. Horace Bushnell has made a statement which is liable to misunderstood, but which contains a substantial truth. When a bush is bent down “im a forest, nature does not send another bush, nor yet a tree, to pick up the bush, but puts life and power into the bush itself. So it seems to me God operates upon us by His grace. He comes with His supernatural power into us, and works along the jormal lines of our activity, and thus enables us to rise into His likeness. And then, if there were any possibility that angels could come, and by swarming the whole vault above us into the brightest glory, and crowding in untold millions into the path of each wanderer, could hasten forward the salvation of one single sinner, the infinite love of God, that stops at nothing, would, of necessity, crowd all angelgy into this world of ours, and put an immediate stop to sin. But it is not in the nature of the case. We misapprehend the nature of sin itself. It is not something that may 350 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. be put to death by an outside being; it can be killed only when the creatiie from whose bosom it leaps, and in whose purpose it lives, becomes the executioner. And we mistake the character of the work itself. It is not outside work, done for some- thing else and somebody else; it is an inside work, done in and for us at the end. We do not work like hirelings, we are sons; we work not for wages, but an inheritance— an inheritance not to be received after some grave has been filled, but that is to be received here, and under God, and with God, to be worked out by us for the home yonder. This outside work, pushing forward the interests of the church, building edifices, attending prayer-meetings, going after the poor, and other Christian work that comes upon a Christian’s heart that seems to be outside, may be, after all, only one field for his development. Yonder is a man who goes into a shop to make an engine. Unwittingly, he develops his arm, fills out his chest. Yonder man goes into a gymi- nasium, swings dumb-bells, climbs ropes, leaps bars, pounds bags of sand, and the like. Wittingly, he develops His chest and arms. Now, in God’s plan, both these systems work in together. Many a thing seems like making the engine, doing some outside thing, yet actually it is the only way by which we can be brought on in this co-operating work with God. And it is just here that the necessity is put upon us to do so much outside work for God; and the man who does it—who carries the burdens, who gets under the tremendous pressure, who agonizes in the darkness—is not the man to be pitied; but the man who does not do it—the man who dodges—he is the man to be pitied; the sick man, whom the Lord has to nurse and lead on to heaven, and whom He stands a mere chance of losing before He gets there with him; he is the man to be pitied, because it is in this process of co-operation with God that this poor material is fashioned up into a man, then a saint, then an angel. There is another thing that is true. If this fact of co-operation is true, then Christ’s kingdom goes forward or is retarded, according as we are active or negligent. I think that is an inevitable sequence from the proposition that we are co-workers with Him. Then, what follows? Just as the falling of an autumn leaf will jar the most distant sun, so the slightest faltering of even the weakest and lowest saint holds back the coming of the kingdom of Christ. Look at the case a little. There is no lack of love on His part. He has come for the sole purpose of saving men. He came into the world at the earliest hour. All through the ages He carried humanity on His heart, crying: “O that there were such an heart in you that you would hear my voice!” longing to come always from the moment of the first transgression, anxious to come to the oppressed and sorrowing and wounded, to comfort the mourning, and bind up their wounds. And this, of necessity, in the nature of infinite love. He could not have infinite love and hold back anywhere. It must press out at the earliest chance. So He waits, and waits, and waits for His people. He waited four thousand years for a virgin to say: “Thy will be done.” I doubt not He waited a thousand years for grand old Martin Luther, and that He stood and watched and looked for twelve centuries for the coming of John Wesley; and today He waits, and His cause hangs back, and His kingdom is delayed, because we, His children, allow our hands to hang down. He is here for the salvation of all men, coming to establish a kingdom of righteousness, and it delays because we lack faith and devotion and consecration. The thought to me is oppressive. We are so related to God’s kingdom that our lack of prayer and faith and sacrifice actually retards the coming of the kingdom. With this immense responsibility, we might expect, there comes also a com- mensurate dignity. It could not be otherwise. And yet it is to me incomprehen- sible. We can only look at it a little. It is amazing to me that such a being as Jesus Christ, full of His infinite love, clothed in light, the first-born of every creature, by whom all things consist, King of kings and Lord of lords, invisible, immortal, eternal, See Divine and Human Copartnership—Fowler. 25t to repeat His wonderful words, to walk among the sorrowing, and tell of His com- yassion. This to me is the infinite thing. All else in life is but as dust and ashes, and the chance of standing for Him among the dying and sinning, and there crying, ‘Behold, behold the Lamb!” is more than all else in life. It seems to me, if we could ut see the dignity of the work He has given us, its power, depth, height, glory, irre- Sistible victory, divine radiance, we would go though we starved; we would work though it were a thousand years; we would pray on while we had breath. It seems to It is something, too, to be a citizen of this republic; it means something, though we cannot comprehend it. That poor soldier-boy may not know the day of the epublic’s birth, nor the number of her commonwealths, nor count the stars of her lag even, and yet he wears the sign of the nation’s power; and it is something to be 1 citizen of this republic, because there is no land on all the earth, no dungeon any- _where under the sun, no island in the sea, where prince or potentate can harm a hair of his head with impunity. Let the despot touch him, and forty millions of citizens ise for his defence! I remember reading awhile ago, how that, yonder in South erica, a poor Norwegian sailor, by some transgression of the local laws, was volved in serious trouble. The petty government tried him for conspiracy; they und him guilty, and sentenced him to death. He did not understand his crime, nor b is relations to their government; he only knew the horror that was coming upon him, But the ministers of the governments of England and of the United States interfered in his behalf; they protested;.the petty authorities insisted; the ministers forbade the ecution, but the local government took the victim out, and drew up the line of _ soldiers for his execution, when the representatives of these two great governments, 2. the flags of the two countries, went in before the man and wrapped around him the Stars and Stripes and England’s flag, and the soldiers dared not shoot. It meant ething to be a citizen of the United States, or Great Britain; but infinitely more n this is it to be a citizen of that country beyond. We are brought into fellowship God, and permitted to work in copartnership with Him; and though little, and gnorant, and unable to count His stars, nor tell His glory, nor know the time of His coming, yet we are in copartnership with him, and his flag is over us, and his angels are about us, and absolutely nothing can, by any chance, harm us. God's infinite love mes in just back of our weakness. He has given His only begotten Son for us. and with Him will He not freely give us all things? This tenderness comes to us so ‘that we may know that we are His, and kept by His almighty power. % I remember once standing by the surging billows, all one weary day, and watch- ing for hours a father struggling beyond in the breakers for the life of his son. They e slowly toward the breakers on a piece of wreck, and as they came the waves turned over the piece of float, and they were lost. Presently we saw the father come ‘the surface and clamber alone to the wreck, and then saw him plunge off into the = . . . . tr and thought he was gone; but in a moment he came back again, holding his " . Presently they struck another wave, and over they went; and again they eated the process. Again they went over, and again the father rescued his son. By and by, as they swung nearer the shore, they caught on a snag just out beyond where we could reach them, and for a little time the waves went over them there, til! vy" Cet a 252 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. we saw the boy in the father’s arms hanging down in helplessness, and knew they must be saved soon or be lost; and I shall never forget the gaze of that father. And as we drew him from the devouring waves, still clinging to his son, he said, “That's my boy, that’s my boy!” and half frantic, as we dragged them up the bank, he cried all the time: ‘That’s my boy, that’s my boy!” And so I have thought, in hours of darkness, when the billows roll over me, the great Father is reaching down to me, and, taking hold of me, crying, ‘““That’s my boy!” and I know I am safe. [Charles Henry Fowler, D. D., a gifted pulpit orator of the M. E. Church, was born August llth, 1837. His boyhood and youth were spent on a farm in central Illinois. In 1859 he graduated with first honors from Genesee College, New York, and two years later from Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Illinois. Upon the martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln, he was chosen to deliver the commemorative eulogy in that city. His literary works include able contributions to the church periodicals, and a volume exposing the fallacies of Bishop Colenso. He is a man of marked intellectuality, of great imagination and fancy—withal, of great force of will, of tireless energy and industry. This sermon was preached at the dedication of the Arch Street M. E. Church, Philadelphia, in 1870, and is from Porter and Coates’ Half Hours with the Great Preachers, being reproduced here with their permission. ] - a “a ¥ ‘7 Mt (258) CHRIST—THE LIGHT AND THE GLORY. A. J. GORDON. “A Light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.” This strain of Hebrew poetry from the lips of the aged Simeon, who is holding the infant Jesus in his arms, is exquisitely rich and beautiful. It is beautiful, not merely because of the perfect rhythm of the language, but especially because of the grand pro- portion and balance of the thought. “The light,” and “the glory’—“the Gentiles” and “Israel”—these words are not used for variation or expansion merely; they stand for great antithetical ideas. The \ sun is “the light” and “the glory.” He is the light of the earth; but he is the glory of : ‘4 re the heavens. For while his beams fall on the earth to illumine and vivify it, he himself is in the heavens, the very central orb among its stars and planets. And while Jesus Christ is the light of the Gentile world, and while by His person and doctrine He is more and more “lighting every man that cometh into the world,” He is some- thing yet greater to the Jewish nation. He is the “glory of His people Israel,” for He is of Israel; He is the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star shining among the splendid constellation of Hebrew kings and prophets, and yet out- shining them all, because He is “the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person.” Unless we learn to distinguished these two classes, “the Gentiles’ and “thy people “Israel,” prophecy will be a jumble to us, and the purpose and intention of preaching _ the gospel will be utterly misunderstood. There are woes pronounced upon the nation of Israel with which we have absolutely nothing to do. There are promises given to God’s ancient people which pertain in no respect to us Gentile believers. For the preacher to cumber the doctrines of grace with legal conditions is no greater mistake _ than for the missionary to interline the terms of the great commission with Jewish promises. Let us find out assuredly what we heralds of the gospel to the Gentile nations are sent to do; and then we shall know, without question, whether success or failure is attending our efforts. And so, men, brethren, and fathers, heirs together of the grace of life and of the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, I invite you to consider for a few moments the two great thoughts of my text—Jesus Christ the “light,” and Jesus Christ “the glory.” , I. Jesus Christ, the light to lighten the Gentiles. A more perfect symbol for setting forth the true office of the gospel could not possibly be named than this—“the light.” For what is the light doing as it is poured out upon the earth? Two things; it is electing and illuminating. Here a ray of sunlight falls upon the muddy pool, and takes out from its roiled and stagnant waters the pure crystalline drop, and draws it up to the sky. Here a beam strikes the mouldering sod, - quickening the hidden seed that has been buried there, and drawing out from it, “first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” Here another ray lights upon the - Dead Sea, and distils from its bitter, acrid waters, the pure, sweet rain-drops that form the clouds and give the showers. Election—the taking out of the pure from the impure; the separation of the precious from the vile; the drawing forth of life from _ death, and of beauty from decay—this is the great office and ministry of the sunlight, as it is sent forth from its heavenly fountain over all the face of the earth, 254 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. And what now is the gospel doing throughout this present dispensation? It is “a light to lighten the Gentiles” we are told. But what specifically and exactly this means, we are also told: “Men and brethren, hearken unto me,” says James. “Simeon hath declared, how God, at the first, did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophets.” “Aye, and we may add, to this agree, also, the words of the Savior and the apostles.” For is not the Church, concerning which Christ said, ‘““On this Rock will I build” it, named the ecclesia— the called out? and is not the song of the glorified, “Thou hast redeemed us by Thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation?” This is not the dispen- sation of universal salvation. If it were so we might well be discouraged, since we find, after eighteen hundred years of evangelization, that out of fourteen hundred million population of the earth, there are only a little over three hundred million of Christians of all kinds, Greek, Roman, Protestant. I recall this fact not to dampen the ardor of any lover of missions. I exult in the wonderful conquests which the last hundred years have witnessed in the spread of the gospel. But I see in these conquests no sign of the speedy conversion of the world, if by that is meant the regeneration, under the preaching of the gospel, of the inhabi- tants of the globe. Yet I do see in it the hastening answer to that prayer of the old rituals, ‘that it may please the Lord speedily to accomplish the number of His elect;” and I do hear in it the loudening cry of the coming King, “Fear not little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” What, you will ask in amazed impatience, is not the light of the Gospel spreading and intensifying in every direction? Indeed it is, as never before. «The progress from the flickering tallow candle of fifty years ago, to the brilliant gas chandelier of yester- day, and the keen, gleaming electric light of today, is but a symbol of the kindling and burning upward of the gospel brightness during the same century. The light increasing? Marvelously, beyond precedent! But, have you forgotten, also that the shadows deepen just as the light intensifies? When did ever such black gloom brood over the nations as now? Ghastly nihilism over Russia; red communism over Ger- many; black despair over Turkey; the assassin lurking behind every throne; drunkenness debauching every nation; hell from beneath moved to resist the march of our Redeemer. This is the double aspect of things which is everywhere visible; the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfect day; evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse; and at the end of the ages the tares and wheat found growing together. ‘Lo, I have told you these things beforehand,” says the Master. And nothing of all this will abate our missionary ardor a whit, if we understand our calling. For in all the incorrigible wickedness and corruption of the world, God assuredly has in every nation multitudes who are predestined unto eternal life. And this is our strong encouragement for missionary toil. Paul, confronting the unutter- able degradation and idolatry of Corinth, might well have shrank back appalled, had — he not heard the cheering words of his Master, “Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace, for I have much people in this city.” Under the inspiration of these words, he gave himself to the most unsparing toil and self-denial, as he tells these same Corinthians, “that he might by all means save some.” As surely as the gold is in the mines, the pearl in the depths of the sea, and the diamond in the rock, so surely has our Redeemer an elect people in every nation and every land. And it is to call and — gather out these, to form from them the Bride of Christ, and to make them ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb, that we are sent to preach the gospel. We are not commissioned to convert the whole world, “which never was, nor yet shall be,” says sturdy John Knox, “till the righteous Judge and King returns for the restoration of all — things.” We are sent to find, and to fashion in the divine likeness, those whom the Father Christ—The Light and the Glory—A. J. Gordon. 255 hath given to the Son out of the world, and so to hasten the coming of the Lord, and the consummation of those yet wider purposes which God has announced concerning the nations of the earth. a Do you not see that we can only be strong and courageous in our missionary toil, as we understand exactly what we are sent to do? If we set before us a smaller task ‘than that which God has assigned us, it will beget indolence; if we undertake a larger task, it will beget discouragement. If we know our true work, and are bending our- Selves to it with our utmost strength, nothing can daunt us or elude us. Success! And that success gauged to the pattern of Alexander’s—the conquest of the whole world—is this the standard by which our missionaries are to be judged? Then let us ¢ pect that the great commendation will be revised from “Well done, good and faithful ant,” to “Well done, good and successful servant.” Then let us concede that there ‘is Bay a place in our missionary annals for the record of Clough’s ten thousand con- -verts in a year, for Williams’ hundreds baptized in a day; but no place for Judson’s ‘six years patient toil without a convert, for Henry Martyn’s lonely cry, “Oh, if I could ‘see but one Hindu genuinely converted!” for Hans Egede’s farewell to Greenland, after fifteen years’ fruitless toil on ice-bound hearts: “I said I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for naught.” These men were faithful to the last degree, and not a sigh, or a tear, or a groan, or toil of theirs will fail of entry in God’s book. But their reward will be for their fidelity to the commission of their Master. Let us fix our eyes more steadfastly upon that reward. It is the iron in the blacksmith’s blood that makes his arm strong and stalwart to wield the iron upon his anvil. It is this iron conviction in our hearts of the eternal ‘decree of God concerning those whom He has chosen in Christ from the foundation of _ the world, that will make us strong and heroic in the work of accomplishing those ‘decrees in the earth. Therefore let us hold our work and our commission distinctly before us—the world-wide proclamation of the gospel—‘‘Go ye into all the world and _ preach the gospel to every creature;” a gathering out from the world through an individual faith—‘‘He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved.” “And as it was in the beginning, so it is now, and shall be to the end of the age—that as many as were ordained unto eternal life, believed.” The faithful missionaries’ call will waken ; echoes of the eternal call among all nations, as surely as the sun wakes up the song of ‘birds from every forest where he shines, and opens flowers upon every meadow where his beams fall. ‘ But I have said that the light illumines as well as elects. And this leads me to “speak of the second influence of the gospel—that of enlightening and civilizing the ons of the earth. The gathering out of the Church is the first great purpose of angelizing the world. But the inevitable accompaniment of such evangelizing will s the educating and humanizing of the race. As Archer Butler finely says, “The “mercies, whatever they be, that stretch beyond the Church in the scheme of grace, are but the diffusive blessings that spread around this mystical body. Even as the hem of His garment had healing virtues of old, they are still given to glorify Him, and as the appendages of His royalty.” Plant the golden candlestick of the Church in the “midst of every nation and people of the earth. But how far beyond itself will this ca ndle throw its beams! _ Civilization is the radiance of Christianity shot out into surrounding darkness; it is the light of the gospel woven into the warp and woof of human progress, to ve to it a brighter hue and a finer texture. But civilization is not regeneration. ‘ivilization puts Christianity into the world; regeneration takes men out of the world. Gi ilization diffuses God’s life and truth among men; regeneration separates men unto God. The one process is pervasive; the other is elective. The one makes men better il i ens of earth; the other makes them citizens of heaven, We do not doubt for a 256 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. moment that Christianity is destined in this age to transform the face of society, to soften the asperities, to mitigate the oppressions, to subdue the barbarisms of the | human race. This it has been doing from the beginning. See how it has swept slavery from its track as it has advanced; how it has lifted the curse from woman; how it has melted the ice of stolid inhumanity from human hearts. This is its inevi- table work. The patient sunbeams brooding over the buried seed till it draws out the hidden germ which it contains, is all the time warming the surrounding atmosphere. The gospel, falling on human society to draw out regenerated souls and separate them unto God in newness of life, is all the while changing the moral climate of the world; and in this sense you may apply the parable, if you please, of the leaven hidden in the meal till the whole was leavened. ) Therefore, how cheering and inspiring it is to observe human progress marching forward in the path of the gospel—the fruit of Christianity, and at the same time, its ally and coadjutor. You have only to think a moment to be reminded that the age of modern progress is exactly contemporaneous with the age of modern missions. The last century has seen more accomplished in missionary conquest than the previous ten centuries. And it is equally true that the last hundred years have witnessed greater achievements in the arts and inventions than ten hundred years before. How does it happen that Christianity and science are thus moving side by side, with equal pace? I answer the question by asking another: Why such a triumph of the Roman arms and arts just previous to the first advent of Christ? Thy splendid roads, O imperial Rome, have been built, that the heralds of redemption may make swift haste to bear the gospel of salvation far hence among the Gentiles; thy fleet ships have been constructed to carry the missionaries of the cross into Asia Minor, into Spain and Italy, and among the savage tribes of Britain; thy arts and sciences are but the chariot wheels of Messiah’s kingdom, to speed its progress over all the earth. Czsar is to plant the Roman eagle in the courts of the temple, to proclaim that Judaism is dead, and its carcass given to the birds of prey; but the wings of the Roman eagle are to bear up the new religion and carry it onward so swiftly, that within seventy years from the birth of Christ, the chief apostle shall write, “The gospel which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, was made a minister.” (Col. 1: 23.) My brethren, I believe we are living over again that Roman age—reproducing its corruptions, and far surpassing its intellectual and scientific achievements. And I only echo the opinions of the deepest and most devout students of prophecy, when I express also the belief that our age is preparing for the second coming of the Lord as that age was for the first; an event which will usher in a wider spread of the gospel, | and a vaster triumph of redemption than we have ever yet dreamed of during this’ dispensation of election. What are these arts and inventions of the nineteenth century for? They are for the Master’s use when He shall assume His authority as King over all the earth. Do you remember how the Lord, as He was about to make His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, sent for the ass’s colt on which to ride, with instructions to say to the owner, “The Lord hath need of him?” What! He “who maketh the clouds His chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind,” in need of this lowly beast to bear Him to the Holy City! Behold, He cometh again. He is preparing for His triumphal entry among the nations. To the swift sailing ship He speaks: “The Lord hath need of thee, to carry His messengers to the ends of the earth, and to the far off islands of the sea.” To the keen lightning flash, now tamed and harnessed to man’s control, He speaks: “The Lord hath need of thee, to give commission to His distant servants: in the twink- ling of an eye.” ‘To the myriad-tongued printing press He speaks: “The Lord hath need of thee, to publish His glad tidings to them afar off, and to them that are nigh,” { s Christ—The Light and the Glory—A. J. Gordon. 257 \ The Englisman’s steamship, the Chinaman’s sail, the Indian’s canoe, the Esquimaux Raledze, the Hindu’s palanquin, the implements of the rudest and of the ripest civiliza- tion—the Lord hath need of them all. All were built by His light, and all are wanted - for the furtherance of His gospel. O, “fire and hail, snow and vapor; stormy wind fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all Besttte, creeping things and flying fowl’—the Lord is calling for you all to be His einisters, and to say unto the heathen, “Thy God and Creator.” II. Christ—the Glory of His people Israel. Jesus is the Son of David, and, in spite of their unbelief and rejection, the Hebrew _ Tace has in Him a peculiar and glorious proprietorship. “But thou, Bethlehem - Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He Beome forth unto Me, that is to be a ruler in Israel, whose goings torth have been from old, from everlasting.” And whatever distinctions belong to other cities and tribes, ’ there is one city and one tribe that has been honorea to be the progenitor of earth’s _ Lord and Redeemer. “Ruler in Israel’ He never yet nas been. ‘‘He came unto His own and His own received Him not.’”’ Given to be a chief corner-stone in Zion, elect and precious, He became to the Jews only a “stone of stumbling and a rock of offence,” upon which they were broken into utter wreck and ruin. a And yet, by a strange irony of fate, it has come to pass that that rejected stone has constituted the very chiefest glory of Israel in their dispersion and humiliation. In the midst of all their wandering and captivity, in that sullen obstinacy of unbelief which no ages of persecution and obloquy have suvitened, one only honor has remained ‘to them—that of being the brethren and kinsmen of the Hebrew Christ. The dark - shadow of His cross has pursued and haunted them wherever their weary feet have : trod. But it could never be forgotten that the light that has cast that shadow was ‘a light that sprung out of one of their own tribes, though for them it was only a light shining in the darkness, which the darkness comprehended not. So has Jesus made His nation glorious in its very ruin. ' You have watched a sunset, and seen the day break up. You have seen it pile its shattered fragments of cloud and mist and storm upon the horizon, and then upon ‘this confused and turbulent wreck of cloud, you have seen the hidden sun throwing back its light, kindling and transfiguring it till it has produced a scene of splendor far Surpassing anything which the morning or meridian day had witnessed. So the king- dom and Church of Israel went to pieces when her day was spent. There, in the deepening twilight of her apostasy and rejection, lay the splendid wrecks; her temple in ruins, her shekinah glory fled, her ritual abolished, her tribes scattered, her Messianic hopes disappointed, and all her national splendor turned to shame and mocking. But then it was that the light of her rejected Christ fell upon her, to bring an unsurpassed glory out of these very wrecks. His life, and teachings, and example— what illumination was ever thrown upon the Hebrew Scriptures compared with that which these imparted? His crucifixion, and ascension, and intercession—what mean- | ing had all the Jewish offerings and rituals, until these events put meaning into them? | His second advent, for resurrection, and judgment, and universal reign—what but for these things had become of Israel’s wrecked and disappointed Messianic hopes? Even | in His rejection and humiliation, Jesus of Nazareth is the “glory of His people Israel,” lighting up what, in their history, was otherwise utterly dark, and making illustrious what had else fallen into uttter obscurity. Hear the testimony of one of their own nation on this point. Benjamin D’Israeli says: “In this enlightened age the pupil of Moses may ask himself whether all the princes of the house of David have done so much for the Jews, as that Prince who was crucified on Calvary. Had it not been for Him, the Jews would have been com- paratively unknown. Has not He made their history the most famous in the world? 258 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. What successes did they anticipate from their Messiah? The wildest dreams of the Rabbis have been far exceeded. Has not Jesus conquered Europe and changed its name into Christendom? Is it not through Him that countless myriads of all races have learned to find music in the songs of Zion, as well as to seek solace in the para- bles of Galilee?” And we have only to press these questions a little further, to find the amplest verification of my text. Who is it that has invested the Hebrew Scriptures with such extraordinary interest, that they are more profoundly and widely studied today than at any time since they were written? Is it not He, the Son of David, of whom all those Scriptures bear testimony? Why is it that in these days men are pondering every jot and tittle of Jewish law and ritual, treasuring every smallest fragment of Jewish antiquity, taking pleasure in the stones, and favoring the very dust of Zion? Is it not because of Him who is the most illustrious Son of Zion? Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ! and amid all the misery and humiliation and degradation of that race that gave Thee birth, Thou art, and ever shall be, the “glory of thy people Israel.” But consider now how much larger fulfillment these words are to have when the Christ, now rejected by the Jews, shall at last be owned and worshipped by them— when He shall take to Himself His great power and reign. Remember, that the unparalleled sufferings of the Hebrew race for the past nineteen centuries have come as the penalty of their rejection of their true Messiah. In the presence of Him who was set for “the fall and rising again of many in Israel,” they made their deliberate choice; and God has been giving them what they chose during all these ages. “We have no king but Caesar,” they cried. And Caesar after Caesar has oppressed, and crucified, and enslaved them, until this very day. They chose Barabbas, the robber, instead of Christ; and they have been robbed, and pillaged, and spoiled, as no other nation under the heavens ever was before. They cried, “His blood be on us and on our children;” and the blood which has fallen on Gentile hearts to sprinkle them from an evil conscience, has rested on the head of the Jews, as though imprecating the unceasing vengeance of God, from the day of the crucifixion till now. O “tribes of the wandering feet and weary breast,” are ye not exhausted from your long rebellion against your King? Shall it be long before ye “shall look upon Him whom ye have pierced and mourn for Him,” that “the fountain may be open to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness?” It must come to pass, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Prophecy is as true as history; and as certain as the fact of Israel’s long rejection, so certain is the promise of her final recovery. For, have you not noticed that all the curses pronounced upon the Jews are limited? Hear them: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!” How long? “Until ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles.” For how long? “Until the time of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled.” ‘‘Blindness in part has — happened unto Israel.” For how long? “Until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.’ Thus each curse, as it dies away, lets fall upon our ear a gracious refrain of hope and benediction. How literally and awfully these words have been fulfilled. For eighteen hundred years the Holy City has been desecrated by heathen feet; for eighteen hundred years — the Temple has been desolate and in ruins, an exorable providence defying every attempt to rebuild it; for eighteen hundred years an incorrigible blindness has been upon the Jews, so that they could see no beauty in their King that they should desire Him. But as sure as the oath and covenant of God, all this is to be changed. The prophet Zachariah gives us a graphic picture of the great transaction. Israel has gathered, or begun to gather back, to Palestine. Once more, as so often, her enemies have begun to prey upon her. Then their long-expected Messiah reappears. “His ee ae Sa Christ—The Light and the Glory—A. J. Gordon. 259 - feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives which is before Jerusalem.” At the very place where He went up after His rejection by the Jewish people, He shall _ reappear again; then the spirit of grace and supplication poured out upon these stub- born hearts; then the veil of unbelief lifted from their eyes; then their looking upon Him whom they have pierced, and mourning for Him—a mourning deep, heart- broken, unutterable—a mourning unto which the bitterness of ages of unbelief is distilled; then cleansing and forgiveness, and the hosanna of adoration. Until ye shall say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,” says Jesus. And say it they must, because His mouth has declared it. No burst of impetuous and excited hhosannas, to be followed by the cry “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” but a prolonged ‘and universal acclaim. ‘‘The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” If now Christ is the “glory of His peopie Israel” in His rejection, how much more shall He be so in His acceptance! Ii the light of our Redeemer shining on the lurid wrecks of Israel’s apostasy,‘ kindles such splendor, how much more when He shall ‘shine out of Zion, the perfection of beauty! ‘Then shall the moon be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and before His ancients gloriously.” ‘ Do we ask, ‘‘How shall this be brought about?” Not by terror or compulsion, but by a free and willing choice in the last great outpouring of God's spirit upon His ancient people. I have read the pathetic story of the conversion of an aged Jew. On his dying bed, his eyes were opened by the Spirit of God, to discern his long rejected Messiah. In his delirium, as though in memory transported back to Pilate’s judgment hall, and hearing once more the question, ‘Whom will ye that I release unto you?” he Ww ould break out in the cry, ‘“Not Barabbas, but this man! Not Barabbas, but this man!” So must all Israel say before God's purposes can be fully accomplished. The vote which sentenced Jesus to the cross must be reversed, and before all heaven the _ Jewish nation must retract its condemnation of the Messiah. Do we ask, ““When shall this be accomplished?” The answer is clear and definite - inthe 11th of Romans, viz., when “‘the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. . . all Israel shall be saved.” If Scripture may interpret Scripture, if Simeon and James may in- terpret Paul, this fulness, this pleroma, means the full complement—the total number of all that are to be gathered out of the Gentiles. Oh, blessed calling of the mission- y! He is seeking and saving lost souls for the Master; and He is also, with every convert He makes, hastening the coming of the King, and the deliverance of God’s first chosen and dearly loved people from their long captivity. Do you not remem- ber how this thought stirred the heart of Adoniram Judson? What impetuous mission- ry ardor it kindled in the heart of Joseph Wolf? And what almost supernatural elo- quence it inspired on the tongue of Alexander Duff, as he dwelt upon it? As mission- aries and preachers of the cross, it is our joy to feel the impulse, not of a single motive, b it to yield ourselves to the impetus and sweep of all the great motives which combine : te ) make our hee the highest ever yet sein aeaiy to men—the Dee of the lost, for _ And now, my isieaa what are the signs of hope? As the first faint streaks of Jawn broke upon the hills of Idumza, the watchman heard the dwellers in the plain shouting up to him, “Watchman, what of the night?” Is our answer like his,—the ea , confident, glad response,—‘*The morning cometh?” _ Without answering this question too confidently, let me at least point you to some ng foregleams of the day. The wisest students of the prophetic Scriptures, for hhundred years, have bid us watch along these three or four distinct lines for the 260 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. : tokens of God’s coming kingdom; viz., a marked decadence of the power of the papal Anti-Christ; a waning and decay of the Turkish power in Asia; a revival of Jewish hopes and expectations, and a movement of that people toward their own land; and a mighty and unwonted impulse in Christian missions. These are the signs, they have said, which should cause us to lift up our heads and expect our redemption as drawing nigh. Lift up your eyes now and behold round about—the papacy within the years losing the temporal power which has been her strength for ages, and Europe slipping from the grip of her bloody hand, so rapidly, that we can hardly credit what is passing; Turkey robbed of half her territory, and watching for the end of her dominion, the Jews stirred as they have not been for centuries by the nations, with an impulse of cruelty utterly unaccountable—Russia, Germany and Austria driving them out by hundreds, while Palestine is all alive with the signs of their return to their ancient home; and Christian missions, meantime exhibiting an energy of conquest and a measure of success, utterly unprecedented. What mean these tidings? One thing they certainly mean—“The night is far spent, and the day is at hand;” and that, therefore because the time is short we should summon all our energies, bring forth all our re- sources, throw ourselves with all our zeal into the work of preaching the gospel to every creature. And as the ringing challenge of our great Task-master sounds down the ages, “Behold, I come quickly,” “Occupy till I come,” let us bend ourselves to the task with all our strength; our hearts, meanwhile, breathing out the glad and wel- come response, ‘Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.” (261) JESUS’ HABITS OF:PRAYER. S. D. GORDON. A habit is an act repeated so often as to be done involuntarily, that is, without a new decision of the mind each time it is done. Jesus prayed. He loved to pray. In part, praying was His way of resting. He prayed so much and so often that it became a part of His life. It became to Him like breathing—involuntary. There is no thing we need so much as to learn how to pray. There are two ways _of receiving instruction; one, by being told, the other, by watching some one else. The latter is the simpler and surer way. How better can we learn how to pray than by watching how Jesus prayed and then trying to imitate Him? Not studying what He said about prayer, invaluable as that is and so closely interwoven with the other; nor yet how He received the requests of men when on earth, full of inspiring sugges- tion as that is of His present attitude toward our prayers; but how He himself prayed - when down here surrounded by our same circumstances and temptations. . There are two sections of the Bible to which we at once turn for light, the Gospels and the Psalms: In the Gospels is given chiefly the outer side of His prayer—habits; and in certain of the Psalms, glimpses of the inner side are unmistakably revealed. ‘ Turning now to the Gospels, we find the picture of the praying Jesus like an ¥ etching, a sketch in black and white, the fewest possible strokes of the pen, a scratch here, a line there, frequently a single word added by one writer to the narrative of the ¢ other, which gradually bring to view the outlines of a lone figure with upturned face. ‘e Of the fifteen mentions of His praying found in the four Gospels, it is interesting - to note that while Matthew gives three, and Mark and John each four, it is Luke, Paul’s companion and mirror-like friend, who in eleven such allusions supplies most of the picture. Does this not contain a strong hint of the explanation of that other etching plainly traceable in the epistles which reveals Paul’s own marvellous prayer- life? : Matthew immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures writes to the Jews of their promised Davidic king; Mark with rapid pen relates the ceaseless activity of this wonderful _ servant of the Father; John, with imprisoned body but rare liberty of vision, from the _ glory-side revealed on Patmos, depicts the Son of God coming on an errand from the Father into the world, and again leaving the world and going back home unto the Father; but Luke emphasizes the human Jesus, a man, with reverence let me use a word in its old-fashioned meaning—a fellow, that is one of ourselves. And the Holy ‘Spirit makes it very plain throughout Luke’s narrative that the man Christ Jesus ‘prayed; prayed much; needed to pray; loved to pray. Oh when shall we men down here, sent into the world as He was sent into the world, same mission, same field, same Satan to combat, same Holy Spirit to empower, find out that power lies in keeping closest connections with the Sender, and completest insulation from the power-absorb- ing world! _ Let me rapidly sketch these fifteen mentions of the Gospel writers, attempting to keep their chronological order. The first mention is by Luke in chapter three. The first three Gospels tell of Jesus’ double baptism, but it is Luke who adds, “and praying.” It was while waiting in prayer that the Holy Spirit came upon Him. He dared not begin his public age 262 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. mission without that anointing. It had been promised in the prophetic writings, and now, standing in the Jordan, He waits and prays until the blue above was burst through by the gleams of glory-light from the upper side and the dove-like Spirit wings down and abides upon Him. Prayer brings power. Prayer is power. The time of prayer is the time of power. The place of prayer is the place of power. Prayer is tightening the connections with the Divine dynamo so that the power may flow freely without loss or interruption. The second mention is made.by Mark in chapter one. Luke in chapter four, hints at it, “when it was day He came out and went into a desert place.” But Mark tells us plainly, “in the morning a great while before day (or a little more literally, “very early while it was yet very dark’) He arose and went out and departed into a desert or solitary place and there prayed.” The day before, a Sabbath day, spent in His adopted home-town, Capernaum, had been a very busy one for Him; teaching in the synagogue service, the interruption by a demon-possessed man, the casting out amid a painful scene; afterwards the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and then at sunset the great crowd of diseased and demonized thronging the narrow street until far into the night while He passing amongst them, by personal touch, healed and restored every one. It was a long and exhausting day’s work. One of us spending as busy a Sabbath would probably feel that the next morning needed an extra hour’s sleep if possible. One must rest, surely. But this man Jesus seemed to have another way of resting in addition to sleep. Probably He occupied the guest-chamber in Peter’s home. The house was likely astir at the usual hour, and by and by breakfast was ready, but the Master hadn’t appeared yet. So they waited a bit. After a while the maid slips to His room door and taps lightly, but there is no answer; again a little bolder knock, then pushing the door ajar she finds the room unoccupied. Where’s the Master? “Ah,” Peter says, “I think I know. I’ve noticed before this that He has a way of slipping off early in the morning to some quiet place where He can be alone.” And a little knot of disciples, with Peter in the lead, starts out on a search for Him, for already a crowd is gathering at the door and filling the street again, hungry for more. And they “tracked Him down” here and there on the hillsides, among clumps of trees, until suddenly they came upon Him quietly praying with a wondrous calm in His great eyes. Listen to Peter, as he eagerly blurts out, “Master, there’s a big crowd down there all asking for you.” But the Master’s quiet decisive tones reply, “Let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also; for to this end came I forth.” Much easier to go back and deal again with the old crowd of yesterday; harder to meet new crowds with their new skepticism; but there’s no doubt about what should be done. Prayer wonderfully clears the vision; steadies the nerves; defines duty; stiffens the purpose; sweetens and strengthens the spirit. The busier the day for Him the more surely must the morning appointment be kept,* and even an earlier start made, appar- ently. The more virtue went forth from Him the more certainly must He spend time, and even more time, alone with Him who is the source of power. The third mention is in Luke, chapter five. Not a great while after the scene just described, possibly while on the trip suggested by His answer to Peter, in some one of the numerous Galilean villages, moved with the compassion that ever burned in His heart, He had healed a badly diseased leper, who, disregarding His express command, so widely published the fact of His remarkable healing that great crowds blocked Jesus’ way in the village and compelled Him to go out to the country district where the crowds which the village could not hold throng Him. Now note what the Master does. The authorized version says: “He withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.” A more nearly accurate reading would be: “He was retiring in the deserts, and pray- *See Isaiah 50:4 revised with context. a Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S. D. Gordon. 263 ing;” suggesting not a single act, but rather a habit of action running through several days, or even weeks. That is, being compelled by the greatness of the crowds to go out into the deserts or country districts and being constantly thronged there by the people, He had less opportunity to get alone, and yet more need, and so while He patiently continues His work among them He studiously seeks. opportunity to retire at intervals from the crowds to pray. How much His life was like ours. Pressed by ; duties, by opportunities for service, by the great need around us we are strongly tempted to give less time to the inner chamber with door shut. “Surely this work enist be done,” we think, “though it does crowd and flurry our prayer-time some.’ “No,” the Master’s practice here says with intense emphasis. Not work first and prayer to bless it. But the first place given to prayer and then the service growing out of such prayer will be charged with unmeasurable power. The greater the outer Bears on His closet-life, the more jealously He guarded against either a shortening of its time or a flurrying of its spirit. The tighter the tension the more time must a be for unhurried prayer. i The fourth mention is found in Luke, chapter six. “It came to pass in these days that He went out into the mountain to pray and He continued all night in prayer to 7 God.” The time is probably about the middle of the second year of His public “ministry. He had been having very exasperating experiences with the national leaders from Judea, who dogged His steps, criticising and nagging at every turn, sowing seeds of skepticism among His simple-minded intense-spirited Galilean followers. It was also the day before He selected the twelve men who were to be the leaders after His _ departure, and preached the mountain sermon. Luke does not say that He planned to _ spend an entire night in prayer. + Wearied in spirit by the ceaseless petty picking and Satanic hatred of His enemies, thinking of the serious work of the morrow, there was just one thing for Him to do. _ He knew where to find rest, and sweet fellowship, and a calming presence, and wise Rocce. Turning His face northward He sought the solitude of the mountain not far _ off for quiet meditation and prayer. And as He prayed and listened and talked without words, daylight gradually grew into twilight, and that yielded imperceptibly to the brilliant Oriental stars spraying down their lustrous fire-light. And still He prayed while the darkness below and the blue above deepened, and the stilling calm of God wrapped all nature around, and hushed His heart into a deeper peace. In the fascina- tion of the Father’s loving presence He was utterly lost to the flight of time, but prayed on and on until by and by the earth had once more completed its daily turn, the gray streaks of daylight crept up the east, and the face of Palestine, fragrant with ‘the deep dews of an eastern night, was kissed by the sun of a new day. And then “when it was day’—how quietly the narrative goes on—‘“He called the disciples and chose from them twely e, . . . anda great multitude of disciples and of the people came .. . and Hehealedall . . . and He opened His mouth and taught them, '. . . for power came forth from Him.” Is it any wonder, after such a night! If all Our exasperations and embarrassments were followed and all our decisions and utter- ances preceded by unhurried prayer, what power would come forth from us, too. Because, as He is, even so are we in this world. _ The fifth mention is made by Matthew, chapter fourteen, and Mark, chapter six, John hinting at it in chapter six of his gospel. It was about the time of the third pass- Over, the beginning of His last year of service. Both He and the disciples had been kept exceedingly busy with the great throngs coming and going incessantly. The startling news had just come of the tragic death of His forerunner, There was need of bodily Test, as well as of quiet to think over the rapidly culminating opposition. So taking boat they headed toward the eastern shore of the lake. But the eager crowd watched the direction taken and, spreading the news, literally ran around the head of the lake pai i 264 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. “and outwent them,” and when He stepped from the boat, for the much-needed rest, there was an immense company, numbering thousands, waiting for Him. Did some feeling of impatience break out among the disciples that they couldn’t be allowed a little leisure? Very likely, for they were so much like us. But He was “moved with compassion” and, wearied though He was, patiently spent the entire day in teaching, and then at eventime, when the disciples proposed sending them away for food He, with a handful of loaves and fishes, satisfied the bodily cravings of as many as five thousand. There is nothing that has so appealed to the masses in all countries and all cen- turies as ability to furnish plenty to eat. Literally tens of thousands of the human race fall asleep every night hungry. So here. At once it is proposed by a great popular uprising under the leadership of this Man as King, to throw off the oppressive Roman yoke. Certainly if only His consent could be had it would be immensely successful, they thought. Does this not rank with Satan’s suggestion in the wilder- ness, and with the later possibility coming through the visit of the Greek deputation, of establishing the kingdom without suffering? It was a temptation even though it found no response within Him. With the overawing power of His presence, so markedly felt at times, He quieted the movement, “constrained’”* the disciples to go by boat before Him to the other side, while He dismissed the throng. “And after He had taken leave of them’”—what gentle courtesy and tenderness mingled with irrevo- cable decision—“He went up into the mountain to pray,” and continued in prayer until the morning watch. A second night in prayer! Bodily weary, His spirit startled by an event which vividly foreshadowed His own approaching violent death, and now this vigorous renewal of the old temptation, again He has recourse to His one unfail- ing habit of getting off alone somewhere to pray. Time alone to pray; more time to pray was His one invariable offset to all difficulties, all temptations and all needs. How much more there must have been in prayer, as He understood and practiced it, than many of His followers today know! We shall perhaps understand better some of the remaining prayer incidents if we remember that Jesus is now in the last year of His ministry, the acute stage of His experiences with the national leaders preceding the final break. The awful shadow of the cross grows deeper and darker across His path. The hatred of the opposition leaders gets constantly intenser. The conditions of discipleship are more sharply put. The inability of the crowds of disciples and others to understand Him grows more marked. Many followers “go back.” He seeks to get more time for intercourse with the twelve. He makes frequent trips to distant points on the border of the outside non-Jewish world. The coming scenes and experiences—the scene on the little — hillock outside the Jerusalem-wall seems never absent from His thoughts. 7 The sixth mention is made by Luke, chapter nine. They are up north in the neigh- borhood of the Roman city of Cesarea Philippi. “And it came to pa-s, as He was © praying alone, the disciples were with Him.” Alone, so far as the multitudes are con- — cerned, but seeming to be drawing these twelve nearer to His inner life. Some of . these later incidents seem to suggest that He was trying to woo them into something © of the same love for the fascination of secret prayer that He had. How much they would need to pray in the coming years when He was gone! Possibly, too, He yearned for a closer fellowship with them. He loved human fellowship as Peter and James and John, and Mary and Martha and many other gentle women well knew. And there’s no fellowship among men to be compared with the fellowship in prayer. Se a oe *Does not this very strong language suggest that the disciples had been conferred with by the revolutionary leaders and had probably approved the plan? Ghar Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S. D. Gordon. 265 “There is a place where spirits blend, Where friend holds fellowship with friend, A place than all beside more sweet, It is the blood-bought mercy-seat.” The seventh mention is in this same ninth chapter of Luke, and records a third night of prayer. Matthew and Mark also tell of the transfiguration scene, but it is ‘Luke who explains that He went up into the mountain to pray and that it was as He “was praying that the fashion of His countenance was altered. Without stopping to contact with God! Shall not we, to whom the Master has said “follow Me,” get alone with Him and His blessed word so habitually, with open, or uncovered face, that is, “And the face shines bright With a glow of light, From His presence sent Whom she loves to meet. 4 Yes, the face beams bright Still the face shines bright x With an inner light, With the glory light iP As by day, so by night, From the mountain height, % In shade as in shine, Where the resplendant sight . With a beauty fine, Of His face ‘i That she wists not of, Fills her view, es From some source within, And illuminates in turn And above. Not a few, But the wide race.” & The eighth mention is in the tenth chapter of Luke. He had organized a band of n, sending them out in twos into places He expected to visit. They had returned with a joyful report of the power attending their work; and standing in their midst His own heart overflowing with joy, He looked up and, as though the Father’s face were visible, spoke out to Him the gladness of His heart. He seemed to be always conscious of His Father’s unseen presence, and the most natural thing was to speak to Him. They were always within speaking distance of each other, and always on speaking terms. _ The ninth mention is in the eleventh chapter of Luke, very similar to the sixth mention in chapter nine. “It came to pass as He was praying in a certain place that ) when He ceased one of His disciples said unto Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’” With- out doubt these disciples were praying men. He had already talked to them a good about prayer. But as they noticed how large a place prayer had in His life, and ome of the marvellous results, the fact came home to them with great force that there must be some fascination, some power, some secret, in prayer, of which they were ignorant. This Man was a master in the fine art of prayer. They really didn’t know how to pray, they thought. How their request must have delighted Him. At last they were being aroused concerning the great secret of prayer. May it be that this a if rH 266 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. simple recital of His habits of prayer may move every one of us to get oftener alone — with Him and make the same earnest request. For the first step in learning to pray is to pray “Lord teach me to pray.”’ And who can teach like Him? The tenth mention is found in John, chapter eleven, and is the second of the four instances of ejaculatory prayer. A large company gathered outside the village of Bethany around a tomb in which four days before the body of a young man had been laid away. There is Mary, still quietly weeping, and Martha, always keenly alive to — the proprieties, trying to be more composed, and their personal friends, and the . villagers, and a company of acquaintances and others from Jerusalem. At His word, after some hesitation, the stone at the mouth of the tomb is rolled aside. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said “Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardst Me; and I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the multitude which standeth around I said it that they may believe that Thou didst send Me.” Clearly before coming to the tomb He had been praying in secret about the raising of Lazarus, and what followed was in answer to His prayer. How plain it becomes that all the marvellous power displayed in His brief earthly career came through prayer. What inseparable intimacy between His life of activity, at which the multitudes then and ever since have marveled, and His hidden closet-life of which only these passing glimpses are obtained. Surely — the greatest power entrusted to man is prayer-power. But how many of us are untrue to the trust while this strangely omnipotent power put into our hands lies so largely unused? Note, also, the certainty of His faith in the hearer of prayer: “I thank Thee that Thou heardst Me.” There was nothing that could be seen to warrant such faith. There lay the dead body. But He trusted as “seeing Him who is invisible.” Faith is blind, except upward. It is blind to impossibilities and deaf to doubt. It listens only to God and sees only His power and acts accordingly. Faith is not believing that He can but that He will. But such faith comes only of close, continuous contact with God Its birthplace is in the secret closet; and time, and the open Word and an awakened ear, and a reverent, quiet heart are necessary to its growth. The eleventh mention is found in the eleventh chapter of John. Two or three aays before the fated Friday some Greek visitors to the Jewish feast of Passover sought an interview with Him. The request seemed to bring to His mind a vision of the great outside world after which His heart yearned, coming to Him so hungry for what only He could give. And instantly, athwart that vision like an ink-black shadow, ~ came the other vision, never absent now from His waking thoughts, of the cross, so awfully near. Shrinking in horror from the second vision, yet knowing that only | through its realization could be realized the first, seemingly forgetful for the moment of the bystanders, as though soliloquizing, He speaks—‘“‘now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Shall I say, Father save me from this hour? But for this — cause, came I unto this hour; this is what I will say (and the intense conflict of soul merges into the complete victory of a wholly surrendered will) Father, glorify thy name.” Quick as the prayer was uttered came the audible voice out of heaven ans- wering, “I have both glorified it and I will glorify it again.” How near heaven must — be! How quickly the Father hears! He must be bending over intently listening, | | eager to catch even faintly whispered prayer. Their ears full of earth-sounds, unaccus-— tomed to listening to a heavenly voice, could hear nothing intelligible. He had a trained ear. Isaiah 50:4 revised (a passage plainly prophetic of Him) suggests how: it was that He could understand this Voice so easily and quickly. “He wakenethy morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as they are taught.” A taught | ear is as necessary tp. prayer as a taught tongue, and the daily, morning i with God is essential to both. The twelfth mention is made by Luke, chapter twenty-two. It is Thursday night of passion week, in the large upper room in Jerusalem where He is celebrating the old Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S . D. Gordon. 267 passover feast, and initiating the new memorial feast. But even that hallowed hour is disturbed by their self-seeking disputes. With the great patience of great love He gives them the wonderful example of humility, of which John 13 tells, speaking ‘quietly of what it meant, and then turning to Peter, and using his old name, He F ays, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you that he might sift you as wheat, but I made supplication for thee that thy faith fail not.’”’ He had been praying for Peter by name! That was one of His prayer-habits, praying for others. And He hasn't broken off that blessed habit yet! He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near to God through Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them. His occupation now seated at the Father’s right hand in glory is praying for each of us who trust Him. By name? Why not? The thirteenth mention is the familiar one in John, chapter seventeen, and cannot e studied within these narrow limits, but merely fitted into its order. The twelfth chapter contains His last words to the world. In the thirteenth and through to the close of the seventeenth He is alone with the disciples. If this prayer is-read carefully n the revised version, it will be seen that its standpoint is that of one who thinks of reinstated in glory there. It is realiy, therefore, a sort of specimen of the praying for us in which He is now engaged, and so is commonly called the intercessory or high-priestly prayer. For thirty years He lived a perfect life. For three and a half ears He was a prophet speaking to men for God. For nineteen centuries He has en high priest speaking to God for men, and when He returns it will be as King reign over men for God. The fourteenth mention brings us within the sadly sacred precincts of Gethsemane garden, one of His favorite prayer spots, where He frequently went while in Jerusalem. The record is found in Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22. Let us approach with hearts hushed and heads bared and bowed, for this is indeed hallowed ground. It is a little later on that same Thursday night into which so much has already been pressed, and so much more is yet to come. After the talk in the upper room and the simple, wift, muddy Kidron into the enclosed grove of olive trees beyond. There would be o sleep for Him that night. Within an hour or two the Roman soldiers and the wish mob led by the traitor will be there searching for Him, and He meant to spend he intervening time in prayer. With the longing for sympathy so marked during ese latter months He takes Peter and James and John and goes farther into the eply shadowed grove. But now some invisible power tears Him away and plunges m alone still further into the moon-lit recesses of the garden; and there a strange, awful struggle of soul ensues. It seems like a renewal of the same conflict He experi- iced i in John 12 when the Greeks came, but immeasurably intenser. He who in self knew no sin was now beginning to realize in His spirit what within a few hours He realized actually, that He was in very deed to be made sin for us. And the ay realization comes in upon Him with such terrific intensity that it seems as though dis physical frame cannot endure the strain of mental agony. The actual experience of the next day produced such mental agony that His physical strength gave way. for He died not of His physical suffering, excruciating as that was, but literally of a roken heart, its walls burst asunder by the strain of soul. It is not possible for a sinning soul to appreciate with what night-mare dread and horror the sinless soul of is must have approached the coming contact with the sin of a world. With bated reath and reverent gaze one follows that lonely figure among the trees; now kneeling, 10w: falling upon His face, now lying prostrate, “He prayed that if it were possible e hour might pass away from Him.” One snatch of that prayer reaches our ears: 268 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee—if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” How long He remained — so in prayer we do not know, but so great was the tension of spirit that a messenger from heaven appeared and strenghtened Him. Even after that “being in an agony ~ He prayed more earnestly (literally, more stretched out, more strainedly) and His — sweat became as it were great clots of blood falling down upon the ground.” When ~ at length He arises from that season of conflict and prayer the victory seems to be — won, and something of the old-time calm reasserts itself. He goes to the sleeping | disciples, and mindful of their coming temptation, admonishes them to pray; then — returns to the lonely solitude again for more prayer, but the change in the form of — prayer tell of the triumph of soul: ‘“‘O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away, except I drink it, Thy will be done.” The victory is complete. The crisis is past. He yields — Himself to that dreaded experience through which alone the Father’s loving plan for a dying world can be accomplished. Again He returns to the poor, weak disciples, and back again for another bit of strengthening communion, and then the flickering glare of torches in the distance tell Him that “the hour is come,” and with steady step and a marvellous peace lighting His face He goes out to meet His enemies. He over- came in this greatest crisis of His life by prayer. The fifteenth mention is the final one. Of the seven sentences which He spake upon the cross three were prayers. Luke tells us that while the soldiers were driving — the nails through His hands and feet and lifting the cross into place, He thinking even © then not of self, but of others, said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” | It was as the time of the daily evening sacrifice drew on, near the close of that strange darkness which overcast all nature, after a silence of three hours, that He loudly sobbed out the piercing, heartrending cry, “My God, My God, why didst Thou forsake Me?” A little later me triumphant shout proclaimed His work done, and then the very last word was a prayer quietly breathed out, as He yielded up His life, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” And so His expiring breath was vocalized into prayer. It may be helpful to make the following summary of these allusions: 1. His times of prayer: His regular habit seems plainly to have been to devote the early morning hour to communion with His Father, and to depend upon that for constant guidance and instruction. This is suggested especially by Mark 1: 35; and also by Isaiah 50: 4-6, coupled with John 7:16 1. c., 8:28 1. c., and 12:49. : In addition to this regular appointment, He Souete other opportunities for secret prayer as special need arose; late at night after others had retired; three times He remained in prayer all the night; and at irregular intervals between times. Note that it was usually a quiet time when the noises of earth were hushed. He spent special - time in prayer both before and also after important events. (See mentions 1, 2, 3, 455 5, 10, and 14.) . 2. His place of prayer: He who said “enter into thine inner chamber and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father in secret,” Himself had no fixed inner chamber during His public career to make easier the habitual retirement for prayer. Homeless for the three and a half years of ceaseless traveling, His pak: of prayer was” “a desert place,” “the deserts,” “the mountains,” “a solitary place.” He loved nature. The hilltop back of Nazareth village, the slopes of Olivet, the hillsides overlooking the Galilean Lake were His favorite places. Note that it was always a quiet place, shut away from the discordant sounds of earth. 7 3. His constant spirit of prayer: He was never out of the spirit of prayer. He could be alone in a dense crowd. It has been said that there are three sorts of soli- tude, namely, of time, as early morning or late night; of place, as a hilltop, or forest, Jesus’ Habits of Prayer—S. D. Gordon. 269 them unmoved or be lost to all around in his own inner thoughts. Jesus used all three sorts of solitude for talking with His Father. (See mentions 8, 10, 11 and 15.) 4. He prayed in the great crises of His life: Five such are mentioned; before the awful battle royal with Satan in the Quarantanian Wilderness at the outset; before thoosing the twelve leaders of the new movement; at the time of the Galilean uprising; before the final departure from Galilee for Judea and Jerusalem; and in Gethsemane, he greatest crisis of all. (See mentions 1, 4, 5, 7 and 14.) 5. He prayed for others by name, and still does. (See mention 13.) 6. He prayed with others: A habit that might well be more widely copied. A ew minutes spent in quiet prayer by friends or fellow workers before parting wonder- ully sweetens the spirit and cements friendship and makes difficulties less difficult, and hard problems easier of solution. (See mentions 6, 7, 9 and 13.) 7.. The greatest blessings of His life came during prayer. While praying the Holy Spirit came upon Him; He was transfigured; three times a heavenly voice of trengthen Him. (See mentions 1, 7, 11 and 14.) How much prayer meant to Jesus! It was not only His regular habit, but His esort in every emergency, however slight or serious. When perplexed He prayed. N hen hungry for fellowship He found it in prayer. He chose His associates and received His messages upon His knees. If tempted He prayed. If criticized He yed. If fatigued in body or wearied in spirit He had recourse to His one unfailing it of prayer. Prayer brought Him power at the beginning, and kept the flow roken and undiminished. There was no emergency, no difficulty, no necessity, no smptation that would not yield to prayer. Shall not we who have been tracing these ps in His prayer-life go back over them again and again until we breathe in His ery spirit of prayer? And shall we not, too, ask Him daily to teach us how to pray, nd then plan to get alone with Him regularly that He may have opportunity to teach s, and we the opportunity to practice His teaching? __ [S. D. Gordon was born in Philadelphia, where he received his education. He was for some years Ohio State secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and later was with the New England Evangelization Society. In 1898 he organized ne Ohio Evangelization movement and developed it into a most successful work. 4 This address has been given a number of times and has resulted in strengthening € prayer-life of many. While not a sermon in every sense, we afe certain it will Prove very interesting and helpful.] 270 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. WATCH. H. G. GUINNESS, D. D. “Watch!”’—Mark 13: 37. From the time when the evening sun sinks in the empurpled clouds of the west: from the time when the heavy mists of night descend; from the time when darkness creeps over the face of the earth, through the long hours of the night to the morning till the sun rises, the watcher_paces backward and forward on the castle walls. But when the morning comes, he is weary; he lays his head down and slumbers, and some one else takes his place,—he must sleep. There, bending over yon couch, gazing on yon sick child, there is a mother. She has watched that child night after night; night after night sleep hath not visited her eyelids. But now, look, she sits in the chair. It is night; the lamp almost dies out on the table; theraslumbers the child—you could almost hear the hoarse murmur of its breathing; there sits the mother, and sleep comes down upon her eyelids also, and she slumbers. And there, on the battle-field in the midst of the dead and the dying, lies the weary soldier. All day long he has been engaged in the fight; he is covered with the dust and blood of the fight, and there he sleeps, his head lying calmly, quietly upon the body of a dead man, slumbering even there on the battle-field. And the sailor, clinging to the giddy height of the mast, © slumbers also; he cannot keep his eyes open always. Yet, though all on earth have their time of sleep, there is One whose eye never closes, who never slumbers, never sleeps. The flowers shut up their faces, the petals cover over their bosoms, yea, night succeeds day, and day succeeds night, and after the long day of summer comes the long night of winter; but there is One who knows no rest, knows no sleep,—even God, and with Him it is one perpetual, one ceaseless, and unchanging watching. He watched when we were not; He watches now that we are, and He will watch to all eternity. Oh, Christian, there is not a word on your tongue, not a thought that crosses your mind, nor an imagination that floats, cloud-like, across your soul, not an act of your life, but He sees,—ever watching. And there is one thought that would almost silence me, but for His grace, which is sufficient, that His eye is now fixed on this heart, and His ear now listens to these words—still watching. Now, brethren, as Christians the Lord Jesus addresses you, and ere He departs He would give you His last injunction. Says Christ, speaking first of all to His ~ disciples, ‘‘Watch, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh.” Then turning to them, he says, “What I say unto you,’—Peter and James, and John, and Andrew,—“I say unto all, Watch,” it is of this command we would this night speak; and may the Spirit of God assist us, that our feeble words, spoken in weakness, may, by the Almighty hands of God, be blessed to many souls. There are four things that I would now speak of: And may we be enabled tc — watch against the first two, and watch for the second two. 1.—Watch against sin. 2.—Watch against temptation. 3.—Watch for souls. 4,—Watch for Christ. . Watch—Guinness. 27% I. A word or two about watching against sin. Now, Christian, thou art a soldier. Wilt thou go forth to the battle without armor? Is it wise, is it prudent for you? Should the soldier go forth simply clad in the ordinary raiment? Nay, let him clothe himself from head to foot in armor. And, pi ay, what armor should the Christian soldier wear? Paul tells us, and if you turn Yy ith me to the sixth chapter of Ephesians we will read over what he says upon the ubject. Paul says, “Take unto you the whole armor,’—of man? No. Of angels? No, “of God.” Among the ancients it was said that Jove’s armor was forged by Vulcan, in the fires of Vesuvius. This, of course, is all a myth, all nonsense; there was no such thing. But, be that as it may, our armor as Christians is proof. Why? w le to eaitherana i in the i day,’—that i is, now, the present day—‘‘and having done all, to stand.” ‘Stand, therefore,’ Paul repeats it, “having your loins girt about with truth.” Now, remember the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, “if ye love Me”’—I do not say you do or do not; you profess to do it—‘‘if you love me, keep My commandments.”’ And, pray, what the one of His commandments? “Search the Scriptures.” And thus you gather about yourself a panoply of truth. Being girt about with truth, ‘‘and having on the breast-plate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel the fiery darts of the wicked; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.’ Now, Christian, have ‘“‘your feet shod with peace;” that is the first part of the armor next to truth and righteousness. Peace, Christian; not anger, not war. You have to pass through a world of trouble; if you rom suffering, then you will not resent the thorn-like injury that pierces. Not only So, “but put on the breast-plate of righteousness;” glory, above all things, in the potless righteousness of the Lord Jesus. Let Satan come to thee and say, “thou art e;” say thou, “I know it, but do you see aes I have got on my bosom? Take your have in my bosom a breast-plate, and it is one of righteousness. What if I am vile? ‘T have the righteousness of Him who is not vile—the Lord Jesus.’ Christian, take o “the shield of faith.” There are some of you sorely harassed with doubts. How you ward off these doubts? You know among the Romans they used frequently ) have their darts barbed in a particular manner. They used to take a little phial that might easily be broken, and fill it with naphtha or mineral oil; they used to tie ‘this to the dart, and then place the dart in the bow, and having lit this mineral oil they drew the bow, and, as the oil flamed, they let fly the arrow, and the arrow would bear the flame into the midst of the enemy. If it struck a’ tent it would set it on fire; if it struck a house, and that house was made of wood it would set fire to that Howse. Now, Paul speaks of this, when he tells us to beware of “the fiery darts of e wicked.” Beware of them. Oh, take on your arm this shield of faith. Says Satan, “You are a child of God.” Say, TT-amrT know it for I have here the shield of faith; ow it, because God has told me I am His, and He has adopted me into His family. ” Wear also “the helmet-ef salvation,” so that, no matter what blows you get, e head may be safe. And use in your hand “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Oh, how quick, how powerful this sword of the Spirit is! It 1s sharper than any other sword. The sword of man may be powerful, but it fails to cut down to the very heart, and lay open the secrets of the bosom, If I had spoken my Own words, many of you would never have been affected; but doubtless many of you have been brought to conviction. Now, what sword is this that, held in the arms of s . & 272 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. one feeble and vile, cuts through to your very soul? It was the sword of the Spirit— the word of God. It is the best sword always to be armed with. If ever you meet with an infidel take care how you use your own words. In combatting with him, use spiritual words. Some time since I remember hearing of a Christian minister who was traveling in Switzerland. He met there, in a stage coach, a young man, who was far from Christ, who knew not God, a mocker and an infidel. They entered into con- versation. This young man began to express his doubts on the subject of salvation. “Well,” said the Christian minister, “I believe it, because I feel it.” The young man — said, “It is all nonsense; I do not believe it; it is all a tale, an idle tale.” ‘Well,’ said the minister, thinking at once of the sword of the Spirit, “if the Gospel be hid, it is hid unto them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the eyes of their understanding.” He then called to mind the words of Jesus, how that seeing they should not perceive, and how that hearing they should not understand. Well, that young man spoke no more to him, but began to reflect on the words. A day or two afterwards, these words still clinging to him brought him to conviction. He sought on his knees, and found forgiveness of God, through faith in Christ. He came to the minister and told him these words had pierced him. Nothing else would; he had read all sorts of evidences about Christianity; he had waded through Paley, but none of these had convinced him; it was the sword of the Spirit which pierced his heart. Now, there are some of you who think you are thoroughly armed from head to foot, but who, for all that, are false in your Christianity. I should like to say a few words to such, Some time since I remember walking across the tesselated pavement of a grand hall in the mansion of one of England’s noblest born. In a niche I saw, by the light which streamed through the painted glass of an oriel window, a statue. I thought at first it was a man. I walked across the pavement and drew near to examine the figure. He had upon his head a helmet of iron; the vizor was drawn down over his face, concealing the features; he held on his arm a long shield that reached to the very ground; in his hand was grasped an iron sword, double edged; he wore on his bosom a strong breast-plate; his limbs were covered with greaves and rings; his feet were also shod with iron. I drew near and began to examine it. Pres- ently, to my surprise, I saw something protruding; and I examined it, and found it was a piece of straw. On walking round I saw some more pieces of straw sticking out through the greaves of the armor. I soon found this was a man in armor—if you will—but stuffed with straw. This gave me a thought which I will not lose. There may be many, and there are many, in our midst, armed from head .to toot—cap-a-pied —with spiritual armor. We speak truth to them, and they have always got some answer ready, generally some text of Scripture. We warn them about the world to come, and they bring up some text of Scripture. Thus they are like a porcupine; we cannot touch them. But the sword of the Spirit can. The best way to treat a porcu- pine is to take it up with all its quills, and throw it into the water; and then it must swim and open out. Now, I would throw these men into the water—into the water of trouble and affliction. There may be some of you armed from head to foot with | this spiritual panoply, and the world calls you excellent Christians; but your religion is false, hollow, heartless, soulless, Godless, Christless. You may have this Bible, you may bear within your bosom the very words of truth, you may speak of Jesus to multitudes, you may bring up your families consistently; but, for all that, unless you are watching, unless you are striving, unless you are struggling, unless you are fighting, unless you are warring, unless you are pressing onward, you are none of God’s. Oh, let these words come home to the heart! Forget them not! Neglect them not! Come, every one of you, and search what is within. Examine yourselves and see whether ye be in the faith, “except ye be reprobates.” Watch—Guinness. 273 Christian, not only watch in armor, but watch in earnest. One night, at the head of his troops, leaning upon his sword, stood an officer. There were the ramparts of Sebastopol before him. The gloom of midnight rested upon the whole scene. His troops, many of them, were slumbering; and the man stood there watching. In the midst of the gloom, his wandering and ever-watchful eye detects something. He sees a dark moving mass; he remarks it stealthily, slowly, silently, solemnly, through the darkness, drawing near; he watches, watches, and it is the Russians. He calls his men at once to arms; he rushes onwards, and dies in the fight. Now, Christian, it will not do forever to slumber. If thou art in armor be in earnest. There are numbers oi us, and we sleep within the citadel. There are numbers of us who creep through the gates, and they sleep without the citadel. There are numbers placed by the hand of God as pickets near the outposts of the enemy, and slumber there. Awful danger to sleep in such a position. Beware, and see to it that thou watch in earnest; then thou shalt detect moving masses of God’s enemies and thine, and, if thou watch, thou shalt ye ready. Watch in earnest! And there are some of you sent aloft, like the sailor upon the giddy topmast, to watch for dangerous reefs and rocks. Be in earnest! Oh, on every hand hidden rocks, sunken sands, lee shores. Watch, and God will guide thy vessel properly. I daresay there may be some here who are ministers. I often heart, directed by the hand of God. It may be there is here some minister who has hold of the helm of the vessel—the Church of God—guiding it, but perhaps falling asleep over the wheel. I bid that man take care. I have seen a man steering a ship, holding the spokes of the wheel, with the chart spread out before him, and the sails ‘bent. By and by his head has nodded, and he has slumbered, until, by a sudden turn of the wheel, he has been flung completely over. Many have been lost often thus. Beware of this. If you are standing at the helm, you are standing in an awful position. You have work to do. Work, then, and the more you work, the more you will find yourself able to work. You know that, in the Arctic regions, the sailors who have to Mavigate the vessel are obliged, while on the deck, to beat their arms against their There is one more observation about this watching. Watch unto prayer against Sin. Oh, take care that you neglect not prayer! If you go forth in the morning Without prayer, ten to one that you will be brought in in the evening bowed down cients; an old saint was Origen. One morning he left his room without the usual prayer. His enemies came in, took him, and brought him before the judgment-seat, and said, “Origen, you must give up your Christ, or give up your life.” “Then I will give up my life first.” They then showed him the rack, and they said, “Art thou willing to be bound to that rack, and to have thy limbs stretched there until they are dislocated?” The old man said he was. But when they put him upon the rack, he shru nk, and said, ‘““Let me loose!”” They loosed him; he recanted, and wrote his name “renegade,” giving up Christ and all. Then the enemy blasphemed, saying, “Here is an old saint that has yielded; shall we not manage these poor weak women and chil- ren who refuse to yield?” Ah, they knew not that that man’s strength lies not in himself, but in God. Give me, give mea little child, whose strength is in the Almighty, rather than the warrior who is prayerless. Now Origen tells you a secret which these ple understand not. He says, “The reason I recanted today was because I went from my room without the usual prayer.” We bid you be prayerful; if you would 274 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ever succeed against sin, you must watch prayerfully. I feel it; I feel it. There are sins strong; there are sins mighty; there are sins that seize us and trample us down. If you would overcome such mighty demons, you must have God with thee. God must strengthen thy arms; and if God help thee, thou shalt surely not only be victor, thou shalt not only be conqueror, thou shalt be more than victor, more than con- queror. Oh, watch then, unto prayer. II. A word or two I must speak about watching against temptation. Now, there are several kinds of temptation. A word about watching against the world’s temptations. There are some here, I see, who are inclined to be led away by dress. I cannot avoid speaking about dress. I am here to speak the truth, and nothing else, or I cannot speak at all. There are some of you led away by dress. Is that watching against the world’s temptations? The world talks about fashion; do you attend to the world when it talks about these things? Oh, think of the words of the apostle! Think of what a woman’s true ornament externally should be—the soberness of spirit, the gentleness of soul, the meekness of heart, the warmth of love! Never forget that; if thou art yielding to the temptation of fashion, thou art yielding to the temptation of the world, and art being gradually led astray. Beware of it! Again, there are some of you, good Christians enough in some respects, who are led away from time to time to go and see sights. Does it do you any good? Does it do you any good to see persons making fools of themselves? Does it do you any good to go to the theater, to go to the horse-ring, or to the exhibitions of folly? I could mention some things in particular, but I have not time to pause. I know some Christians who make a great profession, but who regularly give themselves and their families a treat. They say there can be no harm in it, and they go and see different sights; but they come home less peaceful, less calm, less zealous, than when they go out. I know such> persons have come to the minister and said, “We are very unhappy; we wish to live more to God.” And the poor minister cannot tell the reason. But God knows it, that in a time of temptation they give way, and go round thus, following in the foot- steps of the world. Beware of doing any such thing! Watch against the temptations of the flesh. Oh, take care of pride, take care of lust, take care of sloth! If you let sloth, sloth will come upon you and tie your hands, sloth will bind your feet, sloth will draw down your eyelids, and will fan you, life slipping away all the while like a dream. I do believe that there are some of you this very hour lying, fanned by the wings of this sloth. There you are in the boat, floating down the swift stream towards yon mighty cataract, yon torrent. Oh, if I had a voice that would reach you, I would shout in your ear, “Awake thou slothful one! Beware! for the stream is swift and strong that bears thee to destruction. Awake! lest thou perish, and it be too late.’ We bid you watch against lust—lust is strong. And take care, in watching against these temptations, you do so with the help of God. I cannot pause further than to say, watch against the temptations of Satan. Some of you have had the house nicely swept, the furniture has been put in order, the windows have been cleaned, and the door is barred. Take care; for Satan stands just outside, and he is ever on the watch to enter. If, in a moment of inadvertency, you draw the bolt and open the door, in he will come, and the place will be ten times worse than it was before. Oh, beware of Satan; take care of the wily serpent. Watch against him in whatever form he comes—whether as an angel, or as a lion, cr as a serpent, or as a demon—take care of him, for he is all the while Satan. III. The third thing we say to you is, Watch for souls. Be sure you watch with zeal. What zealous men the prophets were! What a zealous man Elijah was! What a zealous man John was! The Pharisees and Saddu- : : —~ 2 Watch—Guinness. 275 sees come to him, and he preaches to them. Does he mince matters with them? Nay; he calls out to them in solemn tones of warning, and bids them beware lest they perish. “Beware,” said he, ‘‘O generation of vipers, lest you perish.’ And he suc- eee for multitudes followed him, and thousands were converted and were bathed y him. And what a zealous preacher the Lord Jesus was! How he spoke to the nultitudes that came to hear Him of heaven and hell! There they sat around Him, istened to His sermons, and from time to time He warned them of that place ‘“‘where man, and I am sure he met with success. Luther was a zealous man, and I am sure ie met with success. Whitfield was a zealous man, and I am sure God blessed him. , sometimes I have coveted the intense earnestness of that man, with whose voice his place has so often and often rung. Here oftentimes has he stood, with uplifted ands and streaming eyes, and called the guilty to repentance. Oh, how that man abored for souls! His zeal, his fire, his energy, his intense earnestness, his irrepres- ible concern—oh, who can depict, who can paint, who can imitate? It was heaven- jorn; it came from God downward. And God gave him success. I wish I could speak you as he might. I wish I could sit there by yon pillar, and just let him stand here ind preach the rest of the sermon—oh, if he would not shake every one of you in your ats! How that man would call you to repentance! But, methinks I might say one word to sinners, might I not? I bid you Christian, watch for souls; are we trying to watch for souls. God may, only give us four Sab- baths more to watch for souls in this place. What say you to that? It may be so; lay we not then speak a word to those afar off? Remember, this poor voice will not always sound in your ears. Remember you shall not always sit here, Sabbath evening ter Sabbath evening, while the sun is sinking in the west, and listen to the proclama- ion of the truth. Remember God will not always give you these opportunities for what solemn thoughts are these! They make my bosom swell and heave till my irt almost bursts. I call you to Christ. I bid you, every one of you, come as you are, come guilty, come to Jesus. And where is He? In your midst. Joes He call, and do you refuse? Oh, remember, death is coming. Whether you death or not, whether you hate death or not, whether you care about death or not, all you. Are you prepared? Nay; numbers are still in darkness. May we not bid e this night to seek salvation? “No” says Satan, “put it off till to-morrow.” fo-morrow may never come. We bid thee tonight, in the name of the most high God, Sometimes, when I am preaching God’s truth, when I speak from my soul sh I could always), I feel as if round about my heart two hands were clasped, d as if two arms were wrapped round this bosom—the two hands the hands of power, two arms the arms of God. I do feel it, God knoweth right well. And from this smn place, with the Bible before me, I say to you—Delay not, delay not! pause not, ause not! stay not! stop not! on, on! Where? Why, to Christ. Oh, man, mayest thou nd Him, and may God lead thee to Himself. But now, if thou wilt not hear us, if hou wilt not turn to God, may we not speak a word still further? Well we leave thee ith God. We bid you, Christian, watch for souls with love. Let there be no coldness, harsh- hess, distance, pride, in the way you address them. Nay; but in humility, with out- tretched hand, with streaming eyes, with kindness, speak to sinners; and you will find a Fy 276 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. that God will bless you, and your words of love win their way to the heart, when words of hatred fall off without touching it. . . Christian watch for souls with care, too. Beware of losing opportunities for doing good. Here, I would call up one thing before your mind’s eye, and bid you never forget it. I should like you to be convinced of the very solemn and very awful fact, that there are thousands who have passed away. Mark what I say. Here we are, a vast multitude of people. There are thousands whom you have known, who have passed into eternity within your recollection, to whom you, as Christians, might have spoken about God, but to whom you never spoke, and who curse you because you did not. Let them join their voices and speak to you; oh, hear them, and be warned, and be instructed. There was one whose hand I held in mine; with whom I trod—the narrow way that leadeth unto life? No—the broad road that leadeth unto hell, and who has departed. I will tell you how it was. Bred early to a knowledge of the blessed God, I became a back- slider, and I wandered with him for years in the road that leadeth to hell. I left this land, and wandered over the shores of Mexico, the West Indies, Texas, through: the ; Caribbean seas; and then returned home, after having been a long while away. I went to where my friend lived, and asked for him. “Where is so-and-so?” The person hesitated, “Where is he? Is he here, or is he in a different part of the country?” The person turned pale. I said, “Tell me—I must have it--where is he?” “Well,” said the person, “he is dead!” “Dead!” I felt petrified. I said, “Where did he die?” The person said, ““He went up to London; there he ran a course of dissipation, and then he was suddenly cut off by the hand of God.” Do you know, I have never lost the remembrance of that. Do you know, sometimes I close my door, and go on my knees in prayer, and I pray God to blot. out the black mark. And sometimes I lie down to slumber, and I see staring at me through the gloom a pale face that I know—it is the face of that damned man. Aye, methinks, if he might speak he would curse me; he would say, “God curse you.” “Why?” “Because you might have preached to me Christ Jesus, but now I am lost.” Oh, Christian, we bid you while you may, which is now, witness, witness of Jesus, and then God himself will give you success. Beware, then, and watch for souls with care. . ‘ : IV. Ere we close, there is just one more point which I shall notice; it is this— watch for Christ. Now, I think that is the sweetest, the best, the most blessed; it comforts me most of all, and I am sure it will comfort you most of all as Christians. Christian, in watching for Jesus, watch affectionately. What is He to thee? “Well,” says one, “He is my own best friend!’ Well, if He is, remember He is away, and He is returning; so watch for His coming affectionately. Is He to thee a husband? Then be sure and look out for his return. In wandering along the streets one dark and silent evening, I pass by yonder house. I see, there, still in the room by the window, a woman. Sometimes she opens the window, and her head looks out, and she looks up and down the street; she sees no one coming, and she draws down the window, and the blind. But she is still watching. How? Listening. Then she hears a footstep coming along; she opens the window, looks out; it is not he whom she expects; she closes the window again. Again she hears footsteps coming along; she listens; they pass the door, and they go. At last, she hears another footfall which she thinks she recognizes. She listens; it approaches nearer, nearer, it comes closer, stops at the door; she rushes down and receives her husband with joy. Art thou the bride Jesus? Canst thou be happy while He is away? Watch for him affectionately. Loo for Him, up to Heaven, and say, “Why tarry Thou the wheels of Thy chariot?” Oh watch for Him, and say, “Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, come, come quickly.” Amen, ame Watch affectionately, Christian. Then, do not be impatient; but watch patiently. There are some of you w ‘watch on your sick bed. You are tossed from side to side, and you say, “T wish t ‘ W atch—Guinness. 277 ‘Lord would come, for He would take away this pain.” It is very right for you to watch for His coming; but it is not right for you to be impatient. It is right for you to say, “Lord, come, come;” but it is not right for you to say, “Come in my time.” Say, “Come in Thy time, not in mine.” I know one who lies this hour on the bed of sick- ‘ness, and she oftentimes—though I have never seen her; so I hear from those who ‘know her—she oftentimes remembers me in her prayers. I am sure I wish God may bless her for it, for I know how the ministers of God need the prayers of Christians. I know another, who said to me yesterday, “I never go down on my knees in prayer, which I do four times a day, without remembering you.” That woman is on the bed of sickness, in continual pain; it is sometimes more than flesh and blood can bear; she almost faints away. But she is calm and peaceful, looking out for the coming of the di ord Jesus, watching with patience. What lessons does she preach to us from her sick bed. Let her preach; let her voice not be silent; let her tell you to watch for the Lord, and watch with patience. But there may be many who do not watch at all for the Lord Jesus; they do not expect His coming. They are in the wrong, says Christ, “I tell you not that I shall come in the morning, or at noon-day, or at evening, or in the night, or at cock-crow- ing; at any time I may come, therefore I say to you, watch.” The last word I shall speak to you to-night is this:—Watch unto the end. Oh, ‘Christian, give not up watching to the end, for He who should come will not delay. Sometimes, when calmly resting in the evening as I have gazed up at the stars, I have fancied I could see Him coming in the clouds, surrounded by hosts of angels, and that I could hear the sound of the trumpet—a solemn sight—and I have almost covered my eyes and shuddered, and yet wept for joy, for, oh, it would be blessed to see Him. Christian, watch unto the end. He may come next month—do you believe that? I believe it. He may come before 1858—do you believe that? I believe it. He may come before ten years are over your head. He may come ere you die. But whether Christ come or not while we live, we ourselves must go directly to Him. Are you Now, I part from you. I leave these solemn words with you, O Christian— atch, for God commands you. Watch against sin, in armor, in earnest, unto prayer. [This sermon was delivered at the Tabernacle, Moorfields, May 31, 1857, and was ublished by John Paul, London. ___H. Grattan Guinness, D. D., was born near Dublin in 1835, He was the founder, 2, and the director of East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions, hich has sent out over 1,000 missionaries. Among his literary works are The _— End of the Age, The Divine Program of the World’s History.] ft a4 ey 278 Pulpit Power and Eloquenéé. THE UPLIFTED CHRIS FRANK W. GUNSAULUS. he Prince of Peace, at about seven o’clock Friday morning, April 15th, had thus been handed over to a mob, revengeful and turbulent, by the cowardly instru- mentalities of Rome, by Pilate himself, who was greater because he sat on the judgment-seat. The procurator could say this only, and mockingly: “Behold your - King!’—John 19: 14—and he could hear their wild shout: ‘“Crucify Him! Crucify Him!? Neither Rome nor Israel could be the same, after such an experience. After that hour, Rome and Israel were to know no peace, They had met the Prince of Peace, and they had failed to recognize in Him a secure foundation for peace; they had refused to make Him their King of Kings. Instead, they had given Him over to a savagery which was to destroy both of them. The robe of ribaldry and jest was taken off—His robe was put on. It was bloody, but it was His own. They started on their way to Golgotha. One would pause here with a startling illustration of the fact that so much of that which is divine may be apparently tossed to and fro, with an ignorance, and, perhaps a brutality, as dark as the splendor against which the darkness shows itself is bright. But here, as elsewhere, if one stops long enough, it will be discovered that the unseen shuttles carry the divine thread, and the careful omniscience of God works within the careless ignorance of men. “They know not what they do.”—Luke 23:24. This saying was already in His heart and was soon to come from Jesus’ lips. Just as we tarry here to consider the unconsciousness in which mighty events occur, and in which human beings come into relation with the divinest forces, there comes upon our thought and experience a figure whose personality and action represent it all—Simon of Cyrene. The Galilean prisoner has been carrying His own cross, until it has probably broken Him down. Then there strays into the scene this helpful man from an unexpected quarter. Involuntarily, but immortally, he is to inscribe his name upon the tablets of time; and it will be read forever by the light of the Name which is above every name. For, “as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to go with them, that he might bear His cross.” The eyes of mankind still follow the footsteps of that sorrowful procession, as it moves from the place where Jesus was judged to the place where He is to be crucified. It never fades from sight—this mournful scene. Human souls cannot permit it to be effaced. The Via Dolorosa runs through every human heart, though the way they took, on the planet, that day, is in controversy. There are echoes in us all of the preparations which were made by the soldiers and guards and which were deemed necessary to the consummation of the plot against the meek offender, who was accompanied by the other prisoners. They doubtless bore the cross-beams of their own crucifixes, as well as wooden placards advertising the crimes for which they had been placed under sentence of death. It is an amazingly pathetic impression made upon us by the ignorance and unconsciousness of those who stood near Jesus as H walked on, attended by that portion of the cohort which had never lost sight of Hi from the hour of His arrest in the garden. Nothing but our own heart’s blindness unto the real Christ, who is alive. forever more, can match the dull, but certai misapprehension of their unique privileges. The Uplifted Christ—Gunsaulus. 279 ; Perhaps it is more to say that all are stone-blind to the moral splendor. One man has caught a glimpse, we think even now, of the Royal One half-concealed in the worn companion with whom he treads the road, while both of them are under ban of _ the law. There are two prisoners associated with Jesus, to be partakers with Him in : common agony. One needs to look at them but a moment, to see that, while their presence with Jesus illustrates the undeserved contempt of Pilate for the Sufferer, one of them is waking to the sweet morning which is plashing its waves of light against his darkness. By and by, up yonder on Calvary, we shall see that coarse b wretch awake entirely, with eyes full of light; and he will become luminous forever. - will take his place, by one heart-word of faith, as the first trophy which the wounded hands of Jesus shall bear up to heaven. He will be known as “the dying thief,” who “rejoiced to see that Fountain in his day.” The contrast between this _ awakening man and these persons, however, does not suffice. We do not yet see how _ divine duties may be done doggedly, until the involuntary servant, Simon of Cyrene, _ is made one of the mournful procession, just as the quaternion of soldiers, the throng _ of Judeans, and the priests have passed out of the city gates with their condemned _ prisoner. ; Simon of Cyrene enters history at this hour as one of the most favored men in _ ail the world’s story. It must be nearly nine o’clock when this journeying Jew, from dt Tunis, in North Africa, suddenly stops, just before his pilgrimage to Jerusalem is to ~ conclude satisfactorily, and finds himself unpleasantly interested in this poor, worn @retre, who has been fainting beneath the heavy + shaped or Latin cross, which was corded upon his back. Jesus has now fallen beneath the post and bars, which are soon to be set up in place for His crucifixion. The stranger has no opportunity Bro utter a word of pity. We know not if such a word suddenly started in the man, _ who is doubtless an alien Jew, having only the mental and spiritual point of view "possessed by that large number of pilgrims, who, coming up to Jerusalem, still deplore their ancient exile, as a people, to North Africa, and always hold to patriotism by _ coming up each year to the feast. Meantime the soldiers have gladly seized upon him. His joy at the annual festivity is broken in upon, for the quaternion of soldiers _ are weary, and without his knowing it, he is relieving the most burdened of human beings from the shameful load under which they have made Him to stagger and at _ length to fall. They “compelled” this pilgrim, whose foreign dress, and probably his _ apparent physical strength, marked him as one able to do this perplexing drudgery _ without causing a tumult. It is his “to bear the cross” of Jesus. Shall the glorious _ thing be done without the appearance of a ray of its splendor entering into the heart of the man who does it? This foreign Jew must know that the cross signifies a mode of punishment to which even Rome did not resort until recently. He must hate Rome, as never before, when he thinks on her decadence by way of unnecessary cruelty. ____ All modern history of human hearts sadly repeats this episode in the career of the ever-living Christ, as He comes again to our world. He walks from the Pretorium to Golgotha, in the needy cause or in the persecuted ideal which trembles and falls ‘somewhere, under the weight of the cross upon which a temporary fashion, a social bigotry, or an ecclesiastical formulary crucifies it. Fortunate, indeed, is that Simon of Cyrene who does anything to help, willingly or unwillingly. Happier he who so yields himself, in the gladness of intelligence and faith, to the Christ whose cross he bears, that it all becomes an understood and joyous service. The saying, “Him they ‘compelied to bear the cross,’ and Paul’s saying, exultant and free in its devotion, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” will ever be associated. It is ever the same cross borne by different men, but men differ only in attitude and spirit. 280 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Done at first because of coercion, Simon’s act was glorified by love: and there is excellent reason for supposing that Simon’s moment of sympathy with Jesus opened — out into an eternity of blessedness. Well-founded appears the tradition that he was converted, then and there, by the majestic Sufferer whose lacerated back had borne the cross as far as He could, on the way from the Pretorium to Calvary. This same Simon is known as the “father of Rufus,’ of whom and of whose mother, Paul writes with loving gratitude at a later time. Mark is very clear in calling him “the father of both Alexander and Rufus.’—Mark 15:21. The work of grace was therefore accom- plishing itself, while the saving power of the Nazarene was being made perfect by the cruelty and odium of the Via Dolorosa. It is not possible to make accurate statements with regard to the case, and even the enthusiasm, with which the influential Jews would have adopted Jesus as their champion, if, at any critical hour, such as was the hour of His Temptation, He had been willing to be a politician and to abandon His moral divinity for a human triumph. It is true that all those kingdoms would have been His, if He had given an instant’s allegiance to the un-Christlike method of gaining power. Such hours came often; but the hour of all hours in which it was possible for Him to be the Messiah of the Jews with speediest acclaim, lay just behind Him. Evil forces were so nearly driven to despair with regard to what could be done with Him that nothing remained save to get Him out of the way quickly, lest the people should compel the powers to take Him as leader and champion. Every step of His career from that moment on, however, made Him less the Messiah of the Jews and more the Messiah of humanity. He had seen the last of those moments in which puzzled and irritated Judaism would have adopted Him as the head of the revolution it fretted to undertake against Rome, if He had made a single concession to its bigotry and narrowness. His plan for the redemption of Israel included His plan for the redemption of the world, and He was now on His way to the great moment in which Judaism was to make Him more revolting to itself and more dear to man, by stretching Him on the most shameful symbol which punishment had devised. He must now speak. He concludes the deeply eloquent silence which has held His lips shut since the early morning, whea He declared Himself Messiah in a way which indicated that the destiny of mankind nestled in His anguished heart. He utters a brief word to the women who stand in line with the multitude of spectators on the roadway. Breaking in on the mournful sound of their wailings, which strangely contrasted with the hoarse clamor which He had heard for many hours, He said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves.’”—Luke 23:28. Jesus Christ had already restored the balance of humanity, by illustrating in Himself the divine beauty of the qualities characteristic woman. He found this a masculine world, in which the feminine was only an incident; He left it a human world in which the feminine was essential. These who lamented Him were the advance guard of that great army and sisterhood who perceive in Jesus the true Son of humanity in whom truly there is neither man nor woman. A brutal and entirely masculine world had already hewn out His crucifix; a new world which should hail Him as the King of humanity was discoverable through the tears of the women who lamented Him. The moment of this profound pathos revealed another ray of His moral sublimity. He was touched by their tears, and yet His kingliness must decline to be considered an object of pity. He knew by the forelook of a wounded heart the calamitous fate which was even then gathering over His beloved Jerusalem. He could not help feeling the certainty of those tears of repentance, to be mingled with countless tears of gratitude, which should flow, age after age, when men and women were to remember this day of shame. He was enough of a statesman to feel that these things were don in what the common phrase called “the green tree.” His statesmanship looke The Uplifted C hrist—Gunsaulus. 281 forward with foreboding and warning to that hour in the history of Jerusalem when the sapless trunk of national life would be ready for the conflagration—‘‘the dry tree.” Withered and fruitless, leafless and dead at the heart, Judaism would then kindle with th heat of passion and the blast of wickedness and consume away. He therefore pou ed His soul into the words: “Behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” Luke 23: 29-31. It must needs be that only the greatest son of Israel shall be Israel’s condem- ‘nation; and as Jesus is come in sight of Golgotha, we perceive that, at every step, He is becoming more indisputably the Messiah of mankind. Nothing more profoundly illustrates the spiritual grandeur of Christianity, its entire independence of earthly lo ations, its deepest dependence upon facts known only and known surely in the ‘geography of the human soul, than the truth that even today no man can point out the spot on which the King of Kings rose to undeniable sovereignty over the race of men. It is a vast gain for the spiritual culture of mankind that we do not know even the pile of debris which probably conceals the spot where bled “Those blessed feet Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed, For our advantage, on the bitter cross.” “To a place called Golgotha” is the only phrase by which we may locate Calvary, Save as a reality in the experience of men. It is a phrase which satisfies the spiritual ‘thinker, because it leaves his Lord to the spiritual and the infinite. It does not abandon Him at an instant when we are the most interested to know just where on this planet He was lifted into changeless royalty, except to locate the event and its ‘circumstances more deeply in the soul of man. The Latin form Calvary seems to have ‘won the permanent place in the vocabulary of men, rather than the Aramaic word Golgotha; and Calvary signifies “a skull.” It may have suggested the peculiar ' configuration of the little elevation in one of the suburban gardens, or the fact that it ‘was a well-known place of horrible associations, because there many offenders had suffered sentence of death. We have lost nothing by ignorance on this point. Christ's k ingdom is an affair internal and spiritual; and the Calvary upon which we put Him to death is to be found within us. From many a Pilate-like passion of prejudice within there stretches through the human heart many a Via Dolorosa. The point where that Toad sadly terminates in our experience may have been lost sight of, the location of ¢ vary has been obliterated by contending armies; yet we know that the tragedy of Jesus is authentic, and no carelessly-piled rubbish can hide it from the supreme light __ of conscience. _ And now we are standing with Him on the spot where His cross will soon be _ erected. It is not quite noon, yet the tremulous blaze from out of that Syrian sky falls _ like a revealing radiance upon the white grandeur of Jerusalem. There are glances st fom Calvary toward the city, from eyes that have the spiritual depth and force which entertain memories and prophecies. Yonder the sacred hills which have been trodden _ by the psalmists and prophets, who accepted the vision of Him as the inspiration of their song and the theme of their eloquence, stand green with olives and holy with us associations. The deep blue sky which arches up and on, until it deepens hitely at the zenith, bends downward again, and falls like a curtain of sapphire beyond Bethany, which has given to this homeless man that which was the nearest home He had ever known on earth. Perhaps His own eye is detained for an instant, as He looks upon the city for the last time, by the little road entering the town by the 282 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Damascus gate, for that is the road from Nazareth, and now, as never before, He seems to be Jesus of Nazareth. There is perfect quiet in the luxurious mansions, half-concealed in the umbrageous growth out of which they rise to crown the hills; the peril of the rich citizens who inhabit them is nearly gone. Property, however wickedly obtained, is safer now, they think, for the pale and too interesting idealist is going to be put to death very soon. He will trouble them no longer with telling them how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps they are half-reconciled to the thought that He might have been disposed of by the scourging, being only a ‘harmless enthusiast. Rough usage was not necessary for even a reforming democrat who had addressed His impecunious followers, telling them: “In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you.”—John 14:2. Ill-gotten wealth was willing even then to contribute to the support of a religion which would make the poor content to look for a home in some other world. Yet it is likely that these homes 07 the rich have made a contribution a little earlier; for the daughters of Jerusalem who wept for Him as He came from the Prztorium were probably members of a society in which the eternal womanly devised schemes for the utterance of that tenderness which is in woman’s heart; and these wealthy ladies have made the usual provision so that He and the other malefactors will be offered, at the right time, the stupefying drink of myrrh and sour wine, that their agonies may be a little mitigated. Still the eyes wander away from the dolorous spot and toward the city; but the city has already gained an infamy. It is now memorable for its outrage upon Him. One cannot keep from beholding the Court of the Priests, nearly four hundred feet higher than the Pool of Siloam, wherein blind Judaism refused to wash its eyes with the beggars. That place below Mount Zion, dark with the foliage which Jesus declined to use to conceal Himself from Judas, is the garden of Gethsemane. He alone knows the significance of these things. They nail together the cross-pieces; the sharp report from the mallet breaks in upon the silence with intrusive violence, but it is part of the music of salvation. No final chorus in Gounod’s Redemption, no Hallelujah strain in which the music of any Handel’s Messiah culminates, is completely true without the sounds which quiver upon that air as the cross-bars are fastened to the upright beam. Still stands the lonely Figure, penetrated with a sorrow so awful and so divine as to isolate Him from the very humanity which He saves. Yonder is Olivet waiting. It shall be the place whence His feet shall leave the rock, when He shall ascend to His Father and His God. But Calvary must be first. Enough, then, from memory, and enough from prophecy! _ Let the pinnacle and the roof of the Temple burn under the fiery noon that fills the dome of blue above the snowy walls and towers; here is One about to make the temple of humanity so much more white and grand and sacred that the brilliant pile upon Mount Zion shall vanish away. They are now stripping Him, and He who was scourged more deeply and cruelly by those to whom He offered His heart of love than He could have been by Roman bullies, is waiting for crucifixion—for enthronement. Never has there been such a divine challenge in the history of this planet as that which He offered to evil when He said: “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me.”— John 12:32. The challenge.has now been fully accepted; they are about to lift Him up. They have gotten rid of the King of the Jews; they are making Him King of humanity. It is the superlative blunder made by bigotry, intolerance and despotism. The more ferocious the hate they visit upon Him, the heavier the indignity they offer Him, the wilder the fanaticism with which they blast Him—the mightier and tenderer, the more meek and royal He comes to be, until sovereignty of earth and man passes into His hands. They have adopted the most shameful method of dealing with the most dreadfpi The Uplifted Christ—Gunsaulus. 283 or the most debased of criminals—crucifixion. Against that dark villainy which they furnish shines the Light of the World. Only the fierce passion of the Orient could have invented and inaugurated so horrible a method of executing a capital sentence. It is almost alien to the Jew, but the instrumentalities of cruelest paganism must now be taxed to furnish a scene revolting enough to express their bitterness and hate. The strong wooden pin has been placed midway from the bottom to the top of the beam, in order that the body may partially rest upon it, so that it shall not tear itself away from the cross. The women whose pity still expressed itself in tears, have their e special task of mercy to perform, and the potion, whose opiate is expected to render ‘His pain less acute, is now offered to Him. Death has never been met by one intel- lectually and spiritually able to make complete discovery of all the treasures and sources of his realm. Jesus refuses the draught! He cannot save man by stupefying His own faculties. He must see and feel and know the last cruelty of man, the last ‘malice of evil, the last spear-point of death. He will “taste the whole of it; then He cannot taste this medicated wine. Let the other two offenders, whose crosses still lie ‘on the ground with His, do as they will—they have no world to save. If the King of Terrors is to be despoiled or to be vanquished by a divine man, it must be done with divine fairness. Thus open-eyed and calm, Jesus was ready to die on the center cross, which probably was not yet upreared and fixed firmly in the earth. He was now laid upon it. The arms which had taken into their embrace His mother and John the Beloved, _were stretched along the cross-beams, and a large iron nail was driven through eacn of the palms of those hands which had blessed the little children. Cruelty of the most calculating sort could add nothing else save to bend the legs upward until the soles of the feet lay against the post, when either one very large iron spike was driven through both, or two smaller nails penetrated the feet in response to the pitiless blows of the mallet. Thus were they fastened to the upright beam. The crowd which had come _ from Jerusalem had never beheld a more frightful condemnation of that Judaistic hate _ which had now called in Roman brutality and Carthagenian cruelty to produce in this forsaken man the extremity of physical agony. The torture which penetrated His soul, however, was more than this; and in a less sweet and gentle heart it would have turned all to bitterness. No human device could intensify the inconceivable pain _ which quivered and throbbed along the torn and trembling nerves, yet He might have | he intense misery of His thirsting frame which hung there surcharged with anguish bi of soul, would ordinarily have robbed reason of every right and thought of every ' prerogative, in that ghastly hour. But just then He rose to a height known only to " God, and surveying the whole mental and spiritual situation, knowing the dull-eyed fanaticism which had hounded Him to that place, comprehending the terrible result of that ignorance which allies itself with religious bigotry, and above all, conscious of _ the divine power of compassion and forgiving love, He looked to the only spot in the universe where He was understood—to heaven, and He said: “Father, forgive them, - for they know not what they do.”—Luke 23: 34, e As has already been intimated, this prayer had been inmate. itself on His lips for hours. His was’a spontaneous, but not an extemporaneous nature. Jesus’ actions darkness out of which this bolt of moral wrong flew into His bosom. There is the ‘patience of ignorance which looks upon ignorance without seriously condemning it. “ It is better called stupidity or dullness. But here was the patience of infinite intelli- — 284 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. conceived in gentleness, benevolence, and an all-embracing love for humanity. He has been lifted up. As the rough tree upon which He hung helpless and tortured held Him high enough to meet the coarse gaze of men who were intoxicated with the horror, He proved His profound faith in the one great fact in the nature of God which © His perfect Sonship had revealed—God’s Fatherhood. For the first word that came from the heart of the tragedy was His word: ‘‘Father.” Nothing that Jesus ever did or said, to publish or illustrate the Fatherhood of God, so outlined the amazing sweep of His faith, as the fact that He drew upon it just then, and so mightily. Because His suffering spirit went far enough into the depth of the Fatherhood of God to obtain His own solace, He could predicate forgiveness. And what far-reaching ~ forgiveness! Jesus would have it reach these ignorant children of the All-Father who were even then murdering Him, the Father’s true Son, their Messiah, with unsur- passed cruelty and deepest shame. So was He the Christ of God. The anguish of this cry was thus softened by Jesus’ charity. His charity and forgiveness sprang out of His love. He knew the ignorance with which the soldiers nailed Him to the cross, as they had nailed others to similar crosses, according to their duty; He knew also that the chief priests and Pilate, who would have been the last to admit that they knew not what they were doing, were actually in deeper dark- ness than the soldiers, because they were disobedient unto a higher law. But Jesus included them all in His prayer. Scorn and ribaldry disported themselves beneath the crucified Man, while the Syrian heat poured out its fierceness upon Jesus, and the helpless One who alone could help the world was enduring extreme internal agony. If ever a bitter thought had right to utter itself forth, this was the moment; but the most maligned and cruelly treated Son of God had nothing to speak out of harmony with His sweet and comfort- ing word of forgiveness. The powers of mind and body were besieged. Still the secret of God was His, and even when memory was assaulted by the tortures of the hour, He did not forget to draw a stream of forgiveness for all His sinning brothers, from the fountain of God’s Fatherhood. Now the Jewish leaders began to get some clear idea of what had happened to their Hebrew dignity, by calling in Rome to complete the death of Rabbi Jesus, under disgracing circumstances. Not only had Pilate sneered at them by his saying at the — Judgment Hall: “Behold your King!” and silently warded off the reply: “We have no king but Czsar”—John 19: 15—in a manner unfavorable to their pride; but the chief priests now saw the soldiers of Rome, having filled themselves with the common wine, which on such occasions was furnished in abundance, staggering gleefully | beneath the dying Jew and deriding Him as the Jewish King. Their derision, however, was a scornful laugh in the face of the Jew. They shouted to the King of the Jews to save Himself, while they lifted up their cups of wine and proposed a health to Him, or asked His response to their revelry. Blind to the fact that He incarnated every fair dream of Israel, and that He had manifested forth every precious anticipation of poet and prophet, the chief men of Israel were now beholding them- selves ridiculed by their servants. They were no longer guiding the events of that shameless murder! The Rome they detested was in control. A frenzied mob of Romans and street-loafers led them into fathomless degradation, at the hour when all that Israel had stood for was being lost. For the time being, they were compelled to mingle their derision with that of contemptuous foes. The doomed man had been taken to Calvary with His sandals, girdle, outer cloak and head-dress, as the only visible property which cruelty and cupidity could parcel out. Perhaps they were not worth much and did not detain their curiosity long, as the four soldiers, who had been especially concerned in the labor of crucifying Him, looked about near the foot of the cross which bore Jesus, and thought of their i 4 The Uplifted Christ—Gunsaulus. 285 “perquisites. They gambled for the inner garment only. It was a priestly vesture, finely woven and seamless. The dice were thrown in the hot Syrian light. Little ‘cal ed they for the whispers of the past, and less for a symbol which would fascinate the piety of the future. To divide this seamless robe, as they had doubtless rended the larger cloak into four parts, would be to ruin something valuable. Neither can the unit of Christ’s influence be divided. The integer of Jesus’ life and words is beyond human power of destruction. The prophecy is ever fulfilled: “They parted “my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”—Matt. 27:35. But the fact is also made forever secure that the priesthood of Jesus is never to be divided. Men may gamble for His priestly tunic; they cannot rend it. Still the miserable fanatics were joining with the half-drunk soldiers in offering their contempt to the sufferer. Coarse mockers went by with scornful Sanhedrists, challenging Him, flinging taunts at Him, entertaining the blatant populace with “grimaces, while the veins of the Son of Man were swollen with agony, and His heart ‘was breaking. Rulers cried out, as they jeeringly walked close to His cross: “He saved others; let Him save Himself, if He be Christ, the chosen of God.”—Matt. 27: 42. What “rulers!” No man ever ruled in God’s world, for long, who ruled on their theory. There was the true Ruler—the Ruler of time and eternity, and, because He was Christ, He could not save Himself. To have saved Himself for an hour or for a life-span would have been to lose Himself and all the race forever. ; The mocking soldiers took up the refrain of contumely, and, coming close to the ‘cross, with hearts untouched by His prayer for their forgiveness, they yielded a little to the impulse of kindliness, and offered Him some of the sour wine which was left after their drinking. Servants of Rome as they were, careless of the feelings of the _ Jews whom they now scorned in their derision of Jesus, they said: “If Thou be the King of the Jews, save Thyself.” They had read the words written on the Titulus. Indeed, the attention of all was attracted by the superscription inscribed upon the placard which either hung from the neck of Jesus, or was firmly and conspicuously fixed on the topmost portion of the cross above His head. This bill or titulus, whose use in particular lay in the fact that it published the name of the condemned person, had been affixed to the victim or to the cross at an earlier time, and, on sight of it, the leaders of the Jews had strenuously objected to its statement, which soldier, priest, and alien could read. The inscription was to the effect that this man, who was crucified with so much of circumstance and disgrace, was “the King of the Jews.”—Matt. 27:37. The title was written by Pilate, and the Roman Governor was partly avenged upon the chief priests of the Jews, who had almost forced him to give up Jesus to their fanaticism and brutality. Nothing } could have been more to his liking than the opportunity of calling Jesus “The King of ‘the Jews,” in this public way. Coming from the Temple, as these priestly devotees did, they at once had hurried to the Pretorium, and sought to influence Pilate not to _ permit this abominated title to be set up. The chief council knew that they must be ic eful of public opinion, for a revolt could easily break forth and become uncon- trollable, and Pilate was evidently not inclined to give up this opportunity for _ discounting the influence of the Sanhedrists. There the title, as John describes it, Plainly showed Pilate’s skill at uttering contempt. It ran as follows: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”—John 19:19. Nothing could have been more offensive to the rulers of Israel than the scorn contained in the word Nazareth. _ “Write not, the King of the Jews; but that He said, I am the King of the Jews,” begged the chief priests.” Pilate’s stern reply was: ‘What I have written I have _ written.”—John 19: 22. o. The age-long conflict between evil and good had reached its Waterloo. The _ hour had struck for the decisive struggle. Every contest which the soul of man had al t 286 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. felt from the beginning, every silent advance of right upon retreating wrong, every sharp defense of truth against error, every dreadful fight against sin, every bloody march upon selfishness, every terrific charge upon the beast, every defeat, every triumph, was but a prelude to this awfully tragic moment when the Son of God, nailed to the cross, was first to hurl the arrogant power of sin from that solemn height and, next, to make the cross His undisputed throne. Is it wonderful that such an hour should bring out the human soul into such a definiteness of feature that its deepest nature and loftiest possibility might be seen? Jesus came to be the Savior of the human spirit—the whole man. He could never be content to merely redeem the intellectual life, or the life of the sensibilities, or that of the purposes and choices of mankind. At His cross, as a trinity in unity, stood the God-like human soul. Thought came in the language of Greece, the land of the intellect; sentiment and feeling came in the language of Hebrewdom, the land of the sensibilities, the home of the human heart. Will came in the Latin tongue, the language of imperial Rome, where human purpose had made its arches of triumph. In all these, came human nature, once dissevered, but now united before the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. We must not forget that this inscription was presented to the eye of the foreigner, in Greek, that the alien might understand it; it was given to the Jew in Hebrew, because Jerusalem and Calvary were located in the province of Judea, a Jewish country; it was put into the Latin language because this same Judea was a Roman province, and this was the official tongue. The assertion it contained was probably made in bitterest irony. But behind these facts lies a greater fact. There these three particular languages were. The powers which make history had so moved in the past and were so moving in the present, that these three great streams of human life and experience met at the foot of that crucifix, as they had taken their rise long ago in the deep springs of the human soul. There was a wondrous drawing power in that cross. Human nature had been dissevered by evil. Human life everywhere was fragmentary. The soul of man was to be reconstituted. [This sermon and the Three Inscriptions are considered among the most powerful of Gunsaulus’ sermons. He is generally considered the leading preacher of Chicago. By permission of the Monarch Book Company, Chicago, this sermon is reproduced from “The Man of Galilee.” Frank W. Gunsaulus was born at Chesterville, Ohio, January 1, 1856, graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University. After four years in the Methodist ministry, he became pastor of Eastwood Congregational church, Columbus, Ohio, serving in Newtonville, Mass., and Baltimore, Md. During 1887-99 he was pastor of Plymouth church, Chicago, and since then of Central Church. He is also president of Armour Institute. His literary works are varied:—the Life of Gladstone, Songs of Night and Day, Monk and Knight, etc.] ‘ _ SPIRITUAL UNITY IN THE NAME OF CHRIST. CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D. D. Tam conscious of three controlling desires and aims. First of all, to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ so that His divine essence and glory shall appear. Second, to do his by setting forth the very teaching of the holy Scripture. I bring nothing of my n; my sole hope is in what the Spirit may do with the very Word of God as it is set forth to you. And third, to carry your minds point by point along a course of hought which the Lord has given to me, and which has come to me as a new flood of light from the pages of His Word, a new vision of the glory, the sufficiency, the luliness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I may thus state the theme: The Quadrilateral of spiritual unity in the name of Christ. You will see why I use this expression, the quadrilateral—a plane four-sided e—in connection with unity. __ A few years ago there was issued in London, by the church of England, a quadri- ateral of ecclesiastical unity, which was offered as a basis of union for the various sects of Christendom. The four members of that quadrilateral unity were the Holy sriptures, the sacraments, the creeds, and the historic episcopate. Now, to me, ecclesiastical unity on this or on any basis, is remote and problematical, and I am not ure it is desirable, if it were practicable. But spiritual unity through Jesus Christ is _ the great message of the New Testament, and is the immediate possession for those who will receive it. This is the great message, of how the confusion and disorganiza- fion in our own lives and in the life of the church may be done away in Christ, that God has shown me marked out upon the pages of the Word of God, as with the ‘distinctness of a quadrilateral. Here I find the secret of unity unveiled on all sides; the unity of God, the unity of man with God, the unity of the powers and forces of man within himself, and the unity of Christians with one another. The four members of “the quadrilateral of spiritual unity in the name of Christ” these: I. Union through Christ, or the vital importance of the atonement; that is, the Union with God of the soul that has been alienated from the life of God by wicked works. II. Union with Christ, or the essence of spiritual experience; that is, that yondrous fellowship with the Savior, which is the characteristic note of a truly consecrated life. III. Union in Christ, or the basis of enduring fellowship; that is, Christ in our earthly relationships to keep them holy, to save them from confusion and disin- IV. Union for Christ, or the platform of statesmanship in Christian service; that ‘Christ the rallying point for a church divided by many theological and ecclesiastical ms; Christ, the common ground on which Christians can stand together and work her for the reformation of society and the evangelization of the world, 288 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE FOUNDATION OF UNITY. But I cannot bring out the full glory of this quadrilateral of spiritual unity, until I have first pointed out the deep foundations upon which it rests. This mighty thought—that Christ can transform life from discord and disintegration into peace; from confusion and contradiction into unity—is, indeed, built upon the granite foun- dations of the deepest truths in the Bible. We will first develop out of God’s Word three fundamental propositions underlying the quadrilateral of spiritual unity in the name of Christ. 1. Unity is the note of God’s perfection and of man’s completion. 2. Sin is the interruption of unity and the incoherence of life. 3. Christ is God’s self-revelation for unity. 1. Unity is the note of God’s perfection and of man’s completion. You may remember in Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” that superb chapter entitled, “Unity the Type of the Divine Comprehensiveness,” in which he points out that the unity of God is realized in His essential presence in all His works. But far more gloriously do the Scriptures themselves bring forth this idea that God’s life is full, rich, manifold, harmonious with Himself. (1) That unity is the note of God’s perfection appears most marvelously in connection with the mystery of the Holy Trinity. May I suggest a few Scriptures that bring out this thought? We read in Luke 3: 22 the account of the baptism of our Lord: The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “Thou art my beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased.” In John 10:30 our Savior said, “I and my Father are one.” In Matthew 25:42, “My Father, Thy will be done;” and in John 8:29, “I do always the things that please Him.” Not only are the Father and the Son thus revealed to us in this wonderful unity, but the Spirit likewise. (Read also John 14:26, and John 16: 13.) To me it is one of the most exalting and blessed things in the world to stop sometimes to think of the completeness, the perfect unity of the life of God, the absolute oneness of will, the absolute unity of purpose, the absolute perfection of character. The more this thought of the perfection of God in the unity of His eternal Godhead grows upon us, the more do we find a basis for the belief that unity is God’s law for all life, and that He would have us sharers with Himself in the unity of a perfect holiness and a perfect joy. But not only is the fact brought out that God’s perfection is in His unity in the Holy Trinity—it is brought out in the comprehensiveness of God's life in His world. We read in John 1:3, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made;” and in Ephesians 1: 23 the great verse, “The fullness of Him that filleth all in all.” We are reminded in I Cor. 14:33 that that fullness of God is not a disorganized and confused fullness, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.” Where shall we find in all the Scriptures a more moving account of God’s fullness in all the world than in the one hundred and thirty- ninth Psalm? Thus unity is the note of God’s completeness, a life that fills all in all, that is in perfect harmony with itself and in perfect relation with all His works. (2) But in unity is also represented to us the note of man’s completion. in Gen. 1: 26 we read that man was designed by God to be the reflection of His own unity. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And after we have gone on through the whole story of the fall and of sinful man, with what wonderful refresh- ment comes to us that prayer in I Thess. 5:23, “Now the God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved entire unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” What is that but the prayer that Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Fall. 289 ity may be brought back into our disorganized lives, a divine, Godlike unity; that fhere sin has disorganized, God may sanctify; that where sin has broken up, God may rebuild? (Read also I Cor. 12:25.) Above all, when we speak of unity among uman lives we find ourselves coming back at the last to the prayer of our blessed avior in John 17:21, “That they may all be one, even as Thou, Father, art in e and I in Thee; that they also may be one in us, I in them and Thou in me, hat they may be perfected into one.” I hope that down at the bottom of all our ‘inking about spiritual unity we have come to the thought that God is perfect unity Himself, and that God’s will for man is perfect unity in the human life. } SIN IS THE INTERRUPTION OF UNITY. 2. Now, if this is true, we pass to the second of these three fundamental lany ways in which to think and speak of sin. There are many points of view from hich to study the awful problem of sin in our own hearts and in the world. But = are especially interested at present in speaking of sin as that which breaks up the nity of life and makes life incoherent and scattered, and finally wrecks life, even as are told in the Word of God, “The wages of sin is death.” (1) Sin is the interruption of unity. In Gen. 3:10 we read words that I am sure ‘one time and another have had an echo in the life of all of us. “I heard Thy fice in the garden, and I was afraid and hid myself.” There is the evidence of a oken unity between the soul and God. It is the disposition of the soul under the power of sin to go away from God, to hide from God, to turn into some other path, seek out a way that is not the way of fellowship. Is not this the testimony of our uls in the deepest experiences of sin that we have ever had? What is there that fits us for communion with God, and makes the thought of God unwelcome, as cherishing of sin in our life and the submission of our wills to the bidding of the fl one? Then, indeed, the voice of God is to us a note of alarm and disquiet. It ' m akes us wish to get farther and farther away from Him. We hear His voice, and we are afraid and hide ourselves. In Isaiah 53:6 is that great verse about the verging paths, the path which we choose leading us away from the unity of the life h God, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own ” Then in I Peter 2: 25 is the echo of that thought, only brightened up with the ssed news that we can come back from our erring ways to Jesus Christ, ‘“‘Ye were sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your als.” (Compare Prov. 4: 18.) This thought takes hold of one’s very soul—the thought of sin being the interrup- m of unity. The bitter experiences of our lives have revealed this to us. How ny, who once were walking in union with Him and who have lapsed into other , have come to realize that sin, whatever else it does, breaks us and drags us er away from Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. (2) Following upon this thought, that sin is the interruption of unity, comes the Sadder thought that sin is the incoherence of life. How many people there are in world without a definite aim, without a great high purpose, without a settled ef, without any clear relation to God, who are simply drifting on, wandering ough life, restless, unhappy, miserable, with no peace in their souls—leading Sherent lives. And what is this but the natural outcome of sin? As it is written Is. 57: 20, “The wicked are like the troubled sea, for it cannot rest, whose waters up mire and dirt.” It is the nature of sin in the soul to work out in us this cing up of purpose, this incoherence of life, this strange restlessness, this lack of 290 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. a settled and high ambition, this powerlessness to take the initiative for great and holy things. It is the doom of sin in the individual to make life incoherent. The most terrible account in the whole New Testament of the incoherence of life which — sin develops is found in Rom 1: 28-34. It begins with these words, “As they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.” Then follows the list of the incoherent acts that people commit who are given up to the life of sin—the incoherent life that is without Christ, without the new motive that Christ puts into life; above all things, without the union with God which is through Jesus Christ our Lord. On into the Christian life, from time to time, by reason of our lack of faith and our lack of prayer and our lack of communion with God, we are haunted with visitations of incoherence in our lives, by reason of conflicting moral interests. Paul says in Romans 7: “I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the iaw of God after the inward man; but I see a different law in my members.” Then the thought of how miserable this incoherent life is, now dominated by the Spirit of God and now drawn off into forbidden paths, grows upon him, until he cries out in an agony of mind, “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” CHRIST IS GOD’S SELF-REVELATION OF UNITY. 3. The third proposition which underlies the great quadrilateral of spiritual unity in the name of Christ; and as that second was dark and dreary as an alkali plain, so this third proposition comes to us like the very glory of heaven. Christ is God’s seli- revelation for unity. Many persons who have a desire to know Christ, and who do, in a certain sense, have a knowledge of Christ, do not at all comprehend what is the position of the Bible regarding Jesus Christ. A great many look upon Christ as the most beautiful, wise, and glorious being that ever lived upon the earth. But when you present Christ as something vital, something that must come into our experience if we are to have peace with God, then many are confused, and turned aside, and troubled, and they say: “I do not see why you should put Christ between me and God. Why cannot I go straight to God and live my life straight to God without having this arbitrary factor of Christ put in between?” In the beginning God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;” and then sin came in to darken the sun, to defile the image, to obliterate the likeness; but God is not turned from His purpose by the intervention of sin, and by the black- ening influences of sin upon human life, and God reveals Himself in the fullness of time in the incarnate form of the holy and eternal Lord, that He may bring again the unity that is broken and dissolved through sin; and therefore, Christ is God’s self- revelation for unity. Have we any idea of what must be the sorrow in God’s heart as He looks upon the world as it is today; upon the miserable incoherence of human lives, when all His plan was so glorious, so eternally beautiful, so worthy of Himself, and when things are so absolutely contrary to what He would desire and what He has chosen for man? If an earthly parent, who has done everything that love and wealth can do to train up a child in the noblest way, is heart-broken when that child, casting aside all its privileges and oppcrtunities, loves darkness rather than light, and untruth rather than truth, what must be the grief in the heart of God? What must be God’s sorrow for a fallen world, when the whole world, as St. John says, lieth in the evil one? But Christ is God’s self-revelation in order to bring once again the unity defiled and broken through sin. Lae OWs let us see whether this position is borne out in the Holy Scriptures, Three things appear in this connection: (1) Christ, in His glorious person, is God's y ‘ Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hail. 291 self-revelation of His own unity. When God would bring back again unity into life which was broken through sin, first of all He reveals Himself that we may know Him. esus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” “No man cometh unto the ‘father but by me;” and therefore, Christ in His glorious person is God’s self-revelation His own unity. Read Colossians 1:19, “It pleased the Father that in Him should the fullness dwell; and Colossians 2:9, “In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the dhead bodily.” This, then, is the view of Christ as it is set forth to us in the New Testament, and need I ask you to discern between such a view of Christ, and the ethical view of Christ which simply represents Him as the loveliest member of the ‘human race, the one in whom all beauties of manly character unite? That is true, f-revelation of His own unity, “in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead dily.”’ (2) Christ is God’s self-revelation to repair the broken unity between God and man.» The Bible tells us that at the beginning there was a perfect unity between God and man, and that sin was the rupturing of that unity and the alienation of man from he life of God. Now we are distinctly told in the Word that Christ is God’s self- elation to repair the broken unity between God and man. Read I Peter 3: 18, ( hrist also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us God.” And II Cor. 5: 18-20, “All things are of God, who hath reconciled us o Himself through Christ and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, hat God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” Perhaps the grandest sage of the New Testament on this subject is Col. 1:19: ‘Having made eace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. And you, that ere sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath de reconciled.” This is the teaching of the Word of God itself, that Christ is the elf revelation of God to repair the broken unity between God and man. (3) The last thought is this: Christ is God’s self-revelation to recover the lost nity in our own human lives. “In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full.” (Col. 2:9.) The empty life, the disorganized ife, the scattered life, the life that has had no motive, no continuity, no peace, no oy, finds all given back to it when it receives the fullness of Christ. So, also, tom. 8:10, 28, “If Christ be in you the Spirt is life,” and “All things work together ir good to them that love God.” What a contrast between the time when all things rked together for evil; when everything was at loose ends in our life; when there yas no plan, no comprehensive motive and purpose, no peace of God passing all understanding; when life was like the troubled sea that could not rest, whose waters ast up mire and dirt—what a contrast between such a state and what is here depicted! Tf Christ be in you the Spirit is life, and all things work together for good to them hat love God—to them that are called according to His purpose. I. Now, taking up the first member of the quadrilateral of spiritual unity in the name of Christ, we shall consider first UNION THROUGH CHRIST. e vital importance of the atonement—the union with God of the soul that has been ated from the life of God by wicked works. I shall take two key texts for this part of our subject: Rom. 5:1, “Being justified by faith, let us have peace with God ‘ough our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also we have had our access into this ice wherein we stand.” Luke 9:30, 31, “Behold there talked with Him two men, 292 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. which were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” That verse brings the mount of the transfigur- ation into touch with the mount of the crucifixion. We all feel the wonderful sacredness of the transfiguration scene, especially in the importance of the theme of which they talked—‘‘His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” Observe in what relation they talked of the death of Christ. They talked of it as a great work which He was under obligation to accomplish and fulfill in the fullness of time. It is this conception of the death of Christ as an act foreseen and foreknown—a sacred fulfillment to be made, a decease to be accomplished—that is now before us as we speak of the vital importance of the atonement, or union through Christ. There are at least three ways in which the death of Christ is regarded. Some have looked upon the death of Christ simply as a catastrophe, the sudden result of excite- ment in a crowd, whereby a young, beautiful life perished before its time, and its work was reduced to failure. Others look upon the death of Christ as a heroic martyrdom, wherein a noble soul met the consequences of its own fearless teachings. They feel that Jesus might have escaped His martyrdom if He had been willing te withdraw from the position that He took; but that His soul was too heroie to withdraw, and therefore He went on to win His crown of martyrdom and to seal His testimony with His blood. But there are others who have been willing to take the teaching of the Word of God concerning the meaning of the death of Christ; and to such the death of Christ appears as the supreme mission of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the accomplishment of which He fulfilled the chief end of His incarnation. There was more than one end in view in the incarnation of our blessed Lord. He came to be the revelation of the Father (John 14: 9). He came also to be an example that we should follow His steps (I Peter 2: 21). These were ends in view in the incarnation of our Savior. But I believe we may say, on the authority of the Word itself, that the chief end of the incarnation of Christ is His sacrifice, His sin-offering, His propitia- tion for the world as the Lamb of God bearing away the sin of the world. I John 4: 14—“The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.” From this point of view the death of our Lord is to us not a mere catastrophe, not even a mere martyr- dom; it is a voluntary sacrifice, it is the decease which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem, it is the supreme mission which brought Him to the earth in His incarnate form. It seems to me to be absolutely fundamental to Christian experience to have large, loving views of the atonement; to make the cross the central fact of life—Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If we construct a system of religion which does not center around the cross we imperil spiritual life, for we give it a mistaken point of view. If we limit our thought of Christ to the moral influence of His example, or to the religious value of His death as an object lesson in heroic self-sacrifice and devotion to principle, we lose the essential feature of the gospel, which is the historic reality of the sacrifice on Calvary for the redemption of the world. But the question is, How are we to obtain a deeper and more vital view of the meaning of Christ's death? I answer, Not by a mere effort of the imagination to picture the terrible details of the crucifixion. It is necessary, of course, that so far as possible we should realize the crucifixion; but the mere dramatic conception of the crucifixion does not necessarily imply any adequate spiritual appreciation of the work of the Crucified. And again, not by an unreal attempt to force a sorrowful state of mind in the presence of the cross of Christ. There is a grief for sin and a grief for the effects of sin in ourselves and in the world which must deepen as all spiritual experience deepens; but this is something very different from the attempt to foster an imaginative and artificial sadness by dwelling upon the physical horrors of the crucifixion. No, there is, I believe, but one way to be lifted up to anything like a true sense of the large meanings of Christ’s death, and that way is the deep study of the « Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hall. 293 Bible. The Bible not only records the historic fact of Christ’s death, the Bible sur- rounds Christ's cross with truths that reflect its glory and that interpret its meaning; and the strange inconsistency of many minds seems to be a willingness to accept from the Bible the historic fact of the death of Christ and at the same time to reject the ‘truths that surround the death of Christ in the same Bible to set forth its meaning and to reveal its unspeakable value and necessity. These truths that stand forth all through the Bible, explaining the meaning of the ‘death of Christ, are far too great in number, as well as too great in scope, to be pre- ‘sented at any one time. All the fullness of God is in them. They deal with every aspect of our Lord’s death—as a sacrifice for sin, as a manifestation of the love of _ God, and as a means of union of the soul with God. But while we realize that a com- plete presentation of these great and world-wide thoughts is entirely impossible, I _may yet briefly lift your minds toward seven world-wide thoughts that make the cross of Jesus glorious. 1. The death of Christ is the consummation in time of an eternal plan of God. - Luke 9:31 presents this thought, although not in its fullness: “They spake of His decease, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” But Rey. 13:8 brings out this thought in all its majesty: “The Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation _ of the world.” The atonement, historically consummated in time in the sacrifice of Christ, is a part of the eternal plan of God's love for man; and it is just because I ople have overlooked this entirely that the atonement, the death of Christ, has emed to many not only unnecessary, but abhorrent. Never was any truth so per- verted as the death of Christ. It has been represented that the atonement is the cause of God’s love; that God hated man and that the gentle Christ threw Himself in tween God, who hated man, and man, who was trembling under God’s hatred, and of the atonement, and the death of Christ is the consummation in time of the eternal plan of God. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that _ whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3: 16.) 2. The first thought has taken us back into the eternal past; the second takes on into the eternal future. The death of Christ is the theme of rejoicing in heaven. als thereof; for Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out of very kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”’ There we catch a glimpse of the eternal glory; there we catch.an echo of the eternal hallelujah; and the light of that glory and the burden of that song is the death of ‘Christ. 8. The Lord’s death is the covenant of hope for His church. In that most affecting interview of St. Paul with the leaders of the Ephesian church at Miletus, _ recorded in Acts 20, he says, “Feed the church of God, which He hath purchased with H s own blood.” Here is the ground of my hope concerning the church. Not her orldly power, not her active work, not her numerous membership, not her material alth. God forbid that we should trust in any of these signs, for these signs may all fail. The only hope that is reasonable for the future of the church of Christ is found in the death of Christ. This is the only thing that lifts me above discouragement and “apprehension in view of the many undesirable and unhappy circumstances that attend the life of the church in the present day. Her worldly conformity, her sad dissensions, hope if one were not held fast by that blessed word. The death of Christ is the covenant of hope for the church. 294 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. 4. The death of Christ is the door of access into the very heart of God. Christ was not setting up any barrier between man and God when He said, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me;”’ He was opening unto us a door of access to the heart of | God. We cannot find our way to the heart of God unless we go by that new and living way. Read again Rom. 5:1, 2: “Being justified by faith let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.” Read also that thrilling passage in Eph. 2:13: “But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition; for through Him we have our access in one Spirit unto the Father. So, then, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but ye are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” What a wonderful note of union is there—the door of access to the very heart of God through the death of Jesus (Christ our Lord. 5. The death of Christ has a direct relation to the personal experience to each one of us. Nothing is more true, I think, among earnest young lives than a desire to receive all the gospel, and yet a comparative failure to see that so great a truth as the atonement has really any personal relation to oneself. It seems so far off; it seems as if it belonged to history, as if it belonged to the ages and the dispensations, but not as if it belonged to the individual soul. It is at this point that the Word of God comes in with this great, great truth. The two texts that I quote here are wonderful in their tenderness. Hebrews 2: 9: “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor: that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” That, indeed, is wonderful! It brings the cross right into touch with our own life. The other text, Galatians 2:20: “T am crucified with Christ: nevertheless 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 Himself for me.” I once heard Canon Liddon in St. Paul’s Cathedral, speaking from that text, say that to St. Paul, the appropriation of Jesus and of the love of Jesus Christ to his own soul was just as real and personal as if there had not been another soul in the whole universe to be blessed and benefited by the sacrifice of the cross. That is the point we want to reach. We want to see that the door of access to the heart of the Infinite is opened for us individually by the Son of God, who loved each one of us, and gave Himself up for each one of us. 6. The death of Christ is the basis of testimony in the life of the Christian. You call yourself a Christian, and you conceive of yourself as a witness for Christ. But what is the burden of your witness? The answer brings you again to the cross. Asa Christian you take your stand at the Lord’s table; as a Christian you receive the bread and wine of the communion. What is the meaning of that sacrament? “As often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.” (I Cor. 11: 26.) That is your Christian witness-bearing; to bear witness to the Lord’s death; far and wide, by spoken word, by crucified life, to bear witness to the reality, and the value, and the personal application of the Lord’s death till He comes. 7. Lastly, the death of Christ is the great motive for personal consecration. Hebrews 10:19: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy. place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, and having a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water: let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking the assembling of our- selves together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.” What day? The day of His second — Ai 3 Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hall. 295 .. coming, the day of which we have just been singing in that hymn about the return ‘of Christ. You do not need anything beyond this to bring the death of Christ close home to your life. It is the great personal motive for consecration. UNION WITH CHRIST. II. Now we may speak a few moments about the second member of the quadri- lateral: Union with Christ, or the essence of Christian experience; that is, the wondrous fellowship with the Savior, which is the distinctive note of the consecrated 4] ‘eB ¥ We take two key texts: Matthew 28: 20 (margin), “I am with you all the days,” md John 15: 4 and 5: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing.” Here we get the thought that union with Christ is the essence of Christian experience. “Apart from me your life amounts to nothing; it is futile so far as it claims to be a Christian life.” The essence ‘of Christian experience is union with the living Lord, who is with you, as He says, all the days. _ I shall just outline this member of our quadrilateral to show that to be in union with Christ brings to us eight essential elements of Christian experience. 1. It brings to us the essential aspiration. “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conform- able unto His death.” (Philippians 3: 10.) The great aspiration in all college life. is for more knowledge. The essential aspiration in Christian experience is the same thing, more knowledge. If we are in union with Christ we want to know more and more about Him. 2. Union with Christ brings to us the essential hope. ‘Looking for that blessed Rope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” Titus 2: 13.) More and more I feel that this hope is essential; that we cannot limit our thought of Christ to His past manifestation in the world, or to His present life in glory; that we are bound, if we take the New Testament at all, to take it all, and to as an essential part of Christian experience the blessed hope of a new manifesta- on of Christ a second time for those who look for Him. 38. Union with Christ brings into our life the essential aim. What we want is B aim in life if our life is going to amount to anything. Philippians 3:14 gives us the m, the very opposite of an incoherent life: ‘‘Not as though I had already attained, ther were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have appre- hen nded; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and ching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the ze of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” There you have an aim in life that worth having, that never wavers, that delivers from incoherence. To press toward | a ‘mark is what gives coherence, shapeliness, continuity, progress to life. _ 4 To be in union with Christ gives to us the essential dynamic. What one wants, I th the best intentions in the world and the noblest aim, is the power to carry those ntions out. A man may dream all day of living a noble life, yet live a most ble one. What we want is power, a dynamic to make it possible to bring into these great aims of Christian experience. Philippians 4: 13 tells what that dynamic is: “I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.” In the life that is consecrated, that is filled with the great essential aim, this means not only a spiritual fengthening, but an intellectual and physical strengthening many, many times, ring the mind and making it able to think when it is disturbed by weakness, lifting 296 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. : up the body which is almost ready to sink down with fatigue, and sending it on to service as if by a miracle. You remember that word of the poet about Sir Galahad, “whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure.” So is every one who lives near to Christ. A weak man, a weak woman feels in Him almost limit- less power to go on in service; and yet there is not a bit of boasting or a bit of pre-— sumption in that claim of power, for with the same breath we say, “Apart from Him I can do nothing.” 5. This union with Christ brings to us the essential victory over circumstances and external conditions. If we are going to defer the larger spiritual expression oi ourselves in this world until our circumstances have shaped themselves favorably and until all our conditions are the very best, we shall simply pass out of this world with- out having fulfilled a mission in it. The thing to know is that in Him is the secret of victory over untoward circumstances and undesirable conditions. It is the over- coming of the world. I John 5: 5—‘‘Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ?” Oh, the wonderful victory over untoward circumstances that has come again and again to God’s servants! Everything the very worst possible for them, everything against them; and yet, because they have lived in this absolute union with Christ, they have overcome the world, they have risen above adverse conditions, they have snatched victory from defeat! 6. This union with Christ brings to us the essential assurance of courage. Who has not had his dark times? Who has not had her moments of depression when she was almost ready to give up the fight for the nobler life and the nobler things? But Romans 8: 35 comes to us with a note of dauntless courage: “Who shall separate us from the love.of Christ? Shall trikulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” There is a note of dauntless courage for you! 7. This union with Christ brings to us the essential refreshment of our ideals and motives and views of living. There is nothing sadder in life than a faded ideal, when our enthusiasm for service wanes and our familiarity with spiritual things degenerates into commonplaceness, and our life looks threadbare and mean. That cannot be if we live in union with Christ. Read II Corinthians 5:17: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” How marvelously fresh God’s world is every new day! How He brings the dawn and the sunrise and the dew and the fresh glory of sky and cloud and field, as if there never had been a day before in all the world! So may our life be if we live in Christ. This refreshing of life’s ideals may be wrought out in us day by day. “Tf any man be in Christ, he is a new creature,” may be a promise verified to us morning by morning. 8. This union with Christ brings to us the essential key of living. Philippians 1: 21—“‘For me to live is Christ.’’ That is just what we want—a key to living. Living is the greatest problem and mystery that we have to deal with—to live our own lives, to work our own way through our own problems, to be extricated from our own tangles and confusions. Christ is the key to living. Christ solves every difficulty, answers every question, leads through every tangle, nerves for every effort—is the way, the truth and the life. Revelation 3: 14 is a part of the epistle to the church at Laodicea—the church of the luke-warm people, the people that were neither hot nor cold, whose lives were all involved in indeterminate relations to God and to evil. They were neither one thing nor the other; they were just like multitudes of us, who find our lives such a problem because our relations with God and with evil are so obscure and indeterminate. In His message to that church of the Laodicean people who were neither hot nor cold, Christ calls Himself “the Amen.” “These things saith the Amen.” There is something marvelously final about the Amen. It is the ss Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hall. 297 end of discussion; it is getting to a point. Christ gives the key of living in that way. When we are all in confusion as to right and wrong, when our whole life is a tangle, Christ is to us the great Amen to set things right. On and on through the days one - finds in Christ the Lost Chord, that Great Amen! It links all perplexed meanings in one infinite peace. Oh, may we all know how Christ gives us the key of living! May _we all know how Christ links the perplexed meanings into one infinite peace! UNION IN CHRIST. III. The third and fourth members of otr quadrilateral are union in Christ, or the basis of enduring fellowship; that is, Christ in our earthly relationships to keep them holy, to save them from confusion and disintegration. Nothing is more evident in our Lord’s life than that He Himself believed in and depended upon fellowship as a source of comfort and a means of strength. He, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, was yet so perfectly and truly human, one with us and one like us, that His heart hungered after human fellowship and His soul rested on human friends. We see this brought out in Christ’s choice of His disciples. Instead of going out upon His mission alone He begins His public ministry by gathering around imself a select circle of friends, to whom He confided the deepest thoughts “of His soul, and whom He took with Him up and down the walks of His “ministry as His companions and His comforters. We see it still more forcibly in the ‘selection of some out of this number to be specially near to Him in the great crises of His earthly experience. There were three out of the twelve—Peter, James and John -whom He seemed to admit still more closely into the confidence of His heart, as _ though through this circle within the circle He is showing us more clearly His rever- ence for human friendships and His dependence upon them. Still further does He “reveal this characteristic of His humanity in the selection of one out of the three, upon whom He especially leaned, and to whom He particularly turned as to one most of all in spiritual kinship with Himself. This is the disciple whom Jesus loved. I believe _ that this was a truly human friendship, the drawing to one another of two souls that ‘were mutually congenial, each finding its best self-expression through the other. How gratefully and how touchingly our Lord expresses His obligation to these human friends! In Luke 22: 28 He says, ‘““Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.” Not always were they worthy of that high word from Him. There yas a time when they forsook Him and fled under the terror of men; yet Jesus trusted them, leaned upon them, and was grateful to them for what they gave to His life. __ I think, also, that nothing is more evident than that Christ desired the element of fellowship to be a part of the religion that He founded. He desired that the spirit and crowded out, instead of His disciples drifting apart into individualism, He longed that fellowship should be cultivated among them and that mutual dependence and the pve of one for another should be strengthened with time. This is very affectingly n in His institution of the communion. The sacrament of His body and blood gnifies much else, but it certainly is also a sacrament of fellowship. The disciples gathered around the common board, and He provided them with the common food. ‘In the early days of Christianity this sacrament was the seal of fellowship in the Chris- tiar church and for a time every meal was looked upon as the Lord’s supper, and in the most simple and unaffected way the disciples of Jesus gathered day by day for the feasts of love.” * But the striking thought is that the fellowship which Christ blesses most evidently is the fellowship in which He Himself is a part; a medium, as it were, through which he human friends find one another, and the human friendship takes up into itself, ; through Him, a saving, sanctifying, and glorifying element. It is the joy of one who ¥ ea 298 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. has learned what it is to have fellowship with Christ, to wish that that divine element shall continue to be a part of every closest relationship that we form, and that every such relationship may be kept holy and saved from disintegration, and loss, and con- fusion, and sin, by His presence in it. “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” (I John 1: 8, 7.) : Now the thought of a union of human hearts in Christ is no vain dream. It may be realized in all stages of our life. Perhaps one of the most pathetic remembrances of life is the remembrance of the supposed friendships that came to nothing; that rushed into our life as warm affinities; that influenced our life, and not always well; that were easily broken, and that passed away and drifted astern as the wreckage of things that might have been, but never came to fulfillment. But I want to speak of the union of human hearts in Christ and in five relations. : 1. Inthe region of our personal friendships. I believe devoutly in friendship, and there is nothing earthly upon which I more intensely depend; yet more and more E feel the mystery of friendship. Friendship is a strange and mysterious commingling of involuntary affinity and conscious choice; and because we so often fail to understand that Christ wants to enter into our friendships, and that He will enter in wherever a pure friendship is ready to welcome Him, we make many mistakes, lose many bless- ings, and greatly impoverish and injure our own lives many times over. In the beau- tiful friendship of David and Jonathan we see one into which God came, and through which God worked as the medium, whereby friendship rose to the level to which it is always intended to rise. First Samuel 23: 16 contains the beautiful words spoken at a time when one of those friends was in the greatest difficulty and had taken refuge in a dense forest; and of the other friend it is said, “Jonathan went to David in the wood and strengthened his hands in God.” Long years ago that verse came into my life as the type of what friendship means. I believe God has a meaning in making us capable of great friendships just as much as He has a meaning in enduing us with any other quality or capacity. But too often this divine element is excluded; too often we make no provision for it, or fail to realize its value; too often the friendships of life, or what are so called, are merely its unspiritual affinities. Unspiritual friendships are the limitation of many lives, and the ruin of not a few. I have seen nothing more striking in the study of human life than the strong influence of an unspiritual nature through friendship or affinity, over a spiritual nature weaker than itself. In II Corin-— thians 6: 14 there is a very wonderful verse. You can apply it almost as far as you will. “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” Those words apply themselves, under the touch of the Spirit, to those who will.receive them, I think they raise this question—not the mere legal or technical question whether it is right for one who is a Christian to marry one who is not a Christian—- not merely that legal and technical question, but this far deeper, richer, and more exhaustive question, whether it is possible for one soul that has within it Jesus Christ, to give its best out to any other soul unless Christ goes with that best and is a part of it. I'am convinced, and with great earnestness I affirm the conviction today, that the only perfect friendship is the friendship in which Christ is the medium between the » two souls that call themselves friends. But if this law is to prevail and we are to keep ourselves back from those who are not Christians, how can the consecrated life give itself to those that are not Chris- tians, that it may bring them to Christ? The answer is found in Christ Himself. Two phrases concerning Christ form one of the most beautiful paradoxes in the New Testa- Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hall. 299 ” 66 ment: “The friend of sinners;” “separated from sinners.” Christ was, of all souls, he one that yearned most to give itself out to the sinful, but Christ felt so supremely hat the communion of soul with soul is along the highest walks of friendship, that He could give Himself forth only in that deeper life to those who were of kindred spirit with Himself in things divine. . 4 2. Now, may I say a word regarding the union with Christ in the home life? What is more precious in this world than the realization of Christ in our home relation- hips! In the fifth and sixth chapters of the Epistle to the Ephesians you will find most every relationship of the home brought out in this Christian light. “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in i heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear if God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Hus- bands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. . - - Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. . . . . Servants, ‘be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.” I will not dwell upon this; home as the Master of the house, the Lord of the home life. 8. Consider this thought of union in Christ in relation to the efforts of small es for spiritual aims. In Matthew 18: 19, 20, we read: “I say unto you, that if _ two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered _ together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”” How many small circles there re that have been formed in the colleges within the last few years for Christian effort; nd how often those circles have been formed by fainting hearts that realized the almost yerpowering weight of worldliness and agnosticism against which they were striving make headway. Christ loves to enter in and be a part of these efforts of a few for d higher and greater things. How cheering is this thought! Christ not only takes lote of numbers, but Christ sees with equal joy and equal sympathy the effort of the _ few, of the two, the three that agree together to seek for the higher things. It is a word of the greatest encouragement to some who are thinking, it may be, of the social Tyfe in their own community or in their own college, and ask themselves, what are we among so many? It is just at this point that Christ meets you and that you have the holy joy of the thought of union in Christ, the basis of an enduring fellowship. Be _ mot afraid if He is with you, to go forward in seeking to bring others to higher dards of thought, and to higher levels of living. _ 4. In the larger life of the Church. The law that Christ has laid down for the church is union in Himself. In Eph. 4, we read: “He gave some, apostles; and some, fophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of € saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a ct man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: That we, speak- ig the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even ‘Christ: from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together through that which joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, ‘eth the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.” Would that at ideal of the church of Christ might be brought forward in these days of confusion dismemberment, that the larger life of the church in the view of Christ might every- 300 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. : where be seen to be the life of a body compacted together in Himself, every member thereof contributing to the unity and the harmony of the effective and perfect whole. 5. I cannot pass from this thought without speaking of that which is present with me every day as I carry along in life the blessed memory of some whose faces I no . longer see upon the earth—fellowship in Him with those who are with Christ in | paradise. Our fellowships would be brief and transitory indeed if they ended with death. How many a glorious fellowship, that had in it the fullness of Christ's presence and the joy of Christ’s life, suddenly ended in this world by the death of one of the friends. How many a home, perfectly beautiful and united in Christ, every relation- ship of the home sanctified by His presence and uplifted by His example, has been darkened and saddened by the going forth from it of some cherished and beloved one. Can we for a moment believe that the thought of union in Christ is not great enough to transcend this break, which comes through death, and to join us with them and them with us? In Eph. 3: 15 Paul says that he bows his knees to God, for whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named. Yes, as that great hymn says: “One family we dwell in Him, é One church above, beneath.” Death has no power to break the union that is in Christ, and those that are with Him in paradise are as much one with us and we one with them, as if they were here by our side. How sweetly does Paul speak in I Thess. 4:13: “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” Ah, friends, is it not worth while to seek to bring Christ into all our earthly relationships? Is it not worth while to seek only for those friendships into which He can come and of which He can be a part; not only that our friendships may be saved from disintegration and confusion here, but that théy may not be broken when death comes to rend the earthly bond; that we may have entered into a union with hearts in Christ which is eternal, which death cannot sever, and which shall be consummated, again in its fullness in the day when the vision opens before us? UNION FOR CHRIST. IV. The fourth and last member of our quadrilateral indicates a still larger aspect of the great unity of which we are speaking: Union for Christ, the platform of states- manship in Christian service; Christ, the rallying point for a church divided by many theological and ecclesiastical systems; Christ, the common ground on which Christians © can stand together and work together for the reformation of society and the evangeli- zation of the world. A key text for this is found in John 17: 20, 21—a part of Christ’s high-priestly prayer: ‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me.” Taking that magnificent text, there are presented to us three vital thoughts concerning the true state and mission of the church as regarded from Christ’s point of view. 1. The great object of Christ is to convince the world of His divine mission. That is exactly what the world does not believe, and what the world fails to believe so long as it sees Christians warring among themselves. The great mission of the church is to convince the world, through the Spirit, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; that He is sent of the Father to redeem. the whole world, ‘‘that the world may know that Thou hast sent me.” , | ; 5 ‘ : Spiritual Unity in the Name of Christ—C. C. Hall. 301 _ 2. This aim of convincing the world of the divine mission of Jesus Christ is to be obtained through the unity of believers. “That they all may be one, that the world nay know that Thou hast sent me.” Here we come, I think, to the largest aspects of his thought of unity; and we feel the responsibility to speak for unity and to work for nity, because here is a world lying in the evil one, which is prevénted by the loss of inity in the church of Christ from believing that the Father has sent the Son to redeem the world. 3. This unity is not uniformity, a mechanical unity that everybody shall be like verybody else. But it is unity like that within the Holy Trinity, “that they may be one, as Thou art in me and I| in Thee’—a unity that allows for differences, a compre- ensive unity, a unity on earth which is like the unity of the Trinity in heaven, a unity _of many members in one body. Starting from this great key thought which is supplied by the Lord Himself, I have found a series of seven noble and commanding propositions presenting them- selves to me. (1.) Christ regards Himself as in vital relations with the whole world of men. John 12: 32: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.” What magnificent point of view—Christ regarding Himself as in vital relations with the hole world of men! In the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said of Christ that He, “for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross.” That phrase means, for the joy was set forth before Him like a great landscape, a great prospect that was set h before Him as He was lifted up on the cross. The joy of Christ in His sacrifice was the consciousness that He stood in vital relations to the whole world of men. Now, in thinking of unity for Christ, let us start with Christ’s own idea of His relation © the whole world of men. (2.) The death of Christ has reference to the whole world of men. I John 2: 2: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the ghteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for 4 sins of the whole world.” Grasp this thought, which I cannot pause to amplify, ‘that Christ’s death has reference to the whole world of men. ; (3.) The gospel of Christ has a message for the whole world of men. Mark 16: 15: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” What could ‘be more broad, more catholic than that thought? A gospel issued to all the world, be preached to the whole creation! (4.) This message of the uplifted Christ can be understood and appropriated by he whole world of men. Colossians 3:10, 11: “The new man, which is renewed in nowledge after the image of Him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor y, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but ist is all and in all.””. When we remember how complicated religious thought has raised in the controversies of the church, it is refreshing to go back to the begin- g and see Christ not only beholding His relation to the whole world of men, but ending out a gospel which is intelligible to the whole world of nen. The message of Christ is something that all men can receive and appropriate. _ (6.) The development of the church is under the law of unity rather than under he law of uniformity. I Corinthians 12:4: “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same law. And * oe ‘ 302 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.” I rejoice to feel that Christ has contemplated that the church would involve differences; that men by their different temperaments, and by their different training, would see things from different points of view; but there is one God that worketh all in all; there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and although there is this diversity in the church of Christ, yet there is a larger comprehensive unity in the gospel message which is given to the church to deliver, that rises above all the minor differences that may from time to time develop. (7.) In this complex church, where due allowance is made for human variations of point of view, Christ is absolutely supreme. Ephesians 1:20: “God put all the things ‘in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all’ This leads up to our conclusion: Union for Christ is the method of statesmanship for the church of the future. The master stroke of the devil is to divide Christians among themselves. What we need is a larger comprehension of one another among Christians; a greater trust of one another as Christians; a zeal for evangelism that shall swallow up the zeal for controversy; a concentration of forces around Christ to exalt Him by common testimony as the Head of the church and the Redeemer of the world, that the world may know that His mission and Himself are divine. Who then will be a peacemaker in the church of Christ, and so a witness bearer in the world? Shall it not be our prayer so far as we have any influence in the church of Christ, to work for that larger. unity, union for Christ, that we may realize over and above all local differences and distinctions these great thoughts, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto myself.” “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” I trust that God in His grace will let this message from His Word so utter itself that we shall have a clearer sense of God’s perfect unity in Himself, of His desire that our life should attain a perfect unity in its relation to Him, in its relation to the world, and in its relation to its own complex powers. [This address was delivered in three parts at the Young Women’s conference, East Northfield, Mass., and was reported for the Northfield Echoes, being reproduced here through the courtesy of Dr. Hall. Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D., was born in New York September 3, 1852, graduating from Williams College and receiving degrees from Harvard and the University of New York. Studied in London and Edinburgh, serving the First Pres- byterian church, Brooklyn, as pastor for twenty years; president of Union Theological Seminary since 1897.] ; So eae : { (303) MODERN INFIDELITY CONSIDERED. ROBERT HALL As the Christian ministry is established for the instruction of men, throughout every age, in truth and holiness, it must adapt itself to the ever-shifting scenes of the moral world, and stand ready to repel the attacks of impiety and error, under whatever form they may appear. The Church and the world form two societies so distinct, and _ are governed by such opposite principles and maxims, that, as well from this con- trariety as from the express warnings of Scripture, true Christians must look for a 7 state of warfare, with this consoling assurance, that the Church, like the burning bush : beheld by Moses in the land of Midian, may be encompassed with flames, but wiil never be consumed. When she was delivered from the persecuting power of Rome, she only expe- tienced a change of trials. The oppression of external violence was followed by _ the more dangerous and insidious attacks of internal enemies. The freedom and _ inquiry claimed and asserted at the Reformation degenerated, in the hands of men _ who professed the principles without possessing the spirit of the Reformers, into a _ fondness for speculative refinements; and, consequently, into a source of dispute, faction and heresy. While Protestants attended more to the points on which they differed than to those on which they agreed—while more zeal was employed in 4 settling ceremonies and defending subtleties than in enforcing plain revealed truths— , the lovely fruits of peace and charity perished under the storms of controversy. x In this disjointed and disordered state of the Christian Church, they who never Booked into the interior of Christianity were apt to suspect, that to a subject so fruitful in particular disputes must attach a general uncertainty; and that a religion founded ¢ on revelation could never have occasioned such discordancy of principle and practice among its disciples. Thus infidelity is the joint offspring of an irreligious temper and _ unholy speculation, employed, not in examining the evidences of Christianity, but in _ detecting the vices of professing Christians. It has passed through various stages, each _ ditsinguished by higher gradations of impiety; for when men arrogantly abandon their guide, and willfully shut their eyes on the light of heaven, it is wisely ordained that ‘their errors shall multiply at every step, until their extravagance confutes itself, and the mischief of their principles works its own antidote. That such has been the _ progress of infidelity will be obvious from a slight survey of its history. Lord Herbert, the first and purest of our English freethinkers, who flourished in _ the beginning of the reign of Charles the First, did not so much impugn the doctrine or the morality of the Scriptures as attempt to supersede their necessity, by endeavor- _ ing to show that the great principles of the unity of God, a moral government, and a future world, are taught with sufficient clearness by the light of nature. Bolingbroke, and some of his successors, advanced much further, and attempted to invalidate the proofs of the moral character of the Deity, and consequently all expectations of tewards and punishments; leaving the Supreme Being no other perfections than those which belong to a first cause, or almighty contriver. After him, at a considerable distance, follow Hume, the most subtle, if not the most philosophical, of the Deists; who, by perplexing the relations of cause and effect, boldly aimed to introduce a i “Without God in the world.”—Ephes. 2: 12. 304 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. universal skepticism, and to pour a more than Egyptian darkness into the whole region of morals. Since his time skeptical writers have sprung up in abundance, and infidelity has lured multitudes to its standard; the young and superficial, by its dex- terous sophistry, the vain by the literary fame of its champions, and the profligate by the licentiousness of its principles. Atheism the most undisguised has at length begun to make its appearance. Animated by numbers and emboldened by success, the infidels of the present day have given a new direction to their efforts, and impressed a new character on the ever-growing mass of their impious speculations. By uniting more closely with each other, by giving a sprinkling of irreligion to all their literary productions, they aim to engross the formation of the public mind; and, amid the warmest professions of attachment to virtue, to effect an entire disruption of morality from religion. Pretending to be the teachers of virtue and the guides of life, they propose to revolutionize the morals of mankind; to regenerate the world by a process entirely new; and to rear the temple of virtue, not merely without the aid ’ of religion, but on the renunciation of its principles and the derision of its sanctions. Their party has derived a great accession of numbers and strength from events the most momentous and astonishing in the political world, which have divided the sentiments of Europe between hope and terror; and which, however they may issue, have, for the present, swelled the ranks of infidelity. So rapidly, indeed, has it advanced since this crisis, that a great majority on the Continent, and in England a considerable proportion of those who pursue literature as a profession, may justly be considered as the open or disguised abettors of atheism. With respect to the skeptical and religious systems, the inquiry at present is not so much which is the truest in speculation as which is the most useful in practice; or, in other words, whether morality will be best promoted by considering it as a part of a great and comprehensive law, emanating from the will of a supreme, omnipotent legislator; or as a mere expedient, adapted to our present situation, enforced by no other motives than those which arise from the prospects and interests of the present state. The absurdity of atheism having been demonstrated so often and so clearly by many eminent men that this part of the subject is exhausted, I should hasten imme- diately to what I have more particularly in view, were I not apprehensive a discourse of this kind may be expected to contain some statement of the argument in proof of a Deity; which, therefore, I shall present in as few and plain words as possible. When we examine a watch, or any other piece of machinery, we instantly perceive marks of design. The arrangement of its several parts, and the adaptation of its movements to one result, show it to be a contrivance; nor do we ever imagine the faculty of contriving to be in the watch itself, but in a separate agent. If we turn from art to nature, we behold a vast magazine of contrivances: we see innumerable objects replete with the most exquisite design. The human eye, for example, is formed with admirable skill for the purpose of sight, the ear for the function of hearing. As the productions of art we never think of ascribing the power of contrivance to the machine itself, so we are certain the skill displayed in the human structure is not a property of man, since he is very imperfectly acquainted with his own formation. If there be an inseparable relation between the ideas of a contrivance and a contriver, and it be evident in regard to the human structure, the designing agent is not man himself, there must undeniably be some separate invisible being, who is his former. This great Being we mean to indicate by the appellation of Deity. This reasoning admits of but one reply. Why, it will be said, may we not suppose the world has always continued as it is; that is, that there has been a constant succes- sion of finite beings, appearing and disappearing on the earth from all eternity? I answer, whatever is supposed to have occasioned this constant succession, exclusive of F Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 305 an intelligent cause, will never account for the undeniable marks of design visible in all finite beings. Nor is the absurdity of a aie & a contrivance without a contriver | every step of the series. Besides, an eternal succession of finite beings involves in it a contradiction, and is therefore plainly impossible. As the supposition is made to get quit of the idea of any one having existed from eternity, each of the beings in the succession must have begun in time: but the succession itself is eternal. We have then the succession of _ beings infinitely earlier than any being in the succession; or, in other words, a series , of beings running on, ad infinitum, before it reached any particular being, which is absurd. From these considerations it is manifest there must be some eternal Being, or nothing could ever have existed, and since the beings which we behold bear in their whole structure evident marks of wisdom and design, it is equally certain that He who formed them is a wise and intelligent agent. . To prove the unity of this great Being, in opposition to a plurality of gods, it is not necessary to have recourse to metaphysical abstractions. It is sufficient to observe _ that the notion of more than one author of nature is inconsistent with that harmony of design which pervades her works; that it explains no appearances, is supported by no evidence, and serves no purpose but to embarrass and perplex our conceptions. Such are the proofs of the existence of that great and glorious Being whom we _denominate God; and it is not presumption to say it is impossible to find another truth 4 in the whole compass of morals which, according to the justest laws of reasoning, admits of such strict and rigorous demonstration. But I proceed to the more immediate object of this discourse, which, as has been already intimated, is not so much to evince the falsehood of skepticism as a theory, as to display its mischievous effects, contrasted with those which result from the belief of a Deity and a future state. The subject, viewed in this light, may be considered under two aspects: the influence of the opposite systems on the principles of morals _ and on the formation of character. The first may be styled their direct, the latter _ their equally important, but indirect, consequence and tendency. sy I. The skeptical or irreligious system subverts the whole foundation of morals. It may be assumed as a maxim that no person can be required to act contrary to his ; greatest good, or his highest interest, comprehensively viewed in relation to the whole duration of his being. It is often our duty to forego our own interest partially, to Sacrifice a smaller pleasure for the sake of a greater, to incur a present evil in pursuit of a distant good of more consequence. In a word, to arbitrate among interfering e claims of inclination is the moral arithmetic of human life. But to risk the happiness "of the whole duration of our being in any case whatever, were it possible, would be foolish, because the sacrifice must, by the nature of it, be so great as to preclude the possibility of compensation. 9 * As the present world, on skeptical principles, is the only place of recompense, _ whenever the practice of virtue fails to promise the greatest sum of present good— ~ cases which often occur in reality, and much oftener in appearance—every motive to _ Virtuous conduct is superseded; a deviation from rectitude becomes the part of wisdom; and should the path of virtue, in addition to this, be obstructed by disgrace, torment, or death, to persevere would be madness and folly, and a violation of the first and ‘most essential law of nature. Virtue, on these principles, being in numberless instances at war with self-preservation, never can, or ought to, become a fixed habit of the mind. _ The system of infidelity is not only incapable of arming virtue for great and trying occasions, but leaves it unsupported in the most ordinary occurrences. In vain will its advocates appeal to a moral sense, to benevolence and sympathy; for it is undeniable | .. Whe 306 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. that these impulses may be overcome, In vain will they expatiate on the tranquility and pleasure attendant on a virtuous course: for though you may remind the offender that in disregarding them he has violated his nature, and that a conduct consistent _with them is productive of much internal satisfaction; yet if he reply that his taste is of a different sort, that there are other gratifications which he values more, and that every man must choose his own pleasures, the argument is at an end. Rewards and punishments, assigned by infinite power, afford a palpable and pressing motive which can never be neglected without renouncing the character of a rational creature: but tastes and relishes are not to be prescribed. A motive in which the reason of man shall acquiesce, enforcing the practice of virtue at all times and seasons, enters into the very essence of moral obligation. Moral infidelity supplies no such motives: it is therefore essentially and infallibly a system of enervation, turpitude, and vice. This chasm in the construction of morals can only be supplied by the firm belief of a rewarding and avenging Deity, who binds duty and happiness, though they may seem distant, in an indissoluble chain; without which, whatever usurps the name of virtue is not a principle, but a feeling; not a determinate rule, but a fluctuating expe- dient, varying with the tastes of individuals, and changing with the scenes of life. Nor is this the only way in which infidelity subverts the foundation of morals. All reasoning on morals presupposes a distinction between inclinations and duties, affections and rules. The former prompt; the latter prescribe. The former supply motives to action; the latter regulate and control it. Hence it is evident, if virtue have any just claim to authority, it must be under the latter of these notions; that is, under the character of a law. It is under this notion, in fact, that its dominion has ever been acknowledged to be paramount and supreme. But, without the intervention of a superior will, it is impossible there should be any moral laws, except in the lax metaphorical sense in which we speak of the laws of matter and motion. Men being essentially equal, morality is, on these principles, only a stipulation, or silent compact, into which every individual is supposed to enter, as far as suits his convenience, and for the breach of which he is accountable’to nothing but his own mind. His own mind is his law, his tribunal, and his judge! Two consequences, the most disastrous to society, will inevitably follow the general prevalence of this system:—the frequent perpetration of great crimes, and the total absence of great virtues. ; 1. In those conjunctures which tempt avarice or inflame ambition, when a crime flatters with the prospect of impunity, and the certainty of immense advantage, what is to restrain an atheist from its commission? To say that remorse will deter him is absurd; for remorse, as distinguished from pity, is the sole offspring of religious belief, the extinction of which is the great purpose of the infidel philosophy. The dread of punishment or infamy from his fellow-creatures will be an ineffectual barrier; because crimes are only committed under such circumstances as suggest the hope of concealment; not to say that crimes themselves will soon lose their infamy and their horror under the influence of that system which destroys the sanctity of virtue, by converting it into a low calculation of worldly interest. Here the sense of an ever-present Ruler, and of an avenging Judge, is of the most awful and indispensable necessity; as it is that alone which impresses on all crimes the character of folly, shows that duty and interest in every instance coincide, and that the most prosperous career of vice, the most brilliant successes of criminality, are but an accumulation of wrath against the day of wrath. As the frequent perpetration of great crimes is an inevitable consequence of the diffusion of skeptical principles, so, to understand this consequence in its full extent, we must look beyond their immediate effects, and consider the disruption of social Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 307 ies, the destruction of confidence, the terror, suspicion, and hatred which must prevail 1 that state of society in which barbarous deeds are familiar. The tranquility which ervades a well-ordered community, and the mutual good offices which bind its embers together, are founded on an implied confidence in the indisposition to annoy; | the justice, humanity, and moderation of those among whom we dwell. So that the jorst consequence of crimes is, that they impair the stock of public charity and reneral tenderness. The dread and hatred of our species would infallibly be grafted on conviction that we were exposed every moment to the surges of an unbridled ferocity, nd that nothing but the power of the magistrate stood between us and the daggers of Ssassins. In such a state, laws, deriving no support from public manners, are unequal > the task of curbing the fury of the passions; which, from being concentrated into elfishness, fear, and revenge, acquire new force. Terror and suspicion beget cruelty, and inflict injuries by way of prevention. Pity is extinguished in the stronger impulse of seli-preservation. The tender and generous affections are crushed; and nothing is sen but the retaliation of wrongs, the fierce and unmitigated struggle for superiority. his is but a faint sketch of the incalculable calamities and horrors we must expect, hould we be so unfortunate as ever to witness the triumph of modern infidelity. 2. This system is a soil as barren of great and sublime virtues as it is prolific in imes. By great and sublime virtues are meant those which are called into action on eat and trying occasions, which demand the sacrifice of the dearest interests and prospects of human life, and sometimes of life itself: the virtues, in a word, which, by eir rarity and splendor, draw admiration, and have rendered illustrious the character of patriots, martyrs, and confessors. It requires but little reflection to perceive that hateyer veils a future world, and contracts the limits of existence within the present €, must tend, in a proportionable degree, to diminish the grandeur and narrow the there of human agency. _ As well might you expect exalted sentiments of justice from a professed gamester as look for noble principles in the man whose hopes and fears are all suspended on the esent moment, and who stakes the whole happiness of his being on the events of this vain and fleeting life. If he be ever impelled to the performance of great achieve- ents in a good cause, it must be solely by the hope of fame; a motive which, besides that it makes virtue the servant of opinion, usually grows weaker at the approach of Pal h; and which, however, it may surmount the love of existence in the heat of battle, Or in the moment of public observation, can seldom be expected to operate with much rce on the retired duties of a private station. Tn affirming that infidelity is unfavorable to the higher class of virtues, we are s pported as well by facts as by reasoning. We should be sorry to load our adver- saries with unmerited reproach: but to what history, to what record will they appeal the traits of moral greatness exhibited by their disciples? Where shall we look the trophies of infidel magnanimity or atheistical virtue? Not that we mean to se them of inactivity: they have recently filled the world with the fame of their D loits; of a different kind indeed, but of imperishable memory, and disastrous luster. ‘Though it is confessed great and splendid actions are not the ordinary employment tif but must, from their nature, be reserved for high and eminent occasions; yet ph System is essentially defective which leaves no room for their production. They iré important, both from their immediate advantage and their remoter influence. They ofter eae, and always illustrate, the age and nation in which they appear. They raise he standard of morals; they arrest the progress of degeneracy; they diffuse a luster pver the path of life: monuments of the greatness of the human soul, they present to phe 1 orld the august image of virtue in her sublimest form, from which streams of igh band glory issue to remote times and ages; while their commemoration by the pen bf h istorians and poets awakens in distant bosoms the sparks of kindred excellence, 308 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Combine the frequent and familiar perpetration of atrocious deeds with the dearth of great and generous actions, and you have the exact picture of that condition of society which completes the degradation of the species—the frightful contrast of dwarfish virtues and gigantic vices, where everything good is mean and little, and everything evil is rank and luxuriant: a dead and sickening uniformity prevails, broken only at intervals by volcanic eruptions of anarchy and crime. II. Hitherto we have considered the influence of skepticism on the principles of virtue; and have endeavored to show that it despoils it of its dignity, and lays its authority in the dust. Its influence on the formation of character remains to be examined, The actions of men are oftener determined by their character than their interest: their conduct takes its color more from their acquired taste, inclinations and habits, than from a deliberate regard to their greatest good. It is only on great occa- sions the mind awakes to take an extended survey of her whole course, and that she suffers the dictates of reason to impress a new bias upon her movements. The actions of each day are, for the most part, links which follow each other in the chain of custom. Hence the great. effort of practical wisdom is to imbue the mind with right tastes, affections and habits; the elements of character, and masters of action. 1. The exclusion of a Supreme Being and of a superintending Providence tends directly to the destruction of moral taste. It robs the universe of all finished and consummate excellence even in idea. The admiration of perfect wisdom and goodness for which we are formed, and which kindles such unspeakable rapture in the soul, finding in the regions of skepticism nothing to which it corresponds, droops and languishes. In a world which presents a fair spectacle of order and beauty, of a vast family nourished and supported by an Almighty Parent—in a world which leads the devout mind, step by step, to the contemplation of the first fair and the first good, the skeptic is encompassed with nothing but obscurity, meanness and disorder. When we reflect on the manner in which the idea of Deity is formed, we must be convinced that such an idea, intimately present to the mind, must have a most powerful effect in refining the moral taste. Composed of the richest elements, it embraces, in the character of a beneficent Parent and Almighty Ruler, whatever is venerable in wisdom, whatever is lawful in authority, whatever is touching in goodness. Human excellence is blended with many imperfections, and seen under many limitations. It is beheld only in detached and separate portions, nor ever appears in any one character whole and entire. So that when, in imitation of the Stoics, we wish to form out of these fragments the notion of a perfectly wise and good man, we know it is a mere fiction of the mind, without any real being in whom it is embodied and realized. In the belief of a Deity, these conceptions are reduced to reality: the scattered rays of an ideal excellence are concentrated, and become the real attributes of that Being with whom we stand in the nearest relation, who sits supreme at the head of the universe, is armed with infinite power, and pervades all nature with His presence. The efficacy of these views in producing and augmenting a virtuous taste wil indeed be proportioned to the vividness with which they are formed, and the frequency with which they recur; yet some benefit will not fail to result from them even in thei lowest degree. The idea of the Supreme Being has this peculiar property: that, as it admits of ni substitute, so, from the first moment it is formed, it is capable of continual growtl and enlargement. God Himself is immutable; but our conception of His character i continually receiving fresh accessions, is continually growing more extended an refulgent, by having transferred to it new elements of beauty and goodness; by attract ing to itself, as a center, whatever bears the impress of dignity, order, or happiness Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 406 t borrows splendor from all that is fair, subordinates to itself all that is great, and sits enthroned on the riches of the universe. _ As the object of worship will always be, in a degree, the object of imitation, hence ris s a fixed standard of moral excellence; by the contemplation of which the tenden- s to corruption are counteracted, the contagion of bad example is checked, and * yman nattife rises above its natural level. P When the knowledge of God was lost in the world, just ideas of virtue and moral ob igation disappeared along with it. How is it to be otherwise accounted for, that in he polished nations, and in the enlightened times of pagan antiquity, the most innatural lusts and detestable impurities were not only tolerated, in private life, but entered into religion, and formed a material part of public worship; while among the Jews, a people so much inferior in every other branch of knowledge, the same vices were regarded with horror? _ The reason is this: the true character of God was unknown to the former, which by the light of Divine revelation was displayed to the latter. The former cast their deities in the mold of their own imaginations; in consequence of which they partook the vices and defects of their worshipers. To the latter, no scope was left for the anderings of fancy; but a pure and perfect model was prescribed. False and corrupt, however, as was the religion of the pagans (if it deserves the mame), and defective, and often vicious, as was the character of their imaginary deities, it was still better for the world that the void should be filled with these than abandoned to a total skepticism; for if both systems are equally false, they are not equally per- Nicious. When the fictions of heathenism consecrated the memory of its legislators ind heroes, it invested them for the most part with those qualities which were in the Greatest repute. They were supposed to possess in the highest degree the virtues in wh ich it was most honorable to excel; and to be the witnesses, approvers, and patrons f those perfections in others by which their own character was chiefly distinguished. Men saw, or rather fancied they saw, in these supposed deities the qualities they most admired, dilated to a larger size, moving in a higher sphere, and associated with the power, dignity, and happiness of superior natures. With such ideal models before them, and conceiving themselves continually acting under the eye of such spectators and judges, they felt a real elevation; their eloquence became more impassioned, their Datriotism inflamed, and their courage exalted. Revelation, by displaying the true character of God, affords a pure and perfect fandard of virtue; heathenism, one in many respects defective and vicious; the ashionable skepticism of the present day, which excludes the belief of all superior owers, affords no standard at all. Human nature knows nothing better or higher han itself. All above and around it being shrouded in darkness, and the prospect onfined to the tame realities of life, virtue has no room upward to expand; nor are any xcursions permitted into that unseen world, the true element of the great and good, y which it is fortified with motives equally calculated to satisfy the reason, to delight he fancy, and to impress the heart. a 2. Modern infidelity not only tends to corrupt the moral taste, it also promotes e growth of those vices which are the most hostile to social happiness. Of all the ces incident to human nature, the most destructive to society are vanity, ferocity, id unbridled sensuality; and these are precisely the vices which infidelity is calculated cherish. That the love, fear, and habitual contemplation of a Being infinitely exalted, or, in her words, devotion, is adapted to promote a sober and moderate estimate of our wn excellences, is incontestable; nor is it less evident that the exclusion of such senti- Ss must be favorable to pride. The criminality of pride will, perhaps, be less admitted; for though there is no vice so opposite to the spirit of Christianity, = 310 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ; yet there is none which, even in the Christian world, has, under various pretenses, besa treated with so much indulgence. There is, it will be confessed, a delicate sensibility to character, a sober desire of reputation, a wish to possess the esteem of the wise and good, felt by the purest minds, which is at the furthest remove from arrogance or vanity. The humility of a noble mind scarcely dares to approve of itself until it has secured the approbation of others. Very different is that restless desire of distinction, that passion for theatrical display, which inflames the heart and occupies the whole attention of vain men. This, of all the passions, is the most unsocial, avarice alone excepted. The reason is plain. Property is a kind of good which may be more easily attained, and is capable of more minute subdivisions than fame. In the pursuit of wealth, men are led by an attention to their own interests to promote the welfare of each other; their advantages are reciprocal; the benefits which each is anxious to acquire for himself he reaps in the greatest abundance from the union and conjunction of society. The pursuits of vanity are quite contrary. The portion of time and attention mankind are willing to spare from their avocations and pleasures to devote to the admiration of each other is so small, that every successful adventurer is felt to have impaired the common stock. The success of one is the disappointment of multitudes. For though there be many rich, many virtuous, many wise men, fame must necessarily be the portion of but few. Hence every vain man, every man in whom vanity is the ruling passion, regarding his rival as his enemy, is strongly tempted to rejoice in his miscarriage, and repine at his success. Besides, as the passions are seldom seen in a simple, unmixed state, so vanity, when it succeeds, degenerates into arrogance; when it is disappointed (and it is often disappointed) it is exasperated into malignity, and corrupted into envy. In this stage the vain man commences a determined misanthropist. He detests that excellence which he can not reach. He detests his species, and longs to be revenged for the unpardonable injustice he has sustained in their insensibility to his merits. He lives upon the calamities of the world; the vices and miseries of men are his element and his food. Virtues, talents, and genius are his natural enemies, which he persecutes with instinctive eagerness and unrelenting hostility. There are those who doubt the exist- ence of such a disposition; but it certainly issues out of the dregs of disappointed vanity; a disease which taints and vitiates the whole character wherever it prevails. It forms the heart to such a profound indifference to the welfare of others that, what- ever appearances he may assume, or however wide the circle of his seeming virtues may extend, you will infallibly find the vain man is his own center. Attentive only to himself, absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections, instead of feeling tenderness for his fellow-creatures as members of the same family, as beings with whom he is appointed to act, to suffer, and to sympathize—he considers life as a stage on which he is performing a part, and mankind in no other light than spectators. Whether he smiles or frowns, whether his path is adorned with the rays of beneficence, or his steps are dyed in blood, an attention to self is the spring of every movement, and the motive to which every action is referred. His apparent good qualities lose all their worth, by losing all that is simple, genuine, and natural: they are even pressed into the service of vanity, and become the means of enlarging its power. The truly good man is jealous over himself, lest the notoriety of his best actions, by blending itself with their motive, should diminish their value; the vain man performs the same actions for the sake of that notoriety. The good man quietly discharges his duty, and shuns ostentation; the vain man com siders every good deed lost that is not publicly displayed. The one is intent upo realities, the other upon semblances: the one aims to be virtuous, the other te appear so, a, Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 311 Nor is a mind inflated with vanity more disqualified for right action than just speculation, or better disposed to the pursuit of truth than the practice of virtue. To such a mind the simplicity of truth is disgusting. Careless of the improvement of mankind, and intent only upon astonishing with the appearance of novelty, the glare of paradox will be preferred to the light of truth; opinions will be embraced, not because they are just, but because they are new: the more flagitious, the more sub- yersive of morals, the more alarming to the wise and good, the more welcome to men who estimate their literary powers by the mischief they produce, and who consider the "anxiety and terror they impress as the measure of their renown. Truth is simple and uniform, while error may be infinitely varied: and as it is one thing to start paradoxes, and another to make discoveries, we need the less wonder at the prodigious increase of modern philosophers. We have been so much accustomed to consider extravagant self-estimation merely as a ridiculous quality, that many will be surprised to find it treated as a vice pregnant with serious mischief to society. But, to form a judgment of its influence on the manners and happiness of a nation, it is necessary only to look at its effects in a family; for bodies of men are only collections of individuals, and the greatest nation is nothing more than an aggregate of a number of families. Conceive of a domestic circle in which each member is elated with a most extravagant opinion of himself, and a proportionable contempt. of every other—is full of contrivances to catch applause, and whenever he is not praised is sullen and disappointed. What a picture of disunion, disgust, and animosity would such a family present! How utterly would domestic _ affection be extinguished, and all the purposes of domestic society be defeated! -The general prevalence of such dispositions must be accompanied by an equal proportion of general misery. The tendency of pride to produce strife and hatred is sufficiently apparent from the pains men have been at to construct a system of politeness, which is nothing more than a sort of mimic humility, in which the sentiments of an offensive ie 8 FF tine OF Kee 4 re SS 2 ee : self-estimation are so far disguised and suppressed as to make them compatible with Y the spirit of society; such a mode of behavior as would naturally result from an atten- ¥ tion to the apostolic injunction “Let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory; but, in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves.” But if the ‘, semblance be of such importance, how much more useful the reality! If the mere garb of humanity be of such indispensable necessity that without it society could not subsist, ___ how much better still would the harmony of the world be preserved, were the conde- scension, deference, and respect so studiously displayed a true picture of the heart. ; The same restless and eager vanity which disturbs a family, when it is permitted in - a great national crisis to mingle with political affairs, distracts a kingdom, infusing __ into those intrusted with the enaction of laws a spirit of rash innovation and daring empiricism, a disdain of the established usages of mankind, a foolish desire to dazzle the world with new and untried systems of policy, in which the precedents of antiquity ___and the experience of ages are only consulted to be trodden under foot; and into the executive department of government a fierce contention for pre-eminence, an incessant __ struggle to supplant and destroy, with a propensity to calumny and suspicion, pro- scription and massacre. We shall suffer the most eventful season ever witnessed in the affairs of man to pass over our heads to very little purpose, if we fail to learn from it some awful lessons on the nature and progress of the passions. The true light in which the French Revolution ought to be contemplated is that of a grand experiment on human nature. Among the various passions which that Revolution has so strikingly displayed, none is more conspicuous than vanity; nor is it less difficult, without adverting to the national character of the people, to account for its extraordinary predominance. Political power, the most seducing object of ambition, never before circulated through an Pulpit Power and Eloquence. so many hands; the prospect of possessing it was never before presented to so many minds. Multitudes who, by their birth and education, and not infrequently by their talents, seemed destined to perpetual obscurity, were, by the alternate rise and fall of parties, elevated into distinction, and shared in the functions of government. The short-lived forms of power and office glided with such rapidity through successive ranks of degradation, from the court to the very dregs of the populace, that they seemed rather to solicit acceptance than to be a prize contended for. Yet, as it was still impossible for all to possess authority, though none were willing to obey, a general impatience to break the ranks and rush into the foremost ground, maddened and infuriated the nation, and overwhelmed law, order, and civilization, with the violence of a torrent. If such be the mischiefs both in public and private life resulting from an excessive self-estimation, it remains next to be considered whether Providence has supplied any medicine to correct it; for as the reflection on excellences, whether real or imaginary, is always attended with pleasure to the possessor, it is a disease deeply seated in our nature. Suppose there were a great and glorious Being always present with us, who had given us existence, with numberless other blessings, and on whom we depended each instant, as well for every present enjoyment as for every future good; suppose, again, we had incurred the just displeasure of such a Being by ingratitude and disobedience, yet that in great mercy He had not cast us off, but had assured us He was willing to pardon and restore us on our humble entreaty and sincere repentance; say, would not an habitual sense of the presence of this Being, self-reproach for having displeased Him, and an anxiety to recover His favor, be the most effectual antidote to pride?. But such are the leading discoveries made by the Christian revelation, and such the dispositions which a practical belief of it inspires. Humility is the first fruit of religion. In the mouth of our Lord there is no maxim so frequent'as the following: “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Religion, and that alone, teaches absolute humility; by which I mean a sense of our absolute nothingness in the view of infinite greatness and excellence. That sense of inferiority which results from the comparison of men with each other is often an unwelcome sentiment forced upon the mind, which may rather embitter the temper than soften it: that which devotion impresses is soothing and delightful. The devout man loves to lie low at the foot of his Creator, because it is then he attains the most lively perceptions of the divine excellence, and the most tranquil confidence in the divine favor. In so august a presence he sees all distinctions lost, and all beings reduced to the same level. He looks at his superiors without envy, and his inferiors without contempt; and when from this elevation he descends to mix in society, the conviction of superiority, which must in many instances be felt, is a calm inference of the understanding, and no longer a busy, importunate passion of the heart. “The wicked (says the Psalmist) through the pride of their countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all their thoughts.” When we consider the incredible vanity of the atheistical sect, together with the settled malignity and unrelenting rancor with which they pursue every vestige of religion, is it uncandid to suppose that its humbling tendency is one principal cause of their enmity; that they are eager to displace a Deity from the minds of men, that they may occupy the void; to crumble the throne of the Eternal into dust, that they may elevate themselves on its ruins; and that, as their licentiousness is impatient of restraint, so their pride disdains a superior? We mentioned a ferocity of character as one effect of skeptical impiety. It is an inconvenience attending a controversy with those with whom we have few principles in common, that we are often in danger of reasoning inconclusively, for the want of its % : Modern Infidelity C onsidered—Robert Hall. 413 being clearly known and settled what our opponents admit, and what they deny. The persons, for example, with whom we are at eae engaged have discarded humility ' iew obvious. But there is another light in which this part of the subject may be viewed, in my humble opinion, much more important, though seldom adverted to. “misery, makes him a creature of incomparably more consequence than the opposite supposition. When we consider him as placed here by an Almighty Ruler in a state _ of probation, and that the present life is his period of trial, the first link in a vast and interminable chain which stretches into eternity, he assumes a dignified character in our eyes. Everything which relates to him becomes interesting; and to trifle with his happiness is felt to be the most unpardonable levity. If such be the destination of man, it is evident that in the qualities which fit him for it his principal dignity consists; his : moral greatness is his true greatness. Let the skeptical principles be admitted, which "represent him, on the contrary, as the offspring of chance, connected with no superior power, and sinking into annihilation at death, and he is a contemptible creature, whose existence and happiness are insignificant. The characteristic difference is lost between him and the brute creation, from which he is no longer distinguished, except by the vividness and multiplicity of his perceptions. If we reflect on that part of our nature which disposes us to humanity, we shall ‘find that where we have no particular attachment our sympathy with the sufferings, 1 and concern for the destruction of sensitive beings, are in proportion to their supposed importance in the general scale; or, in other words, to their supposed capacity ‘of enjoyment. We feel, for example, much more at witnessing the destruction of a man than of an inferior animal, because we consider it as involving the extinction of a much greater sum of happiness. For the same reason he who would shudder at the slaughter of a large animal will see a thousand insects perish without a pang. Our sympathy with the calamities of our fellow-creatures is adjusted to the same propor- tions; for we feel more powerfully affected with the distresses of fallen greatness than ith equal or greater distresses sustained by persons of inferior rank; because, having been accustomed to associate with an elevated station the idea of superior happiness, the loss appears the greater, and the wreck more extensive. But the disproportion in ‘importance between man and the meanest insect is not so great as that which subsists between man considered as mortal and as immortal; that is, between man as he is _Tepresented by the system of skepticism and that of divine revelation; for the enjoy- Mg ment of the meanest insect bears some proportion, though a very small one, to the _ present happiness of man; but the happiness of time bears none at all to that of - eternity. The skeptical system, therefore, sinks the importance of human existence to an inconceivable degree. From these principles results the following important inference—that to extinguish _ human life by the hand of violence must be quite a different thing in the eyes of a age from what it is in those of a Christian. With the skeptic it is nothing more than diverting the course of a little red fluid, called blood; it is merely lessening the number by one of many millions of fugitive contemptible creatures. The Christian Sees in the same event an accountable being cut off from a state of probation, and hurried, perhaps unprepared, into the presence of his Judge, to hear that final, that J Pg 314 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. irrevocable sentence, which is to fix him forever in an unalterable condition of felicity or woe. The former perceives in death nothing but its physical circumstances; the latter is impressed with the magnitude of its moral consequences. It is the moral _ relation which man is supposed to bear to a superior power, the awful idea of account- ability, the influence which his present dispositions and actions are conceived to have upon his eternal destiny, more than any superiority of intellectual.powers abstracted from these considerations, which invest him with such mysterious grandeur, and con- stitute the frmest guard on the sanctuary of human life. This reasoning, it is true, serves more immediately to show how the disbelief of a future state endangers the security of life; but though this be its direct consequence, it extends by analogy much further, since he who has learned to sport with the lives of his fellow-creatures will feel but little solicitude for their welfare in any other instance; but, as the greater includes the less, will easily pass from this to all the inferior gradations of barbarity. As the advantage of the armed over the unarmed is not seen till the moment of attack, so in that tranquil state of society in which law and order maintain their ascendency, it is not perceived, perhaps not even suspected, to what an alarming degree the principles of modern infidelity leave us naked and defenceless, But let the state be convulsed, let the mounds of regular authority be once overflowed, and the still small voice of law drowned in the tempest of popular fury (events which recent expe- rience shows to be possible), it will then be seen that atheism is a school of ferocity; and that, having taught its disciples to consider mankind as little better than a nest of insects, they will be prepared in the fierce conflicts of party to trample upon them without pity, and extinguish them without remorse. It was late before the atheism of Epicurus gained footing at Rome; but its preva- lence was soon followed by such scenes of proscription, confiscation and blood, as were then unparalleled in the history of the world; from which the republic being never able to recover itself, after many unsuccessful struggles, exchanged liberty for repose, by submission to absolute power. Such were the effects of atheism at Rome, An attempt has been recently made to establish a similar system in France, the consequences of which are too well known to render it requisite for me to shock your feelings by a recital. The only doubt that can arise is, whether the barbarities which have stained the Revolution in that unhappy country are justly chargeable on the prevalence of atheism. Let those who doubt of this recollect that the men who, by their activity and talents, prepared the minds of the people for that great change—Voltaire, D’Alem- bert, Diderot, Rousseau, and others—were avowed enemies of revelation; that in all their writings the diffusion of skepticism and revolutionary principles went hand in hand; that the fury of the most sanguinary parties was especially pointed against the Christian priesthood and religious institutions, without once pretending, like other persecutors, to execute the vengeance of God (whose name they never mentioned) upon His enemies; that their atrocities were committed with a wanton levity and brutal merriment; that the reign of atheism was avowedly and expressly the reign of terror; that in the full madness of their career, in the highest climax of their horrors, they shut up the temples of God, abolished His worship, and proclaimed death to be an eternal sleep; as if by pointing to the silence of the sepulcher, and the sleep of the dead, these ferocious barbarians meant to apologize for leaving neither sleep, quiet, nor repose to the living. As the heathens fabled that Minerva issued full armed from the head of Jupiter, so no sooner were the speculations of atheistical philosophy matured, than they gave birth to a ferocity which converted the most polished people in Europe into a horde of assassins; the seat of voluptuous refinement, of pleasure, and of arts, into a theater of blood. , Having already shown that the principles of infidelity facilitate the commission Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 315 crimes, by removing the restraints of fear; and that they foster the arrogance of the P daring defiance of religious restraints, are the natural ingredients of the atheistical ‘character; nor is it less evident that these are, of all others, the dispositions which most forcibly stimulate to violence and cruelty. Settle it therefore in your minds, as a maxim never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful restraint and to every virtuous affection; that, leaving nothing above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it wages war with heaven and with earth: its first object is to dethrone God, its next to destroy man. ; There is a third vice, not less destructive to society than either of those which have been already mentioned, to which the system of modern infidelity is favorable; that is, unbridled sensuality, the licentious and unrestrained indulgence of those pas- sions which are essential to the continuation of the species. The magnitude of these _ passions, and their supreme importance to the existence as well as the peace and welfare of society, have rendered it one of the first objects of solicitude with every wise legislator to restrain them by such laws, and to confine their indulgence within such - limits, as shall best promote the great ends for which they were implanted. ‘The benevolence and wisdom of the Author of Christianity and eminently con- ‘spicuous in the laws He has enacted on this branch of morals; for, while He author- izes marriage, He restrains the vagrancy and caprice of the passions, by forbidding polygamy and divorce; and, well knowing that offenses against the laws of chastity usually spring from an ill-regulated imagination, He inculcates purity of heart. _ Among innumerable benefits which the world has derived from the Christian religion, gy superior refinement in the sexual sentiments, a more equal and respectful treatment of women, greater dignity and permanence conferred on the institution of marriage, are not the least considerable; in consequence of which the purest affections and the “most sacred duties are grafted on the stock of the strongest instincts. The aim of all the leading champions of infidelity is to rob mankind of these benefits, and throw them back into a state of gross and brutal sensuality. In this “spirit, Mr. Hume represents the private conduct of the reprobate Charles, whose debaucheries polluted the age, as a just subject of panegyric. A disciple in the same school has lately had the unblushing effrontery to stigmatize marriage as the worst of all monopolies; and, in a narrative of his licentious amours, to make a formal apology for departing from his principles by submitting to its restraints. The popular “productions on the Continent which issue from the atheistical school are incessantly _ directed to the same purpose. Under every possible aspect in which infidelity can be viewed, it extends the dominion of sensuality: it repeals and abrogates every law by which Divine revelation has, under such awful sanctions, restrained the indulgence of the passions. The dis- belief of a supreme, omniscient Being, which it inculcates, releases its disciples from an attention to the heart, from every care but the preservation of outward decorum; and the exclusion of the devout affections and an unseen world leaves the mind immersed ‘in visible, sensible objects. ___ There are two sorts of pleasures—corporeal and mental. Though we are indebted ‘to the senses for all our perceptions originally, yet those which are the furthest ‘Temoved from their immediate impressions confer the most elevation on the character, ) since in proportion as they are multiplied and augmented, the slavish subjection to the r senses is subdued. Hence the true and only antidote to debasing sensuality is the _ possession of a fund of that kind of enjoyment which is independent on the corporeal appetites. Inferior in the perfection of several of his senses to different parts of the 416 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. brute creation, the superiority of man over them all consists in his superior power of multiplying by new combinations his mental perceptions, and thereby of creating to himself resources of happiness separate from external sensation. In the scale of enjoy- ment, at the first remove from sense are the pleasures of reason and society; at the next are the pleasures of devotion and religion. The former, though totally distinct from those of sense, are yet less perfectly adapted to moderate their excesses than the last, as they are in a great measure conversant with visible and sensible objects. The religious affections and sentiments are, in fact, and were intended to be, the propef antagonist of sensuality—the great deliverer from the thraldom of the appetites, by opening a spiritual world, and inspiring hopes and fears, and consolations and joys which bear no relation to the material and sensible universe. The criminal indulgence of sensual passions admits but of two modes of prevention: the establishment of such laws and maxims in society as shall render lewd profligacy impracticable or infamous, or the infusion of such principles and habits as shall render it distasteful. Human legislatures have encountered the disease in the first, the truths and sanctions of revealed religion in the last of these methods: to both of which the advocates of modern infidelity are equally hostile. So much has been said by many able writers to evince the inconceivable benefit of the marriage institution, that to hear it seriously attacked by men who style them- selves philosophers, at the close of the eighteenth century, must awaken indignation and surprise. The object of this discourse leads us to direct our attention particularly to the influence of this institution on the civilization of the world. From the records of revelation we learn that marriage, or the permanent union of the sexes, was ordained by God, and existed, under different modifications, in the early infancy of mankind, without which they could never have emerged from barbarism. For, conceive only what eternal discord, jealousy and violence would ensue, were the objects of the tenderest affections secured to their possessor by no law or tie of moral obligation: were domestic enjoyments disturbed by incessant fear, and licentiousness inflamed by hope. Who could find sufficient tranquility of mind to enable him to plan or execute any continued scheme of action, or what room for arts or sciences, or religion, or virtue, in that state in which the chief earthly happiness was exposed to every lawless invader; where one was racked with an incessant anxiety to keep what the other was equally eager to acquire? It is not probable in itself, independent of the light of Scripture, that the benevolent Author of the human race ever placed them in ~ so wretched a condition at first: it is certain they could not remain in it long without being exterminated. Marriage, by shutting out these evils, and enabling every man to rest secure in his enjoyments, is the great civilizer of the world: with this security the mind is at liberty to expand in generous affections, and has leisure to look abroad, and engage in the pursuits of knowledge, science, and virtue. Nor is it in this way only that marriage institutions are essential to the welfare of mankind. They are sources of tenderness, as well as the guardians of peace. Without the permanent union of the sexes there can be no permanent families: the dissolution of nuptial ties involves the dissolution of domestic society. But domestic society is the seminary of social affections, the cradle of sensibility where the first elements are acquired of that tenderness and humanity which cement mankind together, and were they entirely extinguished, the whole fabric of social institutions would be dissolved. Families are so many centers of attraction which preserve mankind from being scattered and dissipated by the repulsive powers of selfishness. The order of nature is evermore from particulars to generals. As in the operations of intellect we proceed from the contemplation of individuals to the formation of general abstractions, so in the development of the passions, in like manner, we advance from private to public affections; from the love of parents, brothers, and sisters, to those more expanded tegards which embrace the immense society of human kind, Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 317 In order to render men benevolent, they must first be made tender: for benevolent affections are not the offspring of reasoning; they result from that culture of the heart, from those early impressions of tenderness, gratitude, and sympathy which the endear- ments of domestic life are sure to supply, and for the formation of which it is the best possible school. __ The advocates of infidelity invert this eternal order of nature. Instead of incul- cating the private affections, as a discipline by which the mind is prepared for those of amore public nature, they set them in direct opposition to each other, they propose to build general benevolence on the destruction of individual tenderness, and to make us love the whole species more by loving every particular part of it less. In pursuit of this chimerical project, gratitude, humility, conjugal, parental, and filial affection, together with every other social disposition, are reprobated—virtue is limited to a passionate attachment to the general good. Is it not natural to ask, when all the tenderness of life is extinguished, and all the bands of society are untwisted, from whence this ardent affection for the general good is to spring? When this savage philosophy has completed its work, when it has taught its disciple to look with perfect indifference on the offspring of his body, and the wife of his bosom, to estrange himself from his friends, insult his benefactors, and silence the pleadings of gratitude and pity—will he, by thus divesting himself of all that is human, be better prepared for the disinterested love of his species? Will he become a philan- thropist only because he has ceased to be a man? Rather, in this total exemption from all the feelings which humanize and soften, in this chilling frost of universal indiffer- ence, may we not be certain that selfishness, unmingled and uncontrolled, will assume the empire of his heart; and that, under pretense of advancing the general good, an _ object to which the fancy may give innumerable shapes, he will be prepared for the _ yiolation of every duty, and the perpetration of every crime? Extended benevolence is the last and most perfect fruit of the private affections; so that to expect to reap the former from the extinction of the latter, is to oppose the means to the end; is as absurd as to attempt to reach the summit of the highest mountain without passing ‘through the intermediate spaces, or to hope to obtain the heights of science by for- getting the first elements of knowledge. These absurdities have sprung, however, in _ the advocates of infidelity, from an ignorance of human nature sufficient to disgrace even those who did not style themselves philosophers. Presuming, contrary to the _ experience of every moment, that the affections are awakened by reasoning, and per- _ ceiving that the general good is an incomparably greater object in itself than the happiness of any limited number of individuals, they inferred nothing more was neces- sary than to exhibit it in its just dimensions, to draw the affections toward it; as though the fact of the superior populousness of China. to Great Britain needed but to _ be known to render us indifferent to our domestic concerns, and lead us to direct all _ our anxiety to the prosperity of that vast but remote empire. It is not the province of reason to awaken new passions, or open new sources of ‘sensibility, but to direct us in the attainment of those objects which nature has already rendered pleasing, or to determine among the interfering inclinations and passions which sway the mind, which are the fittest to be preferred. Is a regard to the general good then, you will reply, to be excluded from the motives of action? Nothing is more remote from my intention: but as the nature of this motive has, in my opinion, been much misunderstood by some good men, and abused by others of a different description, to the worst of purposes, permit me to d eclare in a few words what appears to me to be the truth on this subject. __ The welfare of the whole system of being must be allowed to be, in itself, the gael of all others the most worthy of being pursued; so that, could the mind dis- ‘inctly embrace it, and discern at every step what action would infallibly promote it, + re 318 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. we should be furnished with a sure criterion of right and wrong, an unerring guide, which would supersede the use and necessity of all inferior rules, laws, and principles. But this being impossible, since the good of the whole is a motive so loose and indeterminate, and embraces such an infinity of relations, that before we could be certain what action it prescribed, the season of action would be past; to weak, short- sighted mortals Providence has assigned a sphere of agency less grand and extensive indeed, but better suited to their limited powers, by implanting certain affections which it is their duty to cultivate, and suggesting particular rules to which they are bound to conform. By these provisions the boundaries of virtue are easily ascertained, at the same time that its ultimate object, the good of the whole, is secured: for, since the happiness of the entire system results from the happiness of the several parts, the affections, which confine the attention immediately to the latter, conspire in the end to the promotion of the former; as the laborer, whose industry is limited to a corner of a large building, performs his part toward rearing the structure much more effectually than if he extended his care to the whole. As the interest, however, of any limited number of persons may not only contri- bute, but may possibly be directly opposed to the general good (the interest of a family, for example, to that of a province, or of a nation to that of the world), Providence has so ordered it, that in a well-regulated mind there springs up, as we have already seen, besides particular attachments, an extended regard to the species, whose office is twofold: not to destroy and extinguish the more private affections, which is mental parricide; but first, as far as is consistent with the claims of those who are immediately committed to our care, to do good to all men; secondly, to exercise a jurisdiction and control over the private affections, so as to prohibit their indulgence whenever it would be attended with manifest detriment to the whole. Thus every part of our nature is brought into action; all the practical principles of the human heart find an element to move in, each in its different sort and manner conspiring, without mutual collisions, to maintain the harmony of the world and the happiness of the universe. Before I close this discourse, I can not omit to mention three circumstances attending the propagation of infidelity by its present abettors, equally new and alarming. 1. It is the first attempt which has been ever witnessed, on an extensive scale, to establish the principles of atheism; the first effort which history has recorded to dis- annul and extinguish the belief of all superior powers; the consequence of which, should it succeed, would be to place mankind in a situation never before experienced, not even during the ages of pagan darkness. The system of polytheism was as remote from modern infidelity as from true religion. Amid that rubbish of superstition, the product of fear, ignorance, and vice, which had been accumulating for ages, some faint embers of sacred truth remained unextinguished; the interposition of unseen powers in the affairs of men was believed and revered, the sanctity of oaths was maintained— the idea of revelation and of tradition as a source of religious knowledge was familiar; a useful persuasion of the existence of a future world was kept alive, and the greater gods were looked up to as the guardians of the public welfare, the patrons of those virtues which promote the prosperity of states, and the avengers of injustice, perfidy, and fraud. Of whatever benefit superstition might formerly be productive, by the scattered particles of truth which it contained, these advantages can now only be reaped from the soil of true religion; nor is there any other alternative left than the belief of Christianity, or absolute atheism. In the revolutions of the human mind, exploded opinions are often revived; but an exploded superstition never recovers its credit. The pretension to divine revelation is so august and commanding, that when its false- Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 319 d is once discerned, it is covered with all the ignominy of detected imposture; it falls from such a height (to change the figure) that it is inevitably crumbled into atoms. Religions, whether false or true, are not creatures of arbitrary institution. After discrediting the principles of piety, should our modern freethinkers find it neces- y, in order to restrain the excesses of ferocity, to seek for a substitute in some popular superstition, it will prove a vain and impracticable attempt: they may recall 4 a y, or to repeal by legislative authority the dictates of reason and the light of science. _ 2. The efforts of infidels to diffuse the principles of infidelity among the common people is another alarming symptom peculiar to the present time. Hume, Bolingbroke enlist disciples from among the populace. Infidelity has lately grown condescending; ed in the speculations of a daring philosophy, immured at first in the cloisters of the learned, and afterward nursed in the lap of voluptuousness and courts; having at ngth reached its full maturity, it boldly ventures to challenge the suffrages of the ople, solicits the acquaintance of peasants and mechanics, and seeks to draw whole ations to its standard. It is not difficult to account for this new state of things. While infidelity was rare, was employed as the instrument of literary vanity; its wide diffusion having dis- jualified it for answering that purpose, it is now adopted as the organ of political convulsion. Literary distinction is conferred by the approbation of a few; but the otal subversion and overthrow of society demands the concurrence of millions. _ 8. The infidels of the present day are the first sophists who have presumed to innovate in the very substance of morals. The disputes on moral questions hitherto tated among philosophers have respected the grounds of duty, not the nature of duty itself; or they have been merely metaphysical, and related to the history of moral sentiments in the mind, the sources and principles from which they were most easily deduced; they never turned on the quality of those dispositions and actions which were be denominated virtuous. In the firm persuasion that the love and fear of the preme Being, the sacred observation of promises and oaths, reverence to magis- rates, obedience to parents, gratitude to benefactors, conjugal fidelity, and parental enderness were primary virtues, and the chief support of every commonwealth, they we re unanimous. The curse denounced upon such as remove ancient landmarks, upon ‘thus to poison the streams of virtue at their source, falls with accumulated weight on he advocates of modern infidelity, and on them alone. _ Permit me to close this discourse with a few serious reflections. There is much, it ust be confessed, in the apostacy of multitudes, and the rapid progress of infidelity, awaken our fears for the virtue of the rising generation; but nothing to shake our th—nothing which Scripture itself does not give us room to expect. The features Ww ich compose the character of apostates, their profaneness, presumption, lewdness, Impatience of subordination, restless appetite for change, vain pretensions to freedom md to emancipate the world, while they themselves are the slaves of lust, the weapons with which they attack Christianity, and the snares they spread for the unwary are depicted in the clearest colors by the pencil of prophecy: ‘Knowing this first (says 5 t t), that there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts.” In the same epistle he more fully describes the persons he alludes to; “as chiefly them which walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government; pre- sumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak eyil of dignities; sporting » 320 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. themselves in their own deceivings, having eyes full of adultery, and that can not cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: for when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error; while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.” Of the same characters Jude admonishes us “to remember that they were foretold as mockers who should be in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they (he adds) who separate themselves (by apostacy), sensual, not having the Spirit.” Infidelity is an evil of short duration. “It has (as a judicious writer observes) no individual subsistence given it in the system of prophecy. It is not a beast—but a mere putrid excrescence of the papal beast: an excrescence which, though it may diffuse death through every vein of the body on which it grew, yet shall die along with it.” Its enormities will hasten its overthrow. It is impossible that a system which, by vilifying every virtue, and embracing the patronage of almost every vice and crime, wages war with all the order and civilization of the world; which, equal to the establishment of nothing, is armed only with the energies of destruction, can iong retain an ascendency. It is in no shape formed for perpetuity. Sudden in its rise and impetuous in its progress; it resembles a mountain-torrent, which is loud, filthy, and desolating; but, being fed by no peren- nial spring, is soon drained off and disappears. By permitting to a certain extent the prevalence of infidelity, Providence is preparing new triumphs for religion. In asserting its authority, the preachers of the Gospel have hitherto found it necessary to weigh the prospects of immortality against the interests of time; to strip the world of its charms, to insist on the deceitfulness of pleasure, the unsatisfying nature of riches, the emptiness of grandeur, and the nothingness of a mere worldly life. Topics of this nature will always have their use; but it is not by such representations alone that the importance of religion is evinced. The prevalence of impiety has armed us with new weapons in its defence. Religion being primarily intended to make men wise unto salvation, the support it ministers to social order, the stability it confers on government and laws, is a subor- dinate species of advantage which we should have continued to enjoy, without reflect- ing on its cause, but for the development of deistical principles, and the experiment which has been made of their effects in a neighboring country. It had been the constant boast of infidels, that their system, more liberal and generous than Chris- tianity, needed but to be tried to produce an immense accession to human happiness; and Christian nations, careless and supine, retaining little of religion but the profession, and disgusted with its restraints, lent a favorable ear to these pretensions. God per- mitted the trial to be made. In one country, and that the center of Christendom, revelation underwent a total eclipse, while atheism, performing on a darkened theater its strange and fearful tragedy, confounded the first elements of society, blended every age, rank and sex in indiscriminate proscription and massacre, and convulsed all Europe to its center; that the imperishable memorial of these events might teach the last generations of mankind to consider religion as the pillar of society, the safeguard of nations, the parent of social order, which alone has power to curb the fury of the passions, and secure to every one his rights; to the laborious the reward of their industry, to the rich the enjoyment of their wealth, to nobles the preservation of their honors, and to princes the stability of their thrones. We might ask the patrons of infidelity what fury impels them to attempt the sub- version of Christianity? Is it that they have discovered a. better system? To what virtues are their principles favorable? Or is there one which Christians have not carried to a higher perfection than any of which their party.can boast? Have they discovered a more excellent rule of life, or a better hope in death than that which the Scriptures suggest? Above all, what are the pretensions on which they rest their claims to be the guides of mankind; or which embolden them to expect we should Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 321 ple upon the experience of ages, and abandon a religion which has been attested by a train of miracles and prophecies, in which millions of our forefathers have found a refuge in every trouble, and consolation in the hour of death; a religion which has been adorned with the highest sanctity of character and splendor of talents, which enrols among its disciples the names of Bacon, Newton and Locke, the glory of their Bocce: and to which these illustrious men were proud to dedicate the last and best fruits of their immortal genius? | If the question at issue is to be decided by argument, nothing can be added to the triumph of Christianity; if by an appeal to authority, what have our adversaries to “oppose to these great names? Where are the infidels of such pure, uncontaminated morals, unshaken probity, and extended benevolence, that we should be in danger of being seduced into impiety by their example? Into what obscure recesses of misery, into what dungeons have their philanthropists penetrated, to lighten the fetters and relieve the sorrows of the helpless captive? What barbarous tribes have their Apostles "visited; what distant climes have they explored, encompassed with cold, nakedness, and want, to diffuse principles of virtue, and the blessings of civilization? Or will _ they rather choose to waive their pretensions to this extraordinary and, in their eyes, eccentric species of benevolence (for infidels, we know, are sworn enemies to enthu- _siasm of every sort), and rest their character on their political exploits—on their efforts to reanimate the virtue of a sinking state, to restrain licentiousness, to calm “the tumult of popular fury, and by inculcating the spirit of justice, moderation, and pity for fallen greatness, to mitigate the inevitable horrors of revolution? Our adver- - Saries will at least have the discretion, if not the modesty, to recede from the test. More than all, their infatuated eagerness, their parricidal zeal to extinguish a sense of Deity must excite astonishment and horror. Is the idea of an Almighty and perfect Ruler unfriendly to any passion which is consistent with innocence, or an obstruction to any design which it is not shameful to avow? Eternal God, on what are thine enemies intent! What are those enterprises of guilt and horror, that, for the ‘safety of their performers, require to be enveloped in a darkness which the eye of Heaven must not pierce! Miserable men! Proud of being the offspring of chance: in love with unjversal disorder; whose happiness is involved in the belief of there being “No witness to their designs, and who are at ease only because they suppose themselves “inhabitants of a forsaken and fatherless world! Having been led by the nature of the subject to consider chiefly the manner in) which skeptical impiety affects the welfare of states, it is the more requisite to warn you against that most fatal mistake of regarding religion as an engine of policy; and recall your recollection that the concern we have in it is much more as individuals t as collective bodies, and far less temporal than eternal. The happiness which it confers in the present life comprehends the blessings which it scatters by the way in ‘its march to immortality. That future condition of being which it ascertains, and for which its promises and truths are meant to prepare us, is the ultimate end of human "Societies, the final scope and object of present existence; in comparison of which all the revolutions of nations and all the vicissitudes of time are light and transitory. a0dliness has, it is true, the promise of the life that now is; but chiefly of that which is to come. Other acquisitions may be requisite to make men great; but, be assured, the réligion of Jesus is alone sufficient to make them good and happy. Powerful sources of consolation in sorrow, unshaken fortitude amid the changes and perturba- tions of the world, humility remote from meanness, and dignity unstained by pride, contentment in every station, passions pure and calm, with habitual serenity, the full enjoyment of life, undisturbed by the dread of dissolution or the fear of an hereafter, are its invaluable gifts. To these enjoyments, however, you will necessarily continue Strangers, unless you resign yourselves wholly to its power; for the consolations of 322 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. 5 religion are reserved to reward, to sweeten, and to stimulate obedience. Many, without — renouncing the profession of Christianity, without formally rejecting its distinguishing — doctrines, live in such an habitual violation of its laws and contradiction to its spirit, : that, conscious they have more to fear than to hope from its truth, they are never able ~ to contemplate it without terror. It haunts their imagination, instead of tranquilizing — their hearts, and hangs with depressing weight on all their enjoyments and pursuits. Their religion, instead of comforting them under their trouble, is itself their greatest trouble, from which they seek refuge in the dissipation and vanity of the world, until the throbs and tumults of conscience force them back upon religion. Thus suspended between opposite powers, the sport of contradictory influences, they are disqualified for the happiness of both worlds; and neither enjoy the pleasures of sin nor the peace of piety. It is surprising to find a mind thus bewildered in uncertainty, and dissatis- fied with itself, courting deception, and embracing with eagerness every pretext to mutilate the claims and enervate the authority of Christianity; forgetting that it is of the very essence of the religious principle to preside and control, and that it is impos- sible to serve God and mammon. It is this class of professors who are chiefly in danger of being entangled in the snares of infidelity. The champions of infidelity have much more reason to be ashamed than to boast of such converts. For what can be a stronger presumption of the falsehood of a system than that it is the opiate of a restless conscience; that it prevails with minds of a certain description, not because they find it true, but because they feel it necessary; and that in adopting it they consult less with their reason than with their vices and their fears? It requires but little sagacity to foresee that speculations which originate in guilt must end in ruin. Infidels are not themselves satisfied with the truth of their system; for had they any settled assurance of its principles, in consequence of calm dispassionate investigation, they would never disturb the quiet of the world by their attempts to proselyte; but would lament their own infelicity, in not being able to perceive sufficient evidence for the truth of religion, which furnishes such incentives to virtue, and inspires such exalted hopes. Having nothing to substitute in the place of religion, it is absurd to suppose that, in opposition to the collective voice of every country, age, and time proclaiming its necessity, solicitude for the welfare of mankind impels them to destroy it. To very different motives must their conduct be imputed. More like conspirators than philosophers, in spite of the darkness with which they endeavor to surround themselves, some rays of unwelcome conviction will penetrate, some secret apprehen- sions that all is not right will make themselves felt, which they find nothing so effectual to quell as an attempt to enlist fresh disciples, who, in exchange for new principles, impart confidence and diminish fear. For the same reason it is seldom they attack Christianity by argument; their favorite weapons are ridicule, obscenity, and blasphemy; as the most miserable outcasts of society are, of all men, found most to delight in vulgar merriment and senseless riot. Jesus Christ seems to have “His fan in His hand, to be thoroughly purging His floor;”? and nominal Christians will probably be scattered like chaff. But has real Christianity anything to fear? Have not the degenerate manners and corrupt lives of multitudes in the visible Church been, on the contrary, the principal occasion of scandal and offense? Infidelity, without intending it, is gradually removing this reproach: possessing the property of attracting to itself the morbid humors which pervade the Church, until the Christian profession, on the one hand, is reduced to a sound and healthy state, and skepticism, on the other, exhibits nothing but a mass of putridity and disease. | In a view of the final issue of the contest, we should find little cause to lament the astounding prevalence of infidelity, but for a solicitude for the rising generation, a Modern Infidelity Considered—Robert Hall. 323 whom its principles are recommended by two motives, with young. minds the most ' persuasive—the love of independence, and the love of pleasure. With respect to the { st, we would earnestly entreat the young to remember that, by the unanimous consent of all ages, modesty, docility, and reverence to superior years, and to parents bove all, have been considered as their appropriate virtues, a guard assigned by the mmutable laws of God and nature on the inexperience of youth; and with respect to the second, that Christianity prohibits no pleasures that are innocent, lays no restraints that are capricious; but that the sobriety and purity which it enjoins, by strengthening the intellectual powers, and preserving the faculties of mind and body in undiminished vigor, lay the surest foundations of present peace and future eminence. d At such a season as this, it becomes an urgent duty on parents, guardians, and tutors to watch, not only over the morals, but the principles of those committed to their care; to make it appear that a concern for their eternal welfare is their chief concern; and to imbue them early with that knowledge of the evidences of Christianity, and that profound reverence for the Scriptures that, with the blessing of God (which, with u bmission, they may then expect), “may keep them from this hour of temptation that has come upon all the world, to try them that dwell on the earth.” To an attentive observer of the signs of the times, it will appear one of the most extraordinary phenomena of this eventful crisis that, amid the ravages of atheism and infidelity, real religion is evidently on the increase. The kingdom of God, we know, cometh not with observation; but still there are not wanting manifest tokens of its approach. The personal appearance of the Son of God was announced by the shaking nations; His spiritual kingdom, in all probability, will be established in the midst of similar convulsions and disorders. The blasphemous impiety of the enemies of God, as well as the zealous efforts of His sincere worshippers, will doubtless be overruled to accomplish the purposes of his unerring providence: while, in afflicting the chastise- ments of offended Deity on corrupt communities and nations, infidelity marks its drogress by devastation and ruin, by the prostration of thrones and. concussion of ingdoms; thus appalling the inhabitants of the world, and compelling them to take ge in the Church of God, the true sanctuary; the stream of Divine knowledge, observed, is flowing in new channels, winding its course among humbler valleys, refreshing thirsty deserts, and enriching with far other and higher blessings than those of commerce the most distant climes and nations, until, agreeably to the predic- tion of prophecy, “the knowledge of the Lord shall fill and cover the whole earth.” : bv: Within the limits of this discourse it would be impracticable to exhibit the idences of Christianity; nor is it my design: but there is one consideration, resulting mediately from my text, which is entitled to great weight with all who believe in the e living and true God as the sole object of worship. The Ephesians, in common th other Gentiles, are described in the text as being, previous to their conversion, ithout God in the world;” that is, without any just and solid acquaintance with His aracter, destitute of the knowledge of His will, the institutes of His worship, and = hopes of His favor; to the truth of which representation, whoever possesses the htest acquaintance with pagan antiquity must assent. Nor is it a fact less ontestable that, while human philosophy was never able to abolish idolatry in a ngle village, the promulgation of the Gospel overthrew it in a great part (and that € most enlightened) of the world. If our belief in the unity and perfections of God, wether with His moral government and exclusive right to the worship of mankind, De ounded in truth, they can not reasonably be denied to be truths of the first mportance, and infinitely to outweigh the greatest discoveries in science; because they arr n the hopes, fears, and interests of man into a totally different channel from that in hich they must otherwise flow. Wherever these principles are first admitted, there a new dominion is erected, and a new system of laws established. 324 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. But since all events are under Divine direction, is it reasonable to suppose that the great Parent, after suffering His creatures to continue for ages ignorant of His true character, should at length, in the course of His Providence, fix upon falsehood, and that alone, as the effectual method of making Himself known; and that, what the virtuous exercise of reason in the best and wisest men was never permitted to accom- plish, He should confer on fraud and delusion the honor of effecting? It ill comports with the majesty of truth, or the character of God, to believe that He has built the noblest superstructure on the weakest foundation; or reduced mankind to the miser- able alternative either of remaining destitute of the knowledge of Himself, or of deriving it from the polluted source of impious impostures. We therefore feel our- selves justified, on this occasion, in adopting the triumphant boast of the great Apostle: “Where is the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” [Robert Hall was born in 1764 and died in 1831. The large part of his ministry at Bristol] and Cambridge. His sermon on Modern Infidelity was published in 1801, and was the ablest presentation of the subject of that day if not to the present. Later he published other pamphlets on the themes of the day, one on the freedom of the press. In 1810 he published Terms of Communion. This sermon is considered one of the ablest on the subject, and was recommended py Kerr Boyce Tupper, F. W. Gunsaulus, F. B. Meyer and W. G. Moorehead as one of the ten best sermons of the century.] TWO GREEK BOOKS ON THE LIFE BEYOND. GILBERT HAVEN. “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.” I Cor. 15: 47. While hastening on the sad errand of a funeral to my native home and parental roof, I beguiled the tedium of travel and the sorrowfulness of heart with readings by way. I had two books with me, in which I daily buried the slowly flying hours— the “Odyssey” of Homer and the New Testament. I had come, in the reading of the former in course, to the visit of Ulysses to the realm of departed spirits, and my mind naturally wandered in the other among those passages that talk of the world unseen. You can harldy imagine the contrast. Both works written in the same language, oth composed by men of the highest capacity, both treating on the same subject, nd both solemnly considering this theme; but how different each from the other! dow vast the space that separates these two creations! _ Iam not going to ask you to look on the one book as different in origin from he other. Let them both be considered as sacred—I cannot say as divine, for they are 90 far apart from each other for both to be divine. Let them both be considered as mest efforts of their authors. Then see how immense the contrast. The story of mer, it should be said, has been long esteemed divine. At the very time Christ ame it had such a reputation. So it may be contrasted as the best specimen of the se divine without revelation and without Christ, with the correlative specimen of the divine by revelation and in- Christ. No one will deny the superior rank of Homer. General consent makes him the hief of pagan poets. By pagan I do not mean a word of reproach, but of necessity. are the poets who never had direct light from Christian revelation. He ranks Hindoo poet in clearness, positiveness, imagination, rhythm, and that highest faculties, the perfect bringing forth of things unknown and unseen. He ranks Persian and Arabian writer, every Egyptian and Phoenician poet, by immeas- ble breadths. He has no successor in lucidity, a shining clearness, force, and eetness of vision, among all the writers of Greek and Roman fame. He is sovereign n these realms everywhere, and to this day. He is, therefore, no weak and ignorant illustration of the condition of man pe. By Beversal suffrage he is put at the head of the writers on whom the legacy of Christianity and the word of God never directly came. _ We may, therefore, turn away from all lower guesses at the secret of the grave, ncoherent mumblings which fill volumes of heathen lore, in all tongues and ages, md which have been laboriously gathered up in the large volume entitled History of i ¢ ‘Doctrine of a Future Life, which volume contains neither the doctrine nor history f that truth and life. We need not seek through all these realms of shade for gross nd feeble guesses at the truth. Homer is their best representative; elected by imanimous suffrage, he stands forth their chief. He is sufficient for this place. Nor should we bring to this theme our own information, gathered from centuries ' Christian education, which has created an atmosphere and made us something ~ & 326 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. other than nature-people looking at this problem of the grave with nature-eyes. We must get out of ourselves, go back from the light of Christianity, and the immeasur- able forms and powers in which it has manifested itself, and enter the realm where Christianity is not, nor ever was—the realm of pure human nature, or as near that realm as it is possible to get; for perfect nature without a-ray from the Gospel sun it is impossible to find. Christ is the light, and has always been the light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and no age or race is completely without His illuminations. Yet these rays are not direct; they give no sight of the sun. They are not traceable directly to the word of God. They are not to be accounted as scripturally revealed. They are classed under the head of nature. If, therefore, you would see how you would be, how all have been, in the dark- ness of unrevelation, read this story of the visit of Ulysses to the realm of the dead; then turn to the pages of that other Greek book, and see how wonderful the contrast— midnight at its uttermost darkness, and midday in its perfection of glory. You will also notice how clear are the limitations of that light, what you can see, and what you cannot see, and rejoice in Him who has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.” This is the story of Homer: Ulysses, having been confined a prisoner by the arts of Circe for many long months, begged to be allowed to go home. She granted him permission, but told him he must first visit the abode of the dead and inquire of a dead soothsayer as to his future. If, however, Homer wrote, as some think—and as even Gladstone, his last and best commentator, thinks—not far from the time of Saul, it shows how general at that age was the idea of learning the future from departed Spirits; the errands of Ulysses and Saul to Tiresias and Samuel being almost identical. Under her direction he sails from her island straight to the land of shades. Cimmeria, whence comes our familiar Cimmerian darkness, crying himself, as with his companions he is borne unwillingly to this “land of deepest shade, unpierced by human thought.” Thus Bryant translates his description of that country: “There lies the land, and there the people dwell Of the Cimmerians, in eternal cloud And darkness. Never does the glorious sun Look on them with his rays, when he goes up Into the starry sky, nor when again He sinks from heaven to earth. Unwholesome night O’erhangs the wretched race.” Into this thick darkness he comes, lands, digs a trench, pours into it the blood of a black sheep, and the ghosts come thronging round, eager to taste the blood, which was requisite before they could acquire the gift of speech. He sees naught here but shades. No human being lands on that strand. But how bitter the wails of these trooping ghosts: “Thronging around me came the Souls of the dead from Erebus—young wives And maids unwedded, men worn out with years And toil, and virgins of a tender age In their new grief, and many a warrior slain In battle, mangled by the spear and clad In bloody armor, who about the trench Flitted on every side, now here, now there, With gibbering cries, and I grew pale with fear.” Bear in mind the universal unhappiness of these spirits. Not one is in heaven. It is Cimmeria, a shade, and they its shadows. The first he spoke with was one of his" Two Greek Books on the Life Beyond—Haven. 327 ompz nions, who a day or two before, drunk, had fallen off a roof, where he was umbering, missed the stairway and broke his neck. “The phantom sobbed” its ply, and weeping and wailing told how he was slain. _ Then came his mother. She drank the blood which enabled her to speak, and Id in piteous tones her piteous state. She asks: “How didst thou come, my child, a living man, Into this place of darkness? Difficult It is for those who breathe the breath of life To visit these abodes, through which are rolled Great rivers, fearful floods.” ow sad the confession! His own mother, high-born and gentle-hearted, in the lace of darkness! Think you had Ulysses had a better faith he would not have plied it to his own mother? Would he have had her shivering in the mists of arkness at the door of the pit could he have placed her on more shining seats? She lis the story of her death as any one on earth might describe a lingering sickness up “°Tis the lot. of all our race When they are dead. No more the sinews bend The bones and flesh, when once from the white bones The life departs. Then like a dream the soul Flies off, and flits about from place to place.” la is the utmost of his knowledge of the dead. The soul flits hither and thither ea dream, and always in and with darkness. His talks with other dames of high gree reveal no further light on that state. Each discourses on her earthly state. ich is still of the earth, earthy. No Lord from heaven breaks in on the scene and Ssipates the gloom of the grave. The men, he said, were in as lamentable a plight as the women. Agamemnon, en he had drank the blood, “Wailed aloud, and, bursting into tears, Stretched out his hand to touch me; but no power Was there of grasp or pressure, such as once Dwelt in those active limbs. I could not help But weep at sight of him, for from my heart I pitied him.” ch is the aspect of the chief of the men whom Ulysses had known—King of the teks, head of their armies. In conversing together they confined themselves to ast. There was no present and no future. ‘Thus in sad talk we stood, and freely wed our tears.” d hilles, the greatest of the Grecks, the pet hero of Homer, draws near. He le, Save Tiresias, was in superior abodes. He ruled among the dead, yet he ed of his condition: “Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death, As if thou couldst console me. I would be A laborer on earth, and serve for hire Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, a, Rather than reign o’er all who have gone down i To death.” is 328 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. How powerful his confession! How it tells against those who declare there is no light in revelation, no difference between Christian and antichristian states! To be alive, the slave of the meanest man, is better than to rule over all the mighty dead. This is the gift of the greatest of the Grecians to his people; his best, his only glimpse into the world beyond. This is the brightest flower of Greek philosophy, art, literature, arms, religion. The rest of the story is no better. He sees famous criminals: Sisyphus rolling the ever-rolling stone, Tantalus tantalized with his thirst and its impossible relief, Tityus devoured by vultures that never cease to eat his ever- growing vitals. He cries out with fear: “And now there flocked Already round me, with a mighty noise, The innumerable nations of the dead.” Affrighted, he escapes to his ship of the earth. This is one Greek book on the future state. It is the best that nation afforde to its people. It is better than any other nation, without the Bible, afforded its people. It never improved to the days of Christ. Plato adds no light to Homer. Socrates leaves off his discussion with a guess; he has no real knowledge. Virgil has Elysian fields, but the most of his spirits fail to enter them, and his crowds of ghosts are almost identical with Homer’s, a thousand years apart in time, but not a moment in knowledge. The Greek people were fed on this food. ‘This story was first told by Ulysses at a royal banquet. I think how sadly those hearers must have listened: those ladies of the court, hearing these sorrows of the great dames of Greece; those heroic men, the mournful state of their historic heroes, and feeling that this fate of their fathers and mothers was to be their own. What was there to stimulate faith in these stories— truth to them of the most sacred sort? Tell me, ye who fancy light can come from other sources than the word of God—ye who believe in Emerson and Tyndall and other lesser lights who rule your night, and make it darker—is there any light at all in your philosophy superior to that which shone over the Achaians’ halls, where Ulysses recited this mournful tale? Has humanity any glimpse of those fields Elysian which was not granted to this blind seer and singer? Leave out to-day the light of the Gospel, and men gather now drearily in seances, and get chilling grasps of dead friends’ hands, and hear sad wailings of their present state. There is not a step ahead in the seance of to-day from the Ulyssean visit three thousand years ago. Not long since I heard one tell how a spirit visited him through a medium, who bewailed her miserable fate, beaten and buffeted and spit upon by her companions, a modern blackness of darkness as mournful as that in which these spirits wandered. That was their best. Those who are reported better off are still material, earthy, as fond of life and crying for it as strongly as did Achilles. “The first man is of the earth, earthy.” He can never rise above that condition. He is dragged down by his ignorance and his sin. He fears death itself. He fears its revelations. ‘‘The fears of the tomb,” Campbell rightly calls it; or, as Job more powerfully says, “The land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness,” or darkness that is darkness; “and of the shadow of death,” the shade of the death-shade, ghost of ghost, terror of terror, hades of hades, “without any order,” the chaos of nature, “and where the light is as darkness.” How terrible the picture! The very light itself makes only a deeper night. Yet this is not as terrible as the truth. To this day, with a line of a | hundred ancestors standing between us and those who listened to Ulysses and Job, there is no more beauty in the grave itself, in death or the dead body, than there was then. The body is still an object of fear and repulsion. We hasten to bury it out of our sight. It becomes fetidness and dust. You adorn it with flowers, make your Two Greek Books on the Life Beyond—Haven. 329 cemeteries beautiful parks, the most beautiful of parks, and still your graveyard is not a delightsome thing. It is chaos come again, the worse chaos because superin- duced upon the best cosmos. No order like that of comely man and woman; no disorder like their destruction. What shall change this view that nature gives—so _ dreary, so desolate, so fearful, so horrible? What? Listen! There is another Greek book, the work of several penmen, some _ mative to the tongue, most foreign, written about two thirds of the time back between us and Homer, nearer to his age by a thousand years than to ours. It does not _ profess to have his graces of rhythm or his varied and vivid fancy. It has never been translated by poets, nor is it a favorite with mere philosophers without faith. Yet for clearness of view, simplicity of statement, reach of faith, grandeur of imagination, and solidity of confidence, all that all the world has elsewhere said or sung is naught, and worse, to its infinitude of strength. The Lord from heaven is the second man. He has come; He has brought life and immortality to light. He has shed the sunlight of the throne in the barrows of the dead. He has walked in Cimmeria, and made it bright as the beams of the morning. He has revealed to us the happy fields, and shown us who walk together there. He has even taken the dusty earth from its coffin and urn, and made it animate with eternal life and glory. How wondrous the change! See how early it begins in - this second Greek book. Hardly is His advent announced that this fact is not N announced with it. Before the Sun appears in form His radiance shines. “Far off His { coming shone.” In exultant song Zacharias declares, “The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” p This was before He was born—the Divine Ulysses—who was not only to visit the _ dead, but to destroy death itself. 4 The acclaim of the angels announcing, “Peace on earth” to good-willing men, was in the same key. Peace and good-will must cover death, or there is no peace. \ Then come the words and works of the Master, lifting dead bodies from their _ couches into all the fullness of their lost health, calling them back from loathsome corruption into serene and solid beauty. Then comes His words, fit accompaniment 3 for such works: “I am the resurrection, and the life: . . . whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never dic.” “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up . . . But he spake of the temple of His body.” “I lay down my life of _ myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This com- ; _ mandment have I received of my Father.” “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour _ is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and i they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to _ the Son to have life in Himself. . . Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in t the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto & the resurrection of damnation.” What august, what awful power is here! Tenderer are other words: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in _ me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told _ ~you. I go to prepare a place for you. . . . I will come again, and receive you ~ unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”’ How infinitely different this from Achilles striding off over the meadows, leaving his mournful inferiors shivering _ in the darkness! % Christ, our Leader, does not thus stride gloomily and haughtily away. He talks to His companions, who are tearful and affrighted, in the most cheering manner. Before He goes to Gethsemane, to the agonies and bloody death, which He saw and would not flee, for four chapters, which must have been for an hour, He enlarges on cheering and helpful themes. He tells them for the first time distinctly about the 330 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. third Person in the Trinity, and unfolds His twofold character and work—Sanctifier and Comforter; especially the latter, as they were to be in especial need of the latter. Being divine, and alter these bold and cheerful words, to prove they were no mere boast, He condescends to die. Weakest of the weak He mounts the cross. He lays down His life as powerless as a babe. Death hath complete dominion over Him. He wrestles not. He puts forth no effort to save Himself. He does not even toss and writhe in natural resistance to His fate. Never was a babe’s death quicker or easier. “Pilate marveled if He were already dead.” He goes, not like Ulysses, and Orpheus, and Hercules, alive to hades; but, like every other man, He goes dead. Those myths never affect the world’s heart, because they do not suffer the world’s experience. Christ suffers unto death, suffers the severest agonies, which everybody dreads, and dies the quickest and easiest in these very agonies. Ile touches every experience in that hour of agony and utter weakness. How different this from Hercules marching in hades! The one strongest of the strong, and in the very towering of his strength; the other weakest of the weak, and in the very weakest of his weakness, he sinks into the power of death. No shade so thin wanders about the pit of Ulysses. They have a show of strength, he none. The victory is complete. Never more so; the dead body hangs a perfect corpse. It is taken down limp and clammy—dead. It is stretched as such; bathed, washed, wrapped, and borne off as such. You know their helplessness by many a sad experience. He is shut up in the tomb. Locked is the door, a great stone rolled before it, sealed, and watched by a band of soldiers. Can Death ask for a better compliance with his conditions? It is done as he has commanded, perfectly done, satisfactorily done; governor and king and chief priest are content. The devil can conceive of nothing further. His victory is complete. He has killed and entombed the Son of God. Hercules, the Mighty, lies slain among His foes. Ulysses, the Wise, is outwitted by His enemies. They accept their victory and are satisfied. When io! He is not here! He is arisen. He is gone! Death is outwitted, overmastered. Out of this all-eater of man cometh forth meat for the reanimation of all men. Out of the grave He marches serene and calm and mighty. Death hath no more dominion over Him, nor over His. He has done it. Not fable, not poetry, not marvelous rhythm, but fact—most marvelous fact! Everybody rushes to Him. He is lifted up triumphant over death. He draws all men unto Him. Then comes the application of this victory. His words, His works, His own divine deed, begin to tell on the world above. He ascends to heaven, a thing easily to be done after ascending from the tomb, and the story flies through the world. “Jesus and the resurrection” His disciples preach, and everybody hears. Some reject, some despise, some hate; all hear. Persecutions arise, but they hear the more, “Jesus and the resurrection.” Death comes violently, but they hear the more yet. For before the assembled authorities and populace of Jerusalem—on the very spot possibly where Jesus sank powerless in the grasp of death—the first of His newly converted preachers and disciples, probably a convert of the Pentecostal days, His first witness, declares with his dying lips that his dying eyes behold “Jesus sitting at the right hand of God,” and he asks him to receive his spirit. How different this from Homeric darkness, from Socratean guess! No wailing ghost here, no wandering shade here, seeking to taste a drop of blood that it may tell its woes to mortal ears. “Receive my spirit;”’ and having so said, he fell asleep. Asleep his body, received his spirit into Jesus’s arms. He who a few weeks beiore had said to a dying neighbor, “This day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” saw the servant who looked up, : “And from a happy place God’s glory smote him on the face.” Not only God’s glory, but the very countenance of God, the face of Jesus Christ, Two Greek Books on the Life Beyond—Haven. 33: - smiled upon His disciple, who fell asleep as a tired babe falls asleep in its mother’s arms, while she smiles her benediction into its weary eyes. Thenceforward fled the mighty word over the realms where Homer sung, over the realms where Ulysses sailed, around the great sea, and over the voluptuous East, and into the icy North—the word flew, ‘Jesus and the resurrection.” The future of man is secure. He shall come forth. He shall renew himself in glory everlasting. Then came the letters of argument and consolation; letters describing the inter- mediate conditions, so far as description is permitted and allowable; letters limiting the wildness of the human fancy and human hope within due bounds; letters suggest- ing the time and manner of this advent, yet equally careful to abstain from too great detail. How wonderful are some of their passages! Read them by the side of ~ Homer’s lines, and how his graceful rhythms wither and decay! ‘We know that, if _ our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” ‘We know!” No Greek before them ever knew—nay, ever dared to guess—this sublime fact. “For me to die is gain.” _ Socrates and Cicero never dared say that, ‘nor Homer, nor Achilles. ‘Gain?” “Gain?” “To die, gain?’ Whence know you this? Only because the Lord from _ heaven hath come from heaven, and hath transformed the earthly into the heavenly. That fifteenth of First Corinthians, written to the most sensual and voluptuous city of Greece, how it shoots its light across the ages of the grave and shines bright over its farther gate! How it lifts up that graceless city through its saints into the heights of grace! How it riddles all mere physical ascension and every attempt to abolish the bodily resurrection! How it sets forth with undying strength the steady assurance that our dead bodies shall live again! What a shout it sends through the hollow depths of hades! “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy _ victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be y to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” What a change * from the tearful, wailing shades of Homer’s heaven to this burst of rapture! ” That is the new Greek against the old; Christian against heathen; God against _ Satan. These passages grow denser and more delightful as we draw toward the close. ‘ The letters have more in them than the gospels, Corinthians than Romans, John than ~ Paul; and all consummate themselves in the grandest book in the world, the Revela- _ tion. What care we that we cannot understand its trumpets and vials and horsemen and horns? We cannot understand the convulsions of symphony, but we can the gentle melody that purls through the roaring, surging, upheaving mass of song. _ Sothrough this book runs every stream of melody—the beatitude of the spirits of the holy dead. It opens with the promises of this bliss: “These shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.” ‘They shall sit on my throne.” They shall be led to “living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” The _ old grand Greek saw only tears in the eyes of the dead; his mother, his leader, his ‘servant, his greatest soldier, Hercules himself—all wail and weep. But the new grander Greek sees God wiping away all tears. Think how changed that book had by Ulysses seen Jupiter wiping away his mother’s tears. And so on and on through this book of disclosure appear harpers harping on their harps; crowds on a sea of glass i “mingled with fire, yet never breaking nor burning; rivers of water of life; trees laden _ with precious fruits, which drop their richness every month, until the glorious golden _ city breaks on our view, descending from God out of heaven, with its gigantic aes ona of a single pearl, its wall of specified precious stones, its light the Lamb, _ temple the Lord God, its people the saints of the Most High. Here we must pause. How infinite the distance from Ulysses crying as he is drawn into dark Cimmeria and fleeing from its multitude of ghosts, “the innumerable mations of the dead.” and John talking with the angel who measures the city, and 4 aA x. 332 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. beholding its inhabitants, and listening to their songs! That is the change wrought in the race of man by the Gospel. That is the immortality Christ has brought to light. That is the Lord from heaven already dwelling among men and giving them a joy of peace and assurance such as never could otherwise be known. Three things, among many, we pause to notice: First, that the consummation of this triumph is at the resurrection. Homer never dreamed that those spirits would be reunited to their bodies. The most he hoped for was a happy home sometime for some spirits. But the Gospel laughs at impossi- bilities and leaps chasms that Nature never dare look into. It puts the crowning glories at and alter the raised, revived, and glorified body is reunited to its spirit. That is its objective point. Thither it tends. There it gazes. That is its goal and begin- ning of glory. Christ put His death and resurrection within forty-eight hours of each other. He puts our ages apart. What of it? The science that can connect the two ends of a laboratory table with the magnetic spark can gird the world with its flame. Christ can raise Himself in one day and portions of two. He can raise us if millions of years intervene. Thus and then He will show forth His glory. He reserves the highest splendors for that crowning hour. But, second, the time between is spent deliciously; whether asleep he does well, whether awake he does well; all is well. The intermediate state is not dwelt upon as the post-resurrection state, but it is sufficiently delineated to show that it is a state of peace. Happy on Jesus’ breast to lie and in His smile to bask! No Christian can find a gloomy thought in the reference to the blessed dead. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord;” not shall be—“are.” “They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” The gloom cf Job, which his faith defied, but could not abolish, is all gone in the New Testament. Stephen goes home rejoicing; Paul exults in the day of deliverance; Peter looks for and hastens after the coming of the Lord; John sees own sonship changing into his likeness when he shall appear. All are serene, happy, jubilant. The intermediate worid to a Christian is a world of life and love. It is delightful, it is desirable. Let your heart rest in peace, in the con- fidence that “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” Third, this hope is limited; Ulysses makes no limit in virtue and vice. His characters boast, in hades, of the vilest amours. Achilles, who rules below, is there, as above, a polluted chief; while his own mother wails in outer darkness. But *tis not so in the Christian’s future world. The discriminations are sharp. Some shall arise to shame and everlasting contempt. What a shame of soul is that! How terrible may this awakening be! A fallen minister, driven by remorse, withdrew to commit suicide, when the thought of that doom rolled over his soul. “Shame and everlasting contempt,” he kept repeating to himself; “Shame and everlasting contempt.” He shrank back from a further and an eternal plunge into that abyss, and was saved, ‘hough not from present shame and contempt. Take heed, O great man, lest you awake to that terrible doom! You may ride in your lordly carriage through lordly ways; you may be the proud and petted head of grand society; but if your life is false and corrupt, you shall surely awake that resurrection morning to shame and everlast- ing contempt. God help you to avoid that terrible doom! Some shall have a resurrec- tion to damnation. Who? They that have done evil. “Blessed are they that . . . haveright to the tree of life, and . . . enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whore- mongers, and, murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever maketh and loveth a lie.” How sharp the lines! The Christian's heaven is no mixed, promiscuous muddle, like a world’s town, and sometimes like a world’s church. It is separate, seclusive. Forever so: “He that is filthy, shall be filthy still; he that is holy, sha:l be holy still.’ See to it that you accept Two Greek Books on the Life Beyond—Haven. 333 tions. Accept it in honest fear of falling. Accept it in humble hope of standing. Accept it in joyful assurance of possessing heaven. Accept it for your consolation, for your perfection in righteousness. What things we have seen enter these realms. i Yet all who have entered in Christ are in Him today, and shall grow in bliss till the ripening hour of the resurrection, when the Lord from heaven shall again appear, _ take the earthly with the heavenly, and take both earth and spirit in its new and heavenly unit unto the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, the glory everlasting. Wherefore comfort one another with these words: “Weep for your dead no more; Friends, be of joyful cheer; _Our star moves on before, Our narrow path shines clear. “Now is His truth revealed, His majesty and might; The grave has been unsealed; Christ is our life and light! “His victory has destroyed The shaft that once could slay; Sing praise! the tomb is void Where the Redeemer lay.” q [Gilbert Haven was born at Malden, Mass., Sept. 1821, and died there Jan. 3, - 1880. He was a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and one-time editor of . Zion’s Herald. This sermon is from Christus Consolator, and is reproduced by permission of _ Eaton & Mains, publishers, New York, by whom it is copyrighted.] 334 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE USES OF SUFFERING BY NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, Dim “For Christ was made perfect through suffering,” and “If we suffer we shall also reign.” Culture and character are through suffering. Life is God’s university, happiness is the graduating point, but trouble and adversity are the appointed teachers. The world is built for joy, but man comes to his full estate through the tutelage of sorrow. Even Christ, who brings glad tidings of great joy, is exhibited as passing through the uttermost of pain, on His way upward toward the uttermost of pleasure and the world’s throne. If man washes his eyes in tears and makes his garments white with blood, he, too, is promised the throne and scepter of the higher manhood. For suffering is an alchemist, refining out coarseness, and transmuting bad into good, and selfishness into sympathy. Steel is iron plus fire. Tools are wood plus gashing axes. Statues are marble plus the chisel, whose every stroke makes sparks to fly. Manhood is nature plus the temptations that chisel out character. That which lets the beau- teous crystal out of the geode is not the clear shining of the sun. No Phidias ever polished his marble with softness and warmth; periection is through the chisel and the sharp blows of the mallet. Whom God loves, He chastens; whom He receives, He scourges; then brings He forth for His children the best robe—a robe with warp and woof woven of threaded pains—and places their feet in the shining way, a way bright with fagot fires, and brings them to the city of crowning joy by a way that passes by some Gethsemane and Calvary. Bronze doors of old cathedrals are all of beaten handiwork and character is ham- mered out on the anvil of adversity. Wine is through crushing of the grapes, and joy is a fine spirit oft distilled from the essence of bruised affections. Sin and selfish- ness dig deep furrows in the face, so suffering is sent in, to iron the lines out smooth again. From Paul to Livingstone, what heroic leader hath worn soft raiment? What Luther or Lincoln was reared in kings’ palaces? It is wrestling against opposing winds, that works toughness into trees and gianthood into men, If the poet’s vision is ever fulfilled and we do “judge the angels doing easy duty at home,” we must first, as veterans of the “Old Guard,” achieve our scars and as victors bring our dented shields and tattered flags in from fierce battles upon a far off frontier. As optimists, therefore, let us not ‘make believe’ and play there are no troubles. One form of folly is to always drag the corpse into the banquet. Another form is to try and triumph over tragedies by blinding our eyes. Let us confess that man, called “the Son of God,” groans and travails from the cradle to the grave; that man, the Lord of all creation, is unique through his defeats and sorrows. To deny suffering and death is to become the philosophers of mist and shallowness. To define life’s adver- sities as “figments of the brain,” imperils intellectual integrity. To ignore trouble is to falsify the facts, to rob our lives of refinement, to mutilate the higher nature and miss life’s true economy. With unyielding courage let us hasten to confess that life is full of sufferings. Reverses do overtake men; then the competency of a lifetime melts away in a night, and shoulders, so weakened by old age, as that the grasshopper is a burden, must The Uses of Suffering—Hillis. 335 again dig and delve. Ill health comes; then the hand forgets its cunning and the brain its skill; the pallid brow, the sunken cheeks, the trembling thought proclaims the end. Enemies arise to ruin reputation; then the skies rain slander and bitter lies, until all the springs of peace are poisoned. Death enters the fireside circle; “then the van- ished feet walk not with us and the silenced voice speaks only in our dreams.” These sufferings are real; they must be reckoned with, as we reckon with the laws of gravity. With sturdy brain and brave heart let us meet life’s facts, asking no intellectual anodyne for paralyzing our faculties and destroying our pains. Calmly let us confess that life holds desert as well as garden, holds midday, but also midnight. Nor hath any sage discovered the secret of perpetual peace. Man hath sought out many inven- tions, fashioned conveniences, discovered remedies, but it is given to none to achieve an uninterrupted career of happiness. A full admission of these facts will do much to help us search out the higher uses of pain in the economy of nature and God. The frontier lines of ignorance begin to recede when we note that as men go up toward manhood they go toward the possibility of pain. Suffering is a possible infliction of a large, sensitive and godlike nature. Coarseness and rudeness suffer little, but refinement much. The iron bars over a jail window answer the wind with no vibrating melody, but the silken threads sing for the gentlest zephyr. As we move _ downward and away from God’s throne, the capacity of suffering is steadily decreased. _ When we stand at the very bottom of the scale of organized life, beside the worm or oyster, we stand at the vanishing point of suffering. The jelly fish is so near nothing _ that it discerns not the knife that divides its parts. The insect of a day knows no care _ or anxiety. Birds have few fears, they dread only the snake and the hawk. The lark feels no remorse for yesterday, no fear of food failing tomorrow, has no thought of death. When death comes for beasts it comes quickly and painlessly. If the brain of the humming bird is small, small are also its sufferings. But man stands at the summit of all the animal creation. He unites within himself the bee’s skill in hiving, _ the beaver’s art in building, the bird’s deftness in nest-lining. Man includes in his little body the special gift and grace of every creature in the world’ below him, com- pacting within himself their every source of pleasure. Therefore, the accumulated possibilities of pain for all the rest of creation are also focalized upon his single person. Thus, as manhood increases, the possibility of suffering augments. This vast mental mechanism, with nerve lines running out into land and sea and sky, carries with it not only the possibility of an infinite variety and volume of pleasure, but also equal possibilities of pain. & Therefore it is that troubles seem centralized upon man. Man’s large endowment r is a drag net sweeping in pains innumerable. As he journeyed away from birds and _ beasts he left behind their painlessness, with their brutishness. As man goes up ¥ toward Jesus Christ he goes up toward sensitiveness. By so much as Christ agonized _ in Gethsemane while rude Peter slept, was tortured on Calvary while that coarse thief _ on his cross chattered, by that much was His supremacy proclaimed. Chiefly is God the great sufferer, having infinite inflections of pity, compassion, love and mercy _ toward His ignorant and sinful children. As men go up toward the throne of uni- _ versal sympathy, they go up toward the possibilities of sympathetic suffering. If a man will descend and degrade himself to the beast’s level, he can cut most of the nerve paths along which pains come in. Susceptibility to suffering argues man’s nearness to God. i Consider the sources of suffering. Nearest to our thought are pains physical in nature. Through no fault of theirs, many are born to ill health. Heredity dooms Baca. to wear a garment whose warp and woof are fiery pains. In temperament, tone ; and physical tint, like produces like. Oaks bear acorns, not figs; canaries are not _ from eagles. In the Darwin family there are five generations of students of natural Pi 2p 336 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. history, and in our Adams family five of statesmen and scholars! Of fifty-one of the world’s great poets twenty-two are known to have had illustrious relatives; also, the gloomy, tempestuous nature of his mother reappears in Byron and the weak will of Coleridge in his son Hartley. Physical suffering in others is through accident or ignorance or error in personal carriage. Some by overzeal in office, street or study, stretch the nervous cords so tightly that they give way. Love and self-sacrifice make others martyrs of ill health. What sweetness and patience have come from sick rooms, as the richest perfumes come from shrubs whose leaves are crushed. Some have borne an amount of pain distributed upon them through years that, if brought together and focalized at one time upon one person, would have equaled a thousand deaths upon the inquisitor’s wheel. The ruined temples, with broken columns and fallen arches, is the type of these wrecked lives. The heart and its affections also opens up avenues through which sufferings enter. Whoever rears a home altar and surrounds himself with loved ones, opens doorways for pain to enter. Doubling joy involves the possible doubling of sorrow. Rejoicing when the child comes involves weeping when the child goes. He who goes astray as husband or father doth not himself suffer so much as do those who love him. Pain for that prodigal son was delayed until he came to the husks and swine. But the father began to suffer when the boy first began to drift away from him. Affection protracted that agony through long years until the prodigal came to himself again. He who buys love pays for it with the possibility of pain. Love must suffer with the sins and suffering of its dear friends. Interest in the welfare of society also yields suffering. Men are knitted in with their kind. The very sight of ignorance and wretchedness works sorrow in a sensitive mind. Only those who pull down their blinds and selfishly seclude themselves, becom- ing turtles that draw the head under the shell, can be oblivious to the world’s woe and want and vice and crime. A wide-browed man cannot go upon the street without constant reminder of the chronic misery of the ignorant and wretched poor. Within a mile or two from this spot are tenement houses, every brick oozing filth, every floor sweating grime, where felons and parasites and drunkards congregate; where children open their eyes to filth and squalor; waken to blows and kicks and oaths, are debauched while they are still children, and are only chosen for the path that leads to the hospital and jail. These facts anguish good men, drive sleep from theif eyes and slumber from the couch. A great heart is like that city of Thebes, with its one hun- dred gates, through which swept caravans of wealth, indeed, but also the poor, spent pilgrims, the weary, the homesick, the heartbroken. Moreover, the contrasts of life produce keen pain. All aspire unto power, but few, can achieve wealth and position. Ambition to excel burns in the peasant as truly as in the prince. Failing himself, the poor man transfers his ambition to his children. Thenceforth he vexes the days and nights with ceaseless toil, vainly hoping to buy for the child privileges that were denied to the parent. Sleeping he breathes a prayer: “O, that my son never be a drudge!”’ Waking, he sighs: ““O, that my daughter may never go through what her mother has!” But competition is fierce and the pace fast. Soon multitudes fall behind or perish on the way. Men go down into obscurity. Millions perish, having shaped no tool, built no bridge, written no book, organized no law, furnished no incitement to virtue, created no new thought. Gold was in them, but it was undug. Talent was theirs, but it was latent. Full many a man is like these famous crystal caves. Some work- man discerns an aperture, and, passing through, the torch reveals a vast hidden cave. For ages beasts and men had walked by, never dreaming that just within was this vast kingdom of diamonds, Multitudes go through life, unknown even by those who walk The Uses of Suffering—Hilhs. 337 ‘beside them. Many die as they have lived, mere seeds of men. When April comes it finds myriads of roots and germs in the soil waiting for the south wind to bring release and power to burst through the seed, to bud and blossom. And many remain to the very end of life germinant men, even those nearest to them never know what secret force is theirs. How others feel we may not know, but for us it is not enough that the poor stand or fall with this life. God’s resources for future happiness and _ character are infinite and by us all unsuspected. Out of nature’s ruins God works strange resurrections. From rotting log the snowdrop springs; over the tree, shattered and blackened by thunderbolt, grow the beautiful vines; after Gettysburg the grass heals over the scars that cannon and death had digged; soon over the gravestone grows the softening moss, and good men cherish the hope that some time, we know not where, somehow, we know not the instrument, e the great God will give wrecked men a second summer and lead forth into full fruition His millions who were here maimed and dwarfed by heredity, ignorance, poverty and sin. The career denied here shall come hereafter. I stretch lame hands of faith and grope And gather dust and chaff and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope. Primarily suffering hath this ministry, that it is a safeguard of character. Con- stant prosperity enervates. Iron is powdered by unceasing electricity, but the steel _ fecovers itself when the current intermits. Steady sunshine ruins the tropic races and luxury often barbarizes men. The great civilizations lie along the snow belt. Men _ grow great only where winter stimulates to the best possible use cf summer. Frost puts tang and crispness into the winesap and jonathan and frost also lends spice and richness to the people’s thinking. The iron and granite in the New England soil will _ soon work their way into some Webster’s soul. Wealthy parents hire tutors and travel for their sons and daughters, but they can invent no device that will do for their _ children what poverty and adversity did for them. Of old the seer said: “When men __ have eaten and are filled straightway they forget God,” and today abundance does for _ man what abundance did. Adam and Eve disobeyed when sated by flowers and fruits. _ Life’s good things robbed them of God; then came adversity, and lo, the thorns and the thistles and the sweat of the brow gave God back to them. For adversity is God’s _ antidote for self-sufficiency. Prosperity can buy travel, rest, skill. Soon men feel as if they can do without God. Yet how little man has to be proud of. The husband- man’s part in a sheaf of wheat or cluster of grapes is 4 per cent; nature’s part is 96 B ‘per cent. Men call themselves self-made. Why, they only hold a sack while God _ fills it. Therefore men must be modest, sincere, trustful and true. Growing proud, Suffering is sent to correct his egotism and refine his coarseness. Today men curse _ God for that for which tomorrow they will think they have chiefest reason to give gratitude. The world is built for giving the race just as much prosperity as it will bear without being materialized. When men have learned to use without abusing ife’s good things, then they are death-born into eternal abundance and satisfaction. _ But under present conditions there can be no civilization without suffering. a Sufferings are often revelatory, and toil as teachers. Troubles often are danger pesnals. Often men, through excitement and mental stimulants, are in danger of destroying the integrity of the physical system. Then hunger rings its alarm bell and i proclaims the tissues inflamed by overwork. Rightly interpreted, all aches and " pains are cautionary. Penalties are bulwarks between the race and the slough that } * . 338 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. threatens to engulf it. Pains are not given in revenge, but out of mercy as curative medicines. Youth is bold and enterprises into sinful réalms. Youth caresses the adder and the scorpion. Excess drains away the precious nerve treasure. Death is in the right hand, but the man knows it not. Then pain strikes the clear, sharp note of warning balance. Penalties proclaim the everlasting distinction between iniquity and integrity, the great gulf fixed between innocence and guilt, between virtue and vulgarity. Disobedience is followed by anguish that henceforth this form of sin may be avoided and a life passed in pleasure. If man needed only one throb of pain in each organ to teach him the law of living for that member he would master every principle of sound living within the period of childhood. Then all his days would be days of happiness. Unfortunately, man forgets, so that the pains must be continued as cautions. On either side of that bridge over the Niagara are iron guards and fences. Thus the ten commandments are so many guards and hedges along life’s dangerous way. Man plunges through forests, past bogs and over chasms. When he leaves the path to plunge into the thicket where scorpions will sting, the thorns prick him back into the way. When he would plunge into the bog, nettles sting him back from the slough. When he wanders too near the precipice, sharp pains of body or mind affright him back from the abyss. God's deepest compassion and love are organized into these pains that restrain men from wrong and constrain them toward right. Properly interpreted, sufferings and penal- ties represent God’s goodness as truly as fruits and flowers, as surely as happiness and prosperity. Oftentimes also sufferings are educatory. Strangely enough, nearly all racial progress and soul culture are through adversity and suffering. If one man’s craft strikes the rock and goes to the bottom, his death lifts a signal over the spot, and saves whole fleets. If one family mistakes poison for food, and perishes, afterward the generations avoid the deadly nightshade. Soon one generation’s pain become the pleasure of the next generation. Once liberty of thought was unknown. All lips were padlocked. Then Huss went to his stake and Savonarola to his blazing pile. Soon man had free thought, free speech, free action. Each free institution cost society a hundred battle fields. The social forces of today were not rain fed, but blood nour- ished. Free institutions are vines; above their roots our fathers slit their veins and emptied out their blood, that reappeared for us in crimson blossoms. Formerly no deed nor charter was valid without the king’s seal. Now no institution is genuine that is not stamped with the blood of some patriot or martyr. All social advancement is a history of suffering and endurance and martyrdom without recognition. Reformers have labored and perished. Other generations enter into their labors. Our planet has a soil deep and rich because of ages when fire billows melted the adamant; when huge glaciers ground the rocks to powder; winds went rioting every whither; electric storms blazed, but all in vain; frost wedges split down the cliffs; heat levers pushed down the precipes. Then destruction was universal. Now we perceive that early desolation meant later fruition. The wheels of earth- quake tore the hills apart that the nations might not be separated. Watery currents scooped out the rivers as channels for man’s commerce. Frost crumbled the cliffs into food for forests and flowers. Rude forces sloped the hillsides, up which the shepherd now leads his happy flocks, and enriched the valleys where villages and vineyards now nestle beneath the shadow of high hills. This civilization grows rich through age on age of suffering. All our treasure of thought and life is a social har- vest sown in tears, watered with blood and reaped in grief, thrashed out in pain, garnered by death into the granary of the ages. ‘ The law of the conservation of energy is the key that unlocks the problem of the The Uses of Suffering—Hillis. 339 uf ring. Everywhere in nature and life growth is through the conversion of force. Fire converts things upward, while seeds work juices and solids into trees. Heat and "pressure convert limestone and iron into blood red marble. In the forests it is the frost that makes nuts sweetly plump and frees wild grapes from their tartness. Only in fierce crucibles can Nature change carbon into fiashing diamend. In the world of ‘pottery it is fire that burns the artist’s delicate tracery into the texture of porcelain. In the animal kingdom science tells us the music of the fields began with the fear and in of birds. The robin’s first note was a cry of danger. Afterward changing the “Note, it proclaims the flight of the hawk. The notes of warning and alarm developed into the liquid music of the lark and the melting rapture of the hermit thrush. In Statecraft, too, the law holds good. Socrates says no man is fitted for ruling who has ‘not known suffering. Concerning the home kingdom, his pupil thought no woman was fitted for training her children until she had been mellowed by grief and pain. Fulfilling these exalted duties in Nature, suffering is also appointed for the soul. With more than a father’s affection, with more than a mother’s love, God sends pain ‘to men. Carefully He chooses them. Suffering comes under divine commission. Sorrows do not riot through life. Men are not atoms buffeted hither and thither. Troubles are appointed to refine away our grossness; to transmute selfishness into self-sacrifice; to destroy vice to transfigure all our life. Refused, troubles bruise with- out softening; they crush without maturing. Accepted and rightly used they change their nature and become joys. Tears are seeds; planted they blossom into joy and gladness. In vision the seer said he saw the door of heaven standing open. For one brief moment he looked in upon a group of radiant beings. They seem the favorites of the es. They live in the very center of joy. No care is upon them. No burden bears em down like ball and chain. No taskmaster drives them to uncongenial tasks. % here are no furrows in the cheek nor pain ridges on the forehead. ' They are freer _ than the birds. They exhale joy as tropic winds sweet odors. Happiness is native te these children of song. Surely these have never wrought in earthly sphere and known trouble through three score years and ten. Then answered one: ‘These are ‘ they who came out of great tribulations. They have washed their robes in the bath Of suffering. Passing through the uttermost of pain, they have come to the uttermost bf joy. Emancipated at last the invalid from ill health, the persecuted from their suers, the poor from their poverty, the ignorant from their night, the heartbroken a m their every anguish, these children of exile have come to their throne, their own and scepter.” - _ In his celebrated painting Delaroche has assembled a court of universal genius. trou nd an imaginary art tribunal stand the sages, orators and philosophers, the lormers and martyrs, with all who have achieved eminence in any department of life. Strange, passing strange! that those who stand in the fore front, pre-eminent for their ability ty, are chiefly pre-eminent for their sufferings! Denied his ambition and the romised land, Moses leads the immortal band. Blind, Homer ‘eels his way. Hold- g his cup of poison, Socrates stands forth condemned to his shameful death. Then omes Paul, flogged and stoned out of all semblance of a man. Exiled Dante, too, is lere, whose “Inferno” in life best interprets his “Inferno” of death. And there is ilton, both blind and heartbroken. Now comes One who leads all that goodly com- pany. His name is “above every name.” And whence His supremacy? This is His et; “His face is more marred than any man’s.” le sermon on The Use of Suffering, or the Soul’s Victory over Suffering, was hed in Plymouth church, Brooklyn, under circumstances that made the sermon 340 ) Pulpit Power and Eloquence. particularly memorable. The audience was largely made up of men, and e and his listeners were anxious about Mrs. Hillis’ severe illness. This — between speaker and audience, together with the subject, made the sermon impressive. It is reproduced here as reported for the Brooklyn Eagle, co _ 1899, and with their permission. Newell Dwight Hillis was born at Magnolia, Ta., Sept. 2, 1858, rece education at Iowa College, Lake Forest University and McCormick Theo Seminary. He served Presbyterian churches at Peoria and Evanston, three o years each, and was then called to succeed Prof. David Swing at Central C Chicago; since 1899 pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. His | literary work consists of The Investment of Influence, Man’s Value to Society, I tokens of Immortality, etc.] (341) . ? y “THE FINAL TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY. ‘ig ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D. D. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.”—John 12; 32. , Our Lord was crucified on Friday, April the seventh, in the year 30. On Wed- nesday, the fifth of April, He stood for the last time within the venerable precincts of the Jewish Temple, and in the hearing both of Jews and Gentiles, pronounced His last ‘public discourse; a discourse which John alone of the evangelists has reported, and of ‘which our text may be looked upon as the grand culminating utterance. i The lifting up here spoken of has doubtless a double reference: First, to death by crucifixion; and secondly, to the glorious exaltation which was to follow. Greek proselytes, representing the Gentile world, had asked to see Jesus, that they might learn about the kingdom which He had come to establish. In two days more, the Founder of this new kingdom would be hanging dead upon the cross. The faith of these inquiring Greeks was liable to be rudely shaken by an issue seemingly so disastrous. To enable them to withstand this shock, our Lord not only accepts, but emphasizes the impending agony. His path, He assures them, will be no defeat, no disturbance even of His plans. Lifted up to the cross, He will thence be lifted to the tight hand of the Father, and from that heavenly height, will carry on triumphantly His redeeming work. Nor need it be thought strange that death should thus be made the gateway to life, to glory, and to dominion. Such is the universal law. The corn of wheat must be buried in the ground to rot and perish, or it bears no fruit. Man himself must die unto self and sin, in order to live unto God eternally. Much more, then, must man’s Redeemer die in order to the assumption of His regal power. It is as though our Lord had said: Be not troubled when you see Me lifted up to the eross; for in this is the beginning of a kingdom, which shall spread from heart to heart, from race to race, and from century to century, till it completes at length the ‘conquest of the globe. _ And so the meaning of our text is plain. It does not teach the doctrine of “Universal salvation. It does not say that every single member of the human family will certainly be saved. The drawing to Himself, which Christ promises, is not a compulsory, but a moral drawing, which may therefore, of course, be resisted, and endered of no avail. As a matter of fact, palpable to every honest observer, multi- tudes of men, stoutly withstanding this divine attraction, have perished and are now Perishing in their sins. But the Gospel shall prove no failure. Suited as it is to the necessities of all men, and sincerely offered to all, it shall save all who embrace it. Nor shall the number of those embracing it be small. That cross of agony and shame, teared on Golgotha, shall never be overturned. Men of every race, and clime, and dye of guiltiness, shall be drawn towards it, and subdued by it. Everything else on earth shall totter and fall away; laws, customs, institutions, religions. But this shall stand unshaken amidst the nations. Jews and Gentiles, wise and foolish, high and low, bond and free, shall gather round it. High looming amidst the civilizations and the cen- turies, it shall stand and draw; working slowly, it may be, but working ever surely l its work is done, and great voices are heard shouting back and forth athwart the heavens, that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever. 342 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Christianity thus stands committed to the achievement of universal dominion. Its Founder puts it forward into history as the universal religion, . fore-ordained to universal prevalence. For those of us who worship ‘Christ as God, this prophetic assurance of final victory is enough. Our lines might be much thinner than they are, our march much slower, our trophies fewer, and still we should not be disheartened. We should still stand fast by the ancient bond, which gives Christ the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. Generation after generation might succeed to the arduous struggle, and still the Church would keep her camp-fires burning, never doubting that the time will come, however distant, when her camp-fires shall be kindled, and her banners shake, on every hill-top from the rising to the setting sun. But if this be true of the Church in her instinctive loyalty to Christ, it is equally true that the asserted divinity of Christ is itself on trial. If the religion which He established falls short of universal acceptance, if it encounters civilizations superior to it, if it comes into contact with races of men which it cannot conquer, then the preten- sions of its Founder are brought to shame. Scattered and partial triumphs will not suffice. Either Christianity must subdue all things to itself, or be routed entirely from the field. If it does not everywhere ultimately prevail, then it is not what it claims to be, and ought not anywhere to prevail. Setting aside therefore, for the present, the promise of its Founder, ce is de- cisive only on the assumption of His divinity, it becomes necessary for us to entertain, on independent ground, the question, whether Christianity is likely thus to prevail. We shall have to ask ourselves whether there be anything inherent in the system itself, or anything in its past history, prophetic of universal dominion. This we know has been again and again denied. In the second century it was denied by Celsus, who took the ground that different races and nations are preconfigured to different religions, and that consequently the expectation of universal diffusion for any single religion is a foolish dream. Christianity is thus confuted at the start by the glaring absurdity of its aim. Its insane ambition of universal conquest brands it as an imbe- cility and a cheat. A skepticism similar to this of Celsus in regard to the ultimate universal prevalence of Christianity exists in our day. There are those amongst us, affecting philosophy, who have no faith in our evangelism. They may indeed admit, what no candor can deny, that the religion of the cross has become the religion of the best and ruling races of mankind; but they do not believe that it can be made to traverse the whole scale of humanity. There are races of men, it is alleged, who can no more take it than they could take the refined philosophy of Plato. These races may be overborne and pushed out of history; but evangelized they can never be. Or if ever evangelized, it cannot be till they have first been civilized. Nor is the faith of Christian men themselves always as firm and buoyant as it should be. The good work goes on slowly. Empires like those of China and Japan, embracing more than a third part of the population of the globe, and millions of men everywhere, idolatrous and stupid, resist our march. On national and historic grounds, apart from the explicit assurance of prophecy, have we any right to expect that these empires and these millions will ever accept the faith we offer them? This question I now propose to answer: First, by an analysis of Christianity itself, which by making clear its marvelous adaptation to human wants, such as no human system ever exhibited, may at the Same time demonstrate the divinity of its origin, and so give double assurance of its final triumph; and secondly, by a brief glance at the past achievements of Christianity in its gallant struggle for the dominion of the world. I. In the first place, what are the distinctive features of Christianity? Wherein The Final Triumph of Christianity—Hitchcock. 343 Joes it differ from other religions? And how do these points of difference stand lated to God on the one side, and to man on the other? iL. _In enumerating the distinctive features of our religion, we may mention first the Incarnation of God in Christ. If anything is clear from history, it is clear that human nature can not endure a yald spiritual theism. Man has two thoughts of God, equally normal and necessary. ‘He thinks of God as One Infinite Spirit, wholly separate from matter, without form, voice, or changeable affections, transcending the limitations of time and space, wise, just, and awful in His holiness. Hence the pure monotheism now recognized as lying ir the background of all the better Pagan mythologies. Hence, in part, the triumphs f Mohammed, whose wild voice out of the Arabian peninsula went pealing over three continents: “Your God is one God.” That there are more gods than one, or that his One God is anything else than pure spirit, human reason, in its best estate, has always steadily refused to believe. The divine unity and spirituality were affirmed by ‘Plato, looking the Greek polythism boldly in the face; and were reaffirmed by the eo-Platenists as essential parts of their eclectic creed. But human weakness and uman sinfulness necessitates another conception of God. Across the great gulf between the finite and the infinite, between sin and holiness, the voice of man is afraid ‘to speak. The human heart sinks discouraged, and shudders with affright. A being ‘so feeble, and so defiled, must have God near to him. Hence the Patriarchal and Hebrew theophanies, in which the ineffable Jehovah is seen wearing the human form, nd is heard speaking in human tones. Hence, likewise, the Pagan deification of jature and man, and all the inferior divinities of the Pagan Pantheon, bridging, as best y might, the bottomless abyss which yawns betwixt the finite and the infinite, the sinful and the sinless. The idea of incarnation is thus seen to be congenial to our re. And yet in none of the instances referred to was this idea realized. The Patriarchal and Hebrew theophanies were only transient manifestations of God in the nen form; a temporary expedient of merely provisional economies. They only ted a hunger which they could not feed. Still they served what appears to have their providential purpose; they prevented at once the worship of nature and ie multiplication of inferior divinities. Accordingly for centuries, down even to the ne of the deluge, when wicked men shrank away from the awfulness of God, they ook refuge not in polytheism, but in atheism. After the deluge, mankind no longer ble to be atheists, betook themselves to the worship of innumerable divinities. ature in all her rage was defied from the starry hosts on high down to the mountains, he rivers, and the trees. At first these natural objects were revered only as symbols of the Divine presence and power. At first the carved or molten image was only a nbol. But in process of time the symbols themselves were worshiped. Even the lebrews, in spite of their theophanies, were still, after the exile in Babylon, constantly sing into these idolatries. Outside of Judaism the declension was monstrous. The tor was sunk and lost sight of in His creation. In the great hunger of the human cart for an incarnate God, polytheism became the faith of the masses, and pantheism ne speculation of the schools. Human reason pronounces for unity in its conception the Godhead; but the human heart, yearning for sympathy in its weakness, and tricken with terror in its defilement, cries out for an incarnate God. _ This importunate demand of our finite and sinful nature is for the first time met the incarnation of God in Christ. The theophanies were transient 2nd provisional. really adumbrated the coming reality. The incarnations of the pagan world were all of a pantheistic type, involving no proper personal union between the Divine the human. In the pagan philosophies, God could enter humanity no other wise than He entered nature. The tree and the man fared alike. But in Christ the two natures, each complete and perfect in itself, were united in a real, perfect personality. e t. i 344 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. He was a man, born of the Virgin Mary, with a real human body, and a real human soul; as human in every proper sense of the word as any one of us. He was also God; not God the Father, but God the Word, the Second Person in the Trinity, whom angels worship and who made the worlds. In one breath we may say of Him that He was born and died. In the next breath we may say of Him, before Abraham began to be He eternally and unchangeably is. And for three and thirty years this mysterious being lived and walked in Palestine. Now he sailed upon the lake, and now He soothed its angry billows by a word. Now he was a genial guest at a marriage feast, and | now He turned the water into wine. Now He wept before a sepulcher, and now He waked the dead. Now He died Himself, and now having risen from the dead, He as- cended up where He was before. Such is the Christ of the New Testament. Such was the Christ of Christendom for three hundred years before the Nicene Creed echoed the speculations of Athanasius. And such has been the Christ of Christendom, by a vast preponderance of numbers, in every succeeding century. Such, too, must continue to be the Christ of Christendom, by an equally vast preponderance of numbers, through all coming time. Here at last our nature rests. Here at last is the great hunger of the heart appeased. We need no less, as we can ask no more. God manifest in the flesh is the end of all our desires, the solace of all our sorrows, the conquest of all our fears. And what is more, even philosophy is now ranging herself on the side of faith. From pantheistic speculations there is no legitimate escape but in the doctrine of the Word made flesh. Here, then, the sage and the savage meet, bowing together at the feet of an incarnate God. The conception of such a divine humanity is equally above them both; but as an accomplished fact, it satisfies and renovates, and saves them both. 9. Another distinctive feature of Christianity is the atonement. If as a Roman poet has said, it be human to err, equally human is it to undergo the pangs of remorse and the fear of punishment. Dualism may affirm an eternal independent principle of evil, and pantheism may seek to resolve all evil into good; but the conscience of the race refuses thus to be relieved of its crushing burden of guilt. In man’s own unperverted and honest judgment of himself, he is an offender, not merely against the moral order of the universe, but an offender against the Moral Ruler of the universe, against whom personally he has rebelled, and whose inmost moral ‘nature has been aroused to the vindication of its righteous claims. Punishment is of course the instinctive apprehension of the soul that has sinned. Nature, it is observed, always punishes, never pardons an offender. Human governments seldom pardon. Human society would lose its coherence, and human life itself become a hideous riot, were not punishment the rule for evil-doers, and pardon the rare exception. How, then, can impunity for sinners be looked for under the moral government of God? But the abyss thus opened is frightful; for every human being misery, and that misery eternal. Hence a wild cry everywhere for relief. Is there no escape? Is the law to have its course? In this sphere of spirit, as in the sphere of sense, must fire always burn, and water always drown? Verily they must, says reason; there is no such thing as forgiveness. Altars and sacrifices are of no avail. From the very heights of the Platonic philosophy, more than two thousand years ago, the verdict came that “the gods are not easily propitiated.” Sorrow, O sinner! is bottomless; by penance you must yourself atone for the mischief you have wrought. I will not say that human beings in their distress would never dare to dream that God might somehow succor such misery. But I must say, what no sound thinker will venture to question, that there is no safety in reasoning from mere goodness to mercy. The rude peas- ant, with low, confused notions of what is due to justice and law, might have imagined that somehow pardon was attainable; but philosophy would have The Final Triumph of Christianity—Httchcock. 345 S rebuked his presumption. And yet in spite of philosophy, men everywhere have By ? +4 ’ had their altars and victims. Whence these altars and victims? Of blind human instinct say some, making thus the strongest possible confession of ill-desert, in the hope of averting a retribution seen to be justly impending. Of gross concep- tions, say others, as though God might be wrought upon and moved to favor by such offerings. But penitent confession, how bitter soever it may be, ts no atonement says philosophy. Nor is God so coarse and savage a monster as to delight in the scent of burning flesh. Let then altars and victims be swept away; they are an offense to reason. And yet the altars stand, dotting every continent, and with their huge volumes of smoke, blackening the whole firmament. Whatsoever it may be that builds them and lights their fires, these altars are evidently indestructible. Philosophy may frown but still they smoke. And their meaning is, that sin, in order to be remitted, must first be atoned for. The necessity of expiation is what they preach with their tongues of flame. But there is no real expiation in the blood of beasts and birds. Such victims take away no sin. The whole system of bloody sacrifices is therefore vain; a dismal cheat if it promises atonement; and pitiful at best, if it be only a con- fession that atonement is needed. Such is the dilemma of philosophy. Here on the one side is the admitted universality of sacrifice proving its connection with something indestructible within us; and on the other side the demonstration of its impotency. From this dilemma Christianity offers the only possible escape. In the sufferings and death of Christ it sets before us a real atonement actually accomplished in history; an atonement eternally prepared, of course, since God Himself, its author, is eternal; an atonement which began its saving work by the very cradle of our apostate race. It was no mere show of condescension and of sympathy, enacted for moral effect, but a real thing. Christ actually suffered for us in His divine humanity, enduring mysterious and immeasurable agonies, that there might be a real satisfaction to the awful justice of God. Not God’s honor only but God’s own nature required it. This sublime work of atonement was to Him, as well as of Him, penetrating the very depths of His being, and answering a holy demand, which otherwise could have been answered only by the punishment of the guilty. It was not merely that He might safely pardon, but-that He might pardon at all. Pardon required some other basis than that of penitence in the offender; it required a basis of satisfied justice in God’s own nature. And that basis was furnished by the sufferings and death of Christ. As for man, there was nothing for him to do, indeed there was nothing he could do but simply accept the atonement thus accomplished for him. He had only to confess his sin and receive forgiveness on the ground of what had been done for him by another. In this way was Adam saved, if saved at all. It matters not that thousands of years were to roll away before the Son of Man should go as it was purposed for Him. The Lamb that taketh away sin was already slain—slain from before the foundation of the world, and _ faith had only to await the historic consummation of an eternal act. But the goal was _ distant and the way was rough. And so the altar was built, and the victim brought, not of human impulse or invention, but by divine appointment; not for taking away of sin, but only to typify the real sacrifice. That this was too crude a ritualism, beneath the dignity of its alleged Original, let no one say who has ever heard of the holy walk of Enoch, who has ever heard of the tithes paid to Melchisedek as the representative of an economy older and wider than that of Abraham. We who have never used nor had need to use these types must be careful how we sit in judgment upon the pious men of the elder ages, whose faith embraced not an ascended but only a coming Savior. To them these types were eloquent. The gleaming knife, which slew the shrinking victim, pierced their own heart. The flame which leaped from the altar, pointed its red finger towards the throne at once of justice and of grace. And so these men were saved, as all men might have been. The system had certainly its 346 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. limitations and its perils. There was always danger that type would usurp the place of antitype. There was always danger that atonement would be sought for in the sign, rather than in the thing signified. When thus emptied of its great meaning, the whole sacrificial system of course miscarried. No wonder the Greek philosophy made such havoc of the Greek religion. No wonder the time arrived when the masses thought all religions equally true, and philosophers thought them all equally false. Even among the Hebrews, faith withered into formalism. Indignant prophets accordingly denounced their temple service as an abomination. The lamb of the priest had ceased to be suggestive of the Lamb of God. But the world was now a temple, an altar, and an offering not liable to such abuse. The sensuous types are all withdrawn. The real victim has been slain. The atonement has become an historic fact. And so faith marches out from amongst the shadows, to lay hold upon the substance. Philosophy, which derided the former, cannot deride the latter. Human nature remains unchanged in its corruptions, unchanged in its fears, unchanged in its craving for atonement; and there is no solid peace for the troubled conscience but in the blood of Christ. 3. The third distinctive feature of Christianity is Regeneration. As already intimated, confession of sin is not confined to Christendom, and is no new thing in history. Universal sacrifice, of which we have just spoken, is itself a universal confession of sin. It stands confessed likewise in all literature; even in that of China, the coldest and poorest of all. In the better literatures, as of Greece and Rome, this confession strikes down deep, pronouncing the very nature of raan depraved. “It is clear,” says Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, “that not one of the moral virtues springs up in us by nature.” “We all have sinned,” says Seneca; “some more, others less.” Accordingly when St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, says of all men, that they are “by nature the children of wrath,” he says no more than philosophy has said before. In regard, however, to the genesis of this confessed depravity, the ancient philosophers were greatly at fault. Assuming a better original estate of man, they explained his present character by supposing a gradual degeneracy. As Coleridge has justly observed, they “had no notion of a fall of man.” Only this they knew, that the golden age of the race had been followed by the ages of silver, of brass and of iron. Of course they knew of no adequate remedy. And yet near the conclusion of Plato’s dialogue ‘‘Respecting Virtue,” there is the remarkable assertion, that virtue is neither natural nor acquired by study, but comes, if it comes at all, by a divine fate, without any purpose of our own. Here at length is a finger pointing in the right direction; from the helplessness of man, to the mighty power of God. Christianity begins its curative work by a better diagnosis of the disease. It sets in a clear light the original rectitude of man, reveals the Tempter, and reports the Fall. As by one man sin is said to have entered into the world, and that one man was the first man and father of all men, it is seen that the poison is in our very blood. And it follows, of course, that a damage so radical can be repaired only by the hand that fashioned us. These two points had doubtless been emphasized in the very morning of history, along with the promise of redemption and the appointment of sacrifice. If Adam and Eve repented of their sin, we may be sure that their repentance was born of faith and that their faith was begotten of God. But in process of time these points became obscured. The disease ran on, but its origin was forgotten, and the only infallible prescription for it lost. Hence the mistaken and fruitless attempts of heathen moralists to retrieve by culture a loss which could be retrieved only by regeneration. But although Christianity, in its essence, is thus as old as the promise in the garden, the coming of Christ in the flesh, inaugurated a new economy of the spirit. From the day of Pentecost there dates a more pungent conviction of sin, with a far greater energy of renovating grace. From that time onward, wherever the Gospel The Final Triumph of Christianity—Hitchcock. 347 _ went it darted a new light down into the depths of sin, and offered man the very inter- -yention of which Plato had only vaguely dreamed. It sounded a new call to Berctiance, rendered more urgent by what was disclosed of the origin and malignity of the evil; and accompanied this new call to repentance with the offer of certain - deliverance. Christ himself touched the very heart of the matter, when he told Nico- ~ demus that he must be born again. But the new birth is not merely a doctrine of Christianty; it is a work of the _ Spirit, pledged to attend the faithful proclamation of the Gospel in every age and in every land. Persuasion to virtue was the task and function of the pagan moralist. | The offer of God’s renewing grace is the task and function of the Christian evangelist. * And there is that in man which can be satisfied with nothing less than what is thus _ offered in the Gospel. He knows that he has sinned. He knows that his nature is _ depraved. And he knows that he has no power to restore himself to the image and favor of God. It only remains for him to be told that the hand which first framed now offers to renew him. This, and this only meets his case. Made as we are, Masliverance from the consequences merely of sin is not enough for us; we must be _ delivered also from the sin itself. It matters not what difference there may be of race, Dot language, of rank, of culture, of outward morality; it is enough that we are all human. The first Adam is forever repeating himself in his offspring. And the one _ imperative necessity of every child of Adam is, to be born again. Such is Christianity in its grand distinctive features of Incarnation, Atonement, and Regeneration. These three features are all in the line of human reason, as is seen by reference to pagan philosophies and false religions; and yet are infinitely _ beyond and above human reason, as is proved by the fact so palpable to every candid inquirer, that no pagan philosophy or religion was ever able to grasp them. Chris- tianity thus stands absolutely and sublimely alone; transcending every other religion by all the difference there is between a line which reaches only to the clouds, and a line which reaches to the very throne and bosom of the King eternal, immortal and _ invisible. And not only so, but it fully meets every want of our finite and fallen nature. Precisely those things which are peculiar to it as a system, are precisely the things we need. The conclusion is irresistible, that a system at once so unique and So essential must be of God. And if it be of God, then, as Gamaliel told the San- hedrim, it cannot be overthrown. So long as man is man, and God is God, so long ‘must this religion stand, working its miracles of grace. II. It remains for us to glance briefly at the past achievements of Christianity that we may determine whether or not it be actually advancing toward universal dominion. This we have need to do, not merely for the quickening of our own faith, but because an impression is abroad that Christianity can not very well endure this historic test. It is not to be denied that there is a class of facts which, at first sight, would seem to be hardly in keeping with the prophetic vision of universal conquest. Christianity, it is said, has been constantly shifting its theater from race to race, from continent to continent; losing in the rear, as it gains in the van of its sounding march. Once its banner floated over Asia, even to the shores of the Yellow Sea. Once it waved up and down the Nile, streaming across the northern provinces of Africa to the Pillars of Hercules. Once it rallied the Graeco-Roman civilization beneath its shining folds. Now, these conquests it is alleged have all been lost. Asia has gone back to her old teligions; and Africa has gone back to barbarism. Arabia begat a prophet as well as Palestine; and at this hour, after twelve centuries of trial, more than a hundred millions of our race are Mahommedans. From Asia and Africa Christianity finally withdrew to Europe, and in Europe crept slowly to the north and west. The Greek and the Roman gave place to the Kelt, the Teuton, and the Slay. And even these have so 348 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. soiled the banner they were elected to bear aloft, that it had to be brought across the Atlantic in quest of fresher breezes and a clearer sky. The older nations of Europe, it is asserted, are not sinking to decay, as sank the nations which eighteen hundred years ago skirted the Mediterranean. Two young nations are now rising rapidly to power; on the eastern horizon, imperial Russia; on this western horizon, republican America. In less than half a century their united force will dictate the fortunes of the world. But they, too, must rot and perish, and the Christian banner committed to their keeping again go trailing in the dust. So do some men amongst us interpret the annals of the past; and so do they cast the horoscope of the future. But there is a sounder philosophy of history than this, and a brighter vision of the future. We admit apparent losses in the past; but we claim a real, and from the begin- ning till now, a steady gain. In numerical strength the gain has been immense. The Christian Church passed out from beneath the hands of the Apostles with a member- ship, perhaps, of half a million. When persecutions ceased in the time of Constantine, at least ten millions, or about one-tenth part of the population of the Roman Empire had taken the Christian name. And now, of the twelve hundred millions supposed to be dwelling upon the globe, nearly one-third part are at least nominally Christians. From an expansion of membership, so uniform and constant, we are at liberty to anticipate nothing less in the end than universal prevalence. As to losses of territory, and shifting theaters of conquest, these are of small moment,in the great account. It is only the loss of puissant races of men which can tell against us in the historic argu- ment. And no such loss has.ever occurred. The Tartar and other races of central and eastern Asia, once gained over, in large numbers, by Nestorian and other mission- aries, hold a low place upon the human scale. The Greeks and the Romans were the masters of the ancient world. And these have never died; nor discarded the Christian name. The Greeks are still a Christian people, ruled by a Christian king. The Italians are still a Christian people, rapidly uniting themselves under a Christian head. And both are commencing a new career, which bids fair to outshine the old. The Greek and the Roman Churches are certainly corrupt; but each bears upon its banner the name of an inspired Apostle, and those Apostles, Andrew and Peter, were brothers; each glories in the cross of Christ; and both must return eventually to the simpler rites and the purer doctrines of their better days. As for the newer, and perhaps still nobler races of northern Europe, they proved their inherent loftiness of moral temper by seizing with avidity the offered Gospel. Barbarians we have called those rugged men who overturned the Roman Empire, and trampled its glories underneath their invading feet. But for a hundred years or more, they had had the Scriptures in their own Gothic tongue; and when they crossed the boundaries of the Empire, as Niebuhar thought, were already Christians by a larger percentage than the race they conquered. And these Gothic tribes have never relaxed their hold upon the cross. For centuries, it is true, they wore the trappings of the papacy; but in time they sent forth Martin Luther, and gave us the Protestant reformation. From western Europe, thus recoy- ered to the simplicity of the Gospel, sailed the heroes of faith and freedom, whom we call our sires. Here at last is a Church without a bishop, and a State without a king; here at last is a Christian republic, time’s latest product, and its best. Just now, indeed, we are walking up and down the furnace of a great affliction; but the Son of God Himself is with us amidst the flames, and He will see to it that nothing shall perish but our dross. We are no prophets, but we all of us discern a future now dawning on our horizon, over which the Hebrew prophets would have clapped their hands. Over against us, as though to balance the’ globe, belting Northern Europe and Asia, nay, clasping round to meet us on our own Pacific shore, stands the great colossus of the European and Asiatic future; imperial, it is true, in government, and Greek in faith, but lifting his masses with him to intelligence and freedom, and destined The Final Triumph of Christianity—Hitchcock. 349 to learn of us the great lesson of religious liberty for all men. France, I know, is Roman Catholic and aggressive; but the better faith of her Huguenots is steadily advancing; Protestant England with her heart of oak, stands armed and dauntless _ behind her cliffs; we ourselves will soon be ready for our task; and then the eldest son of the Latin Church will find no mischief which he will dare to do. 5 Millions of men I know are still idolaters; millions of men are still Mohamme- - dans; and millions more still worship Brahme and Budha. But a single Christian nation of western Europe outweighs them all. When these millions will begin in _ large numbers to accept the Gospel, we cannot tell; but we know that they need the Gospel, for they are men. And we know, too, that sooner or later they must receive it at our hands. Where the Gospel once went, winning it victories, it can go again, _ In the last strategy of the Christian centuries of conflict Asia and Africa were indeed abandoned for a time, but our troops are returning to contest anew the ancient fields of victory, and already enough has been accomplished to make us confident in regard _ to the final issue. What we need now first and most of all is a better Christendom. Three hundred and thirty-five millions of mankind now answer the Christian roll-call; and they hold in their hands every art, every science, and nearly every resource of strength in existence upon the globe. Their lands are filled with plenty; and their commerce whitens every sea. Already they clasp the round earth in their stalwart arms; and it only remains for them to lift it up, and lay it upon the bosom of its Lord. Such, my brethren, is the religion we have in charge; and such the triumph which awaits it. For its distinctive features, separating it immeasurably from all other religions, it has Incarnation, Atonement, and Regeneration. These are at once so much above our own invention, and so exactly suited to our case, as to prove a Divine Original. And what God must have ushered into history, will not be let to fall. Not His word only, but His whole nature stands pledged to victory. Nor is this a matter of faith alone. Our faith is helped by sight. For eighteen hundred years the Chris- tian Church has marched from conquest to conquest. The retreats and losses have been only temporary and apparent; the invasions and the gains have been substantial and abiding. The end is sure. Every false system is yet to be exploded; and every idol is yet to be ground to powder. God grant that none of us may be deaf to such a drum- beat, leading the host of the Lord’s anointed to such a conquest. [Roswell D. Hitchcock was born at East Machias, Me., August 15, 1817, and died at Somerset, Mass., June 16, 1887. He was appointed professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary in 1855 and president in 1880. His published works _ consist of a Complete Analysis of the Bible, and Socialism. i This sermon is from the National Preacher and was.preached November 22, 1863, at the Lafayette avenue Presbyterian church, New York, and is considered as important __as his other famous sermon, The Eternal Atonement. ] 350 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. CHOICE AND SERVICE. MARK HOPKINS. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.’—Joshua 24: 15. Probably Joshua is the most illustrious example on record of a great warrior who was also a thoroughly religious man. Chosen by God to bring Israel into the promised land, he had under him a people trained as no other had ever been. With the excep- tion of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, not a man of them was over sixty years old. The faint-hearted and the murmurers of a former generation had perished, every one of them, from among them, and the nation, instinct with one life and one Purpose, were ready to follow their leader. The faith of that leader never faltered, and with the single exception when there was an Achan in the camp, he led them to uniform victory. Having conquered the country, he divided to each tribe its inheritance, and for a time the land rested in quiet. In this quiet the Israelites did not relapse into idolatry. They remained steadfast in their allegiance to God. That generation and the succeeding one received a higher testimony than any other that has been on the face of the earth. It is said, “And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over- lived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord that He had done for Israel.”’ Still, the heathen were not entirely expelled; the Israelites were the descend- ants of those who had made the golden calf at the foot of Sinai, and as the time for his death drew near, Joshua desired to do something to guard the people against that departure from the living God which was the only thing they had to fear. Accordingly he “gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their officers; and they presented them- selves before God.” Then was seen one of the most solemn and imposing spectacles in the history of the nation. This leader, whose success had been so great, whose authority had never, like that of Moses, been questioned, now more than a hundred years old, stood before the assembled nation, and surrounded by its chief men, recounted to them what God had done for them, and required them to choose deliber- ately and solemnly the service of the God of their fathers; or, if they would reject that, to choose whom they would Serve. The question was to whom they would render supreme allegiance, and that question they were then to decide. This decision Joshua was careful should be made only with the fullest light. He not only told them what God had done, but also that He was a holy God, and the difficulty of His service on that account. They heard, they understood, and decided that they would serve the Lord. “And the people said unto Joshua, Nay, but we will serve the Lord.” That was decisive of the history of that generation. So far as the choice was from the heart it decided the influence and destiny of every individual during the whole course of his being. In this transaction with the Israelites one thing was required and another implied. It was required that they should choose their supreme object of affection and worship; it was implied, that, having chosen, they would serve him. The choice was to be made once and forever; the service was to be perpetual, involving volitions and acts con- stantly repeated. In this choice and these volitions the radical character of the Choice and Service—Hopkins. 351 Israelites found expression; in a similar choice and the consequent volitions our character will do the same, and on these our destiny will depend. Let us therefore look a little at these acts of choice and of volition, as they are in themselves; as related to each other; and to human character and well-being. Taking then the act of choice, I observe, in the first place, that we must choose. There are certain original and necessary forms of activity through which man knows himself. These are commonly said to be three—thinking, feeling, willing. In reality there are four, thinking, feeling, choosing, willing. These were never taught us. They are not the product of will. We do not think because we will to think, on choose because we will to choose, any more than we will because we will to will. We think and choose and will by a necessity of our nature immediately and directly when the occasion arises. These forms of activity we find originally in us, and a part of us; they go back with us to our first remembrance and conception of ourselves. If man did not find in himself each of these he would not be a man. Free we may be in choosing, but not whether we will choose. This is so a condition of our being, that the very refusal to choose is itself choice. And not only must man choose, he must also choose an object of supreme affec- tion. A supreme object of worship, an object of worship at all, he need not choose, but of affection he must. This belongs to the constitution of our nature. If a man were compelled to part with the objects of his affection one by one, as the master of a vessel is sometimes obliged to throw overboard his cargo, it must be that there would be a last thing to which he would cling. Without this our nature could have neither consistency nor dignity. In this the great masters of thought agree, and through it they account for the apparent anomalies of human conduct. “Search then the master passion—there alone The wild are constant and the cunning known.” As a river, if it be a river, despite backwater and eddies, must flow some whither, and as those eddies and the backwater are caused by the very current they seem to contradict, so must there be in man some current of affection, bearing within its sweep all others, and that would, if known, reconcile all seeming contradictions. In this, too, the Scriptures agree. It is only a statement in another form of the great doctrine announced by our Savior, that in the moral sphere there can be no neutrality and no double service. “He that is not with Me is against Me.” “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” , How far God so reveals Himself to each man as He did to the Israelites that there must be a distinct acceptance or rejection of Him, He only can know, but every being ‘having a moral constitution must be either in harmony with, or in opposition to, the _ great principles of His moral government, and thus virtually either choose or reject ‘Him. To know what the supreme object thus chosen and the master passion is, is the capital point in the most difficult and valuable of all knowledge, the knowledge of ourselves. Not our capacities alone do we need to know, but the set and force of that “current within us which is deepest. But what the object thus chosen is, or even that he does thus choose, a man may not distinctly state to himself, and it may come out into clear consciousness only as he is brought to a test. The covetous man may go for years amassing property; the upas tree of avarice may grow till every generous affection is withered beneath it, and yet no test may have been so applied as to compel him to say to himself, “I am a miser.” He may not even suspect it. If told the truth he may honestly, in one sense honestly, as well as indignantly and reproachfully deny ‘it, and say with one of old, “Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?” A & 352 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Christian may be in doubt whether he loves God supremely. But let persecution come | and demand his property, and that will be one test; let it demand his liberty, that will , be another; let it demand his life to be given up through reproach and torture, and ~ that will be a third and final test. Then will there be a felt ground of consistency and — of dignity. The ship will right itself in the storm, and with its prow toward its haven, the fiercer the winds the faster will it be driven thither. But while we are thus necessitated to choose, and to choose an object of supreme affection, the choice itself is free. There is always in it an alternative. In this it differs from all that precedes it either in nature or in ourselves. Here it is indeed that we find the birth-place and citadel of that great element and royal prerogative, Free- dom, which underlies all moral action and accountability. This it is which brings us into a moral and spiritual sphere wholly out of and above that of mere nature. The sphere of nature has for its characteristics uniformity and necessity, but here is free- dom. This element is typified indeed, and foreshadowed in nature through all her forms of unconscious life. Wery beautiful it is to see a multiform life working spon- taneously toward its ends. Wonderful is that selective power by which the root and leaf of each vegetable, and the sense and digestive apparatus of each animal, appro- priate that which will build up the life of each, and reject all else. But here is no freedom. And the same may be said of all that precedes choice in our own life. We must previously have knowledge, but we know by necessity. No man can help know- ing his own existence and acts of consciousness. We must previously have desire. Hunger and thirst, the desire for food and drink, are necessary; and there are hunger- ings and thirstings, appetencies and cravings so running through our whole nature that if we do not hunger and thirst after righteousness even, we cannot be filled. But here too the congruities are prearranged, and the desire is necessary. As such it has a wider range than choice. We desire many things which we do not and cannot choose. We desire wealth, position, power; we may desire the possession of the stars, or of universal dominion, but we can choose only that which is offered to our accept- ance. There is in choice appropriation, and the thing chosen must be in such a rela- tion to us that it may, in some sense, become our own. But the peculiarity of an act of choice is that there is in it an alternative. This belongs to its definition. There is an overlooking of the whole ground, a comparison, and a felt power of turning either way. We must indeed choose, but we are under no necessity of choosing any one thing. When but a single object is offered us we may choose or reject it; when two are offered, both of which we cannot have, as learning and ease, power and quiet, pleasure and virtue, we may choose between them. Thus, through the whole range of faculties which God has given us, we may choose which shall be brought into predominant activity; and through the whole range of objects which He has set before us, including Himself, we may choose which we will appro- priate as the source of nutriment to our inmost life. In this act of choice, having thus an alternative, every man stands forth to his own consciousness as free, that a conviction of his freedom must cling to that con- sciousness forevermore. The freedom is so a part of the act, and enters into the very conception of it, that men generally would as soon think of denying the act itself as of denying its freedom. No man can honestly deny it. Hence, as being known at once, and certainly, just as is the act itself, freedom can neither be proved nor disproved, but. must be accepted on the immediate testimony of consciousness. A man might as well deny the fact that he exists, as to deny those characteristics of his being which enter into his conception of himself; and of these, freedom of choice is one. ‘‘We lay it down,” says Dr. Archibald Alexander, “as a first principle—from which we can no- more depart than from the consciousness of existence—that man is free; and therefore stand ready to embrace whatever is fairly included in the definition of freedom.” Let ' ‘ Choice and Service—Hopkins. iar lead the mass of men to disbelieve it. They can never really disbelieve it them- selves, they can never practically discard it. . And this leads me to observe that as freedom finds in an act of choice its cradle, ‘0 does it also its citadel. Interfere with a man in his outward acts, restrain him from passing the limits of a wn, shut him up in a prison, fetter his limbs, and you are said to deprive him of his understood, but there is still a freedom which you do not and cannot touch. There is in choice an activity of the spirit that abides wholly within itself. It neither requires nor admits of means, or instrumentalities. or outward agencies. Hence no power, human or divine, that does not change the essential nature of the spirit itself, can teach the prerogatives of this power. Here is the inner circle of freedom, its impreg- mable fortress. Within this, man is a crowned king. Here, though but a beggar, he We thus see what choice is. But the Israelites were not only to choose, they were By distinct and separate acts of volition, or of will, they were to cause the choice thus made to find expression in all their outward life. Let us then, as was _ Almost universally, and by the leading philosophers, as Kant and Hamilton, choice and yolition have been confounded under the common name of Will. As more imme- liately connected with action, volition has been made the more prominent, and obscurity and sad misapprehension have been the result. But not only are choice and _ Yolition, or an act of the will, not the same, they are totally different. To this I ask pecial attention. LE _ And first, choice must precede volition. No man can intelligently will an act except with reference to some object previously chosen. i Secondly, choice, and not volition, is the primary seat of freedom. In a sense we re free in our volitions. They are wholly within ourselves, they require no means or strumentalities, and no earthly power can interfere with them; but yet they must be im accordance with some choice that predominates at the time, and can be changed = Qn ly by a change of the choice. But are not men compelled to will what they do not choose? Not strictly. By force unjustly used they are said to be compelled to will hat they would not but for that, and this is slavery; still the will will be in accordance ith the choice on the whole, else a man could not become a martyr. A patriot, laving chosen as his end, and with his whole heart, the good of-his country, and while hus choosing, cannot will acts in known opposition to that good. He may die, but ie cannot do that. _ Again, choice and will respect different objects. In strictness, we never choose lat we will, or will what we choose. The objects of choice are persons, things, ends. he object of volition is an act; always an act. We choose God, we choose a friend, a house, a profession, an ultimate end, but we do not will these. To say that we will a ill study; we choose an apple that hangs with its fellows upon the bending bough, we the act by which we pluck it. And as the objects of choice are different from those of volition, so are its grounds. 354 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. We choose the apple because it is good; we choose a friend for his intrinsic ani we choose an end as good in itself; we choose God as infinitely excellent in Himself, — and as meeting through that excellency every capacity of our rational being. ‘ Always we choose an object for something in itseli—some beauty, some utility, — some grace, some excellence, by which it awakens emotion or desire, and comes into 7 some relation to our well-being. But an action we never will for anything in itself, but only as it is related to an end. An action tending to no end would be a folly, and one abstractly right without reference to an end, is inconceivable. We do indeed wiil actions as right, but we mean by that, sometimes simply their fitness to gain an end, and sometimes, also, that the end is good. If the end be good, and be chosen because it is good, the action will be morally right; if not, it will be right simply from its relation to the end. An act of choice is itself right when the true end for man is chosen, and the choice is made, not merely because it is right, but, as all choice must be, in view of some good in the end. Universally, then, it is true that we choose objects and ends because they are good, and will actions because they tend to secure such objects and ends. Once more, in choice man is not executive, in volition he is. We think, feel, choose, and though active in these, are not conscious of putting forth energy. Every one knows the difference between a mere choice, or even purpose, and that putting forth of energy by which we attempt to realize our purpose. This gives a new element. Before, the man was contemplative, choosing an end, maturing plans; now he is executive, working for an end. Choice and purpose are known in themselves, volition by its effects, and what these may be experience only can reveal. Thus at all points do we find a difference between choosing and serving, that is, of willing. Choice is primary—volition secondary; choice is directly free—volition indirectly; choice respects persons, objects, ends—volition acts; choice is not execu- tive—volition is; choice too has the common relation of source to both willing and loving; volition is not a source at all; choice fixes on ultimate ends and absolute value, which is a good and not a utility. The very idea of utility is excluded from this sphere. A System of Morals based on the choice of a supreme end as good in itself, cannot be one of utility. In choosing the supreme end appointed by God for the good there is in it, there can be no undue reference to self. If this had been seen, much misapprehen- sion would have been saved. Ultimate ends we choose for the sake of an absolute value; a utility is a relative value. It belongs to means and instrumentalities, to volitions and acts as related to ends. We have now considered choice and volition as they are in themselves, and as related to each other. If any one should say that these points are too elementary, or, if you please, metaphysical, for an occasion like this, I should agree with him if their connection were less vital with human character and well-being. That connection it remains for us to consider. And first, I observe that choice, free as we have seen it to be, is the radical element in rational love. In this is the difference between rational and instinctive love. I know that mere emotion has stolen the name of love, and that the impulsive affections have been made identical with the heart. I know that there are affinities, and attractions, and a magnetism between persons as well as things, that there are subtle and inex- plicable influences by which individuals are strangely drawn together, and that under the domination of these they think they love. And so they may; but not from these alone. So long as attractions are balanced by defects of character, or incongruities of temper, so long as there is a parleying between the better judgment and the feelings, and while as yet there is no ratifying choice, there is no rational love. Let this choice be withheld, and however emotion may eddy and surge, it is not love, and in time it will die away. But when the deliberate and full choice is made, the heart is given. ; Choice and Service—Hopkins. 355 Then objections become impertinent, imperfections disappear, and the full tide of emotion flows on, tranquil, it may be, but deepening and widening. Choice is not emotion, nor a part of it, but it opens and shuts the gate for its flow. It is the “personality determining where it shall bestow those affections that are its life. It is _ the nucleus of a train that sets the spiritual heavens aglow. Emotion fluctuates; it comes and goes with times and moods and health, but love is constant, and this is the ot part of love. It is principle as opposed to emotion. In these two—choice and emotion—it is that we find what is called in Scripture “the heart.” “His heart is fixed,” says the Psalmist. There is the choice and the principle. “Trusting in the ‘Lord;” there is the emotion. The heart is not the affections regarded simply as ‘emotion; it is not the will except as will and choice are confounded. It is the affec- tions, including choice; born of choice and nurtured by it. Hence, under moral ‘government the heart may be rightly subjected, not only as emotion, to indirect regu- ation, but as choice, to direct and positive command. For God to say, ‘““My son, give “Me thy heart,” is wholly within His prerogative as a righteous moral Governor. This is a point of the utmost moment, and often but imperfectly apprehended. P Again, if choice be thus an element of love, I need hardly say that it must deter- mine character. ___ This follows because the character is as the paramount love. If this be of money, the man is a miser, if of power, he is ambitious, if of God, he is a religious man. It is ‘said by some that character depends on the governing purpose. It does proximately, but purpose depends upon choice. We first choose, then purpose. On this, too, depends disposition, so far as it is moral. A supreme choice is the permanent dis- posing by a man of himself, in a given direction. This is the trunk of that tree spoken of by our Savior, when He said, “Make the tree good, and his fruit will be good.” From this will flow a sap that will reach the remotest twig and leaf of outward expres- sion, and give its flavor to every particle of the fruit. Such a choice will determine not only the disposition, but the subjects of thought, the habits of association, the whole furniture of the mind. Hence those expressions of the Bible “the thoughts of the h ell “the imaginations of the heart,” are perfectly philosophical. Thoughts, imagi- nations, fancies, castle-buildings, take their whole body and form from those choices nd affections which are the heart. These come and go, but they swarm out as bees from the home of the affections, and there they settle again. So it is that ‘‘out of the he proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies;” and so it is that “out of it are the issues of life.” But it is in these, as thus springing from the heart, that character is expressed, and hence it is that the cart, having its nucleus and salient point in choice, is the character. But if character thus depends upon choice, then the connection of choice with human well-being opens at once upon us. Under a moral government—and if we are under that we can have no hope of anything—if we are not under that there is no God—under a moral government character and destiny must correspond. What- apparent and temporary discrepancies there may be, ultimately they must spond. That they should do this enters into the very conception of moral rnment. Settle it therefore, I pray you, once and forever, that as your character , SO will your destiny be. Whatever capacities there may be for enjoyment or for uffering in this strange being of ours, and God only knows what they are, they will ¢ drawn out wholly in accordance with character. There shall be no inheritance of sessions, or felicity of outward condition, no river of life, or gate of pearl, or street 1d, there shall be no serenity of peace, or fulness of joy, or height of rapture, or y of love; there shall be no hostile and vengeful element, no lake of fire, no wing worm, no remorse or despair, that will not depend upon character. It is by t bearing upon this that we are to test every claim made upon us in the name of 356 Pulpit Powcr and Eloquence. religion for outward observance and self-denial; and we are to sweep away as super- stitions all forms and observances that do not tend to the purification and elevation of character, because it is this alone that bears upon destiny. This is destiny. We thus see the amazing import and responsibility attached to this prerogative of choice. As we are active and practical it is the one distinguishing prerogative of our being. Entering into it, not as that which we may do, but as that which we must do, it is so a part of our being that it cannot be separated from us, and that its responsi- bility cannot be shared by another. It is that by which we make ourselves known for what we are. It is by choice only that our proper personality, ourself, acts back upon 4 the forces that-act upon us. As an original primitive act, admitting no use of means, : it requires no one to teach us how to choose; no one can teach us. If I am required i to kindle a fire I can be taught how, because means must be used, and there must be 7 a process; but I must think and choose before I can be taught how. As a moral act the results of choice are immediate and inevitable because it is in that that morality is. Outward results and general consequences will depend on ~ powers and agencies out of ourselves, but this is wholly between man and his God, and reacts upon the soul, leaving its own impress forever. To that impress all things outward will come to correspond, and thus it is that man decides his own destiny. — His destiny is as his choice, and his choice is his own. In this, not alone in immor- ~ tality—immortality without this would be but the duration of a thing—in this, crowned by immortality, is the grandeur of our being. All below us is driven to an end which it did not choose, by forces which it cannot control. But for us there are moments, oh, how solemn, when destiny trembles in the balance, and the preponderance of either : scale is by our own choice. Do you deny this, ye who speak of the littleness and weakness of man, and of the power of circumstances? Ye who scoff at freedom, and . sneer at human dignity, and mock at the strivings of a poor insect limited on all sides, — and swept on by infinite forces, do ye deny this? Then do you deny that man is made | in the image of God. You deny that he can serve Him. You destroy the paternal — relation of the Godhead, you blot out a brighter sun than that which rules these visible ~ heavens. If God is to be served it must be by a free choice; by a free choice it must be if His service is to be rejected. Other service would do Him no honor, other rejection would involve no ‘guilt. Feeble as man is, and we admit his feebleness; limited as he is, and we admit the limitation, it has yet pleased God to endow him with the prerogative of choosing or rejecting Him and His service. Therefore do I call upon you, every one of you, to choose this day whom you will serve. I call upon you to choose God, the God in whom you live and move and have your being, the God who has made you, and redeemed you, and would sanctify you. Him I call upon you F to choose and to serve as that service is revealed in the Gospel of His Son. “If the Lord be God, follow Him, and if Baal, then follow him.” Choice and service—these were demanded of the Israelites, these are demanded of you; these only. Choice and service—in these are the whole of life, and heeding practically the characteristics belonging to each, your life must be a success. To choice belongs wisdom. Here, indeed, and in the choice of ends rather than of means, is the chief sphere of wisdom. The whole of wisdom is the choice and pursuit } of the best ends by the best methods and means. But in the choice of methods and means to secure their ends ‘the children of this world are often wiser in their genera- tion than the children of light.” The difference is in their choice of ends. The ends” of the children of this world are madness, and this, in the eye and language of the | Bible, stamps them as fools. ; But while wisdom belongs to choice, to service belong energy and firmness tempered by skill. You will be careful here not to mistake for energy a prevalent reckless and boastful tendency to “go ahead,’ or for firmness, a dogged obstiae aa Choice and Service—Hopkins. 357 out candor. Indiscriminate antagonism is easy. Denunciation, indignant or castic, coarse denunciation mistaking elegance for sin, is easy. By these a reputa- t as a reformer may be cheaply gained. But to be energetic and firm where principle demands it, and tolerant in all else, is not easy. It is not easy to abhor wickedness and oppose it with every energy, and at the same time to have the meek- ness and gentleness of Christ, becoming all things to all men for the truth’s sake. The another to give to four millions of slaves all their rights. Here, I repeat it, is your de ger. Here it was that the Israelites failed. Their choice was right; their resolution was good; they promised well, but they failed to take full possession of the promised well-doing; there is a country to be made united, peaceful, prosperous, free, wholly free; there is that better time coming for which the whole world waits; there is, above all, a promised land beyond the dark river. All these are a promised land to you, and wait with more or less of dependence on your wisdom and energy. They are no illusions, Bright as any or all of them, except the first, may seem to you to-day, if you do your part, the reality will be brighter. Always the realities of God transcend Wisdom and energy—this is the watch-word that I would give you as you go down nto the battle. Do any of you say, we have not wisdom? I say to you, “If any man ‘ack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.”” Do you say, we have not strength? I say to you, ‘Lo, e is strong,’”’ and “underneath are the everlasting arms.’’ Guided by His wisdom, strong in His strength, there may yet be for you struggle and suffering, the darkness {Mark Hopkins was born in 1802 and died in 1887, was principal of Williams \ ollege from 1836 to 1872, and professor of moral philosophy. He wrote a number of books, The Law of Love and Love as a Law, The Study of Man, etc. President Garfield was one of his pupils, and he said once that the best definition of a college was a boy on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins on the other-] 358 : Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE GOSPEL A COMBATIVE FORCE. BISHOP JOHN F. HURST. “Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”—Matt. 10: 34. - Our humanity is an uneven thing. Like the seas over which we sail, and the dome of sunlight and cloud above us, it is changeful, and is a matter of endless surprises. It despises uniformity and monotony, and takes delight in sudden and violent contrasts. Of precisely the same nature is the Gospel, which aims at the saving of our humanity. It is the most manifold system known to the world’s annals. Of all the gems in the precious treasure box of truth, it has the most faces, and the flash from them is quickest and reaches farthest. The ancient seer now depicts the coming Messiah as a victor over many foes, coming “from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in His apparel, and traveling in the greatness of His strength;” and now the same prophet describes Him as “The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Ages later, when the prophecy became a fulfillment, the angels sang of the incarnation as “peace on earth” and ‘“‘good-will toward men.” Still later, when the infant became the preacher of the Beatitudes, he declared: “Blessed are the peace- makers: for they shall be called the children of God.” In the final period of His incarnate life, when the clouds of the great passion began to gather thick and fast, and the cross was in full vision, and the Savior needed every friend from far and near, to the impulsive disciple who had drawn his sword in His defense, He said: “Put up again thy sword into his place; for all that take the sword shall perish by the sword.” Yet it is this same One, the dumb sheep before the shearers, whose speech was hardly greater than His silence, whose lips also said, that He came not to “send peace, but a sword.” To such a contrast between an aggressive and combative spirit on the one hand; and a sublime and silent patience on the.other, there is no analogy among men. In the presence of these divine opposites all human diversities grow insignificant. Paul comes nearest in his approaches. Patient, tender, and sympathetic as he was, to no Troy or Cannae or Gettysburg need we go to find a more daring hero than was he who said of the Gospel, that it was “sharper than any two-edged sword.” The solution of these contrasts in character and speech lies in the perfection of the blending of such strong colors. Christ was not all patience. He combined the hero with the silent sufferer. Paul harmonized the tireless apostle, daring, heroic, ever fearless, with the preacher of the charity which is the greatest, and with the willing martyr who could say at last, as he looked back upon no lost battle-field, “I am now ready to be offered.” The Gospel, therefore, is both an olive-branch of peace and a sword of keenest edge and irresistible thrust. In a Florentine gallery one comes to a room where he sees a perfect statue from an unerring ancient chisel. It is poised upon a pivot, which a child’s hand may turn; and, as the immortal marble revolves, the light from the broad. window reveals now a beauty of grace and outline, now a perfection of strength and endurance, and now a flexibility of form—the whole a happy blending of those rare and varied qualities that floated first in the creative mind of the Greek sculptor. So, as the rays fall on this matchless figure of the truth we call the Gospel, The Gospel a Combative Force—Hurst. 450 we discover a perfect combination of the qualities which save—silence and speech, This combative quality of the Gospel has a wonderful fascination. It appeals to sense of heroism and aggressiveness in either the individual or the communion which possesses it. Where there is no vertebral column of vigorous theology, you flabby cheek and the lack-lustre eye. One can endure a deformity better than a negation. Cromwell, with wart upon his face, and Milton, with blind eyes, are fairer figures in the horizon of history than the most polished Tudor or Stuart who oppressed the weak millions. Christianity, when it stood first before the world, had its face, which was the open index of the vital fires which burned within. Think of the mt over all the seven—the type of the majesty and potency of man over the resisting forces of the world in which he lives. Behold the historical David, with the flush of the sweet Judaean hills in his face, and a consciousness of his royal destiny his heart, bringing the Philistine giant to the dust, and giving to his people a peace which the bronzed army could not hope to win. You see a Joan of Arc leading the French hosts to deeds of valor never surpassed in the annals of the world’s warfare— the type of the power of womanhood on the throne, on the battle-field, and in the home. But you fail to find any analogy to the young and valiant Christianity, as it stood before the world, in the presence of Judaism and paganism, the sworn foes of every step of its advance. With unblanched cheek and steady eye and drawn sword it went from one field to another, making no compromise with any faith that sued for s valorous friendship, conquering the old lands for its new Gospel, stripping the venerable temples of their dying faiths, releasing the prisoner and the slave, filling the ery archway of the firmament with its songs of triumph, occupying the Roman throne by a natural gravitation, threading the deserts, climbing the mountains, penetrating the savage northern forests, building its churches, rearing happy homes, establishing schools, and constructing a civilization new to the world. Such was this new com- batant in the warfare of ideas. It was the hero who never trembled in the presence of any foe. It never came back from the battle upon its shield, but always with it. nines of a decaying planet, and whose every figure upon its broad and shining disc might, indeed, be carved with such skill and care as only blind Homer could sing of th shield of Achilles. The Christian’s shield was far more, and is more still, for it is the shield of faith, forged in the fires of God, and fore-ordered for successful resistance wherever the strong arms of His servants raise it in defense of the right. The utility of the Gospel, in its combative and aggressive quality, may be seen in— I. The doctrinal triumphs of the church. The great foundation on which the _ church of Christ rests is a compact and firm system of theological truths. There they hie, the basis of all Christian experience, the authority of all religious activity. It is this which marks the difference between Christianity and paganism, between the believer and the idolater. Each one of these doctrines has its authority in the Bible, ts distinct individuality, its separate history, its record of immortal worth through all © years since its formulation. Besides this separate type of purity and worth, each 2 loctrine has its relationship to the whole. Each is a link in the chain of the unbroken which have been brought from the quarry and shaped for their place in wall, or arch, t bridge, and yet all firmly joined by that subtle cement with which the Romans, 360 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. greatest of all the worlds builders, knew how to defy the storm and heat of all the ages. So, in the doctrinal structure of Christianity, do we observe an individuality of the doctrines, but at the same time a firmly articulated and cemented system, which constitutes the vantage ground of the church for all its triumphs. Let me ask, What is the history of these Christian doctrines? Have they come to us as the finished gifts from the skillful hand of the Divine Architect, or has He given only the inspired direction and left the workmanship to man? I answer, There is not a doctrine in the entire organism of the church’s faith, which has not come to us in the abstract, while the concrete development has been left to the human co-worker with God. Had each doctrine its tongue, and would tell its history, it would reveal a romance of courage that would put to blush the story of Xenophon’s retreat, and the inspired daring of Leonidas or Charles Martel. Every one of our sublime Christian doctrines is the price of blood. When Froude was one day walking through the market of Scotch Leith, he inquired of a woman the price of her fish, and chaffed her for asking too much. She sadly replied, “But they are the price of men’s lives.” Right was on her side, for they had been caught at great risk from the wild waves and angry tides of the treacherous North Sea. So each doctrine of the Christian structure of holy faith has been shaped, and placed in position, at the great cost of the sublimest heroism of faith. Let me individualize. Look at that majestice.truth, the doctrine of justification by faith. An Augustinian monk is reading the revelation of it in a black-letter Bible in the Erfurt monastery, making a pilgrimage to Rome, rising on his feet, against all codes of propriety, with the words, “The just shall live by faith” in his mind and on his conscience, beginning a new life, nailing the old superstitions to the door of the Wittenberg church, and with the click of his hammer waking the dead to life from the rising to the setting of the sun. The sanctity of the Sabbath, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the Christian’s firm belief in miracle, and indeed, in the doctrines of the truth, the shield of our higher Christianity, are precious trophies borne off by faith and heroism. II. In moral reform we observe another exhibition of the worth of the antagoniz- ing Gospel. The broad face of society abounds in great moral wrongs, images of impurity, and it is the part of the Gospel to attack these, and to rear in their place the grand creations of a pure Christianity. The church that sleeps in the presence of any crime deserves to die, and be buried in the nearest ecclesiastical potter’s field. The one who calls himself a Christian, and is unmoved by the biting serpent and stinging adder of alcohol, and refuses his speech and example to aid in putting it to death, richly merits the loss of all citizenship in this free republic. No great morality comes to us unbidden. We must struggle for it with mighty will, or we never acquire it. Every victory which we have gained in the realm of a higher social life has been hotly contested, and has been won at last only by nerve of steel and quick sabre-stroke. Stand with me on the height which overlooks the calm and beautiful plain that lies, as if it might be a piece of rare tapestry from the Gobelin loom, around the still walled and moated medieval Nuremberg. Look at that grim historical castle which crowns — the height. Its thick walls and grinning windows have witnessed many a close conflict. Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus are only two of the thousand who have fought for its possession. It has been the coveted prize of great warriors and their strong armies for many centuries. There is not a granite block in all the structure that does not sing its legend of plenteous bloodshed. So, in all the mighty fortresses -. of our great reforms, there is not a stone which has not been gained by mortal conflict. - ,Walk about the great citadel of the reforms of all these later days, and count its bastions and measure its walls, and go beneath the jagged teeth of its portcullis, and st&nd in calm beneath the sunlight of its esplanade, and you know that there is not a yi Ss The Gospel a Combative Force—Hurst. 361 stone on which you stand, or native granite far beneath your feet, or a quiet home far off in the distance, or an acre that springs into beauty at the husbandman’s wand, vhich has not become a prize at the end of bitter and relentless war. Ill. We see a further illustration of spiritual combative force in the believer's personal development. When the heart is changed there is only the beginning of the Christian life. Not a muscle has been trained to vigorous work; not a nerve has been taught its fine vocation of quick sympathy; every faculty of the mind enters upon an untrodden path. God's ideal for His child is not a perpetual infancy, but an immortal _ maturity. He means no raw recruit, masquerading on the drill-ground before the barracks, but the broad battle-field, beyond river and mountain and desert, a thousand miles away, with the innumerable hosts of the enemy in full and threatening front. His purpose for the new nature is growth—accretive, steady gain. The law is ‘inerease—‘‘first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” “Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, ‘temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity.” It is one grace after another, ‘until manhood, an ever stronger manhood, is reached. God means “the perfecting of the saints till we all come, in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” This completeness of Christian character, then, is what God’s ideal means for every believer. To attain it requires great discipline, the ordeal of severe struggle. Haw- thorne, the keenest analyst of human nature produced by our country, says that a woman’s face is never so beautiful as when she has passed through a great trial. Is not all beauty of soul the result of conflict? Look at your stronger and better : characters in the sacred gallery of heroes! Did not Moses acquire that calmness of _ manner and equipoise of character by a rigid discipline of forty years of monotony and ‘toil as a shepherd in Midian? He was first developed before God committed to him the spiritual leadership of the race. Was not Elijah trained for his faith in the plain a below before he was ready to see the cloud from the top of grand old Carmel? _ No moral strength comes save by struggling for it. It is trial and sorrow that ing out the beauty of the soul. We look at the beautiful flower and enjoy its agrance, but we must not forget that it was once a wild thing, clinging to some bald orwegian boulder, brought away from its barrenness by some Linnzus, and taken 9 a warmer sun and friendly soil, and developed into a plant fit for a royal hall or a mple service. Look at the sparkle of the diamond. We must not forget that it nce lay in the earth in the rough, and that only the sharpest and hardest instruments ould cut it into smooth faces and perfect angles, and let the sun find its way to its very heart. Behold the coin fresh from the stamp! Never could you see the fine design _ and trace the beautiful legend until the gold had been rescued from the mine and passed through the ordeal of fire and force. The same inward process of purification ongs to the souls. Whenever you see a pure and noble character, know that Somewhere, in the obscurity of the work-shop or the ministry of home, there has been mete for purity, a long strife for development, and that symmetry and steadiness ave come after supreme and unrelaxing effort. I see a Christian apostle brought into F he presence of a representative of royalty and commanded to make his defense. His mies have presented charges. He is told he may now speak. With masterly nner he passes from one firm proposition to another, in his irresistible logic. By nd by you see a tremulousness, a stir, an unsteadiness. But in whom? Let us read: As Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trem- d.” It was the man on the throne, the representative of Roman authority, every ad and fold of whose purple robe shook with fear. Paul was as undisturbed as calm sun in that Syrian sky. He, the accused and the prisoner, conquered the 362 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. occupant of a throne. Yet his real conquest was not there, but long before, in the darkness of the prison. The perfect victory is won before the battle begins, in the long and steady battle with one’s own self. Like the flower, we see triumph only aiter the forces have been at work in secrecy and in silence. The time is coming when they who have come up through great tribulation shall receive the welcome home and enter upon their life of happiness. All tribulation is the price they pay for the crown and the robe and the palm. In the old Roman days, the husbandman had his tribulum, a heavy block of wood to which was attached a rope and that was connected with the staff or handle which was wielded by his strong arm. The grain was put upon the threshing-floor. The man who was to thresh it brought down his great tribulum upon it, first in one place and then in another, until the chaff and the grain were separated and the winds of heaven bore off the chaff while the golden grain lay upon the threshing-floor. The tribulum has done its work, The grain is bright and beautiful and ready for grinding into finest flour. Had we our own way in all our plans, were our purposes never interfered with by the holy mind and the stronger hand, we should never be fit for the Master's use. Do we not recall the question as the multitudes of triumphant souls surround the throne, “What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?” The answer comes back, “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” [This sermon his not been printed but was copied especially for its use in Pulpit Power and Eloquence. It contains a vigor that seems to be slipping away from a_ great deal of present-day preaching, and will have served its purpose if it spurs up those who read it. John Fletcher Hurst was born in Dorchester county, Maryland, Aug. 17, 1834. He studied theology at University of Halle and Heidelberg, entering the Methodist ministry in 1858. Became instructor at the Methodist missionary institute, Bremen, then professor historical theology, then president of Drew Theological Seminary, 1873-1880. His literary work embraces books on theology, history and travel; bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church since 1880.] , ; | THE REFORMATION OF THE FAMILY. PERE HYACINTHE. Ladies and Gentlemen: The importance of questions affecting the family becomes enhanced in the presence of institutions of popular government. Over against that rowing and agitating individualism to which it ought to act as a counterpoise, unless he family represents the force of a wise and liberal conservatism, it becomes the instru- ment of the most dangerous and obstinate reactions. And if, unhappily, its influence hould cease, or rather should decline, for the family is incapable of being wholly lestroyed—the order of society would find that its natural foundations had given way, ind the impotence of political forces to stand alone would be laid bare to the eyes of ll. The question of the family, then, a question of all ages, is peculiarly the question the ages and lands of popular government. Now, it is a fact, which unfortunately needs no proof, that the family is impaired verywhere, and, I think, particularly so in our own country. I do well, therefore, to ike up the question of its restoration. I did this ten years ago in the pulpit of Notre Jame. My point of view has not changed since then; my convictions have only eveloped and strengthened, and I shall speak to you from the same principles, and iometimes with like expressions. Less than ever can I take part with those chimerical, mot perverse minds which propose to better the family by a course of headlong mnoyation. I hold, on the contrary, that the maxim of Macchiavelli is here peculiarly plicable, that ‘‘institutions are to be reformed only by carrying them back to their riginal.”” _ What, then, is the original of the family? Is it a sort of legalization by the State ad by religion of the baser instincts of human nature? I blush to put the question, it I am forced to do so, because the moral sense of some men is so gross as to make necessary. If the family were nothing but this, generous souls would turn from it iscorn, and adopt that ancient motto out of Homer, “Live wifeless and die childless.” hristianity has planted itself at quite another point of view, and if it has proposed to ptional persons in exceptional circumstances the type of absolute asceticism, it , at the same time, glorified the family, and opened it to all, not as a refuge Shall we find it in fatherhoood? Of all the heights of human existence, herhood is one of the sublimest. In contemplation of it St. Paul exclaims, “I bow y knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood in aven and earth is named!” Fatherhood is a lofty height; but it is not lofty enough. is not there that the human family has fixed its throne. That, if you will, is its rious footstool, but not its royal seat. What, then, is the original of the human family? Doubtles, fatherhood is a fact capital importance, but it is an intrinsic fact, and consequently does not constitute ‘inward essence of wedlock. Ask of reason, and you will learn that there is one v of love for persons and another for things. We love a thing for our sake, but a son for his own sake, If fatherhood was the prime and absolute end of marriage, 364 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the wife would be lost in the mother, the companion of man would be only a means to an end—a noble and sacred means to the perpetuation of our race, but still a means. Asia would be in advance of Europe, and Mussulman barbarism of Christian monogamy. That be far from us! The family must rest essentially on the disinter- ested love of two human beings, loving for love’s sake, taking each the other for their mutual end, and finding in the unselfishness of this choice the fulfillment of their moral nature. For just as when man loves his God, loves truth, righteousness, absolute and living—for this is God—it is for the very excellence of this sublime object, and yet he receives of Him, out of measure, overflowing, never-failing, the joys of reason, con- science, heart and all His being; just so in wedded life, there is the devotion of each to each, but at the same time they become each the complement and so the felicity of the other. For the man is not humanity; the woman is not humanity; but man and woman are the two fragments, the thesis and the antithesis, if you like the phrase, that unite in the sublime synthesis of marriage, at once human and divine. The-intellect, with the law that governs the relations of person to person—the law of finality and not utility; the heart, with the law that governs all great affections, friendship as well as love, the law of self-devotion; the intellect and the heart, both answer us by showing us the essence of the family in that bond, pre-eminently a moral bond, which unites forever in one being a man and a woman. And now suffer me to interrogate the Bible. I did this in last Sunday’s discourse, and we saw what profound philosophy is hidden in its neglected pages. We observed the harmonious and progressive development of the material creation up to the unfold- ing of man, spirit in flesh, flesh in spirit—the crown in this world of the completed work of the creative thought. Now, Genesis tells us also of the creation of woman and the duplication of human nature in its two parts—the masculine and rational, and the feminine and effectional. Genesis carries us back to a scene which it calls Eden. What wonder that mankind begins in Eden! Understand me at the outset, I do not attempt to define exactly the historical value of the narrative. My reason presents no objection to it, for there must needs, at the origin of the species, have been some strange transactions in the world, and miracle for miracle. I like the Bible story better than the hypotheses of some men of science. But I am not unaware that in dealing with the mysteries of the beginning and the end—mysteries beyond the reach of our reason and our imagination, and of all our present faculties—both Genesis and — Revelation make use of symbols that are not to be taken literally, lest we belittle the things, not less real but more vast, which the letter unveils to us by veiling them. I say, then, that for my part I find it no wonder that the Bible story makes man begin in Eden. Is it not thus that all of us begin? Is not man born into the midst of the scenes of nature as into an enchanted garden, whose forms, whose colors, whose perfumes have for his infancy and childhood charms, delights and revelations which by and by he will cease to find in them? Every life has its dawn, its spring- time—dawn and spring-time that seem destined to be eternal. Even until now, life begins with a never-to-be-forgotten dream of innocence and bliss! Here, then, we find ourselves, with Adam, in Eden. The whole scene shows us that we are in the ideal regions of human stature, and that we have nothing to do with the instincts of a weak and fallen creature. We are in Eden. Human nature stands before us, not finished, but magnificently roughed out, in that being who has retained more especially the name of man; and in him the thing that shines most obviously and conspicuously in his face is the power of thought and will. The Apostle Paul, uncon- sciously commenting on Moses, tells us that “the husband is the head of the wife.” Behold that dominating and commanding brow! Beneath his penetrating gaze creation is displayed. It appears before him in its noblest works—those that come ee The Reformation of the Family—H yacinthe. 365 nearest to man himself—the animals. The lips of Adam move, and he gives them ; ames. There, O philosophy, you see the difference between man and brute—it is ound in speech. Let science compare the species to its heart’s content, and liken man to the lower beings. Speech remains, not as a shade of difference, a gradation, but as a great gulf between him and them, for it is the sign and instrument of abstract, free, reflective thought. And not until you shall have succeeded in evoking smiles “near each other the edges of that yawning chasm that separates forever the thinking ‘being from that which cannot think. Man called the creation by its name; he conceived it; he commanded it. And yet amid all this happiness, despite this power and this intelligence, he was not happy. Adam found no helpmeet for him. His reason was seeking for life; his head was inclining toward his heart. At this point begins the second scene of the drama of creation. He sleeps a deep sleep. Ah! once again suffer me to exclaim, “Oh, the philosophic depth of the thoughts of Holy Writ!” Come away, my friends, withdraw, ‘like the first man, from this common—I had almost said this vulgar scene, into which _ we are ushered every morning and in which we abide until evening; this scene which we call the real world, but which is only the apparent world, the world of phenomena, "passing forms, not of abiding substance, of sensible effects, not of the causes which _ produce them and which escape the scrutiny of the senses! Withdraw from this waking scene and enter into the slumber of the senses—into that immediate intuition, that deep contemplation, that trance of the understanding and the reason in which we behold the inmost depths of things. “And Adam slept a deep sleep.” It was there, at the fountain-head of being, and not in this common world in which we dwell, that ‘the primordial reduplication of human nature was effected for all the coming time. The woman is not a being alien to man. She is not to be animated by a breath _ different from his. She is not to be formed like him, of lower substances, as of the dust of the earth. She is to radiate from the man like his consciousness, or, as St. Paul says, like his glory. “The woman is the glory of the man.” She is to radiate from man, but not from his brow—the brow is the seat of thought. Ah! this splendor, this flame, this glory must go forth from the heart. There it is that the story of Genesis shows us its origin. And when the mysterious production is finished, man so is finished, and the Creator, so far at least as concerns this globe, may enter into His triumph and His rest. Man exists now in his completeness—the head, the heart; the heart that thinks in the head, the head that loves in the heart; head and heart, man and woman, united in supreme harmony and bearing a single name. “In the day that God created man, male and female created He them, and called their name Adam— man.” Such is the first page of the Bible, to which perhaps you have never given a thoughtful reading. I repeat it: I have no concern with the story, more or less literal, of two individuals. What I discern in it with certainty, with profit, with admiration, is ‘the typical but authentic and revealed history of the moral and religious origin of the amily, of society, of all humanity. ____ It is by the harmonious combination of thought which predominates in man, and affection which predominates in woman—by the union of the head and the heart, which is the condition and the principle of the union of man and woman—that the fair and noble structure of the family is to be reared up. But, mark it well! with this is to be reared the whole structure of society, for society is but the development of the family. For what is the nation but the circle of contiguous homes? What is the Nation but the expanded family? How is it that we feel in common that we are Frenchmen? Is it that we speak one language and are of one blood; that for centuries we have developed one sentiment of brotherhood, on one territory, watered with the 366 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. } sweat and sometimes with the blood of ourselves and our ancestors? This makes the — nation our country—this sense of brotherhood and fatherhood. Fatherland! Land — of the fathers and the children! Now, in the fatherland, as in the family, the two great — influences meet together—the thinking head, the loving heart—head and heart that are to think, love, act as one; and woe to society when they are separated one from another—when the man’s influence and the woman’s influence become not only distinct but hostile! Of these two forces one will not destroy the other, for you cannot destroy nature; but they will come into collision in the worst of all civil wars! By every fireside, in every parlor, in the sanctuaries of every church, even in the counsels of the state, everwhere you will see the affectional force, the moral force, the religious force—too often darkened and’ perverted in woman—holding in check and sometimes driving back the scientific, liberal, progressive force personified in man. And now from the conception which we have contemplated, let us turn our atten- tion to the actual fact: which is it, unity or variance? Doubtless, the reality is not always the opposite of an ideal state of -ociety. Whatever superficial or unfair observers may think, there is no race on earth in which the family sentiment is as strong as in the French race. I am not here for an effort of flattery. I am not capable of it anywhere, least of all before this great audience. I am not here for a work of rhetorical art—I make no claims to rhetoric in these discourses. I am here before these free and thoughtful consciences, on a mission of morality and patriotism, while waiting to be received on a mission of religion. I set before your consciences my own experiences and convic- tions. If I had the power to impose them on a single one of my fellow-men, I would not do it. Only hear me, and then judge. I say that in a part of the society of France—I might say of Europe, but you will understand why I am chiefly concerned with my own dear and glorious country—the spiritual unity of the home is not adequately attained, and that, as a fatal consequence, the unity of society itself is affected. I have said this, and I shall prove it. I shall prove it by considering the family at two principal points—before marriage and after. Before marriage, here are two children, unacquainted with each other, or, if they have been brought together through neighborhood or family acquaintance, they know nothing of the future that awaits them; and yet they are foreordained for each other. Despite the abuse that certain theologians have made of the term, I believe in fore- ordination in the order of eternal destinies—that just and reasonable foreordination in which the liberty of man is not overborne by the liberty of God. But leaving aside the mysteries of theological speculation, I believe, or rather I clearly see, each day fore- ordination in the order of nature. There are plants, animals—fauna and flora—whose place is marked out for them in advance in such a region of the globe, or in such a geologic period. And in another order that seems more modest, but which is really of far higher dignity, there are souls which, whatever they may do, can never be developed apart from each other. Woe to them if they never meet each other, or if they meet amiss! These children, then, are foreordained for each other. How are they prepared for each other? The young man is the head; what needs training in him is those gifts which he has received in greatest abundance—the gifts of intellect; but it is also the heart, for we are always liable to fall on that side toward which we lean, and withal the heart is the point of contact by which, by and by, in the course of moral and domestic development, the man is to come into harmony with the woman. Now, I ask, does the education which we give to young men nowadays develop, as it ought, the heart and the affections? I put the question, and the answer I get is— science! Now, there is no more proud and jealous friend of science than I, only let it be science complete, not self-mutilated, self-isolated from human life. Science is more than observation and experiment in visible nature—more than the nomenclature of The Reformation of the Family—Hyacinthe. 367 facts. Spirit is not of less account than matter, neither is it less fruitful of diversified nd positive studies. Doubtless our young men do study history in connection with the natural and abstract sciences, and it is not for me, amid this circle of illustrious the soul of a people and into its coming fate. This is history worthy of the name! And can we, in fact, separate the reason from the conscience, the heart, the imagina- tion even? Can we put abstract truth on one side and life on the other? Is it the tight and normal course for thought which ought to circulate through the whole human being like a generous blood, when, as if seized with vertigo, it rushes to the brain in a fit of metaphysical intoxication or in a stroke of mental apoplexy? Such ‘science I would none of for our sons. And yet it is to such science as this that they are often condemned for the most noble, fruitful and critical years of youth. But, I am told, there is religion, which is provided for in the course of instruction Too often religion is presented to the young man under a form or in a spirit which he cannot accept, or can only accept as a family tradition, not to be too closely examined, but not entering into practical life. Ah, well I know that God’s truth does not change with succeeding ages or with varying climes. We cannot say it is truth this side the Pyrenees and falsified the other side. But there are forms of the truth predestined for this country or that, for this century or that, and the form of religious truth needed today for cultivated, manly young Frenchmen is not the form that was fitted for the Middle Ages, and which is no longer wanted either in Italy or in Spain. And so it comes to pass that religion, even when it exists, has a little cell to itself, all closed and dark, in the young man’s brain, and does not pass, like a free and all- powerful breath, over his whole life and soul. But then there is morality. Yes, morality. Gentlemen, in my opinion it is a great stake to think of religion as the only thing that divides men’s minds, and of morality the finger of nature in the recesses of our conscience, that morality indeed is one, not vo. But this book of the conscience is like all other sacred books—men sometimes nevertheless, by many persons, that there are two standards of right and wrong, one or individuals and the other for nations? And among individuals, alas! that there is One standard of right and wrong for men, and another for women! These are commonplace remarks, I know, but the applause that I hear from you proves that there is need to insist on these commonplaces till they pass out of rhetoric and into the conscience, and out of the conscience into fact. The day must needs come, and if it be not in the calm and glorious evening of the nineteenth century, it must not longer wait than till the peaceful dawn of the twentieth—the day when we y Say to nations as well as to individuals, “Thou shalt not lie,” without hearing in reply that, in politics, lying is the lawful and necessary and legitimate weapon of governors and governed. . The day must needs come when we shall not be saying to individuals, “Thou shalt ot steal,” while nations are glorying in conquest. And it must needs come to pass mat collective murder, unless imposed by hard necessity and sanctioned by sacred stice, shall be branded, not as equally, but as far more flagitious than individual urder! BOB). Pulpit Power and Eloquence. respond to this doctrine by a hiss discredits his allegiance both to the law of God and — to the Gospel. I repeat, also, one law of right and wrong for man and for woman. I lay my finger here on the most delicate and the most critical point of the morals of our time. — Why is it, when there is only one standard of truth and one standard of justice for man and for woman, that a corrupted public opinion should have two standards of chastity? The woman’s fault is held by all to be her ruin—her moral death-sentence. The same fault in a man brings him neither harm nor shame. Too often he glories in it as if his only consciousness of the holy gift of manhood was in the abuse of it. And that mysterious but equal fidelity mutually due between the betrothed, is it not subjected to contradictory and unjust judgments? Where is the young man, in whose bosom still remains some fibres of humanity, that does not demand of her, who is today his betrothed and who tomorrow is to be his wife, the jealous, implacable integrity of all her past life? But are there many that hold themselves bound to reciprocal fidelity? Do not the demands of such a morality—mystical, ascetic—bring to the lips of many a strange, incredulous smile? You see how it is; morality does not always supply what is lacking in religion as an antidote to an incomplete and perverted science. Look, now, at this young man—in many respects a noble young man; see him wasted on one side in sensuality, on the other side in abstraction, and yet called to appreciate and understand a heart—and what a heart!—called to love it, to honor it, to cultivate it, even; for it is in actual life as it is in the Bible story, that the woman, before she becomes in the fullest sense the man’s wife, must be his pupil and his offspring. And now over against this preparation of the young man, what is the preparation of the girl? In the seclusion of home, under the eye of her parents, in the intimacy of brother and sister, her heart, perhaps, will bloom alone, like some plant of genial clime that needs no human aid, but only the dew and the sun. But her reason—what culture will that receive? Hear what Fenelon wrote, in the seventeenth century, in his “Treatise on Female Education:” “Nothing,” says he, “is more neglected than the education of girls. Everything is decided, in many cases, by fashion and the mother’s whim. No one supposes that this sex needs much instruction.”” Has French society in this century made any very important advance upon that of the seventeenth? Is it quite secure from the strictures which he applied to his own century? He adds, some pages later: “Superstition is certainly a thing to be feared for a woman, but nothing is better, to eradicate or prevent it, than solid instruction. Let girls, too credulous as they are by nature, be accustomed not lightly to admit certain unauthorized legends, nor to devote themselves to certain religious practices that are introduced by an indiscreet zeal, without waiting for the approval of the Church.” Fenelon could not have sus- pected that the day would come when such legends and practices would be approved by those who claim to be the representatives of the Church. My friends, it does not develop the understanding of young women to drag their faculties to and fro over surfaces which they cannot penetrate. It does not enrichi their memory nor elevate their thought to overload them with a mass of undigested facts and notions. What I ask, as a general rule, of the institutions in which they are educated, is this: Are you training up women capable, when the time comes, of becoming partners of a man’s intellect, confidantes and counsellors of his thought, his reading, his work? Above all, are you giving them a religious belief and practice in which their brothers now, their husbands by and by, can take part without blushing for themselves, and without doing violence to their reason? These two existences, so little fitted for each other, chance—I cannot bring myself to say Providence—presently brings together A whim, or a calculation of self- The Reformation of the Family—H yacinthe. 369 interest—which of the two is the better, or rather which is the worse?—unites them; and on this union is to be built up that sublime trilogy, the individual, the family, society! “But they love one another,” you tell me. And you call that love, in the true, moral, Christian sense of that great word! You call that love! Because upon this rock without soil, this sand without water, there has sprung up an ephemeral flower, deceitful to the careless eye, but having no brilliancy, no fragrance, no continu- ance, you declare that they love! Look, then, a few years later, and see what becomes _ of this union. The young man has made an effort with himself to get control of his own heart that he may keep his hold upon the heart of his wife. Now, what sort of sequel follows at the end of one of these feverish days of our toilsome and democratic com- munities, when the man, weary from the conflict with his fellows and with himself, i. wounded, whether he be victor or vanquished, comes back to his home? ‘‘Now,”’ he ‘says to himself, “I shall have two or three hours, at least, of peace—two or three hours that will be like balm to my mind and heart.” He sits down at his fireside, and feels quickening within him that which lies deepest in man—deeper than science and poli- tics, deeper than business and the toil and tumult of modern life—the holy aspirations _ of human nature. He takes upon his lap his youngest child, and the little innocent _ strokes his face with happy hands—happy because pure. Dear little hands! How _ they fondle the wrinkles of his brow and the scars of old wounds! and in the breath of his child the father breathes, as it were, a breath wafted from paradise! He listens with delight to those simple but sublime prattlings that are uttered partly in the _ language of men, and partly in the speech of angels. Then drawing near the lamp, _ whose shade seems to gather up the light and the thoughts, he speaks to his wife, and seeks to evoke from this pure and charming present the solemn but happy visions of _ the future. But she listens not, or listens only with a pre-occupied mind. Her _ thoughts are not with his, either on the present or on the future of their children. He _ opens a book—one of those grand books of history of which I have been speaking—a book of poetry or of philosophy. But poetry, philosophy, history alike divide them. _ She cannot have any complicity in his reading. He opens the Gospel, and this, too, they do not understand in the same way. He unfolds the newspaper; they cannot so _ much as read the newspaper together! Alas! it is history that I am telling—a page out of the history of France more , eeainful and dreadful than that of our civil discords and our military disasters. The husband will come back to his home, at first less gladly, afterward less fre- quently. Then, in place of these visions of innocence and peace, his mind will begin _ to be haunted by recollections out of his reading or out of his past experience—the _ courtesans of Athens, the bayaderes of India. At last he will ask himself that fatal question, What is marriage, after all? What does it amount to, this union under a legal contract or religious benediction, so long as the hearts are divided by an eternal gulf? Ah! my friends, if he be anything less than a hero, he will go on from that point in a course in which we will not follow him. And now, as to the wife. I might depict her also a prey to the same enticements, the same mistakes. I will not do it; I prefer to take only the gravest and saddest aspects of the picture. I think of her, then, as making every effort, despite the defects of her education, to bring her own mind and conscience into sympathy with those of _herhusband. But in her mind and conscience themselves she finds a limit to her good _ will, For if she has, I do not say superstition, but faith—if she has distinct and settled _ principles rooted in the soul by which to decide questions of duty and of eternity, and _ hecessarily, therefore, questions of the present life in practice and in detail—if, I say, in the convictions of her reason and the dictates of her conscience she comes to a _ barrier that she cannot cross, what is to become of her? Where shall she find counsel oe ay 370 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. in the perplexing questions relating to her own duty or that of her children? Whither shall she turn for light, comfort, strength, in those inward struggles that come oftener to woman than to man, and in which man is her natural and providential helper? She has, I know, received from God these three gifts—purity, tenderness, patience. She loves the more because she is the purer, and she knows how to suffer because she knows how to love. But at last, just because she is under this law of love, she needs support from one that is stronger; she needs, in spiritual matters, to find him who, in these also, is “her head.’ If she does not find him in her husband, if he cannot share her religious and moral anxieties, she will seek elsewhere. She will find what she needs in the Catholic priest, or if not, in that other representative of the gospel, the A Protestant pastor; and if she does not find him in any of the official ministers of Christianity, she will look for it in some man of religious or philosophic conscience, some man of strength, gravity and purity, whom she will ordain by her prayers and tears to the priesthood of her conscience. i . However legitimate this resolution of the woman, deeply misconceived, long and painfully gainsaid, the woman of whom the Scriptures seem to speak under the figure. of the captive daughter of Zion, with tearful, backward-turning face, looking toward a past which was but a dream, and which never can return—however sacred the despair of the wife, of the mother, isolated in her conscience, and at the cradle of her child— after this, tell me, what is there left of marriage? The husband possesses nothing but a carcass. His wife’s heart, conscience, soul, are gone from him forever. The educa- tion of his children is no longer under his control; for this is the end of the pitiful drama—the moral divorce of the parents is consummated by this divorce in the education of their children. The children are divided. The sons follow the law of the father, the daughters of the mother; or, it may be, each of them will be divided in ‘soul, and the variance which I have shown in the parents will reappear in the children. Be they sons or daughters, they will retain from this contradictory education—I will not say faith enough, faith is too high and pure a thing for this—but superstitiom enough never to think freely as long as they live, never to make a strong and energetic decision in view,of the great and solemn moments of existence—marriage, suffering, death—superstition enough for this; and at the same time doubt enough never firmly and joyously to believe in the religion which they practice, or at least do not repudiate. So it keeps coming back under all its forms—this variance that is tormenting and dividing us, and, unless we beware, will be the death of us. That is the great enemy of France. And now, my friends, to point out the remedy. I have had much to say of Christianity; let me lead you, ere we close, to the heathen fireside—which is also ours. Christianity is a synthesis; far from rejecting it, it calls to itself all the moral and religious elements of the inferior forms of religion. We are descended not only from Judea, through the apostles and the first disciples; we are descended from the Celts, the Romans, the Greeks. We belong to the old and aristocratic family of the Aryans. Now, in every Aryan region, on the shores of the Mediterranean as well as on tha banks of the Ganges, each house had its altar—its real, material altar, and on that altar burned a fire. Woe to the family whose altar flame should go out, were it only for an hour! Before this altar, cherishing this flame, there stood a man, the father of the family. He is the family priest, who pours the libations, immolates the victims, celebrates the rites, sings the ancestral hymns. And the day whea the father—for this name, pater, was given to him among the Greeks and Romans even before his marriage; it was a name of honor, of royalty and priesthood—the day when the father would take to himself a companion, he separated her from the altar and the worship of her parents, and introduced her by a solemn ceremony into the house and religion which she was thenceforth to share with him, The Reformation of the Family—H yacinthe. 371 _ By whom has this altar, the sure defence of the community, been thrown down? ho quenched that flame? Who silenced those hymns? Don’t tell me it was Chris- anity. Christianity has spiritualized everything, but destroyed nothing. The ruin me from another quarter. It is a part of that perilous crisis through which we are ssing, and the issue of which no man can foretell. Family religion is no more. e is individual religion; and if you take the members of the family one by one, the best of them, you will find in the secret sanctuary of the conscience a flame, or ast a spark. But there is no longer a family altar where they pray and sing er; or, if an altar, it is a hidden one, where the mother timidly gathers her brood ‘the father’s absence. Beware! there are two Christianities; one is manly, the other jinine, or rather effeminate. The second may kill the first, but cannot take its place. The remedy, my friends, I know it, I offer it to you. Rebuild the family altar! tesume your priesthood. Have the courage to believe, teach, pray, to gather about gu your wife and children. But what religion shall I follow, do you ask? Whatever conscience chooses, were it the most incomplete of all. The poorest of all an who has lost all, whether by his own fault or not, and who is groping in the night nd stumbling on the brink of the abyss. This fetish is but a dry root or lump of apeless wood, if you please. But once let a beam of the human conscience gleam ion it—let the radiance and the dew of the revelation from on high envelop it, and » blasted, mutilated wood shall bud like Carmel, and blossom and bear fruit unto ie Lord. Yes, the humblest of religions, only a religion! But the ancient forms of worship, ywever beneficent they may have been in their time, can never come back again. either can we look for new religions to appear. The last evolution of light among is Christianity. True, Christianity may go on from glory to glory, but it can surpass itself. Men’s conception of it and realization of it may be improved, but cannot change its nature nor cease to be itself—Jesus Christ yesterday, to-day, rever. _ Young men, and you of riper years, husbands and fathers, have, then, a Christianity ng, tender, religious enough to attach to itself your wife and hold your children. e a Christianity enlightened, manly, progressive enough to abide in it yourselves, ving and practicing it with them. d entering the order of Carmelites. About 1865 he moved to Paris, where he e famous in denouncing abuses in the church. He was chosen curate of a con- tion of Liberal Catholics in Geneva in 1873, and founded a Gallican congregation Paris in 1879. This address, which is reproduced from the Complete Preacher, was delivered in Paris, April 22, 1877, at the Winter Circus. It, with other discourses at that time. ved the Parisians mightily. President Barrows of Oberlin College, recommended at one of Pere Hyacinthe’s addresses be included in the volume.] 372 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. PREPARATION FOR CONSULTING THE ORACLES OF GO ' j EDWARD IRVING. ) “Search the Scriptures.’-—John 5: 39. ; § There was a time when each revelation of the word of God had an introduction ~ PA into this earth, which neither permitted men to doubt whence it came, nor wherefore it was sent. If at the giving of each several truth a star was not lighted up in heaven, : as at the birth of the Prince of Truth, there was done upon the earth a wonder, to — make her children listen to the message of their Maker. The Almighty made bare His arm; and, through mighty acts shown by His holy servants, gave demonstration - of His truth, and found for it a sure place among the other matters of human knowl- | edge and belief. % i But now the miracles of God have ceased, and nature, secure and unmolested, is no longer called on for testimonies to her Creator’s voice., No burning bush draws the footsteps to His presence chamber; no invisible voice holds the ear awake; no hand cometh forth from the obscurity to write His purposes in letters of flame. The vision is shut up, and the testimony is sealed, and the word of the Lord is ended, and this — solitary Volume, with its chapters and verses, is the sum total of all for which the chariot of heaven made so many visits to the earth, and the Son of God Himself taber-— nacled and dwelt among us. The truth which it contains once dwelt undivulged in the bosom of God; and, on ; coming forth to take its place among things revealed, the heavens and the earth, and nature, through all her chambers, gave it reverent welcome. Beyond what it contains, the mysteries of the future are unknown. To gain it acceptation and currency, the noble company of martyrs testified unto the death. The general assembly of the first-— born in heaven made it the day-star of their hopes, and the pavilion of their peace. Its” every sentence is charmed with the power of God, and powerful to the everlasting salvation of souls. Having our minds filled with these thoughts of the primeval divinity of revealed Wisdom when she dwelt in the bosom of God, and was of His eternal Self a part, long before He prepared the heavens, or set a compass upon the face of the deep; revolving also, how, by the space of four thousand years, every faculty of mute Nature did solemn obeisance to this daughter of the divine mind, whenever He pleased to com- mission her forth to the help of mortals; and further meditating upon the delights which she had of old with the sons of men, the height of heavenly temper to which she raised them and the offspring of magnanimous deeds which these two—the wisdom of God, and the soul of man—did engender between themselves—meditating, I say, upon these mighty topics, our soul is smitten with grief and shame to remark how in this latter day she hath fallen from her high estate; and fallen along with her the great and noble character of men. Or if there be still a few names, as of the missionary martyr, to emulate the saints of old—how to the commonalty of Christians her oracles have fallen into a household commonness, and her visits into a cheap familiarity; while by the multitude she is mistaken for a minister of terror sent to oppress poor mortals with moping melancholy, and inflict a wound upon the happiness of human kind, ans Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God—Irving. 373 For there is now no express stirring up the faculties to meditate her high and Jescended from the porch of heaven? Who feels the awful weight there is in the least jota that hath dropped from the lips of God? Who feels the thrilling fear of trembling lope there is in words whereon the destinies of himself do hang? Who feels the welling tide of gratitude within his breast, for redemption and salvation coming, instead of flat despair and everlasting retribution?. Finally, who, in perusing the Word of God, is captivated through His faculties, and transported through ali His motions, and through all His energies of action wound up? Why, to say the best, it is done as other duties are wont to be done; and, having reached the rank of a daily, o1 al duty, the perusal of the Word hath reached its noblest place. Yea, that which is the guide and spur of all duty, the necessary aliment of Christian life, the first and he last of Christian knowledge, and Christian feeling hath, to speak the best, degen- rated in these days to stand, rank and file, among those duties whereof it is parent, preserver, and commander. And, to speak not the best, but the fair and common truth, this Book, the offspring of the Divine mind, and the perfection of heavenly wisdom, is permitted to lie from day to day, perhaps from week to week, unheeded and unperused, never welcome to our happy, healthy, and energetic moods; admitted, if admitted at all, in seasons of sickness, feeble-mindedness, and disabling sorrow. _ Oh! if books had but tongues to a their wrongs, then might this Book well exclaim—Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! I came from the love and embrace of God, and mute Nature, to whom I brought no boon, did me rightful homage. To men I come and my words were to the children of men. I disclosed to you the mysteries of hereafter, and the secrets of the throne of God. I set open to you the ga es of salvation, and the way of eternal life, hitherto unknown. Nothing in heaven did I withhold from your hope and ambition; and upon your earthly lot I poured the full horn of Divine providence aud consolation. But ye requited me with no welcome, ye held no festivity on my arrival; ye sequester me from happiness and heroism, closeting me with sickness and infirmity; ye make not of me, nor use me for, your guide to wisdom and prudence, put me into a place in your last of duties, and fithdraw me to a mere corner of your time; and most of ye set me at naught and utterly disregard me. I come, the fullness of the knowledge of God; angels delighted nm my company, and desired to dive into my secrets. But ye, mortals, place masters Over me, subjecting me to the discipline and dogmatism of men, and tutoring me in your schools of learning. I came, not to be silent in your dwellings, but to speak welfare to you and to your children. I came to rule, and my throne to set up in the s of men. Mine ancient residence was the bosom of God; no residence will I e but the soul of an immortal; and if you had entertained me, I should have sessed you of the peace which I had with God, “when I was with Him and was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him. Because I have called you and ye lave refused, I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded; but ye have set at daught all my counsel and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they cry apon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.” 374 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. From this cheap estimation and wanton neglect of God's counsel, and from th terror of this curse consequent thereon, we have resolved, in the strength of God, te do our endeavor to deliver this congregation of His intelligent and worshiping people—an endeavor which we make with a full reception of the difficulties to b overcome on every side within no less than without the sacred pale; and upon whic’ we enter with the utmost diffidence of our powers, yet with the full purpose of strain: ing them to the utmost, according to the measure with which it hath pleased God to endow our mind. And do thou, O Lord, from whom cometh the perception of truth, vouchsafe to Thy servant an unction from Thine own Spirit, who searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God; and vouchsafe to Thy people “the hearing ear and the understanding heart, that they may hear and understand, and their souls may live!" Before the Almighty made His appearance upon Sinai, there were awful precursors sent to prepare His way; while He abode in sight, there were solemn ceremonies and a strict ritual of attendance when He departed, the whole camp set itself to conform unto His revealed will. Likewise, before the Savior appeared, with His better law, there was a noble procession of seers and prophets, who decried and warned the world of His coming; when He came there were solemn announcements in the heavens and on the earth; He did not depart without due honors; and then followed, on His departure, a succession of changes and alterations which are still in progress, and shall continue in progress till the world’s end. This may serve to teach us, that a revelation of the Almighty’s will make demand for these three things, on the part of those to whom it is revealed: A due preparation for receiving it; a diligent attention to it while it is disclosing; a strict observance of it when it is delivered. In the whole book of the Lord’s revelations you shall search in vain for one which is devoid of these necessary parts. Witness the awe-struck Isaiah, while the Lord displayed before him the sublime pomp of His presence; and, not content with overpowering the frail sense of the prophet, despatched a seraph to do the ceremonial of touching his lip with hallowed fire, all before He uttered one word into his astonished ear. Witness the majestic apparition to Saint John, in the Apocalypse, of all the emblematical glory of the Son of Man, allowed to take silent effect upon the apostle’s spirit, and prepare it for the revelation of things to come. These heard with all their absorbed faculties, and with all their powers addressed them to the bidding of the Lord. But, if this was in aught flinched from, witness, in the persecution of the prophet Jonah, the fearful issues which ensued. From the presence of the Lord he could not flee. Fain would he have escaped to the uttermost parts of the earth; but in the mighty waters the terrors of the Lord fell upon him; and when engulfed in the deep, and entombed in the monster of the deep, still the Lord’s word was upon the obdurate prophet, who had no rest, not the rest of the grave, till he had fulfilled it to the very uttermost. Now, judging that every time we open the pages of this holy book, we are to be favored with no less than a communication from on high, in substance the same as those whereof we have detailed the three distinct and several parts, we conceive it due to the majesty of Him who speaks, that we, in like manner, discipline our spirits with a due preparation, and have them in proper frame, before we listen to the voice; that, while it is disclosing to us the important message, we be wrapt in full attention; and that, when it hath disburdened itself into our opened and enlarged spirits, we proceed forthwith to the business of its fulfillment, whithersoever and to whatsoever it summon us forth. Upon each of these three duties, incumbent upon one who would not forego the benefit of a heavenly message, we will discourse apart, addressing ourselves in this discourse to the first-mentioned of the three. _ The preparation for the announcement.—“‘When God uttereth His voice,” says the Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God—Irving. 375 Psalmist, “coals of fire are kindled; the hills melt down like wax; the earth quakes; and deep proclaims itself unto hollow deep.” These sensible images of the Creator _have now vanished, and we are left alone, in the deep recesses of the meditative mind, to discern His coming forth. No trump of heaven now speaketh in the world’s ear. No angelic conveyancer of Heaven’s will taketh shape from the vacant air; and having done his errand, retireth into his airy habitation. No human messenger -putteth forth his miraculous hand to heal Nature’s unmedicable wounds, winning for his words a silent and astonished audience. Majesty and might no longer precede the oracles of Heaven. They lie silent and unobtrusive, wrapped up in their little compass, one volume among many, innocently handed to and fro, having no distinction but that in which our mustered thoughts are enabled to invest them. The want of solemn preparation and circumstantial pomp, the imagination of the mind hath now to supply. The presence of the Deity, and the authority of His voice, our thoughtful spirits must _ discern. Conscience must supply the terrors that were wont to go before Him; and the brightness of His coming, which the sense can no longer behold, the heart, ravished with His word, must feel. For the solemn vocation of all her powers, to do her Maker honor and give Him _ welcome, it is, at the very least, necessary that the soul stand absolved from every call. Every foreign influence or authority arising out of the world, or the things _ of the world, should be burst when about to stand before the Fountain of all authority; every argument, every invention, every opinion of man forgot, when about to approach tothe Father and oracle of all intelligence. And as subjects, when their honors, with invitations, are held disengaged, thoug preoccupied with a thousand appointments, sO, upon an audience, fixed and about to be holden with the King of kings, it will become the honored mortal to break loose from all thralldom of men and things, and __ be arrayed in liberty of thought and action to drink in the rivers of His pleasure, and Now far otherwise it hath appeared to us, that Christians as well as worldly men come to this most august occupation of listening to the word of God; preoccupied and prepossessed, inclining to it a partial ear, a straightened understanding, and a disaffected will. The Christian public are prone to preoccupy themselves with the admiration of those opinions by which they stand distinguished as a Church or sect from other _ Christians, and instead of being quite unfettered to receive the whole counsel of the divinity, they are prepared to welcome it no further than it bears upon, and stands with opinions which they already favor. To this pre-judgment the early use of cate- _ chisms mainly contributes, which, however, serviceable in their place, have the a) disadvantage of presenting the truth in a form altogether different from what it _ all the faculties of the soul. In early youth, which is so applied to with those compila- tions, an association takes place between religion and intellect, and a divorcement of religion from the other powers of the inner man. This derangement, judging from _ observation and experience, it is exceeding difficult to put to rights in after-life; and _ which speak to the various sympathies of our nature, we are, by the injudicious use of these narrow epitomes, disqualified to receive. In the train of these comes controversy with his rough voice and unmeek aspect, 376 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. to disqualify the soul for a full and fair audience of its Maker’s word. The points of © the faith we have been called on to defend, or which are reputable with our party, assume, in our esteem, an importance disproportionate to their importance in the Word which we come to relish chiefly when it goes to sustain them, and the Bible is hunted for arguments and texts of controversy, which are treasured up for future service. The solemn stillness which the soul should hold before his Maker, so favorable to meditation and rapt communion with the throne of God, is destroyed at every turn by suggestions of what is orthodox and evangelical—where all is orthodox © and evangelical; the spirit of such readers becomes lean, being fed with abstract truths and formal propositions; their temper uncongenial, being ever disturbed with contro- versial suggestions; their prayers undevout recitals of their opinions; their discourse technical announcements of their faith. Intellect, cold intellect, hath the sway over heavenward devotion and holy fervor. Man, contentious man, hath the attention which the unsearchable God should undivided have; and the fine, full harmony of heaven’s melodious voice, which, heard apart, were sufficient to lap the soul in ecstacies > unspeakable, is jarred and interfered with, and the heavenly spell is broken by the recurring conceits, sophisms, and passions of men. Now truly an utter degradation it is of the Godhead to have His word in league with that of any man, or any council o: men. What matter to me whether the Pope, or any work of any mind be exalted to the quality of God? If any helps are to be imposed for the understanding, or safe- guarding, or sustaining of the Word, why not the help of statues and pictures for my devotions? Therefore, while the warm fancies of the Southerns have given their idolatry to the ideal forms of noble art, let us Northerns beware we give not our idolatry to the cold and coarse abstractions of human intellect. For the preoccupations of worldly minds, they are not to be reckoned up, being manifold as their favorite passions and pursuits. One thing only can be said, that before coming to the oracles of God they are not preoccupied with the expectation and fear of Him. No chord in their heart is in unison with things unseen; no moments are set apart for religious thought and meditation; no anticipations of the honored ‘ f " x 4 a" ‘4 interview; no prayer of preparation like that of Daniel before Gabriel was sent to teach — him; no devoutness like that of Cornelius before the celestial visitation; no fastings like that of Peter before the revelation of the glory of the Gentiles! Now to minds which are not attuned to holiness, the words of God find no entrance, striking heavy on the ear, seldom making way to the understanding, almost never to the heart. To spirits hot with conversation, perhaps heady with argument, uncomposed by solemn thought, but ruffled and in uproar from the concourse of worldly interests, the sacred page may be spread out, but its accents are drowned in the noise which hath not yet subsided in the breast. All the awe, and pathos, and awakened consciousness of a Divine approach, impressed upon the ancients by the procession of solemnities, is to worldly men without a substitute. They have not solicited themselves to be in readi- ness. In a usual mood, and vulgar frame they come to God’s Word as to other compositions, reading it without any active imaginations about Him who speaks; feeling no awe of a sovereign Lord, nor care of a tender Father, nor devotion to a merciful Savior. Nowise depressed themselves out of their wonted dependence, nor humiliated before the King of kings—no prostrations of the soul, nor falling at His feet as dead—no exclamation, as of Isaiah, “Woe is me, for I am of unclean lips!”— nor request “Send me”—nor fervent ejaculation of welcome, as of Samuel, “Lord, speak, for Thy servant heareth!” Truly they feel toward His word much as to the word of an equal. No wonder it shall fail of happy influence upon spirits which have, as it were, on purpose, disqualified themselves for its benefits by removing from the regions of thought and feeling which it accords with, into other regions, which it is of too Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God—Irving. 377 evere dignity to affect, otherwise than with stern menace and direful foreboding! If would have it bless them and do them good, they must change their manner of and reverential frame which becomes an interview with the High and holy One who abiteth the praises of eternity. Having thus spoken without equivocation, and we hope without offense, to the contradictoriness and preoccupation with which Christians and worldly men are apt to under which we shall address ourselves to the sacred occupation. It is a good custom, inherited from the hallowed days of Scottish piety, and in our which the mind is full and overflowing. Of those sentiments which befit the mind that comes into conference with its Maker, the first and most prominent should be gratitude for His ever having condescended to hold commerce with such wretched and fallen creatures. Gratitude not only expressing itself in proper terms, but possessing the mind with one abiding and over-mastering mood, under which it shall sit impressed the whole duration of the interview. Such an emotion as can not utter itself in language—though by language it indicate its presence—but keeps us in a devout and adoring frame, while the Lord is uttering His voice. { Go visit a desolate widow with consolation, and help, and fatherhood of her orphan children—do it again and again, and your presence, the sound of your approaching footstep, the soft utterance of your voice, the very mention of your name, shall come to dilate her heart with a fullness which defies her tongue to utter, but speaking by the kens of a swimming eye, and clasped hands, and fervent ejaculations to heaven upon your head! No less copious acknowledgment of God, the Author of our well-being, and the Father of our better hopes, ought we to feel when His Word discloseth to us the excess of His love. Though a veil now cast over the Majesty which speaks, it ra bce, you were into the third heaven translated, company and OE REE with the alities of glory which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man unimpresive tone with which its accents are pronounced; and that listless and in urious ear into which its blessed sounds are received. How can you, thus unim- assioned, hold communion with themes in which every thing awful, vital, . and endearing meet together! Why is not curiosity, curiosity ever hungry, on edge to iow the doings and intentions of Jehovah, King of kings? Why is not interest, interest ever awake, on tip-toe to hear the future destiny of itself? Why is not the that panteth over the world after love and friendship, overpowered with the full 378 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. into the yellow leaf. Of the poets which charm the world’s ear, who is he that inditeth a song unto his God? Some will tune their harps to sensual pleasure, and by the enchantment of their genius well-nigh commend their unholy themes tothe imagination of saints. Others to the high and noble sentiments of the heart, will sing of domestic joys and happy unions, casting around sorrow the radiancy of virtue, and bodying forth, in undying forms, the short-lived visions of joy! Others have enrolled them- selves the high-priests of mute nature’s charms, enchanting her echoes with their minstrelsy, and peopling her solitudes with the bright creatures of their fancy. But when, since the days of the blind master of English song, hath any poured forth a lay worthy of the Christian theme? Nor in philosophy, “the palace of the soul,” have men been more mindful of their Maker. The flowers of the garden, and the herbs of © the field have their unwearied devotees, crossing the ocean, wayfaring in the-desert, and making devout pilgrimages to every region of nature for offerings to their patron muse, The rocks, from their residences among the clouds, to their deep rests in the dark bowels of the earth, have a bold and most venturous priesthood, who see in their rough and flinty faces a more delectable image to adore than in the revealed coun- tenance of God. And the political warfare of the world is a very Moloch, who can at any time command his hecatomb of human victims. But the revealed suspense of God, — to which the harp of David, and the prophetic lyre of Isaiah were strung, the prudence © of God, which the wisest of men coveted after, prefering it to every gift which heaven could confer, and the eternal intelligence Himself in human form, and the unction of the Holy One which abideth—these the common heart of man hath forsaken, and — refused to be charmed withal. : Pe eal od I testify, that there ascendeth not from earth a hosannah of her children to bear witness in the ear of the upper regions to the wonderful manifestations of her God! From a few scattered hamlets in a small portion of her territory, a small voice ascendeth, like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But to the service of our general Preserver there is no concourse from Dan unto Bersheeba, of our people, the greater part of whom, after two thousand years of apostolic commission, have not the testimonies of our God; and the multitude of those who disrespect or despise them! But, to return from this lamentation, which, may God hear, who doth not disre- gard the cries of His afflicted people! With the full sense of obligation to the giver, combine a humble sense of your own incapacity to value and to use the gift of His oracles. Having no taste whatever for the mean estimates which are made, and the coarse invectives that are vented against human nature, which, though true in the main, are often in the manner so unfeeling and triumphant, as to reveal hot zeal rather than tender and deep sorrow, we will not give in to this popular strain. And yet it is a truth by experience, revealed, that though there be in man most noble faculties, and a nature restless after the knowledge and truth of things, there are toward God and ~ His revealed will and indisposition and a regardlessness, which the most tender and enlightened consciences are the most ready to acknowledge. Of our emancipated youth, who, bound after the knowledge of the visible works of God, and the gratifi- cation of the various instincts of nature, how few betake themselves at all, how few absorb themselves with the study and obedience of the word of God! And when, by God’s visitation, we address ourselves to the task, how slow is our progress and how imperfect our performance! it is most true that nature is unwilling to the subject of the Scriptures. The soul is previously possessed with adverse interests; the world hath laid an embargo on her faculties, and monopolized them to herself; old habit hath perhaps added to his almost incurable callousness; and the enemy of God and man is skillful to defend what he hath already won. So circumstanced, and every man is so circumstanced, we come to the audience of the word of God, and listen in worse tune t : Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God—Irving. 379 han a wanton to a sermon, or a hardened knave to a judicial address. Our under- standing is prepossessed with a thousand idols of the world, religious or irreligious— ryhich corrupt the reading of the word into a straining of the text to their service, and when it will not strain, cause it to be skimmed, and perhaps despised or hated. Such a thing as a free and unlimited reception of all parts of the Scripture into the mind, is -athing most rare to be met with, and when met with will be found the result of many a sore submission of nature’s opinions as well as of nature’s likings. But the word, as hath been said, is not for the intellect alone, but for the heart, and for the will. Now if any one be so wedded to his own candor as to think he doth accept the divine truth unabated, surely no one will flatter himself into the belief that his heart is attuned and enlarged for all divine commandments. The man who thus ‘misdeems of himself must, if his opinions were just, be like a sheet of fair paper, -unblotted and unwritten on; whereas all men are already occupied, to the very fullness, with other opinions and attachments, and desires than the word reveals. We do not grow Christians by the same culture by which we grow men, otherwise what need ot divine revelation, and divine assistance? But being unacquainted from the womb with God, and attached to what is seen and felt, through early and close acquaintance, we { are ignorant and detached from what is unseen and unfelt. The word is a novelty to our nature, its truths fresh truths, its affections fresh affections, its obedience gathered _ from the apprehension of nature and the commerce of the worldly life. Therefore _ there needeth, in one that would be served from this storehouse opened by heaven, a disrelish of his old acquisitions, and a preference of the new, a simple, child-like teach- _ableness, an allowance of ignorance and error, with whatever else beseems an anxious learner. Coming to the word of God, we are like children brought into the conver- Sations of experienced men; and we should humbly listen and reverently inquire; or _ we are like raw rustics introduced into high and polished life, and we should unlearn our coarseness, and copy the habits of the station; nay we are like offenders caught, _ and for amendment committed to the bosom of honorable society, with the power of regaining our lost condition and inheriting honor and trust—therefore we should walk ; softly and tenderly, covering our former reproach with modesty and humbleness, hhasting to redeem our reputation by distinguished performances, against offense doubly guarded, doubly watchful for dangerous and extreme positions, to demonstrate our recovered goodness. These two sentiments—devout veneration of God for His unspeakable gift, and deep distrust of our capacity to estimate and use it aright—will generate in the mind a constant aspiration after the guidance and instruction of a higher power. The first sentiment of goodness remembered, emboldening us to draw near to Him who first drew near to us, and who with Christ will not refuse us any gift. The second senti- ment, of weakness remembered, teaching us our need, and prompting us by every interest of religion and every feeling of helplessness to seek of Him who. hath said, “If any one lack wisdom let him ask God, who giveth liberally and upbraideth not.’ The soul which under these two master-feelings cometh to read, shall not read without ‘profit. Every new revelation feeding his gratitude and nourishing his former ‘ignorance, will confirm the emotions he is under, and carry them onward to an unlimited dimension. Such a one will prosper in the way; enlargement of the inner man will be his portion and the establishment in the truth his exceeding great reward ‘In the strength of the Lord shall his right hand get victory—even in the name of the Lord of Hosts. His soul shali also flourish with the fruits of righteousness from the seed of the Word, which liveth and abideth forever.” Thus delivered from prepossessions of all other masters, and arrayed in the raiment 380 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. should call a muster of all her faculties, and have all her poor grace in attendance, and any thing she knows of His excellent works and exalted ways she should summon up to her remembrance; her understanding she should quicken, her memory refresh, her imagination stimulate, her affections cherish, and her conscience arouse. All that is within her should be stirred up, her whole glory should awake and her whole beauty display itself for the meeting of her King. As His hand-maiden she should meet Him; His own handiwork, though sore defaced, yet seeking restoration; His humble, because offending servant—yet nothing slavish, though humble—nothing superstitious, though devout—nothing tame, though modest in her demeanor; but quick and ready, all addressed and wound up for her Maker’s will. How different the ordinary proceeding of Christians, who, with timorous, mis-— trustful spirits; with an abeyance of intellect, and a dwarfish reduction of their natural powers, enter to the conference of the Word of God! The natural powers of man are to be mistrusted doubtless, as the willing instruments of the evil one; but they must be honored also as the necessary instruments of the Spirit of God, whose operation is a dream, if it be not through knowledge, intellect, conscience, and action. Now Christians, heedless of the grand resurrection of the mighty instruments of thought and action, at the same time coveting hard after holy attainment, do often resign the mastery of themselves, and are taken into the counsel of the religious world—whirling » around the eddy of some popular leader—and so drifted, I will not say from godliness, but drifted certainly from that noble, manly, and independent course, which, under steerage of the Word of God, they might safely have pursued for the precious interests of their immortal souls. Meanwhile these popular leaders, finding no necessity for strenuous endeavors and high science in the ways of God, but having a gathering host to follow them, deviate from the ways of deep and penetrating thought—refuse the contest with the literary and accomplished enemies of the faith—bring a contempt upon the cause in which mighty men did formerly gird themselves to the combat—and so cast the stumbling-block of a mistaken paltriness between enlightened men and the cross of Christ! So far from this simple-mindedness (but its proper name is feeble- mindedness) Christians should be—as aforetime in this island they were wont to be— the princes of human intellect, the lights of the world, the salt of the political and social state. Till they come forth from the swaddling-bands, in which foreign schools have girt them, and walk boldly upon the high places of human understanding, they shall never obtain that influence in the upper regions of knowledge and power, of which, unfortunately, they have not the apostolic unction to be in quest. They will never be the master and commanding spirit of the time, until they cast off the wrinkled and withered skin of an obsolete old age, and clothe themselves with intelligence as with a garment, and bring forth the fruits of power and love and of a sound mind. Mistake us not, for we steer in a narrow, very narrow-channel, with rocks of popular prejudice on every side. While we thus invocate to the reading of the Word, the highest strains of the human soul, mistake us not as derogating from the office of the Spirit of God. Far be it from any Christian, much further from any Christian pastor, to withdraw from God the honor which is every where His due; but there most of all His due where the human mind labored alone for thousands of years, and labored with no success—viz., the regeneration of itself, and its restoration to the last semblance of the Divinity! Oh! let him be reverently inquired after, devoutly on, and most thankfully acknowledged in every step of progress from the soul’s fresh awaken- ing out of his dark, oblivious sleep—even to her ultimate attainment upon earth and full accomplishment for heaven. And that there may be a fuller choir of awakened men to advance His honor and glory here on earth, and hereafter in heaven above; let the saints bestir themselves like angels, and the ministers of religion like arch- ¢ ¢ d o § ° ‘ - rien Ca ‘ . - 7 - Preparation for Consulting the Oracles of God—Irving. 381 - ngels strong! And now at length let us have a demonstration made of all that is e in thought, and generous in action, and devoted in piety, for bestirring this sthargy, and breaking the bonds of hell, and redeeming the whole world to the service fits God and King! : _ [This sermon is from the History and Respository of Pulpit Eloquence by Heury C. Fish, published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. Edward Irving was born at Annan in 1792, and died in 1834. He was educated at nburg, entered the Scottish church and became assistant to Dr. Chalmers at sgow in 1819. As minister at Hatton Garden, London, 1822, he drew large crowds, ng to the Presbyterian church in Regent square in 1826. In 1833 he was suspended from the Presbyterian church for so-called heretical expression. He is known as the ounder of the Catholic and Apostolic church. It is generally agreed that he was the zreatest pulpit orator of the century.] 382 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE STRENGTH OF BEING CLEAN. DAVID STARR JORDAN. I wish this afternoon to make a plea for sound and sober life. I wish to base this plea on the fact that to be clean is to be strong; that sinfulness makes for feebleness| and vice for decay. If I were to take a text it would be this: ‘If sinners entice thee, consent thou not!” But I should change this to read: “If sin entice thee, consent thou not;” for the enticement which leads to sin comes from our own ill-governed impulses more often than from the persuasions of others. When I was a boy I once hada primer which gave the names of many things which were good and many which were bad. Good things were faith, hope, charity, virtue, integrity and the like, while anger, wrath, selfishness and trickery were rightly put down as bad. But among the good things, the primer: placed ‘“‘adversity.” This I could not understand, and I remember to this day how I was puzzled by it. The name ‘‘adversity” had a-pretty sound, but I found that the meaning was the same as “bad luck.” How can bad luck be a good thing? E Now that I have grown older and have watched men’s lives and actions for many years, I can see how bad luck is good. It depends on the way in which we take it. li we yield and break down under it, it is not good; but neither are we good. It is not in the luck, but in ourselves, that the badness is. But if we take hold of bad luck bravely, mantfully, we may change it into good luck, and when we do so we make ourselves stronger for the next struggle. It was a fable of the Norsemen, that when a man won a victory over another, the strength of the conquered went over into his veins. This old fancy has its foundation in fact. Whoever has conquered fortune has luck on his side for the rest of his life. So adversity is good, if only we know how to take it. Shall we shrink under it, or shall we react against it? Shall we yield, or shall we conquer? To react against adversity is to make fortune our servant. Its strength goes over to us. To yield is to make us fortune’s slave. Our strength is turned against us in the pressure of circum- stances. A familiar illustration of what I mean by reaction is this: Why do men stand upright? It is because the earth pulls them down. If a man yields to its attraction he soon finds himself prone on the ground. In this attitude he is helpless. He can do nothing there, so he reacts against the force of gravitation. He stands upon his feet, and the more powerful the force may be, the more necessary it is that the active man should resist it. When the need for activity ceases, man no longer stands erect. He yields to the force he has resisted. When he is asleep the force of gravitation has its own way so far as his posture is concerned. But activity and life demand reaction, and it is only through resistance that man can conquer adversity. In like fashion temptation has its part to play in the development of character. The strength of life is increased by the conquest of temptation. We may call no man virtuous till he has won such a victory. It is not the absence of temptation, but the reaction from it, that ensures the persistence of virtue. If sin entice thee, consent thou not, and after a while its allurements will cease to attract. In a recent journal, Mr. W. C. Morrow tells the story of a clergyman and a vagabond. They met by chance on the street and each was tempted by the other. The young clergyman, fresh from the seminary, in black broadcloth and white necktie, The Strength of Being Clean—Jordan. 383 semed to the vagabond so fresh, so innocent, so pure, that he revolted against his past ife, his vulgar surroundings, his squalid future. The inspiration of this unspoiled ample gave him strength to resist. For the moment, at least, he threw off the hains which years of weakness had fastened upon him. ’ The minister, on the other hand, found an equal fascination in sin. All the yearn- ng curiosity of his suppressed impulses cried out for the freedom of the vagabond. ife’s realities. He had never known temptation before, and hence he had never resisted it. In his first acquaintance with it, its cheap meanness was not revealed. As it chanced, so the story goes, when next the pair met, the vagabond and the minister, the two had exchanged places. From a curbstone pulpit the vagabond was talking to his fellow sinners from the fullness of his heart. As one who could turn 9% Him who has for so many centuries been the symbol of purity and light. And as ie went on with his harangue, two policemen came up leading away the other, flushed face, disheveled of garment and unsteady of step, his tongue uttering words of foulness and profanity. The pleasures of sin were over and the minister was on his Perhaps this is not a true story, and very likely the incident happened only in the fancy of the writer. But something of that sort takes place every day. It is only the trength of past resistance that saves us from sin. We must know it and fight it if we would not have it take us unawares. _ Inthe barber shop of a Washington hotel, this inscription is written on the mirror: ‘There is no pleasure in life equal to that of the conquest of a vicious habit.’ This In every walk in life, strength comes from effort. It is the habit of self-denial thich gives the advantage to men we call self-made. A self-made man, if he is made t all, has already won the battle of life. He is often very poorly put together. His sducation is incomplete; his manners may be uncouth. His prejudices are often rong. He may worship himself and his own oddities. But if he is successful in life ‘im any way, he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and he has learned how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how to ‘money or time away. He has learned to say No. To say no at the right time, and hen to stand by it, is the first element of success. I heard once of a university (it may be in Tartary, or it may be in Dreamland) fo teach him self-control. By this means he was made slow to anger. To resist wrath elps one to resist other impulses. There is a great value in the habit of self-restraint, en when self-gratification is harmless in itself. Some day self-denial will be ystematically taught to children. It ought to be part of the training of men, not _ The Puritans were strong in their day, and their strength has been the backbone our republic. Their power lay not in the narrowness of their creed, but in the verity of their practices. Much that they condemned was innocent in itself. Some gs which they permitted were injurious. But they were ready to resist whatever 384 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. they thought was wrong. In this resistance they found strength, and they found happiness, too, and somewhat of this strength and this happiness has fallen to our inheritance. We may wander far from the creeds of our fathers; we may adopt far different clothing, and far other customs and practices. But if we would have the Puritan’s strength, we must hold the Puritan’s hatred of evil. Our course of life must be as narrow as his; for the way that leads to power in life must ever be strait and stony. It is still true and will be true forever, that the broad roads and flowery paths lead to weakness and misery, not to happiness and strength. There is no real happiness that does not involve self-denial. In general, the sinner is not the man who sets out in life to be wicked. It is the man who cannot resist temptation. It is the man who cannot say, “No.” For sin to become wickedness is a matter of slow transition. One virtue after another is yielded up as vice calls for its sacrifice. In Kipling’s fable of Parenness, the slave of Vice is asked to surrender, one after another, his trust in man, his faith in woman, and the hopes and conscience of his boyhood. In exchange for all this the demon left him just a little crust of dry bread. That is all the demon had to give. If he is to be the slave of sin, there will be nothing else left for him at the last. It is because decay goes on step by step that bad men are not all bad, as good — men are not wholly good. In the stories of Bret Harte, the gamblers‘and sots are capable of pure impulses and of noble self-devotion. The pathos of Dickens rests largely on the same kind of fact. It is indeed a fact, and those who would save such people should keep it constantly in mind. I number among my friends, if he be living yet, which I doubt, an old miner, who — had led a hard, wild life. He was a victim of drink and the hysterical Keeley cure did not save him from delirium tremens. He walked from Los Gatos to Palo Alta for such help as might be found there. As he sat waiting in my house, a little child, who had never known sin, came into the room and fearlessly offered him his hand. This a grown man would not do without shrinking, but the child had not learned to be a respecter of persons. The scarred face lightened; the visions of demons vanish for a moment, and the poor man repeated to himself these words of Dickens: “I know now how Jesus could liken the kingdom of God to a child.” It is not usually the great temptations but the small ones that destroy. Most vice comes through corrosion. Corrosion is the constant pressure of petty temptation each one easily resisted if it stood alone, but the culminative force being beyond th strength of those not already trained in habits of self-denial. “Evil communications — corrupt good manners.” However unlovely they may be at first, yet if they are con- stantly with us, it is the way of human nature to “first endure, then pity, then embrace.” ; B We may divide sin into two classes: Evil to others and evil to ourselves. Evil to others is wickedness or crime. Relatively speaking, there is not so much pure - wickedness in the world. All men have hidden tendencies to greed and trickery and selfishness and cruelty. But these for the most part remain hidden except as the weakness of vice lets them forth. There are great criminals who have no vices, aS monsters of every sort, headless and heartless, one time or another are born. But the greater part of what we call crime is the work of weaklings, men or women who have lost their strength to resist evil, and who yield to the temptations to harm others as they do to the temptations to harm themselves. The habit of drink, for example, does not cause theft and murder. It makes its slave too weak to resist even small tempta~ tions, and small temptations may lead one into great crimes. It is of evil towards one’s self that I wish chiefly to speak today, not of hereditary yice, nor the sins that grow out of oppression—these may serve for some other time— The Strength of Being Clean—Jordan. 385 put of the crimes to one’s self that grow out of our social relations. Evil to one’s self is the yielding to one’s own temptations—to great temptations or to small; this last TI have called corrosion. The primal motive of most forms of sin is to make a short cut to happiness. The reason why we yield to temptation is that it promises pleasure thout the effort of earning it. This promise is one that has never been fulfilled in the history of all the ages, and it is time that men were coming to realize that fact. Happiness never came to stay unless it was earnea. There are momentary pleasures which are not earned by effort. They are not happiness. They are decep- tions or delusions, and like other illusions they soon pass away. We know them to e false pleasures, because their final legacy is pain. They “‘leave a dark-brown taste in the mouth.” Their recollection is ‘‘different in the morning.” Such “pleasures are ike poppies spread; you seize the flower, its bloom is shed,” as Robert Burns, who had tried many of them, truthfully tells us. But true happiness is permanent. The ind is at rest with itself, and it feels the full joy of living. Happiness is a positive thing. It comes with action. In doing, striving, fighting, helping, loving, happiness is the encouragement to effort. Even loving without helping cannot bring happiness. Said Christ to Simon Peter, “If thou lovest Me, feed My lambs.” Whatever feeling is worthy and real will express itself in action, and the glow that surrounds worthy action we call happiness. Happiness is the joy of living, and the joy is felt in propor- tion to the real “abundance of life.” The short cuts to happiness which temptation commonly offers to you and to me may be roughly classified as follows: 1. Idleness—This is the attempt to secure the pleasures of rest without the effort which justifies rest and makes it welcome. When a man shuns effort he is in no position to resist. So, through all ages, idleness has been known as the parent of all vices. “Life drives him hard” who has nothing in the world to do. The dry rot of existence, the vague self-disgust known to the wealthy as ennui and to the poor man as plain misery, is the result of idleness pure and simple. Through the open door of idleness all other temptations enter. 2. Gambling.—In all its forms gambling is the desire to get something for noth- ing. It is said that “money is the root of all evil.” But this is not true. The desire to get money without earning it is the root of all evil. It is the search for unearned happiness through unearned power. To get something for nothing, in whatever way, demoralizes all effort. The man who gets a windfall spends his days thereafter watching the wind. The man who wins in a lottery spends all his gains in more lottery tickets. The whole motive for gambling, betting and of all other forms Of stakes and hazards, is to get something for nothing. To win is to lose, for the winner's integrity is in jeopardy. To lose is to lose, for the loser gets nothing for ymething. He has thrown good money after bad, and that too is demoralizing. I can see that a professional gambler who has averaged all these matters and justed his philosophy to them, might be in his way an honest man and a kindly man. ‘do not personally know any such, and have found him only in the pages of Bret Harte. But whatever charity I might feel for Jack Hamlin or John Oakhurst as I meet them in literature, I cannot extend much sympathy to their victims. é The same motive lies behind stealing as behind gambling. The difference lies in Our statutes and in our social prejudices. _ 8. Licentiousness.—There is an ever-present temptation to secure the pleasures of love without love’s duties and love’s responsibilities. In whatever form this temptation arises, it must be met and fought to the death the man who values honor or character or happiness. Open vice brings with a certainty disease and degradation and ruin. Secret vice comes to the same end, but all the more surely, because the sin and folly of lying are added to the other agencies of destruction. The man who tries to lead a double life is either a neurotic freak or 386 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. else the prince of fools. Generally he is something of both. That society is so severe in its condemnation of such conduct is an expression of the bitterness of its own experience. To you who look forward to useful and honored lives, the temptations of lust must be trodden under foot. Love demands singleness of soul. It is a sturdy plant of vigorous growth, with wondrous hope of flower and fruitage, but it will not rise from the ashes of lust. But it is not alone the gross temptations that must be resisted to the end. There is much that passes under other names that is only veiled licentiousness. The word flirtation covers a multitude of sins. The pure woman, if she knows the truth, will turn from the man who touches her hand in wantonness, as she would turn from a rattle- snake. The real heart and soul of a man is measured by the truth he shows to woman, It may be true as men say, “boys will be boys,” but if “boys will be boys” in the bad sense, they will never be men. 4. Intemperance.—Men try to get the feeling of happiness when happiness does not exist. They destroy their nervous system for the tingling pleasure they feel — as its organs are torn apart. There are many drugs which cause this pleasure, and in proportion to the delight they seem to give is the real mischief that they work. Pain is the warning to the brain that something is wrong in the organ in which the pain is felt. Sometimes that which should be felt as pain is interpreted as pleasure. If a man lay his fingers upon an anvil and strike them one by one with a hammer, the brain will feel the shock as pain. It will give orders to have the blows checked. © - But if through some abnormal condition, some twist of the nerves or clot in the brain, the injury was felt as exquisite delight, there would arise the impulse to repeat it. This would be a temptation. The knowledge of the injury which the eyes would tell to the brain should lead the will to stop the blows. The impulses of delight would plead for their repetition, and in this fashion the hand might be sacrified for a feeling of pleasure which is no pleasure at all, but a form of mania. Of this character is the effect of all nerve-exciting drugs. As a drop of water is of the nature of the sea, so in its degree is the effect of alcohol, opium, tobacco, cocaine, kola, tea or coffee of the nature of mania. They give a feeling of pleasure or of rest, when rest or pleasure does not exist. This feeling arises from injury to the nerves which the brain does not truthfully interpret. There have been men in abnormal conditions who felt mutilation as pleasure, in the way I have just described. Men have paid others to pinch their bodies, to tear their flesh, to bruise their bones for the exquisite delight in self-mutilation. This feeling is the basis for the extraordinary mania which shows itself from time to time among — those sects who call themselves flagellants and penitents. Such extravagance is not religion; it is madness. And drunkenness is madness also. Differing in degree and somewhat in kind, it has yet the same original motive, self-destruction, because of the temptation of imaginary pleasure. To make clear what I have to say, we must consider for a moment the nature of the mind. It is the brain’s business to know, to think, to will and to act. All these functions taken together we call the mind. The brain is hidden in darkness, sheltered within a bony box, and from all the nerves of sense it receives impressions of the outside world and of the conditions of the parts of the body. These impressions are the basis of knowledge. All that we know comes to us in one way or another through the nerves of sense. It is all drawn from our experience of the world through the brain. These impressions are compared one with another and brought into relations with past experiences, that the mind may deduce from them the real truth. This is the process of thought, which has many forms and many variations. eo ee, The Strength of Being Clean—Jordan. : 387 _ The purpose of knowledge is action. When we see or feel or hear anything, what re we going to do about it? The function of sensation is to enable the body to act afely and wisely. Hence the brain controls the muscles. Hence thought always tends 9 go over into action. The sense organs aré the brain’s only teachers. The muscles e its only servants. But there are many orders which can be issued to these servants. tions may be incongruous one with another. How shall the brain choose? This “the function of the will. It is the duty of the will to choose the best action and to uppress all the others. The power of attention enables us to fix the mind on the sations or impressions of most worth and to push the others into the background. ll past impressions linger in the brain, and these arise, bidden or unbidden, to mingle ith the others. To know the relation of these, to distinguish present impressions rom memories, to distinguish recollections from realities, is the condition of sanity. Phis is mental health, when the machinery of the brain and nerves performs each its Il with the world. But there are many conditions in which the machinery of the brain fails. The nind grows confused. It cannot tell memories from realities. Its power of attention ags. A fixed idea not related to external things may take possession of the mind. the will may fail, and the mind may be controlled by a thousand vagrant impres- ions (really forgotten memory pictures) in as many minutes. In any case the move- vent of the muscles becomes uncertain. Their action does not respond to external Inditions, but to internal whims. The deeds which result from these whims may be ngerous’ to the subject himself or to others. This i$ a condition of mania, or of iental irresponsibility. Some phase of mental unsoundness is the natural effect of any of those drugs Iled stimulants or narcotics. Alcohol gives a feeling of warmth or vigor or exhilara- on, when real warmth, vigor or exhilaration does not exist. Tobacco gives a feeling f rest which is not restfulness. The use of opium seems to intensify the imagination, ying its clumsy wings a wondrous power of flight. It destroys the sense of time and pace, but it is in time and space alone that man has his being. Cocaine gives a rength which is not strength. Strychnine quickens the motor response which follows nsation. Coffee and tea, like alcohol, enable one to borrow from his future store of tce for present purposes; and none of these makes any provision for paying back the mm. One and all these various drugs tend to give the impression of a power or a fasure, Or an activity, which we do not possess. One and all, their function is to ce the nervous system to lie. One and all, the result of their habitual use is to der the nervous system incapable of ever telling the truth. One and all, their bposed pleasures are followed by a reaction of subjective pains as spurious and as eal as the pleasures which cause them. Each of them if used to excess brings in le insanity, incapacity and death. With each of them the first use makes the second sier. To yield to temptation weakens the will, and that makes it easier to yield ain. The weakening effect on the will is greater than the injury to the body. In t, the harm intemperance does to the body is wholly secondary. It seems almost irely the visible reflex of the harm already done to the nervous system. While all this is true, I do not wish to take an extreme position. I do not care to in judgment on the tired woman who finds comfort in a cup of tea, or on the man of nds a bottle of claret or a glass of beer an aid to digestion. A glass of light wine trick on the glands of the stomach may spur them to better action. These uences are the white lies of physiology. A cup of coffee may give an apparent 388 . Pulpit Power and Eloquence. strength we greatly need. A good cigar may soothe the nerves. A bottle of cool beer on a hot day may be refreshing; a white lie oils the hinges of society. I make no attack on the use of claret at dinner or beer as medicine. This is a : matter of taste, though it is not to my taste. Each of these drugs leaves a scar on the nerves; a small scar, if you please, and we cannot go through the battle of life without ~ many scars of one kind or another. Moderate drinking is not so very bad so long as — it stays moderate. It is much like moderate lying—or, to use Beecher’s words, like — “beefsteak with incidental arsenic.” It will weaken your will somewhat, but maybe — you are strong enough for that. It was once supposed that intemperance was like : gluttony; the excessive use of that which was good. It was not then known that — all nerve exciters contain a specific poison, and that in this poison such apparent — pleasure as they seem to give must lie. . Use these drugs if you can afford it: There are many worthy gentlemen who use them all in moderation, and who have the strength to abstain from what they call their abuse. You will find among drinkers and smokers some of the best men you know, ~ while some of the greatest scoundrels alive are abstemious to the last degree. They dare not be otherwise, they need all the strength and cunning they have to use in their business. Wine loosens the tongue and lets fly the secrets of guilt. But whatever > others may do or seem to do with impunity, you can not afford to imitate them. You know less of the world than they do and less of yourselves. You are nearer to tempta-— tion, and if you are tempted and fall, it will be harder for you to recover. But whatever you do, let it be of your own free choice. Count all the cost. Take your stand whatever it may be, with open eyes, and hold it without regret. There is nothing more hopeless than the ineffective remorse of a man who drinks and wishes that he didn’t. If you don’t want to do a thing, then don’t do it. The only way to. reform is to stop, stop, stop! and go at once to doing something else. ; But whatever you may think or do as to table drinking and the like, there is no question as to the evil of perpendicular drinking, or drinking for drink’s sake. Men. who drink in saloons do so for the most part for the wrench on the nervous system. They drink to forget. They drink to be happy. They drink to be drunk. Sometimes it is a periodical attack of madness. Sometimes it is a chronic thirst. Whichever it is, its indulgence destroys the soundness of life; it destroys accuracy of thought and action. It destroys wisdom and virtue. It destroys faith and hope and love. It brings a train of subjective horrors, which the terrified brain can not interpret and which we call delirium tremens, the tremendous madness. This is mania, indeed, but every act which injures the faithfulness of the nervous system is a step in this terrible direction. Some clever writer in the San Francisco Examiner reports the words of an old sailor called ‘““Longshore Potts,” who gave a striking account of what he calls “the shock.” A young man with money and ambition starts out to enjoy life. He is “hail fellow well met,” “afraid of no man,” and “nobody’s enemy but his own.” He fre- quents the clubs; he plays the races, and he is with the gayest in all gay company. He thinks well of himself; he has a good time and he knows no reason why others should not think well of him. This goes on for a year or two, when the pace begins to prove too rapid. The “difference in the morning” becomes disagreeable. It inter- feres with business. It spoils pleasure. The only thing to do is to go still faster. The race down the cocktail route helps to forget. Suddenly the man gets sight of himself. He catches his face in the glass. He sees himself as others see him. Instead of “the jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny,” he gets the glimpse of a useless, helpless sot. He sees a man who has spent his substance, has disgraced his name, has ruined his home, has broken the heart of his wife, has beggared his children, has lost the respect of others, and the respect of himself. This is the Shock! When it is come he The Strength of Being Clean—Jordan. 389 n alcoholic repentance. There is nothing that can save him but to stop, and it takes omething of manhood to do this. Such tears of remorse are not “tears from the epths of some divine despair.’ They arise rather from the fact that champagne rritates the lachrymal glands. With most men sin comes not as a result of strong passions, ungovernable mpulses and the revolt against conventions. It is rather that weak will, scanty brain nd unchecked selfishness meet some petty or nasty temptation or corrosion. It is rue that there are cases of another kind. There are some men whose untamable ndependence leads them into peril through revolt from tiresome conventionalities. Phey sin because they will not be tied to the apron-strings of society. For these awless, turbulent, defiant spirits there is always great hope, for when they find them- hey are likely to break away again and to lead lives aggressively good in reaction rom past follies. To this class belong the subjects of the great conversions, the real brands who have snatched themselves from the real burnings. “What a world this would be without coffee,” said one old pessimist to another as hey sat and growled together at an evening reception. “What a world it is with offee,” said the other, for he knew that the only solace coffee could give was that it semed for the moment to repair the injury its own excessive use had brought. No stimulant nor narcotic can ever do more than this. They help us to forget ime and space and ourselves—all we have worth remembering. “With health and a lay” man “can put the pomp of emperors to shame.” Without time and space he can do nothing. He is nothing. _ “There is joy in life,” says John L, Sullivan, the pugilist, “but it is known only the man who has a few jolts of liquor under his belt.” To know this kind of joy is to put one’s self beyond the reach of all others. The joy of the blue sky, the bright sunshine, the dark forest, the log covered with green moss, the songs of birds, the prattle of children, the glow of effort, the beauties f poetry, the victories of thought, the thousand and thousand real pleasures of life re inaccessible to him “who has a few jolts of liquor under his belt,” while the orrows he feels, or thinks he feels, are as unreal as his joys, and as unworthy of a fe worth living. _ There was once, I am told, a merchant who came into his office smacking his lips, nd said to his clerk, ‘““The world looks very different to the man who has had a good s of brandy and soda in the morning.” ‘Yes,” said the clerk, “and the man looks And this is natural and inevitable. For the pleasure which exists only in the Nagination leads to action which has likewise nothing to do with the demands of life. he mind is confused, and may be delighted through the confusion, but the confused uscles tremble and halt. The tongue is loosened and utters unfinished sentences, the ind is loosened, and the handwriting is shaky, the muscles of the eyes are unhar- essed, and the two eyes move independently and see double, the legs are loosened sion is:long continued, the mental deterioration shows itself in external things, the abby hat and seedy clothing and the gradual drop of the man from stratum to ratum of society till he brings up at the last in the ditch. As the world looks re and more different to him, so does he look more and more different to the world. A prominent lawyer of Boston once told me that the great impulse to total absti- mence came to him when a young man, from hearing his fellow lawyers talking after 390 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. . their cups. The most vital secrets of their clients’ business were made public property when their tongues were loosened by wine. And this led my friend to the firm resolu- tion that nothing should go into his mouth which would prevent him from keeping it closed unless he wanted to open it. The time will come when the only career for the ambitious man of intemperate habits will be in politics. It is rapidly becoming so now. The private employer dare not trust his business to the man who drinks. The great corporations dare not. He is not wanted on the railroads. The steamship lines have long since cast him off. The banks dare not use him. He cannot keep accounts. — Only the people long suffering and generous remain as his resource. For this reason, municipal government is his specialty; and while this patience of the people lasts, our cities will breed scandals as naturally as our swamps breed malaria. Before you step outside the path of sanity, be it ever so little, consider well the cost. How much can you afford? You are young, strong, ambitious. You have your work in life before you. You have burdens already of your own, and you will wish to carry the burdens of others. These will tax all your strength. Therefore, keep all you have. Do not throw away your one great chance for happiness in the search for pleasures which you have not earned, and which at the best will take you from the ‘ path you have chosen, and which is the path of your duty. After these four, the great temptations, comes the train of small ones, which I have called corrosion. The lower temptations are those nearest to us, and they act persistently, however little any one of them may attract us in itself. First of these comes vulgarity. To be vulgar is to do that which is not the best of ‘its kind, It is to do poor things in poor ways, and to be satisfied with that. Vulgarity weakens the mind and thus brings all other weakness in its train. It is vulgar to wear dirty linen when one is not engaged in dirty work. It is vulgar to like poor music, to read weak books, to feed on sensational newspapers, to trust to patent medicines, to be amused by trashy novels, to enjoy vulgar theaters, to tolerate coarseness and loose- ness in any of their myriad forms. We find the corrosion of vulgarity everywhere, and its poison enters every home. The bill-boards of our cities are covered with its evidences; our newspapers are redolent with it; our story books reek with it; our schools are tainted by it, and we cannot keep it out of our homes or our churches or our colleges. It is the hope of civilization that our republic may outgrow the toleration of vulgarity, but we have a long struggle before us before this is done. It is said that vulgarity is the besetting sin of democracy. This we might believe were it not that the most vulgar city in the world, the one from which vulgarity rises like an exhala- tion, is one of the least democratic. The second power of vulgarity is obscenity, and this vice is like the pestilence. Wherever it finds lodgment it kills. It fills the mind with vile pictures, which will come up again and again, standing in the way of all healthful effort. Those’ who have studied the life history of homeless poor tell me that obscenity and not drink is the cause of the ineffectiveness of most of them. In the ranks of the unemployed, besides ee ee ae ee the infirm and the unfortunate, is the great residue of the unemployable. The most of - these are rendered so by the utter decay of force which comes from the habit of obscenity. The forces which make for vulgarity tend also towards obscenity, for all inane vulgarity tends to grow obscene. We judge the wickedness of Pompeii by evil signs and paintings which the baptism of fire and eighteen centuries of burial have failed to purify. If San Francisco were to be buried today we would not willingly have our civilization judged by its bill-boards on the corner of Market street. The gauntlet of obscene suggestions is the most terrible one our children have to face. We men can stand it perhaps, but the children and their friends would surely be justified The Strength of Being C lean—Jordan. 36t in forming a vigilance committee to clean up the town. Perhaps they may do this sometime in some fashion. A form of vulgarity is profanity. It is the sign of a dull, coarse, unrefined nature. There are times perhaps when profanity is picturesque and effective. In Arizona sometimes it is so, and I have seen it so in Wyoming. But not indoors nor in the streets nor under normal conditions. It is then simply an insult to the atmosphere which is vulgarized for the purpose. It is not that profanity is offensive to God. He may deal with it in His own way. It is offensive to man and destructive to him. It hurts the man who uses it. ‘““‘What cometh out of a man defileth him,”’ and the man hus defiled extends his corrosion to others. The open door of the saloon makes it a center of corrosion, and the miserable habit of “treating” which we cail American, but which exists wherever the tippling house exists, spreads and intensifies it. _ There is no great virtue in statutes to keep men sober. I would as soon “see the thole world drunk through choice as sober through compulsion.” The resistance to mptation must come from within. So far as the drink of drunkards is concerned, prohibition does not prohibit. But to clean up a town, to free it from corrosion, saves men and boys and girls too from vice, and who shall say that moral Sanitation is not is much the duty of the community as physical sanitation? The city of the future will not permit the existence of slums and dives and tippling houses. It will prohibit their being for the same reason that it now prohibits pig-pens and dung-hills and cesspools. For where all of these things are, slums and cesspools, saloons and pig-pens, there the people grow weak and die. There are many other forms of the evil of corrosion, but I need pass them only with a word. The feeling of weakness breeds the habit of envy; the jealousy and atred of the fortunate. Many a vagabond looks on the man with a clean collar as an memy who has robbed him, and there are not wanting agitators and politicians who nake the most of this jealousy. Other evil influences too there are which you know nd I know, and which from day to day we must struggle to cast aside. But the point of all I have to say is this: “Consent thou not!” Resistance to one temptation brings strength to overcome all others. To overcome temptations is to make a man of you. To be a man is to be useful, honored, successful, happy. It is not fo t1 to seek strength by hazard or chance. Power has its price, and its price is traight effort. It is not for you, in Kipling’s words, “with all your life’s work to be done, that ou must needs go dancing down the devil’s swept and garnished causeway because brsooth there is a light woman’s smile at the end of it.” t is not for you to seek pleasure and strength in drinks whose only function is to It is not for you to believe that idleness brings rest or that unearned rest brings leasure. You are young men and strong, and it is for you to resist corrosion and to help stamp it out of civilized society. Temptation will be in the path of man forever. It is good for him, as adversity _ but vulgar corrosion is like poisoned water. Whatever our relation to it, it can # nly bring us harm. id soul and body clean. “TI know of no more encouraging fact,” says Thoreau, “than the ability of a man > elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to paint a particular picture Har wees Sau beat ks nes) 7 y ‘ a 392 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. or to carve a statue and so make a few objects beautiful. I carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through morally we can do.” [David Starr Jordan was born at Gainesville, N. Y., Jan education at Cornell University, Indiana Medical College, been president of Indiana University, U. S. Commissioner in ‘ tigations, and president of Leland Stanford University from 1891 number of works on zoology, The Innumerable Company, etc. — This address was delivered to a large audience of young ‘men, most eloquent. presentation of a subject not often brought befor THE CRUCIFIXION. FRIEDRICH WILHELM KRUMMACHER. “And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place fa skull, they gave Him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall; and when He had tasted hereof, He would not drink. And they crucified Him.’”—Matt. 27: 33-35. “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.” Let hese words of the prophet Habakkuk be the language of our hearts on entering into he Most Holy Place of the Gospel history. _ The most solemn of all days in Israel was, as we well know, the great day of ttonement, the only day in the year on which the high priest entered into the most joly place in the temple. Before he approached that mysterious sanctuary, the law njoined that he should divest himself of his costly garments, and clothe himself rom head to foot in a plain white linen dress. He then took the vessel with the acrificial blood in his hand, and, thrilling with sacred awe, drew back the veil, in rder, humbly and devoutly, to approach the throne of grace, and sprinkle it with the toning blood. He remained no longer in the sacred place than sufficed to perform lis priestly office. He then came out again to the people and, in Jehovah’s name, nnounced grace and forgiveness to every penitent soul. We shall now see this symbolical and highly significant act realized in its full and accomplishment. The immaculate Jesus of whom the whole Old Testament riesthood, according to the divine intention, was only a typical shadow, conceals dimself behind the thick veil of an increasing humiliation and agony; that, bearing n His hands His own blood, He may mediate for us with God His Father. Removed izes and accomplishes all that Moses included in the figurative service of the acle. The precise manner in which this was accomplished we shall never ly fathom with our intellectual powers; but it is certain that He then finally rocured our eternal redemption. _ My readers, how shall we best prepare ourselves for the contemplation of this os solemn and sacred event? At least we must endeavor to do so by holy recollec- in of thought, devout meditation, a believing and blissful consideration of the work ‘redemption, and by heartfelt and grateful adoration before the throne of God. May we be enabled thus to draw near by the help of His grace and mercy! ‘Once more we return to the road to the cross, and, in spirit, mingle with the vd proceeding to the place of execution. They are just passing the rocky sepul- hres of the kings of Israel. The ancient monarchs sleep in their cells, but a dawning surrection gleams upon their withered remains when the Prince of Life passes by. e | procession then enters the horrible vale of Gehenna, which once reeked with the od of the sacrifices to Moloch. But there is another still more dreadful Cehenna; d who among us would have escaped it, had not the Lamb of God submitted to the ferings which we now see Him enduring? . We are arrived at the foot of the awful hill; but before ascending it, let us cast 304 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. a look on the crowd behind us, and see if, amid all the hatred and rancor that rages there like an infernal flame, we can discover any traces of sympathy and heartfelt veneration for the divine sufferer. And lo! an estimable little group meets our eye, like a benignant constellation in the darkness of the night. O we know them already, these deeply-distressed mourners! We first perceive the pious Salome, the blessed mother of the two “sons of thunder.” She desires to set her children an example of faithfulness unto death, and we know that both James and John, the former of whom : was the first martyr for the new kingdom of peace, afterward showed themselves — perfectly worthy of such a mother. Near Salome walks Mary, the near relative of the | blessed Virgin. She had also the great privilege of seeing her two sons, James the > Less and Joses, received into the immediate fellowship of the great Master. But alas! when the sword came upon the Shepherd they were also scattered with the rest of the flock; while it seemed to their excellent mother a paramount duty to appear, — instead of her children, and by her own fidelity to cover their flight. And lo! yonder walks Mary Magdalene, sobbing aloud, who had experienced, above others, the delivering power of Him who came to destroy the works of the devil. O how she — appears dissolved in grief and sorrow! She has only one wish more, and that is, ta be.able to die with Him, without whom the earth seems to her only a gloomy grave, a den of murderers. ; But who is she with tottering step, leaning on the disciple whom Jesus loved, — dejected more than all the rest, who covers her grief-worn face? It is the sorely-tried mother of our Lord, in whom Simeon’s prophecy is now fulfilled, “A sword shall pierce through thine soul also.”’ But she had scarcely the smallest presentiment that it would be accomplished in such a manner. Truly, what she feels no heart on earth ever experienced. But look up, Mary! Cast thyself, with all thy grief, into the arms | of the Eternal Father. Dost thou see thy Son going to be crucified? He also sees His. He who is crowned with thorns is His Son as well as thine. O look at the dear disciple, who, though inconsolable himself, tries to support the deeply-grieved mother of his Lord. What a scene! But how gratifying is it to perceive, that love for the Man of Sorrows has not wholly become extinct upon earth! Nor shall it ever expire. Be not concerned on that account. In that mourning group you see only the - first divinely-quickened germs of the future kingdom of the Divine Sufferer. From — a few, a multitude that no man can number will ere long proceed. , After this cursory retrospect of the Savior’s attendants, let us again put ourselves — in motion with the crowd. Only a few steps upward, and we reach the end of the ~ dreadful pilgrimage. Where are we now? Weare standing on the summit of Mount Calvary—Golgotha—horrifying name—the appellation of the most momentous and awful spot upon the whole earth. Behold a naked and barren eminence, enriched only - by the blood of criminals, and covered with the bones of executed rebels, incendiaries, poisoners, and other offscourings of the human race. An accursed spot, where love | never rules, but where naked justice alone sits enthroned, with scales and sword, and from which every passer-by turns with abhorrence, a nocturnal rendezvous of jackals and hyenas. Only think, this place so full of horrors, becomes transformed into “the hill from whence cometh our help,” and whose mysteries many kings and prophets have desired to see, and did not see them. Yes, upon this awful hill our roses shall blossom, and our springs of peace and salvation burst forth. The pillar of our refuge towers upon this height. The Bethany of our repose and eternal refreshment here displays itself to our view. Truly the ancients were in so far correct in their assertion, that Mount Calvary formed the center of the whole earth; for it is the meeting-place where the redeemed, though separated in body by land and sea, daily assemble in spirit, and greet each other with the kiss of love. Not less correct were they in the legend that Father Adam was buried beneath Mount Calvary—this hill being really ont. The Crucifixion—Krummacher. 395 dam’s grave, when by the latter we understand the fallen sinful man, whom we all a ‘ry about in us, and who was crucified with Christ on Golgotha. It is strange that ) this day the learned dispute the position of this hill, and that there is scarcely a rospect of ascertaining the place with certainty. But it was the divine intention that material mount should be exalted into the region of that which is spiritual; and ich is actually the case. It finds its abiding-place in the believing view of the world. On that awful mount ends the earthly career of the Lord of Glory. Behold Him, en, the only green, sound, and fruitful tree upon earth, and at the root of this tree the ce is laid. What a testimony against the world, and what an annihilating con- radiction to everything that bears the name of God and Divine Providence, if the tter did not find its solution in the mystery of the representative atonement! Behold lim, then, covered with wounds and ignominy, and scarcely distinguishable from the nalefactors among whom He is reckoned. But have patience. In a few years Jeru- lem, that rejected Him, glorifies Him in the form of a smoking heap of ruins, as the sloved Son of the Most High, whom no one can assail with impunity; and surrounded y the lights of the sanctuary, living monuments arise, in three quarters of the globe, ed ing the inscription, ‘““To Christ, the Redeemer of the World.” Before these things ake place, a horrible catastrophe must occur. The life of the world only springs forth rom the death of the Just One. The hour of His baptism with blood has arrived. ollect your thoughts, my readers, while you witness it. _ Alas! alas! what is it that now takes place on that bloody hill? O heart of stone n our breasts, why dost thou not break? Why, thou cold and obdurate rock, dost hou not dissolve in tears of blood? Four barbarous men, inured to the most dreadful f all employments, approach the Holy One of Israel, and offer Him, first of all, a fying potion, composed of wine and myrrh, as usual at executions. The Lord isdains the draught, because He desires to submit to the will of His Heavenly Father vith full consciousness, and to drink the last drop of the accursed cup. The execu- joners then take the Lamb of God between them, and begin their horrid occupation y tearing, with rude hands, the clothes from off His body. There He stands, whose arment once was the light, and the stars of heaven the fringe of His robe, covered nly with the crimson of His blood, and divested of all that adorned Him, not only efore men, but also in His character as Surety, before God—reminding us of Adam in aradise, only that instead of hiding Himself behind the trees at the voice of God, He serfully goes toward it; reminding us also of the Old Testament high priest, His ious type, who, before he entered into the Most Holy place to make an atone- exchanged his rich attire for a simple white robe. After having unclothed the Lord, and left Him, by divine direction, only His ‘own of thorns, they lay Him down on the wood on which He is to bleed; and thus, hout being aware of it, bring about the moment predicted in Psalm 22, where we ar the Messiah complaining, and saying, “Be not far from Me, for trouble is near; r there is none to help. Many bulls have compassed Me about; strong bulls of shan have beset Me round.” O what a dying bed for the King of kings! My ends, as often as we repose on the downy cushions of divine peace, or blissfully semble in social brotherly circles, singing hymns of hope, let us not forget that the se of the happiness we enjoy is solely to be found in the fact that the Lord of Glory ice extended Himself on the fatal tree for us. -O see Him lie! His holy arms forcibly stretched out upon the cross-beam; His t laid upon each other and bound with cords. Thus Isaac once lay on the wood on Moriah. But the voice that then called out of heaven, saying, “Lay not thine 396 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. pervades the crowd, like that which is wont to fill the house of mourning when the coffin is nailed down. And, probably, not only on earth, but also in heaven at that moment, profound and solemn silence reigned. The horrible nails from the forge of hell, yet foreseen in the sanctuary of eternity, are placed on the hands and feet of the righteous Jesus, and the heavy strokes of the hammer fall. Reader, dost thou hear the sound? They thunder on thy heart, testifying in horrible language of thy sin, and at the same time of the wrath of Almighty God. O how many sleepers have awoke from their sleep of death under the echo of those strokes, and have escaped from Satan’s snare! Awake also thou that art asleep in sin, and rouse thyself likewise, thou who art lulling thyself in carnal security! How many a proud and haughty heart has been broken into salutary repentance by those strokes! O why does not thy heart also break? For know that thou didst aid in swinging those hammers; and that the most crying and impious act which the world ever committed is charged to thy account, See, the nails have penetrated through, and from both hands and feet gushes forth the blood of the Holy One. O these nails have rent the rock of salvation for us, that it may pour forth the water of life; have reft the heavenly bush of balm, that it may send forth its perfume. Yes, they have pierced the handwriting that was against us, and have nailed it, as invalid, to the tree; and by wounding the Just One have pene- trated through the head of the old serpent, like Jael’s nail through the head of Sisera. O, let no one be deceived with respect to Him who was thus nailed to the cross! Those pierced hands bless more powerfully than while they moved freely and un- fettered. They are the hands of a wonderful architect, who is building the frame of an eternal church—yea, they are the hands of a hero, which take from the strong man all his spoil. And believe me, there is no help or salvation save in these hands; and these bleeding feet tread more powerfully than when no fetters restrained their steps. They now walk victoriously over the heads of thousands of foes, who shortly before held up their heads with boldness. Hills and mountains flow down beneath their steps, which they never would have levelled unwounded; and nothing springs or blooms in the world, except beneath the prints of these feet. The most dreadful deed is done, and the prophetic words of the Psalm, “They pierced My hands and My feet,” have received their fulfilment. The foot of the cross is then brought near to the hole dug for it; powerful men seize the rope attached to the top of it, and begin to draw, and the cross, with its victim, elevates itself and rises to its height. Thus the earth rejects the Prince of Life from its surface, and, as it seems, heaven also refuses Him. But we will let the curtain drop over these horrors. Thank God! in that scene of suffering the Sun of Grace rises over a sinful world, and the Lion of Judah only ascends into the region of the spirits that have the power of the air, in order, in a mysterious conflict, eternally to disarm them on our behalf. Look what a spectacle now presents itself! The moment the cross is elevated to its height, a purple stream falls from the wounds of the crucified Jesus through the air, and bedews the place of torture, and the sinful crowd which surrounds it. This is His legacy to His Church. We render Him thanks for such a bequest. This rosy dew works wonders. It falls upon spiritual deserts, and they blossom as the rose. We sprinkle it upon the door-posts of our hearts, and are secure against destroyers and avenging angels. This dew falls on the ice of the north pole, and the accumulated frozen mass of ages thaws beneath it. It streams down on the torrid zone, and the air becomes cool and pleasant. Where this rain falls, the gardens of God spring up, lilies bloom, and what was black becomes white in the purifying stream, and what was polluted becomes pure as the light of the sun. That which dew and rain is to nature, which without them would soon become a barren waste, the crimson shower which we see falling from the cross is to human minds, There is no possibility of flourishing The Crucifixion—Krummacher. 397 without it, no growth nor verdure, but everywhere desolation, barrenness, and death. et us therefore embrace the cross, and sing with the poet:— “Here, at thy cross, my dying God, I lay my soul beneath thy love, Beneath the droppings of thy blood, Jesus, nor shall it e’er remove!” There stands the mysterious cross—a rock against which the very waves of the ‘curse break, a lightning-conductor by which the destroying fluid descends, which would otherwise have crushed the world. He who so merciiully engaged to direct this ‘thunderbolt against Himself hangs yonder in profound darkness. Still He remains ‘the Morning Star, announcing an eternal Sabbath to the world. Though rejected ‘by heaven and earth, yet He forms, as such, the connecting link between them both, and the Mediator of their eternal and renewed amity. Ah, see! His bleeding arms are extended wide; He stretches them out to every sinner. His hands point to the east and west; for He shall gather His children from the ends of the earth. The top of the cross is directed toward the sky; far above the world will its effects extend. Its foot is fixed in the earth; the cross becomes a wondrous tree, from. which we reap the fruit of an eternal reconciliation. O, my readers, nothing more is requisite than that ‘the Lord should grant us penitential tears, and then, by means of the Holy Spirit, show us the Savior suffering on the cross. We then escape from all earthly care and sorrow, _and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. For our justification in His sight, nothing ‘more is requisite than that, in the consciousness of our utter helplessness, we lay hold on the horns of that altar which is sprinkled with the blood that “speaketh better ‘things than that of Abel.” And the Man of Sorrows displays to us the fulness of His treasures, and bestows upon us, in a superabundant degree, the blessing of the - Patriarch Jacob on his son Joseph:—“The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills.” __. There stands erected the standard of the new covenant, which, when it is under- stood, spreads terror around it no less than delight, and produces lamentation no less than joy and rejoicing. It stands to this day, and will stand forever, and no more fears those who would overturn it than the staff of Moses feared when those of the _ Magicians hissed around it. And wherever it is displayed, there it is surrounded by - powerful manifestations and miraculous effects. We carry it through the nations, and without a blow of the sword conquer one country after another, and one fortress ‘aiter another. Look how the missionary fields become verdant, and a springtime of the Spirit extends itself over the heathen deserts! Hark how the harps of peace _ resound from the isles of the sea; and behold how, between the icebergs of the north, the hearts begin to glow with the fire of divine love! From whence these changes? these -resurrection-wonders? From whence this shaking in the valley of dry bones? The cross is carried through the land, and beneath its shade the soil becomes verdant and the dead revive. When this wondrous cross is exhibited, with a correct exposition of its hieroglyphic characters, “lightnings, thunderings, and voices” are wont to pro- ceed. Stones melt in its vicinity, rocks rend before it, and waters, long stagnant, again tipple, clear and pure, as if some healing angel had descended into them. “Tam crucified with Christ,” exclaims the apostle, and by these words points out the entire fruit which the cross bears for all believers. His meaning is,“They are not His sins, for which the curse is there endured, but mine; for He who thus expires on ‘ the cross dies for me. Christ pays and suffers in my stead.” But that of which Paul _ boasts is the property of us all, if by the living bond of faith and love we are become _ One with the crucified Jesus. We are likewise exalted to fellowship with the cross of Christ in the sense also that our corrupt nature is condemned to death, and our old 398 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. man, with his affections and lusts, is subjected to the bitter process of a lingeri T partly through the spirit of purity which dwells and rules within us, and partl ry trials and humiliations which God sends us, until the lance-wound of the death of body makes an end of it. But it is while enduring these mortal agonies that we | see the cross of Calvary unfold its full and peace-bestowing radiance. It arches like a rainbow, over our darkness, and precedes us on our path of sorrow like a p: oi fire. O that its serene light might also shine upon our path through this va tears, and, as the tree of liberty and life, strike deep its roots in our souls! App hended by faith, may it shed its heavenly fruit into our lap, and warm and ona hearts and minds beneath its shade! was born at Meurs, Lower Rhine, @enuaier January 28, 1796, and died Decem' 10, 1868. His father was a distinguished theologian, and author of the famous “ bles,” in verse. Friedrich was educated at Halle and Jena. After a three yea pastorate over a German Reformed congregation in New York city, he settled Berlin in 1847. The closing words of his last Sermon are said to have epitomi his religious character: “Our conversation is in heaven.” Among his widely kn works are: “Elijah the Tishbite;”’ “David, the King of Israel;” “The Suffer: Savior,” meditations on the last days of Christ. From the last named this Ser is taken, by permission of Porter and Coates.] THE NEW SONG. JOHN ELLIS LANCELEY. _ “And they sung as it were a new song before the throne.”—Rey. 14:3. “And they ing the song of Moses . . . and the song of the Lamb.”—Reyv. 15: 3. _ There is a special benediction pronounced upon those who read the words of this rophecy. This stirs the aspiring soul to a prayerful study, and a plea for the fulfill- ment of the promise: “To him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Stand a little while with me this morning upon the threshold of the unseen and beyond—that realm which is as true and potent in its influence over us as anything we ive seen in this career. The veil is lifted in that revelation given to our fellow-servant John, and written! by y command to stir our hope. It is full of messages which have been a solace and : ngth to us in all the variations of our human hours. _ Weare here as Bible students. Whatever of difference there is between us and the worldling, or the slave of sin and unbelief, comes from the Bible. Shut up this Book and we are imprisoned, and we may abandon ourselves to a pitiless fate. We may hout and cry, yet there is no answer save the echo of our cry. But we are here with he Bible before us. To us there is no darkness unbroken, and no problem but a iossible solution has been rendered, and the forecast of its outcome laid before our At the conclusion of the messages to the seven churches, of which John was the pastor, we have the record: “Behold, a door was opened in heaven.” ‘Following this is the rehearsal of what was made manifest through that open door. No doubt this loor opening was largely—though not entirely subjective, i.e., in the mind of John imself. Education opens a door to the human mind, and makes the interior of the temple of knowledge visible. Open the eyes of the blind man, and you may record he event by saying: “A door was opened into this world for him.” There was one thing very certain about John’s experience at this time. All other doors had been closed to him; he had no outlook which gave him any pleasurable ght, and yet he says: “I looked.” Yes; where did he look? Not back toward mainland, where his friends and home and churches were; that opens no vision, epting such as memory gives of scenes gone by. “I looked!’ There was no her on which to look, save that which the soul chooses when it is freed from ly ties. So he looked upward. If he had not looked, to him no door in heaven would have opened. It is the “lookers” who become the seers. And we learn that one did not bring all the revelation. He looked again and again. It was because he a “looker” that he was invited to “come and see.” It was when he looked that he aw the “Lamb standing upon Mount Zion.” It was when he looked again that he w “the white cloud and the Son of man seated thereupon, with a golden crown and s harp sickle.” It was when he looked again that he saw the opening of the “temple of the tabernacle of testimony.” O surely! it is those who look that see. In this miverse of infinite wealth we finite souls shall see only that kind for which we look. _ John saw the “throne of God;” he saw “the Lamb in the midst of the throne;” saw heavenly beings and earthly ones in one great act of worship. And they did uredly worship “the Lamb.” I am glad that this is so recorded. We lift our 400 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. voices down here in strains of worship to Jesus Christ. Sometimes we have been called idolaters by those of our brethren who have assumed a Unitarian name, O Ts is a worship approved in heaven. The angels—cherubim and seraphim—worship H L. If we are wrong, then they are wrong. Surely I need not be wiser in this matter than the “angels of God.” If they stand round the throne and sing: ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive blessing and honor and glory and power,” surely I can jo in the strain: n “Let earth and heaven agree, Angels and men be joined, To celebrate with me The Savior of mankind; To adore the all-atoning Lamb, And bless the sound of Jesus’ name.” And theirs was a worship of song. Song is the language of triumph. Even when melancholy triumphs in us for a time, our song becomes a minor, and pours forth a funeral dirge—strange mingling of a temporary grief, through which hope sings in sackcloth. When hope triumphs, she flings off her sackcloth and sings in bold an d major numbers. It is easy for fulfilled desire to sing, i.e., when that desire has been within the spirit-air, where music floats. Not all forms of thought can sing. houses of legislature or the senatorial halls have no ideas for music’s scale. The boa of trade, or joint-stock company, think not of opening or closing their meetings wi song; not even the Science Association of Britain or America thinks of associating song with its sessions. There is clear admission that their business is too low-set for song; that their ideas are not above the shallow exercises of this passing day. They need no wings, for they belong to the dust of earth. ay Songs are the soul’s language spoken into the unseen. It is not to one another we sing. It may be sometimes for one another, and ofttimes with one another, when “all partake the joys of one,” and “the common peace we feel.” Songs are the soul’s” transfiguration of speech, when the Divine sounds through the human and bespeaks the parentage sublime. I am full well aware that, as on one occasion the vessels of God’s temple were desecrated to the service of heathen wine-bibbers, so may the harps" of God be strung for the Bacchanalian revelries and the mirth which is the mocking» mimicry of joy; but it is the prostitution of the Divine in man, and the prostitutes are few. Do you not remember the peculiar and significant phraseology of the singer of Israel, when he declared: ‘Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.” Just look at chat! ‘Thy statutes have been my songs.” “Thy” and_ “my” indicate the conscious fellowship of God and man, “The house of my pilgrim-_ age!” Look at that! How clearly is declared the consciousness of this as a pilgrim | state, with this house as a temporary abode! It is really the same phraseology as that of the later “child of hope’ who sang: “When the house of this tabernacle shall be dissolved.” It is in this temporary condition the Psalmist sings: “Thy statutes have been my songs.” What are statutes? What is the meaning of the statute? You who go to school every day can tell us. Statutes are things fixed, decreed, set, which cannot be otherwise—certainties!—eternal realties! O yes! we can read it. Thy cer- tainties have been my songs in the changing courses of my pilgrimage! Thy eternal truths, fixed in my soul, are my songs in the night seasons and in the storm: “While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high.” Thy statutes anchor my soul within the veil, sure and steadfast! That idea must be repudiated which places the soul’s songs as among the mutatory effects of exhilara-~ tion or enthusiasm. The song is the soul’s voice of trust singing the statutes amid - ae The New Song—Lanceley. 401 ae crumbling of earth-built castles. It is the law that sings—mind that! The spheres e set to the music of the statutes. Why do we not think more about all these great hings? Why do not God’s children study everything that is for the Father’s sake and heir own? It is all for them, created and redeemed from destruction for their sake. me, just here, why it is that we have a musical scale of eight notes, the eighth being a return to the first! Tell me why the seventh cries out for the finality of the ighth, and no song could end on the seventh! Tell me why the first or eighth, which are alike, is the keynote to which all the rest are related, and to which all must return or a peaceful rest! _ Then tell me why it is the same with days: the first and the eighth, being the same, ye us the keynote by which to regulate the operation of the six which fill the interval! ell me why the Son of God, when moving through this sphere of days, died on the h day, which corresponds to the note on which all the minor chords, voicing the quiems of the sad, are posited! Tell me why the eighth day was made the Lord’s ‘day, on which He rose from the grave to begin the new octave of salvation’s song which He sings in glory: “I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: which was dead and is alive forever more!” Tell me why all this was prefigured a thousand ars before in acts and facts and sacrifices, Divinely commanded to be performed or ered on the eighth day; that on this day the Lord revealed Himself in glory to ron and his sons after they had waited the full seven days at the door of the taber- nacle; that on this eighth day the lepers were cleansed, the Feast of First Fruits kept, d, likewise, the Feast of Pentecost on the eighth day, fifty days after the Feast of First Fruits; and also the Feast of Tabernacles, which pointed to the time when God would tabernacle with men and wipe away all tears from their eyes! The eighth day is a return to the first; but we can neither begin nor end the scale without the consciousness of both. The first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath, and it is he eighth day of the whole Jewish ritual, and between these two all the history of the work of salvation comes. Jt is the “statutes” that are to be our songs—no maudlin sentiments of a passing motion: such die down with the breeze which stirred them. The statutes abide. Law is musical, for it is orderly. The “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” gives the sou its freedom, and sets all its goings agoing. _ But who of God’s witnesses cares to study all these things, and stand as the inter- preters to men of God’s great gifts? The great world loves music and knows not yet ‘its meaning. God's children only can ever know; it is given to them to know the Mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. } ie But we only can know who seek to know. It is the reward of a patient, faithful ‘search. Why gyrate around upon a few well-founded platitudes, and think ourselves neere followers of Christ. We sing—we know not what; we ask not why. We fear en to look upward or forward, lest we be compelled to fold up our tents and seek land of the prospect. Hence, we are slothful and indolent disciples. Often your teachers go up into the mount of God, and see visions of truth which them to lead you out; but they fall flat on the unaspiring crowd. I have sat down id wept, on, many a time, through sheer loneliness—through lack of appreciation of hat has fairly transfigured my spirit with its heavenly glow. I have often retreated into the common-place and stayed there because there was none to arise and go up a the land of promise. _ “And they sang as it were a new song.” That was because they were redeemed from the earth, and no man could learn it but a redeemed one. This teaches us that we all not all be merged into one class when we reach that blest abode. The angels and the redeemed will be distinct in their experiences. They can tell us much of der sphere, and in due time we will come into their conditions and understand il 402 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. their loftiest thoughts; but our experience will be a mystery to the wisest of them. best angel chum cannot sing my song of grace. He has never wept, never sorro never sinned, never given birth to a child and mourned over the pale, cold face of dead one; he has never yearned over a prodigal son or daughter. Ah, indeed, me He has never writhed in the agonies of guilt, and cried from his heart depths: wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” I you and I, should we meet there, could sing together. We have shared each oth woes; we have borne our mutual burdens; we have wept the same tears; we have cried the same cry for help; we have received the same consolation, and so we sing same song of triumph. Maybe the angels can play our accompaniments. I think it Bisely for the angels are forever servants, but men forever sons. “A new song!” I have been looking over our hymn book—and there are { better, as you know—but I find in it many topics which we shall never need « yonder: “Warning and inviting,” “penitential hymns,” “for believers praying,” “ believers watching,” “for believers suffering,” “for believers fighting,” “for burial All these belong to the wilderness journey, the piledaay and the warfare. In midst of the throne they sing ‘“‘a new song.’ va Our second text says: “They sing the song of Moses . . . and the song e the Lamb.” Right! for verily, indeed, they are closely related. ; I read over for you this morning the song of Moses. Did you notice its oper address, its prelude incomparable? ‘Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.” That is music! No speaker of prose so large an auditorium in which to give his oration. Look at that again!—“Give O ye heavens,” while I sing. Quickly, now, turn over all the pages betwee Pentateuch and the Apocalypse! Look in through the open door! Listen! ° they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God.” Ah! Did not the heavens ear, and did not the earth also hear the words of his mouth? Oh, ’tis wonderful not so wonderful either. The subject of the song demands it. Men with little su may content themselves with class-rooms and corners, with favored spots ‘and c hearers; but Moses is going to sing about God. There is only one God! Does. not fill the heavens and the earth? Then, all must hear of His wonderful works is the grandeur of the Bible. It is big with every element of worth; and its gra like its outreach—infinite. The song of Moses was a song of God. It could, there! be sung in heaven. ‘ 3 Moreover, it was a song of redemption. It was taught to the people at the end of the pilgrimage, to sing in the land of their inheritance. It was a song of dealing with man, redeeming him from his enemy and from his bondage, and | him a liberty to serve God and partake of His eternal bounties. It was a new and no man can learn it but they that had been redeemed. Moses wrote it in a da: is the way the songs come. You cannot work on a song; it is now or never. It i or it is impossible. It is an inspiration, or it may be a respiration. It comes above, or it rises up from the hidden depths. It may be both. The inspiration and it searches the deepest recesses of the soul, and gives a vital energy to the hic things by which they come forth and are born into an active life. Then Moses taught this song to the children of Israel. They could learn it. man in Moses’ day could Jearn that song but the redeemed. No other could und stand its wonderful range of utterance. There must be no singing in an unkn tongue. So far back as that day, they must “sing with the spirit and the un standing.” The song of Moses contained history and statute and judgment, cou and warning and promise. It was the first chapter of Redemption’s story. It 1 O of the struggle to free them from the outward enemy which had enslaved them then rehearsed the intenser conflict of redeeming and liberating them from the enem The New Song—Lanceley. 403 arned at the end of the pilgrimage by the pilgrims themselves, it was their aan song through all the years of their history. David’s psalms are paraphrases ne song of Moses, which he taught them on purpose to sing in Canaan’s temple, e living God.” Ve can easily understand, then, that in the musical programme of that occasion, John was present ‘in the spirit,’ there should be a place for “the song of es, the servant of God.” But, you say, that is not a new song. Oh, yes; it will lew in the light of heaven. In the light of sun and stars it would, perhaps, ght’—the unfading day, when “they shall need neither candle nor light of the i, for the Lamb shall be the light thereof.” In this new light all will be new. - song will be a song of meanings. Problems which we sighed over in per- ity a thousand times down here; events that took all the bloom out of our ek, and all the bravery out of our heart; days of struggle, of fear, of failure, ark imaginings, which we could not escape and could not understand, will all seen in the relation they bore to the forecast and providence of God. Our back- J look over ‘“‘all the way the Lord our God hath led us,” will be a new scene rely. Embarrassed, circuitous, dark as it has so often seemed, as we pursued our tiny lamp in hand, it will then appear like a silvery thread of light a-down be the tedium, the monotony, the sickening satiety of the other life. The per- ‘sweetness of heaven palls upon their appetite. They think its routine and safety hing victories of principalities and powers in heavenly places. “THE SONG OF MOSES AND THE SONG OF THE LAMB.” ho first began the story of the Lamb? Was it not Moses, when the redemption rael from Egyptian bondage was effected? Is not this song the sublime fulfil- t of the earliest letter of atonement, of remission by meritorious blood? Was sus the Savior first introduced to John as the “Lamb of God?” Has He not borne that tender name? Has not His death been set forth as the one t fact of time, giving significance to every other by its relation thereto? In iad better not forget it. Listen! “Thou art worthy . . . for Thou wast Is that the one thing worth an ecstatic mention? Is this the pean of a song umph? Oh, no! not after the manner of men! “Thou art worthy . . . for wast slain.” Aye! slain that He might “give repentance to Israel and the remis- of sins;” slain that we might find a way to “glory and honor and eternal life;” or you, my listening fellow-sinner, still careless of your soul’s salvation, and ss of your eternal doom: slain for the hardened veterans of guilt, whose foul ce has echoed in His pitying ears for threescore years and ten; slain for all, 404 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. that the “righteousness of God might be revealed,’ which knoweth no failure, that ‘‘all might come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved.” = My time is gone.- We must apply this lesson to our own souls. The con is clearly expressed: ‘No man could learn that song but the redeemed from earth.” They did not learn it after entering heaven. They entered heaven beca they had learned it on earth. It is the fitness of things declared. We be to the Lamb. “Thou art worthy . . . for Thou wast slain.” Now it is, art thou to sing, for thou art redeemed.” There shall in no wise enter into | chorus anything that defileth, neither worketh discord or maketh a false n Harmony only by the perfect attunement of hearts! We all know that is right. this world of the Creator’s skill organisms are fitted to localities, minds are fitte to bodies, and laws ordered for both. In the social order character graduates possession of place. In the intellectual life scholarship fills the professor’s ch We find perfection in fitness. There is a peculiar sensitiveness in the realm of To interblend with the “harps of God” the singers must be keyed up to the ; p of redeeming love. The pilgrimage here is the rehearsal. Let us understand t Life is the training process for the culture of our hearts, and of our utterance, of our ears to hear. This is God’s seminary, His College of Music for the rac of immortals to learn the song and how to sing it together. First alone, families, then in church, then in society, “till we all come in the unity of the and the consecration of our powers, to a.perfect chorus in the fulness of Ch If we only realized this as we should, we would not fret at our exercises so without much tune to them, as we think. We have much to learn; but oh! 1 learn it. We must practice our individual part, and know it well. We must forget the assembling of ourselves together for rehearsal, for this is also n We must not forget what we have learned, as the children of Israel did the si Moses. Unto this let us take heed. % Have you learned the song? Can you and your fellow-heirs sing it sw together? Do you hear a discord? Is some one flat? Then we must tune up 2 Let us take our pitch from the voice of our beloved Lord, the “vox humana, its pure, divinely given expression, and thus bring our heartstrings into filial ac Then let us lend our voices to each other’s hearing till we are conscious of a sy attunement. Thus shall we rehearse within the outer porch of earth that mel which, within our morning’s vision, ten thousand thousand sing before the tk And when our earth’s rehearsal is complete we shall be called to take our pz the chorus of redemption, and in that . “Noblest, sweetest song, Sing forth His power to save, When this poor lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent in the grave.” [John Ellis Lanceley was born in Birkenhead, England, in 1848, and move his parents at an early age to Canada. He left Victoria College before fini his studies, on account of the death of his father. He occupied positions as teleg operator and then bank accountant, but the call to the ministry was so evident he finally accepted, serving churches in a number of smaller places and th most important churches in Toronto, and received a call to a Baltimore, Md., ch He died March 5, 1900. When Joseph Parker, the great London preacher, heard of ? Lanceley’s death, he said: “A brilliant star has gone out of the visible firmament.” — This sermon is from a volume, “The Devil of Names,” published by Williz Briggs, Toronto, was included at the suggestion of Ward Beecher Pickard v regards it as one of the greatest of the century. It also gives representatio1 the preachers of Canada, many of whom are eloquent and able.] (405) JARRINGS OF HEAVEN RECONCILED _ BY THE BLOOD OF THE CROSS. JOHN LELAND. And by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be gs in earth or things in heaven.”—Colossians 1: 20. reconciliation of “things in heaven,” is the part of the text which I shall nd to. take place hereafter, give to the Almighty no new ideas, furnish Him with no 1 matter for consideration. Things which are past, present, or to come, with men, theless, in condescension to our weakness, speaks of Himself as having head, ears, face, mouth, etc.; also as being jealous, angry, pacified, reconciled, having is that which gave rise to this contention. When this contention began in (to speak after the manner of men) the great I AM arraigned the criminal, and summoned all the contending parties to appear and make their pleas before reat white throne of divine glory. Which leads me, econdly. To treat of the contending parties and their pleas, the Holy Law i: “My rise is not from revelation, although that does me honor; throughout scond volume I hold conspicuous rank and have been magnified and obeyed by on of God. But my origin is from the great scale of being itself; so that if there een no revelation among men, honor and regard would have been my due. Yet all the sacred majesty due to my character, man, the dependent creature, has risen ion and disregarded my voice; not only in one instance, but sin, taking by me, has wrought in him all manner of concupiscence—so that the ination of his heart is only evil continually. Now we know a law is nothing it a penalty to enforce it; and a penalty threatened is but a piece of mockery 406 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. unless it is executed. In this case, therefore, should man escape with impunity Divine government would be reduced to contempt, and every fugitive vagrant be hardened in his wickedness. My demand, therefore, is, that man sho without mercy.” : Truth next approached the Throne, and after attending to and confirming which the holy law had said, added, “The soul that sins shall die—cursed is eve that continueth not in all things which are written in the law—he that offends i point is guilty of the whole—the wicked shall be turned into hell—in the day rebellest thou shalt surely die. These are the true sayings of God, sentences y came from the mouth of that Being who can not lie; the veracity of the Almigh therefore pledged that the sinner, man, be speedily executed, without delay—tf sentence against an evil work be not speedily executed, the hearts of the vicious fully set on mischief, and nothing but anarchy and confusion will be seen 1 empire.” ; Justice then advanced, with piercing eyes like flaming streams, and burni tongue like the devouring fire, and made his plea, as follows: “My name may s inharmonious to the guilty, but that which is just must be right, and the least devi therefrom must be wrong! I plead for nothing but what is just. I come not wi an ex-post-facto law, to inflict a penalty which was not known at the time the sin \ committed, but I come to demand the life and blood of the rebel man, who sinn with eyes opened—for guilt will always stain the throne of glory till vengeance is tak on the traitor.” Holiness then addressed the sovereign Arbiter of life and death in the w ; following: ‘My name and nature forbid the continuance of the sinner, man, i empire. He is full of wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores; from the crown his head to the sole of his foot there is no soundness in him; among all his hel, there is no healing medicine, and if there was, yet he is so stubborn that he would apply it. Therefore, as two can neither walk nor live together except they be ag either the polluted sinner or consummate holiness must quit the regions.” ; By this time darkness and smoke filled the temple, and seven thunders utt their voices. The flashes of vindictive fire broke out impatient from: the throne, a the angelic messenger waved his dread weapon, which high brandished shone, , ing for human blood, while hell grew proud in hopes of prey, and laughed pre loud. The sun became black as sack-cloth, and the heavens were all in~ convulsion. The earth shook to its center, and the everlasting hills trembled. stood astonished at the awful emblems of Divine displeasure, expecting each mom to see the rebel hurled to eternal darkness, as they had seen their fallen brethren, ¥ left their first estate in a former period. < Omnipotence appeared as the executioner of the criminal, clothed in p divine—robed in awful majesty. Thunders rolled before him, the shafts of lig darted through the ethereal vault; the trumpet sounded, the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs; even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of the Lord. At the brightness that was before Him His thick clouds passed hailstones coals of fire. In one hand He had an iron rod with which He could dash His en to pieces like a potter’s vessel, and in the other a sharp sword, with two edges. set one foot on the sea, and the other on the earth, and lifted His hand to hi His face was awfully majestic, and His voice as the roaring of a lion; but mone « learn from His appearance whether He choose to strike the vengeful blow, or in Himself in behalf of the criminal. At length He spoke: “I am able to destroy was mighty to create; nothing is too hard for Me to do. All worlds were spoken existence by My word, and all material worlds hang upon nothing, through Mj e1 ; yet I have no will, no choice of My own. Let all the contending parties agree, I am at their command, all acquiescent. The charges against the criminal, as r now stand, call for My vindictive stroke, but if any expedient shall be found to rr e the pleas which have been made, when the final result is made, then I shall _ Vicious beings feel power and forget right, but Omnipotence is governed by ht. The works which I perform are those which all the perfections of Deity in cert point out.” Wisdom then arose, and spake to the following effect: ‘Why is the decree so ty from the King? The matter is of the first importance. One soul is worth e than all the world. The pending decision not only affects this one criminal, the millions and “aie ti? of human kind. I, Wisdom, dwell with a and Love then came forward, in all his winning forms; his bosom swelled with lanthropy, and his eye bespoke the benevolence of his heart. In mellifluent accents s began, “My name is Love. No one in heaven claims higher rank than myself, for id is Love; of course none deserves to be heard and regarded more than I do. My fe to man is everlasting, and neither death nor life, angels, principalities, nor powers, ngs present, things to come, nor any other creature shall ever extinguish my love. “Mine is an unchanging love, Higher than the heights above; Deeper than the depths beneath, Free and faithful, strong as death.’ d the rebel, therefore, be doomed to perdition, with all his vast progeny, the ss of my love would cause eternal mournings in heaven; to prevent which my fervent cry is, Let the rebel live.” Grace also appeared on the side of the criminal, and made the following plea: “If ature receives from a fellow creature, or from his God, a compensation for any he has no claim on the donor, it is grace. If, moreover, a donor confers a favor, only on a needy creature, who has no claim on the donor, not anything to buy h; but on one, who i in addition to his meet has contracted guilt, and is an enemy ‘more exalted than he possessed before he sinned. If this should not be the case, would be a word without meaning, and the benevolence of Jehovah would be scured forever. Mercy, in concert with Love and Grace, was all divine oratory in favor of the el, and proceeded: “I can not claim the same rank among the attributes of Deity, t Wisdom, Power, Holiness, Goodness, Truth and Justice can, since I am myself hild of Love. . . . . . But when innocent creatures fall into need and ery, the display of Love assumes my name, Mercy. As I therefore have a name in heaven, as Mercy is magnified above the heavens; as Jehovah is rich in mercy, and is 408 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. After a solemn pause, the great I AM, the sovereign judge, thus spake: “The | statements and demands of Law, Truth and Justice against the criminal are well sup- ported. Love, Grace and Mercy have discovered abundance of goodness and soomm will toward the sinner; but they have not shown how the law can be honored, Truth — supported, and Justice satisfied, in the forgiveness of the rebel; and unless such an expedient can be produced, man must die without mercy. If any of the celesti a angels, or any being in the universe can suggest the expedient, the sinner lives—if not, — he dies.” - He spake—He closed—but all was whist, and silence reigned in heaven. 4 The elect angels knew how Love, through a Mediator, could confirm innocent creatures in their innocency, but had no idea how criminals could be pardoned. F At the instance of Justice, Omnipotence arose like a lion from the swellings of Jordan; made bare His thurdering arm, high raised His brandished sword, waved His | * iron rod, and advanced toward the rebel with hasty strides. Love cried, Forbear, I can not endure the sight! "4 The Law replied, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the law to do them. The soul that sins shall die! % Grace exclaimed, Where sin hath abounded, grace shall much more abound! Truth said, In the day that thou transgressest thou shalt surely die! Mercy proclaimed, Mercy rejoiceth against judgment! Justice, with piercing eye, and flaming tongue, said, “Strike! strike! strike the rebel dead! and remove the reproach from the throne of heaven!” At this the angels drooped their wings, and all the harps of heaven played mourn- ful odes. The flaming sword, to pierce the criminal, came near his breast, and the iron rod, to dash him to pieces like a potter’s vessel, was falling on his head; when lo! on a sudden, the voice of Wisdom sounded louder than seven thunders, and made the high arches of heaven to ring and reverberate—‘“Deliver him from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom!” In that all-eventful crisis, the eternal Son of God, in a mediatorial form, appeared, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. Angels paid Him profound reverence and the great I AM placed Him at His right hand. He saw the ruined, guilty man, and oh! amazing grace! He loved. With pity all His inmost bowels moved. He said, “I was set up from everlasting, my goings have been of old, and my delights are with the sons of men. The sinner shall live.” The Law, in awful majesty, replied: ‘I am holy, just, and good, my injunctions on the rebel were perfectly proper for a human being, and my penalty, which the rebel has incurred, is every way proportionate to his crime.” Mediator—“All you say is true. I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not a jot or tittle of the law shall fail.” Truth—“The lips that never spoke amiss have said that the wicked shall be turned into hell. My veracity is therefore pledged to see it executed.” Mediator—“That part of truth which was proper to reveal unto man, as a moral agent, has said as you relate, with abundance more to the same effect; but that part of truth which the great Jehovah, my heavenly Father, spake unto Me, in the covenant . of peace, which is made between us both, has declared, that, on account of an atone- ment which I shall make, sin shall be pardoned, and sinners saved.” Holiness—‘“‘I am so pure that I can never admit a sinner into heaven. Nothing unclean or that worketh a lie shall ever enter there.” ‘ ae a The Jarrings of Heaven Reconciled by the Blood of the Cross—Leland. 409 _ Mediator—‘‘Provision is made in the new covenant, whereof I am the Mediator and Messenger, to remove the pollution as well as the guilt of sin. I have guaranteed that sinners shall be washed in My blood and made clean, and come before the throne of glory without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” Justice cried out again, “Strike!” Mediator—‘“Not the sinner, but the Surety!” Justice—‘‘Can heaven admit of a vicarious suffering?” _ Mediator—“It is that of which no government on earth ever will admit, or ever sught to do, but is the singular article agreed upon in the scheme of salvation, which astonish the universe in its accomplishment. In the fullness of time I shall be born of a woman; be made under the law, and perfectly obey and magnify it, which is all that the law in reason can require of human nature. I shall suffer that penalty for ners which justice will approve, and God shall accept; shall die, and follow death “The day of days will commence; the great day of dread, for which all other days were made, will arrive; on that day the dead shall be raised, and those who are living on earth shall be changed from a mortal to an immortal state, and all of them shall come to judgment before My bar. Those who are like goats among sheep, like tares among wheat, who are unclean and polluted, who are lovers of transgression and haters of obedience, who have broken the law—wantoned with atoning blood, and done despite against the work of the Holy Ghost; shall be banished the kingdom— ¢ast into outer darkness, and gnaw their galling bonds forever. But the righteous _ (both those whose souls have been in Paradise, and their bodies sleeping in the dust, and those also who never shall have died) shall be admitted into the kingdom prepared “Now, if any one in heaven has dae against this plan, let him speak; for I have undertaken to reconcile all things and beings in heaven to the salvation of man.” He closed! but O what rapturous joy beamed forth on every face in heaven! Law, Truth, and Justice cried out, “It is all we want or wish for.” Love, Grace, and . Mercy shouted, “It is the joy of our hearts—the delight of our eyes, and the pleasure of our souls.”’” The great I AM said, “It is finished—the expedient is found—the Sinner shall live—deliver him from going down to the pit, for a ransom is found!” The angels, filled with heavenly pity and divine concern, who had been waiting in anxious suspense, through the important contest, now swept their golden harps, and ang aloud, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and good-will to man! Thou rt worthy, O, Thou Son of God, to receive glory, and honor, and riches, and power, Orever and ever! Man, though a little lower in nature than ourselves, shall be raised even higher, being in likeness of nature more like the Son of God. While we shall De ever adoring confirming love through a Mediator, men will be extolling the riches of redeeming blood and the freeness of boundless grace.” The great I AM then said to the Mediator, “Forasmuch as Thou hast undertaken Bice I give Thee a name which is above aoe name—that at the name oi Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess. Thou shalt have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. I will divide Thee a 410 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. — : < portion with the great, and Thou shalt divide the spoils with the strong. ' the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth foi possession, and I will glorify Thee with Myself, with the glory which Thc before the world began.” : [John Leland was born in Grafton, Massachusetts, May 14, 1754; and in united with the Baptist Church in Bellingham, from which body he received lice preach at the age of twenty years. He was ordained in 1776. His first minist labors were in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, where he had a circu one hundred and twenty miles in length. For some time revivals almost conste followed his labors. In about two years he had baptized four hundred individ In the fourteen years of his preaching, in that part of the country, he baptized : hundred. In 1790 he removed to New England. After preaching awhile in Co cut and in Conway, Massachusetts, he settled at Cheshire, in the latter State, wher resided for nearly half a century, though making frequent preaching tours throug Vermont, Virginia, New York, and many other States. He died in January, 184 his eighty-seventh year. : This sermon was considered by Kerr Boyce Tupper one of the ten best se of the century.] oe ENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. HENRY P. LIDDON, D: D. 4 “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst ot tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.’”—John 3: 8. _ Who has not felt the contrast, the almost tragic contrast, between the high station f the Jewish doctor, member of the Sanhedrin, master in Israel, and the ignorance of slementary religious truth, as we Christians must deem it, which he displayed in this mterview with our blessed Lord? At first sight it seems difficult to understand how pur Lord could have used the simile in the text when conversing with an educated and thoughtful man, well versed in the history and literature of God’s ancient people; and, indeed, a negative criticism has availed itself of this and of some other features in the narrative, in the interest of the theory that Nicodemus was only a itious type of the higher classes in Jewish society, as they were pictured to itself by the imagination of the fourth Evangelist. Such a supposition, opposed to external facts and to all internal probabilities, would hardly have been entertained, if the critical genuity of its author had been seconded by any spiritual experience. Nicodemus is very far from being a caricature; and our Lord’s method here, as elsewhere, is to lead on from familiar phrases and the well-remembered letter to the spirit and realities of igion. The Jewish schools were not unacquainted with the expression a “new treature;” but it had long since become a mere shred of official rhetoric. As applied a Jewish proselyte, it scarcely meant more than < change in the outward relations of religious life. Our Lord told Nicodemus that every man who would see the kingdom of God which he was founding must undergo a second birth; and Nicodemus, who had Deen accustomed to the phrase all his life, could not understand it if it was supposed to mean anything real. ‘“‘How,” he asks, “can a man be born when he is old? can he snter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Our Lord does not extri- ite him from this blundering literalism; He repeats His own original assertion, but in trms which more fully express His meaning: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 30d. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is pirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, “Ye must be born again.” Our Lord's refer- to water would not have been unintelligible to Nicodemus; every one in Judea new that the Baptist had insisted on immersion in water as a symbol of the purifica- ion of the soul of man. Certainly, in connecting “water” with the Spirit and the new rth, our Lord’s language, glancing at that of the prophet, went very far beyond this. Te could only. be fully understood at a iater time, when the Sacrament of Baptism had een instituted, just as the true sense of His early allusions to His death could not have een apprehended until after the Crucifixion. But Nicodemus, it is plain, had not yet dvanced beyond his original difficulty; he could not conceive how any second birth $ possible, without altogether violating the course of nature. And our Lord pene- tes his thoughts and answers them. He answers them by pointing to that Invisible \g who could achieve, in the sphere of spiritual and mental life, what the Jewish dctor deemed so impossible a feat as a second birth. Nature, indeed, contained no 412 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. force that could compass such a result; but nature in this, as in other matters, was a shadow of something beyond itself. It was late at night when our Lord had this interview with the Jewish teacher, At the pauses in conversation, we may conjecture, they heard the wind without as it moaned along the narrow streets of Jerusalem; and our Lord, as was His wont, took His creature into His service—the service of spiritual truth. The wind was a figure of the Spirit. Our Lord would have used the same word for both. The wind might teach Nicodemus something of the action of Him Who is the real Author of the New Birth of man. And it would do this in two ways more especially. On a first survey of nature, the wind arrests man’s attention, as an unseen agent which seems to be moving with entire freedom. “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” It is fettered by none of those conditions which confine the swiftest bodies that traverse the surface of the earth; it sweeps on as if independent of law, rushing hither and thither, as though obeying its own wayward and momentary impulse. Thus it is an apt figure of a self-determining invisible force; and of a force which is at times of overmastering power. Sometimes, indeed, its breath is so gentle, that only a single leaf or blade of grass will at distant intervals seem to give the faintest token of its action; yet, even thus, it ‘“bloweth where it listeth.” Sometimes it bursts upon the earth with destructive violence; nothing can resist its onslaught; the most solid build- ings give way; the stoutest trees bend before it; whatever is frail and delicate can only _ escape by the completeness of its submission. Thus, too, it “bloweth where it listeth.” Beyond anything else it strikes upon the senses of man; it is suggestive of free super- sensuous power; it is an appropriate symbol of an irruption of the Invisible into the world of sense, of the action, so tender or so imperious, of the Divine and Eternal Spirit upon the human soul. But the wind is also an agent about whose proceedings we really know almost nothing. ‘‘Thou hearest the sound thereof; such is our Lord’s concession to man’s claim to knowledge. ‘‘Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth;” such is the reserve which He makes in respect of human ignorance. Certainly we do more than hear the sound of the wind; its presence is obvious to three of the senses. We feel the chill or the fury of the blast; and, as it sweeps across the ocean, or the forest, or the field of corn, we see how the blades rise and fall in graceful curves, and the trees bend, and the waters sink and swell into waves, which are the measure of its strength. But our Lord says, “Thou hearest the sound thereof.” He would have us test it by the most spiritual of the senses. It whispers, or it moans, or it roars as it presses us; it has a pathos all its own. Yet what do we really know about it? “Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.”” Does the wind then obey no rule; is it a mere symbol of unfettered caprice? Surely not. If, as the Psalmist sings, “God bringeth the winds out of His treasuries,’ He acts, we may be sure, here as always, whether in nature or in grace, by some law, which His own perfections impose upon His action. He may have given to us of these later times to see a very little deeper beneath the surface of the natural world than was the case with our fathers. Perchance we explain the immediate antecedents of the phenomenon; but can we explain our own explanation? The frontier of our ignorance is removed one stage farther back; but “the way of the wind” is as fitting an expression for the mysterious now as it was in the days of Solomon. We know that there is no cave of Holus. We know that the wind is the creature of that Great Master Who works everywhere and incessantly by rule. But, as the wind still sweeps by us who call ourselves the children — of an age of knowledge, and we endeavor to give our fullest answer to the question, “whence it cometh, and whither it goeth?” we discover that, as the symbol of a spirtual force, of whose presence we are conscious, while we are unable to determine, ae “es ee ret o Influences of the Holy Spirit—Liddon. 413 with moderate confidence, either the secret principle or the range of its action, the wind is as full of meaning still as in the days of Nicodemus. When our Lord has thus pointed to the freedom and the mysteriousness of the wind, He adds, ‘So is every one that is born of the Spirit.” The simile itself would have led us to expect—''So is the spirit of God.” The man born of the Spirit would ‘answer not to the wind itself, but to the sensible effect of the wind. There is a break of _ correspondence between the simile and its application. The simile directs attention to ‘the Divine Author of the new birth in man. The words which follow direct attention to the human subject upon whom the Divine Agent works. Something similar is 4 observable when our Lord compares the kingdom of heaven to a merchantman seeking goodly pearls; the kingdom really corresponds not to the merchantman, but to the pearl of great price which the merchantman buys. In such cases, we may be sure, the natural correspondence between a simile and its application is not disturbed without a ‘motive. And the reason for this disturbance is presumably that the simile is not adequate to the full purpose of the speaker, who is anxious to teach some larger truth _ than its obvious application would suggest. In the case before us, we may be allowed _ to suppose, that by His reference to the wind our Lord desired to convey something _ more than the real but mysterious agency of the Holy Spirit in the new birth of man. % His language seems designed, not merely to correct the materialistic narrowness of _ the Jewish doctor, not merely to answer by anticipation the doubts of later days as to _ the spiritual efficacy of His own Sacrament of Regeneration, but to picture, in words which should be read to the end of time, the general work of that Divine Person Whose mission of mercy to our race was at once the consequence and the completion _ of His own. ‘ It may be useful to trace the import of our Lord’s simile in three fields of the action of the Holy and Eternal Spirit; His creation of a sacred literature, His guidance of a Divine society, and His work upon individual souls. As, then, we turn over the pages of the Bible, must we not say, “The wind of _ heaven bloweth where it listeth?” If we might reverently imagine ourselves scheming beforehand what kind of a book the Book of God ought to be, how different would it be from the actual Bible! There would be as many Bibles as there are souls, and they would differ as widely. But in one thing, amid all their differences, they would prob- ably agree: they would lack the variety, both in form and substance, of the Holy Book _ which the Church of God places in the hands of her children. The self-assertion, the scepticism, and the fastidiousness of our day would meet like the men of the second Roman triumvirate on that island in the Reno, and would draw up their lists of pro- Scription. One would condemn the poetry of Scripture as too inexact; another its history as too largely secular; another its metaphysics as too transcendental, or as hostile to some fanciful ideal of “simplicity,” or as likely to quench a purely moral enthusiasm. The archaic history of the Pentateuch, or the sterner side of the ethics of the Psalter, of the supernaturalism of the histories of Elijah or of Daniel, or the so-called pessimism of Ecclesiastes, or the alleged secularism of Esther, or the literal mport of the Song of Solomon, would be in turn condemned. Nor could the Apostles nope to escape: St. John would be too mystical in this estimate; St. James too legal in hat; St. Paul too dialectical, or too metaphysical, or too easily capable of an anti- “nomian interpretation; St. Peter too undecided, as if balancing between St. Paul and ‘St. James. Our new Bible would probably be uniform, narrow, symmetrical; it would be entirely made up of poetry, or of history, or of formal propositions, or of philosoph- ical speculation, or of lists of moral maxims; it would be modelled after the type of some current writer on English history, or some popular poet or metaphysician, or some sentimentalist who abjures history and philosophy alike on principle, or some composer of well-intentioned religious tracts for general circulation. The inspirations 414 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. of heaven would be taken in hand, and instead of a wind blowing where it listeth, we — should have a wind, no doubt, of some kind, rustling earnestly enough along some — very narrow crevices or channels, in obedience to the directions of some one form of — human prejudice, or passion, or fear, or hope. My brethren, the Bible is like nature in its immense, its exhaustless variety; like nature, it reflects all the higher moods of the human soul, because it does much more; because it brings us face to face with the infinity of the Divine Life. In the Bible the ] wind of heaven pays scant heed to our anticipations or our prejudices; it “bloweth ~ where it listeth.” It breathes not only in the Divine charities of the Gospel, not only — in the lyrical sallies of the Epistles, not only in the great announcements scattered here and there in Holy Scripture of the magnificence, or the compassion, or the benevo-_ lence of God; but also in the stern language of the prophets, in the warnings and lessons of the historical books, in the revelations of Divine justice and of human responsibility which abound in either Testament. ‘Where it listeth.” Not only where our sense of literary beauty is stimulated, as in St. Paul’s picture of charity, by lines which have taken captive the imagination of the world, not only where feeling and conscience echo the verdict of authority and the promptings of reverence, but also where this is not the case; where neither precept nor example stimulates us, and we are left face to face with historical or ethical material, which appears to us to inspire no spiritual enthusiasm, or which is highly suggestive of critical difficulty. Let us be patient; we shall understand, if we will only wait, how these features of the Bible too are integral parts of a living whole; here, as elsewhere, the Spirit breathes; in the _ genealogies of the Chronicles as in the Last Discourse in St. John, though with an admitted difference of manner and degree. He “bloweth where He listeth.” The Apostle’s words respecting the Old Testament are true of the New: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” And, “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” - “But thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” The majesty of Scripture is recognized by man, wherever there is, I will not say a spiritual faculty, but a natural sense of beauty. The “sound” of the wind is perceived by the trained ear, by the literary taste, by the refinement, by the humanity of every generation of educated men. But what beyond? What of its spiritual source, its spiritual drift and purpose, its half-concealed but profound unities, its subtle but imperious relations to conscience? Of these things, so precious to Christians, a purely literary appreciation of Scripture is generally ignorant; the sacred Book, like the prophet of the Chebar, is only “as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument.’ Or again, the “sound thereof” is heard in the admitted empire of the Bible over millions of hearts and consciences; an empire the evidences of which strike upon the ear in countless ways, and. which is far too wide and too secure to be affected by the criticisms that might occasionally seem to threaten it. What is the secret of this influence of Scripture? Not simply that it is a Book of Revelation; since it contains a great deal of matter which lay fairly within the reach of man’s natural faculties. The Word or Eternal Reason of God is the Revealer; but Scripture, whether it is a record of Divine revelations or of naturally observed facts, is, in the belief of the Christian Church throughout “inspired” by the Spirit. Inspiration is the word which describes the presence and action of the Holy Spirit everywhere in Scripture. But what does the Christian Church exactly mean by Inspiration? Many have been the attempts to answer that question precisely. It has been said of the late Dr. Arnold that during the later years of his life he spent more thought in the effort to construct a perfectly satisfactory theory of inspiration than on ¥ es 4 7 tay aS ai a 7 ae Influences of the Holy Spirit—Liddon. 415 any other subject. In the Church of Rome there are at least three permitted opinions as to the nature of Biblical Inspiration. The more rigid, advocated by some Domin- can theologians, regards the sacred writers as simply passive instruments of the aspiring Spirit, so that every word and comma and point was dictated from heaven. Others understand by inspiration a general positive assistance, prescribing*what to write, what to omit, and guiding the general choice of language and of periods without ‘dictating each separate expression. The Jesuit divines of Louvain, Hamel and Lessius, ‘confined inspiration to the purely negative function of protecting the inspired writer from error. In the English Church the differences on the subject are, at least, as con- ‘siderable as in the Church of Rome. The demand for an exact theory is natural enough, especially on the part of sincerely religious men, who have lost sight of the providential guidance of the Church, and who desire to enhance as far as possible the definite force of the authority of Scripture. Yet surely it is a matter for thankfulness that no part of the Catholic Church has formally committed itself to an authoritative doctrine of Biblical Inspiration, whatever may have been attempted by private writers of more or less consideration. Not merely because any possible definition would almost certainly add to difficulties which are suggested by negative criticism; but much more because, from the nature of the case, we are not really able to deal ab intra with such a subject. That Divine inspiration must postulate certain momentous results, positive as well as negative, may indeed be taken for granted; some positive informing guidance, as well as immunity from any moral or doctrinal error. But when we go beyond this, and endeavor to hold the balance between mechanical and dynamical theories, in other words, to determine how the Divine Spirit has acted upon the human, _We are in a region where nothing is really possible beyond precarious conjecture. We know not how our own spirits, hour by hour, are acted on by the Eternal Spirit, though we do not question the fact; we content ourselves with recognizing what we cannot explain. If we believe that Scripture is inspired, we know that it is instinct with the Presence of Him Whose voice we might hear in its every utterance, but of Whom we cannot tell whence He cometh or whither He goeth. ' The history of the Church of Christ from the days of the Apostles has been a history of spiritual movements. Doubtless it has been a history of much else; the Church has been the scene of human passions, human speculations, human errors. But traversing these, He by Whom the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified, ‘thas made His Presence felt, not only in the perpetual proclamation and elucidation of truth, not only in the silent, never-ceasing sanctification of souls, but also in great upheavals of spiritual life, by which the conscience of Christians has been -quickened, or their hold upon the truths of Redemption and Grace made more intelli- gent and serious, or their lives and practice restored to something like the ideal of the Gospels. Even in the apostolic age it was necessary to warn Christians that it was high time to awake out of sleep; that the night of life was far spent, and the day of eternity was at hand. And ever since, from generation to generation, there has been a succession of efforts within the Church to realize more worthily the truth of the Christian creed, or the ideal of the Christian life. These revivals have been inspired or led by devoted men who have represented the highest conscience of Christendom in their day. They may be traced along the line of Christian history; the Spirit living in the Church has by them attested His Presence and His Will; and has recalled luke- warm generations, paralyzed by indifference or degraded by indulgence, to the true irit and level of Christian faith and life. _. In such movements there is often what seems, at first sight, an element of caprice. They appear to contemporaries to be onesided, exaggerated, narrow, fanatical. They are often denounced with a passionate fervor which is so out of proportion to the ty as to border on the grotesque. They are said to exact too much of us, or to 416 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. too popular and insensible to philosophical considerations, as being the work of men of the people. Or, again, they are so occupied with controversy as to forget the claims of devotion, or so engaged in leading souls to a devout life as to forget the unwelcome but real necessities of controversy. They are intent on particular moral improvements so exclusively as to forget what is due to reverence and order; or they are so bent upo rescuing the Church from chronic slovenliness and indecency in public worship as t do less than justice to the paramount interests of moral truth. Sometimes thes movements are all feeling; sometimes they are all thought; sometimes they are, as i seems, all outward energy. In one age they produce a literature like that of the fourth — and fifth centuries; in another they found orders of men devoted to preaching or to works of mercy, as in the twelfth; in another they enter the lists, as in the thirteenth _ century, with a hostile philosophy; in another they attempt a much-needed Reforma- tion of the Church; in another they pour upon the heathen world a flood of light and y warmth from the heart of Christendom. It is easy, as we survey them, to say that something else was needed; or that what was done could have been done better or — more completely; or that, had we been there, we should not have been guilty of bis onesidedness, or of that exaggeration. We forget, perhaps, Who really was there, ana Whose work it is, though often overlaid and thwarted by human weakness and human passion, that we are really criticizing. If it was seemingly onesided, excessive or defective, impulsive or sluggish, speculative or practical, esthetic or experimental, may not this have been so Beene in His judgment, Who breatheth where He listeth, this particular characteristic was needed for the Church of that day? All that contempora-— ries know of such movements is “the sound thereof;” the names with which they are — associated, the controversies which they precipitate, the hostilities which they rouse or allay, as the case may be. Such knowledge is superficial enough; of the profound - spiritual causes which really engender them, of the direction in which they are really moving, of the influence which they are destined permanently to exert upon souls, men know little or nothing, The accidental symptom is mistaken for the a characteristic; the momentary expression of feeling for the inalienable conviction of certain truth. The day may come, perhaps, when more will be known; when practice — and motive, accident and substance, the lasting and the transient, will be seen in their true relative proportions; but for the time this can hardly be. He is passing bw “Whose way is in the sea, and His paths in the deep waters, and His footsteps” unknown.” The Eternal Spirit is passing; and men can only say, “He bloweth where | He listeth.” a Those who take God at His word will not doubt where His Holy Spirit is given In sacraments which He has ordained; in a message which He has authorized; in prayer, public and private, to which He has pledged His presence, this great gift is certainly to be found. The Spirit is the soul of the Church, and whatever be the weak- nesses or diseases of parts of the body which He deigns to inhabit, the soul a itself as life in its furthest extremities. But is His mission wholly confined to the Body of Christ? has He no relations | to separated groups of Christians, to seekers after truth in heathen lands, to lower forms of truth as well as higher, to philosophy, to science, to art, to all departments of human energy? Surely in recognizing this larger sphere of His energy we do not blur the lines of His covenanted action; to believe in the mighty gift of Pentecost is not to deny that “the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world.” Doubtless in His activity there are many methods, many degrees of intensity, many ends in view. His influence is” youchsafed to those who hold only portions of truth, that they may be led on to that : Influences of the Holy Spirit—Liddon. 417 hich as yet they do not hold; He prevents men with His most gracious favor before e furthers their efforts by His continual help. This may be understood most easily y those who most firmly believe in the revealed constitution and claims of the Church ‘Christ; and it suggests happier prospects than are otherwise possible amid the xisting confusions of the world and of Christendom. Last year two American achers visited this country, to whom God had given, together with earnest belief | some portions of the Gospel, a corresponding spirit of fearless enterprise. Certainly they had no such credentials of an apostolic ministry as a well-instructed and believing hurchman would require. They knew little or nothing of God’s revealed Will especting those sacramental channels whereby the life of grace is’ planted and main- ained in the soul; and their test of ministerial success appeared sometimes to mistake physical excitement or inclination for a purely spiritual or moral change. And yet, ust not we, who through no merit of our own, have enjoyed greater spiritual advan- tages than theirs, feel and express for these men a sincere respect, when, acting accord- g to the light which God had given them, they threw themselves on our great cities ith the ardor of Apostles; spoke of a higher world to thousands who pass the ater part of life in dreaming only of this; and made many of us feel that we owe m at least the debt of an example, which He Who breatheth where He listeth must ly have inspired them to give us? _ Our Lord’s words apply especially to Christian character. There are some effects the living power of the Holy Spirit which are invariable. When He dwells with a hristian soul, He continually speaks in the voice of conscience; He speaks in the vice of prayer. He produces with the ease of a natural process, without effort, with- the taint of self-consciousness, “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good- faith, meekness, temperance.” Some of these graces must be found where He es His home. There is no mistaking the atmosphere of His presence: in its main atures it is the same now as in the days of the Apostles. Just as in natural morality = main elements of “goodness” do not change; so in religious life, spirituality is, amid great varicties of detail, yet in its leading constituent features, the same thing Tom One generation to another. But in the life of the individual Christian, or in that the Church, there is legitimate room for irregular and exceptional forms of activity excellence. Natural society is not strengthened by the stern repression of all that uliar in individual thought or practice; and this is not less true of spiritual or ious society. From the first, high forms of Christian excellence have often been ciated with unconscious eccentricity. The eccentricity must be unconscious, tauise consciousness of eccentricity at once reduces it to a form of vanity which is irely inconsistent with Christian excellence. How many excellent Christians have m eccentric, deviating more or less from the conventional type of goodness which been recognized by contemporary religious opinion! They pass away, and they are gone men do justice to their characters; but while they are still with us ow hard do many of us find it to remember that there may be a higher reason for f peculiarities than we think. We know not the full purpose of each saintly life ne designs of Providence; we know not much of the depths and heights whence it $ its inspirations; we cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. Only we that He Whose workmanship it is bloweth where He listeth; and this naturally ids us to remark the practical interpretation which the Holy Spirit often puts upon ord’s words by selecting as his chosen workmen those who seem to be least fitted lature for such high service. The Apostle has told us how in the first age He set aself to defeat human anticipations. “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many hty, not many noble, are called;” learned academies, powerful connections, gentle id did little enough for the Gospel in the days when it won its first and greatest ) es. The Holy Spirit, as Nicodemus knew, passed by the varied learning and 418 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. his contemporaries as “the dumb Ox,” so little did they divine what was to be his place in the theology of Western Christendom. And to those of us who can look back upon now exerts, and most Ceuenlar, the widest influence for good, and whose name i repeated by thousands with grateful respect. Or we can call to mind another whos whole mind was given to what was frivolous, or even degrading, and who now is leader in everything that elevates and improves his fellows. The secret of these trans figurations is ever the same. In those days these men did not yet see their way; they j were like travelers through the woods at night, when the sky is hidden and all things seem to be other than they are— ‘ “Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna Est iter in silvis, ubi ccelum condidit umbra Jupiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem.” Since then the sun has risen and all has changed. The creed of the Church of Christ, in its beauty and its power, has been flashed by the Divine Spirit upon thei hearts and understandings; and they are other men. They have seen that there is : something worth living for in earnest; that God, the soul, the future, are immense | realities, compared with which all else is tame and insignificant. They have learned 4 something of that personal love of our crucified Lord, which is itself a moral and 4 religious force of the highest order, and which has carried them forwards without their knowing it. And what has been will assuredly repeat itself. Some of you who listen, — if you are living thirty years hence, will verify their experiences by your own. 4 In conclusion, our Lord’s words suggest many lessons, but one of especial ana incontrovertible importance; reverence for the presence and work of that Holy Visitor — Whose festival this is. Reverence for Him, in the Bible which He inspires; in the Church which He governs and sanctifies; in the souls, whether our own or others, in e which He deigns to dwell. It is easy to become familiar with the outward tokens of His presence; to use language which has no meaning apart from Him; to forget a | He is the Lord and Giver of Life, without Whom Holy Scripture, the Church, the — New Birth, the New Life, would be empty phrases. If nature is full of interest and wonder; if the bodily frame which we inhabit, like the sea or the sky, are ever ae ing to us new material for thought; much more is this the case with the mysterious — depths of the human soul. And few things, perhaps, weigh more heavily on those 0 a us who know that life is already on the wane, and that the greater number of the years” for which we shall answer hereafter must have already passed, than the recollection which at times steals over us, of that almost unnoticed multitude of thoughts, feelings, — aspirations, pointing upwards and onwards, which have presented themselves in the presence-chamber of the soul, and then have vanished away, and left no trace behind. — Whence came they? Those glimpses of nobler truth, those sudden cravings after a higher existence, those fretful uneasy yearnings, full of whosesome dissatisfaction with self, those whisperings, those voices, which would not for a while allow us to rest, but which, as the years have passed—is it not often thus?—have died away into silence. , a Influences of the Holy Spirit—Liddon. 419 hence came they; and whither should they have led us on? Ah! we have said to rselves, or the world has said to us, that the foolish enthusiasm of youth has passed, d that with middle age we have succeeded to common sense and to ripe discretion. may be so; but there is, at least in some cases, another way of reading the result. It too possible that something more than fervid indiscretion has been lost with youth; at the bloom of the soul, the freshness and tenderness of the conscience, has been ded by a condition of thought and feeling, the true character of which we con- il from ourselves and from others when we label it “discretion” and “common nse.” Depend upon it, my younger brethren, the bright, self-sacrificing enthusiasms early manhood are among the most precious things in the whole course of human They may have their illusions, but they have their safeguards also; and when ey emancipate us from all that would force us down, when they clear the spirit’s eye id nerve the bodily arm, when they enable us to tread under our feet some clinging ischief which has made us wretched for years, and open out horizons of disinterested rt from which we already draw the inspiration of a higher life, surely we do well cherish them. Amidst much which is depressing in the religious circumstances and ospects of this place, Christians have signal reason humbly to thank God the Holy host for the impulse which He has given of late to missionary enterprise; for the oble men, known to not a few of us as teachers or as friends, whom He has sent out 9m our midst within the last two years to rule His flock in heathen lands; and for € young, warm, and generous hearts whom human affection, deepened and sanctified the supernatural love of God, has gathered around them as a band of devoted sons d workers. This assuredly is the “sound” of the wind from heaven, of that Eternal irit Who marks in every generation predestined souls for His higher service; of hom none can exactly say whence he comes to them or whither He is leading them; ho breatheth where He listeth, not by caprice or by accident, but because He knows actly whereof each of His creatures is made, and apportions His distinctions with € unerring decision of perfect Love and perfect Justice. “Tf you make it a rule to say sincerely the first verse of the Ordination Hymn every ning without failing, it will in time do more for you than any other prayer I know, cept the Lord’s Prayer.” They were the words of one who had a right to speak from perience, and who has now gone to his rest. “Veni, Creator Spiritus, Mentes Tuorum visita, Imple superna gratia, Quz Tu creasti pectora.”’ tainly this prayer does not take long to say; and perhaps, fifty years hence, in th r state of existence, some of us will be glad to have acted on the advice. , with Canon Mozley’s sermon, furnish the best examples of the University mons at Oxford, a number of which have become very well known. It was ched June 4, 1876. ord and became a prominent member of the Liberal High Church party. His pton lectures on the divinity of Jesus Christ were delivered in 1866, and in 1870 appointed canon residentiary of St. Paul’s.] 420 . Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. GEORGE C. LORIMER. “Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”—Jer. 6: 16. “a Tennyson sings sweetly, but wildly, “Ring in the Christ that is to be.” entitled, “The Old Faith and the New,” in which he inquires, “Are we still Christians furnishing an elaborate reply in the negative. He declares, writing of a comi religion, “that a new growth will in the future develop itself from the inevitable disso- lution of the old.” Recently, the Duke of Somerset, in a small work, which breath something of a nobleman’s languidness and superciliousness, sanctions this drea expectation, saying, “It is now obvious that the theology of former ages cannot b permanently maintained.” Of course, it is hardly needful to say that Mr. O. Frothingham, and the radical party of America, sympathize with these views, regard. ing as certain the destruction of the Old Faith, however they may differ among themselves concerning the doctrines of the New. They appear to believe that history must repeat itself, and that as the power of Greek and Roman mythic superstitions was overthrown by the Sophists, so must the essential and distinguishing features of Christianity succumb to the speculative neologists and rationalizing critics of moder times. ‘ As asubstitute for what they consider doomed, they offer a variety of speculations, some of which are more radical than others, while all partake of a common inclinatio a towards naturalism and the doctrines of materialism and necessity. The mo moderate among them, like some of their ancient prototypes, the Sophists, are not | anxious to obliterate the name of the reigning religion, but aim to resolve the so-called — mythic tales of miracles’ into certain great facts and powers of nature, that, as they claim, a more rational ground of support for religious life may be furnished. In this — way they think it will be easier to accomplish their ends. They propose to paralyze — the heart of the system, and to satisfy humanity with the faint warmth which ma survive for a season in the dead body. 4 Others openly and avowedly are more radical, and agree either with the more — extreme among the ancient Sophists, or with the philosophic hopelessness of Epicurus. Justin Martyr wrote of the former class, as it was in his times, “They seek to convin us that the Divinity extends His care to the great whole, and to the several kinds; but not to me and to you, not to men as individuals. Hence it is useless to pray to Him; — for everything occurs according to the unchangeable law of an endless cycle.” And- Pliny, speaking from the side of the heathen, declared “that all religion is the offspring © of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God is, if in truth He be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the compass of man’s understanding to know.” ‘a These and similar views are being revived among us, in connection with modern discoveries in physical science, and the advance in philosophy. We have now Herbe t Spencer’s doctrine of the Unknowable, by which we are taught that the Unseen Pow ; of the universe cannot be known at all, and therefore cannot reasonably be served, — loved, honored, or obeyed, Haeckel, of Jena, and with him many others, regards th sf The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. 421 se of the world as a ceaseless evolution, implying no plan, choice, or will, on the of an Unseen Power, and including no choice, will, or moral good or evil, on mechanical laws alone. In this way, according to their statement of the case, “a pr imitive nebula, called sometimes a fire mist, has developed into worlds, suns, planets, and living things, and will probably return, after countless ages, to nebulous mist, confusion and darkness.” Mr. Frothingham, in one of his published sermons, thus sharply contrasts the fundamental teachings of the New Faith with those of the Old: ‘‘The doctrine that man was created perfect, and fell, is contrasted with the doctrine that man was created imperfect, and rose. The doctrine that man was introduced upon the planet a new sreature, radically unlike any that had preceded him, is contrasted with the doctrine that man was the natural result of processes that had gone before. The doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible is contrasted with the doctrine of the inspiration of the mind. The doctrine that truth is imparted by supernatural revelation is contrasted with the doctrine that truth is acquired by patient investigation and slow advance. The doctrine that the soul must be submitted to an external spiritual authority is It does not seem to me credible that the world will abandon the religion of Christ for a series of propositions as barren as these. Humanity, though depraved, is surely not inane enough to thrust from it the sources of its intellectual and moral inspiration, y and receive instead teachings as unsatisfactory as they are unelevating. I have no fear for the ultimate result of these attacks. Like those which have preceded them various periods of the past, they will inevitably end in placing Christianity, as eved by the fathers, on a loftier height of influence, and on an impregnable basis evidence. But in the meanwhile damage is being done. There are not a few, especially among the youth of our city, whose spiritual future is imperiled. While the conflict tages between the true and the false, while they are measuring strength, the souls of many may be deceived. Christianity is safe enough, but individuals are not. It is Ss impression that constrains me to look a little more closely than I otherwise should at the teachings of those who desire to be the religious guides of the coming ages. The Prophet, in my text, commanded the Jews “to stand and see’—see the foolish ays they were treading—and return to the old paths.” And that the young men, who ink for themselves, and who desire to devote their powers to the loftiest of services, may be warned of pitfalls which skeptics and infidels have opened before them, and have their confidence in the truth and grandeur of Christianity renewed and _ THE PERMANENT DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. I. The Old Faith is Historical, the New is Speculative. This is a very important stinction, and one very easily understood. If we recur to the ages before Christ's dvent, we shall find them setting towards Him—on any other hypothesis they are imless. Not only do prophets foretell His coming, but there are yearnings, as xpressed by Plato, and by the Stoics in their dreams of human perfection, which point © Him. The voices of oracles, and the inarticulate groanings of the heathen, carry he thoughts of men towards a deliverer. Christ was the goal towards which ancient istory set, its meaning and its climax; for since His appearing the great heart of umanity has beat less feverishly and throbbed less painfully. _ We all know that since His resurrection He has been the spring and source of ne world’s mightiest and most wide-sweeping movements. Modern history has been 422 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. shaped and molded by the mission of Jesus. In China and India, where religior speculative, stagnation has been the rule for centuries, and they can hardly claim have had any history during this period. If they are now beginning to stir with n activities it is because the Cross at last has been planted in the heart of their territory. The West has only escaped this numbed and half-paralyzed condition because Chris- tianity has been its quickening force. Christianity is not merely historical as influencing history, but as being in itself historical. Our religion is to be considered first of all as a series of facts. Of cours deeper than those of a Plato or an Aristotle. Nevertheless, its first aspect presents — deeds done, events occurring, scenes transpiring in the ordinary relations of life These are seeds which contain the flower of doctrine. Facts involve truths. Thu the miracles of Christ carried in their train the doctrine of the supernatural, as Hi resurrection proclaimed the hope of immortality. Indeed, every act of His life, and every movement of His ministry, was pregnant with abstract truth. Nor should it b forgotten that this history formed part of the history of a period, is inseparably inter- woven with what for convenience we may call the secular, and cannot be denied without repudiating the annals of the latter as well. The advantages of this characteristic of our religion are manifold. Not the least is the opportunity it affords for a searching investigation of its claims to superhuman origin. By this we see that it hides behind no veil of mystery, no inexplicable a unintelligible mummeries, but invites the most rigid scrutiny. To all men it says, “These things were not done in a corner. If you can show that they did not take place as recorded, then the doctrines which are their legitimate outgrowth ar unworthy your confidence. Decide the question for yourselves, and just as you woul: any other in history. Search me, know me, and see whether the facts are not abund : antly sustained.” Begin your inquiries: Did Christ live? Did He die? Did He rise again? Did He send out the Word, and has it done in the earth what He said it should accomplish? These questions, and others like them, you can readily answer, — and with their answer will come acceptance or rejection of the system. i Moreover, there is that in the nature of man which seems to demand this historical _ element in religion. Few among us, if we may judge from observation, are capable of abstractions. Even the pagans tried to simplify and commend their doctrines by inventing a mythology which gave an appearance of fact to what they taught. We take pleasure in personal existences and their actions. We need an apprehensible object to worship, and if we are to exercise dependence and trust we must have some-_ thing more before the mind than a vague ideal. Then such a system furnishes examples—not merely rules and precepts, as speculation does. It shows in the real domain of life what men ought to be. Dut is revealed more clearly, and altogether more attractively. We can idealize with facility, but we execute with difficulty. What we want to feel is that the portrait of a human perfection is capable of actualization in such a world as this. It is not the — poet’s description of purity the heart craves, but the exhibition of it in a life. This i is ; furnished by the historic Jesus, and, in a measure, by the historic apostles. Moreover there is a consciousness of sin in our hearts. Sin is the most momentous and terrible fact of our experience. We know that it is in the way of our attaining moral 2 excellence, and spiritual perfection. This must be overcome. But how? Not by ag dream, a beautiful philosophy, but by a fact equally real and mighty as itself. That | fact is supplied by the Cross; and the weary soul, burdened with a sense of its actual guilt, finds there an actual atonement, and actual cleansing. Thus a divine fact is set — over against the human fact, and whoever apprchends their relations to each other — attains peace of conscience. a The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. 433 ~ On such a foundation as this we can build with satisfaction. Here is a tower firmly constructed, resting on primeval granite, from whose summit we can securely weep the vast circumference of the spiritual heavens. In comparison with this the , foundation on which the New Faith builds is as cloud, mist and fog-bank. In exchange for this we are offered speculations—the surmisings and the hypotheses of modern teachers. Their guesses, their hasty conclusions from uncertain premises, appear to me but miserable substitutes for historic facts. _ Speculations are legion. In all circles, evidently, there is a mania in this direction. without the aid of Revelation, and as far from its teachings as possible. Science, in the person of its devotees, has become as speculative. as prolific of physico- ee Physical theories as the most bewitched metaphysician could desire. On more the Arabian Nights’ heroes to the genii. We have had a large, ever-increasing and varied crop of cosmic speculation, ranging from theories of the origin of species to theories of the origin of the universe. Mr. Spencer has tried to build up a science of the universe on a philosophy of the unknowable, which may be embodied in one ‘citation from his pages: “The widest, deepest, and most certain of all facts is that the ‘power which the universe manifests to us is wholly inscrutable.” _ But after all he has said in support of such a theory what is it but a bare specu- lation? And yet men profess to be guided in their thinking by a principle as self- destructive and self-contradictory as this. I say it is both; because if the power behind the universe is inscrutable how do we know that there is any power at all? How do we know whether it is one or many? And if it is manifest in the universe t is not wholly inscrutable, and may become clearer and clearer. Professor Tyndall, Bhings historical, and disguising the most airy metaphysics in scientific terms. Witness his Belfast address, the speculative character of which he himself admitted by its bsequent modification. Then we have assumed theories of development which have not reliable facts by which to verify them. Examples are wanting of man’s outgrowth from a lower type. [t cannot be proved that he is the latest outcome of Nature’s efforts at improving on her own experiments in organic life, or the result of some accidental variety of birth in a chimpanzee family. This can hardly be called a new hypothesis. It was hinted at by very ancient writers. Pliny wrote, “Man is the being for whose sake all other things appear to have been produced by Nature.” “Yet,” he remarked, “the various and herds among the Greeks was represented as a compound creature, having the horns and feet of the goat, and the face of a man. The satyrs also blended the animal h the human. It is to such myths Huxley tries to impart scientific certainty, when ¢ declares “that man has proceeded from a modification or an improvement of some lower animal;” and we are warranted in concluding from his latest array of evidence at it rests as yet on guesses and inferences, which are only a step removed from those which haunted the imagination of the men who imposed the original myths upon the ncient world. The same may be alleged of the theories of Comte and Spencer concerning the volution of religious belief. It is now thought possible to explain the grand ideas of nonotheism and of Christian doctrine by the talismanic word “evolution.” This is he new “open sesame” to all spiritual mysteries. But the advocates of this speculation —— i 424 Pulpit Power and sett into fetichism, and from it through intermediate stages into monotheism; and unti it such examples be given hypotheses, claiming to be Natural Histories of Religion, must be judged BP eEneSe still. some quarters it is ee asa nies to the Old Faith. But what does it meant What does it explain? It is we are told, a theory of creation. But in what sense? Does” it describe the cause or the method? Process is one thing, cause is another. ing the method is not the same as simplifying the cause. Suppose the doctrine is true ay regarding “the struggle for existence,” or the “survival of the fittest”—still the question _ remains, Whence came the existence to struggle, the fittest.to survive? Whence, after all, came the Nature whose potencies were to accomplish such admirable wonders The cause, the Supreme cause of all things, is as much in the dark as ever. Understand me, I do not claim that Mr. Darwin, the author of “Origin Species,’ has overlooked this distinction, but others have, and the result is that they — have speculated God out of the universe. The point I make is that the popular — metaphysics of science are not warranted by the facts of science, and that speculations only indicate the inability of men’s intellect to grapple with the problems of existence and to provide an adequate substitute for the Old Faith, which they are seeking to — supplant. f This limitation has been acknowledged at times by the most thoughtful of thie 4 race. Socrates, the most celebrated among the wise men of Greece, designated his — Goethe, the most comprehensive intellect of Germany says, ““Man is an obscure being; — he knows not whence he comes, nor whither he goes; he knows little of the worl and, least of all, of himself.” ‘We are all walking amidst mysteries and marvels says he, in another place; and in Faust: “Tnscrutable in broadest light, : To be unveiled by thee she (Nature) doth refuse; c What she reveals not to thy mental sight, be Thou wilt not wrest from her with bars and screws.” ' “Nature always contains something problematical, which human faculties are incapable of fathoming.”” What he says in Faust is no rash exaggeration. There is in the race an insatiable hunger after knowledge, and yet we are compelled to add— 4 “That we in truth can nothing know 4 This in my heart like fire doth burn.” 4 Pascal declares that “the last step of Reason is to perceive that there are a many things that surpass her, and if she does not attain this knowledge she is weak — indeed.” If these opinions are worth anything, they mean that speculation cannot furnish a firm and sure foundation on which to build a religiolts faith or life. As_ Goethe says, “Human reason and Divine reason are not the same,” and it is only the latter revealed to us that can impart certainty to the beliefs of the former. I spoke of the Christian system a few moments since as built upon history like a tower for. astronomy. May we not now compare it to a lighthouse—while the New Faith in all of its phases is a ship upon the stormy sea. The vessel that is driving yonder, and the lighthouse, seem both to be built upon the troubled ocean. So the superficial would conclude that the Old Faith as well as the New rest upon the shifting billows. of speculation. But in this they are mistaken. Only the New Faith tosses on its” uneasy waves; the Old sinks down through them all, through the depths out of sight, The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. 425 nd rests upon the adamant of historic verities. Therefore, in that Old tower, lone II. The Old Faith is Positive, the New is Negative. The correctness of this sharacterization of Christianity cannot be questioned. She has something to say for erself. She is no stammerer. Her speech is distinct, her declarations positive. h as well as absolute is her creed. She knows God, and proclaims Him in all the ircled and full-orbed completeness of His glory. His attributes are defined, His personality declared, and His gracious purposes delineated. The Blessed Christ is ot a stranger to her; for the bride knows the bridegroom. His love, tender sym- y, matchless self-sacrifice, and undying faithfulness, are set forth by her in words t burn. The mystery of His nature is unveiled, and “God manifest in the flesh” is the wonderful solution of the problem regarding Him, of whom Jean Paul Richter wrote, “that with His pierced hands He lifted the gates of empire off their hinges.” To her the significance of His death is not in question. ‘He died, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,” is her inspired explanation. The blood shed n Calvary is in her creed, the bath of cleansing, the fount of renewal. Knowing sality of the supernatural, and presents herself as the most distinguished proof; nor foes she hesitate to proclaim that every man who sees the kingdom of God must be yorn from above. Knowing heavenly things, she knows earthly things as well. She furnishes the nly philosophy of humanity—accounting for its origin, its condition, and history. To her unclouded vision eternity is as a world touching upon this. Of heaven she ings, and with no faltering tongue proclaims the deathlessness of the human spirit. _ In a word, she supplies a positive, affirmative creed, which, as Napoleon said at st. Helena, “is logical in all of its parts.” She does not permit cavil or doubt to trifle vith her revelation. Dogmatic and absolute is she on all subjects about which she peaks. To this it may be objected that Christianity is too exclusive and intolerant. but her exclusiveness includes all that we need to know, and her intolerance is simply le sovereignty of truth. Truth cannot admit the possibility of its opposite being true ithout denying its own authority. Antagonistic views cannot be equally authentic. Vere Christianity to cease from declaring herself the only heavenly religion she would mnihilate her power over the conscience, and would even question her own right to exist, for she would be denying her necessity. As it is reported that at the beginning e rejected a place for her Savior in the Roman Pantheon, so she is compelled by r very nature to reject all alliances and fellowship with other systems. The question Pilate, “What is truth?’ was answered by Christ in the words, “I am the truth;” din these days His representative dare not sanction a renewal of heathen skepticism. How different from this is the New Faith. In its development aid in its declara- Ins it is a series of negations. It is a denial. Every step of its melancholy progress veals this. About the time of the Reformation a number of uneasy spirits opposed the ortho- x doctrine of the Trinity. This movement was expressed by the Italian, Faustus Mcinius, who, in 1574, gave up a comfortable position in the Medicean court and took himself to Germany and Poland, where he became the center of the denial of : Trinity. Socinianism does not deny either inspiration or supernaturalism, but kes its own subjective notions the standard of all truth. For this reason it rejects doctrine of Christ’s divinity. Wollzogen, the Socinian, said, “It is more credible ta man should be an ass, than that God should be a man,” 426 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. English deism in the seventeenth century made a still further advance on the pai of negation. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1648) headed the movement, and was foll o * by Toland, Tindal, Bolingbroke, and others. It was not a frivolous, but an earne and moral spirit which originated this movement, whose object was to reduce Chri: tianity to general moral and religious principles. Lord Herbert, when he completed his book, prayed God to show him whether it would be to his glory t publish it. He says, “I had scarcely uttered these words, when a distinct, yet gentl sound, unlike any earthly one, came from heaven. This so supported me and gave m peace, that I considered my prayer as heard.” This is wonderful. That God shoul give direct attestation to a book that denied the possibility of a revelation; and that we are not to believe that He manifested himself in Christ, but are expected to believe thai He manifested Himself to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, are amiable assumptions, wh logical consistency is not very apparent. Was there ever greater credulity o blindness? The naturalistic tendency assumed a different form in France. There it w frivolous, immoral, blasphemous, denying the very existence of God. Rosseau, ind had some religious feeling, but his delusive theory of a “state of nature’ was dest ive of everything like religion. Voltaire, whose wit ruled his age, and to whot Frederick the Great wrote, ““There is but one Gom and there is but one Voltaire, satirized and abused the Church, repeatedly saying, “‘ecrasez l’infame;” and he ventur ec to predict the fall of Christ from his dominion over men’s minds in a few deca Singular infatuation! Jesus yet reigns, and reigns more gloriously than ever, while Voltaire is practically forgotten. Though these men drifted far away from truth, i was reserved for Holbach and his gourmands to touch the bottom of the abyss. In his “Systéme de la Nature,’ Baron Holbach affirmed materialism in its baldest forr mn and denied without scruple the existence of God, the reality of man’s spiritual na ur re) and all ethics, but those of self-love and self-interest. a In Germany, Herman Reimarus, a native of Hamburg, took the lead in religi v1 dissent, and transplanted English deism to the soil of his own country. His polemics were not only against Scripture, but against the morals of Scripture characters, an¢ included Jesus as well. Kant, in his Criticism of Pure Reason, declared all thought tc be subjective, and consequently that nothing can be known of the supersensuous general with objective certainty. God, immortality, are claims of conscience, voi by this inner witness to truth, and on this foundation he shaped the moral world. Rationalism, which aims to reduce Christianity to the standard of sound reasor grew out of these elements. It teaches that there is a God, but a God who leaves the — world to itself, with the exception of seeing that it does not deviate from the laws He has imposed on it. According to its philosophy, there is not, neither can there be miracle, prophecy, or direct revelation. God cannot interpose directly, and as to Jesus Christ, He is no miracle, but only, so says this “Daniel come to judgment,” the — wisest and most virtuous man that ever lived. os Another step in this downward tendency is furnished by Pantheism. It denies — the personal God, moral freedom, and the immortality of soul, which Rationalism is “ supposed to hold. God is cosmical life, or the universal reason in all things. He is not essentially separate from the world. He is, as Spinoza puts it, the ocean of existence, and all things are but waves, ripples, spray, which subside back again in the common life. He is the light, and the various great types of existence are but ; the prismiatic colors, which are distinct, and yet are but modifications of the o absolute effulgence. There is no personal relation to such a God, because he impersonal, and has no personal relation to us. Indeed, Hegel taught that He is n self-known, but only known to us; that man is the reality of God, and God merely t truth of man; consequently, while there may be a certain religious disposition, thei Pally The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. 427 ‘an be no faith, no hope, no prayer, to such a God. Morality is virtually abolished, r its postulates are destroyed, as there is no deity to impose a law, and no such thing is free will to execute it. _ The last step in this dark and chiliy eamenied is Materialism. Feuerbach marks the ransition: ‘God was my first; reason, my second; man, my third and last notion.” Thus he expresses the downward course of his theological reasoning. He regards 30d as a creation of man, and formulizes—‘Man created God after his own image.” ‘here is no soul, no freedom, no immortality, nothing but the blackness of night orever. _ Here, then, we have the extreme of doubt. It began in denying Christ’s divinity; t ends in denying man’s spiritual nature, and divinity altogether. It began by revising le piety and morals of religion; it terminates by abolishing them altogether. It can descend no lower. The gospel of earth, the evangel of mud, the millenium of despair s been reached, and lower depth is impossible, save into the abyss profound. _ These opinions are misleading many persons today—and are the ever-deepening 1adows of the New Faith, which envelop mind in the intense darkness of negation. ome of their advocates, to render more plausible their untenable theories, pretend to discard all philosophizing, and set them forth as the doctrine of common sense. The bservances of prayer, praise, adoration, faith, hope, are not according to common ense, and are, therefore, useless. The sentiment of religion, God, providence, immortality, are not acceptable to common sense, and must therefore be swept from he mind. But common sense is not infallible. Many other things are contrary to it. Common sense does not justify or explain heroism, the explorer’s joy, the reformer’s onsecration to his work, the saint’s rapture, the friend’s disinterested loyalty. In a vord, common sense, as proclaimed by these gentlemen, simply ignores what is con- r to its earthiness, its sensuousness, and its selfishness. And this is what is offered as a substitute for the Old Faith.- An unknown God, ho is also the Untalkable, who is secluded from our prayers, and excluded from our xve. Is this common sense? Does common sense demand us to believe that duty ‘enyeloped in everlasting mist, and futurity in impenetrable doubt? Is a huge erhaps our only anchorage? Are we ever to remain satisfied trying to secure urselves to a bank of fog, instead of finding some solid rock under whose sheltering trength we can securely rest? Is it‘tcommon sense to solace ourselves in sorrow with he doctrine of the Uncertain? or to confront the reality of death with a may-be exist- Mce to sustain us? Is it common sense to repudiate the deepest and most sacred istincts of our natures, to turn from religion with its blood-bought pardon and its spirations to purity? Common sense! Rather call it common non-sense! Were the Old Faith burdened with greater difficulties than are alleged against it, tre its mysteries deeper, the reason that stirs within us, the conscience that alarms r guilt, the instinct that bids us look beyond the present to a home of cloudless licity, would rise up in its defense. Man’s whole nature pleads for the Old Faith, as the Old Faith pleads for man. It is light to his spiritual eye, sound to his iritual ear, life to his death, joy to his spiritual sorrow, hope to his spiritual despair. its truth he can feed; on its promises he can rest; by its teachings he can guide his et through this vale of gloom to the Paradise above. He dare not abandon it; he re not bid chaos come again, or seek strength and peace in that which is without imately the order and the glory of a new creation. ‘Ill. The Old Faith is Constructive, the New is Destructive. With this final Stinction the sphere of the practical is reached. The ultimate test of religious tems must always be identical with that which our Savior applied to individuals— uit.” “By their fruit shall ye know them.” If the faith which claims to be from 428 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. heaven is not abundant in good works, if it does not conserve the intere humanity, elevating and refining, then it lacks the most conclusive of all proofs. child should resemble the sire. A heavenly faith should be, and will be, hea Righteousness, peace, and joy will distinguish it; and only as it answers the real of religion in the every-day life of the world will! it receive the homage of mind heart. Nothing to me is so evident as that the doctrines emanating directly or in rectly from the Author of creation must be fitted to promote the well-being of societ I can no more conceive that God would make the material world in the interests of H thinking creatures, and then furnish a faith which should work detrimentally or chievously, than I can believe that sweet and bitter waters proceed from one foun This view of the case has been pretty generally accepted by the representatives ¢ all opinions; and at times has taken shape hostile to the claims of Christianity it Not a few of those who advocate the New Faith have taken pains to show that Old is evil in its bearings. They have tried to prove that its morality is such tha practice it would dissolve society, disorganize governments, and impede the pr of the race. Strauss accuses it of an unmistakable tendency towards communi while the communists of France and Germany reject it because of its leanings to monarchism. Mr. Frothingham, in a discourse on Materialism, declares that e€ gelical teachers inculcate the following opinions: that ‘education is of no acco knowledge is worthless; culture is vain; personal goodness counts for nothing; s kindness is valueless; the truest greatness of mind and character is powerless to man to health and felicity.” This is a misrepresentation. The Old Faith encour the broadest culture, but it denies that it can either regenerate a soul or justify it before God. It proclaims an atonement, not as a substitute for personal training, but as 4 provision for its reconciliation with the Highest. ' But this very conception of an atonement becomes a ground of assault on morality of the Christian scheme. It is claimed that it justifies injustice, and pounds a theory that subverts every wholesome principle of rectitude. Mr. Froth ham is strikingly severe in his denunciations of this doctrine; and represents it maintaining that by a material operation the souls of men are to be saved. He and others fail to see that its inherent and relative morality may be vindice on such grounds as these; that the very idea of such an atonement has its root in intense realization of righteousness, moral laxity having nothing to do with it; no violation of a righteous law is involved, inasmuch as it is appointed and accep’ by the lawgiver, and undertaken freely by the substitute; that it is no more unju per se, that the perfectly holy Christ should die for the guilty as an expiato sacrifice, than it would be for Him to suffer in the slightest degree as an exampl and that the avowed end of substitution is not to appease personal feeling in God, but to vindicate righteousness in the inviolable maintenance of law. Neither do opponents perceive the bearing of the fact, that wherever the atonement is proclai it awakens an intense desire for personal purity, renders the conscience more sensitive, and reclaims thousands from vicious courses. Wherever the Old Faith is earnestly, simply, and clearly preached, great revivals follow, thousands are reclaimed and lif up from despair to hope. When the doctrines of Strauss and Parker result in moral | transformations as numerous and as distinct as those which have followed the teach- ings of Whitfield, Spurgeon or Moody, we shall be more inclined than we are now to credit them with the possession of some redeeming qualities. q The accusations brought by the New Faith are wholly without foundation. Christianity is entirely beneficial. It is constructive, formative. It imparts healt action to society, having supplied it with its purest ideals and noblest organizatio’ The dearest interests of the race are conserved by its influence. From it hum governments receive their stability, the family its sacredness, industry its honor, | The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. 429 5 thority. It has inspired the loftiest sentiments, and kindled the genius of the t and the artist, while it has bound all ranks in the ties of a noble brotherhood. The career of the Old Faith, from the past to the present, gives abundant proof this. Christianity introduced the era of humanity. Not before its advent did men k upon themselves as members of one great family, having a common parentage he Supreme. Not before were the rights of human personality acknowledged as d and inviolable. Their recognition must be regarded as fruits of Christianity. made no direct changes in the external arrangements of society when it first D sared; it left laws and privileges, manners and conditions, customs and ranks, as found them, but it introduced a new spirit into all of these arrangements, which is idually transforming them to heaven’s ideal. It raised the condition of woman from degraded to an honorable one, declaring that in point of honor there is neither male r female in Christ Jesus. It made love, which, as Montesquieu says, ‘at the time of introduction bore only a form which cannot be named,” the noblest and tenderest wer of mental and spiritual life. It created a new family—grounding it in an tion, hearty and genuine, and hitherto unknown. Not till its dawning did the love for neighbors in any true sense exist. Chris- anity made the Good Samaritan the pattern of our relations with those from whom e differ in race or creed. By the wondrous mystery and infinite tenderness of the Toss it introduced humanity into the world, and inculcated the virtue of compassion. are for the sick and poor are of its heart—the spirit of love, of resignation, of self- crifice, of its essential genius. It broke down the wall of partition between classes, ibes, and states. Not before did there exist upon earth such a thing as international , upon which, in our day, the whole framework of society depends. Commerce was orn of this, and all that we count as progress in the material splendor of nations. e has likewise proclaimed liberty of conscience, and she has added comfort and ace, delivery from the sense of guilt, consciousness of pardon through that ever ailing atonement made by Christ for sin. And thus she has become the source of new and hitherto unknown moral power, the extent of which only the “‘dateless and yoluble circles of eternity” will reveal. _ What is more remarkable Christianity has never done otherwise than promote wholesome construction of society, whatever may have been its outward conditions, id however it may have tended towards dissolution. During the first centuries, when ebrated its triumphs in the sufferings of the martyrs, and its rites in the obscurity the Catacombs, it was only preparing a grander community for the coming Rome. fen in the middle ages, when feudalism and ignorance threatened to end civilization, ch as it was in barbarism, it was Christianity, though obscured by many super- tions, which held the elements of irretrievable disaster in check. At the period of e Reformation, when it appeared that the revolt from superstition might terminate in e destruction of society, the whole movement became a conserving, organizing im- ise, from whence modern progress has sprung. During the unhappy war which alien- sd the sections of our beloved country, it was the Old Faith which prevented absolute archy, and the utter wreck of all our institutions. It held us together, and has been @ inspiration, if not the formative principle, of reconstruction and present harmony. The indispensableness of the Old Faith to the order and well-being of society is tnessed to by impartial judges. Montesquieu exclaims: “Wondrous phenomenon! ¢ Christian religion, whose sole object seems to be the happiness of a future life, sures the happiness of the present life.” Ziethe calls attention to this saying, and lis of an Indian Prince who desired to know the secret of England’s greatness, and whom Victoria showed neither her splendid army nor navy, but delivered to him Bible, with the words: “The Word of the Lord is the secret of England's great- ss.” The well-known saying of Goethe is in point, “All epochs under which faith 430 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. has prevailed have been brilliant, heart-elevating, fruitful both to contemporaries and ¥ posterity. All epochs, on the contrary, in which unbelief, under whatever form, has — maintained a sad supremacy, even if for the moment they glitter with a false splendor, vanish from the memory of posterity, because none care to torment themselves with the knowledge of that which has been barren.” He adds that French scholars have pointed out the connection of the history of human society with religion, and with the deyelopment of the idea of God. Thus Franck (in “Etudes Orientals, 1861”) — endeavors to show how the value of a nation’s social constitution is proportional to the - value of its religious idea. We all know how Castellar traces the glory and stability of the United States to our fathers’ faith in the Old Bible. Edgar Quinet, in his a | lectures at Lyons, (1839), teaches that ‘‘the religious idea is the very essence of civiliza- tion, and the formative principle of political constitutions.” Benjamin Constant has taken pains to mark the transition to this opinion, and what he says of Quinet will be found true of some others: “He projected his work on religion in the spirit of Atheism”—note well—“but finished it by seeking the necessary conditions of the — existence of civilized society in the religious sentiment.’’ Guizot declares “that all political and social questions always lead to the religious principle for their final solution;” stumble upon theology.” and Proudhon exclaims, ‘‘as soon as we go deep into politics we always These testimonies carry with them the impression that the theories opposed to the __ Old Faith must be destructive. in their tendency—destructive to the moral sense and to the good of society. What else is inferable from such sentiments as those which pass current among its adversaries? Take the Positivist conception of moral educa- tion, which, according to Comte, is the mere knowledge of facts; “of causes of phenomena, whether past or final, we know nothing.” According to Mr. Herbert Spencer children should be made to experience the true consequence of their conduct. Mr. Mill would have inculcated as a leading principle, what he sets forth as true of himself in the sentence, “of direct power over my volitions I am conscious of none.” Mr. Bain would have education seek a deliverance from “the whole series of phrases” connected with the will,” as being “contrived to foster in us a feeling of importance” for which we have no warrant. That is, we are to train our children morally by telling them that there is no such thing as personal freedom or responsibility; that, as Feuer- bach would phrase it, “thought is but phosphorous,” that “as a man eats, so he is;” and consequently that conduct is but the result of forces over which we have no control, or which is determined wholly by physical qualities. The premises of the New Faith are necessarily fatal to any remarkable growth of lofty manhood. Contrast them with those of the Old: An indefinable, undiscoverable .First Cause is offered the world, instead of a personal and holy God; development of man from a monkey type, instead of creation by the hand of the Highest; phosphorus or proptoplasm, or some hidden vital principle, as the source of human action, instead of an undying spiritual essence; atmospheric pressure, or hydrogenic explosions, as the influencing agencies of history, instead of the Holy Ghost; and death and the grave for the race, instead of immortality and the resurrection. Here we have the foundations of the new ethics. But if men are merely creatures of circumstances, if the only laws they are to obey are only those they cannot disobey, if society is the only God they are to worship, and if annihilation is the only destiny they are to anticipate, the moral results of such a barren creed cannot be problematical. It must contract and materialize the nature of man, repress the divine that is in him and foster the animal. Spiritual character, broad, sinewy, strong, can never spring from its teachings. Such men as came of the French Revolution, which was itself, with all of its disorganizing tendencies, a practical phase of the New Faith; or such persons as Mr. R. W. Emerson described, in a lecture on Modern Thought, as “the dapper’ product of the new doctrines, are specimens of what they can do in the direction of manhood. \ + 4 ‘ 4 i q ¢ q : | The Old Faith and the New—Lorimer. 431 As I think on this subject I cannot but recall a famous passage in the writings of omas Carlyle, which suggests a sad illustration of the natural bearing of the New ith. The grim philosopher quotes from the Moslem myth regarding Moses and the ellers by the sea. It seems a tribe of men dwelt on the shores of the Dead Sea, i having “forgotten the inner facts of nature, and taken up with falsities, were fallen » sad conditions—verging towards a certain deeper lake. Whereupon it pleased id to send them Moses, with an instructive word of warning, out of which would ye sprung remedial measures not a few. But no; the men of the Dead Sea discov- d no comeliness in Moses, listened with real tedium to him, with light grinning, or h splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to yawns—and signified, in short, that sy found him a humbug, and even a bore. Moses withdrew. The men of the Dead a, when we next went to visit them, were all turned into apes. They sat on trees, mning in the most unaffected manner, gibbering and chatting very genuine non- The Universe has become to them a humbug. Only every Sabbath there To me this is a tragical picture of the tendency of the New Faith. The blessed alities of the Gospel are rejected, and men, taught to sneer at their own spirituality, nerate towards the ape species. They chatter or mew unmusically regarding ture, theories of evolution, or positive philosophies, and have only a dim conscious- sss of something they once had, which is now forever gone. Their soul is lost to 2 And we may rest assured that apes, with their screeching and chatter, cannot ve such a society as enlightened Christian men can create. Those who expect otherwise are fatally deluded. When not put to the strain, len not tested by the trials of life, the new doctrines may not seem to be injurious, t they will prove so in the long run to the individual, and to society as well. You ay remember the fate which overtook Donaldson and a companion, in 1876. At st the balloon, to which they committed themselves, rose majestically in the calm, t after a little while the storm struck it, and it was driven wildly over land and lake. hrough the darkness of that night, through the battle in the clouds, they were borne, ly to perish. Neither came back, and only the dead body of the youth, washed ore by the lake, gave clew to the mystery. Now, there are spirits as reckless as these adventurers, who claim that evil effects in not overtake them, whatever doctrines may be received, so long as they are sincere. this apprehension they are wofully mistaken. They forget that Donaldson and his Ociate were perfectly sincere in believing that they could navigate the aerial ocean safety, and yet their sincerity did not preserve their frail vessel from the fury of the And if they hold on to a bag of gas, to an inflated theory, when the storm tries as we are not living in the world of shams, but of realities, they will be dashed to ces. The men in the balloon were never in a position of more peril than are those io would rise heavenward in some frail machine of their own construction, instead ascending the mystic ladder revealed by Christ, which leads man directly to holy swship with his God. Conclusion —To what I have written it may be answered the human mind is so Mstituted that it craves rew ideas and new theories. It cannot satisfy itself with ‘thoughts and beliefs of the past; it demands fresh conceptions for the future. er is beyond question an error in this representation. What the mind really needs something true, not something new;’and in the true, however old, will be ever nd its most ostied aliment. If I hand you a rose fresh from the ep ak dyed 432 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ing, “the eye requires something new?” Surely not. In the realm of the beautift there is really nothing new. Its forms may be reproduced in various ways, its outli and expression may be copied by the art of the sculptor or the painter; but they are as immutably fixed as the laws of right and wrong. The fluidity or changeableness of the beautiful is only apparent; in fact, whether in nature, in marble, or in canvas we look for it, we look for the definite and immutable properties which reveal them- selves in a flower, and without which the object contemplated would not be beautiful at all. When the eye craves satisfaction, it is seeking for these permanencies; and when they are found, it has nothing more to seek for. Not the newly beautiful, but the truly beautiful is its delight. This principle is as applicable to the spiritual sight * as to the eye. That within man which yearns for religion can only be satisfied with that which corresponds to itself, and that which thus corresponds must abide; for which it has been instituted. A new religion is no more required by the race than a new world. The sunt at former ages, day and night succeed each other, and the flowers come and go asie through the centuries which never can return. I love the old world—the old earth — and the old heavens, because they are old. To me they are made peculiarly sacred | by the thought that they surround the sages, poets, heroes and martyrs of the past. y tread the dusty roads they trod, I behold the scenes which charmed them or inspire them. I hear the sounds which broke upon their ear and chased away their sense o solitude. Dear earth! the footprints of the noble are in thy bosom; their tears fe upon thee, and thou dost treasure them in thy secret places; their sighs mingled wit thy solemn moanings, and thou dost whisper them beneath the heavens; and their struggles and their triumphs stormed across thee, and though they have left many aa scar upon thy wondrous face, they have left an undying glory too. Equally as precious, because equally sufficient for all our needs, is the Old Faiths Generations of the best, of the purest, of the truest, have believed its doctrines, a assurances of eternal felicity. Thus let us live, hope and rejoice, until that bright day shall dawn when the immortal shall be translated from the old realm of faith to the new realm of sight: : “For when at ee from life’s dark road, = We climb heaven’s heights serene, All light upon the hill of God In God’s light shall be seen. All kingdoms of the truth shall there To tearless eyes be shown; And, dwelling in that purer air, We'll know even as we’re known.” [George C. Lorimer was born in Edinburg, Scotland, 1838, coming to the United — i States, 1856; educated at Georgetown college, Kentucky. Was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1859, serving churches at Harrodsburg, Paducah and Louisville, Ky., f Boston and Chicago, and for some years pastor of Tremont Temple, Boston, where his 7 evening audiences numbered upwards of 1,500. He has written a number of books, e the most important being The Argument for Christianity, Christianity and the Sone Pa State, Isms Old and New, The Great Conflict, etc. 4 This sermon was preached some years ago, and is from The Gospel Invitation. i It is included for the reason that few men are better read on the subject treated than the author. ] (433) IMPORT OF THE LORD’S SUPPER. JOHN McCLINTOCK, D. D. _ “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.”—1 Cor. 11: 26. I purpose this morning speaking of the Lord’s Supper. I can only do this in certain aspects of the subject, because to treat of it in full, in its nature and in its relation to the Church and to the individual, would require a whole series of sermons. Every name we give it implies a different aspect. We call it the Eucharist—a feast of thanksgiving; the Lord’s Supper—that is to say, a feast in which we have communion with Christ at His own invitation. There are a great many names, and each of them is significant. A preliminary remark upon the sacraments of the Gospel: We have two sacra- ments—Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. There were two rites in the old dispensation to which these correspond—Circumcision, and the Passover; the one the rite of initiation, and the other the rite of confirmation. There must be such rites as these in every religious organization, and there is something analogous to them in every form of organization. The right of initiation under the old law was circumcision, performed once, and once only, upon a subject who was a mere passive recipient. So the rite of baptism in the New Testament is performed once, and once only, and “upon a passive recipient. There is nothing voluntary about the sacrament consid- red in itself; the subject receives the baptism—the effusion of the water, the pouring it or the immersion in it—by some other hand. On the contrary, the right of onfirmation under the old law was the passover, which included certain acts on e part of the partaker, as well as the outward and visible elements of the sacrament self. The lamb had to be procured and slain, and was then roasted and eaten; all these implying voluntary acts of the participant. So in this sacrament there is God’s in providing the elements and constituting them what they are; and, on the ther hand, the participation of the voluntary communicants who go to the sacra- se two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The one is the rite of initia- ion, and the other the rite of confirmation. You can very easily see, if it be dis- ssed whether children or grown people are to be baptized—whether by sprinkling, fr pouring, or immersion—how trifling these differences are when compared with the real substance. They are akin to the disputes as to whether the bread should be leavened or unleavened, whether the wine should be fully pressed or fermented, or dr nk from cups of silver or glass. All these are minor questions. We are to be 434 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Let us contemplate the real substance of this sacrament for us as Christian pe I. The sacrament of the Lord’s supper looks back upon the past, and in sense is a memorial. II. It has relation to the present time and our present personal condition, anc in this sense is a means of grace. : III. It looks forward prophetically to the future, and in this sense is a pledg of everlasting life to all who worthily partake of it. P I. This sacrament looks back upon the-past, and in that sense is a memo It is a commemorative ordinance. Commemorative of—what? Of that for the v purpose of which it was instituted—the circumstances under which it was institu Ah, how apt we are to forget our benefactors! How apt we are to forget even th that we love! Take that single sentence home now and see if it is not so. Ten twenty years ago you buried some one out of your sight, and it seemed as if the v light of your life were gone—a light that could never come back again; and you s so—that it should be never more. And yet that loved image now stands away b in the distance, dim and shadowy. and it is only when some memorial, some t some sign, some sacrament brings back the recollection, that the old love is f It is not gone, I admit; but we are so apt to forget. And so we forget our grea benefactors. Mankind are prone to remember those that hurt them, rather than benefactor who brings blessings at every step of his path in life. Hack a tree with an axe, and the scar remains for ages. The circles that ¢ around in the effort of nature to obliterate it seem more and more to perpetuate But the care of the gardener who planted it, who watched and watered it, that is forgotten. So it is with men. Even that great sacrifice of Christ upon ‘the cr the purchase of our redemption by that bitter death, even the circumstances of death itself, we are apt to forget unless perpetually reminded. And so, in this asp the very institution of the Lord’s Supper is a kind condescension on the part of Ge to our weakness and infirmity; and whenever the Church administers the sacram: whether once a month or once a week, it is intended as a sign, a memorial, a pi of the Lord Jesus, a painting of the crucifixion, a sculpture for us, if our imaginati faith be strong enough to take in all the scene upon Calvary. Nay, more, not mere! a painting or statue, but bringing back again, if our eye of faith be strong eno to see it, the living, breathing, suffering, dying Savior as He hung there upon cross, with the blood still flowing eons His veins and arteries strong and quick as in the flush of His maniy life; then it ebbed away and He became weaker a weaker, paler and paler, until at last He died. This sacrament is thus meant to be memorial and bring back to us the day of our Savior’s death, the nights of humiliation in the grave. “This do in remembrance of Me.” There is special fitness in the matter of the institution as well as in the form: | in the bread and wine which constitute the matter of the sacraments. The bread—we take it, and it is broken, and we eat it; the wine—it is poured out, and we drink 1 And what are ‘these? The bread, how is it made? That bread cannot be made f you every day as the nourishment for your physical frame, except at this expens the beautiful grain must be taken at its maturity, the beautiful head of wheat m be rudely cut down, and then it passes into the hands of the laborer, or under hoof of the horse, or beneath the thrashing-flail, or into the pressure of the machin until it is stripped of its husk, and life is entirely taken from it so far as outwar material instruments can do it, and then it is put between the upper and nether mil stone and ground to powder, And that is not all, You must take it and cavss Import of the Lord’s Supper—McClintock. 435 s elements of death to show themselves; the putrefaction of fermentation must gin before you can have the light, beautiful, life-preserving bread. And so with wine. You cannot get the mantling wine, with its beautiful color and refreshing operties, except by taking the grape in the full blush of its bloom and richness, d cutting it from the vine, and subjecting it to pressure, and after that to fermen- tion, that out of destruction and death shall be brought the life-producing, life- serving wine. So it is with our Lord and Savior. He lived; but if He had only lived there ould have been no life for us. He lived and died upon the cross that you and I light-live; that is to say, this bread of God came down from heaven to be our urishment. It had to be cut off in its full bloom, to be subject to the flail, to the ressure and power of the mill, to be ground between the upper and the nether ill-stone, to be laid in the grave, and the beginning of its corruption to appear, and len its resurrection; and now it is possible for Christ to be the living bread coming own from heaven, and whoever eats of it shall live for evermore. The bread and le wine are alike emblematic of the strength which the Church receives, and through r each individual member, from this blessed communion with Christ, which we mmemorate when we partake of the Supper of the Lord. So we commemorate is sorrows and sufferings in this way for our own'sake. And how rich a blessing that such a commemoration is given! _ And further, our faith in Christ is excited by these emblems, as He is “evidently ‘ forth among us crucified and slain.” If we come to this sacrament remembering lat this bread and wine are an emblem of, and our hearts are filled with it, this issage will be true, that here, as we surround the altar of God, “Christ is visibly t forth among us crucified and slain,” for ‘‘visibly” is what is meant by the word vidently” in the passage; the effect of the memorial being to bring us back to i@ cross, to bring the cross down to us. That is the effect of it if we come with living and true faith to partake of the blessed sacrament. By this commemoration feel the dripping blood of Christ as if we had sat under His cross; the anguish those pains we feel as if we had seen them on Calvary. The spear that pierced Savior’s side has rotted long ago; the cross on which they hung Him has passed fay, gone into corruption; but the water and blood that flowed on the piercing His side by the soldier—the terror and anguish and pain that He endured upon at bitter cross—all these are as fresh as if the cross had been reared but yesterday, d Christ hung upon it today. Our faith brings them to us, because the efficacy of | t cross and of Christ’s redemption is an everlasting efficacy. ~ ‘There is another aspect of this commemorative feature of the sacrament to which must call your attention: “‘As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do Ww the Lord’s death till He come.” We show it as an historical testimony of fact of His death. Every time the followers of Jesus Christ gather around His and partake of the bread and wine as emblems of His broken body and shed od, they add an additional evidence to the truth of the Gospel history. This mance is a perpetual memorial and proof of the facts of Christ’s death, and the sed objects of it. Can you find a day in history, from the day of Christ’s itution of this sacrament the night before He died, on which it has not been ved? No single week has rolled away these eighteen hundred and thirty years y days after the death of the Savior. They gather in stronger numbers and 1 stronger hopes after the day of Pentecost, and so the bread is broken and the € poured out and Christ remembered, and His death borne witness to, So, then, 436 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. brethren, we too are as historical witnesses to the fact of Christ's death, and ever} time we come here we add one new stone to the great fabric of Christian eviden one new testimony to the truth of this Gospel. There is something, to my mi very striking and very beautiful in this one single evidence of the truth of Ch tianity—that you cannot point to any other beginning of this sacrament than that recorded, and that there is no stronger historical proof of any event than the com- memoration in honor of it. Such is our fourth of July; and if it should be only celebrated as it is, once in each year, yet at the end of ten thousand years the force of it as a testimony would be just as great as it is now, unless some one could point to the day when it was instituted without foundation. In history testimony of this kind is considered better than almost any other. But we do more than this as wit- nesses, and not only testify to the fact of Christ’s death, but testify to it with praise and approbation, The cross of the Lord Jesus was to the Jews a stumbling-bloc! and to the Greeks foolishness; but to us who believe, it is the power of God u salvation; that is to say, as often as we eat of this bread and drink this wine, show the death of the Lord until He come, and in coming around this altar vy come to say, What? That the cross of Christ is no longer a stumbling-block o foolishness, that to us the offence of the cross is taken away for ever; not merel that it is not offensive, but that it is our crowning glory that we have a right come to it and say, with a higher emphasis than Paul said, “I am not ashamed of” the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” And when we surround tl altar we come as witnesses to a fact and to the glory of a pact, each of us taking up the strain, and saying, “I joy and glory in the cross of Christ each one of us — says, “I testify to the power of the religion! of the Redeemer;” each one of us says as Paul says, and with a higher emphasis, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and 4 I unto the world.” ; roe II. The second aspect of the sacrament is its relation to the present as a means ~ of grace. Christ died, and we commemorate the sacrifice; but more than +his, He rose again, and is with us here, a living Savior. Bread and wine come again in types, types of the nourishment of life and its preservation. We have in this sac a- ‘ ment the communion of His body and blood, which nourishes and sanctifies us in this life and prepares us for everlasting life in heaven. P The tree of life which stood in the garden of Eden was sacramental, and to e2 t of the tree was the law of the preservation of life under the Adamic covenant. The covenant was this: ‘‘Eat and thou shalt live. Here is the tree of life; the matter of this sacrament is the fruit of this tree, and thou shalt eat of it and shalt live.” When Adam was banished the sacrament was revoked; the tree of life was guarded by cherubim with flaming swords turning every way. But under the promise th q Christ should come again, under all dispensations—Abrahamic and Mosaic—all t way along up to the time when Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper, you will find some sacrament, some sign between God and man. The tree of paradise was the ante-type of the paschal blood that saved Israel’s first-born in the hour when the angel of death passed over Egypt; of the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night; of the manna that sustained them in the desert, and of the passover estab- lished in the promised land and kept up until the coming of the Lord Jesus. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was substituted for the passover. Christ our Pass- over is slain for us. All these were in their time means of grace, comforting and sustaining. The Israelite was likely to doubt the strength and willingness of God to carry him onward, but could be conyinced by Moses suddenly pointing upward, Import of the Lord’s Supper—McClintock. 439 See there! behold that rising vapor as it curls above the marching millions of fsrael, and then no longer doubt!” So in the hour of night and darkness the same leader and guide could tell him, “See there! behold that pillar of fire, beginning aver the ark, ascending, and widening as it ascends! That is the type and pledge of God’s promise to His people.” And so in all ages the natural heart of man has seen in the rainbow spanning the sky the type of God's attributes of mercy and grace, and all people in all ages have looked up to that unimaginable beauty as a sacra- ment between God and man, an assurance that God’s blessing should never more ail to mankind. In the Lord’s Supper we come to refresh ourselves more than the Israelites sould in sight of the cloud and fire, and be fed more than they could by the manna, or our celestial manna is the bread of this sacrament, and whosoever eateth and drinketh in the name of the Lord Jesus eateth and drinketh to his salvation. ‘The The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” How can this be true? It is really and literally true that in coming to this communion rist is actually and substantially to be partaken of by those who believe on Him. I do not mean that the bread and wine are turned into the physical body of the Lord Jesus. What a delusion that is that anything is substantial that can be seen and touched! The least substantial are those that can be seen or touched. The substance of this outward physical form is that Which we cannot see. We do not sven know what it is. Take the substance of the oak wood or pine wood. You do not know what the substance of it is at all; you know certain outward properties ich it possesses, but that is all. Christ is really and substantially present with his hildren in this sacrament. Though we do not see Him, or eat of His body in a tangible and physical sense, or drink of His blood, yet we do really find our Savior in those memorials of Him. Let me illustrate this by a single case out of the Gospel. Our Savior, passing through a great crowd of people, suddenly said, “Who is it that touched me, for I find virtue has gone out of me?” Yet no one had touched His person, His face, or hands, or feet, or any part of His body. It was nothing but a poor woman who had taken hold of the outer edge of his long robe, perhaps four or five feet from His person; only the hem of His garment was touched, nd yet the touch brought life to her, and the Savior knew it, and said, “Some one touched me.” So when we come to surround this table, and come so near to Christ as to take the emblems of His body and blood, we are nearer than to be ouching the very hem of His garment. If we have faith to believe it, our Savior is with us. We have nourished in our souls, in our love for Him, in our purposes of good, nd get ourselves strengthened to bear the ills, temptations, and shocks of life, and © prepare for death and judgment. And so we have often found a means of grace n this communion. When our faith is strong in it “Our spirits drink a fresh supply, And eat the bread so freely given, Till, borne on eagle’s wings, we fly, And banquet with our Lord in heaven.” f there be a doubting Thomas in the congregation who has never been able fully 9 realize our Lord, and has been going for years with his head bowed down, I ly come to the communion, to the altar of God, if you are willing to see Him. Jo this in remembrance of Christ, and open your eyes, and you shall see the hole 438 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. caused by the spear of the soldier, and put your hand in it; you shall see the wounds in His hands and feet; you see Him with His body broken and crushed for you, and you shall be led to say, “My Lord and my God.” Come, and let this communion be for you the means of grace. How many have felt in surrounding this altar not only their own resolutions renewed, but the baptism of the Holy Ghost renewed, fresh power given to them, and that the mysterious manifestation — | of grace in the sacrament has renewed their faith as followers of Christ! : III. Looking toward the future, we find in this sacrament a pledge of glory and everlasting life. ‘‘He said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this | passover with you before I suffer: for I say unto you, I will not any more eat . | thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say ume | you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.’ There Christ institutes this supper, and tells His followers that it is His supper and His supper of communion, but that He will drink it no more with them until the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. Then He will drink it and join them again % in it; then an everlasting supper will be renewed—an everlasting supper of the e Lamb—and not till then. ‘‘As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup you do ~ show the Lord’s death till He come.” That is to say, we are keeping up a memorial © ; of it here in the wilderness until He shall come again; until the wilderness shall = blossom as the rose. And surely this communion is a pledge of that coming—a seal 7, and assurance of it. As often as we partake of it we know that our Master shall — come. He comes to us in the communion itself as a pledge of that last coming. — More than this, the Lord’s Supper is to last until His coming, but no longer. We ~ are not to have it in this shape in heaven. It is a memorial of Christ's coming. — Whenever a pledge is given it is given as security that a certain contract shall be — performed, and when it is performed the pledge is given up. So it shall be with the Lord’s Supper; when Christ’s kingdom is come the Lord’s Supper shall end. But what shall take its place? The Lord’s Supper is a pledge and earnest of the marriage feast of the Lamb. “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude,” writes John on the Island of Patmos, “and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. — Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready: And to her was granted that she © should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness _ of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Every time we surround this altar and partake of the Lord’s Supper we have a ~ pledge, a foretaste and assurance of that great marriage supper of the Lamb, an invi- [. tation to which shall be the crowning glory of every redeemed soul. Oh, to be sure s of that invitation! Oh, to be sure of the wedding-garment! that when these guest tables are prepared, and these viands of heaven are set out by celestial servitors, © when the fruits of the immortal garden are for the Lord’s army, and the vines of the heavenly vineyards have been pressed by the Lord’s husbandmen, and the ever- lasting bread of the kingdom of glory shall be set out on the golden plates and dishes of that great banqueting-house, that I may be called, and my seat be ready, that I may have only to come at the sound of the last trump and obey the willing impulse of my own regenerated and redeemed soul; that my ears may be open to listen when that sound which shall wake the dead to life shall burst upon the dark- ness and silence! Then the angels shall carry me to the entrance of that great banqueting-hall, and I shall rise with the marriage festal garments on me, ready — ale pepariranven strtechaii Import of the Lord’s Supper—McClintock. 439 nter mt, This is what the Lord pledges me when I partake of it, and what He . ‘John MeClintock, D. D., LL. D., an eminent Christian scholar and divine of the fethodist Episcopal Church, was bared in Philadelphia in 1814, and in his twenty-first ar graduated at the University of Pennsylvania. For eight years he edited the Methodist Quarterly Review.” He was pastor of the American Chapel in Paris, nd bore eloquent testimony for his imperiled country during the civil war. In 1867 e became president of the Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J., and died | March, 1870.] 440 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE LITTLE FAITE ALEXANDER McKENZIE. “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’—Matt. 14:31. “O thou of little faith” is one word in the Greek. It had need to be so, for it was an exclamation in surprise. There was no time for formal words. A man was walking upon the sea, and beginning to sink he cried, “Lord, save me!” © Jesus answered him, calling him by a single name, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” It was not the last time that Peter surprised the Lord. It was stranger at the last, but it is strange enough here. We think of him as a stout, hardy sailor, used to the sea and the storms of Galilee which are sudden and severe, } while the boats are not large. It had been a bad night, with head winds and a heavy — sea. They could not carry sail and had taken to their oars. It was very early, from three to six o’clock in the morning, when they saw Jesus walking on the waves. — “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water. And He said Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid and cried, “Lord save ~ me.” It was a good example. Was it? Why did he not swim and work his way ~ back to the boat? Or if it were the time of transition with him, between a sailor — and an apostle, why did he not trust, and keep on? Why did he doubt both Christ and himself? He resorted to that which is commonly unsuccessful, that is, a com- promise. He did not swim, and he did not trust, and failing of both, he does not appear to advantage, as a sailor should. Yet we do not judge him. Who of us knows what he would do on the Sea of Galilee with the waters giving way under his feet and the gray dawn blowing its tempests on him? There is a much better © illustration of faith than this in the instance of a man who consented to sink but went down with trust. Abraham was called to take the life of the child of his own © age, the child of promise in whom all his hope was invested, who was to be a bless- ing to his people and to the world. Obedient to the voice of God he took the boy to the mountain and bound him and laid him on the altar and raised the knife. — This was more than beginning to sink, it was sinking; and so far as we have heard, — there was no voice crying for mercy. He believed that the promise would be kept —he knew not how—‘accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead.” He would have gone down to the bottom of the sea in that confidence. It is sublime. — He may well be called the father of the faithful and the friend of God. The cry of — faith is fine; the silence of faith is nobler. f The teaching of these two incidents of Abraham and of Peter is this: Have great faith and trust it: but more than that, trust the little faith if that be all you have. It is of this that we are to think this morning. It is to our credit that we have faith, whether it be large or small. In this world where we are begirt with things seen and temporal and these demand our thought and our toil, and usurp the control of our time, it is something creditable if one does think of the unseen, and endure as seeing Him who is invisible; if because of a spiritual life above him he is brave and obedient, controlled and comforted by his trust, singing and praying into the seemingly vacant light, laying up his treasure in a world he has never seen, cherishing reverence and virtue and keeping his soul. It is something for which — ae D The Little Faith—McKenzie. 441 should be grateful if through changes, disappointments and misgivings, we are ble to walk with God in the power of an endless life. It was something for which should give Peter credit, that at the call of the Lord he left the ship. I think there is nothing finer in the narrative than to see this man going over the side of the ship in the belief that he could do what no man had ever done, save the One who called him, and could tread upon the waves which in all their fury waited to over- Bicim him. If there was not in his faith all that we could desire, we will not fail © recognize that in it which was admirable. He believed. He believed in Christ as the power of the unseen world who was able to control even the winds and the waves, for the eternal forces were in His power. When the hand of Christ seized his hand, the Eternal held the fisherman and he was held by the Eternal. It was only a hand holding a hand. Children rested in the arms of Christ. A man leaned upon His bosom. Here it was only a hand, but Christ was back of it. It held only a hand, but Peter was behind it. It is our duty to regard the life which this fearful fisherman came afterward to live. We have his letters, or copies of them, letters written thirty years after this event upon the sea, and there is no sign of fear, no token of an uncertain confidence; but the quiet, steady, hopeful reliance of a brave man who had advanced in the knowledge of him- self and God. Let me read a few words: “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. That the trial your faith might be found unto praise, and honor, 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: Receiving the end of your faith. . . . Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you. . . . The God of all grace who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” Ido not find that our Lord ever reproved men because of their little faith. He marvelled when there was no faith. He did upbraid His disciples when, after His resurrection, and after the word was brought to them by those who had seen Him, and after all Bis assurance that He would rise from the dead, they were still sad in their un belief, trusting neither Himself nor their own friends. I do not think that the eproof was severe, for the fact of unbelief when it was brought home to them was eproof enough in itself. He was hindered by the unbelief of those who needed Him, and He could not do the works or give the teachings which their reluctant learts were not ready to receive; but towards the little faith He was always con- iderate. He seemed rather to encourage it than to censure it. The only measure hat He gave for faith was as small as it well could be; it was a grain of mustard eed. The words of Isaiah were applied to Him: “He shall not quench the smoking lax, nor break the bruised reed.” The foolish virgins who shut themselves out from he marriage feast were not denied admittance because They Tape Wickered-and hey had very little oil. ey had no oil, and their lamps were going out. DeTiEeve f there had been so much as a Spark upon their torch it would have carried the dearer into the joy from which she was excluded, The dimensions of our faith r¢ not the chief point, but the reality of it. If it be whole, though small; alive, iough small, it is of service, for it has the power of an unmeasured increase. Between nothing and a seed is infinitely more difference than between a grain of wheat inc the harvest. From nothing will come nothing, but from a grain an army can fed. Faith is trust alive, confidence in action. The great element is its vitality. It is not well to measure ourselves or our attainments. Weights, measures, num- Jers have little use in matters of the spirit. Mathematics have been ‘a hindrance © knowledge and belief in the domain of spiritual thought and life, 442 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. We are bidden often in our time to pray for faith. It is well. We are told that the great want of the church today is faith. I do not think so. If it were given me to choose one blessing which should come to us I should not ask for more ~ faith. I should ask for the good sense to use the faith we have. It does not seem | 7 quite proper or in reverence to ask for more when we are not employing that we have. It would be much better to give to that which we have the opportunity to grow by the service to which we are appointed. This would encourage us to ask for more, and it would be the best form of request for the increase that we desire, No, I should not ask—if there were one thing that I might choose for you—I * should not ask for more faith today. Faith without works is dead, and I should ask for the works which are at once the witness to the vitality of a thing and the pledge of its enlargement. Great assurances are given us by those who sincerely desire a larger religious life. They tell us truly of great things which might be wroleia a by great faith in God. I do not wish to travesty any man’s thought. It seems very — : much at times as if they were saying “If you had faith like a mountain you might remove a mustard seed.” Perhaps we could; but Christ’s way is better, kinder. The New Testament is always better. Other books are well enough, books of coum advice, and pious reflections; but when you want a book to’ stand by you, to en- courage you, to make the best of all you do, go always to the New Testament. The = ways of Christ are easier than the ways of men. Religion as taught by Christ ish simpler and easier than religion as it is taught by anyone else, whoever presumes — to instruct us. It is not difficult to be the Christian whom Christ seeks, the friend 4 who follows Him, who loves Him, believes in Him, finds truest joy in doing His — will. This doctrine of faith illustrates it, and from those who bid us, and with reason, ~ obtain more faith I turn hopefully to Him who never had an unkind word for the smallest faith, but gave to it the opportunity to grow. He encouraged the mustard — seed to believe that small as it was it could become large enough to give a place to the nests of the birds who needed its branches. Do not despise the little faith which the Lord highly esteems. Do not despair of it. Simply employ it. Do not let it go, or crush and smother it. Give it a chance. 2 If it is real, it will be large enough presently. We must learn not to think lightly of — small people and small things. There was a young man, a shepherd boy, who came ~ to his brothers who were in the army. He was of a ruddy countenance, and full of the ardor of youth. His brothers were disposed to patronize him. “You have — come out to see the soldiers, have you?” He asked what the tumult meant in the — army, the eager talking on every side of him. They told him that a man in the other army had challenged their side to send out a man to fight with him, and it should be in its result as the battle of the armies. Why did not one of the brothers gO, Or some man from the ranks? The spirit of the boy was kindled within him, and when he was taken to the king he offered to be the champion of Israel. The king told him that he was not large enough or strong enough, that this was a giant who had sent out this challenge. But in a boy’s way, the youth said “I was keeping my sheep, and a lion and a bear came down upon the flock and I caught them, and holding their jaws I tore them asunder.” The king said he might go and fight for his country. He gave him his armor and sword; but the boy was not used to them. He took a little weapon, one that he had tried. For oftentimes when a sheep had wandered he had thrown a stone from his sling and brought it back. He had not quite confidence enough in himself. It is the only point where his confidence faltered. He went down to the brook and took five stones. It was four more than he needed, as someone has said. But one stone hurled with the skill and strength of a youth brought the giant to the ground. It was as well as if an army had sur- — rounded him. Yet it was a little thing—the power of a boy’s faith. Let us learn : ; ~ The Little Faith—McKenzie. 443 0 recognize this truth, that force has very little to do with size; that it is life, with Oftentimes we look upon men whose lives seem strong, immovable, and almost nvy them their constancy of feeling and faith. Little do we know what lies behind it all, through how much of effort they have come into the firmness we admire, by how much of effort they are preserving it. Let us not think that while we have fear, weakness, dismay and struggle, others have serene lives, undisturbed. | Their such men, who make no effort to live, and yet keep faith with their conscience and with truth, and find life easy and agreeable as they pass softly on to Paradise. There may be saints, to whom the common words “strive,” “run,” “contend,” are obsolete. But for most good Christians in this world those words retain their mean- ge. We know what they signify. It is an effort to hold the truth against ques- fionings within and denials without. Or, for others, to keep the life truthful, honest, generous. Or, with others, to overcome sin, to have the mastery of feeling and desire, to grow in grace, to be like Christ. Many saintly men and women who telt li le of themselves, when we come near enough to them will whisper of the noiseless effort to control their minds, to govern their temper, to preserve their charity, to make the inner life as sweet and constant and beautiful as the life which we see and admire. It is to their credit and not against them that the effort is real, for merit does not consist in having no warfare, but in having courage and never flinching, and so winning. The fear goes with courage. How can one be brave unless he is afraid? To dare is for our honor, In a battle of the war two officers came together, the one confident, daring, the other with his face pale, his hand trembling as he Id the reins of his horse. The first said, ‘‘Man, you’re afraid!” “I know I am. If you were half as much afraid as I am, you would run away!” Oh, there is a evelation in the lives of saints that surprises us! One of our wisest clergymen a years ago preached a sermon upon faith as the gift of God. In it he alluded to a man of whom few of us have heard, though he was well known to the genera- tion before us. He told of Cecil’s confession that he was greatly disturbed, shaken his faith, by some things that he had read. He could not be quiet, and, greatly roubled, he rose at two o'clock in the morning, and fought the battle against doubt ind unbelief, and conquered them. As the preacher came down the pulpit stairs, nm old man met him, a clergyman of distinction, who held a high place in the shurch and was renowned for the strength and beauty of his life. He took the D1 acher’s hand and with emotion said to him, “I fight my battles at two o'clock n the morning!” q If our faith is small there is reason for keeping it lest it should grow less. One tho fights for the little faith he has will win his way to more. Strong men and trong faith are made by exercise. There can be no question that if faith is to live ind to grow, it must be used. I do not know how many falter in the ways of life; mut let every soul of little faith keep it and move on, and let it rule. There may some to repeat with me the familiar lines: “T- falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world’s altar stairs, That slope through darkness up to God. I stretch lame hands of faith and grope And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all. . .” 444 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. A small faith may avail much if it grasps that which is able to reward it. faith clinging to great strength is of much more value than when the order is revers and the faith is great and that which it trusts is small. If I have faith enou: to call a physician, then my faith is rewarded with his skill. If I have f enough to join myself to Christ it is not the faith that blesses me, but He y gives to me all that He is, and can give it because I have united my feeble life to His. The great thing to regard is the one to be trusted. If the ship has gone dow I would rather hold by one finger to the gunwale of a boat than with both hands clasp a chip. I would rather that with one hand you should touch the cross Christ than that with both arms you should encircle the world. The world w slip away from you or draw you down with it, but Christ will draw you up to Hi self. He seized Peter’s hand and saved him, and if He can have your hand will save you. It is not the amount of your faith. What is it you are trusting? The vital point is there. A man may trust himself and fall with himself. He may trust to men who are infirm like himself. The Christian is the man who trusts Christ wi his whole being, or his whole finger, and then goes up to reign with Him. We are in need of eternal life. How shall we obtain it? It is a true saying that we are saved by faith. What the words mean is this: We are saved by Christ a faith is the act that lays hold upon His strength. The words by which He calls are simple words and make their appeal to those who are able to regard them. We may not be equal to mysteries and systems, but we know what these words mean, “Come,” “follow,” “look,” “drink.” We must come to Him, but it may be a very simple way. The description given long after He had returned to heaven is full of encouragement for those who have little knowledge and little strength. “Behold” He said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” It was a long and weary way a for Him, but He stands at the door. What have we to do? So little that we may ~ fail to do even that. If it were more, we might rise to perform it. “If any man hear My voice’—that is not very hard—‘‘and open the door.” A child could do that. Not very much, but essential. Not a great faith, but some faith, real faith. Not large desire, but some desire. Not great action, but something done. “Hear open, I will come in to him, and will sup with him of that which he has to offer me, and he shall sup with me of the bread of heaven which I bring to him.” If once our } faith unites our heart to His, then His life becomes our life. He is the Savior. — Touch Him. Trust Him. With the faith you have look up to Him for more, but — look with the full use of what you have. By grace are ye saved, through faith, an that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man shoul boast. Hear also the words of the Psalm. ‘“‘For the Lord God is a sun and a shield.” “The Lord will give grace and glory.” ‘‘No good thing will He withhold — from them that walk uprightly.” “O Lord God of hosts, blessed is the man that — trusteth in Thee!” * But the trust that has the blessing is alive. If God has chosen the poor of this . world who are rich in faith, still not many mighty, not many noble are called, and — the wealth of faith consists not in its abundance, but in its obedient use. With the — faith we have let us venture out, dare something. Let us go beyond ourselves. faith breathe the outer air and get vigor by exercise. In your faith believe. Believe — that if you give yourself into Christ’s keeping you shall have eternal life. Rest quietly — and seek no other way of life. With your little faith make your confession as a man who, according to the measure of his strength, is following Christ. With your little faith go on to serve Him beyond the path which you are treading, deepening and broadening life. In the faith you have, let conscience and opportunity and Christ 1 you where they will. If our faith be small, our conduct can be large. It has bee very well said that “we only believe as deep as we live.” Perhaps it might be rea i The Little Faith—McKenzie. 445 another way. “We only live as deep as we believe.” This certainly is true, that ith and life belong together and depend upon one another, and by the increase of we gain the enlargement of both. So shall we prove in our life the worthiness of ur faith, for we have years before us, centuries of broken life in Him in whom we live. o begin the life of trust, of close and vital confidence, is to live. It is not the size it, it is the truth of it, and its power shall have the witness of our daily walk and ork— “Till from the pillow of the thinker, lying In weakness, comes the teaching, then best taught, That the true crown for any soul in dying Is Christ, not genius; and is faith, not thought.” _ [Alexander McKenzie was born at New Bedford, Mass., December 14, 1830, graduating from Harvard 1859, receiving degrees from Andover and Amherst, pastor 9f First Congregational Church, Cambridge, Mass., since 1867; preacher to and lecturer at Harvard College, president of trustees of Wellesley College, and on board of many other public institutions. Among his literary work is A Door Opened, Some fhings Abroad, The Divine Force in the Life of the World, etc.] 446 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE BELIEVER’S PORTION IN CHRIST. CHARLES PETTIT McILVAINE, DVD: “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”—Col. 1: 12. ~ Iti is as much the duty of the Christian to give thanks, as to pray, unto the Father. If we are commanded to “pray without ceasing,” we are also commanded “‘in every- thing to give thanks.” In everything, it is a Beeat matter of thankfulness, that we are permitted, enabled, and so graciously encouraged, to pray. A sinner permitted to under the invitations of the Gospel, instead of being condemned to live eternally where only the wrath of God abideth, can never in anything lack a theme of thanksgiving. But a sinner whose heart has been drawn by the grace of God to the embracing of he is now made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, hav in that very condition of his heart the indwelling earnest and witness of the Spirit that | he will finally become a partaker in that glorious inheritance; he surely must in every- thing give thanks; no adversity, no affliction, must ever hide from his sight his bound-_ less debt of pee to the riches of the grace of God to his soul; all his life long he must be so deeply sensible of the preciousness of his hope in Chess and of the wonder-_ ful mercy of God in bringing him thereto, out of the sinfulness and condemnation of — his unconverted state, as to make it his heart’s delight to give thanks unto the Father, — who thus hath made him ‘“‘meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.” In considering the words of the text, let us attend: z I. To the manner in which the future blessedness of the people of God is pre- sented: an “‘inheritance’—“‘the inheritance of the saints’—‘‘the inheritance of the saints _ in light.” _ The portion of the people of God is an inheritance. They are called elsewhere, “heirs of salvation,” “heirs of the kingdom.” ‘He that overcometh, shall inherit all things.” Christ will say to His people in the last day: “Inherit the kingdom prepared — for you from the foundation of the world.” Now there is a great Gospel truth contained in the word inheritance. It teaches that the future portion of the righteous is not their purchase. They do not obtain it on the basis of merit, but of relationship. They do not make themselves heirs; but they are made heirs by the will and favor of their Heavenly Father. A father makes’a — son his heir, not because the son has merited the inheritance, but because he is a son, a dear son. Thus it is written: ‘The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with — Christ.” If children of God, then heirs of God—children by adoption, taken up out of a miserable beggary, and adopted as God’s dear children, and thus made inheritors of Himself as our boundless portion. But this is not all: “joint heirs with Christ.” If God’s children, then Christ’s brethren; and in virtue of that union with Christ we inherit jointly with Him. In ourselves we can have no title to the inheritance. In Christ, the only begotten Son of God, the sons, by adoption, have a most perfect, indefeasible title. He, in His mediatorial office, is “heir of all things.” We, in Him, shall inherit all things. Thus it is that such glorious things are spoken of the future The Belicver’s Portion in Christ—Mcllvaine. 447 possession of His people. “To him that overcometh,”’ He saith, “I will grant to sit with me on my throne;” not merely in my kingdom, but on my throne; not merely to share the blessings of my kingdom, but to share the glory of its King; my brethren in glory, my joint heirs in all that I inherit of my Father. Thus it is written, that “His P ople shall reign with Him,” “shall be glorified together” with Him, and that God doth make them “‘sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.’ In the last day, when our Lord shall be receiving His people to Himself, His words to each will be, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord,” into mine own joy, which thou dost inherit, because thou art in me and I in thee. And when He shall have thus gathered together all His beloved ones that believe in Him, to be with Him where He is, to be glorified with Him and in Him, then shall His own inheritance of joy be completed in their salvation and blessedness—all having come “‘in the unity of the faith, and of the knowl- edge of the Son of God, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” And thus we see how much of the portion of the people of God in the world to come is described, in its being called an inheritance. It teaches how that portion is all of grace; how it results simply from our having received “‘the adoption of sons;” how necessary as the evidence of our title is “the spirit of adoption” in our hearts; and how, ‘since our inheritance is a joint inheritance with that of Christ, we must look only to His merits for the title, and to a vital union with Him through faith that we may share herein. It teaches, moreover, what St. Paul calls the “riches of glory” of that inheri- tance. What description of riches of glory can exceed that of simply telling us we shall be “joint heirs with Christ?” We have in the text another feature of the future bliss. It is called the “inheri- tance of the saints.” The saints are the “sanctified in Christ Jesus.”” To none else is the inheritance, and in that exclusiveness do we see much of its excellence. It is thus an inheritance ‘“unde- . None are there but those whom God hath perfectly sanctified. All there have “the mind of Christ in its perfectness.” It is a Church which He hath sanctified and cleansed, “that He might present it unto Himself, a glorious Church, not having spot, wrinkle, or any such thing.’ Sin enters not into that inheritance, sorrow goes not Tears have no fountain there. ‘No spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing” hh pon the white raiment of that holy fellowship. Holy ones made perfect are the only dwellers there. ‘The former things are passed away.” The Church of Christ will not then be as now, a church defiled; tied to a body of death; the living mingled every- where with the dead; the Christian of a vital faith, and the Christian of a mere lifeless form, united under the same profession of discipleship; the children of this world communing outwardly with the true, but imperfect family of God. Oh! no. Nor will i this life; holy indeed essentially, but so imperfectly holy; saints indeed, because truly sa netified in Christ Jesus—but saints conscious of coming so far short i in holiness, that will then have become new—not only as being Hal but as being all perfectly holy. ‘The spirits of just men made perfect,” is the description of that fellowship. Oh! it is precious to think of a heritage so excluding all unholiness: But it is most alarming’ for you, my hearers, in whom the work of holiness is not commenced. While, however, it is good to think of that inheritance as exclusive of all but saints, we love to think of it as inclusive of all that are saints. We drop our denomination uniform when we undress at the grave. It belongs to those things that are seen and are temporal. We enter into eternal life in no raiment but the white robe of Christ, which are unseen and eternal. If it be necessary to this most imperfect state of the Church, that we should be divided as we now are; it is good to think of it as a humilia- 448 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. tion which can last only while we are here. The grave will cover it with our corrupt ible bodies. The only name to be inquired for, in ascertaining the inheritors of Christ, | is saints—the sanctified—those who have been born again of the Spirit of God, and are | walking in newness of life. Bring them from the east, and west, and north, and south— from all generations, from out of all divisions of the Christian family, from under any | name, or form! Each has his lot in that good land. All inherit by the same title im Christ; and therefore all “inherit all things.” In the poverty of earthly inheritances, the more one heir obtains, the less all others have. But in the fullness of the inhert- tance of the saints each inherits all, as if there were no heir but himself—or rather because all inherit as one body in Christ. Oh! it is a most blessed heritage that shall ship of the people of God, out of all nations, and kindreds, and tongues; all seeing eye to eye; all feeling heart to heart; all children of the same redeeming grace; all brethren of the same wondrous adoption in Christ; all most glorious in His likeness; “the communion of saints” in its perfectness; “the Catholic Church” in its fullness; “the general assembly and Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven.” But there is another feature of the inheritance. It is the inheritance of the saints in light. In light! What so pure as perfect light? Whence all the varied beauties of nature, but from light? Light is an expression for God Himself, its Maker. “God is light.” It describes His people here; they are “children of light.” It describ their progressive advancement in grace; their path is pictured in scripture “as the morning light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” And here describes their future glory, when their path shall have reached meridian—the perfect day; they shall be saints in light. God is light; and they shall be like Him and i. Him as He is. But how shall we understand this description of the inheritance? I read it as having reference to the comparison between the perfect state of the saints in heaven, in point of spiritual knowledge, and their imperfect state while here on earth; just what the same Apostle referred to, when he said, ‘Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now we know in part; then we shall be known even as we are known.” Now we see by aid of a glass—a revelation, an instrumental medium. We see at a distance, at second hand. A thousand motes and mists hinder our vision of spiritual and eternal things. Constant vapors rise up from earth and our own evil natures to obscure our vision. At best we know but in part—nothing entirely; nor can we know how little we are capable of knowing of that boundless field. But then we shall see face to face, in open, boundless vision. We shall dwell with God, in the light which no man can now approach unto. We shall know without tuition, see without a medium, understand without interpreter—‘‘saints in light.” Thus I understand that description of the city of God in the Revelation of St. John. “The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” God is light—its fountain, its fullness; and what need of lesser lights in heaven, when He is there? They will need no sun or moon; in other words, no intervening medium of communication from God to them. Their communion with “God and the Lamb” will be “face to face.” Now, we do need the aid of the sun and moon—we depend upon secondary lights. In this world we must walk by faith, not by sight, and must have the aid of means of grace. What are the ministers of the world; what the sacraments of the Church; what the revelation contained in the scriptures, but parts of a system of instrumental secondary lights, teaching us that we see not yet face te face; that however great our knowledge and privileges, compared with what they woulc have been without those aids; however sufficient and most precious our revelation fo! all the present necessities of the soul, we are far yet from the perfect day. Ministers The Belicver’s Portion in Christ—Mcllvaine. 449 d sacramental signs, and a written inspired word, are marks of the Church in the derness. God is with her, but in the pillar of cloud. They are marks of a state of ace not yet complete. God is communicating with His people, but it is from behind e veil of the inner sanctuary. But the Church in glory will have no need of human linistry, nor of visible signs of spiritual grace, nor of an inspired book, revealing, der the imperfections of human language, the things of the Spirit of God. The ints being “heirs of God,” their portion will be therefore His fullness. God is light— iginal, perfect, boundless light. They will commune directly with that light, that oliness, that truth, that infinite knowledge, that boundless wisdom. They will be ints in light, because saints in the full vision of God. In contemplating that blessed tate, Isaiah dipped his pen in the same effulgence as St. John, and wrote: “The sun hall be no more thy light by day, neither shal! the moon give light unto thee, but the ord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory, and the days of hy mourning shall be ended.” How sweet that sentence, “the days of thy mourning hall be ended!” St. John’s account of it is: “God shall wipe away all tears from their yes.” We know not which descriptionis the most engaging—that of the evangelical rophet, or of the prophetic evangelist? Neither could speak of the light of that brow of the saints, without telling how it would banish all the sorrows which sin $ brought upon our hearts, even to the drying up of the last tear; just as all the emnants of night, even to the last drop of dew, are wiped from the face of nature by he radiance of the sun. But we must come to the second division of our discourse. St. Paul, in the text, nites with his fellow Christians in giving thanks unto the Father, because he had jade them meet, or fit—qualified in Spirit, to be partakers of the inheritance of the aints. And from this we take our second head. II. We cannot partake in that blessedness, unless we are first, by the transforming Tace of God, in this present life, made meet for it. _ One would suppose it could hardly be needful to use many words to demonstrate > plain a truth. We really partake in nothing unless we are meet to be partakers. { sick man cannot partake in a sumptuous feast. It will not be a feast to him; € is not meet for it. A man without an ear attuned to musical sounds may sit in e midst of the richest harmonies; but he cannot partake in them, however he ay hear them. Take a man of grovelling mind, and place him in a circle of he most refined and intellectual; bid him associate his mind with theirs. You might as well command the deaf to hear, or the blind to see. How irksome at company! You easily perceive the reason. His mind is not fitted, his astes are not qualified for such privileges. Well, then, suppose I should find a tle company of saints made perfect, come down from heaven, on some errand from id, to earth, and keeping here for a little while their endless Sabbath of holiness and fappiness, as they keep it in heaven; and suppose I should take a man of the world, ch as we meet with everywhere—his affections all running upon earthly things, all fined to earthly things, and set him down in that circle, and say to him, “Now, ake in their happiness. You think that all you need to make you happy hereafter s Only to be admitted to heaven. Try! Here is a little of heaven; join those blessed own blood, and hath made them kings and priests unto God.” Why, one might as speak to the dead. Not a chord is there in his heart to harmonize with their joys. 2 is all strange in his sympathies to them, and they to him. How would he like to nothing else but their company and their pleasures, with his own present disposi- jon s, for ever and ever? What heaven would that be to him? His whole moral being be changed, before he can be meet to partake with the saints of God on high in ; | | ; 450 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. their holy blessedness. And so long as that change is not wrought, no decree of God is needed to shut him out of the presence of His glory, or the fellowship of the heavenly host. A decree powerful enough is written in the man’s own affections. His own | heart excludes him. A mere title to heaven would not help him. What if he should even be allowed to come to the table of that heavenly feast? He could not partake. He would sit there all deaf and dumb and dead amidst boundless life, My dear hearers, let us well understand what constitutes salvation. Two things are — essential, and both are brought to view in the connection of our text. St. Paul, speak- ing of Jesus, says: “In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” That is one of the two—forgiveness of sins. It opens the door © to the habitation of the saints in light. Very precious, indeed, but it is not all. Then, in the text, we have those who have obtained the forgiveness of sins, that open door, — now giving thanks for another thing, namely, that they have been made “‘meet to be — partakers of the inheritance” to which that door admits them, That is the second of — the two great gifts which make up our salvation. The one removes the barrier on the © side of the broken law; the other, the barrier on the side of our own corrupt, carnal nature. The first is taken away in God’s being reconciled to us through the mediation of Christ. The second is taken away in our hearts being reconciled to God by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. They come inseparably. Neither is ever without the other. They come both out of the great sacrifice on the cross. Faith draws both together from Him who “was wounded for our transgressions, and by whose stripes we are healed” —‘“the water and the blood.” Whom God justifies, He also sanctifies ~ In whom these two are united, the forgiveness of sins and the meetness for the inheri- | tance, in them is salvation. They are saints. In whom both are perfected, salvation is consummated. They are saints made perfect. p But what is that meetness for the inheritance of the saints? It is surely likeness to the inheritance. It is conformity of our affections to the nature of the blessedness. Is that blessedness the presence and glory of God? Then the meetness for it is to be holy, since God is holy. Is it a joint inheritance with Christ? Then to be meet for it, is to be like Christ; to have His mind in us, that His joy may be in us. It is to be assimi- lated to Him in our affections, that we may be associated with Him in His heritage. It is to be not of the world, even as He is not of the world. It is to have our affections. set on things above, “where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” It is to be “dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is to love the will and service of God as our present happiness; to know by our present experience the sweetness of communion with Him as His own children; to have such a’sense of the preciousness of Christ to our souls that we can participate with some degree of real consciousness in that declaration of the early believers: “‘Whom, having not seen, we love; in whom though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice, with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” a Vast, indeed, is the difference between that meetness for the inheritance which believers in their highest sanctification, this side the grave, possess, and that of those who have now entered into possession. It seems, indeed, that it must take a mighty work of grace to make any Christian now on earth, with all our infirmities and remain- ing sinfulness, capable of the presence of God in His manifested glory. So it must, unquestionably. The eye that has never seen “the things of the Spirit of God” but “through a glass darkly,” must needs undergo a mighty change of capacity before it is capable of looking on all those wonderful and glorious mysteries, face to face. The heart that has never communed with the holiness and majesty of God, but on this side the veil, must needs be prepared with a vast measure of new adaptation before it can bear to be introduced to the presence of that unveiled, infinite holiness and glory, on which even the seraphim look not with open face, The Belicver’s Portion in Christ—Mcllvaine. 451 But the change required is only like that of a child that is now meet essentially for he inheritance of his father, because he is a true child, with all the faculties of a child; it who must attain to manhood, and have all those faculties matured, before he can be ready to enter into full possession of the inheritance. What would you say of the ieetness of an infant to possess, and manage, and enjoy, a magnificent estate inherited from his father? But in one most important sense that infant is meet. He has the nind—he has the faculties. All he wants is their development, their ripening, their manhood. The essential preparation he has. It is only the perfecting he needs. You have not to change what he is, but simply to mature it. And thus we understand the present meetness of the Christian in the imperfectness of his earthly state, for the presence of the glory of God in heaven. What though but the youngest child in grace, however old in years—just born again of the Spirit— just beginning the experience of newness of life—every affection and faculty of his heart in infant feebleness, but all nevertheless in living reality? Great indeed is the growth he must make, now that he has just opened his eyes upon such light as comes to us here in this moonlight night, before he can be qualified for the light of that city, where moon and sun are invisible by reason of the light of the unveiled countenance ‘of God. eady) made him “meet to be a partaker with the saints in light.” He is meet, iecause he is God’s regenerate and adopted child. He is meet, because he has all the lind, and heart, and sympathies, and relations, of a child of God. He is meet, essen- tially, though not maturely. The time to enter upon the inheritance has not yet come. Meanwhile, his calling is that of a child of God in minority and pupilage; to see ie inheritance only in reversion, and in the distance; to live in the hope of it, and to be educated for it; and God giveth him grace for that need. When his calling shall be ‘to go hence from the nursery of spiritual childhood, and take his place in the full Citizenship of “the commonwealth of Israel;” to stand in the General Assembly and is meetness will grow with his privilege. When God shall take him to the highest , He will bring forth the best robe and put it on him. Oh! but what a difference there is between the change which that child of God Must undergo to make his present feebleness of holy attainment meet for the fullness the future inheritance; and, on the other hand, the change that must take place in man, in whom not a feature, not an affection, not a sympathy, not a faculty, of the ild of God has ever found a place! In the former case, it is only a change from ning to noon—the day is the same. It is only a transition from the child to the man; the being is the same. But in the latter, it must be a change from night to day, from death to life; from the man who is in no sense a child of God, to the man who is | everything His living, loving child. In the former case, death is the certain intro- ction to the full completion of the glorious advancement. In the latter, death, ding the essential change not made, sets the seal to the certainty of its never being lade to all eternity. And now, would you be told how that meetness for the inheritance of the saints is tained? I answer, it is no endowment of our natural state. All the meetness of this en and depraved nature of ours is for the inheritance of the unholy in darkness erlasting. The mind that is in man by nature, and the mind that is in the wicked lost in hell, is essentially the same mind; just as the mind of the Christian here, 452 Pulpit Poreer and Eloquence. and of the saint with God, is essentially the same. I doubt not there is an awful maturity of wickedness in hell, for which the unregenerate in this world are not pre- pared in point of present growth. It would shock them, were it now seen by the worst of them: just as in “the brightness of the Father’s glory,” as seen by the saints in light, there is a manifestation for which the regenerate on earth, in point of maturity of grace, are not meet, But in every unregenerate man here there is “the carnal mind,” which “is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” That is all that is needed. The meetness for the fellowship of the lost is thus in him ~ essentially. It needs but development. Change of worlds, irom a place of hope to 1 prison of despair; from a condition of a thousand corrective and restraining influences, — to one where none exist, and where every pent-up corruption of the heart is set loose, ; and set on fire, to range and rage without limit—such change will soon consummate the meetness of a lost soul for all the wickedness and misery of the outer darkness. Do you ask again, whence comes that essential meetness for the inheritance of the saints, which I have described as the possession of every child of God in this world? The answer is in our text. St. Paul, with his fellow-Christians, said, “Giving thamks — unto the Father, which hath made us meet,” etc. They ascribed all they had of prepa- ; ration for the inheritance to the power of God. He made them what they were, as Christians. “We are His workmanship (they said), created in Christ Jesus.” So mighty a change as that which forms out of such a being as man, in all t depravity of his natural heart, a being meet to associate with Christ and His saints, © they could ascribe to no power less than God’s. He who created man originally in His own likeness, that He might qualify him for His own fellowship, now that we have lost | that likeness, must by the same power create us anew, or we cannot be heirs of God Hence that strong declaration, “If any man be in Christ;” if out of all mankind there be a true Christian, a child of God, a joint heir with Christ, “he is a new creature.” The work that made him what he is, was a new creation. The power that made “— what he is, was the power that created the heavens and the earth. Of the like testimony are these joyful words of St. Peter: “Blessed be the Gost and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, accerding to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again into a lively hope, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.” What prepared them for such an inheritance? They were” “begotten again.” Who accomplished that new birth in them? ‘The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” in His abundant mercy. That new birth made them His children. That relation of children connected them with the inheritance. “If children, © then heirs.” Invert this sentence and it will be equally true and important—lf heirs, then children. Add—If children, then begotten again by the spirit of God. Add further—If not so begotten again, then ye cannot see the kingdom of God. : Oh, what alarming conclusions necessarily follow from all we have said, in regard to the hopelessness of those of you, my hearers, in whom no such inward, transforming work of grace is found! How painful to be obliged to draw such lines of exclusion | from the blessed heritage in prospect! But we have this alleviation and comfort, that the line is not yet so drawn as never to be crossed. You that find it marking you off from the fellowship of the kingdom, you may cross it yet, if you will strive; the hand of God is outstretched to lift you over when you strive. And it is by this painful plainness in drawing that line before you, and showing where it places you, that we hope, by the blessing of the Holy Ghost, to contribute to the raising up of a fixed determination in your hearts, that by the grace of God you will overpass it, and so gain a place among the inheritors of life. But what precious encouragement and assurance there is in all we have said, to those who, having the love of God in them, and habitually loving His ways, are thus — The Believer’s Portion in Christ—Mcllvaine. 453 ‘ J repared essentially to be with Him in glory! Their pleasure of heart in His word and ess, is “the earnest Of the Spirit.” It witnesses with their spirit, that they are children, id therefore heirs of God. The Lord “gives grace and glory;” glory, the maturity of race; grace, the promise and preparation for glory; both where there is either. The ie, the first fruits of the Spirit; the other, the fullness of the ripe harvest of grace. sure as we have now the one, we shall hereafter possess the other. The heart that meumber it no more. To be meet for the inheritance is the assurance of obtaining it. fe that fashions you for it, will certainly take you to it. Then be joyful in God, and raise Him for the riches of His grace! So run that ye may obtain So seek that ye nay find. So press toward the mark of the prize that ye may be sure of the blessed- ess promised to him that endureth to the end. Amen. [Rt. Rev. Charles Pettit McIlvaine, D. D., D. C. L., president of the American — ‘ract Society, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, January 18th, 1799. In his seven- th year, he graduated at Nassau Hall, Princeton. From 1825 to 1827, he was chap- ain and professor of ethics at West Point. He was consecrated Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio in 1832. By speech and pen, he s ever allied himself with the whole Church of Christ, well saying: ‘We drop our enomination uniform when we undress at the grave.” Although past threescore and en, Bishop Mcllvaine crossed the Atlantic to intercede with the Czar of Russia for the Jigfous rights of his Protestant subjects. He died at Florence, Italy, March 13, 1873. _ This sermon is from a volume entitled The Truth and the Life.] 454 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. WHAT DAVID SAID IN HIS HEART. — JOHN McNEILL. David said in heart, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philis- tines.”—1 Samuel 27: 1. , a We find David here where the Word of God allows us occasionally to find some — of God’s best and greatest servants. Lest they should feel exalted above measure they — were brought down into great depths, and made to dwell in dark places many a time. "4 And I suppose, lest we also, reading their lives, if there had been no such record as” this, lest we might be depressed by seeing how unshaken was their strength and courage, even in the darkest hours, the Word of God shows us carefully that they were men of like passions with ourselves, even the “brightest and best of these sons of the morning.” Elijah lies down under a juniper tree, fleeing from the curse of a woman—_ he who has withstood all the godless power of his age alone on the heights of Carmel. — And David, here at last, gives in and says, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of | Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land | of the Philistines.” 7 David in the dumps: just to state it plainly, and without too fine a point upon it Does not this bring him near to us, who are so often dull and dispirited and discour- aged? Let us learn from David here. Notice, first of all: David said this in his heart. Watch, as David ought to have watched. Watch against the tendency to- brood over your troubles and say sad things to yourself, in your heart. It would be. a much better plan sometimes to say them out loud. I know that from this very place © I have discouraged the spreading of doubt; and have said, and would repeat, “If you ~ have doubts keep them to yourself.” But that depends upon what kind of doubt it ise In an hour like this it would have done David good (and it will do you good, my discouraged brother and sister) to have expressed to some friend, in actual word and © shape, that dull, heartless, despairing thought that lay on his heart like a lump of lead. David said it in his heart. If he had only gone and said it to some boon com- ~ panion “It is all up; I am marked for destruction; I am done for, and my time is come,” — it would have given the friend a chance to have vigorously but kindly contradicted him; — to remind him of things he was forgetting; to have spoken to him of God, and the covenant and promise of God, of that far-back day when Samuel in God’s name called 4 him to be king in the place of Saul; when he was anointed in the midst of his brethren, q and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, as the Scripture says, “from that day and forward.” Yes, to unlock our hearts at times would do us good. It is a precious — privilege when you are in—shall I say—the blues; when you are in this kind of spiritual — delirium tremens; when you are intoxicated, not with liquor, but when your brain and heart and judgment are reeling because God in His providence has put a bitter cup to your lips and is compelling you to drain it to the dregs; when hope is deferred, and therefore your heart is getting so sick that at last you cast away both shield and spear and say, “I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.” Don’t say it in your heart. In an hour of weak faith, which is virtually an hour of unbelief, the believer’s heart is a place of darkness where it is always November, with What David Said in His Heart—McNeill. 455 a fog that seems to be impenetrable, and nothing all round but rushing noises and gruesome, flesh-creeping sounds that increase your fright and despair. Turn, then, rom solitary brooding to some brother born for adversity, some “Son of Consola- ion,” and unpack your load to him. But further, if David had just taken this thought out of his heart and gone in before God with it! David could pray; he was a power n prayer. And if he had gone in before God and tried to make this thought of his sad heart into a prayer, he would have found that there wasn’t enough tow to make a rope that would reach to God. You can spin away at it as long as you like, but you will never make a prayer of it. Such a thought as this, “I shall perish,” won’t pray. To get deliverance try to turn your doubt into prayer and see how your tongue wags empty in your head. You cannot pray this. Go and try it, you who are badgered and worried and threatened by besetting sins—by troubles that seem to blot out heaven and make the present evil world more noisy and oppressive than ever. Let David go in before God and say “out loud,” ‘“‘O God, here Iam. I am David. I am the man with the promise. I am the man over whose head the horn of oil was poured. I am he man to whom Thou didst promise to give the throne of Saul; and I have come before Thee to say, ‘It’s all over: I shall perish by Saul’s hand.” Then he would have ‘discovered the blasphemy of it. Then your tongue would cleave to the roof of your ‘mouth, and you would say, “Perish the thought of perishing! I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord.” Ah! the thought that won’t pray is of the devil; md you are relieved when you discover it. You bend your knees before God and say *O God, I must not say, ‘Thou art a liar, and Samuel is a liar; and everybody is a liar but me’” (but rather means that). “‘O God, Saul is greater than Thou art. Thou hast taken a work in hand, and Thou art not able to finish it. Thou didst begin to nild a tower, and Thou hast run short of material. I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul.’” _ Then there is another way of getting rid of these thoughts that burrow in our earts. First, as we have seen, speak to another and he will help you. You will find our better self in him. Or, next, speak to God in prayer, and you,will find this loleful thing won’t pray. Or, yet again, try to sing it; I say again, David was some- thing of a singer. Now, suppose he had tried to compose a song on this magnificent theme, “I shall now one day perish by the hand of Saul,’’ what a psalm that would ve been! What a grunt in it, what a squeak, what a growl! Here is a specimen of the dreary doggerel which would have been produced by such inspiration, or despera- on rather: God said that He would raise me, And set me up on high; But mighty Saul he slays me In Howling Engedi. Chorus: In howling Engedi, etc. | i. | He never dreamed of doing that. If he had only tried he would have found that his thought, “I shall perish, God notwithstanding,” will neither say, nor pray, nor And when you find that out, you are able to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan. ou art an offense unto me. Thou savorest not of the things that be of God, and the nant and the oath that shall outlast the heavens. But thou savorest the things ut be of earth, and time and sin.”’ I am inclined to push this even further. David S a good musician, and he might have tried to play it on his harp; but no well con- sted instrument would ever lend itself to such blasphemy. You can neither say, ay, sing, play, or even whistle it: “I shall perish by the hand of Saul.” It is a ght that will only live in a desponding heart. And that David said it “in his heart” the Bible is careful significantly to record. ) 456 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Then notice how extremes meet. Notice how a believer in the extreme of timidity and fright joins hands with an atheist. David said in his heart, “I shall perish.” “ fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Extremes meet, the extreme of atheis n and the extreme faithlessness in a believer; paradoxical though it may seem, they co ne virtually to the same thing: “There is no God. This world was made for Cesar, and Cesar has me in his clutch, God and the promise notwithstanding.” I want to be hard, you see, on us, for when it comes to this, sharp, strong tonics landed himself. By looking on Saul, and misreading the past, and taking a wrong forecast of the future, he came to the same position as the poor atheist, whom he him- self, in a brighter moment, called a fool: “The fool hath said in his heart, No God.” q We are very much like each other. If I lose hold of God, where am I? If I lose hold of my simple faith in what God has promised and what He has revealed in Christ Jesus, there are no depths of blackness and godlessness into which I may not descend. My strength—my only strength—is, not genius, or learning, or a high position in the love of God, who spoke to me by Jesus Christ, and said, “Believe in me, and will crown you and set you on the throne.” All I have for it is His word; and if I lose faith in that, the devil in the meantime has cut with his long shears the cord that binds me to the throne of heaven, and I fall back into the pit of practical atheism. have no hope’and am without God in the world. Then another thing I want you to notice is, when we get faint-hearted, and lose sight of God, and Christ, and the exceeding great and precious promises, how unbelief waxes strong, and bold, and very imprudent. It begins to get exceeding proud. “How absolute the knave is!” ‘I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.” Unbelief gets hold of the imagination, and working through the imagination, when faith ought to be working there, conjures up the whole circumstance. He sees himself in the grip of Saul, and almost imagines that the hour of butchery is come. Unbelief in your heart will do the same. The weak, timid, overborne faith will feed itself on all that is dark (seemingly) round about, and bring vividly in close upon the hea “ this thought, “By the hand of Saul.” * The relief is found just this way: Let us turn round upon ourselves, let us tu 1 round upon this unbelief, and try to get the thing definitely and plainly. For there is a wonderful vagueness after all in this threatening, “I shall now perish one day.” Oh, the meanness of the devil! ‘One day.” If he would just come and tell me — explicitly what day it is, and let me know the worst, and get ready for the funeral, and serve the notices upon my friends that they may be there! But he says, “One day,” “Some day.” It is coming, it is coming, “I will not blot you out. I will destroy you Some of these days I will be round. Don’t you say ‘cheep’ to either God or man. Tam _ at the door, and I will have your blood some of these outings.” When, O devil? Whe r O world? When, O flesh? Tell us when it is to be. Give us the day and date. I me | busy man myself, and my book gets very rapidly filled up with engagements, but real ‘i this is an engagement I would like to attend. Tell us precisely when it is to be, that we may enter it in our book, and be sure to be there. Name the day! That is how to get at the devil of unbelief. He never can name the day. He is a big, blustering bravado and bully, forever talking big, vague threats, but you always find him out when you come to particulars. When is the day that I am to perish by the hand of Saul? Well, evidently it is not in any of the yesterdays. It is worth while just to ope he calendar and see. If it is to be, let it be. As well kill me, as frighten me to death What David Said in His Heart—McNeill. 457 So we look through past yesterdays, and say, ““Well, of course any fool can see that I can’t die yesterday. The date can’t be found in the past.” Don’t smile too readily at that, my friend. Weren’t there some yesterdays that looked full like the days you should have been killed? Days when so far as your watchfulness was concerned, you might have been killed. Days when you were not watching. Days when you were not praying. Days when the enemy, like a roaring lion, was going about seeking to ‘devour you—and it was not your own vigilance that kept you from him, and yet, behold! you live! not dead yet, notwithstanding all these dark, gloomy days through yhich, by God’s grace, you have come. Might you not get an argument from that? From the past might not you borrow comfort for today? Let memory bring up to you ‘actual experiences when you and Saul were together—that is to say, when you and sin were together—and you were down and Saul was up, and his spear was at your throat. Why was it not driven home? It was not you that kept it; it was not relent- ng in Saul that spared you. He meant well to destroy you. Then why do you live? Then this evil day about which the devil is always bullying you, I do not, some- how, think it is going to be today. Surely God will never allow the devil to kill us “on Sunday, in the house of God and at the gate of heaven. Watch your own heart and you will find it is not to be today. Even at our lowest, and worst and gloomiest, we do not allow ourselves to write down today as the day and date. Somehow or nother we shove it on a little bit. Take courage, then. If you can be kept today, it comfort from it. “Out of the. eater comes forth meat, and out of the strong comes forth sweetness.” Your yesterdays are like Samson’s rent lion. Your yesterdays are and go on eating today. It is not to be today. Since you woke up, God has kept you safe. He has some- you opened your eyes this morning till ten minutes past twelve. This is what He has done in all the days, ever since He began to deal with you. In this last day in which you have lived, this day when all these things are fore- Shortened and made prominent and vivid, God has kept you. And I want you to believe that the same grace, the same Invisible Presence that has been a wall of fire round about you since you began this morning, that has kept you for twelve hours, can keep you for twelve millenniums. Narrow the thing down. Do not let fear and _ gloom forever drive you out before them; but turn round, resist this devil, and he will flee from you. Don’t be overborne by bluster and vague threatenings. “I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul.” You did not perish in the days past. It does not look as if you are going to perish today. And as for tomorrow, you, and tomorrow, and aul are in wiser and stronger hands. Don’t cross the bridge before you come to it. on’t carry tomorrow’s burdens, and today’s. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” “Tommorow will take thought for the things of itself.’ Thank God that in s brief hour, today, we have been able to see the hollowness of our fear; their unsub- fantialness. Even you at your lowest can see that the day’ cannot be found in all the Oary registers of time. The day you shall go under, and when the world shall have s foot upon your heart—that day, heaven, nor earth, nor hell know aught of such a _ “There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines.’ Ah! poor David, I know you are about to go wrong. I have gone wrong in that way myself. You are going to take Saul, and your salvation, and God into your own hands. We all often do that. We get tired, the road seems long, idea. Go over to the Philistines, Saul will trouble you no more.” And they would — 458 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. know; and is there knowledge in the Most High?” ‘Why is He so long?” And we force ourselves. like Saul, on one occasion. We force ourselves, we cannot wait. We are being kept too long in this purgatory. ‘‘There is nothing better than this plan,” we say. Now, of all the foolish words in this foolish text, this is the foolishest. Even unbelieving German critics have been swift to see that this was the worst move on the chessboard. He could not have done a worse thing than the thing he did—to quit the | land of promise, with all its trials, and go over to the Philistines. By doing this David put the clock back for years. He really set God upon His omnipotence to extricate him from the fearful tangle into which he put himself, when he said: “There is noth- ing better than that I should speedily escape.” 4 Oh, again I repeat, watch yourself when the fog comes down. How many persons | last winter, and, I fear this winter again—how many persons will be killed through fogs! Down at some busy place is some poor woman—shall I say? In the midst of — the fog, and darkness, and grinding wheels, and contradictory shouts and cries; her judgment reels, and she makes a hasty decision, and rushes in this direction—nothing © better than to fly here , she thinks—and she lands beneath the horses’ feet. In trying ~ to escape from harm, you walk right into it. Then, stand! Having done all, stand! Hold hard! Stand fast in a time like this. Wait for God. Wait; hope in His Word; but yield an inch—never! And you will not wait in vain. It was the worst thing you could have done, and it seemed at the moment so wise. “Must I lie rotting in this cave? Must I be forever badgered in this way?” Go to, call in Mr. Worldly Wiseman. A very clever fellow he is when God has gone to sleep. Go to, call in Mr. Carnal Policy, another sharper. And the two of them sit down — together—three heads are better than one. And they said, “David, here is a bright wax eloquent upon the political aspect of this move, and how the land lay across the became as wax in these ill hands—he yielded to these suggestions, and bitterly he rued it. My young brother, are you tempted today in the awful conflict with sin to say, “Preacher, the struggle is harder, and longer, and more taxing and severe than I bargained for. Preacher, I am going to slip my cable a bit, and I am going to take it easier. This being forever on your guard is too severe. Is there no easier way of getting there, preacher? You see, I meet the feliows who tell me, ‘Don’t be so holy as all that comes to. Don’t needlessly put your bows into the front of all these big, tumbling seas. Don’t forever be rowing against the current. Do as I am doing; slack off, take it easy, go with the wind. Be not righteous overmuch. Why shouldst thou destroy thyself? What has religion given you?’ they say.” Religion! It speaks the word of promise to our ear, but breaks it to our hope. As the devil would whisper to David, “What has God given you since you believed His promise, and left keeping P| sheep, and came out to be His king? Has He brought you to the crown? Saul is nA more firmly on the throne than ever. You have simply brought yourself into a peck — of troubles, and the sooner you quit the scene the better.” “What has religion done for you?” the devil whispers in a man’s ear in Chicago. “Has Faith furthered you in 4 your business? You know it has not. By keeping true to Christ, and a clean con- science, you have had to let profits go past you. Other men ‘took it easier;’ they sailed with more wind in the sheet. Now see the speed they have made, while you are forever close-hauled, and lying-to through stress of weather. Trim your sails the ~ other way; be getting on—be getting on!” So with other suggestions about other things. We are all kind of soft when the struggle is prolonged. We all feel it is hard to crucify the flesh, with its affections and * What David Said in His Heart—McNeill. 459 live unto righteousness. The life of the believer is like the life of David—progress by antagonism, living to God by dying to self. For ever subject to two kinds of pains— he pains of dissolution, and the “growing pains,” caused by the soul shooting up into nore holiness and manliness. Now, don’t yield. Don’t escape to the Philistines. The Philistines will use you. yes, the Philistine will use you. The Philistines will say, “Come along, David. We are glad to see you. We always wondered, David, why you took the dangerous course you did. There is another way—a more excellent way than that way—hiding like a rat in a hole. What an undignified life you have been living. Come to us, and fe will show you how to trump the game and win every time!” Abide with God. Keep faith, keep heart, keep hope; be not in subjection—no not an hour—to the thoughts that make you depart from your integrity. ‘ “When we in darkness walk, Nor feel the heavenly flame, Then is the time to trust in God, And lean upon His name.” Light will come; day will dawn. “Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day, live till tomorrow, will have passed away.” Stand still and see the salvation of God. “Blest is the man, O God, Who stays himself on Thee, Who wait for Thy salvation, Lord, Shall thy salvation see.” _ Oh, let us hold fast through stress of weather. Cast not away your confidence, ike poor David, who pulled up his anchor and ran for a false harbor. Of course the waiting time is a testing time. David was required to wait. It’s a and hardening, toughening process, having to wait. While you are waiting, Provi- lence has you on the anvil, and is hammering, pounding, and seeming to destroy you. It is not so; God is working you, and the end will show how splendidly, to His own veet will, and to His own magnificent design. _ The last word is this—David as we know survived Saul. His fears were all wrong. hey were bound to be wrong. Saul went down to death “unwept, unhonored, and. insung.”” David came to the throne, and sat for long years upon it; and this time of rouble was left far behind him; a vanishing speck on the dim horizon. But when days f honor, and affluence, and power came, then David well-nigh perished, not by the hand of Saul, but by his own. His own unbridled lusts warred against his soul. Look earer home ‘or your enemy, my friend. Your last enemy never is an external Saul. Your real enemy is never outside. Your last worst enemy is the unsubdued sin of own heart. Watch for this Saul. Never take your eyes off this traitor; for in ich an hour as ye think not, he will lull you to sleep, make you think he is not there; nd when as stealthily as a panther he will spring upon you, I say look nearer home. Watch in the right direction, not in the wrong. Let us be wise: _ My last word is, trust in God. Our fears are liars; our hopes are stars that stud sky, till the day dawn, and heaven’s morning break. “They that wait for Me never be ashamed.” “He that believeth shall not make haste.” You may have aited long, you may have come through many trials, and still they seem to thicken bon you. Don’t lose hope; don’t lose heart; nil desperandum—never despair. 460 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. “NTy God who caused me to hope, When life began to beat, And, when a stranger in the earth, Didst guide my wandering feet, “Thou wilt not cast me off when age And evil days descend; Thou wilt not leave me in despair, To mourn my latter end. “T know the power in whom I trust, The arm on which I lean; He will my Savior ever be, Who hath my Savior been.” Yes, the thing that hath been is the thing that shall be: “Saved in the ; with an everlasting salvation.” Amen. [Mr. McNeill was regarded by Mr. Moody as one of the great preachers world. He was called “The Scotch Spurgeon,” and visited Chicago, during World’s Fair, to assist Mr. Moody in his great evangelical work. The above is of his sermons delivered in Chicago. Reproduced here by permission of Rhod McClure. ] ; (461) AN OLD PREACHER ON PREACHING. ‘ ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D. ° Fact and logic are both outraged by the names of the two Unions which join in this assembly. The division into Congregationalists and Baptists is faulty as if one said, Englishmen and Londoners, for all Baptists are Congregationalists. We are closest of kin among the Free Churches, and perhaps, therefore, have sometimes been furthest apart, for cordiality often increases as the square of the distance. But we all eel the influence of the uniting tendency which is so marked a feature of the present l nited Free Church of Scotland. Our joint meetings do but demonstrate, on a some- what larger scale, our relations in most cases all through the country. They are the natural expression of a real and felt unity, not a hollow show of an unreal. I some- es venture to think that the ministers of the two churches are in more cordial and closer relations than their flocks are. But be that as it may, we all meet today as rethren with hearty good will and mutual sympathy, and I esteem it a signal honor to occupy the place which I do on so happy an occasion. In casting about for a topic for this address I have thought of many burning questions which it would be timely to discuss, but I feel it wisest to keep to my own ‘metier. I am a preacher, and have been for more than half a century; I speak here mainly to preachers, and I venture to offer some considerations as to the preacher’s Office, its themes, its demands, its possibilities. No one will deny that the question of Whether our preaching is as efficacious as it might be is a burning question, too. Widespread searchings of heart are at work among the Free Churches on that matter. And they have only too good ground in the contrast which would strike us as alarming if we were not so accustomed to it, between the immense amount of effort and the small results apparent. I suppose there are some 6,000 or 8,000 sermons delivered every Sunday by the ministers of our two denominations—and what comes of them all? We have covered the land with chapels, and yet do we even keep up with the growth of population? ‘Ye have sowed much, and brought home little;” and if so much seed yields so scanty a harvest the sower may well ask himself why? No doubt t! ere are trends of thought and habits of life today which make the preacher's task eminently hard, but we have no such difficulties to face as the first messengers of the Cross had to encounter and overcome. Are the philosophical or scientific tendencies honeycombed the luxurious sensualism of Asia? Is the secularizing influence of trade and imperialism more hostile than was the self-centered pride of Rome, with its cult Are these His doings? Surely there can be but one answer to the twofold question— an answer which throws us back on ourselves, and bids us look to ourselves as the 462 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. causes of the loss of power. The last character in which I should desire to stand I have nearly finished my work, and I would fain use the opportunity given me today, — to leave some words which my younger brethren, whose task promises to be still more _ difficult than that of us older men, may perhaps feel to derive some additional weight — . because they may be the last which the speaker will address to such an assembly. If I venture to speak of the preacher and his work I must lay bare my own ideals, and to do that is to lay bare my own shortcomings, for our ideals are the sternest critics of - our accomplishings. It may be freely admitted that the preacher, as the Free Churches know him, is the result of a process of evolution starting with the simple New Testament arrange- | ments. Whether the process has been iegitimate, and the product satisfactory, or - whether there are further developments to be expected and desired, need not concern us now. The point which I seek to make is that, whilst great authorities have told us that differentiation of functions is the mark of progressive evolution, we have in the : preacher of today an apparent coalescence of three offices which are separate in the early church—those of evangelist, teacher and prophet. I purpose to deal with my subject under these three points of view. THE PREACHER AS EVANGELIST. The preacher is, first and foremost, an Evangelist—a bearer of good news. The ~ 7 very name contains a designation of the preacher’s theme, for it, at least, makes this — clear that he has to tell a fact, which is freighted with gladness for a sad world. What- ever more the Gospel is, it is primarily the history of something that did occur. The far-reaching presuppositions and implications of the fact, its force as the spring of transformed humanity, of individual and social progress, open out into a wide room c ¥ where all speculative and practical intellects may expatiate, but the beginning of all these is a person, and the fact of His life and death. The grain of mustard seed grows _ into the great tree in whost branches all the birds can nest and sing, beneath whose — shadow all the peoples can house. “We preach Christ crucified.” It is one thing to preach salvation by Christ; it is another to preach Christ as the Savior. The more we can free ourselves from the abstract and technical theology of the schools, and can make our words throb with the miracle of that loving, human heart, and with the pathos and power of that death for a world’s sins, the more shall we deserve the name j of evangelists. Hearts are more surely to be won by showing them Jesus crucified than by our comments on the sight. A Christ without a cross is a king without a throne. If our ministry is to have power, it must all center in the death for the world’s sins. Otherwise it will be like a lighthouse without a lamp. It will have no grip, no impulse, no regenerating power. “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men.” There are preachers who demagnetize the Gospel, because they falter in the proclamation of ‘ that “lifting up” which, because it is the secret of Christ’s power to heal the fiery erpent’s poisoned sting, is the secret of His power to draw, first, the languid looks of the victims, and then their whole nature, yielded to Him in love and loyalty. The experience of the recent Free Church missions taught us all, that when we really “meant business’ and were seeking for what would touch hearts, we instinctively went back to the simple elementary truths which some of us had been tempted to think too simple and elementary for our intelligent audiences, or too threadbare to be listened to with interest. When preachers really and intensely desire to “save souls’—and have found that that old-fashioned phrase has a meaning today—they will instinctively grasp the only instrument that can effect the purpose, and will find themselves saying: — “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners’”—and they will be wise if they add with Paul, “of whom I An Old Preacher on Preaching—Maclaren. 463 am chief,” for the sense of personal need is an indispensable element in the evangelist’s work. Our message implies that sin is a universal reality, from which there is no deliver- ance but through Jesus. Has the fact of sin, its reality and its consequences, its due place in modern preaching? I for one very much doubt it. Modern theories of eredity and environment, modern laxity of moral fibre, have taken many shades of jlackness out of the black thing. Men think less gravely of sin, and so they super- icially diagnose the world’s disease and therefore they superficially prescribe the remedy. An inadequate conception of sin lies at the root of most theological heresies ind Utopian schemes of reformation of society. It is fatal to the earnestness, the athos and the power of the preacher’s work. Unless we have our hearts and minds aden with the burden of men’s sins our voices will not ring out the vibrating notes of he good news of One who saves His people from their sins, because “Himself bare ur sins in His own body.” We must all confess that yielding to the “Zeitgeist,” the rend of opinion and feeling prevalent around us, and as children of the age, we have been tempted to think less severely, less pityingly of sin, and less solemnly of its certain result, death, than either our Master or His apostles did. We have too much | nk from plain speech on the guilt and the danger of sinners. And, just in exact ing out the good news of the Christ, the propitiation for our sins and for the whole world. The preacher is further spoken of in the New Testament as a herald, and that title mplies that his proclamation be plain, clear, assured. He is not to speak timidly, as i diverse winds of doctrine had blown back his voice into his trumpet. He is not to ng an ambiguous message in cloudy words. “O thou that tellest good tidings to fion lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid.” The evangelist needs 0 deliver his good news with urgency, as if it was of some moment that people should now and accept it. Is that note of urgency audible, as it should be, in our preaching? Phe evangelist has need of tenderness. “We entreat as though God did beseech by s.’ What outgush’ of sympathetic yearning can be too great fitly to bear on its irrent the message of a love which died to save? Are we not too little accustomed D preach with our hearts? Should we not be foolishly ashamed to say, “I now tell ou even weeping?” The evangelist has need of the personal element in his message. ‘has to be rigidly subordinated, else he is in danger of preaching himself, not Jesus. le has not to obtrude his own personality, but he has to speak as one who has felt the apture of the joyful news which he proclaims. ‘‘We have found the Messiah,” was he first Christian sermon ever preached, and it was so efficacious that it converted the hole congregation, for it brought Peter to Jesus. “That which we have seen and eard that proclaim we unto you” is the mold into which the most effectual evangel- izing work has ever run. The evangelist has need of elasticity in his methods, while t preserves uniformity in his theme. Our recent mission has taught us that, if we e to get at the outlying masses, whom the Church of today, thank God! is awaken- ig to long to reach, we must not be afraid of flinging away some of our old appliances, ad shaping new ways of getting at the dense crowds of English heathens. Our lereotyped services do not attract them, and never will. Personally I do not believe “the masses” will ever be reached, until Christian men and women, in far larger umbers and with far more system than hitherto, go among them, and by individual fort cast silken chains of sympathy and brotherliness round them which may draw em out of the depths. But we must also have changes in methods, and the aban. ment of a stiff conservatism which would fossilize our churches. I am not sading for anything sensational, still less for importing entertainments either for or ear into our evangelistic work. All I wish to emphasize is that we must vary 464 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. our methods, and take care that the eternal freshness of the ever young Good News is not hidden under the mustiness of ancient modes of action, which have proved to be ineffectual to reach the mutitudes of “them that are without.” THE PREACHER AS TEACHER. But the preacher has to be a teacher as well as an evangelist. Whether it is a development in accordance with the principles of the New Testament Church that all public, oral teaching should he in his hands is a question that does not concern us here. We may freely allow that a higher ideal would be: ‘‘When ye come together, each one hath a psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation,” and yet see that the present - order of things is best for the present spiritual state of the Church, and be sure that as soon as that changes for the better the old order wiil change with it. When the temperature rises, there will be an outburst of spring flowers. But the teaching office of the preacher is depreciated, not only in the name of an appeal to the primitive condition of the Church, but from the extreme other side of the most modern outlook on things, as being superceded by the hundred-voiced press. The men and women of this generation, we are told, form their opinions from books, not from sermons. I should demur to the word “form,” as expressing the process by | which a large proportion of them arrive at what they call their opinions; I should — consent to say “get their opinions,” for it is not a process of reasoned formation, but of more or less accidental and unreasoned acquisition. The opinions do not grow, are aes shaped by patient labor, but are imported into the new owner’s mind ready made, “in Germany,” or elsewhere, but certainly not in his own workshop, But granting the influence of the press, if it diacaoins the pulpit, it is the fault of the occupant thereof. A certain minister once told a shrewd old Scottish lady that he was engaged to deliver _ an address on the power of the pulpit, and asked what her views on the subject were. She answered: “The power o’ the pulpit! That depends on wha’s in it.’ Which is _ a truth to be laid to heart by all preachers. No man is superseded but through his own deficiencies. There must be weakness in the wall which the storm blows down. _ The living voice has all its old power today, when it is a voice, and not an echo, ora _ mumble. Ifa man has anything to say and will say it with all his heart and with al his soul and with all his strength he will not lack auditors. Books have their province — and preachers have theirs, and neither can efface the other or supply the place of the — other. The cry that the pulpit is effete comes mostly from quarters who do not despise the pulpit so much as dislike the truths which it teaches only too powertaiiay for their liking. 7 We may, then, turn to consider that aspect of the preacher’s work undisturbed. And the first thing that I desire to lay stress on is, that the educational is never to be separated from the evangelistic office. True, ‘there are diversities of operations;” and _ idiosyncracies and spiritual gifts, which for the most part follow in their line, may mark out one man more especially for the one kind of work, and another for the other. We co must all rejoice that there are brethren among us who are endowed with remarkable i gifts of presenting the Good News, which clearly disclose Christ’s purpose for them. yi Still, it remains true and important to keep in view that the truest teaching must be evangelistic, and the truest evangelizing must be educational. The web is made up — of warp and woof. The evangelism which appeals to emotion only is false to the : | Gospel; for God’s way of moving men is to bring truth to their understandings, which shall then set their emotions at work, and so pass on to move the will, the directness of the man, and thus at last affect the actions. As Whichcote says, “Religion begins with knowledge; it proceeds to temper, and ends in practice.” The evangelist who is not a teacher will build nothing that will last. And not less one-sided, and therefore - transient, will be the work of the teacher who is not an evangelist. He will give husks instead of the bread of life, notions that may rattle in skulls like seeds in dried poppy- An Old Preacher on Preaching—Maclaren. 465 ads, but not convictions which burn all the more because they are light as well as heat. _ The true theologian ever brings his doctrines to bear on the emotions, and then on the will, and then on practice. That “theology” suffers under the imputation of ‘The preacher is not to duplicate his part, like an actor who sustains two characters in ; For the most advanced instruction that can be given or received does not leave the most initial truths behind. It only unfolds them. The teacher’s subject matter is the Same as the evangelist’s. The difference lies in the mode of viewing it, and the pur- pose for which it is considered. The last book of Euclid rests on the axioms and postulates that precede the first. No Christian thought can ever travel beyond the bf the Christian life. Bees press themselves down into the flowers from which they would drain the honey, “and murmur by the hour” in their bells. Wasps and other agrant things flit past them and get none. “Whoever goeth onward’—as John says, with a flash of irony as he quotes the advanced thinker’s watchword—‘“and abideth fot in the teaching of Christ, hath not God.” The remainder would benefit some modern successors of these proud, old incipient Gnostics. To lead minds to see the profound and far-reaching truths that underlie the Gospel, what its facts pre-suppose of God and Man, of the Father and the Eternal Word, what they reveal of the heart of h ings, and of the Heart at the heart of them; to lead to the recognition, and still more to the application to individual and social and national life, of the principles that flow from the facts, to disclose to the minds and to lay on the hearts of men the Incarnation ynd Sacrifice and Reign of Jesus as the world-redeeming power, as the revelation of perfect life for men and nations, to find and exhibit in Jesus the answer to all the iestions of the intellect, the satisfaction of all the needs of the heart, the source and standard of ethics, the fountain of all wisdom, the renovator of humanity, the purifier ile he is following out the issues of His work to their remotest consequences—these the tasks of the Christian preacher in his capacity of teacher. All knowledge may e into his sphere. There is room for the widest culture. The teacher may elab- orate his theme with the closest thought, or may adorn it with poetry and imagination. ‘There is room for all gifts in the building of the great temple. Bezaleel was taught by the Spirit of God to execute his works of artistic beauty, and Hiram’s workmen d to hew logs in Lebanon. But the wider the teacher sweeps his circle, the stronger must be its center. The more he lengthens his cords, the more must he strengthen his stakes—and the middle prop that holds up the tent is the Cross with Christ upon it. “Him first, Him last, Him midst and without end.” All that the teacher has to teach is summed up in one word—Christ. His whole theme is “the truth as it is in Jesus.” _ As the theme is Christ, so the text-book is the Bible. Whatever the Higher criticism has done, it has not touched the main substance of the Gospel which we have preach, nor do even its most advanced positions seem to me seriously to affect the jomiletic worth of Scripture. The truths of the Bible remain, even if extreme theories $ to date and manner of origination of its several parts were much more undeniably roven than they are. I venture to use the privilege of age and appeal very earnestly y younger brethren especially, beseeching them not to be tempted by either the aken notion of increasing the attractiveness of their preaching or by the natural 466 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. wish of youth to do something original and break away from conventions. Conver tional usages were instinct with life and meaning when they were new, and it is best t try whether their original significance is worth saving, before we resolve to shake then off. The habit of prefacing a sermon with a text is, no doubt, a survival, and i sometimes unmeaning enough, but it is a witness that the sermon’s true purpose is te explain, confirm and enforce Scripture. Once the text was followed by a serm dealing with it. Would that it were always so now! Better to put new life into the old form by making a text really what it is meant to be than to break through it in < flight after something “fresh and unconventional.” ; a It does not follow from the Bible’s being the text-book that preaching is to be | expository in the technical sense of that word, though I confess to a belief that if w : had more of that we should have a robuster type of Christian, with a firmer grip 0 his professed creed, than is common today. The days of protracted exposition are for good or evil, over. There will be no more courses of sermons like those whicl the painful and reverend Mr. Caryll perpetrated on Job, and published in three folios—double-columned, if my memory is correct. The widest scope is to be given to varieties of mind and ways of assimilatin Scripture, but that ministry only is true to its duties, and up to the height of its la possibilities which makes its main purpose the drawing out into clear statement, and supporting by forceful argument, and the impressing by emotional pleadings, what i has pleased God to say to men. If it was worth His while to give us the Book, it is worth our while to toil to fathom its depth, to saturate our thinking and feeling with its truths, and it is our highest function and office to interpret them to our brethret We shall “shine as lights in the world” if we “hold forth the Word of Life.” There are nebulae, as well as brilliant stars, in the firmament of the Word. It is for the preacher to show men that the stars are suns and the nebulae galaxies of light. Ho unworthy it is for him to direct his telescope from the heaven of the Word to the levels of current topics! I shall have to speak presently of the place which the la’ must hold in the preacher’s work, but they will hold their right place only if he is tr to his vocation as being first of all a minister of the Word of God. More reasons than can be enumerated, much less here expanded, concur in enfore- ing this. In no other profession would the text-books be treated as the Bible some- times is. There is no such discipline for the preacher as the careful, minute study of Scripture. Patient work with such unspiritual implements as lexicon and concordan ce yields rich fruits of spiritual discernment, gives such grasp of great principles nothing else will give, opens out endless vistas into the deep things of God, as witnes such books as the Bishop of Durham’s priceless commentaries on John and Hebrey A preacher who has steeped himself in the Bible will have a clearness of outlook whi will illuminate many dark things, and a firmness of touching which will breed confi- dence in him among his hearers. He will have the secret of perpetual freshness, for he cannot exhaust the Bible. No pulpit teaching will last as long as that which | is given honestly and persistenly to the elucidation and enforcement of Biblical truth. As the Scotch psalm-book has it: “ “In old age, when others fade, He fruit still forth shall bring.” We have to do the work of Christian teachers under remarkable conditions. “© the one hand there is great ignorance of Scripture and of systematized Christian trut among our congregations, and we are perpetually in danger of over-estimating th amount of knowledge on which we may reckon. Otherwise well-educated men an women have but the vaguest notions as to Scripture facts and the most confuse apprehensions of Christian ideas. I for one believe that a considerable percentag ‘ / An Old Preacher on Preaching—Maclaren. 467 ing elementary, and to say as Paul said: “To write the safe things to you to e indeed is not grievous and for you it is safe.” On the other hand, we have to eak to people who have considerable education, and some who think they have gore than they really have, who have been fed on a miscellaneous collection of raps, De omnibus rebus—et quibusdam aliis, in magazines and handbooks, and is hard to get an entrance for solid Christian truth into such minds. Short sermons, is Sunday’s having no connection with last Sunday’s, and based on snippets of cripture, the meaning of which is of small consequence, correspond to the week’s diet of desultory reading. And withal there is the heaving swell of intellectual unrest, which affects all our congregations. How are we to discharge our teaching work in he face of all this? Mainly by the strong, sympathetic presentation of positive truth. Controversy is eedful, but it is seldom efficacious. It convinces the already convinced. Better to yund in affirmations than in negations, though they will be branded as dogmatism. the truth, as you know it and feel it, and let it work. There are two ways of ing rid of weeds—to grub them up, or to sow good seed, which will spring and sar the ground. And we must never forget that, what we have to teach is no llosophy for the few, no system of doctrine for trained understandings, but the spel for the world. When one of Luther’s disciples once asked him for some guid- ¢ as to how he should preach before the Duke, the Doctor said, “All your sermons d be of the simplest. Do not regard the prince, but the simple, stupid, rude and unlearned people, who are cut out of the same cloth as the prince. If, in my sermon, vere to have Philip Melancthon and the other doctors in my eye, I should produce ing good, but I preach the simplest way to the unlearned, and it suits everybody.” of our hearers are educated and can follow our highest flights, but many of cannot. But all have the one human heart, with its deepest needs identical Sad souls are to be comforted, torpid ones to be stung or startled or wooed ‘sensitiveness and activity, eyes glued to earth to be drawn to look up, the inmost needs of a gathered audience might strike the most eloquent dumb, and make € most confident timid. But “our sufficiency is of God,” and God’s sufficiency will THE PREACHER AS PROPHET. he preacher’s work has a third aspect.. Besides being evangelistic and educa- it is also ethical, and, in that aspect especially may rightly be designated as phetic. Of course the form of “inspiration” belonging to the prophet in Israel y: Thus saith the Lord, and if we wi not speak what we have heard in the ear Many a secret “hour of high communion with the living God” we had better be nt for evermore. It may be objected that the preacher has neither the inspiration the insight into the future which belonged to the prophet. But there are different is of inspiration; and that which is secured by hours of communion, by earnest t to stretch the narrow tablet of the mind so that it shall be capacious enough = the amplitude of God's message, by sedulous suppression of our own y by prayer, is no less real than that which touched IJsaiah’s with a live coal, “There 468 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” Philip the evangelist’s seven daughter or the prophets in the Corinthian Church, had no inspiration which we have r What does Paul direct as to the latter? ‘Let them speak by two or three, and the others discern,” a function which is very cheerfully and abundantly dischar, among us. So the New Testament prophet’s teaching had to submit to criticism, It had further to submit sometimes to being cut short; “If a revelation be made f another standing by, let the first keep silence.” So a New Testament prophet co | be tedious and had to learn to give way. There seems no reason to believe that tl inspiration which .endowed these prophets has ceased to be given to us. Much rather is it that’the name has become disused, than that the persons who have a right to it have failed. Are there not Prophets among us today? Have there not always been Prophets in the Church? Nor does the lack of the predictive insight damage the claim to the name. is a common-place now that that element is not the sole, nor even the princip: one in the ideal of the prophet. If we rightly understand what he was to Israel, shall rightly understand how he still survives, in modern garb indeed, but the sz For his chief function was to be an incarnation of the national conscience. It his task to hold aloft the Divine Ideal for Israel, to bring life to the test of Divine law, to stand before king and people undismayed, with his face as against their faces, to denounce national and individual transgression, to set trumpet to his ‘‘mouth and declare to Israel its sin.” He was necessarily a predic not only because God gave to some of the order a fore-knowledge of particular events, but also because God had graven deep in his mind the sure conviction th at righteousness exalts a nation, that all national or individual departure from God is bitter as well as evil, that sin is death, and good the sure result in the long run of goodness. The prophet supplied the force for the Law, the dynamic by which i it got itself obeyed. As one of them says, his word was “as a hammer,” to drive howe and fasten in a sure place the nails of the Law. And is not this the function of the Christian Church as a whole, and cine of its preachers? What are we here for but to bring the principles of the Gospe to bear on all life? No doubt the courtiers of an Ahab or a Zedekiah said wh they thought clever things about the fastidious prophetic conscience, just as ie have heard would-be taunts which Wietie really tributes and turned to a testimony, about “the Nonconformist conscience.” It is the Christian conscience, and to be on individual sins, especially those prevalent in the class from whom his hea “er are drawn. He has to apply the measure of the sanctuary to worldly maxims w ic his hearers take for axioms, and to practices which they think legitimate because they are popular. He has to witness against the cancerous vices which are eat in e out the life of the nation. He has to bring national acts to the standard of Christ's teaching, and to insist that politics is but Christian principles applied to national life. A church which has ceased to protest against the “world” suits the world’s purpose exactly, and is really a bit of the world under another name. The true church must always be remonstrant, protestant, a standing rebuke to the world, till the worl has accepted and applied the principles of the Gospel to personal and social life. And the preacher who does not give voice to the church’s protest fails in one his plainest and chiefest duties. We need brave men in the pulpit, who shall speak with freedom what they belie they have learned from God, of the evils in the land. We need men who ha’ heard Him saying to them, “Be not dismayed at them, lest I dismay thee bef them.” We need for the prophet’s office much secluded fellowship with God, w. “wakens” His servants’ “ear morning by morning,” and gives them ‘the tongue An Old Preacher on Preaching—Maclaren. 469 jem that are taught.” We need to keep clear of popular currents of thought and ractice, suspecting always that truth does not dwell with majorities, and that what e multitude acclaim, God is likely to condemn. We have to be keenly sensitive » the drift of thought, else we shall not wisely make head against it, or know how ® use or direct it. We have to remember that preaching may be as accurately dapted to the times, when it directly contradicts popular dicta, as when it falls in ith them, and that the Greeks’ demand for wisdom, and the Jews’ for a sign, were by being refused in appearance, even while granted in truth. We have need to remember the woes pronounced on two classes of prophets, nat sell for ourselves. And on the other hand we have to see that the word, which $s in that sense our own, is, in a deeper sense, not our own, but God’s. We have ) deal at first hand with Him, and to suppress self that He may speak. And no man will ever be the Lord’s prophet, however eloquent or learned he may be, unless he knows what it is to sit silent before God, and in the silence to hear the still, mall, most mighty voice that penetrates the soul, and to the hearing ear is sweet harpers harping with their harps, and louder than the noise of many waters. But this prophetic or ethical aspect of the preacher’s work can never be rightly one, unless it is based upon the evangelistic and the educational. We shall rejoice that the pulpit and the Church have recognized more clearly lan before the call to make their voice heard on Christ’s side in regard to runkenness, gambling, impurity, and other national vices. But it will be no gain 0 the cause of Christian morality or of national righteousness, if the ethical side of feligion is presented exclusively or disproportionately to the other two, which are its foundation. Let us have applied Christianity by all means—the more the better, at let us make sure first that there is the Christianity to apply. Let us preach hrist as the regenerator of society, but let us not omit to preach Him as the Savior of the soul from sin. Let us begin where the Gospel begins, with “God so s, for society and for the world, which flow from it. It is Christ the Sacrifice and the Savior who is Christ the wisdom of God, and the realized ideal of humanity, the embodiment of the perfect law for life, the perfect motive to fulfil it, and the p erfect giver of the perfect power for obedience. It is Christ, the Sacrifice for men and the wisdom of God, who is the King of nations, from whom the peoples will learn righteousness, and following whom the tribes of the earth shall enter into the nd of peace. We, the preachers of His all-transforming and all-vivifying name, to preach Him in all the aspects of His mission, and to present these, so far our imperfections will permit, in the order, proportion and harmony in which they are revealed to us. The threefold beam may be separated into its parts by a rism, but neither of these three is sunshine. The preacher has to try to recombine hem into the sweet, all-blessing white ray, which every eye feels to be light. We are reachers—that is to say, we are evangelists, teachers, prophets. Let us not limit urselyes to either function, but try always to blend the three in that one which ould include them all. _ Fathers and brethren, I am but too conscious of the imperfection of the concep- dns of our office, which I have ventured to lay before you. I am still more con- ious of the imperfection of my presentation of these. I am most of all conscious 470 Puipit Power and Eloquence. of the imperfections of my attempts at realizing their ideal, in my day of service o which the evening shadows are falling. But, however condemnatory may be the of an ideal of our office, the absence or dimness of that light is fatal. The more loftil; we think of our work, the more lowly will be our estimate of ourselves, and the mor earnest our efforts to reach up to the height of our possibilities, which are therefore our duties. The more we feel the burden of the Lord laid on us as evangelists, the more shall we have a passion for souls, which will fill our hearts with wistful tome : prehension of deep truths is ever garbed, and so will speak with the authority of Truth itself and not as the scribes. The more we are constrained by the word of Lord given to us as His prophets, the more bold shall we be to weigh popular hab and customary sins in the balances of the sanctuary, and the more shall we sometim been a prophet among them.” Some of us are almost passing from the stage, some of us are pressing on to it, eager, hopeful, perhaps thinking that we shall do much better than did the veterans who now seem to “lag superfluous.” The modes of thinking change as do the thinkers, the wonderful new lamps of one age become the dim twinkling candles of the next. Much in our conceptions of the Truth will not long outlive ourselves. That which can be shaken will be removed. Be it so; that which cannot be shaken will remain—_ and what cannot be shaken is the Gospel of the “Kingdom that cannot be moved,” and its King, the same yesterday, today, and forever. ‘All flesh is as grass, and all th glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth: but the word of the Lord abideth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel ; preached.” [Alexander Maclaren, D. D. born February 11, 1826, was educated at Glaagam University and Regent’s Park College; minister of Portland chapel, Southampton, 1846-58, and of Union chapel, Manchester, over forty years. His literary wo consists chiefly of his published sermons, his greatest work probably being his exposi- tion of the Psalms in the Expositor’s Bible. Among his other works are: Secrets of Power and the Life of David. His comments on the Stnday School lesson in the Sunday School Times for so many years, have given him a wide circle of admirers. in America. This sermon was delivered at the City Temple, London, April 23, 1901, on the occasion of the joint meeting of the Baptist and Congregational Unions, of the former of which he was president. ] ; K (471) THE SEPARATION OF THE SOUL FROM GOD. W. F. MALLALIEU. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.”—Isaiah 59: 1, 2. I ask your serious and prayerful attention to these three thoughts derived from 1. The separation of the soul from God; 2. The causes of this separation; and, 8. The consequences of such separation. It is seen at once that it is impossible for the soul to be separate from God, in the sense of being remote or distant from Him. God is omnipresent, and wherever the may be, still God is there. God is in the heights of heaven, and in the depths of ; He is in the uttermost parts of the earth, and the most distant island of the sea; nd if the soul could flee away forever on the wings of the morning, it could never keep the world outside, we may and do sometimes fancy that we can close the approaches of the soul to God. _ But the real truth is, God is so near to us, and is so watchful of all we do, that never perform an action, however slight it may be, without the direct cognizance God. And from the first word we ever lisped up to the last utterance of our lips, whether those words have been words of love or strife, whether of complaining or hanksgiving, whether of cursing or blessing, every word we have ever uttered has n heard of God, and they are all remembered. The worst part of every one’s life is in his thoughts. No one has ever done as wickedly as he has thought. The last thing that any one of us would wish to have made known to the world would be the thoughts which have been in our minds since first we were conscious of thought. Men cover them up and keep them out of sight, and repress them, and to a very great extent conceal them, and they sometimes imagine that there is no being in the universe that knows anything about what is going on within the innermost soul. Men turn down the lights, or put them out altogether, lraw the curtains, and close tight the shutters, and sit down with their thoughts in the darkness. They know that no angel can enter and intrude upon their privacy, that no human being living or dead can reach them in their seclusion, and they dream that 472 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. they are alone. But they forgot when they closed the doors, and put out the lig and drew the curtains, and closed the shutters, that God was inside with them all t time, and they forgot that the darkness and the light are alike to Him; and there is in the very secret place of the soul, and He knows every thought, and knows it with all the infinite perfection of His omniscience, and knows it to remember it, and knows it to approve or to condemn. O that this solemn, awful thought might abide with us, that God is absolutely and constantly near to every soul, searching our hearts, and knowing us better even than we know ourselves. a Hence we see that the separation of the soul from God, which is spoken of in the text, is not that of distance, but rather a moral separation. The soul that is separate from God is unlike God in the very nature and essence of its moral constitution. 4 God is. a being of infinite purity and holiness. In Him there is not the slightest stain of impurity in any respect, there never has been in all the eternity of the past, and there never will be in all the eternity that is to come. From everlasting to ever- lasting, this freedom from all impurity has been, and will be, the distinguishing char- acteristic of God. It is also true of Him that there is no degree of imperfection which attaches itself to the divine nature. Purity is possible, and still there may not be absolutely no imperfection. Of God alone can it be said that He is absolutely and infinitely perfect in all the attributes of His nature. “In Him there can be no malice, or envy, or hatred, or revenge, or pride, or cruelty, or injustice, or falsehood, or unfaithfulness; and if #here be anything besides which implies sin, and vice, and moral imperfection, holiness and purity, as applied to God, signify that the divine nature is at an infinite distance from it.” j But it is not sufficient to say of God that He is devoid of all impurity, and all imperfections, and all unholiness, for this is but a negative statement of the facts in the case. It is equally true that God is infinitely pure, and perfect, and holy. In all His robtious, in 1 the exercise of His compassion, His mercy, His pity, His goodurss attribute of His nature, and in the very essence of His nature, He is infinitely pure, and perfect, and holy; and this to such a degree, and in such an absolute sense, that we cannot express it in human language, nor fathom the fullness of its significance, though we were possessed of the sublimest intellect ever created in earth or heaven. Now, then, when we find a s- ul that is unlike God in these respects, we shall find os that is separate from Him. ; There is no uncreated being but God in the universe, and there can be no othe : being that is infinite in all his perfections; in this sense there will always be an infinite distance between the created and the uncreated. But in respect to purity and — holiness, we may readily perceive that the creature may possess these qualities. li he 7 does possess them, then he is near to God and God is near to him. But the sad truth is that man is fallen and he does not manifest these characteristics. He is impure : his thoughts, and perverse in his volitions. His heart is full of envy and malice, 4 pride and revenge, and cruelty, and lust, and falsehood, and unfaithfulness, and every evil passion, propensity and desire, so that the very sources of thought and feel- ing and action are thoroughly corrupt and unholy. The result is, that the soul in its nature is removed from God almost as far as the east is from the west, and it is a wonder of mercy and love and power that ever a reunion can be effected. The separation spoken of in the text not only involves this unlikeness of nature, but also an equally great dissimilarity in the things that are loved by God and the soul. God loves everything that is pure and holy and good, and He hates whatever is not. He loves righteousness, and goodness, and virtue, and truth, and integrity, an The Separation of the Soul from God—Meullalieu. 473 everything that is excellent, and hates the opposites; while the soul that is separate from God hates all those things that God loves, and loves all the things that God hates. Jor may we wisely flatter ourselves that these things are not true of fallen human nature, for there are the best reasons for supposing that it takes the fear of punishment, le restraints of society, and the gracious influences of the Spirit of God to prevent turbulent passions of depraved hearts from blasting with the hot breath of hell, even to utter destruction, every loving and holy thing that glorifies redeemed II. We come now to inquire as to the causes of this separation of the soul from od. I love to think of every new-born child, of every littfe babe, that it is very near to God. I am glad for the faith I have that “heaven lies all about us in our infancy.” I believe that it is true that each little child is “a new, sweet blossom of humanity, fresh fallen from God’s own home to flower on earth.” 4 Whatever may have been the ruin of the fall, and the corruption of the race, the all-embracing work of Christ for the salvation of mankind has put all children into a position where the Savior himself might say of them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God.” Our first parents were near to God. They held intimate personal communion with Him. He daily revealed Himself to them amid the bowers of Eden. There was no sense of separation from God felt by the sinless pair. But the tempter entered that abode of purity and love, and in an evil hour temptation was yielded to, and the holy and righteous law of God was violated, and sin entered the world. How great the change! God was no longer a welcome and desired visitant, but the guilty ones fled from His presence and hid themselves in the vain purpose to put themselves where God could not find them. In their loves and hates, in their natures, all had changed, and sin had caused the change—sin had separated them from God. , Now, whatever theory of the effects of the fall one may adopt, the first sin of childhood leaves us amid surroundings which, if yielded to, will draw us more and more away from God. Every added sin increases the distance, until we find that the moral separation between the soul and God is but little short of an impassable gulf, and it would be impassable forever had it not been bridged by the infinite grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The effect of sin upon the soul is of the most destructive character, and perhaps in no respect is it more clearly seen than in the fact that it separates the soul from God. God is the source of all the good that any of His creatures ever enjoy. All mercies, gifts and graces come from Him, and every sin indulged in separates us further from this inexhaustible source of blessing. Every year, every day, every hour become more and more unlike God in all the attributes of our moral nature; we gradually lose our sympathy for His plans and purposes, and come at last to despise I is law, and then we hate the Lawgiver, and our rebellious wills rise up, and we say in our hearts and actions, if not in words, we will not have Him reign over us. It is said that a celebrated painter once wished to portray upon canvas the contrast After diligent search he found a little child which seemed to him the most beau- tiful and perfect embodiment of purity and innocence he had ever seen. Its form was Av4 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. With the greatest care the painter transferred the face to his canvas and hung it up in his studio until he should find its opposite. For years he sought in all directions for a face that should comprise everything ~ hideous and hateful. He went among the poorest and the outcast of great cities; he visited the haunts of infamy and vice for a face that should form a perfect contrast — to that of the little child. Success at last crowned his efforts, for with true artistic | delight he one day discovered in a prison a face which completely met his ideal. It was the face of a felon chained to the floor of the dungeon, where, for the most — appalling crimes, he was to be confined until his trial. He was young in years and yet he looked like an old man, for his form was bowed and tremulous, the result of © unbridled debaucheries; his hair and beard were long, and matted, and filthy; his lips were purple and swollen, and his mouth was full of cursing; his eyelids were corroded, and made himself as hideous to behold as though he had been taken possession of by — q a legion of devils. j In due time the painter prepared for his work, but strange to tell, ere the task was accomplished he learned that the young man before him was the identical person whose childish portrait he had kept hanging in his studio for so many years. . It was sin that had separated this young man from his pure, sweet, holy childhood; — it was sin that had swept him out, away from his mother’s arms, and his home of love, and his hopes of life and heaven, out into the storm, and the darkness, and the horrible bi tempests of lust and crime, until he was as far from his own cradle-innocence as the flame-encircled gates of hell are far away from the glorious pearly portals of the city % of God. = Just this terrible effect sin will have upon the soul if it be cherished in any heart. r 3 It obliterates all lines of spiritual beauty; it destroys the moral likeness of the soul to | its Creator; it causes the soul to become more and more like the lost and rebellious spirits which once shone in brightness and purity before the throne, but.are now sunk Ea to the utter depths of hopeless wreck and ruin; it crowds the soul away from light and Fa life and joy, away from the Cross and the Crucified, into the outer blackness and mid- y night of despair; it separates the soul from God. I know the unconverted, surrounded by all the gracious influences of Christian society, and still susceptible to the powerful attractions of Calvary, may be inclined to , say that the sins they have committed cannot cause such a complete separation from 7 all good. But why not? All sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. The nature of all sin, its real essence, is the same; it is a refusal to do the will of God. Suppose we do not swear; suppose you are not dishonest; suppose you have not broken the letter of one of the Commandments of.the Decalogue; suppose for the sake : of friends, and children, and other relatives, and for your own sake, you have so con- ¢ ducted yourself that no blemish has ever rested upon your character, and you have gained and now enjoy the confidence of all who know you: it does not therefore follow f that you are united to God, and that you dwell in Him, and that He abides in you. With all this, in your hearts you may be rejecters of God. You may be neglecters of His Word; you may turn away from the inspired volume and deny its claims, without ever having given a single week of all your lives to the serious and sober investiga- tion of those claims. d You may rest assured that such a course as this will separate your souls from God. It may not be your deliberate purpose to cut yourselves loose from the divine and heavenly attractions, but still I pray you to understand that no surer method of doing so can be taken than that you are pursuing. 8 ° The Separation of the Soul from God—Mallalicu. 475 Perhaps I am appealing to some not guilty of outbreaking sins, who are neverthe- ess indulging in some passions, desires, or ambitions, which are opposed to fellowship ith God. Each one must know just what the difficulty is, and it is manifest that it is the very thing which in time past has kept you from God. You may love riches, and are too eager to gain them to be strictly honest; you love worldly pleasures, and you know not how you can give them up, and yet you know that you must sacrifice hem or you can never come into sweet communion with your Heavenly Father; or you ‘eed be cherishing wrong feelings; there may be pride, or wrath, or revenge, or , or malice, in your heart, and while this is so you know your prayers even are all + Pia, and yet you refuse to yield to your convictions of right and duty, while all the time you are drifting away from God. These evil propensities and passions of the unregenerate nature have a terrible affinity with the spirits of darkness and death, and they will drag down to perdition any soul who clings to them. O, my unconverted readers, why will you not today bring out these idols which keep you from God and His love, dnd destroy them. Say to pride, and anger, and N ath, and malice, and envy, and revenge, “Ye shall be dethroned, ye shall die;’”’ say to the lust for vain and sinful pleasures, and to the greedy desire for gain, “Ye too shall die;” say to carelessness, and indifference, and sloth, and every rebellious feeling of the heart, “Ye too shall die;’’ and then from the very depths of your souls, cry out— ad “Nearer, my God, to thee; nearer to thee, 5 Sr I E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me.” nd I tell you, you shall feel a glorious thrill of joy filling your souls as you realize that the sins which separated you from God, and the iniquities that hid His face from you, have all been pardoned, and you are resting in the divine love. III. What are the consequences of this separation from God? First of all, the spiritual life of the soul is extinguished, and insensibility and death PT) sue. It is not many years since I accompanied a young man to the Boston and Maine pot, as he was about to leave the city for his distant home in the country. Coming ere when a boy only thirteen or fourteen years of age, one of a large family of hildren, and with a very scanty wardrobe, and scarcely more money than enough to b ing him to the city, he soon found himself without means, without employment, ind without friends. But he would not be discouraged, for he had come from his rural home to seek his fortune, and with visions of future wealth as the inspiration of his soul. Day after day he spent in looking for a situation, and night after night he slept in a hogshead, in which was a little straw, until at length he secured a place as errand boy in a retail store. _ A more diligent and faithful boy was never known; early and late he toiled, and soon gained the good-will of his employers, and was rapidly advanced, until in a few fears, he was admitted to the firm, with every prospect that the dreams of his youth wo " id be realized. But by improper exposure, he took cold; the cold was fol- ed by a cough; then came debility and emaciation. Kind friends warned him of danger at every step of the disease, and well do I rermember that many a time, in S store and elsewhere, I urged him to leave his business, and take the rest and recreation he so much needed, only to be answered, with a pleasant smile, that he was young and strong, and that the little cold that was troubling him would soon be gone; ie would drive it off, and all would be well. But it was not to be conquered in this ay, and so it went steadily on its course. Strength was gone, and appetite was gone, ind vigor and elasticity were gone, and with a sad interest I saw him tearfully leave he place where, for half his lifetime, he had toiled to win the success he had so irdently desired. Only a few days after and I saw him in the cars, and as I left him 0 is M1 * 476 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. him no more on earth, for he was even then a dying man, just able to go home to his father and mother, that he might look once more on the familiar scenes of his child- hood, and then let the loved ones close his eyes and bury him in the quiet village grave-yard. Before he would take rest, or use the proper remedy, or consult the skillful physician, he had gone so far that all human hands were too short to reach and save him, and however full of sympathy may have been the hearts of his many friends, yet all his appeals for help must have been without avail. He did, in regard to his bodily health, just what so many are doing in regard to their spiritual well-being. In his case, death was the consequence of his neglect; and so the soul that separates itself from God by outbreaking sin, or by carelessness and indifference, will find, when it is all too late, that the soul must die outside the reach of the boundless mercy and love of God. Again, the soul that is separate from God will miss forever the eternal revelation which God will make of Himself to all who love Him. In all the realms of thought and being, there will be to the outcast sinner no manifestation of the divine benignity. He may gaze Godward, but never will he see light, never a smile of recognition, never an uplifting of the clouds and darkness that hide the awful throne of the majesty of God. The saved will see Christ, and His glory will be shared by them; they will find in Christ the eternal satisfaction of every immortal aspiration; they will walk with Him in white, and join with cherubim, and seraphim, and angels, and archangels, in the peans of love and victory that all heaven is waiting to hear, and which will be heard through- out the universe, even to the depths of the nethermost hell, when all the saints are safely gathered to their eternal home. The last revelation of Christ to the soul that is separated from God will be that _ of the judgment seat, when the crucified Redeemer shall say to those on His left hand: “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” This last vision of Christ, and the soul separated from God, turns away from the throne, } and sinks into the depths of that fathomless outer darkness from whence there is no escape, no return, no deliverance. To be separate from God is to lose all the bliss and a glory of heaven; it is to experience the misery of the lost in hell. * O that the Divine Spirit might impress upon every soul still separated from God, whose eyes shall rest upon this page, that this isa day of hope. The Heavenly Father calls His wandering childrén home. Will you come? Will you all come? Will you come now? The time is very short in which life’s great work can be done. So much of probation has already run to waste, that the greatest diligence and care must be employed, or death will find you so far removed from God that hope and mercy can never reach you. Every moment’s delay in sin thickens the cloud which now but partially obscures the face of God. Every new refusal to accept the offers of divine love builds up a thicker wall of separation between your souls and God. Every new ~ transgression, every cherished sin, increases the distance between the sinner and the Savior. O sinner! O precious soul, bought with the blood of Jesus Christ! You are building up an impassable barrier, which will shut you out of heaven. Your sins, thee they are persisted in, will drive you to that world of joyless sorrow and hopeless despair, from whence the ear of the omnipresent God cannot hear your cry for mercy, and from whence the arm of the omnipotent Jehovah cannot save you. [This sermon is from The Gospel Invitation, a collection published in Boston some years since. ] (477) PARTING WORDS. JAMES MARTINEAU. - “Peace I leave with you: My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”—John 14: 27. This is a strange benediction to proceed from the Man of Sorrows, at the dreariest moment of His life; strange at least to those who look only to His outward career, His incessant contact with misery and sin, His absolute solitude of purpose, His lot stricken with sadness ever new from the temptation to the cross; but not strange per- haps to those who heard the deep and quiet tones in which this oracle of promise went forth—the divinest music from the center of the darkest fate. He was on the bosom of the beloved disciple and in the midst of those who should have cheered Him in that hour with such comfort as fidelity can always offer; but who, failing in their duty to His griefs, found the sadness creep upon themselves; while He, seeking to give peace to them, found it Himself profusely in the gift. It was not till He had finished this inter- view and effort of affection, and from the warmth of that evening meal and the flush of its deep converse they had issued into the chill and silent midnight air, not till the sanctity of moonlight (never to be seen by Him again) had invested Him, and coarse fatigue had sunk His disciples into sleep upon the grass, that having none to comfort, He found anguish fall upon Himself. Deprived of the embrace of John, He flew to the bosom of the Father; and after a momentary strife, recovered in trust the serenity He had found in toil; and while His followers lie stretched in earthly slumber, He reaches a divine repose; while they, yielding to nature, gain neither strength nor cour- age for the morrow, He, through the vigils of agony, rises to that godlike power, on which mockery and insult beat in vain, and which has made the cross—then the emblem of abjectness and guilt—the everlasting symbol of whatever is holy and sublime. The peace of Christ, then, was the fruit of combined toil and trust; in the one case diffusing itself from the center of His active life, in the other from that of His Passive emotions; enabling Him in the one case to do things tranquilly; in the other, to see things tranquilly. Two things only can make life go wrong and painfully with us; when we suffer or suspect misdirection and feebleness in the energies of love and duty within us, or in the providence of the world without us: bringing, in the one case, the lassitude of an unsatisfied and discordant nature; in the other, the melancholy of hopeless views. For these Christ delivers us by a summons to mingled toil and trust. And herein does His peace differ from that which ‘the world giveth’—that its prime essential is not ease, but strife; not self-indulgence, but self-sacrifice; not acqui- escence in evil for the sake of quiet, but conflict with it for the sake of God; not, in _ short, a prudent accommodation of the mind to the world, but a resolute subjugation of the world to the best conceptions of the mind. Amply has the promise to leave behind Him such a peace been since fulfilled. It was fulfilled to the apostles who first received it; and has been realized again by a succession of faithful men to whom they have delivered it. : i The word “‘peace”’ denotes the absence of jar and conflict; a condition free from the restlessness of fruitful desire, the forebodings of anxiety, the stings of enmity. It 478 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. may be destroyed by discordance between the lot without and the mind within, where q the human being is in an obviously false position—an evil rare and usually self- curative; or by a discordance wholly internal, among the desires and affections them- selves. The first impulse of “the natural man” is to seek peace by mending his external condition; to quiet desire by increase of ease; to banish anxiety by increase of wealth; to guard against hostility by making himself too strong for it; to build up his life into a fortress of security and a palace of comfort, where he may softly lie, though tempests beat and rain descends. The spirit of Christianity casts away at once this whole theory of peace; declares it the most chimerical of dreams; and proclaims it impossible even to make this kind of reconciliation between the soul and the life wherein it acts. As well might the athlete demand a victory without a foe. To the noblest faculties of soul rest is disease and torture. The understanding is com- missioned to grapple with ignorance, the conscience to confront the powers of moral evil, the affections to labor for the wretched and oppressed; nor shall any peace be found, till these, which reproach and fret us in our most elaborate ease, put forth an incessant and satisfying energy; till instead of conciliating the world, we vanquish it; and rather than sit still, in the sickness of luxury, for it to amuse our perceptions, we precipitate ourselves upon it to mould it into a new creation. Attempt to make all smooth and pleasant without, and you thereby create the most corroding of anxieties, and stimulate the most insatiable of appetites within. But let there be harmony within, let no clamors of self drown the voice which is entitled to authority there; let us set forth on the mission of duty, resolved to live for it alone, to close with every resistance that obstructs it, and march through every peril that awaits it; and in the consciousness of immortal power, the sense of mortal ill will vanish; and the peace of God well nigh extinguish the sufferings of the man. “In the world we may have tribulation; in Christ we shall have peace.” _ This peace, so remote from torpor—arising, indeed, from the intense action of the greatest of all ideas, those of duty, of immortality, of God—fell, according to the — promise, on the first disciples. Not in vain did Jesus tell them in their sorrows that the Comforter would come; nor falsely did He define this blessed visitant, as “the spirit of truth’”—the soul reverentially faithful to its convictions, and expressing clearly in action its highest aspirings. Such peace had Stephen, when before the Sanhedrim that was striving to hush up the recent story of the Cross, he proclaimed aloud the sequel of the Ascension; and priests and elders arose and stopped their ears, and thrust him out to death; he had his peace; else how, if heaven of divinest tranquility had not opened to him and revealed to him the proximity of Christ to God, how, as the stone struck his uncovered and uplifted head, could he have so calmly said, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge?” Such peace had Paul—at least when he ceased to rebel against his noble nature, and became, instead of the emissary of persecution, the ambassador of God. Was there ever a life of less ease and security, yet of more buoyant and rejoicing spirit than his? What weight did he not cast aside, to run the race that was set before him? What tie of home or nation did he not break, that he might join in one the whole family of God? For forty years the scoff of synagogues and the outcast of his people, he forgot the privations of the exile in the labors of the missionary; flying from charges of sedition he disseminated the principles of peace; persecuted from city to city, yet he created in each a center of pure worship and ‘Christian civilization, and along the coasts of Asia, and colonies of Macedonia, and citadels of Greece, dropped link after link of the great chain of truth that shall yet embrace the world. Amid the joy of making converts, he had also the affliction of making martyrs; to witness the sufferings, perhaps to bear the reproaches, of surviv- ors; with weeping heart to rebuke the fears, and sustain the faith of many a doubted; and in solitude and bonds to send forth the effusions of his earnest spirit to quicken Parting Words—Martineau. 479 the life, and renovate the gladness, of the confederate churches. Yet when did ‘speculation at its ease ever speak with vigor so noble and cheerfulness so fresh, as his glorious letters; which recount his perils by land and sea, his sorrows with friend and foe, and declared that ‘none of these things move” him; which show him pro- jecting incessant work, yet ready for instant rest; conscious that already he has fought the good fight, and willing to finish his course and resign the field; but prepared, if needs be, to grasp again the sword of the spirit, and go forth in quest of wider victories. Does any one suppose that it would have been more peaceful to look back ‘on a life less exposed and adventurous, on a lot sheltered and secure, on soft-bedded comfort, and unbroken plenty, and conventional compliance? No! it is only before- hand that we mistake these things for peace; in the retrospect we know them better, ‘and would exchange them all for one vanquished temptation in the desert, for one ‘patient bearing of the cross! What—when all is over, and we lie upon the last bed— what is the worth to us of all our guilty compromises, of all the moments stolen from duty to be given to ease? If Paul had cowered before the tribunal of Nero, and trembled at his comrade’s blood, and, instead of baring his neck to the imperial sword, had purchased by poor evasions another year of life—where would that year have been now—a lost drop in the deep waters of time—yet not lost, but rather mingled as a poison in the refreshing stream of good men’s goodness by which Provi- dence fertilizes the ages. } The peace of Christ, thus inherited by His disciples, and growing out of a living spirit of duty and of love, contrasts not merely with guilty ease, but with that mere mechanical facility in blameless action which habit gives. There is something faithless and ignoble in the very reasonings sometimes employed to recommend virtuous habits. They are urged upon us, because they smooth the way of right; we are invited to them for the sake of ease. Adopted in such a temper, duty after all makes its bargain with indulgence, and is not yet pursued for its own sake and with the allegiance of a loving heart. Moreover, whoever has a true conscience sees that there is a fallacy in this persuasion; for whenever habits become mechanical, they cease to Satisfy the requirements of duty; the obligations of which enlarge definitely with our powers, demanding an undiminished tension of the will, and an ever-constant life of _ the affections. It can never be, that a soul which has a heaven open to its view, which _ is stationed here, not simply to accommodate itself to the arrangement of this world, but also to school itself for the spirit of another, is intended to rest in mere automatic regularities. When the mind is thrown into other scenes, and finds itself in the society of the world invisible, suddenly introduced to the heavenly wise and the sainted ; good—what peace can it expect from mere dry tendencies to acts no longer practicable and blameless things now left behind? No; it must have that pure love which is | mowhere a stranger, in earth or heaven; that vital goodness of the affections, that | adjusts itself at once to every scene where there is truth and holiness to venerate; that conscience, wakeful and devout, which enters with instant joy on any career of duty and progress opened to its aspirations. And even in “the life that now is,” the mere ‘mechanist of virtue, who copies precepts with mimetic accuracy, is too frequently at fault, to have even the poor peace which custom promises. He is at home only on his own beat. An emergency perplexes him, and too often tempts him disgracefully to fly. He wants the inventiveness by which a living heart of duty seizes the resources of good, and uses them to the last; and the courage by which love, like honor, starts to the post of noble danger, and maintains it till, by such fidelity, it becomes a place of danger no more. It is a vain attempt to comprise in rules and aphorisms all the va ious moral exigencies of life. Hardly does such legality suffice to define the small portion of right and wrong contemplated in human jurisprudence. But the true astincts of a pure mind, like the creative genius of art, frames rules most perfect in 480 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the act of obeying them, and throws the materials of life into the fairest attitudes and the justest proportions. He whose allegiance is paid to the mere perceptive system, shapes and carves his duty into the homeliest of wooden idols; he who has the spirit of Christ turns it into an image breathing and divine. Children of God in the noblest sense, we are not without something of His creative spirit in our hearts. The power is there to separate the light from the darknes within us, and set in the firmament of the soul luminaries to guide and gladden us, for seasons and for years; power to make the herbage green beneath our feet, and beckon happy creatures into existen around our path; power to mould the clay of our earthly nature into the likeness o God most high; and thus only have we power to look back in peace upon our work, and find a Sabbath rest upon the thought that, morning and evening, all is good. of going from us, returns upon us; and the scenes of our existence present themselves to us as objects of speculation and emotion. Sometimes we are forced into quietude — in pauses of exhaustion or of grief; stretched upon the bed of pain, to hear the grez over the vast plain of humanity, and from a height that covers it with silence observe its groups shifting and traversing like spirits in a city of the dead. At such times our — peace must depend on the view under which our faith or our fears may exhibit this mighty “field of the world;” on the forces of evil, of fortuity, or of God, which we — suppose to be secretly directing the changes on the scene, and calling up the bri apparition of generation after generation. And so great and terrible is the amount | of evil, physical and moral, in the great community of men; so vast the numbers sunk in barbarism, compared with the few who more nobly represent our nature; so many — and piercing (could we but hear them) the cries of unpitied wretchedness, that with every beat of the pendulum wander unnoticed into the air; so dense the crowds that are thrust together in the deepest recesses of want, and that crawl through the loath- some hives of sin; that only two men can look through the world without dismay; he, on the one hand, who suffering himself to be bewildered with momentary horror, and — in the confusion of his emotions, to mistake what he sees for the moral chaos, turns 7 his back in the despair of fatalism, crying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we — die;” and he, on the other, who, with the discernment of a deeper wisdom, penetrates ! through the shell of evil to the kernel and the seed of good; who perceives in suffering 4 and temptation the resistance which alone can render virtue manifest, and conscience — great, and existence venerable; who recognizes, even in the gigantic growth of guilt, — the grasp of infinite desires, and the perseverance of god-like capacities; who sees how soon, were God to take up His omnipotence, and snatch from His creature man the care of the world and the work of self-perfection, all that deforms might be swept — away, and the meanest lifted through the interval that separates them from the noblest; and who therefore holds fast to the theory of hope, and the kindred duty of effort; takes shelter beneath the universal Providence of God; and seeing time enough in His vast cycles for the growth and consummation of every blessing, can be patient — as well as trust; can resign the selfish vanity of doing all things himself, and making a finish before he dies; and cheerfully give up his life to build up the mighty temple of human improvement, though no inscription mark it for glory, and it be as one of the hidden stones of the sanctuary, visible only to the eye of God. Such was the spirit and the faith which Jesus left, and in which His first disciples found their rest. Within the infinitude of the divine mercy trouble did but fold them closer; the perversity of r ' man did but provoke them to put forth a more conquering love; and though none — were eyer more the sport of the selfish interests and prejudices of mankind, or came _ Parting Words—Martineau. 451 made their little portion of the desert smile, departed in the faith that the green margin would spread as the seasons of God came round, till the mantle of heaven covered the sarth, and it ended with Eden as it had begun. Between these two sources of Christian peace, virtuous toil, and holy trust, there is an intimate connection. The desponding are generally the indolent and useless; not the tried and struggling, but speculators at a distance from the scene of things, and far from destitute of comforts themselves. Barren of the most blessed of human sympathies, strangers to the light that best gladdens the heart of man, they are without the materials of a bright and hopeful faith. But he who consecrates himself sees at once how God may sanctify the world; he whose mind is rich in the memory of moral Victories will not easily believe the world a scene of moral defeats; nor was it ever known that one who, like Paul, labored for the good of man, despaired of the benevo- lence of God. Whoever then would have the peace of Christ, let him seek first the spirit of Christ. Let him not fret against the conditions which God assigns to his being, but reverently conform himself to them, and do and enjoy the good which they allow. Let him cast himself freely on the career to which the secret persuasion of duty points, without reservation of happiness or self; and in the exercise which its difficulties give Story; for it is conscious of its immortality, and hastening to its heaven. And there its peace be consummated at length; its griefs transmuted into delicious retro- [This sermon is from a volume entitled Endeavors After the Christian Life. It was considered by President Bashford one of the ten best sermons of the nineteenth p tury. ] J 482 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. JOHN H. MASON, D. D. “To the poor the Gospel is preached.”—Luke 7: 22. the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite earth with a curse.” Accordingly, at the appointed time, came John the Baptist, “in the spirit and power of Elias,” saying, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In his great work of “preparing the way for the Lord,” he challenged si without respect of persons. The attempt was hazardous; but feeling the majesty of his character, he was not to be moved by considerations which divert or intimide the ordinary man. Name, sect, station, were alike to him. Not even the imperial purple, when it harbored a crime, afforded protection from his rebuke. His fidel in this point cost him his life. For having “reproved Herod, for Herodias, his broth Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,” he was thrown into pris and at length sacrificed to the most implacable of all resentments, the resentment an abandoned woman. ; It was in the interval between his arrest and execution that he sent to Jesus the message on which my text is grounded. As his office gave him no security agai the workings of unbelief in the hour of temptation, it is not strange if, in a dungeon and in chains, his mind was invaded by an occasional doubt. The, question by two of his disciples, “Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” has a the air of an inquiry for personal satisfaction; and so his Lord’s reply seems to tre: it. “Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, t the poor the gospel is preached.” The answer is clear and convincing. It enumera the very signs by which the Church was to know her God, “for whom she had waited;” and they were enough to remove the suspicions, and confirm the soul, of his se ant John. an t Admitting that Jesus Christ actually wrought the works here ascribed to ee 4 every sober man will conclude with Nicodemus, “We know that Thou art a teachel come from God; for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him.” It is not, however, my intention to dwell on the miraculous evidence of Christianity. The article, which I select as exhibiting it in a plain but interesting view, is “The Preaching of Gospel to the Poor.” In Scriptural language, “the poor,” who are most exposed to suffering and leas able to encounter it, represent all who are destitute of goods necessary to their per- fection and happiness; especially those who feel their want, and are disconsolate especially those who are anxiously “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” This i Ps, 40:17: “I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me.” Thus in Is. 41:17 “When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue failet The Gospel to the Poor—Mason. 483 for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.” Thus, also, chapter 61:1: “The Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek;” the same word with that rendered ‘“‘poor;” and so it is translated by Luke, chapter 4:18, “to preach the gospel to the poor;” which is connected both in the ‘prophet and evangelist, with “healing the broken-hearted.” Our Lord, therefore, refers John, as He did the Jews in the synagogue of Nazareth, to this very prediction as fulfilled in Himself. So that His own definition of His own religion is a system of consolation for the wretched. This is so far from excluding the literal poor that the “success of the gospel with them is the pledge of its success with all others; for they not only form the majority of the human race, but they also bear the chief burden of its calamities. Moreover, as the sources of pleasure and pain are substantially the same in all men; and as affliction, by suspending the influence of their artificial distinctions, ‘reduces them to the level of their common nature; whatever, by appealing to the prin- ciples of that nature, promotes the happiness of the multitude, must equally promote ‘the happiness of the residue; and whatever consoles the one must, in like circum- stances, console the other also. As we cannot, therefore, maintain the suitableness of ‘the gospel to the literal poor, who are the mass of mankind, without maintaining its iP erogative of comforting the afflicted; nor, on the contrary, its prerogative of com- forting separately from its suitableness to the mass of mankind, I shall consider these _ two ideas as involving each other. _ With this explanation, the first thing which demands your notice is the fact itself— Gospel Preached to the Poor. From the remotest antiquity there have been, in all civilized nations, men who devoted themselves to the increase of knowledge and happiness. Their speculations we re subtle, their arguings acute, and many of their maxims respectable. But to whom were their instructions addressed? To casual visitors, to selected friends, to admiring pupils, to privileged orders. In some countries, and on certain occasions, when vanity was to be gratified by the acquisition of fame, their appearances were “more public. For example, one read a poem, another a history, and a third a play, before the crowds assembled at the Olympic games. To be crowned there was, in the proudest period of Greece, the summit of glory and ambition. But what did this, What did the mysteries of pagan worship, or what the lectures of pagan philosophy, ail the people? Sunk in ignorance, in poverty and crime, they lay neglected. Age icceeded to age, and school to school, a thousand sects and systems rose, flourished, d fell; but the degradation of the multitude remained. Not a beam of light found its way into darkness, nor a drop of consolation into their cup. Indeed a plan for Taising them to the dignity of rational enjoyment, and fortifying them against the isasters of life, was not to be expected; for as nothing can exceed the contempt in y hich they were held by the professors of wisdom, so any human device, however captivating in theory, would have been worthless in fact. The most sagacious heathen could imagine no better means of improving them than in the precepts of his philoso- phy. Now, supposing it to be ever so salutary, its benefits must have been confined 0 a very few; the notion that the bulk of mankind may become philosophers, being Itogether extravagant. They ever have been, and, in the nature of things, ever must @, unlearned. Besides, the grovelling superstition and brutal manners of the heathen Presented insuperable obstacles. Had the plan of their cultivation been even sug- gested, especially if it comprehended the more abject of the species, it would have been iMiversally derided, and, would have merited derision, no less than the dreams of |) modern folly about the perfectibility of man. | Under this incapacity of instructing the poor, how would the pagan sage have equitted himself as their comforter? His dogmas, during prosperity and health, | might humor his fancy, might flatter his pride, or dupe his understanding; but against | ' 1 a | | 484 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the hour of grief or dissolution he had no solace for himsef, and could have none for others. I am not to be persuaded, in contradiction to every principle of my anima and rational being, that pain, and misfortune, and death, are no evils and beneath a | wise man’s regard. And could I work myself up into so absurd conviction, how would it promote my comfort? Comfort is essentially consistent with nature and truth. By perverting my judgment, by hardening my heart, by chilling my nobler warmth, and _ stifling my best affections, I may grow stupid; but shall be far enough from consola- tion. Convert me into a beast, and I shall be without remorse; into a block, and 1 shall feel no pain. But this was not my request. I asked you for consolation, and © you destroy my ability to receive it. I asked you to bear me over death, into the fellowship of immortals, and you begin by transforming me into a monster! Here — are no glad tidings; nothing to cheer the gloom of outward or inward poverty. And the pagan teacher could give no better. From him, therefore, the miserable, even of his own country, and class, and kindred, had nothing to hope. But to “lift the needy — from the dunghill,” and wipe away the tears from the mourner, to lighten the burdens of the heart, to heal its maladies, repair its losses and enlarge its enjoyments; and that under every form of penury and sorrow, in all nations, and ages, and circumstances; as it is a scheme too vast for the human faculties, so, had it been committed to mere oa human execution, it could not have proceeded a single step, and would have been remembered only as a frantic revery. Yet all this hath Christianity undertaken. Her voice is, without distinction, to people of every color, and clime, and condition; to the continent and the isles; to the — man of the city, the man of the field, and-the man of the woods; to the Moor, the Hindoo, and the Hottentot, to the sick and desperate; to the beggar, the convict, “7 the slave. She impairs no faculty, interdicts no affection, infringes no relation; but, taking men as they are, with all their depravity and woes, she proffers them peace and — blessedness. Her boasting is not vain. The course of experiment has lasted through — more than fifty generations of men. It is passing every hour before our eyes; and, for reasons to be afterwards assigned, has never failed, in a single instance, when it has been fairly tried. ‘ To design is stupendous; and the least success induces us to inquire, by whom it~ was projected and carried into effect. And what is our astonishment, when we learn that it was by men of obscure birth, mean education, and feeble resource; by men -, from a nation hated for their religion, and proverbial for their moroseness; by carpen-— ters, tax-gatherers, and fishermen of Judea! What shall we say of this phenomenon? A recurrence to the Jewish scriptures, which had long predicted it, either surrenders — the argument or increases the difficulty. If you admit that they reveal futurity, you recognize the finger of God, and the controversy is at an end. If you call them mere conjectures, you are still to account for their correspondence with the event, and to explain how a great system of benevolence, unheard, unthought of by learned — antiquity, came to be cherished, to be transmitted for centuries, from father to son, and at length attempted among the Jews! And you are also contradicted by the fact, — that however clearly such a system is marked out in their scriptures, they were sO — for from adopting it that they entirely mistook it; rejected it, nationally, with disdain; — persecuted unto death those who embarked in it; and have not embraced it to this day! Yet in the midst of this bigoted and obstinate people sprang up the deliverance of the 3 human race. “Salvation is of the Jews.” Within half a century after the resurrection — of Christ His disciples had penetrated to the extremes of the Roman empire and had carried the “day-spring from on high” to innumerable tribes who were “sitting in the region and shadow of death.” And so exclusively Christian is this plan, so remote from the sphere of common effort, that after it has been proposed and executed, men revert perpetually to their wonted littleness and carelessness. The whole face of \ The Gospel to the Poor—Mason. 485 Christendom is overspread with proofs that, in proportion as they depart from the implicity of the gospel, they forget the multitude as before and the doctrines of con- solatiom expire. In so far, too, as they adapt to their own notions of propriety the general idea, which they have borrowed from the gospel, of meliorating the condition of their species, they have produced, and are every day producing, effects the very reverse of their professions. Discontent, and confusion, and crimes they propagate in abundance. They have smitten the earth with curses, and deluged it with blood; but the instance 1s yet to be discovered in which they have “bound up the broken- learted.” The fact, therefore, that Christianity is, in the broadest sense of the terms, “g ad tidings to the poor,” is perfectly original. It stands without rival or comparison. [it has no foundation in the principles of human enterprise; and could never have existed without the inspiration of that “Father of lights, from whom cometh down ery good and every perfect gift.” II. As the Christian fact is original, so the reasons of its efficacy are peculiar. Christianity can afford consolation, because it is fitted to our nature and character. I specify particulars: First, the gospel proceeds upon the principle of immortality. That our bodies shall die is indisputable. But that reluctance of nature, that panting after life, that horrer of annihilation, of which no man can completely divest himself, connect the death of the body with deep solicitude. While neither these, nor any other merely rational considerations, ascertain the certainty of future being; much less of future bliss. The feeble light which glimmered around this point among the heathen flowed not from investigation, but tradition. It was to be seen chiefly among the vulgar, who inherited the tales of their fathers; and among the poets, who preferred popular fable to philosophic speculation. Reason would have pursued her discovery; but the pagans knew not how to apply the notion of immortality, even when they had t It governed not their precepts; it established not their hope. When they attempt- td to discuss the grounds of it, “they became vain in their imaginations, and their polish heart was darkened.” The best arguments of Socrates are unworthy of a child, ho has “learned the holy scriptures.”” And it is remarkable enough that the doctrine of immortality is as perfectly. detached, and as barren of moral effect, in the hands of nodern infidels as it was in the hands of the ancient pagans. They have been so unable to assign it to a convenient place in their systems; they have found it to be so much at ariance with their habits, and so troublesome in their warfare with the scriptures, that he more resolute of the sect have discarded it altogether. With the soberer part of them it is no better than an opinion; but it never was, and never will be, a source of Tue consolation in any system or any bosom, but the system of Christianity and the psom of the Christian. ‘Life and Immortality,” about which some have guessed, for hich all have sighed, but of which none could trace the relations, or prove the existence, are not merely hinted, they “are brought to light by the gospel.” This is the Darting point with every other religion; and yet the very point upon which our appiness hangs. That we shall survive the body, and pass from its dissolution to the ar of God, and from the bar of God to endless retribution, are truths of infinite 10ment, and of pure revelation. They demonstrate the incapacity of temporal things D content the soul. They explain why grandeur, and pleasure, and fame, leave the heart sad. He who pretends to be my comforter without consulting my immortality pverlooks my essential want. The gospel supplies it. Immortality is the basis of her ubric. She resolves the importance of man into its true reason—the value of his soul. he sees under every human form, however rugged or abused, a spirit unalterable by xternal change, unassailable by death, and endued with stupendous faculties of nowledge and action, of enjoyment and suffering; a spirit, at the same time, depraved . wD 486 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. and guilty, and therefore liable to irreparable ruin. These are Christian views. They elevate us to a height, at which the puny theories of the world stand and gaze. They stamp new interest on all my relations and all my acts. They hold up before me objects vast as my wishes, terrible as my fears, and permanent as my being. They bind me to eternity. 3 Secondly, having thus unfolded the general doctrine of immortality, the gospel advances further, informing us, that although a future life is sure, future blessedness is — by no means a matter of course. This receives confirmation from a review of our | ] character as sinners. ; ‘ None but an atheist, or, which is the same thing, a madman, will deny the existence of moral obligation, and the sanction of moral law. In other words, that it is our duty to obey God, and that He has annexed penalties to diobedience. As little can it be denied that we have actually disobeyed Him. Guilt has taken up its abode in the conscience, and indicates, by signs not to be misunderstood, both in presence and power. To call this superstitious betrays only that vanity which thinks to confutea doctrine by giving it an ill name. Depravity and its consequences meet us, at every moment, in a thousand shapes; nor is there an individual breathing who has escaped _ its taint. Therefore our relations to our Creator as innocent creatures have ceased; and are succeeled by the relation of rebels against His government. In no other ~ light can He contemplate us, because His “judgment is according to truth.” A con-— viction of this begets alarm and wretchedness. And whatever some may pretend, a guilty conscience is the secret worm which preys upon the vitals of human peace; the — invisible spell which turns the draught of pleasure into wormwood and gall. To ~ laugh at it as an imaginary evil is the mark of a fool: for what can be more rational than to tremble at the displeasure of an almighty God. If, then, I ask how I am to 2, be delivered? or whether deliverance is possible? human reason is dumb: or if she — open her lips it is only to tease me with conjectures, which evince that she knows — nothing of the matter. Here the Christian verity interferes; showing me, on the one ~ hand, that my alarm is well founded; that my demerit with whom I have to do, “will ~ by no means clear the guilty;” but, on the other hand, revealing the provision of His — infinite wisdom and grace, for releasing me from guilt. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The more I ponder this method of salvation, the more I ~ am convinced that it displays the divine perfection and exalts the divine government; so that, “it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect throaea ; sufferings.” Now I know where to obtain the first requisite to happiness, pardon of | sin, In Christ Jesus, the Lord, is that justifying righteousness, the want of which, though I was ignorant of the cause, kept me miserable a this hour. I cling to it, and am safe. His precious blood “purges my conscience.” It “extends peace to me as a river, and the glory of redemption like a flowing stream.’ My worst fears are dis- _ pelled: “the wrath to come” is not for me; I can look with composure at futurity, and feel joy springing up with the thought that I am immortal. Third, in addition to deliverance from wrath, Christianity provides relief against the plague of the heart. Rr It will not be contested that disorder reigns among the passions of men. The 4 very attempts to rectify it are a sufficient concession; and their ill success shows their authors to have been physicians of no value. That particular ebullitions of passion have been repressed, and particular habits of vice overcome, without Christian aid, is ai admitted. But if any one shall conclude that these are examples of victory over the Pe * + The Gospel to the Poor—Mason. 487 inciple of depravity, he will greatly err. For, not to insist that that experience ot ie world is against him, we have complete evidence that all reformations, not evan- elical, are merely an exchange of lusts; or rather, the elevation of one evil appetite ; the depression, of another; the strength of depravity continuing the same: its form ly varied. Nor can it be otherwise. Untaught of God, the most comprehensive snius is unable either to trace the original of corruption, or to check its force. It has its fountain where he least and last believes it to be; but where the omniscient eye as searched it out; in the human heart; the heart filled with “enmity against God” — he heart “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” “But the discovery being nade, His measures, you hope, will take surer effect.’””’ Quite the contrary. It now fies His power, as it formerly did His wisdom. How have disciples of the moral chool studied and toiled? How have they resolved, and vowed, and fasted, watched, nd prayed, travelling through the whole circuit of devout austerities! and set down t last, ‘““wearied in the greatness of their way!” But no marvel! the “Ethiopian can- change his skin, nor the leopard his spots.” Neither can impurity purify itself. dere again, light from the footsteps of the Christian truth breaks in upon the darkness; id gospel again flows from her tongue; the gospel of a new heart—the gospel of egenerating and sanctifying grace; as the promise, the gift, the work of God. “I will rinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and om all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new pirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh; ind I will give you an heart of flesh; and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you 0 walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.” Here all our ficulties are resolved at once. The spirit of life in Christ Jesus quickens ‘the dead 3 trespasses and sins. The Lord, our strength, works in us all the good pleasure of lis goodness, and the work of faith with power.” That which was impossible with nen, is not so with Him; for “with Him all things are possible; even the subduing our liquities;”’ creating us anew, after his own image, “in knowledge, righteousness, and ae holiness;” turning our polluted souls into His own habitation through the birit;’” and making us “meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.” Verily this is spel; worthy to go in company with remission of sin. And shall I conquer at last? ull I, indeed, be delivered from the bondage and the torment of corruption? A new rnsation passes through my breast. “I lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence pmeth my help;” and with the hope of “perfecting holiness in the fear of God,” hail ty immortality. Fourthly. Having thus removed our guilt and cleansed our affections, the gospel bceeds to put us in possession of adequate enjoyment. An irresistible law of our ing impels us to seek happiness. Nor will a million of frustrated hopes deter from experiments; because despair is infinitely more excruciating than the fear of fresh ppointment. But an impulse, always vehement and never successful, multiplies € materials and inlets of pain. The assertion carries with its own proof; and the ‘inciple it assumes is verified by the history of our species. In every place, and at all ingenuity has been racked to meet the ravenous desires. Occupation, wealth, gnity, science, amusement, all have been tried; are all tried at this hour; and all in ain. The heart still repines: the unappeased cry is give, give. There is a fatal error mewhere; and the gospel detects it. Fallen away from God, we have substituted the ature in His place. This is the grand mistake: the fraud which sin has committed on our nature. The gospel reveals God as the satisfying good, and brings it within rreach. It proclaims Him reconciled in Christ Jesus, as our Father, our Friend, our rtion. It introduces us into His presence with liberty to ask in the Intercessor’s me, and asking, to “receive, that our joy may be full.” It keeps us under His eye; 488 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. surrounds us with His arm; feeds us upon living bread which He gives from heaven; seals us up to an eternal inheritance; and even engages to reclaim our dead bodies from the grave, and fashion them in beauty, which shall vie with heaven! It is enough! My prayers and desires can go no further: I have got to the “fountain of living waters—Return to thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee!” This gospel of immortality, in righteousness, purity, and bliss, would ‘be inesti- mable, were it even obscure, and not to be comprehended without painful scrutiny. — But I observe again. Fifthly. That, unlike the systems of men, and contrary to their anticipations, the + gospel is as simple as it is glorious. Its primary doctrines, though capable of exer-— cising the most disciplined talent, are adapted to the common understanding. Were 1 they dark and abstruse, they might gratify a speculative mind, but would be lost upon the multitude, and be unprofitable to all, as doctrines of consolation. The mass of mankind never can be profound reasoners. To omit other difficulties, they have not 4 leisure. Instruction, to do them good, must be interesting, solemn, repeated, and plain. This is the benign office of the gospel. Her principle topics are few; they are constantly recurring in various connections; they come home to every man’s condi- tion; they have an interpreter in his bosom: they are enforced by motives which honesty can hardly mistake, and conscience will rarely dispute. Unlettered men, whoa love their Bible, seldom quarrel about the prominent articles of faith and duty; and as seldom do they appear among the proselytes, that meagre refinement which arrogates — the title of Philosophical Christianity. From its simplicity, moreover, the gospel derives advantages in consolation. Grief, e whether in the learned or illiterate, is always simple. A man, bowed down under ‘ calamity, has no relish for investigation. His powers relax; he leans upon his com- ~ forter; his support must be without toil, or his spirit faints. Conformably to these reflections, we see, on the one hand, that the unlearned compose the bulk of Christians; 7 the life of whose souls is in the substantial doctrines of the cross—and on the other, that in the time of affliction even the careless lend their ear to the voice of revelation. Precious, at all times, to believers, it is doubly precious in the hour of trial. These things prove, not only that the gospel, when understood, gives a peculiar relief in — trouble, but that it is readily apprehended; being most acceptable when we are the — least inclined to critical research. ae hi Sixthly. The gospel, so admirable for its simplicity, has also the recommendation — of truth. The wretch who dreams of transport feels a new sting in his wretchedness ~ when he opens his eyes, and the delusion is fled. No real misery can be removed, nor any real benefit conferred, by doctrines which want the seal of certainty. And were the gospel of Jesus a human invention; or were it checked by any rational suspicion, that it may turn out to be a fable, it might retain its brilliancy, its sublimity, and even a portion of its interest; but the charm of its consolation would be gone. Nay, it would add gall to bitterness, by fostering a hope which the next hour might laugh to scorn. But we may dismiss our anxiety, for there is no hazard of such an issue. Not only “grace,” but “truth,” came by Jesus Christ. The gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth were words of the Amen, the faithful and the true Witness; and those which He has written in His blessed book, are “pure words, as silver tried in the — furnace, purified seven times.” His promises no man can deny to be exceeding great; yet they derive their value to us from assurances, which, by satisfying the hardest conditions of evidence, render doubt not only inexcusable, but even criminal. “By two — immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we have a strong consola-_ Zt Bi / a A ne The Gospel to the Poor—Mason. 489 tion who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before ts.” Now, there- fore, the promises of the gospel which are. “exceeding great,” are also “precious.” We d not scruple to trust ourselves for this life and the life to come upon that word Cc hristianity glad tidings’to the depressed and perishing! No fear of disappointment. No hope that shall make ashamed! Under the feet of evangelical faith is a covenant col oborated by millions in both worlds, “I know whom I have believed, and I am suaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against ” Lastly, the gospel, as a system of consolation, is perfectly by the authority and energy which accompany it. The devices of man originate in his fancy, and expire with his breath. Destitute of power, they play around depravity, like shadows round the mountain top, and vanish without leaving an impression. Their effect would be inconsiderable, could he manifest them to be true; because he cannot compel the admission of truth itself into the human mind. Indifference, unreasonableness, prejudice, petulance, oppose to it an almost incredible resistance. We see this in the affairs of every day, and especially in the stronger conflicts of opinion and passion. ‘Now, besides the opposition which moral truth has always to encounter, there is a particular reason why the truth of the gospel, though most salutary, though attested by every thing within us and around us; by life and death; by earth and heaven and iell; will not succeed unless backed by divine energy. It is this: Sin has perverted the inderstanding of man, and poisoned his heart. It persuaded him first to throw away his blessedness, and then to hate it. The reign of this hatred, which the Scriptures all enmity against God, is most absolute in every unrenewed man. It teaches him ver to yield a point unfriendly to one corruption, without stipulating for an quivalent in favor of another. Now, as the gospel flatters none of his corruptions in y shape, it meets with deadly hostility from all his corruptions in every shape. It is to no purpose that you press upon him the “great salvation;”’ that you demonstrate lis errors and their corrective; his diseases and their cure. Demonstrate you may, but you convert him not. He will occasionally startle and listen; but it is only to slapse into his wonted supiness: and you shall as soon call up the dead from their st, as awaken him to a sense of his danger, and prevail with him to embrace the sal- Vation of God. “Where then,” you will demand, “is the pre-eminence of your gospel?” _Tanswer, with the apostle Paul, that “it is the power of God to salvation.” When a Sinner is to be converted, that is, when a slave is to be liberated from his chains, and a re bel from execution, that same voice which has spoken in the Scriptures speaks by them to his heart, and commands an audience. He finds the word of God to be “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” It sets him before the bar of justice; strips him of his self-importance; “sweeps away his refuge of lies;’’ and shows im that death which is “the wages of sin.” It then conducts him, all trembling, to ne Divine forgiveness; reveals Christ Jesus in his soul, as his righteousness, his peace, hope of glory. Amazing transition. But is not the causé equal to the effect? “Hath the potter power over the clay?” Shall God draw, and the lame not run? Shall zod speak, and the deaf not hear? Shall God breathe, and the slain not live? Shall god “lift up the light of His countenance” upon singers reconciled in His dear Son, n they not be happy? Glory to His name! These are no fictions. “We speak that do know, and testify that we have seen. The record, written not with ink, but the Spirit of the living God,—not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart,” is os ssed by thousands who have ‘turned from the power of Satan unto God, ” and 406 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. such prodigies on corruption and death, what shall it not perform in direc establishing, and consoling them who have already obtained a “good hope throu grace?” He who thunders in the curse, speaks peace in the promise; and none ¢ conceive its influence but they who have witnessed it. For proofs you must not go to the statesman, the traveller or the historian. You must not go to the gay profession, or the splendid ceremonial. You must go to the chamber of unostentatious piety. You must go to the family anecdote, to the Christian tradition, to the observation of faithful ministers. Of the last there are many who, with literal truth, might address you as follows: ‘I have seen this gospel hush into a calm the tempest raised in the bosom by conscious guilt. I have seen it melt down the most obdurate into tender- ness and contrition. I have seen it cheer up the broken-hearted, and bring the tear of gladness into eyes swollen with grief. I have seen it produce and maintai serenity under evils which drive the worldling mad. I have seen it reconcile the sufferer to his cross, and send the song of praise from lips quivering with agony. t have seen it enable the most affectionate relatives to part in death; not without emo- tion, but without repining; and with a cordial surrender of all that they held most dear to the disposal of their heavenly Father. I have seen the fading eye brighten at the promise of Jesus, “Where I am, there shall my servant be also.” I have seen the faith- ful spirit released from its clay, now mildly, now triumphantly, to enter into the joy of its Lord.” a Who, among the children of men, that doubts this representation, would not wish it to be correct? Who, that think it only probable, will not welcome the doctrine on which it is founded as worthy of all acceptation? And who, that knows it to be true, — will not set his seal to that doctrine as being, most emphatically, gospel preached to poor? In applying to practical purposes the account which has now been given of the Christian religion, I remark, i‘ 1. That it fixes a criterion of Christian ministrations. _If He, who spake as never man spake, has declared His own doctrine to abound with consolation to the miserable, then, certainly, the instructions of others are — evangelical only in proportion as they subserve the same gracious end. A contradiction not infrequent among some advocates of revelation is to urge against the infidel its — power of comfort, and yet to avoid, in their own discourses, almost every principle , from which that power is drawn. Disregarding the mass of mankind, to whom the ~ gospel is peculiarly fitted; and omitting those truths which might revive the grieved — spirit, or touch the slumbering conscience, they discuss their moral topics in a manner unintelligible to the illiterate, uninteresting to the mourner, and without alarm to the profane, This is not “preaching Christ.” Elegant dissertations upon virtue and vice, upon the evidences of revelation or any other general subject, may entertain the prosperous and the gay; but they will not mortify our members which are upon the earth; they will not unsting calamity, nor feed the heart with an imperishable hope. When I go to. ; the house of God, I do not want amusement. I want the doctrine which is according — to godliness. I want to hear of the remedy against the harassings of my guilt, and the disorder of my affections. I want to be led from weariness and disappointment to that goodness which filleth the hungry soul. I want to have light upon the mystery of Providence; to be taught how the “judgments of the Lord are right;”’ how I shall be prepared for duty and for trial—how I may “pass the time of my sojourning here in fear,’ and close it in peace. Tell me of that Lord Jesus “who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” Tell me of His “intercession for the trans- gressors” as their “advocate with the Father.” Tell me of His holy spirit, whom “they that believe on Him receive,” to be their preserver, sanctifier, comforter. Tell The Gospel to the Poor—Mason. 491 ¢ His grace. Tell me of the glory reflected on His name by the obedience of faith. ‘ell me of vanquished death, of the purified grave, of a blessed resurrection, of the life lasting—and my bosom warms. This is gospel; these are glad tidings to me as a uufferer, because glad to me as a sinner. They rectify my mistakes; allay my resent- nents; rebuke my discontent; support me under the weight of moral and natural evil. [hese attract the poor; steal upon the thoughtless; awe the irreverent; and throw over the service of the sanctuary a majesty which some fashionable modes of address never fail to dissipate. Where they are habitually neglected or lightly referred to, here may be much grandeur, but there is no gospel; and those preachers have infinite reason to tremble, who, though admired by the great, and caressed by the vain, are eserted by the poor, the sorrowful, and such as “walk humbly with their God.” 2. We should learn from the gospel lessons of active benevolence. _ The Lord Jesus, who “went about doing good, has left us an example, that we hould follow in His steps.” Christians, on whom He has bestowed affluence, rank yr r talent, should be the last to disdain their fellow men, or to look with indifference n indigence and grief. Pride, unseemly in all, is detestable in them who confess t “by grace they are saved.’ Their Lord and Redeemer, who humbled himself by assuming their nature, came to “deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper.” And surely an object which was not unworthy of the Son God, cannot be unworthy of any who are called by His name. Their wealth and jpportunities, their talents and time, are not their own, nor to be used according to ieir own pleasure; but to be consecrated by their vocation “as fellow-workers with sod.” How many hands that hang down would be lifted up, how many feeble knees sonfirmed, how many tears wiped away, how many victims of despondency and infamy escued by a close imitation of Jesus Christ. Go with your opulence to the house of amine and the retreats of disease. Go “deal thy bread to the hungry: when thou pest the naked, cover him; and hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” Go and mish means to rear the offspring of the poor; that they may at least have access to he word of your God. Go and quicken the flight of the angel, who has “the ever- sti ng gospel to preach” unto the nations. If you possess not wealth, employ your tion in promoting “good will toward men.” “Judge the fatherless; plead for the : Stimulate the exertions of others, who may supply what is “lacking on your 1 Let the “beauties of holiness” pour their lustre upon your distinctions, and ecommend to the unhappy that peace which yourselves have found in the salvation God. If you have neither riches nor rank, devote your talents. Ravishing are the ccents which dwell on “the tongue of the learned,” when it “speaks a word in season him that is weary.” Press your genius and your eloquence into the service of the Lord your righteousness,” to magnify His word, and display the riches of His grace. ho knoweth whether He may honor you to be the minister of joy to the disconsolate, berty to the captive, of life to the dead? If He has denied you wealth, and rank, id talent, consecrate your heart. Let us dissolve in sympathy. There is nothing to inder yyour “rejoicing with them that do rejoice and your weeping with them that eep;” nor to forbid the interchange of kind and soothing offices. “A brother is born ir tpersity :” and not only should Christian be to Christian, “a friend that sticketh oser than a brother,” but he should exemplify the loveliness of his religion to “them at are without.” An action, a word, marked by the sweetness of the gospel, has been owned of God for producing the happiest effects. Let no man, therefore, to excuse his inaction; for no man is too inconsiderable to augment the triumphs 492 . Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ? with joy out of its wells of salvation!” Assume your own character, O ye children of men; present your grievances, and accept the consolation which the gospel tenders. which satisfieth not; hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and _ let your soul delight itself in fatness!’ Come, ye tribes of ambition, who burn for the _ applause of your fellow-worms. The voice of the Son of God to you is, “The friend- ship of this world is enmity with God;” but “if any serve me, him will my Father — honor.” Come ye avaricious, who “pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the ~ poor.” The voice of the Son of God is, Wisdom is ‘‘more precious than rubies; an all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her”—but “what shall i profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ Come, ye profane! The voice of the Son of God is, ‘““Hearken unto me, ye stout-hearted, that are far from righteousness; behold, I bring near my righteousness.” Come, ye formal and self-sufficient, who say “that ye are rich, and increased with goods, — able, and poor, and blind, and naked.” The voice of the Son of God is, counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that ye may be rich; white raiment, that ye may be clothed; and that the shame of your nakedness do not appear; and anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that ye may see.” Come, Se who, oil convinced of sin, fear lest the “fierce anger of the Lord fall upon you.” The voice of the Son of God is, “Him that cometh unto me I will in nowise cast out. I, even I, am He that Pei out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not rememBenin thy sins.” Come, ye disconsolate, whose souls are sad, because the Comforter is away. The voice of the Son of God is, The Lord “hath sent me to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” Come, ye tempted, who are borne down with the ; . violence of the “law in your members,” and of assaults from the evil one. The voice of the Son of God is, “I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; and the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.””’ Come, ye children of domestic woe, — upon whom the Lord has made a breach, by taking away your counsellors and support. The voice of the Son of God is, “Leave thy fatherless children with me; I will preserve — them alive, and let thy widows trust in me.” Come ye, from whom mysterious Provi- — dence has swept away the acquisitions of long and reputable industry. The voice of the Son of God is, “My son, if thou wilt receive my words,” thou shalt have “treasure in the heavens that faileth not; and mayst “take joyfully the spoiling of thy goods, knowing that thou hast in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” Come, ye poor, who, without property to lose, are grappling with distress and exposed to want. The Son of God, though the heir of all things, “had not where to lay His head;” and His voice to the poor is, ““Be content with such things as ye have, for I will never leave thee nor forsake thee; thy bread shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure.” Come, ye reproached, who find ‘“‘cruel mockings” a most bitter persecution. The voice of the Son of God is, “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, for the spirit of God and of glory resteth upon you.’’ Come, in fine, ye dejected, whom the fear of death holds in bondage. The voice of the Son of God is, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be — thy plague! O grave I will be thy destruction! repentance shall be hid from mings eyes!” Blessed Jesus, thy loving kindness shall “be my joy in the house of my pilgrimage!” and I will praise thee “while I have any being,” for that gospel which thou hast preached to the poor! The Gospel to the Poor—Mason. 493 _ [John M. Mason, D. D., was born in the city of New York, in 1770, graduated at olumbia College in 1789, having studied theology with his father. He succeeded his ther in the pastorate of the Cedar Street Church, in 1792. In 1812 he became pastor a new church in Murray street. He had also accepted the appointment of provost olumbia College, which office he filled until compelled to visit Europe in 1816, on count of ill health. On his return in 1817, he resumed preaching, but in 1821 took sharge of Dickinson College. He died in December, 1829. This sermon is the first in a volume of his sermons, and was considered by the uthor his best. He committed it to memory, and repeated to large audiences on ne or two tours throughout the United States. Kerr Boyce Tupper, A. T. Pierson nd W. G. Moorehead, each considered this one of the best ten sermons of the nine- teenth century. ] | 494 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE NATURAL MAN. H. MELVILL. {Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, and Canon Residentiary.) “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are ‘ , foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dis- — cerned.”—I Cor. 2: 14. Here is a severe and grave accusation. The natural man—man in his natural — state—and this must be what we all are, or all haye been—is accused of positive incapa-— city to know or discern the things of the Spirit of God; those things which God’s — Spirit, as on this day, descended to propound, apply and enforce, It will be our F, business to weigh this accusation, to examine its extent, and to vindicate its justice. The Church now commemorates a great event—the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost—as our promised Comforter and Guide. Whit-Sunday may be said to bear much the same relation to the third person in the ever-blessed Trinity that Christmas Day bears to the second person, being the day of public entrance on the office belonging to Him in the work of redemption. As on Christmas Day the second Person specially descended to earth, that He might commence the payment of the ransom which He had from all eternity undertaken, so on Whit-Sunday the third - person specially uescended that He might commence that renewal of our fallen nature, which from all eternity He had undertaken to effect. But there was very great differ- ence in the circumstances of the descent. The second person came with every token of weakness and indigence; for Christ was born a helpless infant, and laid in a manger; the third person came with every token of greatness and supremacy. “A rushing mighty wind” gave signal of the Spirit, and “cloven tongues as of fire’ were symbols of His presence. And in the after residences of these divine persons upon earth there is just as wide a separation as in the circumstances of the original descent. The second person, having assumed human nature, had to bear all the possible indignities which could be heaped upon Him by a sinful and adulterous generation; the third — person, veiling Himself always in the majestic obscurities of His own divine nature, may indeed have been often reviled and blasphemed, but there has been none of that sensible putting off of His glories, which is so conspicuous in the case of the Redeemer. He remains ever the same awful, sublime, inscrutable being which, like wind, may be traced in its effects, but of which, like the wind, “thou canst not tell whence it cometh, } nor whither it goeth.” And thus in the third person of the Trinity we have a person of the Godhead dwelling upon earth, perpetually busied in the work of our redemption, f and yet preserving all the dignity of an essential divinity, “having His way in the whirlwind, and in the storm, and the clouds being the dust of His feet.” E * mm + th SSR vl eae pina But is it practically found, that human pride is less offended at the third person &: than at the second? What difference does it make, that, in operating for our good, _ the third person has retained all His majesty, whereas the second laid it all aside? What difference, we mean, does it make in the readiness wherewith His office is acknowledged, and the thankfulness wherewith the benefits are received? Practically no difference whatsoever. It is no exaggeration to affirm, that human pride revolts to The Natural Man—Melvill. 495 the full as much from the work of the third person, carried on with the solemn secrecy of deity, as from that of the second, performed with all the appearances of indignity and shame. Men are quite as averse to the doctrine of being renewed by Him who works as the invisible God, as to that of being redeemed by one who died the igno- minious death of a malefactor. So that, however men may make the humiliations of Christ their pretext for rejecting Him, the real object of dislike is the doctrine established by the cross, rather than the cross itself upon which it is graven. For _ wherefore is it that there is so much of haughty opposition to the Holy Spirit, so much of reluctance to confess His influence, and submit to His guidance, if the chief stumbling-block to our pride be the poverty and contempt with which a divine person “may have appeared, whereas this third person has put off none of His essential glory, but accomplishes His work by that majestic mysteriousness which as much publishes ‘as conceals the absolute Godhead? There is no parrying with the conclusion, that -men dislike Christianity, not because of anything revolting to their pride in the apparatus, so to speak, through which they were redeemed, but because of the humiliating truths which the very fact of redemption would force upon their belief. us, and taken up graciously His abode in the midst of the church—that, with a _ gloriousness at least as wondrous as His condescension, He appears amidst the ruin and corruption of humanity, and yet surrenders not, even in appearance, one jot of the splendors of divinity. Very cordial might be our welcome, and very warm our admiration of the person and office of this divine agent, were there nothing that flected on ourselyes—nothing that implied truths which go to prove us degraded d honor Him, were there that in His office which passed, so to speak, a compli- ent on the human intellect, and represented it as adequate to heavenly truth; but e entertain a dislike which is little short of disgust, when taught in the language of ur text, that ‘the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they scerned.” _ Now, in these words of St. Paul, there is undoubtedly a very express statement as to the incompetence of the human understanding, for the discovery and appreciation of spiritual things; and forasmucn as that descent of the Holy Ghost which we now _ commemorate may be said to take for granted this incompetence—for the need of “supernatural influence follows only from the insufficiency of our own powers—we cannot better keep the present festival than by examining the justice of the charge might, perhaps, admit of various significations; but as this term is derived from one which often denotes the rational soul, the probability would seem to be that by the natural man is intended man with those powers of intellect and mind which he possesses from nature—man, as naturally born into the world, distinguished from man us supernatural, born again of God’s Spirit. And then the thing affirmed by St. Paul s that our native powers of mind are not sufficient in religion; that whatever our hrewdness, correctness, and grasp of understanding on any other subject, yet that left to ourselves, without the aids of divine grace, we cannot form correct notions of he gospel, apprehend the mysteries, nor appreciate the blessings of redemption. his is virtually the charge laid, and that too in most sweeping terms, against the 496 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. natural man—a charge of actual incapacity for the very matter in which he has con fessedly the closest possible interest, and which may not perhaps seem to him to transcend in its difficulties many others to which he applies a. successful investigation. understanding, and rejecting what.it cannot force to submit itself to reason. There is here, therefore, evidently great room for an important inquiry, and one, moreover, peculiarly appropriate to Whit-Sunday. Is it a true charge, and whence 5. does. it arise, that divine grace is indispensable to the acquaintance and the closing that we launch out into declarations against the human understanding, endeavoring by God’s help, to answer this inquiry, desiring to employ only such reasoning as may _ commend itself to every simple and unprejudiced mind. Give us, then, your patient — attention, whilst, by a few successive arguments, we strive to show you why it must be, and wherefore it comes to pass, that “the natural man receiveth not the things — of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him’’—nay, that he “cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Now, in order to the making good these assertions of the apostle, there is no need that we launch out into declarations against the human understanding, endeavoring to the high matters of religion. The human understanding is not the crippled and impotent thing which it is often described, and the natural man has something like fair ground of complaint, if, after vigorous expatiations over broad tracts of know- ledge, successful searchings into the secrets of nature, and luminous deductions from repeated experiments, he finds himself told that it is simply because his natural powers are feeble and inadequate, that he must not think to make way in inyesti- gating spiritual truth. The province of the understanding is to distinguish between ~ falsehood and truth, between evil and good; and though, undoubtedly, the under- — standing was greatly injured by the fall, nevertheless, in the main, it still faithfully — executes its part, and forms a right decision upon points referred to its tribunal. But—and to this we ask your special attention—the understanding can only judge — of things according to the representations laid before it, whether by the senses or the — affections; and if those representations be incorrect, the understanding may deliver a wrong judgment, and yet be no way in fault. ; “4 Now, just observe, for a moment, how the understanding is dependent on the senses, and how it may be deceived by the senses; for this will greatly assist you in — observing how it may be deceived by the affections, which is exactly what establishes the need we have of divine grace. You must all be aware that you can form no idea ~ of the objects of the external creation, unless by the agency of the senses. The eye, the ear, the touch, must be your informants, otherwise, what notion can you have of their different substances and properties? We might illustrate this by the well-known instance of the blind man, who, when asked his idea of the color of scarlet, likened it to the sound of a trumpet—an evidence, as we all must confess, that, where any of the senses are wanting, the understanding, though without any fault of its own, will form absurd and erroneous conclusions. Let us suppose, then, a man born with impaired or insufficient senses, but a clear and vigorous understanding. Suppose that his eye distorts everything, so as to make the straight appear crooked, and the crooked appear — straight; suppose him unable to discriminate colors, so that now the green is red, and now the red is green; suppose his touch is so imperfect, that in handling the round it — represents it as the square, and passing over the smooth it classes it with the rough; — suppose his ear so faulty, that it confounds the musical notes, and even finds discord in harmony, and harmony in discord, I do not say that the senses are often, if ever, pres eas The Natural Man—Melvill. 497 us radically vitiated, for, in general, they perform their different functions with sufficient fidelity; but there is no difficulty in imagining a man with this defection of ‘senses, and what I ask you is, what would the man’s understanding avail him when such erroneous representations were laid before it by those organs whose business it is to fetch in notices from the external creation of its every occurrence; and what could you form but most inaccurate notions of the gorgeous and beautiful things that are scattered through the visible universe? Would not the supposed man, with the “distorted and insufficient faculties, require to be made the subject of a rectifying process, either obtaining an entirely new set of senses, or receiving into his system - some corrective power, which should be mending constant errors, ere he could form to himself any fitting conception of that world in which he is placed, and those wonders by which he is surrounded? We cannot doubt that you will go with us in this reasoning and conclusion; so that, if by a ‘natural man” in our text were meant aman deficient in bodily senses, and if the things he is declared capable of compre- hending were the objects of the external creation, there is not one of you who would not immediately, and that, too, without supposing that the assertion threw any blame on the man’s understanding, assent to the proposition, that “the natural man receiveth - not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he _ know them, because they are discerned” through a perverted set of faculties and _ organs. i Now, of course we do not for a moment attempt to imply that the foregoing sup- ~ posed case of a natural man answers to that which is referred to by the apostle, though it may very well serve as a help or illustration. The senses are not the channels through which spiritual things are submitted to the understanding, and _ therefore their distortion or derangement would not cause these things to seem foolish- "ness to the man. The eye might have no discrimination of colors, and the ear none of ; ‘sounds; but, whilst such imperfections would cause a misrepresentation of the _ external universe, they would not necessarily at all interfere with correct views of the invisible world. But, now, observe that not only is the understanding dependent On the senses in the manner which we have endeavored to describe; it is dependent also on the affections, and this we have yet to strive to exhibit. There is in all of us a faculty by which we love certain things, and there is in all of us a faculty by which we hate certain things. The former faculty is in right order if it fix on nothing but what is worthy of our love, and the latter is in right order if it fix on nothing but what is worthy of our hatred; but if there be any bias on these faculties—if, like a ‘diseased eye or ear, they misrepresent objects, what will the understanding be able to do, seeing that the impressions transmitted to it of evil may make it seem good, and of good may make it seem evil? Without necessarily laying any blame on the under- Standing itself, what is there to prevent that understanding from deciding in pre- ference of present things over future, perishable over eternal, if the affections, through whose representations it must judge the desirable and the undesirable, give a false Picture, and thus lead it into error? The case of a man with depraved affections is Virtually the same, in regard of the things which it is the business of the affections to Tepresent, as that of a man with vitiated senses, in regard of the things which it is the wisiness of the senses to represent; and is not the natural man a being with depraved ffections, though he may not be a being with vitiated senses? Every one of us by ature regards as worthy of his best love what God would have him despise, and gives lis aversion to that which God would have him value. Every one of us by nature is isposed to seek happiness where God declares that it cannot be found, and to deny at it exists where alone God would place it. Take the scriptural representations of ven, and they have in them little or nothing attractive to the natural man, because distorted affections would find their chief good in the sensual and the earthly. —— 498 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Take the scriptural representations of hell, and though, beyond doubt, they are t rr fying to the natural man, because he can appreciate a threatening of pain, forasmuch as the threatened pain may be distant, whilst the promised pleasure is n the affections will generally decide for the desirableness of the present enjoym as balanced against the evil of the future infliction. In short, the task demand from the understanding by religion is, that it determine that in God is man’s ch ief good, and in obedience to God man’s only true happiness; but whilst his affections in their natural state, give preference to some finite good, and shrink from God’ service as from hardship and bondage, how can the understanding deliver the verdic required by religion, any more than it could form a correct notion of a tree, if senses represented it as lying on the ground, in place of springing from it—as cov with pestilential ashes, in place of crowded with odoriferous leaves? Ah! you n see why we asked you to imagine the case of a man whose senses should give hi distorted representations of the natural creation, and told you that it would serve t illustrate that of the natural man, whom St. Paul asserts incompetent to compre the things of the Spirit of God. It is not that the senses have to do with religi truth, but it is that the affections have to do with them, and in precisely the sam manner as the senses with natural things. In examining whether a tree be round or square, the understanding must depend on the eye or the touch. If there be suc defect in these senses that they convey an impression of square, when the substane is round, the understanding will form a wrong conception, and yet not be to bla In like manner, in determining whether thi$ or that course is the best adapted t thing as fo be loved, and another as to be hated. If there be such a bias on affections—if they be so perverted that they put evil for good, and good for e bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter—what can the understanding do? Will it almost necessarily give a wrong decision, and yet without any impeachment of the high powers and prerogatives which are claimed for it with so much jealousy by natural man? And is there not this bias on the affections? Oh! ye can kni nothing of what man is by nature, if ye know not this. What! do not God and mai make happiness consist in opposite things? Do we love what God would have us” love? Do we hate what God would have us hate? The objects which attract us m by their aspect of desirableness, are they objects on which the Bible bids us fix our affections? Rather, are they not objects from which the Bible exhorts us to withdraw our affections? And what play is there for the understanding, ye admirers and worshippers of intellect—what play is there for the understanding, whilst feelers, so to speak, are radically out of order, and misrepresent the thing which gathers to its bar? No matter, then, if the senses were radically out of order, maki square things of round, and white things of black, and sweet things, of bitter: the grand defect of man is in the heart, and not in the head. The head may have been comparatively uninjured by the fall; but the heart was turned upside down; an there must be a corrective process applied to the heart; divine grace must work there, removing the corrupt bias from the affections and purifying them, so that they shall find their chief good in God, ere the head can apprehend the great things of the gospel, confess their force, and bow to their authority. 4 And thus we say nothing that shall offend the most strenuous upholder of the power of the human intellect, when in the words of the text we declare that “the natural man’—man unaided by divine grace—is utterly incompetent to discern the things of the Spirit of God. Ye had nothing to say when we supposed the natural man a man wanting in the bodily senses, or having those senses diseased or distorted, and then plied you with the almost self-evident fact, that, notwithsanding the p session of a clear and mighty intellect, such a man would remain without any correc The Natural Man—Melvill. 499 notion of the stars, the mountains, and the forests of the visible creation. What have you to urge when we do not suppose but prove the natural man a man depraved in the affections—the affections which, if they perform not the same parts as the senses, which, if they be not informants upon size, and shape, and color, are, upon and good, desirable and undesirable? What have you to urge, when we decide of such a man, that let his reason be as vigorous as it may be, it is impossible for him of himself to apprehend the excellence and the preciousness of the gospel of Christ? Oh! we should not care if we had to admit, that the human understanding was just as strong now as it was in Adam, ere he rebelled against God; there is a thoroughly depraved heart, where there is ever so clear a head; and this will be ways enough to explain why “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” yea, to prove that, ‘he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Here is the point to which we have all Ape been desirous to bring you—the Bepensable need of divine grace, in order to our apprehending and applying the great truths of revelation. Men often profess to count it very strange that we should Bake them out incapable of understanding spiritual things, when they have con- fessedly so much power of grappling with what is intricate, and investigating what is lofty in other departments of knowledge; and the illustration which we have kept up through so much of our discourse is a perfect answer to this. The affections are, to spiritual things, what the senses are to natural things. If, then, the affections misrepresent the object of which they have to give impressions to the understanding, he result will be of the same kind as if the work were done by the senses. But the affections do thus misrepresent objects; they make the worse appear the preferable; “they pass off the shadow for the substance; and,. therefore, a man of the very ‘strongest intellect is no more able to make way in religion of himself, than he would be in natural science, were he born without senses, or with those which give none but false representations. And, as on this day, the Holy Ghost came down in his power, ) apply the necessary corrective to our diseased affections, and thus to enable us to iscern spiritual things. He did not come to give a new understanding, for there was Es ength enough left in the head; he came to set in order those affections, through which the understanding is necessarily influenced; for the root of the moral mischief les in the heart. We are more anxious than we can tell you, that you should be Possessed of this, which we believe the true view of the case. “The natural man” S up against such a text as that on which we have discoursed. It seems to him to depreciate his whole intellectual equipment. He can understand the truths of the | Profoundest philosophy—why should he be unable to understand the truths of a rofound theology? By his own intellect he can make way with the volume of science apty is he stopped outside, and told that he cannot make way with the volume of yelation? Nay, nay, we are not undervaluing his mental strength; but we tell him he t his heart will give his head no chance. Whilst his heart is in its natural state, will mystify, misrepresent, distort, discolor the truths of the gospel; so that, in le strong language of the text, they are actually foolishness unto him. There is 0 form, no comeliness in Christ; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we Should desire Him. “The preaching of the cross is, to them that perish, foolishness,” ough “unto them that are saved it is the power of God.” : How earnestly, then, should we pray the prayer of David, “Create in me a clean , O God, and renew a right spirit within me!” To this it is, as we have already said that we are most anxious to bring you, even to a sense of your need of divine Brace, that you may understand religious truths, and perform religious duties. And | this grace is ready to be bestowed, if we will only ask it in sincerity, and seek it | through the instituted channels, Alas! that we should have so often grieved : f . ee F 500 ' Pulpit Power and Eloquence. and resisted God’s Spirit, walking by our own light, and by the sparks w ic] ourselves have kindled. Alas! that we should have so often opened the Scripture without prayer for His illumination, and undertaken tasks without dependence oO His guidance. No wonder if there be still so much of darkness over the page ®) revelation, if half-performed duties stare us in the face, when we do no accustom ourselves to the habitual recognition of that agency through which alone the things of Christ are shown to the soul, and “‘our hands are taught to war, so that é bow of steel is broken by our arms.” Let us strive that this Whit-Sunday may be to us the commencement of a new era in practical acknowledgment of the office of the Holy Spirit. Not in vain let us have once more listened to the “sound as of a mighty, rush ing wind” and seen “‘cloven tongues as of fire,” sitting upon each of the first preacher of the gospel. Be it our resolve, for now our endeavor, that to that wind will bi given our own devices as chaff, and to that fire all objects of sinful passion as fuel As natural men we cannot, as we have seen, make progress in religion; but God has in and through baptism, brought us out of a state of nature, and placed us under a | covenant of grace; and now it is only needed that we will not put from us assistamc largely vouchsafed, and obstinately withstand a divine guardian, who may be said to have taken us in charge, and we shall be led from one stage to another of Christian attainment, till at length we appear before God in Zion. ‘‘Led of the Spirit.” ii is the spiritual definition of a true Christian. “As many as are led of the Spirit of} God, they are the sons of God.” We cannot put one foot before another in religion except as we are led; and if there be danger of a more than common order, it is : t salvation of his soul. Would that we could prevail on you to take heed that resist not, that you grieve not God’s Spirit! Helpless and hopeless is man’s natul estate; he is born in sin and cradled in sorrow; but the Spirit of the living God ready to enter into his alienated nature, lift him from the dust, nerve to vigor, introduce him into the circles of the heavenly family. Whom else, then, shall I as my guide? Shall I be led by reason? Meteor of the day! I cannot trust Shall I be led by philosophy? Device of man! thou canst not bring me to G No; Spirit of Life! Spirit of Truth! enter Thou into our souls: yea, go Thou before us, as went the fiery and cloudy pillar before Israel of old, and we will follow Thee, and we will obey Thee, making it our confidence that, led of Thee, we are indeed children of the Most High, and heirs of immortality. God grant unto all of us to know and to feel that, though we can do nothing without His grace, we can do all things through (Christ that strengtheneth us! ‘ [Henry Melvill, B. D., was born at Pendennis Castle, Cornwall, on the 14th of September, 1798; his father, Philip Melvill, was a captain in the army, and Lieu ant-governor of Pendennis Castle, a very pious man, whose memoirs have had a wide circulation. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, and took the degree of Second. Wrangler in 1821. In the year 1824, he was ordained as Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge. From the years 1829 to 1848, he was minister of Camden Chapel, Camber- well. He was then made Principal of the East India College, and in 1846 appointe by the Duke of Wellington, Chaplain to the Tower of London. In 1853 he was ma one of the Queen’s Chaplains, and in 1856 appointed, by Lord Palmerston, Canor Residentiary. of St. Paul’s, London. © P This sermon is from The Preacher, and does not belie his reputation, that is the “golden mouthed Melvill.” It was preached May 27, 1860, at St. Paul’s Cathedral.] _ ¢ (501) SPIRITUAL LIFE AND GROWTH. REV. F. B. MEYER, B. A.. LONDON, ENGLAND CHANNELS, NOT CHALICES. “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, f any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me as the ipture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake ie of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was bt yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”—John 7: 37. _ Jesus spoke these words at the Feast of Tabernacles. On the last day, the great lay of the feast, the priests, accompanied by a festal'throng of people, descended the emple steps to the Siloam brook, filled a pitcher with water, and brought it amid uch joy into the temple area, and there poured forth its contents, splashing and shing in the sunlight, upon the pavement. That pitcher so filled, and the water so pilt, were emblematic of the river which had followed the host of Israel in their esert wanderings. And as our Lord saw this water poured out, it seems to have aggested to Him the thought that, instead of being a pitcher whose contents would 2 soon exhausted, He was Himself the river of God, which was full of water, fed rom the everlasting hills of the divine nature, and pouring down to make glad the ity of God. Jesus “cried.” I think that there is the great urgency of Christ. After the same anner, in every gathering, He stands and cries. There is no indistinct articulation; lere is no doubt or hesitancy; but to thee, O soul of man, Jesus Christ stands and ies. This humblest and meekest of men not only professes that His bosom is broad nough for every weary soul to rest upon—‘Come unto me, and I will give you rest” -but He claims to be able, out of His nature, to take away all thirst. Is your heart thirsty? If your thirst is for love, for companionship, for all that needed for life and godliness, though you have a thirst which no thing or person in ne world can quench, if you will come to Jesus Christ He will satisfy you. _ You do not try to feel that water satisfies you: you drink, and pursue your way, ind you are satisfied. Similarly, in dealing with Christ, open your nature to Him, ind say, I take Thee to fill this void, to quench this desire. Wait before Him, and en go forth and dare to reckon that Jesus Christ has done what He promised. As ou dare to trust Him, according to your faith it shall be done. “Jesus stood and cried.” He said in effect, “I am a river.” In a river, you have D stoop to drink. The river is an exquisite emblem of humility; for if there is one lace lower than another, the river will seek it and lie in deep pools there, so that the firm, the aged, the children, the cattle may go thither’and drink. Jesus Christ omes into the low level of your life, and if you are at your lowest He is nearest to yu. He stood and cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” I ink that as Jesus looked down the ages He saw His children, and He said: ‘What is ue of my power to meet the need of men shall be true also of all who belong to . They shall not drink for their own supply only, but through them I will pour fers which shall meet the thirst of the world.” So that Christ first contemplates imself as the river at which we drink, and then transforms our lives into rivers from . h others may drink. Therefore we may pass on to others what we receive from 503 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Him, as He received from God the Father. Just as a river, springing from the 'melting snows of the uplands, pours itself into some great lagoon from which | rivers emanate that carry to the lowland valleys all the glorious force of water which had descended from the hills—so Jesus Christ is the great lake into which the Godhead pours itself, and out of which we may drain His stores without exhausting them. Through us God may do for others what Jesus Christ has done for ourselves. Drink at this fountain-head, and out of you “‘shall flow rivers.” Thus far you have been content with being a pitcher, a chalice, dipped into a river, and poured out and soon exhausted. Attending a yearly convention has, perhaps, been your dip into the river; and thence you have been carried, dripping a drop here | and there on the way, to India, or China, or Africa, or England, or America; and you have been put on end and poured out and you have said presently, “I must go back to the old spot to get filled again.’ You have been a pitcher, but from today you may be a channel-bed through which not one river, but half a dozen, may flow; and you will not need, therefore, to be replenished at certain intervals, because you will be in constant communication with the fullness of Christ. Now notice these points about the river: The first is its effortlessness. You sit beside a river, and it flows, and will flow on in its inexhaustible abundance. There is no thud, no pulse, no engine, no black column of smoke. It is effortless. What strain there is in the lives of most of us! We are always pumping up from unknown depths our information for others—pumping out from commentaries—and there is af a strain. You say, ‘I have got three sermons to make, lessons to prepare, letters to” write to inquirers; I am so tired, my head and heart are overstrained, I can never get through it.” Strain! But Christ says, “My life is effortless, and your life may be effortless; for through you may flow the power of the living God, without strain to yourself, and without the sense of strain that worries other people.” . Then, second, abundance. I am told that the Kongo river pours out from its 4 mighty mouth a million tons of water a minute, and that its influence is seen in dis- coloring the ocean two hundred miles from its mouth. Such is the abundance of its waters. My friend in a little village church or in some obscure city parish, do you — realize that if you could link yourself in a certain manner with Christ there might pour out of you day by day an influence upon that church, that neighborhood, which would be comparable to the Kongo pouring out a million tons of water a minute? If. God can do that in a river, what can He not do through you? I like that word rivers, ” as though the Kongo, and the Mississippi, and the Amazon, and the Ganges, and a dozen other huge rivers would alone satisfy the thought of Jesus for every one “ His beloved. Then there is the constancy of the river. The man near whose house it flows a hears its murmur night and day, in the drought of summer and in the frost of winter, i] always, unintermittently pouring forth. :. | It is good to know, also, that it deepens in its flow. “As the Scripture hath said.” Our Lord was, without doubt, referring to Ezekiel 27, where the water became deeper at every fresh measurement of a thousand cubits. You may be getting gray. Old- men everywhere in the world are having a hard time of it just now; they are : pushed out of every thing, and begin to think they deserve it. They lose heart. But let such a man dare to take God’s Word, and remember that the river grows deeper, i and broader, and intensified in life-giving power. There is no reason why your 4 power of blessing men should get less as the body gets weaker; rather, because the veil becomes thinner, the eternal light may pour forth with more effulgence. a Then, the river is life giving. Wherever the waters come there is life. Is your — life like that? “Jordan overfloweth its banks at time of harvest!’’ When there is not — much water you see plenty of bank, and when there is plenty of water you cannot see — Seared Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer. 503 e banks at all. So when there is not much of God’s life in us, men see many of our nitations and many bare patches in the midst of the stream. But when a man is ght with God, God overflows him and you do not think about the man; you think bout the river. _ It may seem hyperbolical to speak thus. You may say, “It is very well for men ho have been specially called out for God’s work, but it is not for me.” But our Lord says, “He that believeth on me, out of him.” That makes it refer to each one those life is united to the life of Christ by faith and who is being drawn into more nd more intimate fellowship with Him. Belief is not so much intellectual as spiritual. It is receiving. He that believeth jhe that receiveth. He that receiveth from Christ, out of him shall flow rivers. There ust be nothing between; there must be perfect openness between you and Jesus; ere must be the quiet waiting on Him in prayer until He shall pour through you lis life. That is where you may have made the mistake. You have been doing things or Him. Now let Jesus do His things through you. Receive His fullness. _ Will you not open your heart to this fullness today? — It does not matter whether your faith is small or great. It is not the amount of faith, but the object of your faith that helps you. A man says, My faith is so yeak. My friend, if you will give a river time encugh it will find its way through he tlarrowest passage possible; and, though your faith be a very narrow channel day, if you give God time enough He will pour His whole nature through you. is not the faith; it is the object of the faith. r “But this spake He of the Spirit.” We should hear more of Him. “The Spirit “Was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Before His death Christ could receive the Spirit for Himself, but it was not until He was glorified in His cension that He sent the fullness of the Holy Spirit upon His disciples. _ What is true in God’s dispensational dealing is true in His dealing with the in- dividual. There must be an ascension of Christ in your heart before there can be a mtecost. Have you glorified Jesus Christ? Have you made Him the King of your ife? Fave you put Him where God the Father has put Him—as Monarch, the only every thought, and emotion, and purpose, and desire of your soul. When Jesus is fied, and when you have opened your whole nature to Him, then He will shed Holy Spirit through you, and rivers of water will flow through your life. THE WAY TO THE THRONE. The throne stands for two things; victory and influence. It is laudable to want influence and power, if you are disposed to use power to save and help others. _ At the beginning of His life, the devil came to Christ (Matthew 4:8) and said, T will give you a throne if you will pay me my price.” Christ said, “Never.” But t the close of His earthly life (Matthew 28: 18), Jesus was able to say, ‘All power is iven to me.” The power He would receive from the devil He received in another “Way. Between the two mountains of Temptation and Ascension, lay the grave, and shrist came to teach men the true way to the throne. Mark 10:35: “There came near to Jesus, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ying, Master, we would that Thou shouldst do for us whatsoever we shall ask. He — id, What would ye that I should do?” You pastors and Sunday-school teachers you want?” James and John said, “Let us sit by Thy side on Thy throne.” That is lat you want. You are not ambitious, perhaps, for a high salary, or for position, but u do want to live a useful life, to have power that you may save and help. Jesus id, “Ye know not what ye ask. You know not the price. Are you able to drink the p that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Men and 504 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. women are quite prepared to secure a throne by listening to an address, by feelis g the waft of heaven’s breezes by being uplifted by a song. Ah, you will never get wha you want that way; no, not unless you are prepared to pay Christ’s price. But you can all have thrones if you will pay for them. 7 Hebrews 12:2. “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author—or leader—and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising shame.” The meaning is “instead of the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising shame,’—here is God’s way of reaching the throne—‘‘and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Even Christ Himself paid the price. When? Suppose that man had not sinned, how would he have passed from earth to heaven when the discipline of earth was done? I suppose that he would have passed as Enoch did, translated; as Elijah did, swept up; as the saints will be when they art caught up and changed in a moment. Christ was a sinless man, ‘and on the Mount of Transfiguration, He doub less might, if He had chosen, have stepped back to God. The door of heaven stood open, and the joy beckoned Him. He might still have been the great moral teacher, the miracle worker, the example of men, but not man’s Savior; and so, because His a Father’s will pointed that way, and because His heart was one with His Father, instead of entering the beckoning glory, He turned away and went down the slope of the Transfiguration mountain, to where the devil possessed the boy; and all along the — shadowed path of the next six months, Jesus went willingly to His death. There is nothing in history greater than Luke 9: 51, where we read, “And it came to pass, whe ie the time was come that He should be Peeoed up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” : When I was visiting Canterbury Cathedral I saw where Thomas a Becket fell, and then visited the crypt, the hidden place. I went down a very winding staircase, so dark that I could not see where to put my foot; and the smell of the decay of the - vault came to my face, cold and loathsome. When I reached the level of the crypt 7 could see through an open door the garden where the spring flowers were blooming in their beauty, and the blue sky. It made me think of Jesus Christ going down ad staircase of His Father’s will, as it led deeper and deeper down into the crypt of death; but through death He saw the breaking of the spring flowers of a new creation. When a man has gone by way of the cross to reach the right hand of power it will not _ intoxicate him or injure him. ; I believe that the turning point in Jesus’ earthly life was reached in the mountain village where He spent a week of rest before His transfiguration. He was with His” disciples a part of the time, but a good deal of the time, I think, He was alone with the Father. Matthew 16:21: ‘From that time forth ess Jesus to show unto His disciples how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, Spare thyself, Lord. This shall not be unto Thee. But He . . . said, Get thee behind me.—In thy words I hear Satan’s voice. He is all the time trying to stop my going the way of the cross. Thou advisest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” God is unselfish- — ness; man is selfishness. God saves people, but does not save Himself. Man saves — himself, and if he can he saves a few others, too. Then Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ My friend, go alone with God and say, “My God, can I pay that price?” Satan will say; _ “Good man, spare thyself. Thou must travel first-class through the world; thou must be merciful to thyself.” ; 4 Will you look at John 12: 24-26? When the Greeks came and said, “We would see Jesus.” Then Jesus answered, “The hour is come that the Son of Man should be Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer. 505 glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat (Himself) fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” You ask why there are no converts in your church. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ‘ground and die, it abideth alone.” You have not dared to die, You will not die to your ambition for a great reputation as a preacher. You will not die to your desire for a large salary, which you seek by saying pleasant things to. people who _ ought to be dealt with as sinners in God’s sight. You will not die to the love of cul- tured surroundings and companions, with whom you seek to fill your church, at the price of keeping back the truth. You will not die, but lie on your shelf, a very pretty corn of wheat; but you abide alone, and you always will. But if a man die he bears God’s way with men is always life through death. Nature lies in her winter | shroud before the spring life bursts forth. Joseph was buried in the pit and in the prison before he was the bread giver to his people. Moses spent forty years in the _ wilderness before he led Israel forth. History is full of men who have committed _ what men said was suicide. What they said of Jesus is perfectly true. “He saved _ others; ‘Himself He cannot save.’’ Of course not. The mistake of your life has been at you have tried to save others and save yourself, too. You cannot do it. I Peter 4:1, 2: “Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm _ yourselves likewise with the same mind.’’ Put on Christ’s mind as armor. This is | the sum and substance of everything. Arm yourself with the same mind; put on Christ's thought as your panoply and meet the solicitation of the world, the flesh, and the devil, by saying: “Never! I am going to do as Jesus did.” “Arm yourselves with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” “4 Look at Hebrews 10:5: “Wherefore, when He cometh into the world He saith '. . . Lo, I come to do Thy will, O, God.” When I went down that spiral staircase in Canterbury Cathedral, and the cold blast came in my face, I kept my hand on an iron rail, which was fixed into the wall, and as far as that rail went I went. When an came to the world He kept His hand upon the rail of His Father’s will, and He _ went down, down. When He came to the Transfiguration Mountain He saw a ivergent way into heaven, but the Father’s way was down still. In Gethsemane there , ak another divergent way; but the Father’s rail led down, and He said, “Not my will, but Thine be done. He went down deeper, saying, ‘‘The cup that my Father Bhath given me, shall I not drink it?” Later we read that He was “declared to be the _ Son of God, with power according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow x, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The Father’s will leads from the grave up to the glory. __ Men want to skip the grave and to leap right up to the throne. It would ruin you if you got there that way; you would lose your head. You must go by way of e grave; there is no other. Can you pay that price? Do you ask, Is God’s will always so dreadful? God’s will makes heaven; but man’s will desires so many things which are contrary to God’s will, and which are foreign to your true bliss, that out f very love for you God’s will must lead you into death. It is not that God’s will is inkind, but that the corrupt heart of man needs the pruning knife. If you really wish reach the throne, you must be ready to cast aside every weight as well as every sin, d to take the will of God from start to finish. If you are not willing, then ask to be ade willing. If you are in doubt about a thing, then ask God to show you His will d give it up until He shows you that it is right for you. Give yourself to Him 506 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. today, absolutely and truly. Take the cross as He sends it and bear it patiently and gladly. Be brave and do no talk about it to other people. Jesus says from the glory — today, that he that overcometh shall sit with Him upon His throne, as He overcame and sat down with the Father upon the Father’s throne. RESURRECTION LIFE IN CHRIST. “Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee.’’—Heb. 1: 5. The Apostle Paul teaches in Acts 13:33 that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God in eternal generation, was begotten: again in the resurrection; from the dark tomb He emerged into the ressurection life. To the risen Son God said, ‘“Thy throne, O God.” (Heb. 1:8.) When Jesus emerged from the sepulchre it was as though the angel that rolled away the stone accosted Him in the highest sense as the Messianic ~ King. {In 1:12 His supremacy over creation is again reiterated, in 1:13 the angels are said to be beneath His power, and in 11:5 “the world to come,” that is, the world in which we now live, is subject to Him. Thus Jesus Christ, as the representative of — His church, stepped out as the King of the coming age, the Lord of angels, and of creation also. ‘ Now in Hebrews 4:14 Christ has passed through the heavens, in 7:26 He has been made higher than the heavens, and in 8:1 He is seated at the right hand of the © Majesty in the heavens—three positions. We understand what that means by turning __ to Ephesians 1:21, where we learn that God raised Christ far above all rule, and © authority, and power; and these principalities and powers in the heavenlies are spoken ~ of in Ephesians 6: 12 as “‘the rulers of the darkness of this world.” Now, if Jesus Christ had gone back to heaven as God, the devil couldn’t have said a word against Him. But He.ascended as having taken to Himself our human nature, and this roused the whole antagonism of hell. Jesus overcame and rose above it, however, and now our race, made in the image of God, but ruined by Satan, has never- theless, through the work of Christ been restored to its supremacy, so that you and I belong to the supreme race of the universe. Whatever angels there be, or demons, or inhabitants of the other worlds, our race is the royal, the triumphant race, through union with the Son of God. Therefore, in Hebrews 2:8 we read that we see not yet - all things subjected to man, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor because ~ of His suffering and death. It is a great deal to see Jesus there, but how is that going to help us? Turn to Hebrews 2:11: “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.” — That is, as Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father, we are begotten, born again 4 3 £ R as children of God. Therefore we are all hrethren. The very relationship therefore ’ that existed between Joseph on the throne of Pharaoh and his brothers that were in Caanan or stood trembling before him, is the same relationship which exists between Jesus, our brother, crowned with glory and honor, and ourselves. Now, it often happens that one member of a family rises above his surroundings and then is able to help the other brothers and sisters to follow. Heb. 2:14: “That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” Inasmuch as our brother Christ has overcome death and the devil, and is seated in heaven, every one of us may take courage. If a man is one with the living, risen Christ, he has death behind him; he may fall asleep, but cannot die in the sense in which the unconverted sinner will die. He has passed into the resurrection life. The devil is beneath him. But the mischief is that we treat the devil either as an equal or superior, instead of treating him as being under our feet, as he is under the feet of Christ. Let us never forget to distinguish between our position and our condition; Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer. ° 507 ween our standing and our experience; between the objective and the subjective; tween what we are in the purpose oi God, and what we are in our feelings. Many re wretched and live an up and down life because they suppose that their standing efore God is indicated by their sensations. Your feelings may be affected by indiges- on, by a cloudy morning, or by lack of sleep. Elijah prayed, we don’t know how ng, for the rain; he ran before Ahab’s chariot about thirty miles; then Jezebel spoiled is sleep; he traveled the same night another fifty miles south; and do you wonder the ext morning he wanted to die? God Almighty understood that and gave him sleep nd food and drink. Now you have been so foolish as to think that your nervous emperament in its subtle influence over your soul indicates a change in your standing efore God. Nothing of the sort! If we are one with the risen Christ, we have passed hrough the grave and have already risen and ascended, so that we have before us the verlasting ages—eternal life. We are to the windward of the storm. In Christ Jesus paid the penalty of sin; I met the demand of God’s law; I died; I lay in the grave; | arose; I ascended; and I am living, so far as the purpose of God is concerned, in the leavenly places in Christ. Now, mark it. The need of our life is that our condition e lifted day by day nearer to our position; that our experience come nearer to the evel of our standing; and that the subjective be brought into closer conformity to the bjective, which is God’s ideal. _ Turn to Hebrews 5:11: “Melchizedek, of whom we have many things to say and ard of interpretation, seeing ye are become dull of hearing. For when, by reason of le time, ye ought to be teachers ye have need again that some one teach you the udiments of the first principles of the oracles of God, and are become such as have eed of milk, and not of solid food.’ A man is able to digest solid food at first hand, ut the babe must have that food first passed through the digestion of another. So bme can go to the Bible and digest the solid food that God gives us there, while thers have to’ take the Bible truth through the little books that other men write. If ou find yourself always reading men’s books instead of reading the Word of God, our digestion is not strong enough to take the Bible straight. ‘For every one that aketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe. ercised to discern good and evil.” You will never understand the deep things of od’s Word until your senses are exercised. The bodily senses may become keen by ercise. It is so with the senses of the soul. _ Now, the writer to the Hebrews seeks to show the difference between Aaron and Melchizedek. Turn to 7:11: “If there was perfection through the Levitical priest- , what further need was there that another Christ should arise?” Aaron is the of Christ; why, then, do we need another? Perhaps you have lived on the Aaron ide of Christ’s priesthood, and have never advanced to the Melchizedek side. That lay be the gist of your difficulty. _ What is the difference between Aaron and Melchizedek? Read those glorious words in Hebrews 7:16: Christ “hath been made [a priest], not after the law of a arnz "mechanical and transitory—‘‘commandment, but after the power of an ndless’”—indissoluble—‘‘life.” Death tried to dissolve it, and could not; the devil ied and could not; all hell tried and could not. Aaron performed the sacrifice of the onement, and left it there. Jesus Christ did more; He went in within the veil, and e abides there in the power of an indissoluble life. _ Let us turn to Hebrews 2: 14, “Since, then the children are sharers in flesh and 90d, He also in Himself in like manner partook of the same.” Hebrews 3: 14, “We become partakers of Christ.” He partook of our nature, and we partake of His ture and of His indissoluble life. Now, that life, a new unit which overcame death, t devil and hell, and rose to the right hand of God, is in the heart of Jesus; so that 508 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. you and I may partake of it day by day. He is a king, that in our hearts there mig’ ; be the kingly life; a priest, that in our hearts we might experience the eternal salvation at the right hand of God, that we might live in perfect peace, expecting God to make our enemies the footstool of our feet. , ‘ Now in Heb. 10:19 we have the conclusion of the whole arugument: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the ~ way which He consecrated for us, a new and living way, through the veil”—into the ~ resurrection world, where we live—‘‘and having an high priest over the house of God,” which house we are. The way is open into the eternal through the risen Christ; but you have received the risen Christ and the Holy Ghost in your heart, having a great priest over the house of God. For what purpose is the house of God except God live in it? Pray to be tenanted, that God may live in your heart by the Holy Ghost, so that you may be kept all day in fellowship with Him. What is prayer but the motion of a tidal wave which has swept over the heart of Christ and which breaks upon the shores of my inner consciousness? What is love for souls but a passion which swept over the heart of Jesus and of which a wavelet is brought by the Holy Ghost to me? { That is Christian living. Look at 10:22: “Let us draw near’—never to go out again—‘‘with a true heart’”—put away insincerity—‘‘in fullness of faith’ —dare to step out on God’s promises—“having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our body washed with pure water’—all impurity is hateful to God. Ask God to cleanse your soul by helping you to put away anything which is inconsistent with perfect holiness. SELF-LIFE VS. SPIRIT-LIFE. “T myself with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”—_ Rom. 7: 25. : The definition of flesh is given in verse 18: “In Me (that is in My flesh.)” Flesh 1s meism, egotism. Spell flesh backwards, dropping the “h,” and you have “self.” | Flesh is self. The central letter in sin is “i,” and the center, the root principle of sin, — is the “I’’ life, the self-life. Now, there are some who say that the self-life is, or can be eradicated from our nature, and that there comes a time in our life when self is dead. When a man begins to brag that his self-life is eradicated, that is a pretty sure evidence that it is not. “Moses wist not that his face shone.”” We do not believe that the self-life is dead, or 7 that by our own efforts we can make ourselves dead to self; our own resolution and . effort will not suffice. The Word of God teaches us that in Jesus Christ when He died on the cross, we died with Him in the purpose of God. When therefore, the self- # life rises, we are to count that in Jesus Christ we have already died to it. We are perpetually resting and depending upon Jesus’ death on Calvary to enable us, hour by hour, to reckon ourselves dead to the workings of the self-life. The flesh is not eradicated, but in union with Jesus Christ we have entered into a new life where self ‘ no longer reigns. Not-self is the principle of the eternal, the resurrection life in which we are living. The desire for self-glorification, the constant obtrusion of self, will be yours to the very end of your experience. There will always be a looking sideways into the looking-glass to see how you look. But to this tendency we must reckon ourselves to be dead. If your shadow troubles you, the best way is to turn towards the sun; then your shadow will be behind you, and if you stand under the sun at noon your shadow is beneath your feet. Live in communion with Jesus, and the self-life will be under your feet. Now, let us go forward. “There is therefore, now, no condemnation to them that — are in Christ Jesus.’ I do not think the condemnation here referred to is the con- demnation of God’s law, because Paul is dealing here with sanctification, but this” condemnation is the condemnation of your own heart, the perpetual living beneath Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer. 509 _ your ideal, and scourging yourself because you do. There is no longer this perpetual agony of conflict to them that are in Christ Jesus. ‘For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ’”—the indissoluble life of the risen Christ which we need to receive constantly through the Holy Spirit in order to make real our ideal and to lift our experience to _ the level of our standing. Many people are worrying because they have not more _ consciousness of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit never witnesses to Himself, but to _ Jesus Christ, and the man who has most of the Holy Spirit will probably think least _ about the Holy Spirit and most about Jesus Christ whom He glorifies. The Holy _ Spirit works according to a law. I used to think that the filling with the Spirit depended upon a man whipping himself into excitement. Law is so precise, so unemotional, so permanent and unvarying in its action. It was a profound comfort to find that God’s Holy Spirit wrought as a calm, quiet, inexorable law, and if I obey _ the conditions of law, the Holy Spirit’s power is at my command. Obey a law of a . force, and the force must obey you. If I wish to use electricity, the more excited I _ am the less I can use it successfully. I must study the law upon which electricity _ works, and obey that law, then it will be my servant. So, however unemotional you are, if by faith you obey the Holy Spirit, you will find that He waits to fulfill in and : _ through you His own blessed functions. y Now Paul says that the Holy Spirit, who brought the life of Jesus into his heart, made him free; and if it made him free it will make us free. Paul was not a degraded sinner like those in the jail or penitentiary. He was a “respectable sinner” in whom there were many of the traits of true religion. These are the hardest men to reach. But he was freed, and we may be. From today we may be free from the law of sin and death through the working of the law of Christ’s life. Did you ever notice how law cancels law? What makes a bird fly? Is it because the bird is lighter than the air? No; but because as the air is struck by the bird’s wings the compressed air is elastic and rebounds. The law of gravitation is constantly drawing the bird down- ward, but the law of the spirit of life in the bird makes the bird free from the pull of _ the other law dragging it down. Even so the life of Jesus in your heart will make you free from the law of sin and death which pulls you downward. The higher we rise the weaker becomes the power.of the earth pull, and there is a point in space beyond at which the upward pull of the sun entirely counteracts the force of the earth and draws us more and more powerfully to itself. ‘ But that is not all. ‘What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh.” The law of God could deal with sins, but not with sin. The law of Sinai could tell a man what he must and must not do, but could not deal with the self-principle that is the source of all our trouble. The law was good, but it was weakened through the flesh; so God did something else; He sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Jesus Christ was sinless, but bore the likeness of our sinful flesh. He was perfect and yet refused to follow His own will. If He followed the will of God. implicitly at any cost to His own will, even though it meant the cross, how much more absolutely must you and I deny our sinful self, our corrupt personality. Jesus Christ, Himself sinless, as the representative Man bore the curse due to Adam’s race, } and was nailed to the cross. ‘‘God hath made Him who-knew no sin, to be sin.” ; There comes at conversion a blessed montent when we see Jesus dying as our atonement. Then there comes a time when we come again to the cross; possibly the _ two visits might take place at the same moment. But in our second look we see that God has nailed the self-principle to the cross, and we know that it must be an accursed thing if Jesus wore it on the cross. Then we can no longer let that cursed thing which God has put on the cross be the center of our life. Instead of the self-life I must take the Christ-life, of which He shall be the center, and around which my life shall reyolve. 510 Pulpit Power and Eloquence: When you begin to live near God, you become very quick to detect the mo ments of the self-life; but, whenever it asserts itself, you at once reckon that the ; say, “You are aosuestal and no longer the law and central object of my existent ” Thus in the body of Christ you reckon yourself dead to it, and the life of Jesus as yours. life, running away from it, dreading and cursing it. That would be an awful condition to be in. You would be so morbid, so self-conscious, so self-centered that you woul hardly preach a sermon because you would think that it had more self ir it than t ought to have. You would never live naturally. But let us take a step id a positive nid negative pole. That bar represents the work of the Holy Spirit in ¢ man’s heart. It is double—positive and negative. Positively, He glorifies Jesus and is always enabling us to receive Christ’s life into the soul. Negatively, He is antago- nizing the self-life, “lusting against the flesh.” He deals with the self-life so that you may be occupied with Jesus, and walk in the Spirit. Thus sanctification is not a 7 effort on your part to keep holy, but a trusting in the Holy Spirit to keep Jesus alway S in the front, whilst the I-life becomes more and more minimized, ineffective, and weak ‘4 through us as we “walk, not after the flesh, but see the Spirit?” GOD’S WORKMANSHIP. How are our untoward characters to be transformed so as to manifest the charac- teristics of Christ? Paul tells us (Eph. 2:10) not to worry about sanctification as though it were to be attained by our own effort. Throw upon God the responsibility and be content to work out what God works in. God will first suggest to you what which He has taught you to yearn. First, He. (gives us the new conception He desires us to execute; then He leads us to will it; and, finally, He works through its accom- plishment. Remember, that as His grace sought you first, so His grace will achieve © His eternal purpose if only you do not thwart and frustrate it. “We are His work- — manship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” We work not up to the a a but down from it; not to obtain salvation, but because we have it. But the point I desire specially to note is this: “Created in Christ Jesus.” Thi means three things. In Ephesians 1:15 we read that Christ abolished in His flesh the enmity between Jew and Gentile that He might create in Himself one new man, — And in 4: 15 we are told that we grow into a full-grown man in Christ. In the death © and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has constituted one ideal man of whom Christ is the head, and in whom we have been created as members. 7 Second: Read in II Corinthians 5:17: If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation.” In Jesus the divine and the human perfectly blended, aad this new unit of — existence, a new thing in the history of the universe, which had passed through death into resurrection life, is by the Holy Ghost imparted into the nature of the believer. Thus there is an absolutely new creation, something which is not in man by — natural birth, but something which is akin to the eternal life, and which has in itself the principles of victory over the power of the grave and of the devil. When a man ; receives this new creation it makes him, as Peter says, a “partaker of the divine nature.” Third: Eph. 4: 22, 24: ‘Ye put away as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed Spiritual Life.and Growth—Meye . 511 jn the spirit of your mind, and after God put on the new man, which hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” What is the ‘old man?” It is your former manner of life, the habits and practices which went to make you the individual as you were known to your fellows. The new “man is, therefore, a collection of those characters, habits and practices which we receive from the living, the exalted Christ. The old man is somewhat distinct from the flesh, that being the root principle, and the old man being rather the habits and practices through which this root principle expresses itself. ' Now notice that the apostle here refers to a distinct past act, when old habits and practices were abandoned and other habits were accepted. Col. 3:9: “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings and have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that _ created him.” Now when did these Ephesian and Colossian Christians definitely abandon the characteristics of the old life and appropriate those of the new? Evi- dently there is a connection between Col. 3:9 and 11, 12. “In whom ye were also ‘circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, _wherein ye were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God.” Let us _ corroborate that from Gal. 3:27: ‘“‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.” It is quite clear that in the history of these early Christians the act of baptism was a much more important and definite point of demarcation than it is - with most Christians today; and the apostle is constantly saying to these Christians, who had been heathen, that at baptism there was a definite putting off of the practices and habits of the old corrupt life and the putting on of the characteristics of Christ. When coming up the Red Sea I preached on the text, ‘They were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” I said: “We are crossing the greatest “baptistry in the world. There, slavery; here, freedom. There, the leeks and garlic _ of Egypt; and here, the manna and water. Here was the line of demarcation.” Have you gone through your Red Sea? Oh, that at this moment God may lead you to that position in which you say: “There has been the selfish indulgence; it is the leeks and garlic of Egypt. There has been the selfish spendthrift way of using time; there is the living for money, or fame, or popularity, or eloquence; but here and now, through the solemn act of faith, we pass into that other land where the fare is simpler, where _ God waits to be all in all, where my soul shall find henceforth in Jesus its Alpha and Omega.” Compare Col. 3:9, “Ye have put off,” and the eighth verse, “Put off,” with the _ tenth verse, “Ye have put on,” and the twelfth verse, “Put on.” Once, as a definite act, a man puts off but all the time after he is applying that one definite act to the ‘sins, the practices and the habits that assail him, and he does for these perpetually what he did once for all in his holy purpose. So in one moment a man puts on Christ, but that one act of his is repeated thousands of times as he keeps putting on Christ. ou did put off—put off; you did put on—put on. But you say, “This is going to be a heavy piece of work for me.” Probably we will find help in Rom, 13: 11-14. You put on the better and the worse drops off; you put on Christ. See the picture. There is an army encamped, and in the tents and But yonder the sentinel, who catches the glimpse of dawn, cries, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand; put off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.” What is the result? The soldiers spring from their couches, cast away the arments of the night, and every man dons the shining silver, glistening armor with vhich he fronts the dawn. Emerging from their tents they stand a long array, clad the morning light as the sunbeams beat upon their glistening armor. That is what 512 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. God says to you today: ‘Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is one of the me wonderful things I know, that ‘Christ has created a new man, the new man which a God is created, and all day long all the qualities that I need, the characteristics of th risen man are ready for my use. As the Holy Spirit works in my soul, He makes aware when I am coming within the reach of some temptation; and He says, “ you are going into that dense tropical forest, where the poisonous miasma lurks; arn yourself.” Then one, so to speak, puts on Christ, and goes to meet the temptatior encased in Him. As impurity comes, one meets it by putting on Jesus as purity, an ness. Thus all the time, spiritually, one is putting on Jesus Christ. I used to wonder why God let temptation come; I think I understand it now. Temptation does not mean that I-shall sin. There is no sin in temptation. Chris it reveals us and shows where we are weakest; and when the devil makes us kno where we are weak, we go to Christ for a new cargo of the opposite grace. You n a greater curse to ministers than jealousy. Many a man’s ministry is rendered mut because he is jealous of another man. But if the devil tempts you-to say mean things and you say kind ones slap him in the face. The Holy Ghost cannot use a man whd harbors jealous thoughts, and you must keep in close touch with the Holy Ghost i you are going to be used by Him. You will find that this is true, not only of jealousy up from the books, novels, papers. It isn’t enough simply to resist them, but to mee them with all the burning purity of Christ. Has not the time past sufficed to hay wrought your own evil desire? Will you not henceforth put off the old and put on the new? Let us from henceforth stand arrayed in the shining armor of Christ. THE LARGER OUTLOOK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. The church at Jerusalem was too centralized; the apostles there were nursif their own converts, keeping within their own precincts, and making no attempt reach the great world that lay on the heart of God. Some feeling of this sort mi have been brought home to the church at Antioch when Barnabas and Paul back from Jerusalem, where the Church was very much divided by what Peter h done in the house of Cornelius. Now the church at Antioch was met by two though on the one hand, Jesus had said, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel;” on the other hand, the mother church at Jerusalem would make no advance. Therefore since the Antioch church had seen a wonderful work of God in its own neighborhood, there seems to have gathered together a little group of men very like-minded, w “ministered to the Lord.” Dr. A. J. Gordon said that when a young man he was wearing his life out n promoting the machinery of his church, and his physician told him that he would kill himself if he went on thus. He had a périod of illness, and away in the hills hi resolved that henceforth he would keep his church in fellowship with the risen Christ, believing that when He was the center of the church the Holy Ghost would see to the outworking of the church in various mission branches and agencies. Do not spen all your time and strength doing pastoral work, or in looking after the machinery. Keep your heart and the heart of your church in touch with the living Christ, for whe you and the church minister to the Lord the Holy Ghost will direct your energies and your life. If you centralize on Christ the circumference will take care of itself. Now whilst Jerusalem was thinking of itself, and these men at Antioch were wai mg on God for direction, the Holy Ghost’s heart was set on something else. T Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer. 513 Joly Ghost is not content with a self-centered church, He yearns for something better. I feel as if He can hardly restrain the vehement passion of His soul for the vast popu- itions outside our churches, and for the great world. The Spirit was sent to bear witness of Christ and to glorify Him in us and in the great regions beyond. At Antioch He said: ‘Separate Me Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I have called them.” Is He not saying that to us? Who amongst us are to be the chosen men and women for this work? It consisted in three things: witnessing for Christ by the voice, witnessing for Christ by suffering, and witnessing for Christ in the home life. Before us lie sermons waiting to be pyzeached, persecutions and trials ‘0 be suffered, there are also quiet, uneventful, and monotonous home lives to be lived. When you are selected you will be sent each to his or her own work; some to preach and some to suffer, some to live amid lonely mountains or in the heart of the great Cities. Only as you advance will the veil part and reveal what lies just before you in he mind of the Holy Spirit. _ Now what kind of people does the Holy Ghost want? Acts 11:24. Barnabas was “full of the Holy Ghost.” Are.you able to meet this test? All through this book of Acts the word “‘filling’”’ is used of the Pentecostal gift. Have you been “filled with the Spirit?” (Ephesians 5:18.) It matters not whether a well is filled by turning a ‘iver into it suddenly, or whether the water percolates into it a drop at a time, so long as the well is filled. Let it be as God likes, by the rush of the river or drop by drop. Phe question is, are you “filled?” I believe that we receive the Spirit in regeneration, and that as we open the different departments of our life to Him He fills one after nother until, our whole character being yielded and the walls being broken down, are infilled by Him. But I believe also that in every man’s life, especially in regard ) Our ministry, that there are what I like to call freshets. If there is the welling up om within there is certain to be the pouring down from above. Have you ever xperienced that? ‘Be filled.” God will use largely only Spirit-filled men. He jould rather leave the work untouched than have unsanctified, unfilled men to under- take it. That is why many have been so little used. Until you learn the one condition bon which He wiil use you the great stream of God’s power will flow past you, and Maybe someone who is utterly uncouth and unlettered will be called by God to be the annel of blessing and salvation, whilst you, with all your education, will be left high nd dry upon your pulpit. “Be filled.” “Receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.” The same law that ates for justification and sanctification operates for the infilling of the Holy Ghost. eive. Andrew Murray used to say: first, there is such a blessing; second, it is for me; third, I haven’t got it; fourth, I will make any sacrifice necessary to get it; fifth, ‘Now receive it by faith. The devil may say: ‘You have got nothing. You don’t el anything.” Then we may say, “No, but God never would dissappoint His child With a stone when he has asked for bread. I have received because God is faithful, nd I reckon on the faithfulness of God.” If we knew by emotion that we are filled With the Spirit we might think the filling of the Holy Ghost Jasted only as long as the Jesus. The Spirit does not keep us thinking about Himself, but He is ever reveal- g and glorifying Jesus. Let me give you these closing texts. Acts 13, “Separate.” Put against that Num- ts 8:7, 11-14, the separation of the Levites unto God. “Separate.” That’is the key. n Acts 13:9, “Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost.” In Cyprus, Elymas, the sorcerer, hstood them. When you begin to work in the power of the Spirit I expect that 1 will meet some tremendous difficulty that will almost stagger you. Paul was a rit-filled man before, but instantaneously at the time of need he was filled for this 514 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. emergency. In verse fifty-two we read that the “disciples were filled’”—being filled 4 all the time, the Greek signifies. Paul and Barnabas were not only Spirit-filled men themselves, but they were the means of creating Spirit-filled churches. a My last text is Acts 14: 26, “The work which they had fulfilled.” If Paul hadn’t preached at Antioch, and been stoned at Iconium, he would not have fulfilled the work, but he filled the chalice of opportunity up to the brim. Men and women, are _ your lives full? Ministers, if you were to die now, after having preached at that fash- ionable church with so little effect, and having winked at so many things which you > know to be against God’s will, could it be said of you that you had fulfilled your work? Have you lived as a Holy Ghost man? have you preached as a Holy Ghost man? have 4 you been a straightforward servant of Jesus Christ? Is the chalice of your oppor- tunity and your talents filled to the full? God comes to fill you and then to send you — | to fill up the measure of your opportunity. THE SECRET OF FRUIT-BEARING. “T am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in Me and I in him, the same ~ beareth much fruit; for apart from Me ye can do nothing.”’—John 15: 5. a You will easily understand why the vine so obviously sets forth our Savior’s char- _ acter and relationship; for, of all the trees that grow from the soil of earth, none suffers so much as the vine. In the spring the knife is seldom far from it, as the vine dresser is perpetually pruning off the superfluous growth. In the summer and autumn — (in Southern Europe) all the beautiful clusters are ruthlessly torn from the trembling vine and trampled beneath the feet of those that press the grapes. To their very knees they are stained with the blood of the suffering vine, as all its rich and luscious ~ juice is crushed out to give pleasure to the world. Then in winter, when men are glad — with the result of the vintage, the vine itself is stunted and bare, standing neglected and desolate. Thus spring, summer, autumn, and winter alike bring their meed of pain to the vine. When Jesus Christ says that He and those who belong to Him make one suffering vine, He teaches that none of us will ever be able to live long with-— : out the knife, without the pressure of the foot, or without lowliness and desolation, — and that only through these can He and His own give the fruit for which the world — waits. If you truly abide in Jesus Christ you must have your meed of suffering, for in Es every pore and twig the vine bleeds. . e Then I suppose there is no plant so pliable as the vine. The gardener binds the by vines to any place he chooses, bending the branches hither and thither. Here is — another exquisite thought. The whole point and pith of the crucifixion of Christ, sO far as His own character was concerned, is contained in the two words, submission — and surrender. If you and I are to enter into Christ’s purpose for us in this world we © will find that His providence, like the gardener’s hand, is perpetually fixing us to untoward circumstances. Notice John 15:16, “Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you.’ Perhaps, by the hand of God, the husbandman, you have been fastened in a position which you would not choose. You must stop there since © He has placed you that you might bear fruit at that very point. Be pliant, submit, f surrender, and as your Master, the true vine, was nailed to the cross, be thou also © nailed to thy cross and cover it with thy festoons of leaves; then from its arms will F drop the clusters of grapes. 3 Notice also that the vine has very long, far-reaching arms. ‘I have seen large — hothouses covered by the produce of one vine. It is extremely interesting to think — that Jesus Christ and His apostles, and all saints, martyrs, confessors, and believers | of all ages make one vine, the boughs of which spread throughout the whole world. From that crave in Joseph’s garden, where they buried the root, the far-spreading Spiritual Life and Growth—Meyer. 515 anches of the Church of Christ reach to the remotest extremities of the world, and everywhere they are bearing fruit. Now notice that God’s great object is fruit. “Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away.” “If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered.” Here Jesus speaks of burning only as a part of the drapery of the parable. How many ministers have dabbled in the higher criticism, or something else that has led them further and further from the truth, and ultimately have been taken right away from active ministerial work. As fruit bearers they have been put a ide, and Jesus Christ selected some other man through whom to accomplish His ; york. Thank God, many are grafted in again, and bear much fruit. _ The whole secret of fruit bearing lies in Christ’s indwelling. “I in you,” ave MI in Him,” . .. . “My words in you.” He said also (14:23), “We will ‘come and make our abode with him.” In regeneration the Holy Spirit brings Christ into our hearts, but He may be in us as the shekinah was in the midst of the holy place, before which a heavy veil hung. Man’s nature may be likened to the ancient tabernacle; spirit, soul, body; holy of holies, holy place, outer court. I do not believe “we are born with the devil in us, but that the spirit is a dark untenanted chamber. e soul, of course, standing for volition, intelligence, emotion, etc., is lighted up, Huminated, quick, and vivid, and keen, and therefore with the unconverted man, the tural man, the soul life is his chief life. He has the capacity of God, but as yet his irit-realm is untenanted. As the shekinah entered the most holy place, a dark amber, and shone, so in regeneration Christ, the true light, the shekinah, enters our pirit and illuminates it with life, and light, and love. Every regenerated person there- fore is different from what he was and from others. But Jesus Christ is too often relegated to the spirit and not permitted to dominate the soul and the body; the heavy veil hangs there. When Jesus died the veil of the temple was rent in twain, and the whole was cast into one apartment, so that the shekinah could shine right through the whole. This is the simple teaching of God’s Word. So when a man enters into a Justification is when you turn your back to your own effort to get right with God and accept Jesus Christ’s righteousness as your own. Sanctification is when you turn your back upon your own e‘forts to be good, and accept Jesus Christ as your indwell- ig goodness. Fruit bearing is when you turn your back upon your own efforts and trivings to do good in the world, and turn to Jesus Christ, who is in you, and say, “Lord, work through me.” _ The branch that abides deep in the heart of the vine has no anxiety about pro- ‘ducing fruit, for the responsibility is not with it but with the root. I asked a man who was worrying which end of the branch was the more necessary; and he said, "Oh, of course, the end of the branch that bears the grapes.” I said, “Think again, n. The grapes are the care of the root; the important part is to have the branches clean and joined well to the trunk, and the root is responsible for the fruit.’ Why hould we go on holding these conventions when everything is so simple? Christ s. “I am with you; I will bear the fruit; the only thing for you to do is to abide in ” If we always had to prick and scourge ourselves to keep abiding it would be as cult to abide as it is to justify or sanctify ourselves, and there would be no longer but works. Directly you give scope or sphere to the self-life you hinder the life ; aith, You are in Christ! Then stop where you are. You will abide where you fé unless you go out of one of three doors. 516 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. First. Known and permitted sin. If you yield there you immediately get ov abiding union with Christ. Second. Permitted worry. Worrying about your children, your maintena your home, your church. Third. Intermitted fellowship. Broken communion with Christ through Bible, prayer, the use of ordinances. ; ‘ Keep from these three things and you abide in Him. You may not always t about Him, but you may always abide in Him as a woman abides in her husband’ love, though she is busy with many things and does not think directly of him. A: the Holy Ghost to keep your heart always turned toward Jesus. We have deep uni with the Son of God when He abides in the soul.. “Abide in Me, and I in you.” [F. B. Meyer was born April 8, 1847, receiving his education at Brighton an Regent’s Park Baptist colleges. In 1870 became assistant pastor in Liverpool a pastor from 1872 to 1878 in York and Leicester. In 1888 went to Regent's P Chapel, London, and since 1892, minister Christ Church, Westminster. He written a number of volumes, The Bells of Is, detailing his personal experience mission and rescue work. His other books consist largely of sermons and addresse Through his addresses at Northfield and also in principal cities of the United Sta he has done a great deal to awaken large numbers spiritually. He and Dwight L, Moody were close friends and co-workers. This sermon consists of addresses delivered at three sessions of the Nort Conference, as reported for the Northfield Echoes, and reproduced by the publish permission. ] 617) Perea NO DIFPERENCE. D. Lb. MOODY. “There is no difference.’—Rom., 3: 22. That is one of the hardest truths man has to learn. We are apt to think that we are just a little better than our neighbors; and if we find they are a little better than ourselves, we go to work and try to pull them down to our level. If you want to find out who and what man is, go to the third chapter of Romans, and there the whole story is told. “There is none righteous; no, not one.” “All have sinned and come short.” All. Some men like to have their lives written before they die; if you would like to read your biography, turn to this chapter, and you will find it already written. I can imagine some one saying, “I wonder if he really pretends to say that ‘there is no difference.’”’ The teetotaler says, ‘““Am I no better than the drunkard?” Well, I want to say right here that it is a good deal better to be temperate than intemperate; a good deal better to be honest than dishonest; it is better for a man to be upright in all his transactions than to cheat right and left, even in this life. But when it comes to the great question of salvation, these things do not touch the point at all, because “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”’ Men are all bad by nature. The old Adam-stock is bad, and we can not bring forth good fruit until we are grafted into the one True Vine. If I have an orchard, and two apple trees in it, both of which bear some bitter apples, perfectly worthless, does it make any difference to me that the one tree has got perhaps five hundred apples, all bad, and the other only two, both bad? There is no difference; only one tree has more fruit than the other. But it is all bad. So it is with man. One thinks that he has only one or two very little sins— that God will not notice those; while that other man has broken every one of the ten commandments. No matter, there is no difference; they are both guilty; they have both broken the law. The law demands a complete and perfect fulfillment; and if you can not render that, you are lost, as far as the law is concerned. ‘“Whosover shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” Suppose you were to hang up a ‘man to the roof with a chain of ten links; if one were to break, does it matter that the _ other nine are all sound and whole? Not the least. One link breaks, and down comes the man. But is it not rather hard that he should fall when the other nine are perfect, when only one is broken? Why, of course not; if one is broken, it is just the same to e man as if all had been broken; he falls. So the man who breaks one command: ment is guilty of all. He is a criminal in God’s sight. Look at yonder prison with its ‘thousand prisoners. Some are there for murder; some fof stealing; some for forgery; some for one thing, and some for another. You may classify the men; but every one is acriminal. They have all broken the law; and they are all paying the penalty. So ‘the law” has declared every man a criminal in the sight of God. If a man should advertise that he could take a correct photograph of people’s hearts, do you believe he would find a customer? There is not a man among us whom ou could persuade to have his portrait taken, if you could photograph the real man, We go to have our likenesses taken, and carefully arrange our toilet, and if the artist latters us, we say, “Oh, yes, that is a first-class portrait,” as we pass it round among 518 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. our friends. But let the real man be brought out, the photograph of the heart, asi see if a man will pass that round among his neighbors. Why, you would not want your own wife to see it! You would be frightened even to look at it yourself. Nobody knows what is in that heart but Christ. We are told that “the heart is” deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?” We do not know our own hearts; none of us have any idea how bad they are. Some bitter things are written against me; but I know very many more things about myself that are bad than any other man can know. There is nothing good in the old Adam nature. We have by nature a heart in rebellion against God, and we do not even love God unless” we are born of the Spirit. i I can understand why men do not like this third chapter of Romans—it is too strong for them. It speaks the truth too plainly. But just because we do not like it, we { shall be all the better for having a look at it; very likely we shall find that it is exactly _ what we want after all. It is truth that men do not at all like. But I have noticed that the medicine we do not like is the medicine that will do us most good. If we do not think we are as bad as the description, we must just take a closer look at ourselves, Here is a man who thinks he is not just so bad as it makes him out to be. He is sure he is a little better than his neighbor next door; why, he goes to church regularly, and his neighbor never goes to church at all! ‘Of course,” he congratulates himself, “I shall certainly get saved easier.’”’ But there is no use trying to evade the Scripture. — God has given us the law to measure ourselves by; and by this most perfect rule “we | have all sinned and come short;” and “there is no difference.” \ Paul brings in the law to show that he is lost and ruined. God, being a perfect q God, had to give a perfect law; and the law was given not to save men, but to measure © them by. I want you to understand this clearly; because I believe hundreds and \ thousands stumble there. They try to save themselves by trying to keep the law; but — man since the world began. Men have been trying to keep it; but they have never — succeeded and never will. Ask Paul what it was given for. Here is his answer: — “That every mouth might be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God.” In this third chapter of Romans the world has been put on its trial, and found guilty. | The verdict has been brought in against us all—ministers, and elders, and church - members—just as much as against the prodigal and the drunkard; “All have sinned g and come short.” i The law stops every man’s mouth. God will have a man humble himself down onl his face before Him, with not a word to say for himself. Then, when he owns that he | is a sinner, and gets rid of all his own righteousness, God will speak to him. I can always tell a man who has got near the Kingdom of God; his mouth is stopped. If you will allow me the expression, God always shuts up a man’s lips before He saves — him. Job was not saved until he stopped talking about himself. Just see how God dealt with him. First of all, He afflicts him, and Job begins to talk about his own goodness. “T delivered the poor,” he says, “and the fatherless, and him that had none to help ~ him. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor!” — Why, they would have made Job an elder, if there had been elders in those days! He — had been a wonderfully good man. But now God says, “I will put a few questions to — you. Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou Me.” And Job is down directly; he is ashamed of himself, he can not speak of his — works any more. “Behold,” he cries, “I am vile; what shall I answer Thee? I will — lay mine hand upon my mouth.” y But he is not low enough yet, perhaps; and God puts a few more questions. “Ah,” says Job, “I never understood these things before—I never saw it in that light.” He ; There Is No Difference—Moody. 510 is thoroughly humbled now; he can not help confessing it. ‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefor I abhor myseli, and _ repent in dust and ashes.’’ Now he has found his right position before God; and now of all that he had before. The clouds, and the mist, and the darkness round his path, ‘are driven away; and the light from eternity bursts into his soul when he sees his ‘nothingness in the sight of a pure and holy God. This, then, is what God gives us the “law” for—to show ourselves in our true colors. I said to my family one morning, a few weeks before the Chicago fire, “I am coming home this afternoon to give you a ride.’ My little boy clapped his hands. “Oh, papa, will you take me to see the bears in Lincoln Park?” ‘Yes.” You know boys are very fond of seeing bears. I had not been gone long when my little boy said, “Mamma, I wish you would get me ready.” “Oh,” she said, ‘‘it will be a long time before papa comes.” “But I want to get ready, mamma.” At last he was ready to have the ride, face washed, and clothes all nice and clean. ‘“‘Now, you must take good care and not get yourself dirty again,” said mamma. Oh, of course he was going to take care; he was not going to get dirty. So off he ran to watch for me. However, it was a long time yet until the afternoon, and after a little while he began to play. When I reached home, I found him outside with his face all covered with dirt. “I can not take you to the park in that state, Willie.” “‘‘Why, papa, you said you would ‘take me.” “Ah, but I can not; you are all over mud. I could not be seen with such a dirty little boy.” ‘Why, I’se clean, papa; mamma washed me!” “Well, you have got dirty since!’ He began to cry; and I could not convince him that he was dirty. -“T’se clean; mamma washed me!” he cried. Do you think I argued with him? No. _ I just took him up in my arms, and carried him into the house, and showed him his face in the looking-glass. He had not a word to say. He could not take my word, but one look at the glass was enough; he saw for himself. He did not say he was not dirty after that. : Now the looking-glass showed him that his face was dirty—but I did not take the looking-glass to wash it with; of course not. Yet that is just what thousands of people ‘do. The law is the looking-glass to see ourselves in, to show us how vile and worth- less we are in the sight of God; but they take the law, and try to wash themselves with _ it! Man has been trying that for six thousand years, and has miserably failed. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight!’ Only one Man ever lived on the earth who could say He had kept the law; and that was the Lord Jesus Christ. If He had committed one sin, and come short in the smallest degree, His offering Himself for us would have been useless. But men have tried to do what He did, and have failed. Instead of sheltering under His righteousness, they have offered God their own. And God knew what a miserable failure it would be. ‘There ‘is none righteous; no, not one.” I do not care where you put man; everywhere he has been tried he has proved a total failure. He was put in Eden on trial; and some men say they wished they had Adam’s chance. If you had, you would go down as quickly as he did. You put five undred children into a large hall, and give them ten thousand toys; tell them they an run all over the hall, and that they can have anything they want except one thing, placed, let us say, in one of the corners of the organ. You go out for a little while. Do you not think that the spot which is forbidden to them will be the first place to Which they will go? Why, nothing else in the room would have any attraction for hem, but just the thing they were told not to touch. And so let us not think Adam as any worse than ourselves. Adam was put on trial; and Satan walks into Eden. I do not know how long he was there; but I should think he had not been there 520 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. twenty minutes before he stripped Adam of everything he had. There he is, fre a from the hands of his Creator; Satan comes upon the scene, and presents a tempta tion; and down Adam goes. He was a failure. Then God took man into covenant with Him. He said to Abraham, “Look yonder at the stars in the heavens, and at the sand upon the seashore; I will make your seed like that. I will bless thee and multiply thee upon the earth.” But what a stupendous failure was man under the covenant! Look back, and read about it. _The children of Israel are brought out of Egypt, see many signs and wonders; and stand at last at the foot of Mount Sinai. Then God’s holy law is given them. Did they not promise to keep it? “Oh yes,” they cry, ‘‘we will keep the law; cer- tainly.’ To hear them talk you might think it was going to be all right now. But just wait till Moses and Joshua have turned their backs! No sooner have their leaders gone up the mountain to have an interview with God than they begin saying, “Wo der what’s become of this man Moses? We don’t know where he’s got to. Come, us make unto us another god. Aaron! make us a golden calf. Here are the golden ornaments we had from the Egyptians; come and make us another god.’”’ So when it is made, the people raise a great shout, and fall down and worship it. “Hark! listen; what shout is that I hear?’ says Moses, as he comes down the mountain-side. “Alas,” says Joshua, “there is war in the camp: it is the shout of the victor!” “Aho no,” says Moses, “it is not the shout of victory or of war, Joshua; it is the cry of the idolaters. They have forgotten the God who delivered them from the Egyptians; who led them through the Red Sea; who fed them with bread from heaven—angels’ food. They have forgotten their promises to keep the commandments. - Already th 2 first two of them are broken: ‘no other gods,’ ‘no graven image.’ They have made them another god—a-golden god!” And that is what men have been doing ever since. a There are more men in this land worshipping the golden calf than the God of heaven. Look around you. They lay before it health, and happiness, and peate. “Give me thirty pieces of silver, and I will sell you Christ,” is the world’s cry to-day “Give me fashion, and I will sell you Christ.” ‘I will sacrifice my wife, my children my life, my all, for a little drink. I will sell my soul for drink!” It is easy to blan e these men for worshipping the golden calf; but what are we doing ourselves? Ah, . man was a failure then; and he has been a failure ever since. wa Then God put man under the judges; and wonderful judges they were; bu! once more, what a failure he was! After that came the prophets; and what a failur man was under them! Then came the Son from heaven Himself, right out of bosom of the Father. He left the throne and came down here, to teach us how t live. We took Him and murdered Him on Calvary! Man was a failure in Christ’ day. And now we are living under the dispensation of grace—a wonderful dispensa- tion. God is showering down blessings from above. But what is man under grace? A stupendous failure. Look at that man reeling on his way to a drunkard’s grave, “f with his soul traveling to a drunkard’s hell. Look at the wretched harlots on your streets. Look at the profligacy, and the pauperism, and the loathsome sickness. y Look at the vice and crime that fester everywhere; and tell me, Is it not true that man is a failure under grace? Yes, man is a failure. I look forward right down the other side of the milena Christ has swayed His sceptre over the earth for a thousand years; but man is a failure still. For “when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle; . . . and they compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; and fire came down There Is No Difference—Moody. 521 from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” ' What man wants is another nature; he must be born again. What a foolish saying it is, that, “Experience teaches.” Man has been a long time at that school, and has never learned his lesson yet—his own weakness and inability. He still thinks great things of his own strength. “I am ‘going to stand after this,’ he says; “I have hit upon the right plan this time. I am able to keep the law now.” But the first temptation comes; and he is down. Man will not believe in God’s strength. Man will not acknowledge himself a failure, and surrender to Christ to save him from his sins. But is it not better to find out in this world that we are a failure, and to go to Christ for deliverance. than to sleep on, and go down to hell without knowing we are sinners? I know that this doctrine—that we have all failed, that we have all sinned, and come short—is exceedingly objectionable to the natural man. If I had tried to find out the most disagreeable verse in the whole Bible, perhaps I could not have fastened upon one more universally disliked than “There is no difference.” I can imagine—and I think I have a right to imagine it—--Noah, leaving his ark and going off preaching for once in awhile’ As the passers-by stop to listen, there is no sound of the hammer or the plane. Noah has stopped work. He has gone off on a preaching tour, to warn his countrymen. Perhaps he is telling them that there is a zreat deluge coming to sweep away all the workers of iniquity; perhaps he is warning them that every man who is not in the ark must perish; that there would be no difference. I can imagine one man saying, ‘““You had better go back and finish your work, Noah, rather than come here preaching. You do not think ‘we are going to believe in such nonsense as that. You tell us all are going to perish alike! Do you really expect us to believe that the kings and governors, the going to be alike lost?” ‘Yes,’ says Noah; ‘the deluge that is coming by and by will take you all away. Every man that is not in the ark must die. There will be no difference.” Doubtless they thought Noah had gone raving mad. But did not he flood come and take them all away? Princes and paupers, and knaves and kings was there any difference? No difference. } When the destroying angel was about to pass through Egypt, no doubt the haughty Egyptian laughed at the poor Israelite putting the blood on his door-post “and lintel. “What a foolish notion,” he would say, derisively; “the very idea of sprinkling blood on a door-post! If there were anything’ coming, that would never _ keep it away. I do not believe there is any death coming at all; and if there were, it might touch these poor people, but it would certainly never come near us.” But when the night came, there was no difference. The king in his palace, the captive in his prison, the beggar by the wayside—they were all alike. Into every house the In the home of the poor and the lowly, in the home of the prince and the noble, in the home of the governor and ruler, the eldest son lay dead. Only the poor Israelite sscaped—he who had the blood on the door-post and lintel. And when God comes © us in judgment, if we are not in Christ, all will be alike. Learned or unlearned, igh or low, priest or scribe—there will be no difference. God never utters any opinion; what He says is truth. “All have sinned and ome short,” He cries; “and there is no difference.” I read of a deluge of fire that is going to roll over this earth; and when God ; es to deal in judgment, there will be no difference—every man who is out of | Christ must perish. It was my sad lot to be in the Chicago fire. As the flames rolled down our ets, destroying everything in their onward march, I saw the great and the hon- 522 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the thief, and the harlot. All were alike. As the flames swept through the city i was like the Judgment-day. Neither the Mayor, nor the mighty men, nor the y men, could stop these flames. They were all on a level then; and many who worth more than all else in the world put together. And when the Day of Judgment comes, Christ will be worth more than all this world, more than ten thousand worlds. far more terrible for us to go down in our sins to a Christless grave. Now I hope that you have seen what I have been trying to prove—that we ar all sinners alike. If I have failed to prove that, then what I have said has been a failure. I should like to use another illustration or two. I should like to make this truth so plain that a child might know it. In the olden times in England, we are told, they used to have a game of firing arrows through a ring on the top of a pole. The man who failed to get all his arrows through the ring was called a “sinner.” Now I should like for a moment to take up that illustration. Suppose our pole to be put up in the gallery, and on the top of it the ring. I have ten arrows, let us say; and Mr. Sankey has other ten. I pick up the first arrow, and take a good aim. Alas! I miss the mark. Therefore | am a ‘‘sinner.” “But,” I say, “I wili do the best I can with the other nine; I have only missed one.” Like some men who try to keep all the commandments but one. I fire again, and miss the mark a secor | time. ‘Ah, but,” I say, “I have eight arrows still;’’ and away goes another arrow: miss! I fire all the ten arrows, and do not get one through the ring. Well, I wa Mr. Sankey comes with his ten arrows. He fires and gets his first arrow through, “Do you see that?” he cries. “Well,” I reply, “go on; don’t boast until you g them all through.” He takes the second arrow, and gets that through. “Ha! you see that?” “Don’t boast,’ I repeat, “until all ten are through;”’ if a man has not broken the law at all, then he has something to boast of! Away goes the thi and it goes through. Then another, and another, all right; and another, until n are through. “Now,” he says, ‘‘“one more arrow; and I am not a sinner.” He ta up the last arrow, and his hand trembles a little; he just misses the mark. And is a “sinner” as much as I am. My friend have you never missed the mark? Have — you not come short? I should like to see the man who never missed the mark. He has never lived. 4 Let me give you just one more illustration. When Chicago was a small town, it was incorporated and made a city. When we got our charter for the city, there was a one clause in the constitution that allowed the Mayor to appoint all the police. It — worked very well when it was a small city; but when it had three or four hundred — thousand inhabitants, it put too much power in the hands of one man. So our — leading citizens got a new bill passed that took the power out of the hands of the ~ Mayor, and put it into the hands of Commissioners appointed by the Governor. There was one clause in the new law that no man should be a policeman who © was not a certain height—5 feet 6 inches, let us say. When the Commissioners go 4 into power, they advertised for men as candidates; and in the advertisement they® stated that no man need apply who could not bring good credentials to recommend — him. I remember going past the office one day, and there was a crowd of candidates waiting to get in. They quite blocked up the side of the street; and they were com- There Is No Difference—Moody. 523 paring notes as to their chances of success. One says to another, “I have a good tter of recommendation from the Mayor, and one from the supreme judge.” An- other says, ‘“And I have a good letter from Senator So-and-so. I am sure to get in.” The two men come on together, and lay their letters down on the Commissioners’ desk. ‘Well,’ say the officials, “you have certainly a good many letters, but we will not read them until we have measured you.” Ah! they forgot all about that. So the first man is measured, and he is only five feet. “No chance for you, sir; the law says the men must be 5 feet 6 inches, and you do not come up to the standard.” The other says, “Well, my chance is a good deal better than his; I am a good bit aller than he is.’”’ He begins to measure himself by the other man. That is what people are always doing—measuring themselves by others. Measure yourselves by the law of God, or by the Son of God Himself; and if you do that, | you will find you have come short. He goes up to the officers, and they measure him; he is 5 feet 5 inches and nine-tenths of an inch. “No good,” they tell him; “you are not up to the standard.” “But I am only one-tenth of an inch short,” he Temonstrates. ‘It is no matter,” they say; “there is no difference.” He goes with he man who was five feet high. One comes short by six inches, and the other by ‘only one-tenth of an inch; but the law can not be changed. And the law of God is that no man shall go into the Kingdom of Heaven with one sin on him. He that has broken the least law is guilfy of all. _ “Then, is there any hope for me?” you say. “What star is there to relieve the Midnight darkness and gloom? What is to become of mz? If all this is true, I am a poor lost soul. I have committed sin from my earliest childhood.” Thank God, my friends, this is just where the Gospel comes in. “He was made sin for us who knew no sin.” “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our imiquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his pwn way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” You ask me what my hope is. It is, that Christ died for my sins, in my stead, in my place; and that tucrefore I can enter into life eternal. You ask Paul what his hope was. ‘Christ died for our sins according .o the Scriptures.” This is the hope n which died all the glorious martyrs of old—in which all who have entered heaven’s gates have found their only comfort, Take that doctrine of substitution out of the Bible; and my hope is lost. With the law, without Christ, we are all undone. The law we have broken; and it can only hang over our head the sharp sword of justice. Even if we could keep it froin this moment, there remains the unforgiven past. ‘“With- out shedding of blood there is no remission.” He only is safe for eternity who is sheltered behind the finished work of Christ. at the law could not do for us, He does. He obeyed it to the very letter; and under His obedience we can take our stand. For us He has suffered all its penal- ties, and paid all that the law demands. ‘His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” He saw the awful end from the beginning; He knew what death, what ruin, what misery, lay before us if we were left to ourselves. And He came irom heaven to teach us the new and living way by which “all that believe are justi- ied from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses.” There is a well-known story told of the time of Napoleon the First. In one of he conscriptions, during one of his many wars, a man was balloted as a conscript ho did not want to go; but he had a friend who offered to go in his place. His iend jcined the regiment in his name, and was sent off to the war. By and by battle came on, in which he was killed, and they buried him on the battle-field. ome time afterward the Emperor wanted more men, and by some mistake the first an was balloted a second time. They went to take him, but he remonstrated. 524 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. “You can not take me.” “Why not?” “I am dead,” was the reply. not dead; you are alive and well.” “But I am dead,” he said. “Why, mz must be mad. Where did you die?” “At such a battle, and you left me t such a battle-field.”’ “You talk like a madman,” they cried; but the man his point that he had been dead and buried some months. “You look up your he said; “and see if it is not so.” They looked and found that he was right. found the man’s name entered as drafted, sent to the war, and marked off as “Look here,” they said, “you did not die; you must have got some one to you; it must have been your substitute who died.” “I know that,” he said died in my stead. You can not touch me; I died in that man, and I go free K. law has no claim against me.” They aie not recognize the doctrine of subs tion, and the case was carried to the Emperor. But he said that the man was that he was dead and buried in the eyes of the law; and that France had no against him. The story may be true, or it may not be; but one thing I know to be true— the Emperor of Heaven recognizes the doctrine of substitution. Christ died that is my hope of eternal life. “There is no condemnation to them which Christ Jesus.” If you ask me what you must do to share this blessing, I ar and deal personally with Christ about it. Take the sinner’s place at the foot of Cross. Strip yourself of all your own righteousness; and put on Christs. W yourself up in His perfect robe, and receive Him by simple trust as your own Savi Thus you inherit the priceless treasures that Christ hath purchased with His “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of Yes, sons of God. With power to overcome the world, the flesh, and the ¢ power to crucify every besetting sin, passion, ]ust; power to shout in triumph ¢ every trouble and temptabon of your life, “I can do all things pep Christ strengtheneth me.’ I have been trying to tell you the old, old tale that men are sinners. Sonali perhaps, is reading this who thinks it a waste of time. “God knows I am a si he cries; “you do not need to prove it. Since I could speak, I have done nothi but break every law of earth and heaven.” Well, my iriend, I have good ne r you. It is just as easy for God to save you, who have broken the whole decz as the man who has only broken one of the commandments. Both are deac in sins. It is no matter how dead you are, or how long you have been de Christ can bring you to life just the same. There is no difference. When Chi met that poor widow coming out of Nain, following the body of her darling be to the grave—he was just newly dead—His loving heart could not pass her;~ stopped the funeral, and bade the dead arise. He was obeyed at once, and the mot was clasped once more in the living embrace of her son. And when Jesus by the grave of Lazarus, who had been dead four days, was it not just as easy Him to say—“Lazarus, come forth?” Was it not as easy for Him to bring from his tomb, who had been dead four days, as the son of the widow, who & been dead but one? Yes, it was just as easy; there was no difference. They w both alike dead, and Christ saved the one just as easily, and as willingly, lovingly, as the other. And therefore, my friend, you need not complain that can not save you. Why, Christ died for the ungodly. And if you turn to Him this moment with an honest heart, and receive Him simply as your Savior and God, I have the authority of His Word for telling you that He will in no wise you out. And you who have never felt the burden of your sin—you who think there is: great deal of difference—you who thank God that you are not as other men—beware God has nothing to say to the self-righteous. And unless you humble yourself There Is No Difference—M ody. 525 im in the dust, and confess before Him your iniquities and sins, the gate of heaven, ich is open only to sinners saved by grace, must be shut against you forever. 1,000. He did valuable work in connection with the Christian commission 1 ing the war. Later he organized the Young Men’s Christian Association of thicago. The fire of 1871 destroyed the church which had been built as the result i his efforts. His tour of the world with Ira D. Sankey was the greatest evangelistic iterprise of the century. He carried on religious campaigns in all the cities of the nited States. His death in 1900 was a heartfelt loss to the Christians of the world. fe left three monuments to his indefatigable zeal, the Northfield schools and the - ynference and extension work, and the Chicago Bible Institute.] 526 Pulpit Power and Eloguence. ECCLESIASTES: OR UNDER THE SUN. _ W. G. MOOREHEAD, D.D. | We are to look for a little while into the Book of Ecclesiastes. The word Ecclesiastes means preacher or teacher, and we have here in this book | a sermon of this ancient preacher. The first verse of the first chapter reads as follows: “The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” In the twelfth - verse also we have this language: ‘“‘I, the preacher, was king over Israel, in Jerusa- lem.” Now, if these two statements are accepted as historical and historically trust- worthy, it follows that the book must have been written by Solomon. No other son of David, of whom we have any knowledge whatever, was competent to write a book — like Ecclesiastes. That Solomon by human gifts was perfectly able to write such a book appears from First Kings fourth chapter and thirty-second and thirty-third verses, where we have a description of the natural gifts and acquirements of this man. We are told that he spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand and five, and he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, and he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. : Now, according to this description of his gifts, Solomon was first of all a philoso pher, and second, a poet, and third, a botanist, and fourth, zoologist, and fifth, an architect, and sixth, a statesman, and seventh, a leader of men. He was a great man. ~ He anticipated, so it is now believed, not a few of the discoveries and the conclusions of science of our own time, both in botany and zoology. James Hamilton said of him, his is a mind that is to be taken by furlongs, not by feet. He was a great man ¥ in very truth, and, accordingly, as he had a very wide experience of men and things — : in this world, he was able to write a book like Ecclesiastes, which deals almost exclu- _ sively in things under the sun. The tone of this book is a very remarkable one. It is a very sorrowful tone, q almost a sceptical one. If one were asked if there be a book in the Bible that has 7 something of the sceptical, even of the agnostic, in it, the reply would undoubtedly al be that Ecclesiastes apparently is such a book. , Now listen for a little while to certain expressions of unbelief that this writer gives utterance to. In the third chapter and nineenth verse we read as follows: “For a 4 that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; — as one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no . preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” That is, death ends all for the beast and for man alike. In the seventh chapter and fifteenth verse, notice his remark about the inequality of things in this world, and the apparent failure of the divine government to sustain the righteous, and punish the wicked. “All things have I seen in the days of my vanity; there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked, man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.” That is the problem. How to account for it is the question. In the eighth chapter and fourteenth verse, there is another utterance of unbelief. Ecclesiastes; or Under the Ss un—M oorehead. 527 Bicappeneth according to the work of the wit: again there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is va . ry?" Now it is not surprising that sceptical men in all ages have admired this book of lesiastes, reading no deeper than the surface. “We can readily perceive how Fred- rick the Great, and his companion, Voltaire, before the two men quarreled, delighted n Ecclesiastes. It suited exactly their unbelief, and it is somewhat singular that ignostics and unbelievers of all time will quote more frequently from the book of Scclesiastes than from any other portion, probably, of the entire Bible. Is the book sceptical? That is the question we are now to discuss. Well, of sourse, it is not, we will all agree. It is an inspired book. What does it mean? From what point of view does the writer look upon all things in this world? The ey to Ecclesiastes is the expression ‘under the sun,”’ an expression found no where Ise in the entire Bible. It occurs twenty-eight times in this book, and eight or ten imes are also found the other expressions “under the surface,” and “upon the whole f the earth.” So that something like thirty-nine or forty times we are bidden to emember, by the words that are used, that everything is looked at in Ecclesiastes in connection with this earth beneath the sun, and the writer never rises above the sun at all until you get to the last two verses of the last chapter, when everything is set right; jot until then. The key to Ecclesiastes, let me repeat, is the expression “under the sun.” He is iewing things under the sun. Now, let us begin. In the first chapter he views every- hing here under the sun as trivial, and a stiffened monotony. All is a weary go ound. Listen to the language in the fourth verse of the first chapter: ‘‘One genera- ion passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.” Humanity living under the sun is a procession; only a procession, just a kind of a uneral procession; one generation succeeding the other, and the earth alone remain- ig—a go round—monotony. _ And the next verse, “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth (0 his place where he arose.” The succession of day and night by the revolution, parently, of the sun around the earth; the language that we use to the present day. Here is a very remarkable verse, the sixth verse of the first chapter: ‘The wind h toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continu- ally, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.” The signal service of Our country is only about thirty-five years old, and yet it has lived long enough to discover there are great master currents of air that flow from towards the north pole lown to the equator, where the atmosphere is rarefied by the heat, and ascends to the ipper strata of air, and flows back again to the north. The last chart of the signal ervice of our country had those great master currents flowing from the north to the outh, and then back again to the north. That has been discovered within the lifetime if most of us here. Now, listen to Solomon. He wrote that thing down, that scien- fic fact, about nine hundred years before the Christian era.. “The wind goeth toward é south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the ind returneth again according to its circuits.” Here is another scientific fact even more striking than that. The seventh verse: All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the s come, thither they return again.” He was speaking of the Mediterranean. at sea, as you know, drains in part three continents. Asia. Africa and Europe. The ers of those three continents in part flow into the Mediterranean. The Black Sea hes into it by one mouth: the Atlantic Ocean rushes into it by another mouth; yet sea level of the Mediterranean has not varied probably over an inch in twenty-five 528 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. hundred years. What becomes of the surplus water that is poured into the Mediterranean day by day for centuries? That was a question that puzzled geogra- phers in Europe tor three centuries. At last the fact that it keeps the same level for century after century is accounted for by evaporation. The sun carries up the mist or surplus water into the air, into the higher strata, where it is recondensed, and poured back on the earth in the form of rains, dews, vapors and snows. That is a discove : of about two centuries ago. Listen, now, to the discovery of a man who lived about twenty-seven hundred years ago: “All the rivers run into the sea;”—surely the Mediterranean—three continents of water; “yet the sea is not full; unto the place from ‘whence the rivers come, thither they return again.” Circulation of the waters by | evaporation, and not otherwise. Solomon knew that, my brethren. Let me pause to make a remark here. This is a wonderfully boastful age in which | we live. The wisdom of the human mind in our day is something colossal, but it is altogether likely that all the wisdom of the races is not concentrated in the present | generation of men, nor will it perish when this generation of men has given place to” another. Those old fellows of the ancient time knew something. Let me give an example or two. In 1894 or 1895, when they were excavating the ruins of Pompeii in Southern Italy, | where it was my privilege to spend a little while, I went one day to the Museum of | Naples, where the objects discovered up to that time were preserved, and are to this day. The Italian custodian said, “Come here to me; I want to show you something.” He opened a little glass case, and took out a gold fish, an ornament that had been worn on the person, a little gold fish about the length of an inch and a quarter, or even an inch and a half. He held it in his hand, and as I looked at that fish he said, | “I do not know a jeweler in all Europe that can duplicate that fish.” I said that seemed very remarkable; it seemed not to be very hard. I noticed little gold scales — cut on its sides, and there were two brilliants for its eyes, but I thought most jewelers | could make that certainly. He said, ‘Take it by the head and tail, with the back towards the zenith; gently bend it toward yourself, and then bend it away from — yourself, and see what it will do.” I did so, and bending it towards me all the little gold scales on the sides, not as large as a pin’s head, stood out from the body of that gold fish as in life; and when I bent it away from me the gold scales became absolutely invisible. ‘‘Now,” he says, ‘‘what the mechanism is in that fish we do not know, and — we cannot open it to see, for that would destroy it. There is not a jeweler in Europe that can make a gold fish like that.” And with a queer expression on his face he said, _ “those old Pompeiians knew something that we do not.” Very likely! Solomon knew also about the evaporation of water. Do you remember reading lately one of the boaks of one of the great archeolo-— 4 gists, who was engaged in excavating in Egypt for some thirty years, by the name of i Petrie, where he says he found a chest of tools of an Egyptian mason, probably thirty-_ ns two hundred years old. And among the rest he found a drill that was spiral, so that in drilling into granite the drill ran down in the granite at the depth the workman z wanted, leaving the core entire, and at the bottom of it there was some kind of a _ contrivance whereby he severed that core from the body of the granite and lifted it out. Petrie found both the drill and three of these granite cores that were cut out, and he says you can see the line of the spiral running from the top down to the ~ bottom. “Is there any drill that is made by the mechanics of Europe in this day that can do the work like that?” And the answer is in the negative. Another proof that there was something known by those ancients that even we do not know. Solomon knew a good many things. He was a botanist. and a zoologist, and an | architect, and a poet, and a philosopher, and this first chapter proves it. That first Ecclesiastes; or Under the Sun—Moorehead. 529 _ chapter has as its undertone the monotony of the world under the sun. Everything here at last stiffens into a dreadful monotony when it is viewed only under the sun. Then in the second and third chapter he gives us the results of his experiments’ _in everything that the world offers of happiness and blessedness, and we read that the first test that he made was with mirth and delight. The second chapter and first verse: “I said in mine heart, go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy _ pleasure; and behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, it is mad; and of mirth, what doeth it? I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting my heart with wisdom;” not going to great length in the use of wine; “‘and to lay hold on folly, until I might see what was that good for the sons of men which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life.” As a young man he devoted himself to pleasure, amusement, wine and intoxica- ' tion, and he writes down as the result of that first test: “It is vanity and vexation of spirit.” It never can gratify the true longings of the human soul. The next experiment he made was in reference to wealth. “I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water.” He gathered together the peculiar treasures of kings, riches, silver and gold in abundance. He is a business man now. He was a thoughtless and reckless youth at first, when he made the experiment’ of pleasure and wine. Now he goes into the accumulation of property and wealth. He was gathering together the accumulations that make for happiness according to the judgment of the men of this world; and after gathering all _ this wealth the verdict the second time is, “It is vanity and vexation of spirit.” _ And then he rises still higher, into what are known as esthetics, the life of music, poetry, art and so on, and this is as modern as it can be. -It is up to date. “I gath- ered me also silver and gold; I got me men singers and women singers, and the _ delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.” He had his prima donna and his basse and his tenore, and his orchestra, and he lay on his ‘silken couch, no doubt, in the palace of Jerusalem, while his bands were playing down below, and the men and women were singing, and the fountains were plashing. It is cultured refinement now. What is the result? Vanity and vexation of spirit once “again. No doubt. Then he reaches higher still, namely, to the attainment of wisdom, knowledge and earning, and he wrote books. He tells us about all his efforts to accumulate knowl- _ edge and understanding. And the result of this fourth effort was, as in all the other cases, “It is vanity and vexation of spirit.” And having gone the entire round, he finally declares that he hateth his life. He came to the end of all that the world had _ to offer, and the outcome is that he is almost ready to commit suicide. I hate my life; I do not know the difference between the life of a man and the life of a brute. Live below the sun, and never rise above the sun, and that will be the outcome sooner or later, invariably. Then we turn to the observation of the third to the eighth chapters inclusive, and over this I must pass rapidly. According to his observation, he declares that there is inexorable natural law governing everything in this world. There is a time to lant, and a time to reap there is a time to laugh, and a time to weep; there is a time o be born, and a time to die. What does he mean by that long list of times to do this, d times to do that? What is apprehended is that natural law is unchangeable and nvariable and exorable, It always reaches its end. It never can be arrested. It can Mever be turned aside. The great wheels roll on; if you get in their way they crush you. They go on; they go on. After pointing out this natural law and its operation, declares we are tied up by forces that we cannot master, and we are the sport of the powers of nature, It is vanity and vexation of spirit, 530 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Then he goes on in the next place to observe the inequalities of-the divine govern- ment, as we name them; inequalities of the righteous going the way of the wicked; | everything going on in peace and quietness and prosperity. You may need to account for the inequalities observable in the divine government. Some one, a lady, said to me yesterday, I think, or possibly it was Saturday, how comes it to pass that in a certain family, which she mentioned, there is trouble and sickness, and loss of property and death, and yet the most devoted people that are to be found anywhere, and on the other side, a family absolutely without God, or hope in the world, prosperous and nothing adverse in their life. How do you account for it? Under the sun it is abso- lutely inexplicable. So Solomon goes on in his perplexity, and you only see what it~ all means when you come to the last chapter, when he is above the sun, and every- — thing comes straight. Twenty-eight times he has declared under the sun—under the sun—nothing is right. Above the sun, he at last cries out, everything is right. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear God, and keep His com-_ “mandments; for this is the whole of man.” The twelfth chapter, and last two verses. — Notice that I drop out purposely this word printed in italics in the authorized version. — Duty; it is not the duty; it is the whole of man. That is what Solomon wrote. Fear | God: the Old Testament for reverence, for love, for obedience, for trust, for fear in the evangelical sense, as it is called. Fear God; love God; trust God; wait on God; obey God; follow God; take God into all the hours of the day, and then what? This — is the whole of man. Everything centers in that; everything is made whole;*every-— thing is made right. He is above the sun. 5 q Let me repeat to you a little fable that was written by a naturalist in this country, of which I am very fond. Do not forget it is simply a fable, but it illustrates exactly the book of Ecclesiastes. This naturalist writes as follows: q One beautiful spring morning there came a songster, and perched himself on the branch of a tree, and swung himself backward and forward, and poured out his heart © in a glad song. There was a mole working under the sod just below, and he heard the song of this bird, and pushing his nose up through the turf he called out: “Oh, bird, why are you making such a noise?” And the bird made answer: “Oh, Mr. Mole, the } sunlight is so beautiful, and the air is so refreshing, and the world is so lovely that my — heart is filled with gladness, and I cannot but sing.” “The world full of beauty,” said the mole, “there is no beauty in it at all. Everything in the earth is absolutely worth- — less. I have lived under its sod all my life; I have dug holes in it, and tunneled it in every direction, and I know the earth thoroughly, and know there are only two things in the earth—grass roots, and fish worms; nothing more.” Said the bird, ‘Come up, Mr. Mole, out from under the sod into the light, into the presence of the sun, and you will find that you must sing; you cannot do otherwise.’ That is Ecclesiastes—live under the sun, with the face always towards the earth; live beneath the sod, like tha’ mole, and there is nothing in it. It is vanity and vexation of spirit. Come up above the sun into the light, and the presence of God, and all will be well, and your mouth will be filled with a song. Brethren, have you read the autobiography of Charles Darwin, the great evolu- tionary authority of the world today? If you have not, let me advise you to do it. When he was a young man, almost a child, he, first of all, tells us, gave himself to — prayer, and often when he was on his way to school a little late, he would lift up his heart to the Lord that He would help him to run, that he might reach the school before the last bell was rung, and he was always helped. It was the purpose of his father, at that time, that he should enter the ministry of the established Church of England, but he got turned aside to science. He says further in his autobiography that he was, — when he was young, fond of poetry, and exceedingly fond of music, but by his giving — himself up to the investigation of science, with his face always turned to the ground — Ecclesiastes; or Under the. Sun—Moorehead. 531 nd seeking things in connection with this planet alone, he, to use his own scientific ious emotions of early times were atrophied and died. He said there was nothing hat harassed him more than the sound of musical instruments, and there was nothing hat had such an unspeakable annoyance in it as the reading of poetry. As for prayer, he never prayed during all those closing years of his life. At 8 o’clock every morning, even days in the week, he began his investigations, and worked down until 2 in the fternoon, and then rested the rest of the day, and he had no hope, absolutely none, when he went away from the earth. - Live under the sun, with the face toward the ground, and you will never have any- hing but vanity and vexation of spirit. _ Come up above the sun, come out into God's presence, live with God, spend the days with God, and all will be well. That is Ecclesiastes. 4 532 Pulpit Power and Eloquence- I AM WITH YOU ALL THE DAYS: G. CAMPBELL MORGAN. “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.”—Mat- © thew 28: 20, Think for a moment of the position and experience of these men to whom our Lord was speaking. Their personal acquaintance with Him had extended over only about three years. He had found them in the midst of their daily avocations, had called them to follow Him, and they had discovered even in those years of His © sojourn amongst them a new relationship superior to anything that they had ever known. At His bidding they had followed Him, turning their backs upon their chosen occupation, and upon the very dearest relationships of the earth. In response — to His love their love had gone out to Him, and a close bond of union had come to exist between the Master and His disciples. Then they had followed Him from place to place, ministering to Him; sometimes sent away to tell of the things which © He had been revealing to them, and coming back to Him again to report all that they had seen and done in His name. Then they had suddenly and tragically lost Him to all human seeming. They had hoped such great things from Him, and — through Him, but at the moment all those hopes were put out in the darkness of a tragic and awful death. Put yourself, for a moment, in the place of these men and ~ you will see how perfectly natural it was that every hope went out when they saw Him nailed to the cross. Oh, the dark, dark days that set upon them then! Then ~ there came the sudden shining of a new light, a message so strange and weird, and yet so full of hope, that it is said of them that they went from the sepulchre filled with fear and great joy. There was a battle, as it were, between night and morning in their hearts. Then they had found Him again—Mary, Peter, the two on the way to Emmaus, and the eleven gathered together saw Him, and discovered that He was not dead, but living. But now a new shadow is on them. Their Lord is going away again, and He gives them, as His parting word, a commission that must have filled their hearts with fear if it had not been immediately followed by the words of which I want to speak. % | Here is a handffal of men—poor men; men of no position; men who had massed — against them all the great powers, and Jesus says to them: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and — of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have com- manded you.” That is the commission which He gives to them, and the future is full of responsibility. What are they to do? It is to these men in this condition that the Master breathes the words, “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” Beloved, we have been in the place of great privilege. New visions of the glory of the Master have been granted to many souls here, and every new vision has brought - a corresponding duty and responsibility. We have a new sense of the magnitude of the work to be done. How are we going to do it? We are to leave the mount of vision and return to the valley where lies the ordinary sphere of life and of service, I Am With You All the Days—Morgan. 533 - What are we to do? Oh, take this word with you: “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” The material is passing away, but the spiritual abides. The symbolical gives place to that which underlies it. This is the _ method of Christ. He said to His disciples, “It is expedient for you that I go away”—speaking of Himself as the localized and limited one. But why was it ex- pedient that He should go away? In order that He might abide forever as a spiritual omnipresent verity in the lives of men. You remember how, on the walk to Emmaus, He unfolded to those disciples the Scriptures, and then He was made known to them in the breaking of bread, and then He vanished. He led them by teaching and symbol up to the point of a new spiritual recognition, and then He passed out of their sight, in order that their spiritual senses might be developed and strengthened by a living and perpetual com- munion with the spiritual fact of His abiding presence. Jesus said to Mary and to Thomas two very different things, because in His grace He has separate ways of dealing with each separate individuality. He said to Mary, “Touch me not;’”’ but to Thomas He said, ‘‘Reach hither thy hand and touch me.” Where was the difference between these two people? Mary’s concep- tion of the Master needed strengthening in the realm of the spiritual, and therefore Jesus would not allow her to touch the material. Thomas’s consciousness of the Master needed strengthening in the actual verity of a risen Christ, and therefore Jesus invited him to touch Him. But in every case the Master passed away in _ visible form and symbol, in order that His children might eventually come to know Him as an abiding spiritual presence. One of the most blessed things about these conferences for the deepening of Spiritual life is that they come to a close. It is so easy in the midst of these symbols and sacraments to live in the power of spiritual truth and fellowship. We thank _ God for this sacred spot upon His beautiful earth, and for all that helps to make it what it is, but we cannot abide here always. By the grace of God we must leave the opportunities of grace that we have here enjoyed, and there are trembling hearts _ that are saying, What is left to us? This is left: “I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. Now, may I fix your attention, first, upon the One who speaks these words, and then upon the fact which He declares. Who is it that utters these words? The Man Christ Jesus. He was known of them and had already proved to them that He was not a spectre, merely. The Man whom they had learned to love and henor, the companion of their life for three years, said to them: “I am with you all the _ days.” What was true of them is true of us, even at this moment. The Master has not altered; He has not lost His human sympathies; He has not forgotten the tears _ He shed by the grave of Lazarus, dead; He has not forgotten the conflict through which He passed in life for the winning of His own daily bread. It is this Man of human sympathy, with all the supernatural miracle of His life, and death, and resur- rection, who is able to say to us, “I am with you all the days, even unto the com- pletion of the age.’’ It has been a blessed thing for us to meet together in Christian fellowship and to help one another, but the time comes when we must separate from these fellow disciples. Who will be with us? The Man Christ Jesus. We may tell Him just what we have said to others, and we may have His answer as definitely as we have the answer of any human teacher. He is with us all the days the Man, Christ Jesus. Remember also that He who stood upon that mountain side and said this to the 534 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ‘ disciples was the Savior. Do you remember the first time, when by faith, you look into the face of the Son of God, and said to Him, “My Savior?” That same O faces you now and says, “Lo, I, your Savior, with these wound prints in hands, and feet, and side; I am with you all the days.” The old thrill which you first experi-— enced may be an ever-present reality. The first gleam of light that fell upon your soul as you saw the Master as a Savior ought to flood your soul always, and it will if you live in the power of this, “I am with you all the days.” He is the living 4 Savior, the risen Lord, victorious over all the enemies, and Master of all the forces that remake men. It was He who said, ‘I am with you,” and the words spoken to the eleven upon that mountain side are the words spoken to you. We may be sep- arated from one another, but there is One from whom we shall never be separated. The Man Christ Jesus, the Savior, the risen Lord, is saying, “I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” JESUS, THE I AM. But, beloved, there is something infinitely more in it than that. “I am.” The more I have thought upon those words, the more I have come to understand that the manhood of the Christ and the fact of His presence with me as the Savior only becomes real as I enter into the larger fact that is suggested by this word which the Master uses when He said: “I am.” Go back to the Old Testament and you find that when God was about to bring His people out of bondage, and He called Moses from the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed, and gave him directions for the deliverance of Israel, when Moses asked, “Whom shall I say hath » sent me unto them?” then came that most marvelous word of God: “I am that I~ am.” It is as though there was to be an unfolding of glory. God said, “I am,” and then as though the glory were too great, infinitely beyond the possibility of mortal man’s understanding, God refrained and said, “That I am.” This man in the presence d of the burning bush could bear no more: existence, self-existence, inherent exist-— ence, nothing else, and all that the man had was the bush burning but not con-_ sumed, and the voice that took human speech and uttered divine and eternal verities, “I am that I am.” In the power of that revelation, which was necessarily partial E and incomplete, Israel was delivered from the bondage of Egypt and led through 4 forty years in the wilderness; led through all subsequent history until the Master cam J Go through the teaching of the Christ and see how He takes up the revelation o the burning bush and unfolds it to men. Take that little word, “I am,” and see how it runs through the teaching of the Master. I am not going to suggest them to you in their chronological order. Begin with that word which He spoke to those who > asked Him, “Art thou greater than our father Abraham?” He answered at last, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Then said they unto Him, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” | Then it was that the Man who is to be with us all the days looked into the faces of His questioners, and said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” It is the divine word, and the Master claims it for Himself. Man has his past tense; God has no past tense: “Abraham was; I am.” There is the great claim. Now listen to the teaching of Jesus. “I am the good shepherd.” What is that? L Christ’s picture of the pity and compassion of the divine heart; God looking for a wandering soul. “I am the door.’ “I am the way, the truth, the life.” “I am the bread of life.’ Gather them up; they are the Master’s teachings about God. Hes. was unveiling in His own person and character, and His own teaching, all the verities of the divine nature that it was possible for man to understand. All through His” teachings the great music runs on, until in symbol and metaphor we are conducted © into the presence of God, and in the Man Christ Jesus we have a revelation infinitely . q . I Am With You All the Days—Morgan. 535 beyond the revelation of the burning bush. : The Master has told us in little words from His human lips is concerned, and once again He takes hold of the divine name and links it. no longer to the burning bush, no longer to symbol, and metaphor, ea figure, but He links it to every man and woman. He says, “Henceforth, I am with; _ you.” Immanuel, God with us. That is the great word which He left His church. _ That is the great word to us: “I am with you.” What wonders that partial revela- tion to Moses wrought! With a high hand and an outstretched arm I am delivered His people from bondage and led them across the wilderness, and finally established _ them in the land. The Master gives us this self-same word, and says, “I am with _ you always.” It is the word of comfort; it is the word of strength by which you and I will go back to do wonders and win victories, and have triumph all the way. - Lose every other thought if you must, but don’t lose this, “I am with you.” Human in sympathy; divine in power. When will He be with you? “All the days’—dull and bright, foggy and sunshiny, cold and heat—‘all the days.” JESUS’ LOVE FOR HIS PEOPLE. Now, what does this statement mean? First of all, it implies His untiring love - for His people. It is as though He had said to those eleven men: “I am going away from your earthly vision for a little while, but I shall find none in whom I take _ a deeper interest than I do in you.” He went back—I love to think of it; the moment came when everything was finished and old Mother Earth recognized the _ will of the Creator, and gravitation ceased to operate when He so willed it, and He ascended and a cloud received Him out of their sight. Shall we follow Him for a moment?. Leave those men standing there, or join _ them, only look beyond what they saw. The cloud received Him, and He went on and on; and methinks, if earth’s songs are sung in heaven, the angels sang that day, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; that the King of glory may come in.” Then you have the antiphonal chanting of heaven, and other choirs sing, ‘‘Who is this King of glory?’ And the answer comes thunder- _ ing through the everlasting temple, “The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.” _ Thus, Jesus went again into Heaven. What was the first ‘thing He did there? I am bold to say that He first called two bright messengers from those of the heavenly host who have never sinned, and those angels come swift as the lightning at the _ bidding of the King. Then says the King to them in heavenly language—perhaps, in the language of music—‘*Down there upon the earth some men are standing looking up towards the clouds. Go and comfort them.” And down came the bright messengers, and as the men looked at the clouds, the clouds were lit with the glory _ of the coming angels, and the sweet voices of the heavenly messengers took human speech and said to them: ‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like “manner as ye have seen Him go.’’ Do you think the angel did that of his own bidding? Never; the angels are God’s ministers and they do His bidding. I be- lieve that the first thing our risen and ascended Lord did was to send comfort back from heaven to the hearts of these waiting men. He found no one in whom He ‘is more deeply interested than in them, to whom He said, “I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” I say, reverently, that today in glory the Son of Man finds no one in heaven in whom He is more interested than He is in you and in me. We may each get our own blessing out of that thought. “I am with you,” He says; ‘my love is with you, my interest is with you; I shall never “ | into which my own unwatchfulness may lead me, He is with me. Some one said i ' if you get there through your own fault, He won't.” I do not believe that. 536 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. tire of your company.” O Master, I have tired of Thine, alas, again and again, and I have wandered away and left Thee, but Thou hast never tired of me. But these words mean much more. They of necessity imply His care. In any place of difficulty into which He leads me, He is with me. In any place of difficulty If it had been true, I know not how I should have got on. Do not put your limits upon the promises like that. “I am with you all the days.” Wandering child of God, are you hemmed in with difficulty and darkness, which you know is the result of your own folly? The Master has not left you; He is still there. Hear the words” to the church, which have their application to the believer, too: “Behold, I stand at’ the door and knock.” When? Why, when the church has almost forgotten Him, and when, perchance, there is only one man in the church that can hear the knoe c of the pierced hand upon the door. Still He is there waiting, waiting; “I am with you all the days.” Whether it be a place of difficulty into which God has led, or into which I, through my folly, have wandered, He is there; in the hour of Satan’s temptation, “all the days;” in times of danger, through adversity or prosperity, “all the days;” when other helpers fail and comforts flee, “‘all the days.” Oh, let. us get hold of that! The conference ends and we go back to business, or church work. How dare we face it all? “I am with you all the days.” ‘ THE COMPLETION OF THE AGE. But notice, there is something else here. “I am with you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” What does that mean? To my own heart it takes the thought of death and lifts it out and flings it away. He is with us “unto the com-— pletion of the age,” not to the end of the world. Is the age complete yet? No, the age of which the Master spoke then is not completed, When will it be completed? When He comes. Then what did He say? He said to Peter, and James, and John, and the rest of them, “I am with you to the end of the age.” “But, Master, Thou ~ wilt be with us when we preach, and Thou wilt be with us when we work, and Thow wilt be with us on our missionary journeyings, but presently, if Thou shalt delay Thy — coming, we shall have to leave this land and these friends of ours.” “I am with you to the end of the age.” Is He still with Peter, and James, and John? Of course He is; He has never left them from that moment to this. But did they not die? No. What then did they? They “fell on sleep,” and His hand soothed them into the sleep and His hand awoke them in His presence, and He is with them now. He abolishe death and there is only one thing He says, and that is, “I am with you.” If He be with me what care I if there is a shadow like death through which I pass? If the end of life look dark, what is it but the shadow of the portal just outside the gate of eternal life? He is with me; that is everything. Suppose that He does not come before I am taken, or suppose that the moment shall come to me when wealth and health — are gone, when friends are helpless, when earth’s means of grace are denied, and you — watch the child of God going out into what men speak of as the gloom and the gathering darkness, and what is there? Health is gone, and friends are vanishing; everything is gone. No, no; listen! Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the — completion of the age.” fe Now, beloved, that carries us over the line which men call death, into that which is — beyond, and I may reverently take this word of my Lord, and with it light up every- thing that is beyond the moment when I leave this world behind me. May I not say to Him, “Yes, blessed Master, to me the end of the age, and also into the eternal ages, Thow art with me’? It is the promise in the power of which I shall go home and live; +7 1 Am With You All the Days—Morgan. 537 the promise in the power of which I shall go home to serve; it is the promise, the ht of which has made the shadows not to be, and the music of which has begun in e heart of the pilgrim of the night, the song of the everlasting morning: “I am th you all the days, even unto the completion of the age.” _My brother, sister, get hold of this: The material ends; the spiritual remains. ae conference is over; the Christ abides. The teachers pass; the Teacher remains. et us go Our way tomorrow or the next day, but as we go, let us sing, as we hear 5 [This sermon is given here by permission of Northfield Echoes. It was delivered the Northfield conference in 1899.. It is characteristic of the man who came to the 538 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. WALKING IN CHRIST. Hin. 1Gs MOME RS “In Him we move.” (Acts 27:28.) “As ye have received Christ Jesus, Lord, s walk in Him.”—Col. 1. 6, 9 In Him we move. Walk in Him. The first verse, as you remember, is in Paul’s discourse at Athens, and does not speak specially of the Christian truth, | of Theistic truth, the truth of the eternal and supreme, in a respect in which he able to appeal even to the thinkers at Athens. But we must read for our own s surely all such Scripture words in the fullness of the light of Christ now. Jesus Cl is our way to the full knowledge of all and everything that God is. Jesus Christ i us, as we have just heard; the sphere of all the blessings of God, and so, in a s special and glorious, in Him we move. Now I am going to be very simple in this address, closing this morning. We been led into depths and heights of thought, all with the most practical possil purpose. May we now, so to speak, come down to walk upon the ground with we have gained in the upper air, and think most simply for a little time of walki in Jesus Christ. Surely it is not without God that I have been led to these texts Absolutely no consultation took place, but when Dr. Pierson announced his subj and delivered it, I could not but humbly believe that not without God had I be led steadily and without misgiving to this selection of these Scriptures, whose heart and message is, In Christ. So with a quiet confidence that our blessed Lord through His Word will speak to us, and that it will not be the mere talk of man, we will approach the thought upon Walk in Christ. as We are very soon going to break up, we shall soon be on the move. The railwa will be thronged here and there with those who have gathered at Keswick, and y are going back into common life. May every one of them remember that in Him move. Not only when we are sitting or kneeling together in His presence, in sanctuary, or in a chamber of worship, or a meeting like this, but when we ar the way to the station, when we are on the train, when we are taking our journey when we are effecting our connection on the line, in Him we move. There may be great deal of hurried moving externally—there is sure to be when a large assemk is breaking up and going by rail—but there will be no internal hurry in any trayele heart that recollects that in Him we move. But when we have moved and got where we are going, some, doubtless, to ° of much needed rest and change, and others, back to the duties which are Go primary will now for them, then we shall have to walk. And let us see to it that 1 follow out St. Paul’s beautiful simple precept, ‘““Walk in Him.” Walk, you know, the Apostle’s favorite word, among many other words, for the realities of life. It life contemplated in its sensations and activities and experience down upon the ground of common things. There are aspects—we have been well reminded of it—in whi the Christian is to soar aloft with a glorious counteraction to the gravitation of se which can, if we humbly yield to it, bear us high indeed, and equally, too. But th from another view-point the very essence of the Christian life is to walk with two fe upon the real ground. Day by day, hour by hour, duty by duty, thing after thing, wi Walking in Christ—Moule. 539 meant to walk.. Do not let us, from that point of view, fret for wings. It is better to use the feet. Do not let us want to live in a dream or in a cloud, even a cloud of golden crimson. Let us be very thankful for the real road, and very thankful for the real surroundings of it, and set ourselves to walk. Only walk in Him, The Apostle, you remember, has said, “As ye received Christ Jesus the Lord.” We may perhaps nslate his Greek words yet more clearly somewhat thus, “As therefore you received the Christ Jesus the Lord.” Such, I think, is the emphasis and succession of the thoughts—you received the Christ, received Him in truth of message, received Him in embrace of faith, received Him in union of grace, received Him as Jesus, your human, vyhile Divine, Lord and Brother, received Him as Lord, Master and more than Master, for the word is glorified with worship, as well as pregnant with Sonship—as you have humbly taken Him as the Christ Jesus, and your Lord, now remember you are in Him. He is, as we have been beautifully told, not our circle only, but our sphere. We have come into Him, we have stepped into a surrounding, into a sphere, into an atmosphere vhich is Jesus Christ. And now, says the Apostle, do not merely sit there, do not even merely kneel there, but walk in the walk of life in Him. For that wonderful sphere will be ubiquitous with you, wherever it is right that you should be, and as you go He will go, and as He goes you will go, and your home, if I may put it specially so, shall be about you for the activities, the intercourse, the occupations, the walk of every day. Let us break up the thought into some practical particulars. So walk in Him. Very well then, going back to your daily work, you will so walk in Him. Perhaps what we call direct Christian work is mainly your life’s work. Perhaps you are a missionary, perhaps you are a pastor, perhaps you are an evangelist, perhaps you are a visitor of the sick and of the lost. Perhaps, man or woman, your life has been defi- nitely dedicated to exercises like these for Christ. Remember you will more than ever walk and work in Him; not in yourselves, in the energies of your will, in the wisdom of your ideas, in the ambitions of your own joys, but in Jesus Christ as strength; in Jesus Christ as aim and end, in Jesus Christ as sphere. But you, even you, have things im your life which are not direct Christian work, and multitudes have lives to be lived ind walked through which are not mainly direct Christian work in the technical sense of the word. Mother of a family, do not think that it is God’s will you should neglect your children in order to glorify Christ in some enterprise for the lost around you which would make you neglect your children. He has given you them as your sacred work. Your supremely first thing is the work of the home. See that you walk in it in Him. Men who are called to the activities of secular life which need so greatly to be eavened and salted with Christians in common occupation, do not fret because you lave your business to attend to, your bank to be in, your circle of occupation, whatever t is, to study, your property to manage. There are hundreds and thousands for whom God's will is just this as the main walk, day by day, but there is not one of fou who is not called to walk in this in Christ. he And if you walk in this in Christ, what will be the result? The world will find you mut to be real in a very special way. If it is seen that your religion makes you a Christian in common things, if the walk in Christ is such that you are known to be factical to the uttermost, but Christian to the backbone, in common things of life, Du will be, by the grace of God, glorifying your Master. But you can only do it by falking up and down, everywhere in these things, in Jesus Christ. And oh, let us sek for the fulfilment of the prayer offered at the beginning of the meeting, that we ay be faithful to. our stewardship, whatever it is, walking in Jesus Christ. The shame d scandal of a Convention would be that people should go home from it to be pamy, to be unpractical, to be selfish under a spiritual cloak, when they are meant to home to do tenfold well the common thing, to be found faithful in the daily task, 4 3 540 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. to see God's will in the dust of the common road, because they are walking alon Jesus Christ. Then, dear friends, even so walk in Him. That is to say, among other th even so talk in Him. We will remember from this day forth more than ever that ¥ never have a right to say a word outside our Lord Jesus Christ, that whatever we talking about, and we shall have to talk about innumerable things in the course” human life, we never have a right to say a single word outside our Lord Jesus Chri Do not be afraid it will do any harm to your tongue that is exercised, do not think will make you unnatural and stilted, do not think it will make you formalized an mannerized, do not think it will ever give any real cause to them that are outside f say that the man is spoiled as a converser because he is in Jesus Christ. But you kne what it will do. You will find it absolutely impossible while you are recollecting ~ am in Him,” to say a word,that is untrue—and that is a thing that needs a great de of realizing—absolutely impossible to say the thing that is unkind, absolutely impo: sible to say the thing that is in the faintest degree harsh or judging, absolut impossible to say anything in any degree against any one that is not out-and-ouw the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake at a tremendous sacrifice of self. It will be impossibl talking in Jesus Christ, to make a reckless use of the tongue, which is one of 1 disgraces of professing Christian life. ‘ Then we shall read in Jesus Christ. It does not mean we shall have no book bi this Book upon our shelves, and shall never open anything but volumes which at either the eternal Word of God itself, or books about the Bible or the soul life. I ha no doubt I am speaking to many a student here who absolutely ought to be readin and reading hard, at science, at literature, at history, or whatever it is. I am abs lutely certain I am speaking to numberless minds here that will be all the better fc some wholesome acquaintance with pure, true, lofty literature that is not avowed Christian, which will under certain conditions only make you more fit for the Master's use. But an inexorable condition of right reading of anything and everything, of th mathematical page, of the classical treatise, of the poem, of history, or whatever it n be, is this: that we shall walk about with our book in the Lord Jesus Christ, tha shall recollect, as much then and there as in the tent this morning with our B open, that we are in Him. That is the atmosphere, that is the place, those are tl walls, the floor, the ceiling, the windows within which the book is opened, and also is the light in which it is to be read. Has anyone here indulged in reading wh you know cannot be read in Jesus Christ? Then you will from this morning forth g that reading quietly but decisively up. And is there any reading that you know ab’ dantly might be in Christ, and has your duty been done as if you could take outside? Gather it all up, put your whole library indoors, and read in Him. And we shall enjoy in Jesus Christ. We are not made not to enjoy. He giveth all things richly to enjoy. Some of you will be going about this astonishing co and beholding things of beauty during this week. Do not be afraid to enjoy thi do not be afraid to be enraptured over the mighty hill, and the rolling flood, and crimson cloud. Only. remember you are to enjoy it through Him, you are to loo at Helvelyn and Skiddaw through our Lord Jesus Christ, you are to remem that what you are permitted, what you are welcomed by your Master to take and enjoy is all to be brought indoors, and to be, as it were, the picture on His walls, to be looked at within Him. And then you will endure in Jesus Christ. If you enjoy, it will be largely for : sake of recuperation of your being for God’s call to endure, to endure downright ha: work which is privilege and blessing when it is walking about in Christ; to endure, 1 may be, pain and weakness when the outward man doth perish, as it will sooner or later, and is meant to do, only to be re-built so that it will never perish. But the im 4 Walking in Christ—Moule. 541 itward man is perishing, wearing and tearing out, as we may translate the Apostle’s ord, and when life goes on and the man begins to feel that the wear is telling, e is giving off, and cannot do all he used to do. And then you will endure f the Spirit. You will very likely be called upon, before your face or behind our back, and it will come round before your face in time, to be heartily laughed at br your confession of Jesus Christ. A good deal of laughter is expended, and in many arious quarters, upon efforts made in this place and those who make them; and it is t agreeable, outside Jesus Christ, to, have this sort of thing going on about one’s ng-loved self. But if we walk up and down in our Lord Jesus Christ, even the fiery of ridicule will literally produce no bitterness—I know not if it need produce nything but hearty goodwill towards the ridiculer, and the earnest desire to profit n the slightest degree even by suggestions given by the ridicule; for a laugh which ay be unfair on the whole, may often be fair in a detail, and tell the man something bout himself it is wholesome to know. But we must walk up and down in the Lord esus Christ, and let these things come into us through the windows of Him, if the and of them is to be right to our ears, and in tune with the life in us and ours in dim. Do not trust yourself out of Jesus Christ even for the smallest troubles of that Dear friends, we can fill in these few attempted details into a much larger cata- gue. We will all endeavor to do it, if I may humbly ask you, each man and each oman, for yourselves. But remember that we go away moving in Him, and that we settle down to life to walk in Him. There will be plenty of place to walk in in the Only, it will have just the limits, with the liberty, of home. For this is the _ There are many aspects in which we are in Jesus Christ. Wonderful wealth of the jas ages of God’s Word! You know those, as Dr. Pierson has reminded us, that have lis for their keynote. In Him—in Him,as the branch that we may abide in Him; in m as the limb that we may walk in Him and in vital union with Him; in Him (as is wonderful atmosphere surrounding us) for our very life. And oh (may we not ay also?), in Him as the child is in the home in Christ with a home inness, in Christ is the child enjoys the occupation of anything but ennui, the delightful business of ways something coming next, of a bright home life; and all around it the security, ad on the other hand the authority of the blessed parental home in which Christ is enter, Lord, Master, Head of it, and therefore of us. Oh, the blessed interest, the happy, joyful delight of the busy day spent in the atmosphere of such a home, the jecupations round the hearth, the occupations round the table, the occupations upstairs nd down. They are constantly succeeding but relieving one another, and unifying cause they are all in the home. And we are meant to look out upon life always from ome. We are meant to meet the solitudes in which bereavement sooner or later leaves eople, looking at it out of the windows of an unbreakable home. We are meant to neet the loudest roar of the city street, looking and listening to it so often through the alls of home, we are meant to take up the crudest and hardest and dullest things we € got to do in‘daily duty, and bring them into the surroundings of the beautiful ber of home, where they will look so immensely different, put down amongst the archable riches of Jesus Christ. And this is fact, not imagination. Imagination as its part to do, but only by taking up and utilizing and applying fact. The glory it is not that we are poetizing, but realizing what the Bible tells us about our rela- ons with our Lord Jesus Christ. So, dear friends, we end this morning’s meeting where we began it with such ssed profit in Him, in Him as the Christ Jesus, the Master, in Him as the Lord to upon the Throne—and there, and only there, He always makes all things new. Do y of us feel that all things are getting rather old and faded in our soul’s life? The 542 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. reason is certain if it is real spiritual going-off; Jesus Christ is somehow not upon Throne. The newness will spring up anew in Him. Now we are going away in and the result will be that He shall be found out in us, and we in Him. I hope sense the prophets will not be without honor in their own country as regards anyt ny that it may cost them to be lovingly and humbly, not self-assertively, true to Lord. But I trust they will not be out of honor in their country for another reaso because they are not so true to Him at home as they seem to be in the tent, bec the home duties are not all that they should be in their doing, because the h obedience, because the home thoroughness, because the home brigeinese) because home servingness is not all that it should be, because the man is not in his neighbo hood really, what he is supposed to be in the tent, because “the woman amongst friends is not in speech about others, and the man, too, all that is supposed to be law within the Keswick tent. And may we in that sense, or rather may our Mast us, be honored in our own country, they having no evil thing to say of us, nor fi with us except concerning the Lord our God. And so shall it be, with joy let us clo in remembering if, having received Christ Jesus the Lord, we just walk and live ne outside Him. {Handley Carr Glyn Moule, D. D.; Norrisian Professor of Divinity; Professoria Fellow at St. Catherine’s College since 1899; Hon. Chaplain to the Queen since 1 First Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, 1881-99; born Dorchester, 1841; educ at home; Trinity College, Cambridge, Browne’s Classical Medallist, Cambridge, 1863 Second Classic in the Tripos of 1864; B. D. 1894; D. D. 1895. Fellow of Tri College, Cambridge, 1865-81; Assistant Master at Marlboro, 1865-67; Dean of Trin College 1873-76; Select preacher at Cambridge, 1880, 1882, 1891, 1894, 1899; at ford, 1895.] : (6:3) THE REVERSAL OF HUMAN JUDGMENT. 7. BE MOZLENM, D:D! _ “Many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be nirst.’—Matthew 19: 30. Perhaps there is hardly any person of reflection to whom the thought has not occurred at times of the final judgment turning out to be a great subversion of human mates of men. Society forms its opinions of men, and places some on a high pinnacle; they are favorites with it, religious and moral favorites. Such judgments are a necessary and proper part of the present state of things; they are so, quite inde- endently of the question whether they are true or not; it is proper that there should ‘this sort of expression of the voice of the day; the world is not nothing, because it | transient; it must judge and speak upon such evidence as it has, and is capable of seing. Therefore those characters of men are by all means to be respected by us. as members of this world; they have their place, they are part of the system. But docs the idea strike us of some enormous subversion of human judgments in the next world; some vast rectification to realize which now, even if we could, would not be good for 3? Such an idea would not be without support from some of those characteristic rophetic sayings of our Lord, which, like the slanting strokes of the sun’s rays across ne clouds, throw forward a track of mysterious light athwart the darkness of the ure. Such is that saying in which a shadow of the Eternal Judgment seems to come ver us—'* Many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.’’ It is impossible » read this saying without an understanding that it was intended to throw an element f wholesome scepticism into the present estimate of human character, and to check he idolatry of the human heart which lifts up its favorites with as much self-compla- ency as of enthusiasm, and in its worship of others flatters itself. Indeed, this language of Scripture, which speaks of the subversion of human udgments in another world, comes in connection with another language with which most remarkably fits in, language which speaks very decidedly of a great deception f human judgments in this world. It is observable that the Gospel prophecy of the irthly future of Christianity is hardly what we should have expected it beforehand to be; there is a great absence of brightness in it; the sky is overcast with clouds, and rds of ill omen fly to and fro: there is an agitation of the air, as if dark elements were work in it; or it is as if a fog rose up before our eyes, and treacherous lights were Moving to and fro in it, which we could not trust. Prophecy would fain presage ispiciously, but as soon as she casts her eye forward, her note saddens, and the ords issue in melancholy and sinister cadences which depress the hearer’s mind. nd what is the burden of her strain? It is this. As soon as ever Christianity is cast © the world to begin its history, that moment there begins a great deception. It is i pervading thought in Gospel prophecy—the extraordinary capacity for deceiving and being deceived that would arise under the Gospel; it is spoken of as something peculiar the world. There are to be false Christs and false prophets, false signs and wonders; jany that will come in Christ’s name, saying, I am Christ, and deceive many; so that it is the parting admonition of Christ to His disciples—‘Take heed, lest any man leceive you’”—as if that would be the great danger. And this great quantity of decep- on was to culminate in that One in whom all power of signs and lying wonders 544 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the prophecy of the false one was implanted deep in the heart of Christianity. When we come to the explanation of this mass of deception as it applies to tk Christian society, and the conduct of Christians, we find that it consists of a great growth of specious and showy effects, which will in fact issue out of Christianity, not | implying sterling goodness. Christianity will act as a great excitement to human nature, it will communicate a great impulse, it will move and stir man’s feelings and zeal and ardor. But this brilliant manifestation will be to a large extent lacking im the substance of the Christian character. It will be a great show. That is to say, there will be underneath it the deceitful human heart—the xaturva callida, as Thomas 4 Kempis calls it, gue se semper pro fine habet. We have even in the early Christian Church that specious display, of gifts which put aside as secondary the more solid part of religion, and which St. Paul had so strongly to check. Gospel prophecy goes: remarkably in this direction, as to what Christianity would do in the world; that it would not only bring out the truth of human nature, but would, like some powerful alchemy, elicit and extract the falsehood of it; that it would not only develop what was sincere and sterling in man, but what was counterfeit in him too. Not that Christianity favors falsehood, any more than the Law favored sin because it brought out sin. ne Law, as St. Paul says, brought out sin because it was spiritual and forced sin to be sin against light. So in the case of Christianity. If a very high, pure, and heart-seareh- ing religion is brought into contact with a corrupt nature, the nature grasps at the greatness of the religion, but will not give up itself; yet to unite the two requires a self-deception the more subtle and potent in proportion to the purity of the religion. And certainly, comparing the hypocrisy of the Christian with that of the old world, we see that the one was a weak production in comparison with the other, which is indeed a very powerful creation; throwing itself into feeling and language with an astonishing” freedom and elasticity, and possessing wonderful spring and largeness. There is, however, one very remarkable utterance of our Lord Himself upon this subject, which deserves special attention. ‘Many will say to me in that day, Lor Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out devils, and Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I nev knew you.” Now this is a very remarkable prophecy, for one reason, that in the very first start of Christianity, upon the very threshold of its entrance into the world, it looks through its success and universal reception, into an ulterior result of that victory —a counterfeit profession of it. It sees before the first nakedness of its birth is over, prosperous and flourishing religion, which it is worth while for others to pay homa to, because it reflects credit on its champions. Our Lord anticipates the time wh active zeal for Himself will be no guarantee. And we may observe the difference to examine very strictly the tone and quality of it. They grasp at it at once; not so” our Lord. He does not want it even for Himself, unless it is pure in the individuals” But this statement of our Lord’s is principally important, as being a prophecy > relating to the earthly future of Christianity. It places before us public religious leaders, men of influence in the religious world, who spread and push forward by gifts of eloquence and powers of mind, the truths of His religion, whom yet He w not accept, because of a secret corruptness in the aim and spirit with which they d their work, The prophecy puts before us the fact of a great deal of work being do in the Church, and outwardly good and zealous work, upon the same motive if substance upon which worldly men do their work in the world; and stamps it as the activity of corrupt nature, The rejection of this class of religious workers is com- The Reversal of Human Judgment—Mosley. 545 piete, although they have been, as the language itself declares, forward and active for ‘spiritual objects, and not only had them on their lips. : Here then we have a remarkable subversion of human judgments in the next world foretold by our Lord Himself; for those men certainly come forward with established religious characters to which they appeal; they have no doubt of their position in God's kingdom, and they speak with the air of men whose claims have been acquiesced in by others, and by numbers. And thus a false Christian growth is looked to in Gospel prophecy, which will be able to meet even the religious tests of the current day, and sustain its pretensions, but which will not satisy the tests of the last day. We are then perhaps at first sight surprised at the sternness of their sentence, ‘and are ready to say with the trembling disciple—*Who then shall be saved?” But when we reflect upon it, we shall see that it is not more than what meets the case; i. e., that we know of sources of error in the estimate of human character which will. ‘account for great mistakes being made; which mistakes will have to be rectified. _ One source of mistake then is, that while the Gospel keeps to one point in its classification of men,—viz., the motive, by which alone it decides their character, the mass of men in fact, find it difficult to do so. They have not that firm hold of the moral idea which prevents them from wandering from it, and being diverted by irrelevant considerations, they think of the spirituality of a man as belonging to the department to which he is attached, the profession he makes, the subject matter he works upon, the habitual language he has to use. The sphere of these men, of whom the estimate was to be finally reversed, was a religious one,—viz., the Church, and this was a remarkable prop to them. Now, with respect to this, it must be observed that the Church is undoubtedly in its design a spiritual society, but it is also a society of this world as well; and it depends upon the inward motive of a man whether it is to him a spiritual society or a worldly one. The Church as soon as ever it is em- bodied in a visible collection or society of men, who bring into it human nature, with human influences, regards, points of view, estimates, aims, and objects—I say the Church, from the moment it thus embodies itself in a human society, is the world. but the active stock of motives in it are the motives of human nature. Can the Visible Church indeed afford to do without these motives? Of course it cannot. It must do its work by means of these to a great extent, just as the world does its work. Religion itself is beautiful and heavenly, but the machinery for it is very like the nachinery for anything else. I speak of the apparatus for conducting and administer- ng the visible system of it. Is not the machinery for all causes and objects much le same, communication with’ others, management, contrivance, combination, daptation of means to end? Religion then is itself a painful struggle, but religious achinery provides as pleasant a form of activity as any other machinery possesses; nd it calls forth and exercises much the same kind of talents and gifts that the machinery of any other department does, that of a government office, or a public stitution, or a large business. The Church as a part of the world must have active- ded persons to conduct its policy and affairs; which persons must, by their very uation, connect themselves with spiritual subjects, as being the subjects of the iety; they must express spiritual joys, hopes, and fears, apprehensions, troubles, als, aims, and wishes. These are topics which belong to the Church as a depart- nt. A religious society then, or religious sphere of action, or religious sphere of ects is irrelevant as regards the spirituality of the individual person, which is a ndtter of inward motive. _ To take an instance of a motive of this world. Statesmen and leaders of political me. s. parties may of course act upon a spiritual motive in their work, and have done so; 546 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. viz., the single desire to do good in the sphere. of God’s temporal providence; and motive of their work may stand on a perfect equality with that of winning sou nevertheless the world’s great men do often act upon a known class of secondary motives. Dismissing then the grosser and coarser class of selfish aims, which con- spicuously and glaringly put the religious and secular worker on a level, so far as they adopt them, let us take that absorbing frailty, which sometimes figures as a virtue, You see in the case of a political man all the action of life, all its vital energy gather- ing round himself, and accumulating into a kind of egotistic capital, which i advancing and growing, as life and action go on—a representation of the man to himself, which goes by the name of greatness or glory; an ever-accompanying mirror into which he looks for his stimulus and inspiration. This great abstraction, this reflection and adumbration of himself, as it magnifies, becomes his one measure, it gives the worth to everything he does; whatever swells the bulk of this colossal impersonation is valuable, whatever does not is indifferent to him. It wholly emptie ; man, draining all the freshness of his spirit, and drying up the sap of nature, till he only feels one wish which.can speak to him. Everything is grudged which does not feed this fount. Natural interests die, even the impress of personal attachments fades away; whatever is outside the central impulse is in the way; he does not want it, can do without it; everything else is only instrumental to this one devouring end. this great Bh aatoen which represents hirhself is growing, all is right; it must be growing to the last; it is a duty, the first of duties, the sum of all duty, the final cause of his being, and his conscience is pricked if he misses any opportunity of an accessio n to this mystic treasury, this chamber of imagery within him. Nor is the fault only one. of gigantic minds; we may see that even ordinary men are sometimes taken up with creating a petite sample of this personification. But what substantial difference is there in this class of motives as they act upon a religious leader, and as they act upon a political leader? The former, if he is of an ambitious mind, has the same kind of ambition that the other has; he wants success, and the spread of his own principles and his own following is his success. Is there not as much human glory in the bril : principles? Is it GE a temporal, an earthly, and a worldly reward to be called Rabbi, Rabbi? Christ said it was. If then one of the great critics of man could speak of “the muddy source of the lustre of public actions,” the scrutiny may be carried as well to a religious as a political sphere. The truth is, wherever there is action, effort, aim at — certain objects and ends;—wherever the flame of human energy mounts up; all th may gather either round a centre of pure and unselfish desire, or round a centre < egotism; and no superiority in the subject of the work can prevent the lapse into t inferior motive. In the most different fields of objects this may be the same: it is quality of the individual. Whatever he does, if there is a degeneracy in the temper his mind, it all collects and gathers, by a false direction which it receives from the false centre of attraction, round himself. The subject or cause which a man takes up makes | no difference. The religious leader can feel, alike with the political, and as strongly, ! this lower source of inspiration; can be accompanied by this idolized representation — of self, this mirror in which he sees himself growing and expanding in life’s area. Ares the keen relish for success, the spirit which kindles at human praise, and the gusts of ~ | triumph—the feelings which accompany action upon a theatre, guaranteed no place in q a man, by his having religious zeal? These are parts of human nature, and it is not zeal but something else which purifies human nature. So far as religion only supplies. ; a man of keen earthly susceptibilities, and desire of a place in the world, with a subject or an arena, so far that man stands on the same ground with a politician who - is stimulated by this aim. They are the same identical type of men in differen The Reversal of Human judgment—Mozley. 547 pheres. There is a conventionai difference between them, but there is one moral heading. Both may be doing valuable work, important service in a public sense; but if you do not think the politician a spiritual man because he is a useful man, no more m ust you think the active man in the religious sphere to be so. Spirituality belongs to the motive. There is a great common stock of secondary motives then, of lower stimulus and incentive, in the religious and secular worker, which feeds their efforts, keeps them up to the mark, and supplies them with strength and power. But there is this differ- ‘ence between the two, in the action of these motives. Worldly passions tend to be ‘made deeper and keener in those who by their place and profession are obliged to ‘disavow and to disguise them. So in Joshua’s punishment of Achan, or in St. Peter’s punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, regard doubtless was had to the secrecy of the -yice in both cases,—avarice. The avarice was stronger, more corrosive, because it was under disguise; the disguise of a high profession; in the one case of a soldier of God, fighting in a sacred war; in the other case of a convert, just admitted into the kingdom of Heaven upon earth. So in the case of ambition; it is a deeper and stronger vice, as a concealed vice; it gains force by suppression: that kind of sup- p ession which is not a moral conquest of it, but only an outward cover. Thus, in a ‘soldier, or a lawyer, or one who has embarked on any worldly calling, there is less danger in it, for the very reason that it is open and avowed; it is a recognized motive; omnia vitia in aperto leveora, as Seneca says; but when it exists under the special profession of religion, and a religion of humility, and has to be cloaked, not only is there the fault of concealment, but the vice itself is more intense by the concealment. It is a Jaw of our nature that it should be. The passion obliged to act under a disguise, becomes different in its nature from the open one; gains a more morbid ‘strength and corrupts the character. And thus the ambition of the clerical order has always been attended by peculiarly repulsive features, which have been discriminated by the moral sense of mankind. It must be observed, however, that the Gospel has, with that penetration which belongs to it, extended the province and field of human pride from direct self, to self, as indirectly touched and affected by the success of party, or school, or cause. We see this extension of the signification of the vice implied in Christ’s denunciation of the proselytism of the Pharisees,—that they compassed heaven and earth to make one disciple: because if pride only applied to what exalted a man’s self directly or person- ally, the Pharisee might have replied—‘I have no private interest in the propagation of the doctrines of my school; it is no profit to myself personally; I only devote myself to it because of the propagation of religious truth, or that which we believe to be such, is a duty, and.if we value our own belief we must be animated by the wish to impart it to others. We must be zealous in winning over others to our own sect, provided we believe in the creed and principles of our sect, which we show we do 9y belonging to it.” The Pharisee might have said this; but our Lord saw in the ?harisee an aim which was not selfish in a direct sense; but which still indirectly, and bn that account not the less strongly, touched the proud self of the Pharisee. His buke recognizes and proclaims a relation to truth itself in man, which may be a fish one. It was a new teaching, a disclosure beneath the surface. Truth is an ticle of tangible value, it gives conscious rank to its possessors, it gives them the Osition of success in the highest department—viz., that of the reason and judgment; hile to miss getting it is failure in that department. Man can thus fight for truth as piece of property, not upon a generous principle, but because his idea of truth—the ectness or falsity of that idea—tests his own victory or failure. And his way of hting for it is spreading it. Its gaining ground, its being embraced by numbers, ifies his own decision. Thus a selfish appreciation of truth, and not the motive of 548 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. charity only, is able to lead to efforts for its propagation; and there is such a thing as" corrupt proselytism, the eager desire to get hold of other minds representing the false relations to truth, and not the simple and disinterested ones. Proselytising — pharisaism is the first shadow of that great manifestation of the tyrannical aspect of — truth, or man’s idea of truth which afterwards became so terrible a distortion of Christianity. Deep concern for human souls would never have produced spiritual _ despotism or persecution; it was a selfish relation to truth to begin with which pro- — duced these; it was the lapse of the human heart from charity to pride in the matter. — The vindictive punishment of error did not arise from the sense of value of truth, but from men holding truth, or their idea of it, as a selfish treasure; contrary opinions — threatened their hold of this treasure: its forced acceptance rooted them in possession — of it. The propagation of truth became the pride of dominion over souls. One would not, of course, exclude from the sphere of religion the motive of esprit de corps; it is undoubtedly a great stimulus, and in its measure is consistent with ail — simplicity and singleness of heart; but in’an intense form, when the individual is absorbed in a blind obedience to a body, it corrupts the quality of religion; it ensnares — the man in a kind of self-interest; and he sees in the success of the body the reflection — of himself. It becomes an egotistic motive. There has been certainly an immense — produce from it; but the type of religion it has produced is a deflection from sim- © plicity; it may possess striking and powerful qualities, but it is not like the free religion — of the heart; and there is that difference between the two, which there is between what — comes from a second-hand source and from the fountain head. It has not that natural- — ness (in the highest sense) which alone gives beauty to religion. Again, those who feel that they have a mission may convert it into a snare to — themselves. Doubtless, if, according to St. Paul, ‘he who desireth the office of a bishop desireth a good work,’ so one who has a mission to do some particular work — has a good office given him. Still, where life is too prominently regarded in this light, the view of life as a mission tends to supersede the view of it as trial and probation. The mission becomes the final cause of life. The generality may be born to do their duty in that station of life in which it has pleased God to call them; but in their own © case the mission overtops and puts into the shade the general purpose of life as pro- bation; the generality are sent into the world for their own moral benefit, but they are rather sent into the world for the benefit of that world itself. The outward object | ; with its display and machinery is apt to reduce to a kind of insignificance the inward — individual end of life. It appears small and commonplace. The, success of their own individual probation is assumed in embarking’ upon the larger work, as the less is. included in the greater; it figures as a preliminary in their eyes, which may be taken for granted; it appears an easy thing to them to save their own souls, a thing, so to ~ speak, for anybody to do. 7 What'has been dwelt upon hitherto as a source of false magnifying and exaltation of human character, has been the invisibility of men’s motives. But let us take another source of mistake in human judgment. ea “ Nothing is easier, when we take gifts of the intellect and imagination in the abstract, than to see that these do not constitute moral goodness. This-is indeed a mere truism; and yet, in the concrete, it is impossible not to see how nearly they border upon counting as such; to what advantage they set off any moral good there — may be in a man; sometimes even supplying the absence of real good with what looks extremely like it. On paper these mental gifts are a mere string of terms; we see exactly what these terms denote, and we cannot mistake it for something else. It is plain that eloquence, imagination, poetical talent, are no more moral goodness than . ' riches are, or than health and strength are, or than noble birth is. We know that — bad men have possessed them just as much as good men. Nevertheless, take them — The Reversal of Human Judgment—Mozley. 549 moral subjects—to bringing out, e. g., with the whole force of intellectual sympathy, ‘the delicate and high regions of character—does not one who can do this seem to have all the goodness which he expresses? And it is quite possible he may have; but ‘this does not prove it. There is nothing more in this than the faculty of imagination and intellectual appreciation of moral things. There enters thus unavoidably often into ‘a great religious reputation a good deal which is not religion but power. Let us take character which St. Paul draws. It is difficult to believe that one who had the tongue of men and of angels would not be able to persuade the world that he himself was extraordinarily good. Rather it is part of the fascination of the gift, that the grace of it is reflected in the possessor. But St. Paul gives him, besides thrilling “speech which masters men’s spirits and carries them away, those profound depths of ‘imagination which still and solemnize them; which lead them to the edge of the unseen world, and excite the sense of the awful and supernatural; he has the understanding of all mysteries. And again, knowledge unfolds all its stores to him, with which to illustrate and enrich spiritual truths. Let one then, so wonderful in mental gifts, com- _ bine them with the utmost fervor, with boundless faith, before which everything gives way; boundless zeal, ready to make even splendid sacrifices; has there been any age in which such a man would have been set down as sounding and empty? St. Paul could see that such a man might yet be without the true substance—goodness; and that all his gifts could not guarantee it to him; but to the mass his own eloquence would interpret him, the gifts would carry the day, and the brilliant partial virtues _ would disguise the absence of the general grace of love. Gifts of intellect and imagination, poetical power, and the like, are indeed in them- selves a department of worldly prosperity. It is a very narrow view Of prosperity that ‘it consists only in having property; gifts of a certain kind are just as much worldly prosperity as riches; nor are they less so if they belong to a religious man, any more than riches are less prosperity because a religious man is rich. We call these gifts worldly prosperity, because they are in themselves a great advantage, and create suc- cess, influence, credit and all which man so much values; and at the same time they are not moral goodness, because the most corrupt men may have them. But even the gifts of outward fortune themselves have much of the effect of gifts @ mind in having the semblance of something moral. They set off what goodness a ‘man has to such immense advantage, and heighten the effect of it. Take some well- ‘disposed person, and suppose him suddenly to be left an enormous fortune, he would feel himself immediately so much better a man. He would seem to himself to become suddenly endowed with a new large-heartedness and benevolence. He would picture himself the generous patron, the large dispenser of charity, the promoter of all good in the world. The power to become such would look like a new disposition. And in the eyes of others too, his goodness would appear to have taken a fresh start. Even ious piety is recognized more as such; it is brought out and placed in high relief, when connected with outward advantages; and so the gifts of fortune become a kind of moral addition to a man. Action then, on a large scale, and the overpowering effect of great gifts, are vyhat produce, in a great degree, what we call the canonization of men—the popular udgment which sets them up morally and spiritually upon the pinnacle of the temple, d which professes to be a forestalment, through the mouth of the Church or of igious society, of the final judgment. How decisive is the world’s, and, not less onfident, the visible Church’s note of praise. It is just that trumpet note which does 550 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. not bear a doubt. How it is trusted! With what certainty it speaks! How large a part of the world’s and Church’s voice is praise! It is an immense and ceaseless volume of utterance. And by all means let man praise man, and not do it grudgingly either; let there be an echo of that vast action which goes on in the world, provided we only speak of what we know. But if we begin to speak of what we do not know, and which only higher judgment can decide, we are going beyond our province. On this” question we are like men who are deciding irreversibly on some matter in which - everything depends upon one element in the case, which element they cannot get at. We appear to know a great deal of one another, and yet if we reflect, what a vast. system of secrecy the moral world is. How low down in a man sometimes (not always) lies the fundamental motive which sways his life! But this is what everything depends on. Is it an unspiritual motive? Is there some keen passion connected — with this world at the bottom? Then it corrupts the whole body of action. There is a good deal of prominent religion then, which keeps up its character, even when this — motive betrays itself; great gifts fortify it, and people do not see because they will i not. But at any rate there is a vast quantity of religious position which has this one great point undecided beneath it; and we know of tremendous dangers to which it is exposed. Action upon a theatre may doubtless be as simple-minded action as any q other; it has often been; it has been often even childlike action; the apostles acted on a theatre; they were a spectacle to men and to angels. Still what dangers in a spiritual point of view does it ordinarily include—dangers to simplicity, inward probity, sincer- | ity!’ How does action on this scale and of this kind seem, notwithstanding its relig- ious object, to pass over people not touching one of their faults, leaving—more than — their infirmities—the dark veins of evil in their character as fixed as ever. How will persons sacrifice themselves to their objects! They would benefit the world, it would © appear, at their own moral expense; but this is a kind of generosity which is perilous q policy for the soul, and is indeed the very mint in which the great mass of false spir- — itual coinage is made. ; 4 On the other hand, while the open theatre of spiritual power and energy is sO accessible to corrupt motives, which, though undermining its truthfulness, leave standing all the brilliance of the outer manifestation; let it be considered what a strength and power of goodness may be accumulating in unseen quarters. The way in which man bears temptation is what decides his character; yet how secret is thea system of temptation! Who knows what is going on? What the real ordeal has a been? What its issue was? So with respect to the trial of griefs and sorrows, the world is again a system of secrecy. There is something particularly penetrating, and © which strikes home in those disappointments which are specially not extraordinary, a and make no show. What comes naturally and as a part of our situation has a probing — ‘4 force grander strokes have not; there is a solemnity and stateliness in these, but the g: blow which is nearest to common life gets the stronger hold. Is there any particular event which seems to have, if we may say so, a kind of malice in it which provokes. pa the Manichean feeling in our nature, it is something which we should have a diff- culty in making appear to any one else, any special trial. Compared with this inner — grasp of some stroke of Providence, voluntary sacrifice stands outside of us. After all the self-made trial is a poor disciplinarian weapon; there is a subtle masterly irri- tant and provoking point in the genuine natural trial, and in the natural crossness of > events, which the artificial thing cannot manage; we can no more make our trials — than we can make our feelings. In this way moderate deprivations are in some cases 4 more difficult to bear than extreme ones. “I can bear total obscurity,” says Pascal, “well enough; what disgusts me is semi-obscurity; I can make an idol of the whole, but no great merit of the half.” And so it is often the case that what we must do as simply right, and, which would not strike even ourselves, and still less anybody else, is 7 - The Reversal of Human Judgment—Mozley. 551 jt st the hardest thing to do. A work of supererogation would be much easier. All pis points in ts: direction of great work going on under common outsides where it It is upon such a train of thought as this which has been passing through our minds, that we raise ourselves to the reception of that solemn sentence which Scripture has inscribed on the curtain which hangs down before the Judgment Seat—“The first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” The secrets of the tribunal are guarded, and yet a finger points which seems to say—‘Beyond, in this direction, behind this veil, ‘things are different from what you will have looked for.” Suppose, e. g., any supernatural judge should appear in the world now, and it is ident that the scene he would create would be one to startle us; we should not soon be used to it; it would look strange; it would shock and appal; and that from no ‘other cause than simply its reductions; that it presented characters stripped bare, ‘denuded of what was irrelevant to goodness, and only with their moral substance left. e judge would take no cognizance of a rich imagination, power of language, poetical gifts, and the like, in themselves, as parts of goodness, any more than he would of richness and prosperity; and the moral residuum left would appear perhaps a bare result. The first look of divine justice would strike us as injustice; it would be too ‘pure a justice for us; we should be long in reconciling ourselves to it. Justice would ‘appear, like the painter’s gaunt skeleton of emblematic meaning, to be stalking hrough the world, smiting with attenuation luxuriating forms of virtue. Forms, changed from what we knew, would meet us, strange unaccustomed forms, and we ‘should have to ask them who they were—‘You were flourishing but a short while ago, what has happened to you now?” And the answer, if it spoke the truth, would be—‘Nothing, except that now, much which lately counted as goodness, counts as ‘such no longer; we are tried by a new moral measure, out of which we issue differ- ent men; gifts which have figured as goodness remain as gifts, but cease to be good- ness.” Thus would the large sweep made of human canonizations act like blight or volcanic fire upon some rich landscape, converting the luxury of nature into a dried- up scene of bare stems and scorched vegetation. __ So may the scrutiny of the last day, by discovering the irrevelant material in men’s goodness, reduce to a shadow much exalted earthly character. Men are made up of professions, gifts and talents, and also of themselves, but all so mixed together that we ‘cannot separate one element from another; but another day must show what the moral _ substance is, and what is only the brightness and setting off of gifts. On the other F hand, the same day may show where, though the setting off of gifts is less, the _ substance is more. If there will be reversal of human judgment for evil, there will be Teversal of it for good too. The solid work which has gone on in secret, under com- mon exteriors, will then spring into light, and come out in a_ glorious aspect. Do we not meet with surprises of this kind here, which look like auguries of a greater surprise in the next world, a surprise on a vast scale? Those who have lived under an exterior of rule, when they come to a trying moment ometimes disappoint us; they are not equal to the act required from them, because heir forms of duty, whatever they are, have not touched in reality their deeper fault f character, meanness, or jealousy, or the like, but have left them where they were —they have gone on thinking themselves good because they did particular things, and ised certain language, and adopted certain ways of thought, and have been utterly ~ unconscious all the time of a corroding sin within them. On the other hand, some one who did not promise much, comes out at a moment of trial strikingly and favorably. | This is a surprise then which sometimes happens, nay, and sometimes a greater sur- 552 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. prise still, when out of the eater comes forth meat, and out of a state of sin the springs the soul of virtue. The act of the thief on the cross is a surprise. Up to time when he was judged he was a thief, and from a thief he became a saint. For even in the dark labyrinth of evil there are unexpected outlets; sin is established by habit in the man, but the good principle which is in him also, but kept down and suppressed, may be secretly growing too; it may be undermining it, and extracting the life and force from it, In this man then, sin becomes more and more, though holding its place by custom, an outside and coating, just as virtue does in the deteriorating man, till at last, by a sudden effort and the inspiration of an opportunity, the strong good casts off the weak crust of evil and comes out free. We witness a conversion. But this is a large and mysterious subject—the foundation for high virtue to be- come apparent in a future world, which hardly rises up above the ground here. We cannot think of the enormous trial which is undergone in this world by vast masses" without the thought also of some sublime fruit to come of-it some day. True, it may not emerge from the struggle of bare endurance here, but has not the seed been sown? | Think of the burden of toil and sorrow borne by the crowds of poor; we know that pain does not of itself make people good; but what we observe is, that even in those in whom the trial seems to do something, it yet seems such a failure. What incon- stancy, violence, untruths! The pathos in it all moves you. What a tempest of char- acter it is! And yet when such trial has been passed we involuntarily say—has not a foundation been laid? And so in the life of a soldier, what agonies must nature pass through in it. While the present result of such trial is so disappointing, so little seems to come of it! Yet we cannot think of what has been gone through by countless mul- titudes in war, of the dreadful altar of sacrifice, and the lingering victims, without the involuntary idea arising that in some, even of the irregular and undisciplined, the foundation of some great purification has been laid. We hear sometimes of single remarkable acts of virtue, which spring from minds in which there is not the habit of virtue. Such acts point to a foundation, a root of virtue in man, deeper than habit; they are sudden leaps which show an unseen spring in a man, which are able to co m= press in a moment the growth of years. 4 To conclude. The Gospel language throws doubt upon the final stability of much that passes current here with respect to character, upon established judgments, and the elevations of the outward sanctuary. It lays down a wholesome scepticism. We do not do justice to the spirit of the Gospel by making it enthusiastic simply, or even benevolent simply. It is sagacious too, Itisa book of judgment. Man is judged i q it. Our Lord is judge. We cannot separate our Lord’s divinity from His humanity and yet we must be blind if we do not see a great judicial side of our Lord’s human — character—that severe type of understanding, in relation to the worldly man, which | has had its imperfect representation in great human minds. He was unspeakably ~ benevolent, kind, compassionate; true, but He was a Judge. It was indeed of Hisiae very completeness as man that He should know man, and to know is to judge. He ~ must be blind who, in the significant acts and sayings of our Lord, as they unroll — themselves in the pregnant page of the Gospel, does not thus read His character; he — sees it in that insight into pretensions, exposure of motives, laying bare of disguises; in the sayings—‘‘Believe it not;” “Take heed that no man deceive you;” “Behold I ~ have told you;” in all that profoundness of reflection in regard to man which great observing minds among mankind have shown, though accompanied by much of frailty, anger, impatience, or melancholy. His human character is not benevolence only; — there is in it wise distrust—that moral sagacity which belongs to the perfection of man. — Now then, as has been said, this scepticism with regard to human character has, — as a line of thought, had certain well-known representatives in great minds, who have discovered a root of selfishness in men’s actions, have probed motives, extracted aims, ’ The Reversal of Human Judgment—Mozley. 553 and placed man before himself denuded and exposed; they judged him, and in the frigid sententiousness or the wild force of their utterances, we hear that of which we cannot but say—how true! But knowledge is a goad to those who have it; a disturb- ing power; a keenness which distorts; and in the light it gives it partly blinds also. The fault of these minds was that in exposing evil they did not really believe in goodness; goodness was to them but an airy ideal—the dispirited echo of perplexed hearts—re- turned to them from the rocks of the desert, without bearing hope with it. They had “no genuine belief in any world which was different from theirs; they availed them- selves of an ideal indeed to judge this world, and they could not have judged it with- therefore the conception of a good world was necessary to judge the bad one. But e ideal held loose to their minds—not as anything to be substantiated, not as a type in which a real world was to be cast, not as anything of structural power, able to gather into it, form round it, and build up upon itself; not, in short, as anything of power at all, able to make anything, or do anything, but only like some fragrant scent in the air, which comes and goes, loses itself, returns again in faint breaths, and ises and falls in imperceptive waves. Such was goodness to these minds; it was a ‘dream. But the Gospel distrust is not disbelief in goodness. It raises a great suspense indeed, it shows a curtain not yet drawn up, it checks weak enthusiasm, it appends a warning note to the pomp and flattery of human judgments, to the erection of idols; and points to a day of great reversal; a day of the Lord of Hosts; the day of pulling down and plucking up, of planting and building. But, together with the law of sin, _ the root of evil in the world and the false goodness in it, it announces a fount of true ‘Natures; it tells us of a breath of Heaven of which we know not whence it cometh and whither it goeth; which inspires single individual hearts, that spring up here and ‘there, and everywhere, like broken gleams of the Supreme Goodness. And it recog- ‘nizes in the renewed heart of man an instinct which can discern true goodness and ‘distinguish it from false; a secret discrimination in the good by which they know the good. It does not therefore stand in the way of that natural and quiet reliance which we are designed by God to have in one another, and that trust in those whose hearts we know. “Wisdom is justified of her children;”’ ‘“My sheep hear My voice, but a stranger will they not follow, for they know not the voice of strangers.” [This sermon was preached before the university, and was recommended by Presi- dent A. G. K. McClure, of Lake Forest University, as one ef the ten best sermons of the century. ( James B. Mozley, D. D., was born in 1813 and died in 1878. He was educated at Oxford, where he became Magdalen fellow in 1837 and Regius professor of divinity in 1871, and canon of Worcester in 1869. His literary work consisted chiefly of doc- trinal doctrines on predestination and baptism, also the Bampton lectures on miracies. ] 554 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE LIFE 15 THE LG ANDREW MURRAY. “The Life is the Light.” In the opening words of John’s gospel we have great spiritual truth stated. In John’s preaching, in Andrew’s call to Peter, in Philip’s testimony to Nathanael, the joy of the new-found Messiah at once manifests itself in confession and in invitation. Where Christ as the Life has entered the heart, He as the Light ever shine out into the surrounding darkness. We shall be best >re pared to take in the full application of this truth to our modern Christian life if gather up the lessons the story teaches as to Christ and the life which He gives. 1. What is Salvation? It is coming to Christ. John points to Christ. W His disciples follow Christ He calls them to make a personal acquaintance. Witl Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathanael it is all one thing—they come to Jesus, they find Him, they learn to know and receive Him as their Savior. This is salvati It is not, as many think, depending upon a certain work Christ has done, or believ certain truths He has revealed, or doing certain things He has commanded. These have their value, and are most needful. But salvation itself, its true root and its r power, consists in coming to Christ and getting into personal relation with H “This is the record, that God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son; that hath the Son hath life.” Faith means not merely a confidence in certain promis God has made, or the acceptance of a certain gift Christ can bestow; but an openi of the heart to Him, and recéiving of Himself as its Life. _ This truth needs to be studied and pressed home. True religion is a close personal friendship with the Lord Jesus. Prayer is not only a means of obtaining certain ¢ from Christ, but the joy of holding personal intercourse with Him. Obedience is the performance of certain duties, but the living acceptance and carrying out of will—of following Him as Leader and Lord. Through all its duties religion has i secret in the joy and strength which love alone can give. Let us from the very com- mencement of the gospel get firm hold of the cruth that, though He is now in heaven, a personal friendship and intercourse, as real as between Him and His disciples on earth, is the only religion in which there will be power to serve and please and witnes for Him. This alone is the Life that will be able to shine out with its Divine Light. CHRIST, THE LAMB OF GOD. . 2. Who is this Christ? John twice proclaims Him to be the Lamb of God, and — that name He has carried to the throne and bears through all eternity. It has a doub! meaning. It speaks of the work He has done in giving His blood as a sacrifice for our sins; as the price of our redemption; as the fountain for our cleansing; as the nourishment of our soul. There is no mystery in Scripture more deep than this: we — are bought, we are redeemed with the blood of the Lamb of God. There can be no name more precious than the name the Lamb of God. The Christ to whom we must come is He whose blood is the measure of His love, of His right to us, of our cleans- ing, and of our life through Him. Let us trust and follow, let us preach and honor the Lamb of God in His atonement and redemption, as He brings us to God and gives _ us living access to and experience of all His love and favor. And let us say to Him without ceasing, in love and adoration, “Thou art worthy, for Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood! The Life Is the Light—Murray. 5556 _ But the Lamb not only signifies the work, but equally the nature of Christ. As the Lamb of God, He is the meek and lowly One. In His deep humility and depend- his Creator. He taught us, what we never could have conceived, that humility is our highest glory, because it glorifies God; and our only blessedness, because it frees as from that self which is our only misery. Oh, let us follow the Lamb of God as the meek and lowly One, until we experience that the highest salvation for which He ‘edeemed us, or which He can bestow on us, is His own meek and gentle nature. What a change would come over the world and the Church if this were truly preached and practiced! He that truly comes to the meek and lowly Lamb of God and follows Him will become meek and lowly like Him. _ 3. How does this Christ gather men to Himself? It is intensely interesting to notice the different ways in which men are led. Andrew and his companion are suided to Christ by the preaching of John. Peter is brought by his brother Andrew. Philip is called by Christ directly, and Nathanael by Philip. What a means of grace preaching has been in all ages! What millions it has brought to Christ, and yet what millions it leaves unhelped and untouched! The preaching of John the Baptist teaches us that the blessing depends not only on what we preach, but how we preach. John was filled with the Spirit from his birth. John had direct communication with heaven teaching him the mystery of the Christ. John had learned the mystery of the Christ, as the recipient and the dispenser of the Holy Ghost. No wonder his preaching was n power. The Church need beware of nothing more earnestly than the danger of reaching without the power to bring men to Christ. The gospel preached “with the doly Ghost sent down from heaven” will bear this blessed fruit. What means of grace personal witness-bearing has been! Its living testimony “T have found,” its loving offer “Come and see,” is a ministry of reconciliation within teach of every Christian. Where the preaching is not supported by witness-bearing it will soon lose its power. The true preacher knows its value and seeks to call it forth. As long as the winningeof souls is considered to be the work of one man, he and the believers whom he ministers must suffer loss. They are kept from that spiritual exer- ise and activity which is essential to a healthy life. He is robbed of the support which their witness and their prayer could give. The unconverted and the anxious lose the most effective argument for the truth of what is preached—the proof that those with whom they live could give that Jesus has met and is saving them. , PERSONAL FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST. 4. This brings us to what we said at the commencement. It appears to be the great lesson the Church of our time needs to learn. When Christ as the Life has ist’s invitation and their testimony to others, was to lead to personal fellowship ith the Lord Jesus. The Life is in a Person, and can only. be known and received by ose and continued contact with Him. Even so, the one power of the Christian life manifestly seen to come from this personal intercourse. It was the disciples’ stay h Him that night, it was Peter’s coming to Him and hearing what He said to him, t was Philip’s listening to His call and Nathanael’s listening to His teaching that made tem what they became. And it was no less this personal intercourse that made them ich effective witnesses for Him. John the Baptist and Andrew and Philip and uthanael all prove that it was the conviction that His presence had wrought that de it a joy to acknowledge and proclaim Him as Lord. _ Why is it that in our days the great majority of Christians are so unfaithful to 556 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. their call to be Christ’s witnesses, and so impotent in presence of the millions of - ishing nominal Christians and heathen? Why, but that religion has become a selfis thing, a trusting in Christ for a future salvation, without anything of real present loy and fellowship and joy in Him? Why, but that the great truth of Christ dwelling i the heart, Christ possessing the whole heart, with all its powers as its exceeding jo and only love, is to so many a mystery that is hidden and unsought? No wonder | with all our agencies, the great masses—a majority in our large Christian cities— remain alienated from Christ, and so little relatively is done for the larger half of ou humanity sunk in heathenism. 1 We must return to the primitive method. We must see that where the Life is working in power through direct, joyous contact with Jesus, there the Light will shin out brightly and in power. And the Church must preach in power of the Holy Gh Os that every believer is meant and fitted for and will find his blessedness in being, before everything else, a witness for Jesus. God has in these last few years been giving wo derful blessing and power in the Student Volunteer Movement. The secret of blessing and power has lain in its appeal to every Christian to give himself, un absolutely prevented by God, to go to the heathen and help fulfill the last great co mand. The basis and the strength of that appeal was the truth that it is the absolute dut: of every redeemed sinner to live and work for Him who purchased him with Hi blood. That movement is only the beginning of a greater one. What the Church ne ed is the preaching of a call for volunteers for home service. It must be a call for vol teers, not in the sense of leaving it free to Christians whether they will or will not themselves to witness and work for Jesus. No, but in the very different sense o telling them that they are under the most solemn obligation to give themselves to it that God asks no forced service, and therefore leaves them the terrible alternative o| refusing Him; that He beseeches them to accept this as their highest privilege and the only proof of their love. What a change will come when repentance and pardon an¢ Christ’s love in the power of the Holy Ghost are preached with this as their aim a n¢ issue: a share and a partnership with Christ in His work of loving and saving men! Why is it that this is so little seen and heard? Alas! the life is feeble. “The is preached and experienced, the life will shine out, and every believer will be a light out of whom there shines brightly and joyously the name and the love of Jesus. teachers, and all workers of every name! Remember that the personal joy of having met Jesus is what alone can inspire your teaching with the power of a divine conyi tion. Believe that your gracious Lord delights to give you this day by day. H “Come and see” is a standing invitation. Be sure that such intercourse, in which yor I own need and that of those entrusted to you is all talked over with Him and put into His hands, will reach some hearts, and that you will have the joy of bringing them to — Jesus. His “Come and see!” accepted and enjoyed will give your “Come and see!” the seeking and strengthening the feeble. “The Life is the Light.” Let the Life in you be strong and true, and the Light will shine out clear and bright. In Him is Life, 4 and the Life is the Light of men. ; q [This sermon is reproduced from the South African Pioneer, and will be read with interest by admirers of this great author of devotional books. ] COMMUNION WITH GOD. CARDINAL NEWMAN. “One thing have I desired of the Lord, which I will require: even that I may dwell a the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, _ What the Psalmist desired, we Christians enjoy to the full—the liberty of holding pbmmunion with God in His temple all through our life. Under the Law, the presence f God was but in one place; and therefore could be approached and enjoyed only at t times. For far the greater part of their lives, the chosen people were in one sense cast out of the sight of His eyes;” and the periodical return to it which they were lowed, was a privilege highly coveted and earnestly expected. Much more precious fas the privilege of continually dwelling in His sight, which is spoken of in the text. One thing,” says the Psalmist, “have I desired of the Lord . . . that I may dwell i the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, ind to visit His temple.” He desired to have continually that communion with God M prayer, praise, and meditation, to which His presence admits the soul; and this, I ay, is the portion of Christians. Faith opens upon us Christians the Temple of God therever we are; for that Temple is a spiritual one, and so is everywhere present. e have access,” says the Apostle—that is, we have admission or introduction, “by mce, he says elsewhere, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice.” Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks.” And St. James, iS any afflicted? let him pray: is any merry? let him sing Psalms.” Prayer, praise, hanksgiving, contemplation, are the peculiar privilege and duty of a Christian, and lat for their own sakes, from the exceeding comfort and satisfaction they afford him, nd without reference to any definite results to which prayer tends, without reference O the answers which are promised to it, from a general sense of the blessedness of g under the shadow of God's throne. _ I propose, then, in what follows, to make some remarks on communion with God, f prayer in a large sense of the word; not as regards its external consequences, but 3 it may be considered to affect our own minds and hearts. What, then, is prayer? It is (if it may be said reverently) conversing with God. € converse with our fellow-men, and then we use familiar Janguage, because they are ir fellows. We converse with God, and then we use the lowliest, awfullest, calmest, mcisest language we can, because He is God. Prayer, then, is divine converse, differ- - from human as God differs from’man. Thus St. Paul says, “Our conversation is heaven’’—not indeed thereby meaning converse of words only, but intercourse and nner of living generally; yet still in an especial way converse of words or prayer, scause language is the special means of all intercourse. Our intercourse with our fellow-men goes on, not by sight, but by sound, not by eyes, but by ears. Hearing is the social sense, and language is the social bond. In like manner, as the Christian’s 558 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. conversation is in heaven, as it is his duty, with Enoch and other Saints, to walk W God, so his voice is in heaven, his heart, “inditing of a good matter,” of prayers praises. Prayers and praises are the mode of his intercourse with the next world, as the converse of business or recreaticn is the mode in which this world is carried o in all its separate courses. He who does not pray, does not claim his citizenship with heaven, but lives, though an heir of the kingdom, as if he were a child of earth. _ Now, it is not surprising if that duty or privilege, which is the characteristic token of our heavenly inheritance, should also have an especial influence upon our fitness for claiming it. He who does not use a gift, loses it; the man who does not use his voice or limbs, loses power over them, and becomes disqualified for the state of life to which he is called. In like manner, he who neglects to pray, not only suspends the enjo ment, but is in a way to lose the possession, of his divine citizenship. We are memb of another world; we have been severed from the companionship of devils, and broug into that invisible kingdom of Christ which faith alone discerns—that mysteriou presence of God which encompasses us, which is in us, and around us, which is our heart, which’ enfolds us as though with a robe of light, hiding our scarred and discolored souls from the sight of Divine Purity, and making them shining as angels; and which flows in upon us too by means of all forms of beauty and grace which this visible world contains, in a starry host or (if I may say) a milky way of divine companions, the inhabitants of Mount Zion, where we dwell. Faith, I say, alone apprehends all this; but yet there is something which is left to faith—our own tastes, likings, motives, and habits. Of these we are conscious in our degree, and we can make ourselves more and more conscious; and as consciousness tells us what they are, reason tells us whether they are such as become, as correspond with, that heavenly world into which we have been translated. ‘ I say then, it is plain to common sense that the man who has not accustomed him- self to the language of heaven will be no fit inhabitant of it when, in the Last Day, it is perceptibly revealed. The case is like that of a language or style of speaking of this world; we know well a foreigner from a native. Again, we know those who have been used to kings’ courts or educated society from others. By their voice, accent and Jan- guage, and not only so, by their gestures and gait, by their usages, by their mode of conducting themselves and their principles of conduct, we know well what a vast differ- ence there is between those who have lived in good society and those who have not. What indeed is called ‘‘good society” is often very worthless society. I am not spea : ing of it to praise it; I only mean, that, as the manners which men call refined or courtly are gained only by intercourse with courts and polished circles, and as t influence of the words there used (that is, of the ideas which those words, striking again and again on the ear, convey to the mind), extends in a most subtle way over all that men do, over the turn of their sentences, and the tone of their questions and replies, and their general bearing, and the spontaneous flow of their thoughts, and their mode of viewing things, and the general maxims or heads to which they refer them, and the motives which determine them, and their likings and dislikings, hopes and fears, and their relative estimate of persons, and the intensity of their perceptions towards particular objects; so a habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world, in every season, in every place, in every emergency (let alone its super- natural effect of prevailing with God)—prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural — effect, in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before; gradually, imperceptibly to himsclf, he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles. He is as one coming from the kings’ courts, — with a grace, a delicacy, a dignity, a propriety, a justness of thought and taste, a clear- 4 ness and firmness of principle, all his own. Such is the power of God’s secret grace acting through those ordinances which He has enjoined us; such the evident fitness of Communion With God—Cardinal Newman: 559 ‘ment of divine fellowship and divine training. : I will give, for the sake of illustration, some instances in detail of one particular fault of mind, which among others a habit of prayer is calculated to cure. ; For instance; many a man seems to have no grasp at all of doctrinal truth. He cannot get himself to think it of importance what a man believes, and what not. He tries to do so; for a time he does; he does for a time think that a certain faith is neces- ary for salvation, that certain doctrines are to be put forth and maintained in charity | to the souls of men. Yet though he thinks so one day, he changes the next; he holds _ the truth, and then lets it go again. He is filled with doubts; suddenly the question osses him, “Is it possible that such and such a doctrine is necessary?” and he elapses into an uncomfortable sceptical state, out of which there is no outlet. Reason- ngs do not convince him; he cannot be convinced; he has no grasp of truth. Why? Because the next world is not a reality to him; it only exists in his mind in the form of certain conclusions from certain reasonings. It is but an inference; and never can ‘be more, never can be present to his mind, until he acts instead of arguing. Let him | but act as if the next world were before him; let him but give himself to such devo- ‘tional exereises as we ought to observe in the presence of an Almighty, All-holy, and All-merciful God, and it will be a rare case indeed if his difficulties do not vanish. ] Or again: a man may have a natural disposition towards caprice and change; he may be apt to take up first one fancy, then another, for novelty or other reason; he may ‘take sudden likings or dislikings, or be tempted to form a scheme of religion for him- self of what he thinks best or most beautiful out of the systems which divide the world. Again: he is troubled perhaps with a variety of unbecoming thoughts, which he would fain keep out of his mind if he could. He finds himself unsettled and uneasy, dissatisfied with his condition, easily excited, sorry at sin one moment, forgetting it the ' next, feeble-minded, unable to rule himself, tempted to dote upon trifles, apt to be - caught and influenced by vanities, and to abandon himself to languor or indolence. ig Once more: he has not a clear perception of the path of truth and duty. This is ‘an especial fault among us now-a-days; men are actuated perhaps by the best feelings nd the most amiable motives, and are not fairly chargeable with insincerity; and yet there is a want of straightforwardness in their conduct. They allow themselves to be ‘guided by expediency, and defend themselves, and perhaps so plausibly, that though _ you are not convinced, you are silenced. They attend to what others think more than _ to what God says; they look at Scripture more as a gift to man than as a gift from od; they consider themselves at liberty to modify its plain precepts by a certain discretionary rule; they listen to the voice of great men, and allow themselves to be swayed by them; they make comparisons and strike the balance between the imprac- ticability of the whole that God commands, and the practicability of effecting a part, and think they may consent to give up something, if they can secure the rest. They hift about in opinion, going first a little this way, then a little that, according to the oudness and positiveness with which others speak; they are at the mercy of the last peaker, and they think they observe a safe, judicious, and middle course, by always ceeping a certain distance behind those who go furthest. Or they are rash in their re- Tigious projects and undertakings, and forget that they may be violating the lines and fences of God’s law, while they move about freely at their pleasure. Now, I will not dge another; I will not say that in this or that given case the fault of mind in question for any how it is a fault), does certainly arise from some certain cause which I choose 0 guess at; but at least there are cases where this wavering of mind does arise from cantiness of prayer; and if so, it is worth a man’s considering, who is thus unsteady, mid, and dimsighted, whether this scantiness be not perchance the true reason of such 560 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. infirmities in his own case, and whether a “continuing instant in prayer”—by which I pray be ‘ something extraordinary, as medicine is extraordinary, a “redeeming of time” from society and recreation in order to pray more—whether such a change in his habits would not remove them? For what is the very promise of the New Covenant but stability? what is it, but a clear insight into the truth, such as will enable us to know how to walk, how to profess, how to meet the circumstances of life, how to withstand gainsayers? Are we built upon a rock, or upon the sand? are we after all tossed about on the sea of opinion, when Christ has stretched out His hand to us, to help and encourage us? “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.” Such is the word of promise. Can we possibly have apprehensions about what man will do to us or say of us, can we flatter the great ones of earth, or timidly yield to the - many, or be dazzled by talent, or drawn aside by interest, who are in the habit of divine conversations? “Ye have an unction from the Holy One,” says St. John, “and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. . . . The anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you. . . . Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” This is that birth, by which the baptized soul 7 not only enters, but actually embraces and realizes the kingdom of God. This is the true and effectual regeneration, when the seed of life takes root in man and thrives. Such men have accustomed themselves to speak to God, and God has ever spoken to them; and they feel “the powers of the world to come” as truly as they feel the presence of this world, because they have been accustomed to speak and act as if it were real. All of us must rely on something; all must look up, to admire, court, make themselves - one with something. Most men cast in their lot with the visible world; but true Chris- tians with saints and angels. 7 Such men are little understood by the world because they are not of the world; and hence it sometimes happens that even the better sort of men are often disconcerted { and vexed by them. It cannot be otherwise; they move forward on principles so differ- ent from what are commonly assumed as true. They take for granted, as first” principles, what the world wishes to have proved in detail. They have become familiar with the sights of the next world, till they talk of them as if all men admitted them. ~ The immortality of truth, its oneness, the impossibility of falsehood coalescing with it, what truth is, what it should lead one to do in particular cases, how it lies in the details of life—all these points are mere matters of debate in the world, and men go ~ through long processes of argument, and pride themselves on their subtleness in defending or attacking, in making probable or improbable, ideas which are assumed without a word by those who have lived in heaven, as the very ground to start from. In consequence, such men are cailed bad disputants, inconsecutive reasoners, strange, he eccentric, or perverse thinkers, merely because they do not take for granted, nor go to ‘ prove, what others do—because they do not go about to define and determine the sights . (as it were), the mountains and rivers and plains, and sun, moon and stars, of the next world. And hence, in turn, they are commonly unable to enter into the ways of | thought or feelings of other men, having been engrossed with God's thoughts and ¢ God’s ways. Hence, perhaps, they seem abrupt in what they say and do; nay, even make others feel constrained and uneasy in their presence. Perhaps they appear Ki reserved too, because they take so much for granted which might be drawn out, and because they cannot bring themselves to tell all their thoughts from their sacredness, and because they are drawn off from free conversation to the thought of heaven, on — which their minds rest. Nay, perchance, they appear severe, because their motives ~ Communion With God—Cardinal Newman. 561 are not understood, nor their sensitive jealousy for the honor of God and their chari- table concern for the good of their fellow-Christians duly appreciated. In short, to the world they seem like foreigners. We know how foreigners strike us; they are often to our notions strange and unpleasing in their manners; why is this? merely because they are of a different country. Each country has its own manners—one may not be better than other; but we naturally like our own ways, and we do not understand other. We do not see their meaning. We misconstrue them; we think they mean something unpleasant, something rude, or over-free, or haughty, or unrefined, when they do not. And in like manner, the world at large, not only is not Christian, but cannot discern or understand the Christian. Thus our Blessed Lord Himself was not recognized or honored by His relatives, and (as is plain to every reader of Scripture) He often seems to speak abruptly and severely. So too St. Paul was considered by the Corinthians as contemptible in speech. And hence St. John, speaking of “what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God,” adds, “‘there- fore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.”. Such is the effect of divine Mmediations: admitting us into the next world, and withdrawing us from this; making us children of God, but withal “strangers unto our brethren, even aliens unto our mother’s children.” Yea, though the true servants of God increase in meekness and love day by day, and to those who know them will seem what they really are; and though their good works are evident to all men, and cannot be denied, yet such is the eternal law which goes between the Church and the world—we cannot be friends of both; and they who take their portion with the Church, will seem, except in some remarkable cases, unamiable to the world, for the “world knoweth them not,” and does not like them though it can hardly tell why; yet (as St. John proceeds) they have this _ blessing, that “when He shall appear, they shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is.” _ And if, as it would seem, we must choose between the two, surely the world’s friendship may be better parted with than our fellowship with our Lord and Savior. What indeed have we to do with courting men, whose faces are turned towards God? We know how men feel and act when they come to die; they discharge their worldly affairs from their minds, and try to realize the unseen state. Then this world is noth- ing to them. It may praise, it may blame; but they feel it not. They are leaving their goods, their deeds, their sayings, their writings, their names, behind them; and they tare not for it, for they wait for Christ. To one thing alone they are alive, His com- ing; they watch against it, if so be they may then be found without shame. Such is the conduct of dying men; and what all but the very hardened do at the last, if their Senses fail not and their powers hold, that does the true Christian all life long. He is _ ever dying while he lives; he is on his bier, and the prayers for the sick are saying over him. He has no work but that of making his peace with God, and preparing for the adgment. He has no aim but that of being found worthy to escape the things that hall come to pass and to stand before the Son of man. And therefore day by day unlearns the love of this world, and the desire of its praise; he can bear to belong the nameless family of God, and to seem to the world strange in it and out of place, so he is. 7 _ And when Christ comes at last, blessed indeed will be his lot. He has joined him- f from the first to the conquering side; he has asked the present against the future, preferring the chance of eternity to the certainty of time; and then his reward will be but the beginning, when that of the children of this world is come to an end. In the fords of the wise man, “Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before e face of such as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labors. When they See it they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness 0f His salvation, so far beyond all that they looked for. And they, repenting and . wy) 562 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. groaning for anguish of spirit, shall say within themselves, This is he whom we hac sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach; we fools counted his life madn and his end to be without honor. How is he numbered among the children of G and his lot is among the saints!” ae [Note.—Here is added one of his addresses to the Catholics of Dublin, of which : limited edition has been printed by the Kirgate Press, Canton, Pa.] THE DEFINITION OF A GENTLEMAN. CARDINAL NEWMAN. It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflict pain. This description is both refined, and, so far as it goes, accurate. He is mainl} occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrasset action of those about him, and he concurs with their movements rather than takes th initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called th comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature—like an easy chair ora good fire, which do their best in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provide both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manne carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the mind of those with whom hi is cast—all clashing of opinion or collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion ©} gloom or resentment, his great concern being to make every one at ease and at home He has his eyes on all his company, he is tender towards the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful towards the absurd. He can recollect to whom he is speak ing; he guards against unseasonable allusions or topics which may irritate; he ‘i seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favor: when he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He nevet speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; | has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those wl interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or littl in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp” sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a lon sighted prudency, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ey conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. Heh too much good sense to be affronted at insults. He is too well employed to rememb: injuries and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned philosophical principle; he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereaveme’ because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. If he engages in con- troversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinien, but he is too clear- headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence; he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weak- ness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he be am unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to “ against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful or useful, ys The Definition of a Gentleman—Cardinal Newman. 563 sh he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to ne its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious rms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of ling which is attendant on civilization. Not that he may not hold a religion, too, in S$ Own way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of agination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, ajestic, and beautiful without which there can be no large philosophy. Sometimes acknowledges the being of God, sometimes he invests an unknown principle or falities with the attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason or creation his fancy he makes the occasion of such excellent thoughts, and the starting-point Mi so varied and systematic a teaching, that he even seems like a disciple of Chris- fanity itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical powers, he is able see what sentiments are consistent in those who hold any religious doctrine at all, id he appears to others to feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which ist in his mind otherwise than as a number of deductions. Such are some of the eaments of the ethical character which the cultivated intellect will form, apart from e religious principle. They are seen within the pale of the church and without it, in ly men and in profligate; they form the beau-ideal of the world; they partly assist id partly distort the development of the Catholic. They may subserve the education a St. Francis de Sales or a Cardinal Pole; they may be the limits of contemplations fa Shaftesbury or a Gibbon. Basil and Julian were fellow students at the schools of \thens; and one became the saint and doctor of the Church, the other a scoffing d relentless foe. s: {John Henry Newman, D. D., an eloquent coadjutor of Dr. Pusey in the “Oxford act’ retrocession from the doctrines of the Reformation, and author of the famous Tract No. 90,” was born in London, February 21st, 1801. He gained high honors at ford, four years later. Here were preached thoughtful and brilliant sermons, till he cepted the Roman Catholic faith in 1845. He became superior of the Oratory of St. ilip Neri, Birmingham, and head of a high school for Roman Catholic youth. most all his sermons, published in nine volumes, show evidence of his ascetic spirit, ological convictions, and through moral consecration. ] 564 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. wy ue CHRIST, THE ONLY HOPE OF THE WORLE J. P. NEWMAN, D. D. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under he 1 given among men, whereby we must be saved.”—Acts 4: 12. The history of our race is that of a funeral march from the cradle to the gra the music of the widow’s sigh and the orphan’s cry. If all the tears shed from the fi to last were gathered into one volume they would make a new ocean deeper thai Atlantic, broader than the Pacific. Were all the groans uttered from the beginni now gathered into one volume of sound there would be a new peal of thunder | than ever crashed along the mountains of the skies. Were all broken hearts Eden to Gethsemane and thence on to the present time gathered together there wo be a new mountain range vaster than the Sierras, higher than the Himalayas. _ ‘; How long is this condition of things to last? “Is there no balm in Gilead? is th no physician there?” Is our Bible a book of fables, is our Christianity a fancy, is ¢ immortality a dream, is our Savior mistaken in His great mission? Let me ask } ministers and you Christian men and women that pour out your prayers before . throne of the heavenly grace, who pour out your money for the support of home 4 foreign work, let me ask the world, “Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physic there?” saved.” These words are a bold challenge to the world. They make an ab assertion. There is no possibility of compromise, no possibility of diversion Jesus Gime our com This salvation speaks of two things: First, the readiieay n dition, so that his conscience will oe to every voice of duty and justice, so ail : will shall be in harmony with the will divine, and so that his affections shall ensh rine the Lord of lords, and King of kings. We call this conversion, regeneration, san¢ cation. This is the great mission of the Master. Has He accomplished that mis in you? There are two conceptions of the radical condition of man’s moral nature. Soi assert that human nature is radically good, and may rise to the highest excellence i pendent of an external force. But the Christian declares that human nature is radi bad, and the power to purify and elevate it is external; that the power to suppress vic and to develop virtye is not in man nor of man, nor in the church, nor in the sacra ments, nor in the Bible, nor in Christianity as a system of ethics and dogmas, | bu outside of man, higher than man, high as God. Here we join issue with those whi antagonize Christianity as the greatest reformatory force known to mankind. . It is only proper that we should place in juxtaposition the’ propositions of thos who assume the former as against the declaration of those who preach the latter. I. The statesman assumes that human government is the remedy for the wo d’ misery. He assumes that, inasmuch as vice flows from ignorance and poverty, vi at should issue from knowledge and competency; these from public justice; and publi justice from a wise, liberal, and paternal government. Yet history is a proof that thi , Christ The Only Hope of the World—Newman. 565 heory is inadequate to the end. It is the province of constitutions and laws to restrain he evil and conserve the good; to protect, but not to reform. Whether constitutional yr statutory, law lacks the one essential element required in the case, namely, the power 0 purify. That power is not within the province of law, whether human or divine. aw may dictate, guide, conserve; but it cannot purify. ‘“‘By the deeds of the law here shall no flesh be justified in His sight.” “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak, God sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin n the flesh.” The power to purify does not inhere in the penalties of law. There is ‘nothing reformatory in punishment, else every criminal in our penitentiaries would be | virtuous citizen and every soul in hell would become a saint. Something must be dded to effectuate the desired result. Doubtless one form of government is better than another; but all governments, whether paternal or autocratic, have been inadequate to suppress vice and give univer- prevalence to virtue. The feuds between Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and ncompetency of law under a theocracy. What have the autocracies of Russia and ‘urkey accomplished? Have the aristocracies of Venice and England, or the repub- s of Switzerland and America delivered society from vice, and blessed those nations inder the learned Pericles than under the tyrant Philip? Was Rome purer under the eloquent Cicero than under the cruel Nero? Is France holier under the republic than ander the empire? History proves that in their origin vice and virtue lie beyond the reach and scope of civil law. Law can reach actions, but it cannot reach the prin- iples from which actions spring. We find fault with officials, and I say that society leeds a more vigilant police, a more prompt judiciary, a more severe criminal code. t, had we angels for officials, would the results be different? Back of constitutions, ck of laws, back of administrations, there must be a moral sentiment which is at nce the power and glory of human governments. Our splendid government, the rowth of a century, the ripened wisdom of the best and purest and most beneficent f all the earth, would fall to pieces like a rope of sand, unsupported by the moral senti- ‘ment of our people. That moral sentiment comes from Christianity accepted and racticed in everyday life. It is a.fact, worthy of our attention, that under the worst ‘the Neros, the Waldensians under the Popes, and the Puritans under the Stuarts. The ‘truth is, vice and virtue are to a large extent independent of civil government. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” If. The scholar claims that the remedy for vice is to be found in a wise and uni- intellectual culture and mental repose. This scheme has been tested in an empire vast in extent and gray with age. Where will you find such intellectual culture and mental id is developed through the senses. Reduce the physical to the minimum, develop the intellectual to the maximum, and you get virtue.” In obedience to this dogma, the religious devotee in India degrades the body to exalt the intellect. There is an intellectual culture in India, especially in mathematics, such as would honor any ition; and there, also, is prevalent vice in its most hideous forms. There exist crush- ing caste, organized thuggery, religious sutteeism—until abolished by Christianity— nd that which is*the object of worship there, adorned with flowers and watered with ountains of India, let us look the civilized world over and see whether there is proof that men are pure in proportion as they are wise. Is there anything in mere knowl- 566 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. edge that can purify? Chemistry admits us to the very secrets of nature in her marve ous combinations; but can a knowledge of gases, of liquids, of solids, purif Chemists have been known to commit the greatest crimes known to society. Is the anything in a knowledge of flowers, of rocks, of stars, to reform the human being ar to change man’s moral nature? Did wisdom save Solomon from vice, Bacon bribery, Byron from immorality? Some of the greatest monsters, whose lives hay scandalized history and damned society, have been men of imperial intellects. Bacon has well said, “In knowledge, without love, there is somewhat of malign Coleridge has said, “All the mere products of the understanding tend to death.” § Paul has said, “Knowledge puffeth up.’ Were we to add art to science, would y thereby reform society? It is a proud boast, that external beauty inspires a love fe moral beauty. This scheme was tried for a thousand years before Christ. Such wa the perfection of art in Greéce, that “the marble breathed under the chisel of Phidia and the birds of Attica pecked the grapes which Apelles painted on the canvas.” We the Athenians free from vice? You can find the counterpart of the most barbarot Hottentot among the foremost men of Greece in the days of Pericles, of Rome in th days of Cicero, of England in the days of Elizabeth. Art may refine the taste, D it cannot purify the heart. III. It is the theory of the Snilseibasnet that what is needed to elevate our ra is sweet charity; to educate the ignorant, to heal the afflicted, to improve the gel condition of society; but charity has failed to produce such a noble result. Mo philanthropy has sympathy with human condition, and not with human nature. TI rags of Lazarus appeal more powerfully than the soul of the beggar. Christ loo ce behind the rags of the poor, and the angels carried the soul of the beggar to the para dise of God. Thus it is that modern philanthropy is weak, inasmuch as it seeks S| temporary relief and not a radical cure. Go to Moscow, and the Russians will poin with pride, to a foundling hospital, wherein are twelve thousand foundlings. Th great institution was founded by Catherine the Second, and is supported by # Russian government with millions of dollars. But the pride of Russia is the shame Russia, for these children were born out of the sanctity of wedlock. Do you pcin our inebriate asylums, wherein degraded genius, and ruined fortunes, and bli honor are in retirement? Do you remind me of our reformed prison systems, and those houses of mercy for the relief of distress? I must remind you that all institutions are the product of sin. It is the purpose of Christianity to superind such a condition of society as to leave every penitentiary without a felon, and ev inebriate asylum without an inmate. _ IV. But what is the mission of Christ? What are His methods for the refo: tion of society? We can hardly call Him a philanthropist in the usually accep sense of that term. He did not do those things for which we glorify the mo philanthropist. He proclaimed to the world that great law of political science, “See first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be adde unto you.” He passed through the world, declaring that great beatitude, “Ble are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The chief announcement of His evang was, “Ye must be born again.” In all these utterances there is little or nothing 0 modern philanthropy. Christ did not come into the world to improve man’s mo al temporal condition. The things which He did not do and say are quite as edie as the things which He did do and say. Misery existed on every hand. The wi ; sighed in His presence, yet He never founded a house of mercy. The orphans c before Him, but He never built an orphan asylum. He went about doing good, | healed the sick, and raised the dead; but He did not heal all the sick, nor raise all tl dead. It was in order that He might write a credential for His divine philosoph ; that sin is the source of the world’s misery—that He performed miracles. He never Christ The Only Hope of the World—Newman. 567 sent the schoolmaster abroad, never founded a college. Himself the wisest of men, - medica He might have given to the world, at a time when the science of medicine was _ inits infancy! But He did not come for this purpose. All these splendid inventions, He did not appear on earth as a statesman. What a civil constitution He might have given the nations of the earth! He did not express a preference for one form of government over another. He simply said, “Render unto Czsar the things that are esar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Slavery existed in His day more _ terrible than American slavery, yet He did not covet the poor honor of Wilberforce or of Lincoln. He talked of wars, of soldiers, of swords; yet, unlike Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith, He did not organize peace societies. The social evil prevailed in His day. He saw the poor courtesan in the streets of Jerusalem, but, unlike Mrs. rye, He did not establish midnight missions. He saw the drunkard reel through the ‘streets of the Holy City, yet He never offered the pledge of total abstinence to any ‘man. He did not come for this purpose. He would not do what man could do. He __was resolved on something higher and better. Standing on the eminence of the ages He looked out upon the world and saw the ‘efforts of other men. He looked to China and saw that filial obedience had failed there; He looked to India and Greece and saw that intellectual culture had failed there; _ He looked to Rome and saw that law had failed there. There was one thing left which ' no reformer had undertaken. Jesus resolved to take the citadel of the man, the human heart, and hence His beatitude was, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” To attain this Christ laid down the fundamental proposition, ““Ye must be born again.” There is nothing in the universe more powerful than the heart. It sways the _ passions and the appetites, the conscience and the will, the intellect and the affections; it sways character and destiny. Christ resolved to be the king of hearts, to be the beggar of hearts; and He goes through the world, saying, ““My son, give me thy heart, _ for out of the heart are the issues of life.” Behold the result of this divine philosophy. Wherever Christ is accepted as Savior and Lord there man is purified and society elevated. Did He not come into the world _ primarily to improve man’s temporal condition? He did something better. Wherever He is received in sincerity and truth there agriculture and commerce and manufacture are productive of the largest results. The wealth of the world today is in the hands of ‘Christian nations. Under His benign philosophy houses of mercy, temples of piety, schools of learning, halls of justice, spring up upon every hand. The orphan is housed, _ the widow is cared for, and medical science ministers to the suffering. Is it true that He did not found a university? He did something better. He stimulated the human intellect and emancipated the common mind; and, wherever He is accepted, there the poets sing the sweetest, the orators declaim the, grandest, the statesmen are the wisest, and the scholars are the most profound. The original dis- Overies in science, and the original inventions in art, are the work of Christian men. Infidels have made valuable contributions to science and literature, but the original discoveries were made by Christian men. j Is it true that He did not come as a statesman? He did something better. He declared the brotherhood of man and preached the eternal principles of truth, justice nd fraternity; and as Christianity advances these great principles are incorporated ‘in the constitutions and statutory enactments of the governments of the world, so that - 568 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. the prophecy will be fulfilled, ““The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” Is it a fact that He never issued a proclamation of emancipation? He did something better. He proclaimed the equality of all men, and asserted the redemption of the human race in its entirety. Slavery has disappeared before His coming, and Christian nations have been the great emancipators in all time. Is it true that He did not organize peace societies? He proclaimed the beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God;” and antici- pated the time when war shall be no more, when there shall be a supreme cour of the world, with its chief justice and associate justices; and before that bar, England, France and Germany shall stand, to have their international. difficulties adjudicated. Is it true that He did not organize midnight missions? He resolved to do something better—to create in the heart of men an affection for women, founded upon personal esteem. He does not banish the courtesan from society. He demands reformation; “Sin no more.” Is it true that He did not offer the pledge of total abstinence to any man? He did something better. He wrote over the gateway of the temple in the skies, ‘“No drunkard shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” It is a fact in history that rises to the majesty of law that all the upward moverse of society have been preceded by a revival of evangelical religion. The history of the world is in proof that the conscience must be aroused, the affections elevated, the passions restrained, and that private virtue and public morality are the safeguards of mankind. What is Christ’s plan for the suppression of vice and the development of virtue? He goes to the fountain-head of all our troubles. He knows the seat of sin is not in the flesh, nor in the intellect, but in man’s moral nature. Hence His proposition is the regeneration of the human soul. He breaks the power of sin, and He imparts the power of righteousness; He transforms the soul into His own likeness. Do you complain that the gospel has not accomplished more? It must be accepted first, and then it will accomplish its noble purpose. Is salt a failure because meat no salted putrifies? Is science a failure because some men will not be wise? Is govern- ment a failure because some will not keep the law? Would you see the full benefits of Christianity you must look into the hearts of men and see what passions have been restrained. You must lift the curtain of Christian homes and see what joys therein abide. You must call around you the millions of happy Christians who bless the earth with their devotions. Would you see the grand total, go to the houses of mercy ~ thronged with orphans, with the aged and infirm, with the deaf, and dumb, and blind, and indigent. Go to our schools of learning, where, from nature, the young mind is a led up to nature’s God. Go to our libraries, the depositories of Christian literature, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Would you see the whole, ascend the — mount of God and look into glory, and behold the company which no man can number, ~ who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” whose _ youth is immortal, whose heaven is eternal, whose glory is ineffable. All these tell us is ‘that Christ is the only all-efficient and all-sufficient reformer known to mankind. i What then is true is this, that there is no hope for humanity outside of this great truth of regeneration as taught by Jesus Christ our Lord, and when the human heart 3 enshrines the Master, when every motive springs from Him, and every purpose centers i in Him, when the intellect is sanctified and all the passions and appetites are held under His sway, then comes that better condition of humanity of which the prophets 4 dreamed and which the Savior anticipated. But “there is none other name under — heaven whereby we must be saved.”’ This power to regenerate mankind is not in the intellect, it is notin our schools of learning, it is not in our houses of mercy; it is out- side of man, higher than man, high as God. It is only in Jesus Christ our Lord. — 4 . a ‘ 4 0 Christ The Only Hope of the World—Newman. 569 ss every other hope; dismiss philosophy, dismiss science, dismiss law, dismiss “In the Cross of Christ I glory, Towering o’er the wrecks of time, All the light of sacred story, Gathers round its head sublime.” [This sermon is reproduced by permission of The Northfield Echoes. ] 570 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. GETHSEMANE, THE ROSE GARDEN OF GOD. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, LL. D. “Without shedding of blood is no——.”—Hebrews 9: 22. I do not use the complete sentence. It is true even upon the lowest plane that without shedding of blood, there is nothing, no mighty result, no achievement, no triumph. Every worthy deed costs something; no high thing can be done easily. No great thing can be accomplished without the shedding of blood. Life is just our chance of making this great and strange discovery. Many of us never make it. We begin by trifling, by working with a fraction of our strength. We soon see that nothing comes of that. At last, if we are wise, we see that all the strength is needed. What have we besides this? We must disrobe ourselves. We do it; yet our object remains ungained. What more have we to give? We have our blood. So at last the blood is shed, the life is parted with, and the goal is reached. We are happy if we know that everything noble and enduring in this world is accomplished by the shedding of blood, not merely the concentration of the heart and soul and mind on: one object, but the pruning and even the maiming of life. Young men are being taught this lesson now, and unless all signs are false they will be taught it more sternly in the future. Without shedding of blood there is no ——. There has been from the beginning a profound and solemn witness in the human heart to this. Many of the primitive religious ideas are God’s deep preparation of the mind and heart of man for the grand Gospel of Christianity, the substitution of the Lord Jesus Christ for guilty inne This witness is embedded in our language. What is meant by the word “bless?” It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for blood. We may legitimately translate this by saying that before we can truly bless another human being we must shed our blood for him. You can lighten a brother’s way by cups of cold water, by small gifts, smiles, by friendly words, and these things are great in the eyes of Christ. But to ble in the superlative degree we must part with life. Without shedding of blood it cannc¢ be. And the primitive religions everywhere bear the same witness. It was thought that a life had to be buried in the seed-ground before there could be a harvest. The old legend of Copenhagen tells us that its founders failed again and again. Their wor was destroyed by the sea till at last a human life was sacrificed, and the city becam stable. I might quote from the Greek tragedians, whose theology is a deep theology, to the same effect. However crude, however distorted these notions might be, they a pointed men onwards to the supreme Altar of the universe where Jesus died, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” So the Eternal Son shed as it were great drops of blood in Gethsemane, andl , offered Himself immaculate to God on the Cross. We can never render the doctrine of the Atonement in terms of human self-sacrifice and self-surrender. Rudyard Kip- ling, in his “Light that Failed,’ puts the true word into the mouth of one of his characters. “I’d take any punishment that is in store for him if I could, but the worst > of it is that no man can save his brother.” But the human analogies help us, and, indeed, the doctrine of the Atonement without them would be a mere blank for our minds. So I seem to see how it is that the simple receive and understand the plainest — Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God—Nicoll. 571 _ preaching of the glorious truth of propitiation, and leap to it, while those whose minds are overlaid with speculation and what is called culture find it difficult. Alas! we often see theologians, even Evangelical theologians, using infinite evasions and subtle- ‘ties to disencumber themselves of the one weapon without which the Evangelist can do nothing at all. But we know that Christ’s appearing would have had no purpose _ and conduced to no end if He had not stayed long enough with us to shed His blood in Gethsemane and Calvary. To know what our redemption cost Him we must, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, look at Gethsemane as well as Calvary, and even then we do not know. “None of the ransomed ever knew How deep were the waters crossed, Or how dark was the night that the Lord passed through, Ere He found the sheep that was lost.” But we do know something. We see Him in His extremity when He began fully _ to understand the bitterness of His cup. We hear Him pray His prayer with strong crying and tears. “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me.” That transeat calix! There is no prayer like that, no prayer ever uttered with such intensity. The prayer that is lifted when it seems just possible that the cup may pass, and that the pleading _ may decide it, is in itself a shedding of blood. We realize the dim witnesses who heard afar the broken moaning, the long sobs, who witnessed the hard-won victory which seemed a defeat, who could not watch with Him one hour. We know what the strain must have been when there came to His succor the all-pitying but undimmed Angel. Tf it had not been that God made His minister a flame of fire in that darkness, could Christ have conquered? The cup was not taken away, but the prayer was answered, for His lips were made brave to drink it. Perhaps they are right who say that Geth- _ semane was the crowning point of our Redeemer’s sufferings, though it was on Calvary that He finished His work. I do not know. He quivered for a moment on Calvary, too. I shall endeavor to illustrate simply two missionary ideas partly suggested by etymology. Blessing, as we have seen, means blood-shedding. With blood, too, are _ connected the words bloom and blossom; that is, the perfection and crown of life comes out of death. So, then, we speak first of blessing from blood-shedding to others, and next of the perfect bloom of life in ourselves coming out of death. I. Blessing comes from blood-shedding; that is, our power to bless in the highest sense comes from our shedding, as it were, great drops of blood. We need not shed them literally, though the Church has justly placed the martyrs first. The Church of Rome never prays for the martyrs, but makes request for their prayers. The martyrs it _ sees before Christ in robes of crimson, and the saints in white. The blood of the “martyrs is the seed of the Church. We cannot atone, but we can bless. We cannot have a share in the one perfect Oblation, the Evening Sacrifice of the world, but we fill up that which is behind the afflictions of Christ. Of every great servant of Christ it is true that the Lord says, “I will show him how great things he must suffer for My _ Name's sake.” It would not be right to say that it is the suffering that counts, and not the labor. What is true is that the labor without the suffering does not count, that the two in a fruitful life are indissolubly joined. We are familiar with the great passages _in which the Apostle is driven to use the awful language of the Passion, where he says, P ey am crucified with Christ, I die daily.” And it is true that all along the way there a rock comes to little, but the elect have one that ptdridde above all, one shedding of : blood, one death, after which the rest seems easy. Can we know the Gethsemane of 572 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. another? I think not often. It is passed, as a rule, with little sign or show. When George Howe, in the ‘Bonnie Brier Bush,” came home to die, his mother hid herself beneath the laburnum to see his face as the cart stood beneath the stile. It told her plainly what she had feared, and Marget passed through her Gethsemane with the gold blossoms falling on her face. You may be passing through yours now, and there is little to show it—some absence of manner, some twitching of the lips, but no more; and you will never tell anyone of it, and no one may discover it even after you are dead. One may suspect another man’s Gethsemane, the time when he parted with his life, but very likely he is wrong, and the surrender he is thinking of was accomplished almost without murmur or reluctance. It is so in biographies. We sometimes think that we see when we do not. The Gethsemane may be, and often is, the rooting out of some cherished ambition that has filled the heart and occupied every thought. It may be the shattering of some song, the breaking of some dream. It may be, and often is, the great rending of the affections, the cutting of the soul free from some detaining human tenderness. Anyhow, the full agony cannot last more than a little, though the heart-ache may persist through a lifetime. “Could ye not watch with Me one hour?” I sometimes think that blood-sheddings are far more common than we are apt to imagine, and that they take place in the most unlikely lives. In the memoir of Dr. Raleigh, a prosperous suburban minister with every earthly ambition realized, there is a significant passage. When he was at the zenith of his fame he said that ministers came and looked round at his crowded church, and envied his position. “They do not know what it cost me to come to this.” So, in James Hamilton’s life, we are permitted to see how he parted, for Christ’s sake, with his great ambition. He wished to write a life of Erasmus, and devoted many years to preparation, but other claims came and balked him of his long desire. He says: “So this day, with a certain touch of tenderness, I restored the eleven tall folios to the shelf, and tied up my memo- ~ randa, and took leave of a project which has sometimes cheered the hours of exhaus- tion, and the mere thought of which has always been enough to overcome my natural indolence. It is well. It was a chance, the only one I ever had, of attaining a small - measure of literary distinction, and where there is so much pride and haughtiness of heart it is better to remain unknown.” I think we may easily see where the Geth- semane was in Henry Martyn’s life, and I think one may also see it in John Wesley's life, though I should not care to indicate it. But the heart knoweth its own bitterness. What we know is that the Gethsemanes in the Christian life come in the course of duty, and in obedience to God’s will as it is revealed from day to day. Wesleyan Methodists have always recognized that blessing must come from the shedding of blood, from the parting with the life. 1 miight quote many passages, but must content myself with two. John Wesley, speaking of a reputed saint, rejects his claims, saying, ‘‘No blood of the martyrs is here, no reproach, no scandal of the Cross, no persecution of them that live godly.” Dr. Adam Clarke, in his adress at the founda- tion of the London Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in 1816, made special reference to the Moravians. I need not say how great the Moravian influence was on early Methodism. He told his hearers how, when the Moravians were only six hun- dred in number, they had missionaries all over the world. The beginning was in this wise. A negro named Anthony came from St. Thomas, and passed under the influence of Zinzendorf. He said that his fellow slaves were seeking a missionary to declare to them the true God, but the missionary could only find entrance if he went as a slave. Two brethren, Leonard Dober and Tobias Leopold, immediately offered themselves, and expressed their willingness to be sold as slaves that they might preach Christ. We may be sure, whether we are aware of the facts or not, that no life that brings fruit to God is without its Gethsemane, its parting with life, its shedding, as it were, great drops of blood. But, as the Savior’s blood fell on the cursed ground and blessed it, Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God—Nicoll. 573 so the blood of the surrendered soul makes Gethsemane a garden. If not now, then hereafter; sooner or later the time must come. II. The bloom and perfection of life to the missionary comes from the shedding of blood. Observe that I am not speaking here of the blessing to others, but of the blessing that is meant to come to ourselves in the great enrichment of the spiritual life that should follow, and abundantly make up for the impoverishment and expenditure of the natural life. What comes after the parting with the natural life, after the shed- ding of blood, after the death to the world? Various things come, but what ought to come is the resurrection life, which the shedding of blood has made room for. It does not always come even to the servants of God whose life is faithful. Their work is fruitful, never without result, but they themselves have not the full blessing of the resurrection life. (1) Often the Gethsemane of the soul means a brief tarrying in this world. It seems as if too much had gone, as if the spirit could not recover its energies. There are a few books peculiarly dear to the heart of the Church, which I may call Gethse- mane books. The chief are the lives of Brainerd, Martyn, and McCheyne. All of these died young, not without signs of the Divine blessing, but prematurely—rich and fervid natures exhausted and burnt out. I do not overlook physical causes and reasons, but in each case there was a Gethsemane. Read the memoir of Brainerd, which Wesley published in an abridged form. It was written by Jonathan Edwards, the greatest intellect of America. Mark its reserved passion, its austere tenderness. Read the story of young Jerusha Edwards, who followed her betrothed so soon, and you feel that you have done business in great waters. Read Brainerd’s aspirations. ‘Oh! that I might be a flaming fire in the service of my God. Here I am; Lord, send me; send me to the ends of the earth; send me to the rough, the savage pagans of the wilderness; send me from all that is called comfort in life or earthly comfort; send me even to death itself, if it be but in Thy service and to promote Thy kingdom.” (2) Sometimes the earthly life parted with is not fully replaced by the resurrection life, and a long-drawn melancholy ensues. It is so, I venture to think in the life of Charles Wesley. It will be granted by the most ardent admirers of that great saint and supreme Christian poet that the last thirty years of his life will not compare with those of his mighty, strenuous, ardent youth. They were sad years in the main, spent in comparative inaction, and with many weary, listless, discontented days. There is some- thing most attractive about the melancholy of his hymns, but it must never be for- gotten that there is no such thing as melancholy in the New Testament, and that such strains as: “T suffer out my three-score years Till the Deliverer come,” and “Explain my life of misery, With all Thy Love’s designs on me,” however they may fascinate us in many moods, are not really Christian. The text of Charles Wesley’s later years, the text that must ever be associated with his name, was, “T will bring the third part through the fire.’ He thought that one-third part of Methodists would endure to the end. He never sought an abundant entrance for him- self into the heavenly Kingdom, never asked more than that “I may escape safe to land —on a broken piece of the ship. This is my daily and hourly prayer, that I may escape safe to land.” In his later days he used to warn those who summoned him that a flood was coming which might sweep away much of the religion in the country. This was not the highest nor even the normal Christian life. Our Gethsemanes are not meant to 574 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. end in gloom and melancholy. They are meant to give us, by the grace of God, a a richer, even an eternal life in the place of that which we have lost. Our sufferings must be well used, for ‘‘in this mortal journey wasted shade is worse than wasted sunshine.” (3) No, the bloom of life should come out of death. The resurrection life should pour into the depleted veins, and fill them with strength and peace. That was emi- nently the experience of John Wesley. Branch after branch was withered, but every time the new life rushed through all the arid fibres, and they bloomed again. There is no book, I humbly think, in all the world like John Wesley’s Journal. It is pre- eminently the book of the resurrection life lived in this world. It has very few com- panions. Indeed, it stands out solitary in all Christian literature, clear, detached, columnar. It is a tree that is ever green before the Lord. It tells us of a heart that kept to the last its innocent pleasures and interests, but held them all so loosely, so lightly, while its Christian, passionate peace grew and grew to the end. To the last there is not diminishing, but increasing, the old zeal, the old wistfulness, the calm, but fiery and revealing eloquence. John Wesley was, indeed, one of those who had attained the inward stillness, who had entered the Second Rest—of those who, to use his own fine words, are “at rest before they go home; possessors of that rest which remaineth even here for the people of God.” Jt is with peculiar love and reverence that one comes to his closing days, and follows him to his last sermon at Leatherhead, on the words, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near;” and watches by his triumphant deathbed, and hears him say, “The clouds drop fatness.” The only one I can compare with him is Apostle Eliot, the missionary to the Indians, whose life is quaintly written by Cotton Mather. It used to be said in New England that the country was safe when Eliot was there. Hawthorne tells how the hero of “The Scarlet Letter” went to Eliot in his racking agony. Of that great apostle, worthy to stand with John Wesley, we read that he was a man of infinite serenity. His face shone with an almost supernatural radiance. But he had his bitter sorrows. His sons died before him, They were “desirable preachers of the Gospel,” but we are told that he sacrificed them ‘‘with such a sacred indifferency.” He was so nailed to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that the grandeurs of this world were just to him what they would be to a dying man. When, at a great age, and nearing the end, at last, he grew, like Wesley, still “more heavenly, more savory, more Divine, and scented more and more of the spicy country at which he was ready to put ashore.” he: The application of all this is very obvious. I, for one, believe the ancient word, “The knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.” But first there must fall on the earth the blood shed from faithful souls. There is no life save from the parting with natural life. Some young men whom I love have plans for the evangelizing of the world in the present generation. Yes, but what is evangelizing? The sending of Bibles; the delivery of the Message to everyone? No, but the shedding of the servants’ blood on every field. When the world has become one great Gethsem- ane we shall see over it all the flowers that grow, and grow only, in the garden where Christ’s brow dropped blood. But this morning some sweet mother will go through her Gethsemane and give her son. Said one in weeds, when asked if she subscribed to a missionary society, ““Yes, I gave my only son, and he died on the field.”” Some heart will hear me today, and answer to the call, and pass through its Gethsemane in this’ chapel, and return to open itself to the influx of the life of the Holy Spirit, and depart to years of mighty words and deeds. May it be so! I have heard it said that your people die well. Surely, of this death to the world of which I have been speaking this morning, those words of Charles Wesley’s are most of all appropriate: “Ah lovely appearance of death; What sight upon earth is so fair?” Gethsemane, The Rose Garden of God—Nicoll. 575 ‘ For us who remain there is a message. The service will be over in a moment; - there will be a collection. You will put your hands in your pocket and pick out a small coin, thinking of what you are to spend in other ways before you get home. — You will not miss it, not know that you have given it. Your missionary magazine will come to you, and you will look at it, or perhaps you will complain that those mis- sionary periodicals are so dull. And you think that the world will be converted after this fashion! No, the Church of Christ must be in an agony, praying more earnestly, sweating, as it were, great drops of blood, before the world can be brought to Christ. We give nothing until we give what it costs us to give, life. There is no life without death. Gethsemane is the rose garden of God. [W. Robertson Nicoll, LL. D., was born at Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, Oct. 10, _ 1851, and was educated at the University of Aberdeen. He served the Free churches at Dufftown and Kelso from 1874 to 1885. From 1886 he has been editor of the British Weekly, Expositor, Bookman and other publications. His literary work con- _ sists of a number of biographical and theological works. This sermon, reported for the British Weekly, was delivered at the annual meeting of the Wesleyan Methodist Foreign Missionary Society in Great Queen street chapel. ] 576 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CHURCH ORVGOD; WM. R. NICHOLSON, D. D. “An holy priesthood.”—1 Peter 2: 5. Assembled in our capacity as a Council, we shall have to engage our attention a variety of interests belonging to the outward and visible church of God. The outward and visible is of great importance; at the same time, the inward and invisible is of greater. A casket is valuable; yet only for the sake of the jewel within. What were we without our bodily organs? Still, the body were dead without the soul. It is the hidden intelligence within which gives to the eye its brightness, to the ear its music, to the tongue its eloquence, to the hand and the foot their activities. The Church of God in the earth has its manifold modes and polities, all of them important; but it has also its one informing life, and all modes and polities are worse than nothing if they: be not as obedient servants to the inhabiting spirit, or like John Baptist to his Lord, as only heralds of what is greater and better than themselves. The form, however, which is sO necessary, ever gravitates to formalism. We are apt to become so absorbed with looking at the machinery of the Church, as to leave uncared for the fire of the Holy Ghost, which, though out of sight, is alone what generates the motive power, and puts life into wheel and shaft for effectuating the proposed results. We scarce need an exhortation to look at the Church’s things which are seen; we do need to be urged | toward the Church’s things which are not seen. I crave your attention to the subject of the priesthood of the Church of God: the priesthood of the entire body of believers; the priesthood of every single believer. ' It is a subject far off from the beaten track of most Christians’ habitual thinking. - Pity it is that it is so; but the more the reason for exciting attention to so great a truth. Large is the space which is appropriated in Scripture to the priesthood of he Church. I might even say, that it is as the warp to the woof; interlacing with all other truths, and weaving the Word of God into a fabric of strength and beauty. Impos- sible, then, that it should be an indifferent truth, or even a truth only second-rate. It cannot be a speculative tenet; it must be a vital element of gospel blessedness. It is. not a theological fossil; it is a living power of gospel holiness. Here, however, as so often elsewhere, the traditions of Christendom are bewilder- ing and misleading. Priesthood, as generally conceived of, instead of being a plant of the Heavenly Father’s planting, is a parasite of man’s device, entwining around the ‘Church, and absorbing its gospel juices. I wonder not that so many of those who love the gospel have looked at this whole subject, as at “a great horror of darkness.” But now, as the mariner uses his sextant when he would determine his position on the pathless ocean, and consults his compass to know in what direction to steer the ship, so, amid the wide waste of man’s traditions, we betake ourselves to God’s own estimate of the importance and preciousness of our subject. And as the miner, in his hunt for gold, is careful to follow up whatever ‘lead’ he may have discovered, so, finding out those veins of the precious metal which lie at the surface of Scripture, and any others which may be deeper down, let us go to explore our riches, till we know ourselves to be possessed of a mine of blessedness whose yield the largest lifetime shall not be able to exhaust, The Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. 577 I. First of all, we see at the surface of the Word of God certain declarations of the priesthood of believers. 1. ‘An holy priesthood” is the declaration of our text. “Ye,” saith the Apostle. He is writing to those to whom, as “believing,” he says that “Christ is precious.” “Ve an holy priesthood.” It is of that Church, then, which is the whole body of true believers in Christ, that he declares a priesthood. ' Now this word “priesthood” has been transferred to the New Testament from Leviticus. Wherefore, say some, we are to understand the priesthood of Christians as merely a figurative application of the word. For have we blood to shed? Can we make expiation for sins? Have we anything to offer more than spiritual sacrifices, such as faith and thanksgiving? How, then, can we be literally priests? But are “spiritual” and “figurative” equivalent terms? Are “spiritual” and “real” the opposites of one another? Is the priesthood of Expiation the only priesthood of Leviticus? Let the Word of God reply. What doeth Christ in heaven? Is He not there as our High Priest? And yet e sheds no blood there, He makes no expiation for sins there. He did shed His blood once, on earth; He did make expiation then. Without that priesthood of His elf-offering on earth, He could not be our Priest in Heaven. That blood-shedding, however, has taken place, once for all. What doeth He, then, in His priesthood now in Heaven? He pleads in the presence of the Father the value of what He has finished. This, and this alone, is His priesthood there and now. Yet is it not a real priesthood? nd now what do we in our approaches to God? Plead we not the same blood-shed- ding, once for all? Carry we not into the Presence, by faith, the same values? He reads the expiation which He himself, indeed, has effected; and therein He infinitely differs from us. But it is the pleading of it, not the doing of it, which He is engaged about in heaven; the trustful claiming on the ground of it, and in the terms of the everlasting covenant ratified by His blood. So is it the trustful claiming on the ground of the same Expiation, and in the terms of the same Covenant, which believers in Him are engaged about. He is a better pleader than we, for He rests in His confi- dence with infinite complacency. Still, the one plea which He offers is our plea as well. Besides, as we offer it, the Father judicially regards us as judicially He regards Him, since we are “clothed upon with Him,” and His righteousness is our righteous- “Mess, nay, we are “God’s righteousness in Him.” Therefore, have we not in Christ a riesthood which is of the same nature with what He himself exercises in Heaven? 7 The Lord Jesus Christ alone, as the antitype of Aaron, is commensurate with the ‘Scriptural definition, that “Every high-priest taken from among men is ordained for i men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.’ He offered himself a sacrifice for sins. That was His priesthood of expiation; and in that priesthood neither man nor angel can have the least possible part. “There ‘Yemaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” The Priesthood of Expiation stood peerless and Supper. And when men think to satisfy for their sins by their own good deeds, or by their sufferings, whether as penance or as involuntary, they do but snatch from Christ ba honor of His own completed and Divine satisfaction for sins. But now His Statement of His having been “ordained for men in things pertaining to God.” When aron had shed the blood of the sin-offering, he had then to carry it within the vail; d this latter was equally ‘for men in things pertaining to God.” His being per- 578 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. mitted to go with the blood into the Holiest was evidence of the Propitiation effecte by the Expiation, and accordingly, as he entered, the smoke of sweet incense envelope and arose from his person. And then, as with the blood he continued in the Presence it was virtually his act of pleading; as the fragrant fumes ascending symbolically expressed it, so, as it were, did the value of the blood ascend, and make its appeal te the Shechinah Deity there visible. Thus, while the shedding of the blood and he burning of the victim were Expiation, the going within the vail was Intercession. The | Priesthood of Expiation went not within the vail, its work being all done on the outside; but the Priesthood of Intercession, taking charge of the fact of Expiation finished, entered into the immediate presence of God. So, after His finished sacrifice of the Cross, Christ had yet a work to do in heaven. Having been Himself personallj delivered by means of His own sufferings, from the curse which He bare as the substi tute for sinners, He now appears before the Father as fragrant in the all-sufficiency His past, pleading for the salvation of those for whom He died, and as well for H own delectation in seeing of the travail of His soul. This is His Priesthood of Inter- cession; and in this priesthood His believing people may and do have part. Havi ng been delivered in His deliverance, we in Him do now appear before the Father in the same fragrance which is His, pleading both for ourselves and for the salvation ¢ others. Precisely because He is a priest in heaven, we also are priests. The brane! is in the vine; the believer is in his Savior. “As He is, so are we, even in this world, He offers up there the spiritual sacrifices of praise and intercession; we offer up her the spiritual sacrifices of praise and intercession. And both He and we offer them on the same one ground of His own past sufferings. Thus “spiritual” and “real” ai not opposites the one of the other. Nay, our functions as priests are even at the top and perfection of all priesthood, since they are of the same nature with those of the High-Priesthood of Christ in heaven, which High-Priesthood is the very flower and fruit of the Priesthood at Gethsemane and Calvary. Who, then, is a priest? In the rounded completeness of its meaning, Jesus Christ alone is exhaustive of the word. But the priesthood of expiation having been finishe a true priest now, whether Christ or any of His people, is one who has the distinction of direct access to the Father, who has it because of the sacrifice for sins accomplished, who is taken into closest nearness to the Father, and who thereupon has power wit God in praying for and laboring for others. Priesthood, accordingly, is the power Ot Divine Service, of all Divine Service. J ‘ Such a priesthood is the whole true Church of God. And a “holy” priesthood; set apart to God, and, in their character as priests, regarded by Him as His jewels. 2. “Ye are a royal priesthood” is another declaration (1 Peter 2:9.) As priests, the people of God are Kingly. i Yet are they really Kings? And if not, must not priesthood also be interpreted figuratively? But it is not true that they are Kings only suppositiously. When tk shall have been “‘seated with Christ in His throne, even as He is set down in His Father’s throne,” will they not be Kings? When they “reign with Christ a thousand years,” will they not be Kings? And even now they are Kings, so far as concerns their title to Kinghood. Their priesthood is the foundation of their kinghood, even as Christ is “‘a priest upon His throne.” “Ye are a royal priesthood,” says the Apostle, “that ye should skow forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” As priests, they have been called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.” Only as priests are they capacitated to show forth His praises. Only as priests, then, can he glorify Himself in them to crown them with glory an¢ honor. 3. A third declaration is in that sublime song of all believers, “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings ane / | | | | | The Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. 579 priests unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:5, 6.) There the priesthood is claimed by each individual of the body. They declare that they have been made priests through having been washed om their sins in Christ’s blood. He has presented them to the Father in His own sthood, and in that presentation they have been placed so near as that nearer cannot be, and, by consequence, they themselves have become priests. And they claim tas a matter of distinct thought and conscious appropriation. It is the subject-matter of their resounding doxology to Jesus Christ, and of their worshipping gladness. It 5s not a thing merely to be conceded, and then lost sight of in the conventional leader- ship of a class. It is something pre-eminent, and to be looked at with rejoicing in the bright light of communion with God. _ 4. Yet another declaration concerns the risen saints. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection. On such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” ey. 20:6.) Priests we shall be in the glories of the coming resurrection. Priest- hood is inseparable from a state of salvation. It is an everlasting thing. As the ever’s position in Christ is never lost, so neither his priesthood. As here and now is a priest in the direct access into the spiritual presence of God, and in Christian eficence toward men, so will he be a priest in the same offices there and then, entering into the beatific splendors of God’s visible residence, and exercising a various hinistration toward the nations then existent on the earth. ‘Blessed is he that hath art in the first resurrection,’ for “he shall be a priest.” Priesthood is the very expression of blessedness. And now, looking back over these declarations, we are at once arrested by the ident equality of all believers in the regard of priesthood. They are all together a ‘priesthood, and each particular one is himself or herself a priest; as well Phebe the ‘deaconess as Paul the Apostle, Onesimus the slave as Philemon the master. There are other official differences among them, some occupying one office in the church, some another. There are denominational differences. And there are differences of a ‘practical kind; some, more than others, appreciating the fact of their priesthood, and feeling it as a mighty power of holy living. Hence, there are differences of personal lization in the joy of communion with God. And again, there are answering differ- mces in the degrees of personal reward in heaven. But in the fact and office of esthood there is absolute equality; only one and the same right and title, among hem all, to nearest access to God. And just here, on the one priestly level among all Christians, our Reformed Church plants its standard. That in the church of God, all of whom are a priesthood, there should be a Separate class specially called priests, and nearer to God than are the others, is simply an absurdity. The standing of every believer in Christ absolutely precludes it. In Israel there was such a separate class; but that was a ceremonial dispensation, and such an outward demarcation was indispensable for shadowing forth the good things Ocome. Ours, however, is not a ceremonial priesthood. Nor, in all the New Testa- ent, are Christian ministers, as such, even named priests. The minister is, indeed, a Priest, but only because he is a Christian, not because he isa minister. Nay, he is a inister only because he is first a priest. Priesthood is the power of Divine service; id with that power every one is gifted the instant he believes in Jesus, and is washed from his sins in the blood of redemption. When such an one is called of God into the Official ministry, it is that he shall expend his power of service in the way of preaching he gospel; but, even so, no more of priestly function does he exercise, than does the hristian mother who teaches her children about Jesus, and is interceding for them at he throne of grace. The priesthood of the Church is universal. But we need division of labor. 580 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Nor is there a single service of God’s worship but what any Christian is compe tent to perform. Writers on Christian antiquities tell us, that the Lord’s Supper wi observed by the first believers at Jerusalem in their own houses, and at the conclusio of the ordinary evening meal. The analogy of the Paschal Supper, at which the maste of the household presided, would lead the first Christians into that practice, since it we at the Paschal Supper Jesus instituted that service. And evidently the laity at Corinth at the time of Paul’s writing his epistles to that Church, were in the habit of observin the Lord’s Supper at the close of an actual supper, and independently of the ministry Now that the ministry should have the leadership in the devotions of God’s hous is a thing eminently fitting, nor would we for an instant disturb that arrangement. | is in the last degree important, however, that we apprehend the true ground of th leadership; that we understand it to have come about by an arrangement of the bod of believers themselves, for convenience and order. For the insidious tendency of th outward and visible is to throw this truth of universal priesthood into the shade; ar to one brought up under the ordinary influences of Christendom, like an electric shoe to the nerves of the body, would be his first clear view of it. Moreover, in evel organization among men, and churches are no exceptions, the drift is evermore towa self-assertion and imperial rule. Concessions granted lovingly at first do at leng harden into rights domineeringly claimed. The administering of ordinances is arrogated to the ministry on the ground of Divine right; and the consequences af that a kind of superstitious attention is given to their perfunctory officiating, the je of direct fellowship with God is hindered, formalism is even provided for as though were the normal condition of the Church, and a mere churchism usurps the place faith’s beatific vision of God. Oh, the priesthoood of all believers is a very synonyt of “the Jiberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” 4 II. But now, going down beneath the surface of Scripture, what other vein of th precious metal do we discover? This: that even the Priesthood of Leviticus w ordained to typify the service of Christians. Its first and chiefest business was the setting forth of Christ; and certain functiol it had, and they were the fundamental ones which could have no reference whatey except to His expiatory work. But Christ and His Church are inseparable. Whi in the counsels of Eternity he undertook the cause of human redemption, a church promised Him, a body of saved ones; would it not be most fitting, then, that w the Levitical priesthood was ordained for shadowing forth His work for oma should have been so ordained as also to shadow forth His Church? 4 The Levitical priests were Aaron and his sons. What was the relationship subsis ing between him and them? There was a marked distinction between them, as W evinced in both dress and functions. Yet he and they were closely associated. Thi were made dependent on him, insomuch that only as he was filling his place, cou they stand in their places. Nay, they were represented in him; for when he went in the Holy of Holies, where they could not go, he bare with him the sins of “his house that those sins might be forgiven through the blood already shed. And they were I sons; none others were associated with him. 7 Now, was such relationship for nothing? If, as the Apostle tells us, Aaron w the type of Christ, were nct his sons the type of Christians? Not exclusively indee But as, when Christ suffered on the cross, we were set forth in Him, so it was not | incongruous thing that, while in their bloody sacrifices the sons of Aaron typifi Christ solely, they should also, in those ceremonial deliverances resulting to them fre the blood of bulls and goats, have typified all believers as spiritually delivered by t blood of Christ. See, then, how minutely answered to, and fully, as between Chr and Christians, is that constitution of the Levitical priesthood. Are not Christians t sons of Christ? Is He not the second Adam, the progenitor of His people? De “ t The Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. 581 not the branch grow out of the vine? They are indeed the sons of the Father, but are made su only in Christ, who is Himself the Son of the Father. And is it not only in the fact of Christ filling His place as our High Priest, that we stand in our places of service? And are we not now represented in Him in heaven? and, therefore, is not His blood, shed once for all, evermore cleansing us from all sin? And yet how marked the distinction. The gorgeous dress of Aaron, so transcending that of his sons, was it not symbolical of those Divine excellencies of person and character belonging to Christ, an appreciation of which prostrates us before Him in adoring reverence and worship? And the transcendent function of Aaron, he alone going into the Holiest, and representing there in blood and incense his priestly house, did it not symbolize Christ as personally alone in the work of redemption, as our Forerunner, matchless and mateless, whom we could not follow till after His work was done, and he had presented it to the Father? Were not the sons of Aaron the type of Christians? Did ever type prophesy its antitype more plainly or beautifully? _ But consider now Aaron himself. As High Priest, he was typically Christ. But another character he had than that of High Priest. He was a sinner, and needed to have atonement made for him. Therein he contrasted with Christ, and the contrast is marked in Scripture (Heb. 5:3; 9:7). Personal Aaron, then, was atoned for by what official Aaron did. And because personal Aaron was in official Aaron, therefore might personal Aaron stand before God in even the Holiest. Now personal Aaron, as being accepted in official Aaron, was typically all believers; for are they not in the antitypical Aaron, and, what is more, in him in even the Holiest, in nearest access to God? Hence hat wonderful word of the Apostle, “We have boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus.” And accordingly, when at length the blood of Jesus was shed, the vail of the Holiest was rent in twain, and the Holiest itself has been actually laid open to every believer. Thus Aaron himself was a type of Christians. But of all priestly functions the very topmost was that of going into the Holiest; and so, intimate com- munion with God, joys of fellowship, a clear, deep-felt, serene assurance of our home in heaven, all this is not only priestly blessedness, it is the ultima thule of priesthood. Consider, next, that Aaron’s priesthood and that of his sons are spoken of in the law (Ex. 28:1) as being but one ministration of priesthood. So essentially included in Aaron, typically speaking, was all priesthood. And what read we of the one minis- tration of priesthood of Christ and Christians? It is Jesus who speaks in that sublime oracle, “In the midst of the Church I will sing praise unto thee” (Heb, 2:2); He, the Leader of the praises of His Church. And in that Apocalyptic scene, when prayers of all the saints were lying, like sacrifices, upon the golden altar before the throne, it was Jesus who added to those prayers His own incense; and the prayers were borne upward by the smoke of the incense upon its fragrant wings (Rev. 8:3, 4). His priest- hood, as He is now in the heavens, and their priesthood are but one ministration. And now, in view of all this remarkable foreshadowing of the Church in Leviticus, is it not strange that every priestly action of that book should be predicated of Chris- tians, though, of course, in the spiritual fulfillment? Did those priests offer sacrifices? We offer up “spiritual sacrifices.” Did they bear incense before God? The Philippian ievers are said to have presented to God “‘an odor of a sweet smell;” for it was the sweet merits of Christ which the incense typified, and believers are enveloped in His merits. Did the priests of Leviticus eat of the flesh of their peace-offerings? So do Christians, by faith, “eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man,” and feast upon the peace of God. Did they intercede for the people? So is it the duty of believers in Christ to do, and “the prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Were they teachers of the law? So do Christians “hold forth the word of life,” and “minister grace to the hearers.” Did they separate clean from unclean? Christians are described 582 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. as doing spiritually what they did but ceremonially, and as “coming out and being Fe separate from evil.” Did they cut off unclean persons from the congregation of Israel? — Christians are in duty bound to “mark them which cause offences contrary to the doctrine which they have learned, and avoid them.” And did they go into the Holy © Places? Aaron especially into the Holiest? So do believers “draw near to God,” and “enter into the Holiest.” ¥ On the other hand, no action at all is predicated of Christians that is not described as priestly. Do they pray? Their prayers are “set forth before God as incense, and the lifting up of their hands as the evening sacrifice.” Do they sing praises to God? It is “the sacrifice of praise’ which they “offer” (Heb. 13: 15); this word offer being, in the Greek, the regular Septuagint word for the offering of sacrifices. Do Christians exercise faith in Christ? “The sacrifice of their faith,’ saith the Apostle; and again, “The service of their faith;” that is, the priestly ministration of their faith, the Greek — word for “service” here being a Levitcal word (Phil. 2:17). Are they to do good, and to communicate of their pecuniary substance? “With such sacrifices God is well pleased.” Do any of them preach the gospel? It is a priestly serving, as the Apostle’s word expresses it (Rom. 15:16), and leads to the “offering up” of converted men to God. Do they present their bodies, and devote themselves to God? They do it as “ living sacrifice;” and, according to the Greek of the Apostle, it is their “reasonabh (spiritual) priestly service” (Rom. 12:1). In fine, does “the blood of Christ purge their consciences from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14), to serve Him in” all possible acts of service? The Apostle’s word is, to “‘serve as a priest.” Or, does the-Christian “serve God in his spirit in the gospel of His Son” (Rom. 1:9), including all possible service in thoughts, affections, purposes, motives, in every detail, and throughout the life? The word “serve” in that place is the serving of a priest. The Christian is a priest to his God in his spirit; in all his inner self, and therefore through all his outer self; “not in a material temple, not a material altar, but in his spirit, and at the gospel of Christ.” So that, as Christians, we do nothing except as priests. All | worship is the action of priesthood. The devout culture of the heart is the work of a priest. The overcoming of evil, the growth in spiritual life, the doing good to others, all is priestly. For, it was by giving us access to God in the Holiest, that is, by making us priests, that the salvation in Christ has empowered us for service. To say that we are priests is to say that we are capable servants of God; and if we appreciate our priesthood, we become acceptable servants. A separate class of priests in the Church? Most damaging conceit; not only blasphemous toward Christ, but a greedy plunderer of all fields of Christian blessedness. Yes, the priesthood of Leviticus was ordained to typify the service of Christians. What honor conferred upon our holy living. What nearness to God it proves to be ours. What oneness with Christ it demonstrates. III. And now we strike a third vein in this great mine of spiritual wealth; the Consecration to the priesthood of Leviticus receives its fulfillment in the setting apart of believers. The latter is an exact answering to the former, as antitype to type. In the eighth chapter of Leviticus we have the account of that Consecration. 1, “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Take Aaron and his sons with him.”* Aaron’s being “taken,” that is, chosen, represented that “Christ glorified not Himself to be made a high priest,” but was called of God, and set apart to His work in the counsels of eternity. And Aaron’s sons being “taken” represented that the people of Christ have been chosen of God to be His people. For, hath He not “chosen them in Christ?” Hath He not “called” them, and “drawn” them? Did He not “take” Saul The Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. 583 ‘of Tarsus, and Lydia, too, whose heart He opened to attend to the things which were ‘spoken to her? The first step in our being made priests is one which shows how graciously God loves us. 2. But only the sons of Aaron were taken with him. None others were admitted to the priesthood. And does God ever put into the gospel service any who are not included in that word of Christ to His Father, ‘‘Behold, I and the children which Thou hast given me?” Men are dead as toward God till they be born again, and dead men render no service. But when He “quickens” them into life and makes them “the sons of God,” then are they ‘““His workmanship created unto good works.” Priesthood and Sonship, therefore, are inseparably allied. Only a child’s service is acceptable to God, and only a child’s spirit is the spirit of priesthood. The joyous action of a child and the’ functions of priesthood blend in one. Inherent in priesthood is the principle of “the full assurance of faith.” Whoever says, in the depths of his feelings, Abba, Father, feels his priesthood. Thus, priesthood is no part of the outward arrangements of God’s Church; although it is what should permeate the outward, like thought in sound, like heat in light. It is not created by Papal conclave or by churchly council. It is no dangling pendant to the concatenation of historic centuries. It exists only in the birth of God’s life in the soul. Not the so-called Apostolical Succession is the principle of its being. The family principle is that which dominates the priesthood of the Church of God. Whoever is a member of the family of faith is a priest of God, man or woman, prince Or peasant, minister or layman. Whoever belongs not to the family of faith is not a priest of God, although on his head had been laid the hands of all the generations of Bishops from Linus of Rome to Pius IX. 8. Again, Aaron and his sons were washed with water. While water as used for refreshment sets forth in Scripture the influences of the Holy Spirit, as used for washing it is the blood and sufferings of Christ. As, “Christ gave Himself for the Church, that He might cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Aaron’s being washed with water was Christ’s being washed with His own blood and sufferings. For, bare He not our sins in His own body? Was not the defilement of our guilt im- puted to Him? And when the damnatory wrath of His Father was being poured out upon Him, did He not Himself say, ‘‘Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul?” (Psalm 69.). But did He avail to cleanse away the guilt laid upon Him? | Then was He washed with His own blood and sufferings. And, accordingly, the sons of Aaron being washed with water with Aaron typified the fact that believers died with ‘Christ, and have been washed from condemnation with His blood. The sufferings of their Substitute were the sufferings of believers. Now, Aaron and his sons were _ washed in order to priesthood. So Christ was not ‘‘made perfect” in priesthood except “through sufferings.’’ And believers are introduced into their priesthood only through the sufferings of Christ. Their priesthood starts into being only out of salvation pos- sessed. It is not for procuring salvation, but only for service. And always salvation before service, and as the foundation of service. 4. As another step in the consecration, Aaron and his sons were clothed for the "Office of priesthood. Aaron, in “garments of glory and beauty.” His sons, not in the _Magnificence belonging to him; for the excellencies of Christ are His own. Yet the ." were so clothed as to be like Aaron; for the excetlencies of Christ are imputed to us. The fine white linen of Aaron was upon his sons; that same material clothed both him and them; and are not believers clothed with the same righteousness which is ¢ hrist *s? Not only washed from condemnation, but judicially made righteous, and therein personally accepted. Not only so, but the sons of Aaron were represented in name of their tribe, as inscribed upon one of the onyx stones of memorial in the that effect, is an imitation of the holy oil; as in the sentence, “Receive ye the Holy 584 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. shoulder pieces of Aaron’s Ephod, and there they were enveloped in even the magnifi- — cence of the High Priest. So God has made beautiful all believers with the beauty of Christ. Not merely accepted in His righteousness, but even endeared to God, and His — very delight. Sanctified, says the Apostle: “sanctified through the offering of the — body of Jesus Christ.” Priesthood and sanctification to God are inseparably allied; and he is the appreciative priest who realizes that God has covered him over with the entire preciousness of his Savior. q 5. Again, Aaron and his sons were anointed with the holy oil. Peter says, “God anointed: Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost,” and John says, “The anointing © which ye have received.”” Thus how important to priesthood that we should have the sanctification of the Spirit as well; that He should teach us to feel the power of our sanctification in Christ, and to work it out in every day results. Whoever should imitate that holy oil should be cut off from Israel (Ex. 30: 33). © Men cannot confer the Holy Ghost; and a claim to do it, without express authority to Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.” Not so are priests ever made. 6. At length the filling of the hands of Aaron and his sons was the crisis of their consecration. The very word “consecration” is, in the Hebrew, “fillings.” The “ram of consecration” is the ‘‘ram of fillings.” So that the decisive moment of the conse-— cration was when their hands were filled, for it was giving the priest wherewith to offer. Now their hands were filled with the slain “ram of consecration,” and what had filled their hands was afterwards in part burned on the altar “for a sweet savor” to God, and in part eaten. When Christ presented Himself to the Father, His hands were © full of the merits of His ‘‘obedience unto death,” “‘a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.” And to His people it is given to have their hands filled with the same merits and the same sweet savor. Not alone are their persons accepted, but their works also. © Their hands, the organs of activity, are filled. It is a normal idea of priesthood that Christ’s merits are presented to the Father in every exercise of the priest’s office; in every prayer, in every praise, in every meditation, in every labor for others; insomuch” that even a cup of cold water given to a disciple in the name of a disciple is Christ filling the hand, and shall not lose its reward. A wonderful thing it is that His merits should pervade and sweeten all our imperfect obedience. Like as in a plant, in which — you have first the substance of it, and then that substance filled and beautified with the © green and the fragrance of vegetable life. We may fail to appreciate this, and, by consequence, may practically fail, in many things we do, to “walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.” But such is the official enrichment of our priesthood. What we — need is to cultivate a joyous faith in this endowment of our office, as corresponding to the priest’s eating of a part of the consecration ram. Thereby we should grow strong — in our consciousness of Christ in everything, and it would irradiate the sense of duty with the feeling of gladness, and make us to abound not alone in duties done, but, what is more, in the confidence of God’s approval of our dutifulness. For, whatever — the satisfaction resulting to our moral nature from the idea of duty performed, yet, as , matter of fact, we never do duties perfectly, and of the fact of our failures not seldom } have we so painful a conviction that it disheartens for service. But take home the , truth, that the merits and sweetness of Christ are made of God to fill and character our © obedience, like as in a cluster of ripened grapes, it is the virtue of the vine which has — expressed itself in the luscious fruit, and then neither idleness nor indifference shall be allowed to waste our energies, and even duties that are unpleasant will take on an attractive look. Oh, a Christ-fullness is what belongs to our service, and our priest- hood is a joy for ever. : The Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. 585 In fine, is not the Setting Apart of believers the Antitype of the Consecration to the Priesthood of Leviticus? In the very process of being saved in Christ is involved the being set apart or consecrated to service. “I have ordained you,” said Jesus, “that ye should go forth and bring forth fruit.” A divine ordination to office is theirs. Priestcraft it is which would use the Levitical consecration for sequestering and exaggerating the Christian ministry; but Priesthood it is which Shines to our view in the application of it to Christians. IV. Finally, the Actual Entrance of the Levitical Priests upon the discharge of their functions was made to foreshow the Resurrection Life of Christian service. The priests went not to their work till the eighth day; that is, the day after the seven days of their consecration had ended. On that eighth day Aaron stood forth in his perfected priesthood. On that day, then, he was the type of the Lord Jesus as risen from the dead; for Aaron’s Antitype, as having beén “made perfect through sufferings,’ could have had his perfected priesthood only in resurrection. Thus the eighth day was one of God’s symbols of resurrection; even as still Sunday, the eighth day, is the festival of resurrection, it being the eighth with reference to what has gone before and out of which it has risen, but as well the first with reference to what may follow, even as resurrection is the beginning of a new series of time. Now in correspondence to the fact, that in association with Aaron his sons also _ stood to their work not till the eighth day, is it not said that believers have risen with _ Christ? that their “life is hid with Christ in God?” and that even now they are “seated _ with Him in the heavenlies?” And does not Scripture bring this their resurrection life to bear with tremendous force in respect of all holy service? “If ye then be risen with Christ,” was Paul’s grand appeal to the Colossians. Thus was it foreshown that the only sphere of priesthood is resurrection life. We cannot be priests except as we have risen with Christ; we cannot properly discharge our priesthood except as we are realizing this fact. That we have actually passed from death unto life, and really have in us the risen life of Christ, and in our spirits here and now are part and parcel of the new creation of God; that is our resurrection life; and “priesthood has its play and power in a clear assurance of it. We are priests “not after the law of a carnal commandment,” but, in our Divine Melchisedec and Captain of our salvation, “after the power of an endless life.” Our priesthood in the present time is but the earnest and anticipation of it in heaven. Hence Priesthood appreciated is heavenly-mindedness. It sends forth its faith into the Heavenly Sanctuary, and brings back for its own inspiration and strengthening the foretasted blessedness of priesthood _ there. There we ‘shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.” There we shall serve God in the perfection of service; each one of us as that six-winged seraph of _ whom it is said, “with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.” How transporting the prospect. How quickening to our halting service now. Is it not evident that we should become more thoroughly the "practical servants of God, if we were conspicuously under the power of our resurrec- tion life? How it would put to flight worldly ambition, unseemly strife, unholy greed, : envyings, sensualness, selfishness. And honesty and honor, patience, meekness, tem- ¥ £ 4 pa tat tS Sed ia Nea oe ‘perance, diligence, brotherly kindness, and charity, how richly they all would grow along the pathway of priesthood in resurrection life. Looking back now over all this wealthy domain of Christian thought which we have endeavored to explore, what impression have we of God's estimate of the impor- tance and preciousness of Priesthood? Is it not the most spiritual, the most heavenly, of subjects? The priesthood of the people of God is their being put in possession of “the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of peace.” It is the direct outcome of the believer's personal union with the Savior, and of his identification with the work of his Substitute. It is Sonship. It is Sanctification. Tt is Heavenly-mindedness. It + . a? 586 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. is the Earnest of Heaven. It is the power of service. It touches our Christian life not alone at one or two points, but covers it from head to foot. It is our ability to walk worthy of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. It is the glorification of God’s boundless love for His saved ones in Christ. And the doctrine of priesthood it is all-important that we keep clear and familiar. Like a sun-glass, it brings the rays of light, otherwise scattered, to a burning focus. It necessitates the full honoring of Christ; enforcing the truth that nothing must be allowed to intervene between Him and the believer; and putting upon Him the whole weight of our souls. It defines and makes more vivid personal fellowship with God, and suffuses it with incense ahd fragrance. It demonstrates that the Assurance of Faith, instead of being that aristocratic privilege which so many think is accorded to only a favored few, is indeed the common birthright of every believer. And it directs us into “the joy of the Lord” which “is our strength,” and certifies us that “our joy may be full.” Moreover, it is the irresistible antagonist of some of the deadliest errors prevailing in Christendom. Brethren, we have different appointments of service. There are ministers and laymen, parents and children, friends and neighbors; but whatever our station, we are, as believers in Christ, priests of God. Let us appreciate it. Especially here, in the Council of our Church, let our gospel priesthood dominate our action, and distill into our souls both sweetness and light. Give honor to the Word of God. “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” “Thy words were found,” said Jeremiah, “and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” Oh, if only our Reformed Church, laity and clergy both, were living in the full priestliness of their standing in Christ! “Awake, O North wind, and come thou South; blow upon our garden, that the spices thereof may flow out!” Beloved brethren, my own heart interprets you, that you would not be satisfied to have me release your attention until I had spoken a brief loving tribute to him, — whose memory just now, by a melancholy interest, is uppermost in our hearts. Pass- ing, then, from the discussion of our glorious theme, and bearing with us its gospel blessedness into this the hour of our Church’s great sorrow, permit me to say that it has been with somewhat of painful effort I have sought to discharge the duty of this occasion. It was laid upon me by his appointment. And so frequently, during the composition of my sermon, my love for him brought up his image before me, and I delighted myself at thinking how one with me he would be in the thoughts and truths which I was preparing to deliver here. But what unexpected alterations of human experience. It was while engaged upon the closing pages of my manuscript I received the startling telegram, “Bishop Cummins is dying; come by the first train.” Dropping my pen, I hastened with all dispatch from Philadelphia to his home in Maryland, that, if possible, I might catch from his own lips his dying testimony. Alas, I was too late. His redeemed spirit had been for some hours with Jesus, when I reached that stricken and desolate household. Yet, although I had not the privilege of listening to himself, I learned of his triumphant departure from the vivid recitals of his weeping family. Our beloved Bishop and Leader was ready; not merely resigned, but acquiescent. “Then let me die,” was his quick response, when told by the physician that nothing more could be done. Then, with a trust strong, clear, and serene, like that of Stephen, he added, “(Lord Jesus receive my spirit.” After an interval he continued, “Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the billows near me roll, While the tempest still is high; The Priesthood of the Church of God—Nicholson. 587 Hide me, O my Savior, hide, Till the storm of life is past; ‘ Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last.” His very last utterance on earth was no more than what infant lips might have said, “Jesus, precious Savior;” at once his farewell to the world below, and his home- greeting to the world above; the simplest of all expressions of the heart, yet the sub- limest of all formulas of thought; the shortest, yet the fullest. So he died; and so he lives. In such words as these, as in a chariot of fire, his ascending spirit went triumph- ing “far above all heavens;” and yet, not until upon the Elishas left below had fallen the mantle of Elijah, in that message to the Church, ‘Tell them to go forward.” The very process of his dying was the march of victory. Within one hour and a quarter from his first knowing that he could not recover, all was over. The summons had come to him, and, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, he was required to answer it. Yet no consternation, not even a disturbance; all was so calm, so absorbed in the sweet will of God, so blissful. He died as he had lived; he lives as he died. He had fulfilled his priesthood on earth; he is now in the priesthood of the heavens. He had here drawn nigh in full assurance of faith; he is now within the vail, where faith has merged in sight. “His sword was in his hand, Still warm with recent fight, Ready that moment, at command, Through rock and steel to smite. His spirit, with a bound, Left its encumbering clay; His tent, at sunrise, on the ground A darkened ruin lay. Soldier of Christ, well done! Praise be thy new employ; And while eternal ages run, Rest in thy Savior’s joy.” This is not the time to analyze his character, neither to delineate his great work, neither to forecast the magnitude of its far-reaching results. The future will provide for the due rendering of those services. But no labored effort do we need for giving shape to our present vivid apprehensions, or for calling forth our lively affections. We recognize without delay how rich and sacred a bequest to us is his memory, so untar- nished. We recall at once the sweetnesses of his character, his marked humility, his Christ-like meekness, his long-suffering gentleness, his unretaliating speech, nis per- sistent patience. We remember his abiding faith in God and His word, his understanding of the gospel, his personal trust in Jesus, his reliance on Christ as his only righteousness, his rejoicings in the felt blessedness of salvation experienced; his moral bravery, his courage of faith, his decision of character, his self-abnegation, his sacrifice of self for truth and principle; his fervid oratory, his eloquent defence and preaching of the gospel, and his influence over men. We speak what we know, and testify what we have seen. Great indeed is our loss. No other man, be he how transcendent as he may, can ever stand to the Reformed Episcopal Church in the same relations, for he was our Luther. Nor shall his name ever fade from the annals of the Church militant. He was spared sufficiently long to us, that our Church might stand upon her own feet; and now her banner is unfurled to the breezes of heaven, and on its gleaming folds inscribed the legend, “Jesus, precious Savior.” His death is to us as God’s clarion call; his absence from us is filled up with the presence of Jesus. 588 _ Pulpit Power and Eloquence. His beloved family and our beloved Church are inseparable in the bonds of sorrow; but to them and to us the gospel truths at which we have been looking are sunlight to the gloom. We have sometimes seen in the west a pile of dark clouds whereupon, and soaring high above them, a scene of gorgeous grandeur, of many} blending hues of light, of temple, towers, and palaces, was enkindled by the settin sun; and in the ravishing of our imaginations, as though the New Jerusalem had com down out of heaven in burnished gold and flashing gems, we thought no more of dark clouds at the base, save only as enhancing by contrast the glory on high. “T sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory whic shall be revealed in us.” [This sermon by Bishop Nicholson of the Episcopal Reformed Church is regarded as one of the best of the century by James M. Gray, D. D., author of the Synther Plan of Bible Study. It was preached July 12, 1876.] i (589) THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. EDWARDS A. PARK, D. D. “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”—I Corinthians, 2: 2. Should the apostle who penned this eloquent expression resume his ministry on earth, and should he deign to hold converse with us on the principles of his high calling, and should he repeat his strong words,—I am now, as of old, determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified—some of us would feel an impulse to ask him: “Can your words mean what they appear to imply? You are learned in Rabbin- ical literature; you have read the Grecian poets, and even-quoted from Aratus; you have examined the statuary of Greece, and have made a permanent record of an inscription upon an altar in ancient Athens; you have reasoned on the principles of Aristotle from effect to cause, and have taken rank with the philosophers, as well as ' orators of the world; and now, you seem to utter your determination to abandon all knowledge save that which concerns the Jew who was crucified. You once said that you had rather speak five words with the understanding, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue; and here, lest the pithy language of this text should fail of being truly apprehended, we desire to learn its precise meaning in three particulars: “In the first place, do you intend to assert that our knowledge is controlled by our will? You determined not to know anything save one. Can you by mere choice expel all but one of your old ideas, and make your mind like a chart of white paper in reference to the vast majority of your familiar subjects of thought?” ‘I am ready to concede,’ is the reply, ‘that much of our knowledge is involuntary; still a part of it is dependent on our will. In some degree, at some times, we may attend to a theme or not attend to it, as we choose, and thus our choice may influence our belief, and thus are we responsible, in a certain measure, for our knowledge. Besides, the word “know” is used by us Hebraistic writers to include not only a mental apprehension, but also a moral feeling. When we know Christ, we feel a hearty complacence in Him. Again, to “know” often signifies to manifest, as well as to possess, both knowledge and love. We do not know an old acquaintance when we of set purpose withhold all public recognition of him, and act outwardly as if we were inwardly ignorant of his being. But I, Paul, say to you, as I said to the Corinthians, that I shall make the atonement of Christ, and nothing but the atonement of Christ, the main theme of my regard, of my loving regard, and such loving regard as is openly avowed.’ Thus our first query is answered; but there is a second inquiry which some of us would propose to the apostle, were he uttering to us personally the words which he wrote to the Corinthians. It is this: “Should a Christian minister out of the pulpit, as well as in the pulpit, know nothing save the crucified one? Did you not know how to sustain yourself by the manufacture of tents; and did you not say to the circle of elders at Ephesus,—These hands have ministered to my necessities? Did you not dispute with the Roman sergeants—plead your cause before the Roman courts? Must not every minister 590 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. cease for a time to converse on the word of Jesus; and must he not think of providing for his own household, lest he become worse than an infidel?” : ‘I am willing to admit, is the reply, ‘that the pulpit is the place whee ‘the minister should speak of Christ with more uniform distinctness than in other places; but there are no places, and no times, in which he should fail to manifest, more o less obviously, his interest in his Redeemer. Wherever he goes he has a pulpit. Whether he eat, or drink, or whatever he do, he must do all for the glory of God, and the highest glory of God is Christ, and the highest honor of Christ is in Him crucified. A minister must always respect the proprieties of life; in honoring them he knows that appropriate model man, who, rising from the tomb, wrapped up the napkin that was about His head, and laid it in a place by itself. Now the proprieties of life do require a minister to speak in the pulpit on themes more plainly and more easily connected with the atonement, than are various themes on which he must. speak in the market-place or in the schools. But all subjects on which he may discourse do lead, sooner or later, more or less obviously and easily, to the great work of Jesus; and he should converse on them with the intent of seizing every hint they give him, following out every line to which they point him, in the direction of the cross. I have been in many synagogues, and in the temple, and on Mars’ Hill, and on a Mediterranean ship-deck; and once was I hurried along in a night-ride from Jerusalem to Czesarea with four hundred and seventy soldiers, horsemen and spear- men. I have resided at leisure with my arm chained to a Roman guard in a prison at the Capital of the Roman Empire; but in all such places I have felt, and every- where I do feel, bound to speak out, and to act out, all the interest which the fitnesses” of the occasion admit, in the atonement of Jesus; and not to manifest, and not to feel, any interest in any theme which may lessen my regard for this—the chiefest among ten thousand!’ But there is a third question which some of us would propose to the apostiall were he to speak in our hearing the words of the text: “Should every man, as well as every minister, cherish and exhibit no interest in — anything but Christ? Should a sailor at the mast-head, a surgeon in the extirpation — of the clavicle, a warrior in the critical moment of the last charge, look at nothing, — and hear of nothing, but the cross? Must not every one conduct businesses, and sustain cares, which draw his mind away from the atonement?” ‘I am ready to grant,’ is the reply, ‘that some duties are less plainly and less intimately connected than others with the work of Jesus; but all of them are connected — with it in some degree, and this connection may be seen by all who choose to gain — the fitting insight. The great principle of duty belonging to the minister in the pulpit, belongs to him everywhere; and the great principle of duty belonging to the q minister, belongs to every man, woman, and child. There is not one religion for the 4 man when he is in the temple, and another religion for the man when he is in the parlor or in the street. There is not one law for the ordained pastor, and another law for the tradesman or the mechanic. The same law and no different one, the same — religion and no different one, are the law and religion for the apostles, and publicans, — and prophets, and taxgatherers, and patriarchs, and children, and nobles, and beggars. Every man is bidden to refuse everything, if it be the nearest friend, who interferes — with the claims of the Messiah; and therefore every man, layman as well as clergyman, must keep his eye fixed primarily upon the cross. He may see other things within the range of that cross, but he must keep the cross directly at the angle of his vision, and allow nothing else, when placed side by side with the tree on Calvary, to allure his eye away from that central, engrossing object.’ : Here, then, is our third question answered; and in these three replies to these three queries, we perceive the meaning of our text to be: that not on the first day only, The Prominence of the Atonement—Park. 591 but on every day likewise, not in the religious assembly only, but in all assemblies, and in all solitudes likewise, not the preacher only, but the hearer likewise,—every man must adopt the rule, to give his voluntary, his loving, his secret and open regard to nothing so much as to the character and work of his Redeemer. Having inquired into the meaning of the apostle’s words, let us proceed, in the next place, to inquire into the importance of making the atonement of Christ the only great object of our thought, speech, and action. And here, did we hold a personal interview with the author of our text, we should _ be prompted to put three additional queries before him. Our first inquiry would be: “Ts not your theme too contracted? It is well to know Christ, but in all the vary- _ ing scenes of life is it well not to know anything else? Will not the pulpit become wearisome if, spring and autumn, summer and winter, it confine itself to a single topic? We have known men preach themselves out by incessant repetitions of the scene ¢ at Calvary,—a scene thrilling in itself, and on that very account not bearing to be i presented in its details, every Sabbath day. How much less will the varying sensibili- " ties of the soul endure the reiteration of this tragic tale every day and at every interview! Such extreme familiarity induces irreverence. The Bible is not confined to this theme. It is rich in ecclesiastical history, political history, ethical rules, metaphysical discussion, comprehensive theology. It contains one book of ten chapters which has not a single allusion to God, and several books which do not mention Christ; why then do you shut us up to a doctrine which will circumscribe the mind of good men, and result in making their conversation insipid?” ‘Contracted!’—this is the reply—‘and do you consider this topic a limited one, whose height, depth, length, breadth, no finite mind can measure? Of what would you speak?’ “We would speak of the divine existence.” ‘But Christ is the “I am.”’ “We would speak of the divine attributes.” ‘But Christ is the Alpha and Omega; He searcheth the reins and trieth the hearts of men; He is the same yesterday, today, and forever; full of grace and truth; to Him belong wisdom and power and glory and honor; of His dominion is no end. Of what, then, would you speak?’ ? “We would speak of the divine sovereignty.” ‘But Christ taught us to say: Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight—and He and His Father are one.’ “We would converse on the divine decrees.” ‘But all things are planned for His praise who was in Christ, and in whom Christ was at the beginning.’ “We would discourse on electing love.” ‘But the saints are elect in Christ Jesus.’ | “We would utter many words on the creation of men and angels.” : ‘Now by our Redeemer were all things created that are in heaven and that are in the earth, visible and invisible.’ ‘ “We would converse on the preservation of what has been created.” ‘Now Christ upholdeth all things by the word of His power. What would you have, then, for your theme?’ My “We would take the flowers of the field for our theme.” ‘But they are the delight, as well as the contrivance of the Redeemer.’ ¢ “We would take for our theme the globes in space.” ie ‘But they are the work of His fingers.’ “Then we would take the very winds of heaven for our theme, lawless and "erratic as they are.” ae Se | | 592 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ‘But Jesus taught us to comment upon these as an illustration of His truth. Hi poetic mind gave us the conception that the wind bloweth where it chooseth to blow; and we look on, wondering whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, knowing onkyl that is the breath of the Wonderful Counsellor, who arouseth it as He listeth, or saith, Peace, be still. What else then, do you prefer for your topic of conversation?” “We prefer the laws of nature for our topic.” ‘But in them the Father worketh and Christ worketh equally.’ “Tf it be so, we will select the fine and useful arts for our subject.” | ‘But all the materials of these arts and all the laws which compact them, and in’ all the ingenuity which arranges them are of His architectonic plan, He is the guide of the sculptor, painter, musician, poet. He is the contriver of all the graces which we in our idolatry ascribe to the human discoverer, as if man had originally invented them. The history of the arts is the history of Christ’s Ov SEES on earth, Will you propose, then, some other theme for your remark?’ “Do let us converse on the moral law.” ‘You may; but Christ gave this law and came to magnify it.’ “Then let us comment on the ceremonial law.” ‘You may; but all its types are prophecies of Jesus.’ “Then we will expatiate on virtue in the general.” ‘Do so; but Christ is the first exemplar, the brighest representative of all abstract SOOELIS of all your virtue in the general.’ “Then we will take up the ethical maxims.’ ‘Take them up; but they are embodied in Him who is the way, the truth, the life.’ “We will resort, then, to human responsibility for our subject of discourse.” ‘But we must all appear before the judgment seat of that fair-minded arbiter who is man as well as God.’ “May we not speak of eternal blessedness?” ‘Yes: but it is Christ who welcomes His chosen into life.’ “Shall we not converse, then, on endless misery?” ‘Yes; but it is Christ who will proclaim: Depart, ye cursed.’ “The human body;—we would utter some words on that.” ‘But your present body is the image of what your Lord wore once, and the body that you will have, if you die in the faith, is the image of what your Lord wears now; —the image of the body slain for our offenses and raised again for our justification. — And have you still a favorite theme which you have not suggested?’ , “The pleasures of life are our favorite theme.” ‘Yes, and Jesus provided them and graced them at Cana.’ “The duties of the household are our favorite theme.” ‘Yes, and Jesus has prescribed them and disciplines you by them, and will judge you for your manner of regarding them.—What would you have, then, what can you think of for your choice topic of discourse?’ “We love to talk of our brethren in the faith.” ‘But they are indices of Christ, and He is represented by them.’ “We choose to converse on our Redeemer’s indigent, imprisoned, diseased, agonized followers.” ‘And He is an hungered, athirst, penniless, afflicted in them, and whatsoever we do to one of them we do to Him, and what we say of one of them we say of Him.’ “May we speak in the pulpit of slaves?” ‘Of slaves! Can you not speak of Medes and Parthians, Indians and Arabians? Why not then of Africans? Have they, or have they not, immortal souls? Was Jesus, or was He not, crucified for them? Was He ashamed of the lowly and the down- trodden, and those who have become the reproach of men and the despised of the q The Prominence of the Atonement—Park. 593 F all things, globes or atoms, suggest thoughts leading in a right line or in a curved line to the cross of Christ. All things, being thus nearly or remotely suggestive of the atonement, are for your sakes; whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, life, or death, or things present, or things to come,—all are yours, for your oughts, for your words. If things pertain to the divine essence, the whole of that s the essence of Jesus; if they pertain to the divine relations, all of them are the relations of Jesus; if they pertain to the noblest and brightest features of seraphs, all human life, in all our vicissitudes Jesus keeps up His brotherhood with us; if they ‘pertain to the vilest and darkest spot of our depravity, they pertain to Jesus,—for to speak aright of sin is to be determined to speak of Christ and of Him crucified for sin. 7 ‘And is this the doctrine which men call a contracted one? Narrow! The very suspicion of its being narrow has now suggested the first reason why you should place it and keep it as the crown of all your words and deeds:—it is so large, so rich, so boundless, that you need nothing which excludes it. And therefore,’ continues the Apostle, ‘I mean to know and to love nothing, and to make it manifest that I care for othing, in comparison with, and disconnected from, the God-man, as He develops all is attributes and all His relations on the cross.’ _ But were the author of these laconic words in a familiar conference with us, we might be tempted to address to him a second inquiry: } “Is not your theme too large? At first we deemed it too small, but now it swells : before us into such colossal dimensions that we change our ground, and ask: an the narrow mind of man take in this multiplicity of relations, comprehended in both the natures, and in the redemptive, as well as all the other works of Christ? Do ‘not frail powers need one day as a day of rest, and one place as a sanctuary of repose, from every thought less tender than that of the atoning death itself? Must we not call in our minds from Christ and Him crucified, so as to concentrate all our emotions on the simple fact of Christ crucified?” ‘Too large a theme!’"—this is the reply.— it is a large theme, toc large to be fully comprehended by finite intelligences. Men have dreamed of exhausting the atone- ment by defining it to be a plan for removing the obstacles which stand in the way of our pardon. It is too large for that definition, as the atonement also persuades the Most to forgive us. Then men have thought to mark it round about by saying that is a scheme for inducing God to interpose in our aid. But the atonement is too large for that defining clause, as it also presents motives to man for accepting the terposition of God. Then some havé thought to define it exactly, by saying that z atonement is both an appeal to the Law-giver and also an appeal to the sinner. Too large still is the atonement for that explanation. It is an appeal to both God and an, but it is more. It is an appeal to the universe, and is as many-sided as the iverse itself is to be variously affected. Can we by searching find out the whole atoning love? It is the love of Him who stretched out His arms on the fatal wood, and pointed to the right hand and to the left hand, and raised His eyes upward, and ast them downward; and thus all things above and below, and on either side, He nbraced in His comprehensive love. It is a large theme, but not too large to operate $a motive upon us. The immeasurable reach of a motive is the hiding of its power. e mind of man is itself expansive, and requires and will have something immense id infinite of truth or error, either overpowering it for good or overmastering it for evil. The atonement is a great theme, but not too great; and for the additional reason,—its greatness lies, in part, in its reducing all other doctrines to a unity, its | ae them around itself in an order which makes them all easily under- ‘stood. We know in other things the power of unity amid variety. We know how iT . 594 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. simple the geography of a land becomes by remembering that its rivers, although ~ meandering in unnumbered circuits around the hills and through the vales, yet pursue one main direction from one mountain to one sea. Now all the truths of God flow into the atonement. They are understood by means of it, because their tendencies are toward it; and it is understood by means of them, because ita receives and comprehends them. ‘Consider more fully the first part of this sentence; all other truths are understood by means of the atonement. It gives to them all a unity by illustrating them all. Other truths are not so much independent themes, as they are branches growing up or side-wise out of this one root, and they need this single theme in order that their relations may be rightly understood. What, for example, can we know in its most important bearings, unless we know the history and office of our Redeemer? Begin from what point we may to examine the uses of things, we can never measure their full utility until we view them from the cross. The trees bud and blossom. Why? To bear fruit for the sustenance of the human body. But is this an ultimate object? The nourishment of the body favors the growth of the mind. But is the human mind an end worthy of all the contrivances in nature? Does the sun, with all its retinue of stars, pursue its daily course with no aim ulterior to man’s welfare? Do we adopt a Ptolemaic theory in morals, that man is the center of the system, and other worlds revolve around him? All things were made for God, as the Being in whom they: all terminate. Do they exist for elucidating His power? This is not his chief attribute. His knowledge? There is a nobler perfection than omniscience. His love? But there is one virtue imbedded as a gem in His love, and His love is but a shining casket for this pearl of infinite price. This pearl is grace. This is the central ornament of the character of Jehovah. But there is no grace in Jehovah save as it beams forth i Christ; not in Christ as a mere Divinity, nor in Christ as a mere spotless humanity, but in the two united, and in that God-man crucified. All things were made by Him and for Him, rising from the cross to the throne. Without reference to Him in His” atoning love, has nothing been made that was made in this world. The star in the East led wise men once to the manger where the Redeemer lay; and all the stars of heaven lead wise men now to Him who has risen above the stars, and whose glory illumines them all. He is termed the sun of righteousness; and, as the material sun. binds all the planets around it in an intelligible order, so does Christ shine over, and under, and into, and through all other objects, attract them all to Himself, marshal them all into one clear and grand array, showing them all to be His works, all sug- gestive of our duty, our sin, our need of atonement, our dependence on the one God, and the one Mediator between God and man. - ‘The first part of my sentence was, All other truths are understood by means of the atonement. Consider next the second part: The atonement is understood by means of other truths. It crystallizes them around itself, and reduces them into a system, not only because it explains them, but also because it makes them explain it. Tt is not too large a theme, for all the sciences and the arts bring their contributions to make it orderly and plain. Our text is a simple one, because its words are inter- preted by a thousand facts shining upon it, and making themselves and it luminous in their radiations around and over it. Listen again to its suggestive words: “For I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” ‘Now, what is the meaning of this plain term, “Christ?” It means a “King.” But how can we appreciate the King, unless we learn the nature of the beings over whom He rules? He reigns over the heavens; therefore we investigate the heavens. The whole earth is full of His glory; therefore we study the earth. He is the Lord over the angels; when we reflect on them, we catch a glimpse of Him in His regal state. He The Prominence of the Atonement—Park. 595 is the King of the Jews and the Gentiles. When we meditate on men, we enjoy a glance at Him who was born for this end, that He might have dominion over our ‘race. When we contemplate the material worlds, all the vastness and the grandeur included in them—the sphere of mind, all the refinement and energy involved in it— ‘we are overpowered by the reality, surpassing fable, that He who superintends all the “movements of matter and first spake it into being and once framed, as He now governs, the souls of His creatures—He is the King who atoned for us; and the more we know of the stars in their courses, and of the spirit in its mysteries, so much the eeper is our awe in view of the condescending pity which moved their Creator to “become one with a lowly creature acquainted with grief for you and me. So much is involved in the word, “Christ.” ‘But our text speaks of Jesus Christ. That word, “Jesus!” What is the meaning of it? It means a “deliverer,”’ and in the view of some interpreters it means “God, the deliverer.”’ Deliverer? From what? We do not understand the power of His “great office, unless we learn the nature and the vileness of sin; and we have no con- ‘ception how mean, how detestable, sin is, unless we know the needlessness of it, the xs obleness of the will which degrades itself into it, the excellence of the law which is dishonored by it. All our studies, then, in regard to the nature of the will, the unforced voluntariness of depravity, the extent of it through our race, the depth of it, ne purity of the commands aiming to prevent it, the attractions of virtue, the strange- mess of their not prevailing over the temptations of vice—they are not mere "metaphysics; they are studies concerning the truth and the grace of Immanuel, who is r od with us, and whose name is “Deliverer’”’ because He delivers His people from their sins; sins involving the power and the penalty of free wrong choice; a penalty including the everlasting punishment of the soul; a punishment suggesting the nature and the character of the divine law, and the divine Lawgiver, in their relation to the conscience and all the sensibilities of the mind; and that mind, as undying as its Maker. All these things are comprehended in the word, “Jesus.” ‘But our text speaks of Jesus Christ and Him crucified: and this third term, “crucified,” adds an emphasis to the two preceding terms, and stirs us up to examine ‘our own capabilities—to learn the skill pervading our physical organism, so exquisitely ented for pain as well as pleasure; the wisdom apparent in our mental structure, so enly sensitive to all that can annoy as well as gratify; and thus we catch a glimpse of the truth, that He who combines all of our. dignity with none of our guilt, and with all of the divine glory, and who thus develops all that is fit to be explained in ‘man, and all that can be explained in God—He it is who chose to hang and linger with aching nerve and bleeding heart upon the cross for you and me. This cross — out an atonement of the sciences and the arts and brings them also, as well as devout men, at one with God; all of them tributary to the doctrine that we are bought with a price—that we are redeemed, not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of a man, who was God manifest in the flesh. Too large a theme is the atone- ment? But it breaks down the middle wall of partition that has kept apart the different studies of men; and it brings them together as illustrations of the truth, which in their light becomes as simple as it is great. _ ‘The very objection, then, that the redemptive work is too extensive for our familiar converse, has suggested the second reason why it should be the main thing for us to think upon, and speak upon, and act upon: It systematizes all other themes, and gains from them a unity which becomes the plainer because it is set off by a luminous variety; and for this cause,’ continues the apostle, ‘I intend to know nothing with supreme love, except this centralizing doctrine which combines all other truths into a constellation of glories.’ J | ee { third hour, the hour of triumph, when His troops of heralds shouted at His arrival: 596 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. There is still a third inquiry which we might present to the author of our text, could we meet him in a personal colloquy: r “Your words all converge toward one point; will they not then become manoto- nous, and inapposite to the varying wants of various, or even the same individuals?” “A monotonous theme!’—this is the reply: ‘What can be more diversified than the character and work of Him who is at one time designated as the omniscient God, | and at another time as a Mechanic; at one time as a Judge, and at another time as an Intercessor; now a Lion, and then a Lamb; here a Vine, a Tree, there a Way, a Door; again a Stone, a Rock, still again a Star, a Sun; here without sin, and there He was — made sin for us. :: ‘Monotonous is this theme? Then it is sadly wronged, and the mind of man is sadly harmed; for this mind shoots out its tendrils to grasp all the branches of the tree | of life, and the tree in its healthy growth has branches to which every sensibility of the human mind may cling. The judgment is addressed by the atonement, concerning the nature of law, of distributive justice, the mode of expressing this justice either by punishing the guilty or by inflicting pain as a substitute for punishment, the influence of this substitution on the transgressor, on the surety, on the created universe, on God Himself. There is more of profound and even abstruse philosophy involved in the specific doctrine of the atonement, than in any other branch of knowledge; and there has been or will be more of discussion upon it, than upon all other branches of knowl- edge; for sacred science is the most fruitful of all sciences in logical deduction, and this specific part of the science is the richest of all its parts. ‘Not only the judgment, but also the imagination is addressed by the atonement, as this is the comprehensive event pointing to those three several hours, the like to which have never been heard of, no, nor ever shall be: that first hour, the hour of humiliating change, when the Son of God, who had been from the beginning with God, gathering in the praises of angels and enjoying the honors of His universal reign, on a sudden left the bosom of His Father, and choirs of angels followed far off from His train, and heralded to the shepherds His arrival on earth; and that second hour, the hour of gloom, when the only begotten Son, smitten of the Father, cried out with a loud voice at the heaviness of the blow, and the earth was astonished more than when the prophet asked of old: Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? Was Thine anger against the rivers? Was Thy wrath against the sea? And that. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in, scarred in His hands and feet and side, but over all His foes victorious, and marching from His cross to His throne—and let all the angels of God now worship Him! What was the appearance of heaven, how did its hosts look during that first hour, when the very light of heaven moved out of its place, and descended gracefully like a star to Bethlehem? And what was the solemnity of heaven, what was the deed done there, during that second hour, when the first Person withdrew Himself from the second Person, and the angels veiled their faces at the unutterable solitude of Him who trod the wine-press alone? And what was the festival in the realm of joy during that third hour, when its monarch came riding prosperously home, with His sword upon His thigh, and all the hearts of the redeemed threw open their doors: for His glad entrance—a conqueror, and more than conaueror, welcome, welcome to His everlasting rest! At these three scenes, in a life all full of transporting eras, the imagination falters, and lingers around them, and loses itself in a strange delight; and whether it be in the body or out of the body, it cannot tell. And will you say that scenes like these are monotonous?” 4 “Not so for the poet or the philosopher,” we might reply, “but are they variously appropriate for the common mind?” stirs tamer tes cE. sda ls The Prominence of the Atonement—Park. 597 ‘The common mind!’—this is the rejoinder. ‘The common mind is reached first of all by the Atonement. Those children who cried “hosanna” in’ the temple are yet in our eye as pictures of thousands of children, who feel and love the divine attributes as they are made plain and well-nigh tangible in Jesus. Simeon and Anna yet stand in that same temple as statues representing hundreds of aged saints, who love to read the history of their Redeemer when all other letters become illegible, and who can hear His voice when all other voices become inaudible, and who grow young again as His fresh doctrine rejuvenates their heart. Zaccheus climbing the sycamore still remains in our vision as a symbol of many a rich extortioner, who cannot rest until he has entertained his Lord, and consecrated the half of his goods to the poor, who are to be always with him, reminding him of their Redeemer. That widow weeping as she measures her slow steps out of the city, and smiling through her tears as she receives her Son healthy from the bier on which He was borne toward the needlessly opened tomb, yet continues in our view as a representative of many a mourner relieved by His timely charities. Those minstrels who laughed Him to scorn are images of millions who despise Him; and then He blesses them, and then with glad voice they spread the fame of Him round about; the fame of Him whose mission it is to render good for evil, and to be the friend of His foes. If I desire to be soothed, I find nowhere such gentleness as at His last supper. If I aim to be stimulated, I find noth- ing like His crown of thorns stirring me to duty. If I need to be joyous, whither shall I go but to Him, all whose garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made him glad? ‘The very intimation that the Atonement addresses only one sensibility, and is appropriate to only one class of men, in one mood of mind, has now suggested the third reason why this doctrine should be the main spring of our inward and outward enterprise: It is so flexible and multiform, that it must be apposite to every man in every change of character or state; and therefore,’ continues the apostle, ‘I desire to make nothing prominent in my inward thought or outward life, except this ever-fitting truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified!’ Having now stated three reasons why it is important to make the redemptive scheme our main object of interest, let us close this discourse with three brief inquiries into the method of giving the desired prominence to this wonderful scheme. And, first, were we conversing face to face with the author of our text, when he had become Paul the aged and the counsellor, we might ask him: “In what method shall we resist our natural disinclination to make the grace of Christ so conspicuous? Is there not such a disinclination? Will not your hearers, will not you yourself, much more, shall not we who have never been caught up to the third heaven, feel tempted to elevate self above the redemptive mercy?” ‘I fear it;'"—this is the reply—I fear it for myself. Many secret misgivings have disturbed me. I know the need of watchfulness. But I have a fixed resolve. If any man be tempted to find some less humbling theme, I more; circumcized the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee (after the most straitest sect I lived a Pharisee), as touch- ing the righteousness of the law blameless. Yet I am determined to count all these things as loss, that I may win Christ. ‘You inquire about my hearers. They will prefer to gratify their self-esteem, rather than receive the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus. I have tried them again and again. I knew the pride of Corinth when I avowed to her citizens: I am deter- mined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I knew then that Corinth was called, The Wealthy. For more than eighteen months I dwelt within her proud walls. I met her glad citizens on the Acrocorinthus, enjoying their magnificent scenery. I saw them going down the marble steps of their fountain 598 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. Peirene, where their famed Pegasus, as they believed, was caught by Bellerophon. Vg visited their stadium, and I drew one of my illustrations from it. I looked in upon & their theatre, and was moved by it to exclaim: We are become a theatre to the world, to angels, to men. I beheld the gay throngs at the Corinthian Amphitheatre, that ; edifice so massive that the remains of it, as also of their stadium and their theatre, — are yet to be seen, aid long alter your dying day will be visited and admired by your ~ own countrymen. It is true, I did feel often that those votaries of pleasure would — look upon my preaching of the cross as foolishness in comparison with their rounds. % of festivity. But none of these things moved me. I was not ashamed of the Gospel i of Christ. I had a fixed plan. I wrote from Corinth to the very capita. of the world: i So much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you who are at Rome also. — Wherever I went, I knew that bonds and imprisonment awaited me for my chief theme of discourse, yet I was determined to confer not with flesh and blood; for I said: A { necessity is upon me; yea, woe is me if I preach not the Gospel of Christ even in them a palaces of Corinth and of Rome. And if my steadfast resolution helped me to resist my own and my hearers’ pride in the brilliant cities of the East, then your set resolve — ‘ will nerve you anywhere, everywhere, to the same humbling service. 4 ‘Here, then, is the first method in which you may keep up the habit of making Jesus and Him crucified, the soul of all your activity: Bring to your help the force of a resolute determination. There is a tendency in this resolute spirit to divert your thoughts from other themes, to turn the current of your sensibilities into the right | channel, to invigorate your choice, to exert a direct and reflex influence in confirming — the whole soul in Jesus. God is in that determination. He inspires it. He invigorates - 4 it. He works with it and by it. There is a power in it, ee the power is not yours it is the power of God. God is in every holy resolve of man.’ oe: In our interview with the apostle we should address to him a second inquiry: 3 “Tn what method can we avoid both the fact and the appearance of being slavishly 7 coerced into the habit of conversing on Christ and on Christ alone? You speak of taking your stand, adhering to your decision; but this dry, stiff resolve—comes any — genial spirit from it? Will you not be a slave to your unswerving purpose? Your ? inflexible rule—will it not be a hard one, wearisome to yourself, disagreeable to others? You hold up a weighty theme by a dead lift.” ‘I am determined’—this is the reply—‘and it is not only a strong, but it is a loving — resolve. For the love of Christ constraineth me; whom having not seen in the flesh I love; in whom, though now I see him not, yet believing, I rejoice with joy unspeak- _ able and full of glory. It is not a business-like eeolatnel It is not a diplomatic © purpose. It is not a mechanical force. It is an affectionate decision. It is a joyous rule. It is the effluence of a supreme attachment to the Redeemer. ‘And this is the second method in which you may retain Jesus Christ as the jewel of your speech and life: Cherish a loving purpose to do so. A man has strength to — accomplish what with a full soul he longs to accomplish. Your Christian toil will be irksome to you, if it be not your cordial preference; but if your undeviating resolve spring out of a hearty choice of your Savior, then will it be ever refreshed and enlivened by your outflowing, genial preference; then will your pious work be the repose of your soul. There is a power in your love to your work. It is a power to make your labor easy for yourself and attractive to others. This is not your power; it is the power of God. He enkindles the love within you. He enlivens it. He gives “it warmth. He makes it instinct with energy. God is in all the holy joy of man,’ In our conference with the author of our text we might suggest to him our third and last inquiry: “Tn what method can we feel sure of persevering in this habitual exaltation of Christ? You speak of your stern purpose, but can you depend upon the continuance The Prominence of the Atonement—Park. 599 of it? You speak of your cordial as well as set resolve. But who are you? (forgive our pertinacious query.) Jesus we know. But His disciples, His chief apostles—is not every one of them a reed shaken with the wind, tossed hither and thither, unstable as a wave upon the sea?” ‘I know it is so’—this is the reply. ‘Often am I afraid lest, having preached the Gospel to others, I should be a castaway. And after all I am persuaded that nothing— height, depth, life, death, nothing shall be able to separate me from the love of Christ; - for I put my confidence in Him, and while my purpose is inflexible and affectionate, it is also inwrought with trust in the atonement and the intercession. I do pursue my Christian life in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. For all the piety of the best of men is in itself as grass, and the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field. Therefore serve I the Lord with all humility of mind and with many tears and temptations. Yet I am determined with a confiding love. I am troubled on every side; my flesh has no rest; without are fightings, within are fears; in presence I am base among you, my bodily presence is weak and my speech contemptible; and if I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern my infirmities. Still, after all, I am determined, my right hand being enfolded in the hand of my Redeemer. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. For my conversation is in heaven, from _ whence I am to look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself. I say the truth in Christ; I lie not; I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I injured the church of God; I am less than the least of all saints. Still I am determined; for by the grace of God I am what I am; and this grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I but the grace of God which was with me; for I can do al! things through Christ which strengtheneth me, and therefore I am determined. ‘Borne onward, therefore, by your fixed plan, and no one can succeed in anything without a plan, yet you must never rely ultimately upon your determined spirit. Allured further and further onward by your delight in your plan, and no one can work as a master in anything without enthusiasm in his prescribed course, still you must ‘not place your final dependence upon your affectionate spirit; for if you take, for your last prop, either the sternness or the cheerfulness of your own determination, then ~ you will know your determination, and you are not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Here, then, is the third method in which you may give the fitting prominence to the best of themes: You must rest for your chief and final support on _ Him and only on Him, from whom all wise plans start, by whom they all hold out, _ to whom they all tend, who is all and in all, Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’ My Christian brethren, you are all apostles. Every man, every woman, every _ child, the richest and the poorest, the most learned and the mostaignorant of you—who _ have come up hither to dedicate yourselves and this sanctuary* to your Lord, all being sent of Him to serve Him, have in fact and in essence the same responsibility _festing on you as weighed on the author of our text. And he was burdened by the ‘same kind of temptations and fears which oppress your spirit. But he was held up om failing in his work by a three-fold cord; and that was his resolute determina~ tion, as loving as it was resolute, and as trustful as it was loving, to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The last that you hear of him as an impenitent man wis in the words: “And Saul, yet breathing out threatening and slaughter against the 4 disciples of the Lord.” It was Christ whom the proud Jew last opposed. The first that you hear of him as a convicted man is in the words: “Who art thou, Lord?” It ; *This sermon was preached at the dedication of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, April 24, ’ Him, speaking of Him, loving Him first, and last, and midst, and without end. 600 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. was Christ whom the inquiring Jew first studied. And the first that you hear of as a penitent man is: ‘‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” It was Christ to who the humble disciple first surrendered his will. And the first that you hear of hima Christian minister is: “And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues that He is the Son of God.” And the last that you hear of him as a Christian hero is: “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.” And the secret of this victorious career is in words like those of our text: “I adhered to my plan (when among he fickle Corinthians), I was decided (when among the vacillating Galatians), to know nothing (when among the learned at Athens and them of Czsar’s household at Rome); save Jesus Christ (when I was among my own kinsmen who scorned Him) and Him crucified (when I was among the pupils of Gamaliel, all of whom despise¢ my chosen theme; still I was determined to cling to that theme among the Greek and the Barbarians, before Onesimus the slave and Philemen the proud master; for loved my theme, and, suffering according to the will of God, I committed the keeping of my soul to Him in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator.” a i And herein is it to be your plan, my brethren, and your joy, not to make thi sanctuary the resort of wealth and of fashion, but rather of humble suppliants, who b; their prayers may divert all the wealth and fashion of the world into the service of you Lord; not to make this temple ‘the resting place of hearers who shall idly listen : the words of an orator, but a temple of earnest co-workers with Christ—thinking | you come to this house of God on the Sabbath, as you go from it, as your week day recollections gather around it, may you renew and confirm your plan to know your Redeemer, and not only to know Him, but—who is sufficient for these things?—not te know any thing save your Redeemer; and not only to shut yourselves up to the supreme love of nothing except Christ, but also—His grace will be sufficient for yo to worship and serve Christ in the central relation of Him crucified. Knowing EF alone, He will sustain you as fully as if He knew you alone. He will come to you this temple as frequently as if He had no other servants to befriend. He will listen your prayers as intently as if no supplications came up to Him from other altars, He will intercede for you as entirely as if He interceded in behalf of no one else; remember, that when He hung upon the cross, He thought of you, and died for just as fully as if He had been determined to think of no one, and to die for no 0 save you, whom He now calls to the solemn service of consecrating your own souls and your “holy and beautiful house” to the glory of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. [Edwards A. Park was born at Providence, R. L., December 29, 1808, and died in 1900. He received his education at Brown University and Andover Theologica Seminary; degree of D: D. from Harvard in 1844. After two years’ pastorate in Braintree, Mass., he became professor at Amherst, occupying the chair of Christian theology from 1847 to 1881, and emeritus professor to the time of his death, Andoy Seminary. He founded and was editor for forty years of Bibliotheca Sacra. I addition to his theological writings on the Atonement, etc., he wrote a number of biographies. It is said he once had a conversation with a German philosopher, incognito, and after he had tangled him up the gentleman cried out: “Either you are the devil or Professor Park.” phi This sermon is from The Gospel Invitation, published in Boston some years since. | BY A WORD IN SEASON TO HIM THAT IS WEARY. JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how ‘to speak a word in season to him that is weary.”—Isaiah 1: 4. _- Shall I be very far wrong in my estimate if I take you to be as I myself often am, ‘all weary? Probably there are some young hearts here who will hardly allow: them- s Ives to be included in that somewhat mournful estimate, but I think I am speaking along the line of fact, and actual and most painful experience, when I assume that Nine men out of every ten in this great multitude know personally, humblingly, the ‘meaning of the word weary. Some are weary of labor, some are weary of waiting— weary of suffering, weary of the cruel pain that never ceases to gnaw the poor heart. Just in proportion as ‘you understand the meaning of the term “weary” and all that it implies you will enter into the poetry, the genius, the divinity of this exquisite text, “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” _ -The power of speaking to the weary is, then, according to this text, nothing less than a divine gift. As you see the divinity in your gifts will you be careful of them, x thankful for them: every gift seems to enshrine the giver, God. But how extraordi- ary that this power of speaking to the weary should not be taught in the schools! It S$ not within the ability of man to teach other men how to speak to the weary-hearted, _ the wounded in spirit, the sore in the innermost feelings of the being. But can we "Tay down directions about this and offer suggestions? Probably so, but you do not touch the core of the matter. There is an infinite difference between the scholar and the genius. The scholar is made, the genius is inspired. Information can be imparted, but the true sense, the sense that feels and sees God, is a giit direct from heaven. It is a common notion that anybody can sing. Why can yousing? Why, because Thave been taught. That is your mistake. You can sing mechanically, exactly, prop- erly, with right time, right tune, but really and truly you cannot sing. Here is a man With his notes and with the words, and the same hearers exclaim, “Oh, that he would go on forever!”” How is that?—the words exactly the same, the notes identical—how? Soul, fire, ever burning, never consuming, making a bush like a planet. The great difficulty in all such cases is the difficulty of transferring to paper a proper or adequate conception of the power of the men who thus sway the human heart. There are some men whose biographies*simply belie them, and yet every sentence in the biography is true in the letter; but the biography is little else than a travesty and a caricature, ause the power was personal-—it was in the face. in the voice, in the presence, in the gait, in the touch—an incommunicable power; the hem of the garment trembled under It is a common notion that any man can visit the sick. Let me tell you that very ‘dew ministers can enter a sick chamber with any probability of doing real and lasting good, They can read the Bible and they can pray, and yet, when they have gone, the _ room seems as if they had never been there. There is no sense of emptiness or desola- _ tion. Other men, probably not so much gifted in some directions, will enter the sick ‘room, and there will be a light upon the wall, summer will gleam upon the window- 602 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. pane, and angels will rustle gently in the air, and it will be a scene of gladness and vision of triumph. How is that? The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned that I might know how—how to speak a word in season to him that is we The Lord God hath not only given me a word to say, but He hath given me learning teach me how to speak it. Place the emphasis upon the how, and then you develo all the mystery, all the tender music, all the infinite capacity of manner. a You may say the right word in the wrong tone, you may preach the gospel as if it were a curse. The common notion is that anybody can go into the Sunday School and teach the young. I fanoy that it would be well if a great many persons left the Sunday School all over the world. Teach the young—I would God I had that great gift, to break the bread for the children, and to be able to lure and captivate opening minds, and to enter into the spirit of the words— 7 Delightiul task, to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot. 5 Why, it requires to be father and mother and sister and nurse and genius to speak the young. They may hear you and not care for you; they may understand your words and be repelled by your spirit. You require the tongue of the learned to know how to speak, and that tongue of the learned is not to be had at school, college university—it is not included in any curriculum of learning; it is a gift divine, breath- ing an afflatus, an inspiration—the direct and distinct creation of God, as is the star the sun. a The speaker, then, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the representative of the Father, the incarnate Deity. He it is who is charged with the subtle learning, He it is whose lips tremble with the pathos of this ineffable music. , Though the gift itself is divine, you must remember that it is to be exercisec seasonably. The text is, “That I should know how to speak a word in season.” There is a time for everything. It is not enough to speak the right word; you musi speak it at the right moment. Who can know when that is? You cannot be taught. You must feel it, see it hours beyond; nay, you must know when to be silent for whole twenty-four hours, and to say to yourself, “Tomorrow, at such and such a time, I will drop that sentence upon his listening ear.” “The day after tomorrow he will probably be in circumstances to admit of this communication being delivered with sympathy and effect.” How few persons know the right time—the right time in con- versation! Some people are never heard in conversation, though they are talking all the time. They talk so unreasonably, they talk when other people are talking, they can not wait, they do not know how to come in along the fine line of silence; they do not understand the German expression, “Now an angel has passed,” and they do not quickly enough follow in his wake. Consequently, though chattering much, they are saying nothing—though their words be multitudinous, the impression they make is a blank. . é I have aripe seed in my hand. As an agriculturist I am going to sow it tonight. And any laborer in the field can tell me that I should be acting foolishly in sowing it just now. Why? “It is out of season,” the man says. “There is a time for the doing of that action; I will tell you when the time returns—do it then, and you may expect a profitable result of your labor.” Then I will change my character and be a nurse, and I will attend to my patient (perhaps I will over-attend to him—some patients are killed by over-nursing), and I will give the patient this medicine—it is the right medicine. So it is, but you are going to give it at the wrong time; and if you give the medicine at the wrong time, though itself be right, the hour being wrong, you shall bring suffering upon the patient, and you yourself shall be involved in pains and penalties. Thus we touch the very subtle and sensitive line in human life—the line of refined discrimination. You (oO A Word in Season to Him that is Weary—Parker. 603, “may say, “I am sure I told him.” You are right—you did tell him, and he did not hear you. You may reply, “I am perfectly confident I delivered the message—I reached the exact words of the gospel.’’ So you did, but you never got the hearing eart, your manner was so unsympathetic, so ungentle, so cruel (not meant to be consciously so), that the man never understood it to be a gospel. You spoiled the sic in the delivery, in the giving of the message. The Lord giveth the tongue of e learned that he to whom it is given may know how to speak—how to speak the right word—how to speak the right word at the right point of time. You want divine ; aching in all things, in speech not least. Why, this is a curious word to find in the Bible. Does the Bible care about weary ople? We have next to no sympathy with them. If a man be weary, we give him iotice to quit; if he ask us to what place he can retire, we tell him that is his business, ‘not ours. Now, the tenderness of this Book is to me one of the most telling, convine- ‘ing arguments on behalf of the inspiration and its divine authority. This Book means ‘to help us, wants to help us, says “I will try to help you, never hinder you; I will wait r you; I will soften the wind into a whisper; I will order the thunder to be silent; | I will quiet the raging sea; I will wait upon you at home, in solitude, at midnight, anywhere—fix the place, the time, yourself, and when your heart most needs me I will be most to your heart.” Any book, found in den, in gutter, that wants to do this ‘should be received with respect. The purpose is good; if it fail, it fails in a noble “object. ___ Everywhere in this Book of God I find a supreme wish to help me. When I most need help the words are sweeter than the honeycomb. When other books are dumb, ‘this Book speaks most sweetly to me. It is like a star—it shines in the darkness, it “waits the going down of the superficial sun of my transient prosperity, and then it ‘breaks upon me as the shadows thicken. This is the real greatness of God: He will ‘not break the bruised reed. I have reminded you before that because the reed is bruised, therefore the rude man says he may break it. His argument in brief is this: “Tf the reed were strong, I should not touch it, but seeing that it is bruised, what harm can there be in completing the wound under which it is already suffering? I will even ‘snap it and throw the sundered parts away.” This is the reasoning of the rude man— that is the vulgar view of the case. The idea of healing is the idea of a creator. To “destroy is the work of the brute beast; to gather up the poor little wounded child, and i it to a motherly breast, is a bit of God. That instinct comes out of the Creator; He who creates also heals. Herein we see God's estimate of human nature; if He cared only for the great, the splendid, the magnificent, the robust and the everlasting, why then He would indeed be too like ourselves. The greatness of God and the estimate which He places upon human nature are most seen in all these ministrations ‘in reference to the weak and the weary and the young and the feeble and the sad. “Made originally in the image of God, man is dear to his Maker, though ever so broken. Oh! poor prodigal soul, with the divinity nearly broken out of thee, smashed, bleeding, crushed, all but completely damned and in hell—while there is a shadow of ee outside perdition, He would heal thee and save thee. Thou art a ruin, but a grand one—the majestic ruin of a majestic edifice, for knowest thou not that thou wast the temple of God? _ When I am weary, even in my weariness God sees the possibility of greatness that May yet take place and be developed and supervene in immortality. How do we talk? Thus: “The survival of the fittest.’ It is amazing with what patience and mag- Nanimity and majestic disregard of circumstances we allow people to die off. When we hear that a million of them have perished, we write this epitaph on their white slate - tombstones: “The survival of the fittest required the decay of the weakest and the poorest.” We pick off the fruit which we think will not come to much. The gardener be ja 604 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. lays his finger and thumb upon the tree, and he says, “This will not come to muc hrs he wrenches the poor, unpromising piece of fruit off the twig and throws it down a useless. In our march we leave the sick and wounded behind. That is the great littl the majestic, insignificant, the human contradiction. We go in for things that ai fittest, strongest, most promising, healthy, self-complete, and therein we think we ar wise. God says, “Not a lamb must be left out—bring it up; not a sick man must be omitted; not a poor publican sobbing his “God be merciful to me a sinner’ must omitted from the great host. Bring them all in, sick, weary, wounded, feeble, young illiterate, poor, insignificant, without name, fame, station, force—all in; gather up t fragments that nothing be lost.” I will go to that Shepherd—He will spare me ane love me. When my poor strength gives out, He will not set His cruel heel upon n neck and kill me; He will gather me up in His arms, and make the whole flock stan still till He has saved His weakest one. Oh! poor worn heart, didst thou but know the name for thy pain, thou woulds call it sin. What dost thou need, then, but Christ the Son of God, the Heart of Go the love of God. He will in every deed give thee rest. He will not add to the gre weight which bows down thy poor strength; He will give thee grace, and in Hi power all thy faintness shall be thought of no more. Poor soul, I can well feel fo thee, for I know how dark it is when the full shadow of our sin falls upon our life, 1 I know how all the help of earth and time and man does but mock the pain it canne reach. Say not that Christ will not go so low down as to find one so base and vi as thou; I heard Him calling for thee; I heard His sweet voice lift itself up in the wi wind and ask whither thou hadst fied, that He might save thee from death and brin thee home. My yearning, silent one, I see thine upstarting tear, and I know what means, for I too, have had baptism of that same dew. My life, for it, if it be every whit the very truth of God, that Christ wants thee, and will save thee. I will g with thee, step by step, as far as man may go, for I have been there before and OY the way of Christ with men. There is no wrath in His face or voice, no sword swung by His hand as in cruel joy, saying, “Now at last I have my chance with ou. His eyes gleam with love; His voice melts in pity; His words are gospels, every on Let Him but see thee sad for sin, full of grief because of the wrong thou hast don and He will raise thee out of the deep pit and set thy feet upon the rock. I wait f thee, poor, poor soul, that we may go hand and hand to Christ this night. Iho knowest that I am no fierce preacher of malediction and curse upon the poor tremblit penitent. I search my heart for tender speech, for gentle word, and I ask heaven | bless me with the gift of the persuasive tone, that I may call thee by name, sweetly z a mother might call a runaway child back to her side. Say, poor black soul, stains upon thee like wounds, say, “I will arise and go to my Father.” I cannot How can I? Try: the saying of it will do thee good. Oh, if I could get som throats so to open as to express this prayer, “God be merciful to me a sine very cpening of the throat, the very opening of the lips would do that soul good. TI saying of it will be like the first breath of the spring wind, melting the bands of fro and bringing up flowers and birds—flowers that cannot die, birds that bring their ow light with them. Many a time I should have sunk right down without hope of rising again but fe this sweet couplet— “Christ is strong to deliver and good to redeem The weakest believer that hangs upon Him.” I am not triumphant always, sometimes much broken, and the darkness is rout about me like three-fold, seven-fold night. God I have none, nor Christ, nor hog nor heaven—nothing but a memory black as the darkest night. What can I do, the but remember that the Bible was made for the weary, and the poor, and the sick, a! A Word in Season to Him That is Weary—Parker. 605 the lame, and the halt and the blind, and the maimed—for the infirm, for those that have no friend and no helper; a book for the wilderness, not for the garden. You know you will fall back again if you do come? Well, still come. Do we not all I] back? “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Take my heart, Lord, take and seal it, Seal it for thy courts above.” What said He? He said, “If my brother turn again, saying, I repent, forgive him, even until seventy times seven.” If He laid down that measure for us, what must be the measure of His own pardoning mercy? I want victory tonight, surrender-on the _ part of human hearts. If I could take thee, sinner, with me now, I should feel like a king who has won his last battle, and thou wouldst feel like a slave breathing the first breath of the living air of liberty. [Joseph Parker, D.D., was born at Hexham-on-Tyne, April 9, 1830. He was educated at private schools and University College, London. He was Independent n inister at Banbury, Oxford, 1853-58; Cavendish Chapel, Manchester, 1858-69; and City Temple, London, from 1869 to present. His literary work is prodigious; his People’s Bible and Pulpit Bible alone would have been a great life work, but his other volumes represent as much more, This sermon is from the Complete Preacher, and it was preached in the City Temple, London, in 1877.] 606 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. EVERY ONE THAT LOVETH. CHARLES H. PARKHURST, D.D. “Every one that loveth is born of God.”—I John 4: 7. In the midst of all the preaching that is being done, and all the efforts along tha and kindred lines that are being put forth, we cannot keep too distinctly shaped before our mind the object toward which we are laboring, the particular result we are attempt- ing to see realized. Now what is that result? Here is a church: what does it stand for? What is the meaning of it? You are a Christian. If so you-are trying to make your Christianity tell; tell in what way? Tell upon yourself in what way? Tell upon others in what way? What is Christianity for? Paul says that the Gospel is the power of God; power exercised for what purpose? We should know how to answer such < question as that. Even the children ought to know how to answer it. And it is not enough to be able to answer it, unless at the same time the answer means so much to us and is such a present factor in our Christian doing, as to give shape and direction to our doing. You stand before a manufactory and see printed upon its front in large showy letters, ‘“Carpet Manufactory.” But suppose that after you have gotten through the door and into the midst of tie operatives you ask one of them, ‘““What are you weaving here?” and the hesitant reply should come back to you, “Well, I don’t know as I could tell you exactly what I am weaving.” A pheno- menal grade of tapestry such operatives would turn out, and every bale of product delivered at the rear door would probably give the lie to the sign emblazoned over the front door. There would probably not a great deal come out of the rear door any - way, and what did come it would be difficult to tag in a way to make it intelligible to the general market. * Now the Church, a church is, or is presumably, a kind of manufactory, that is, it exists for the purpose of yielding some form of product. And it is as evident as it needs to be that only a few peoplc, comparatively, have any simple and distinct idea what that product is. That is shown in the fact that so many, who are as good Christians as any here, do not care to associate themselves with the Church. The meaning of Church is not so clearly felt by its members and therefore is not made so apparent by its members, as to lead outsiders to care to become identified with it or be made responsible for it. You do not need to have it pointed out to you what a contrast there is between that and the agencies that are operating to turn out material products. And if you see an ordinary manufacturing corporation that knows what it is doing and that is turning out a first rate article of its kind, and an article that lists well in the market, you are glad to invest in its stock and become part of the concern. ‘ That is why so many have disposed of the stock that they held a few years ago in the Presbyterian Church. While some were doing their best to make it contoraa and prontable for Christians to come into the Presbyterian Church, others were work-— ing a good deal harder to make it uncomfortable and unprofitable for them to stay there, and between the two sets of performance an impression of miscellaneousness . was left upon the mind that has been a great godsend to the Episcopal Church and that has established for it a sort of position of ecclesiastical retreat. But Presbyterianism has by no means the monopoly of this kind of thing, for in ‘the old days, at least, Anglicanism used to be a hundred times worse than American eS a Every One that Loveth—Parkhurst. 607 ir even New York Presbyterianism has ever been. And in your reading of Church an acute and intelligible purpose toward which the aims of the Church at large rere directed. Sometimes one part of the Church would be doing one thing and mother part another and a contradictory thing; and sometimes no part would be doing anything to speak of. At one date one branch of the Church would be making saints, ad another would be boiling and broiling them. One bishop spending his life translat- ing the Bible, another tinkering creeds, a third hoarding ducats, a fourth working the tack and kindling the fires at Smithfield. And it is this working at cross-purposes and his constant production of contradictory results (that cancel each other) that accounts for the slow gains that the Church makes in the world. The Church grew fast enough ‘s0 long as it could be said of its members what is related in the fourth of Acts, that ‘the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.” _ Coming back to our question, we might say that the commodity that Christianity } intended to produce in the world is character. “Character,” however, is an uninter- ing word, too abstract to impress the mind, too juiceless to saturate the mind, and is not a Bible word, at least I do not find it in my concordance. It is a little gular, at first thought, that such a teacher as Jesus or as Paul should not have had asion to use the word. But there is a certain warmth about Bible terms, and there s none of that about the word “character,” any more than there is about that phrase vA thical culture.” To talk to a child about character would probably produce upon theorem or logarithms. It is one of those terms that mean so much and in such an “unparticularized way that the intelligence does not take kindly to it nor the heart snuggle up to it. _ We might well substitute, then, by saying that Christianity aims to make human hearts as much like God’s heart as possible, and when I say ‘“‘God’s heart” I mean for it is in Him that we see what God’s heart is. It is sufficiently orthodox for practical purposes to say that Christ is God's heart uncovered to us. Christ did ‘not come to let us understand all that God knows, but to let us understand as far ag ‘possible what God feels, and the heart is the place in man or God where the feelings ubsist and move. It will be proper then to say that the thing Christianity is here to do is to make en right in their feelings. It may not always make people wise; it may not give lem correct understanding of things, nor attempt to. That quality of heart that Christianity aims to induce is something that correct understanding has almost nothing to do with. You know how much a child can love his mother without under- : tanding his mother, without having ever in any way thought nicely and accurately about her. Indeed it is his love for her that helps him to understand her a great deal ‘More than it is his understanding of her that makes him love her. 4 But all I wanted to say just now was that Christianity does its work for us in that art of us where we keep our feelings, our sentiments, our loves. We want to be -like, and we are if our loves are like God’s loves. It is important that we realize t what that is in us that Christianity is concerned with. Bible and Holy Spirit are cerned only to have us feel right. It is not mind that needs to be converted, nor Y, nor actions, nor pocket. We sometimes say of a man that his pocket is con- ed, meaning by it that he has become generous. Such expressions are well enough a way, but they do not mean a great deal and what little they seem to mean is not te true. The only thing that can be converted is the heart, that part of us where he impulses spring, the place where we keep our affections and hatreds, loyalties and ousies; in a word, our feelings. So we might, in rather a random way, say of a tan who was an atheist and has become a Christian, that his mind, his brain, is con- 608 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. verted. Probably it is a suspicion that something of that kind takes place that leeds us so often to try by some argumentative process or other to change the workings ) a man’s brain and to create a little revival of religion all on the inside of his cranium. We have all done that, and then after reasoning with our man for half a day, have been surprised to find that he is just where he was to commence with. Christianity doe not work directly upon a man’s brain to change the character of its conclusions an more than it will work directly upon a man’s body to correct its temperature or improve its digestion. If a man’s heart is right, that is, if its impulses are like t impulses of Jesus Christ, his purse will be right and his thinking will be correct, so far as there is any religious necessity for its being correct. My intent in all this is to keep our thoughts upon that one place in us upon whic everything else depends. We have got to be agreed as to the spot at which our wor is to be put. I am not authorized to say that a certain amount of Bible truth judiciously presented may not be necessary in order that the heart itself may be reached and Christlike impulses started, but that is not for the sake of the truth or f the Bible in itself considered. Considered in its purely religious and Christian refer ences, Bible truth, though it come directly from God, is worth only what it will doi making the heart right, in making our loves like Christ’s love, in making us have th feelings that God has. If we feel as He does we shall do as He does, that is, to th extent that our finiteness admits of our doing. A man does not act according to hi opinions, but he does act according to his loves. Knowing that a thing is the right thing to do will not make a man do it. We act counter to our best judgment an distinct conscience every day we live. But loving the thing that is right will guarante our doing it. ‘The issues of life are from the heart.” That is the fundamental fac in the matter and was understood by candid and wise men thousands of years ago. 3 If there were any other way by which a man could become perfect in his feelings and absolutely Christlike in his loves besides using the Gospel and preaching Jesus Christ, then we might throw away the Bible and dispense with Jesus Christ. I do not know of any other way; and certainly, if the question be subjected to the test of history, it is something to which we should all agree, I am sure that the sweetness and Christlikeness that were in men before Christ came is hardly to be mentioned by the side of the like qualities evinced since He came. At the same time it wants to be understood that Christ's Gospel is for the sake of man and not man for the sake of Christ’s Gospel. The importance of the Gospel in its relations to us is not in what it is, but in what it can do, in what it can do for us, and in what it can. do for us in the way of making our feelings right and our loves like Christ’s loves. It is like the medical appliances employed by the physician. Those appliances exist - respectively for the producing of specific results. The only real meaning they hava for us is their ability to produce those results. So it is with the Bible, for instance. Revealed truth is a means chosen by God to cure our hearts of the malady of bad impulse, and to make us Godlike—Godlike in what concerns our affections and passions. So that the amount of truth, even Christian truth, that you have succeeded in lodging in your child’s mind, is no indication in itself that you have Christianized your child. Your child is a Christian child if he is a Christlike child, and likes and loves the things Christ likes and loves; and the Gospel truth you have been able to acquaint him with is not something that you can reckon in as a part of his Christianity any more than the tonic that a patient swallows is to be counted as part of the patient's recuperation. It all turns in the last case on whether the tonic has made the patient alive again, and in the first case on whether the Christian truth you have administered has made the child’s heart a beautiful heart, bubbling up with holy impulses, passion- ate with the sort of affection that Christ’s heart was impassioned with. Every One that Loveth—Parkhurst. 609 In the old days, as we saw a few minutes ago, men did not keep these things distinct. Wicked men, men with coarse lives, foul hearts, beastly affections, were not hindered thereby from becoming accredited bishops and distinguished cardinals. A “man’s heart didn’t count. To be a Christian meant to assent to certain propositions, ch as the authority of the Pope, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, acceptance of “The Six Articles,” etc. If aman, woman, lad or girl wouldn’t make such subscrip- tion, the Church would burn them and commit them to eternal damnation. The fact ‘that a lad was as holy as a young St. John or a girl as sweet as an angel didn’t signify. J And that has been the character of the Church, off and on, ever since a time not long subsequent to the departure of Jesus Christ; that is, it has not centered its first thought on a beautiful heart, but on something else. The first question it has asked ont a man is not, Has he got a heart like the heart of Jesus? but, What does he believe? Does he subscribe to the Creed? Is he orthodox?’ I am not making light of creeds nor belittling orthodoxy, but all that creeds and orthodoxy are worth is what they can do toward making a man to be in his heart what Christ was in his heart, and, if they are that, I don’t care whether they get it by being orthodox or by being heterodox, by being Lutherans or Wesleyans, by being Calvinists or heretics. The _best doctrine is that which does most to make men Godlike, and the best denomina- ‘tion is the one that will graduate the finest saints and the most of them. f v Now, this idea that Bible truth or Christian doctrine has an importance of its own independently of what it can do in the way of making the heart sweet and beautiful, ‘is an idea that almost all of us have become unconsciously impregnated with. When I commence examining a candidate with reference to uniting with the Church, I start in by asking him what opinion he holds as to this or that point of Christian doctrine. I do not believe in proceeding in that order, but I do all the same. The emphasis of the Church has settled down so heavily, and for so long a time, upon the thought side, the brain side, of the thing, that almost in spite of ourselves we are swept off our feet by the current of usage and tradition. I ought to begin by questioning a candidate about his heart, what kind of a heart he has gotten, whether it is a pure one, a tender and forgiving one: whether it is like what the Bible tells us God’s heart is. Perhaps he can tell me a good deal about the Trinity, but I ought to want more to know about his loves, whether he loves others as well as he does himself, and whether those beati- tudes that Christ laid down as fundamental in commencing His ministry have become in him experimentally a part of his own tone and temper of heart. In the last chapter of John is an account of Christ’s examining Peter for the ministry. That, of course, was long prior to the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, so the Lord could not have questioned the candidate upon them. It also antedated the sessions of the Westminster Assembly, which relieved Peter from the necessity of being quizzed upon any one of the hundred and seven questions of the Catechism. There was no New Testament at that time, so that no inquiries could be put to him touching its plenary inspiration. There was the Old Testament, though, but even so, Christ asked him nothing as to his views of it, whether the days of creation were ‘twenty-four hours long, whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch, how many Isaiahs there were, and whether the Jonah story was historical or mythical. It is along that line that examining bodies regularly interrogate their candidates. I am not denying that some questions are put to them touching their religious experience, etc., but it is understood by ministerial councils in the Congregational Church and by presbyteries in our Church, that the examination proper has not really begun till the questioners have commenced to grill the candidate on the conundrums of the Bible, and to dis- locate his intellectual joints upon the rack of dogmatic theology; and it is the simple fact in the case that a man need not in such circumstances be greatly concerned about the haziness of his Christian experience and the general condition of his heart, if he 610 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. can unstammeringly confess to a distinct and certified theology, and is prompt answer his interrogators in the way that they want him to answer them. : Nor any more did the Lord admit Peter to the ministerial office without an exaft nation, and an examination more searching than I ever heard conducted before Congregational council or a New York presbytery. As recorded in the last chap of John he asked Peter three questions. The first was, “Peter, do you love me Peter answered, “Yes.” And the Lord said, “Feed my lambs;” go to preachin But the Lord questioned him again, put the second question, but the second questi was simply the first question over again, “Peter, do you love me?” Peter said, “Ye The Lord said, “Feed my sheep;” go to preaching. But the divine examiner not through with His candidate yet. And so He asks him a third question, wh however, was only the first question again repeated. “Peter, do you love me?” A Peter said, “Yes.” And the Lord added, “Feed my sheep; go to preaching. A the candidate was licensed. That is the way Jesus Christ conducted the examinati of a candidate for the ministry; and it is no more like the way in which most ce temporary bodies conduct examinations than heaven is like—almost any other ple It is as though the Lord had said, “Peter, I want to know what kind of a he you have got. I want to know the passions that it is filled up with, the intense lo} ties with which it is supremely actuated. I want to know whether your heart knitted to mine with those ties of a wholesale devotion such that no peril you may exposed to will operate to relax those ties; and not only that, but whether the Ie that is between us makes us so one with each other that you are become entered i the mysteries of my being and so can preach me in a way to make people hear ; listen and respond.” Now I beg of you to be just enough to what has been spoken not to go away ¢ say that I have made light of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy means sound thinking, and make light of sound thinking is to make fun of intelligence and to mutiny against own brain; but the thing that makes a man a Christian is the love that is in his i not the phosphorus that is in his head, and the consummating qualification for Christian ministry is Christ-begotten and not school-begotten, The trouble is that we have taken the same two elements that existed in Chr day, love and wit, but we have reversed them. We are saying that out of the a the issues of life. We do not ask, “Do you love?” but “What do you think?” tianity ought to be in some measure intelligent, but intelligence isn’t Christianity, intelligence about Christian things isn’t Christianity. The supreme fact about bein Christian is to have a heart that is full of love to God and man. That is the pe upon which the grand emphasis of the Bible falls all the way through. Luther ha great, big, warm, loving heart toward God and man, but he never could have b ordained as pastor of this church, for he tore out of the Bible the whole Book James. But Calvin could have come here, bony, eagle eyed, unlovely and unloy Calvin could have come here, even if he were the occasion of sending Servetus heaven on a chariot of fire kindled at Champel, a couple of miles out from Genev: Now I have said these things because the Christian Church cannot progress it comes out distinctly on the higher and sweeter ground. Why, in the old apost days the common people loved the Church and flocked into it. People are changed, the Church is changed. They would love the Church now if they thot the Church was lovely. If hearts were trumps we would win. In Christ’s day | was the determining qualification both for the Church and for the ministry. Ev thing was fitted up with a lot of doors and they were all open. Now the Church ke in its employ men whose distinct function it is to nail up doors. Your heat all right, they say, and we love you and all that sort of thing, and shall be gla Every One that Loveth—Parkhurst. 61 leet you in heaven, but we are a little more particular than the Lord is and must bid you “‘au revoir” till we meet on the other shore. 14 Iam not rebelling against orthodoxy, I am not rebelling against Calvinism, ie I dislike the word, but I am rebelling against any system that calls itself hristian but that makes the principal part of the matter to turn on a hinge that the ord never contrived but that He distinctly reprobated both by word and example. By all the stress that we properly can upon indoctrination, the final proof and fruit of it all is a pure heart and a loving spirit and living sympathy with the mind of Jesus. ind if the Church has lost the confidence of the people, as it certainly has, by setting tests upon which the Lord never insisted, it will just as certainly recover that sonfidence when it comes back distinctly on to Christ’s ground, when it becomes pure is Christ is pure, tender as Christ is tender, and when Church life is understood to sonsist in the inbreathing of God's Spirit of holiness and loving kindness in order hat we may breathe it forth again into the atmosphere of a world that needs not so 7 ch to be enlightened as to be loved. fs {Charles Henry Parkhurst was born at Framingham, Mass., April 17, 1842, and pees from Amherst in 1866. He studied theology at Halle and Leipzig for four s. He was pastor of the Congregational church at Lennox, Mass., 1874 to 1880, and since then pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian church. He became president of the society for prevention of crime, and his efforts led to an investigation of the olice by the New York legislature. He has published a number of volumes of sermons, The Blind Man’s Creed, Three Gates on a Side, etc. _ This sermon was preached in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, Feb. 3, (901, and was revised by the author for The Christian Work.] ~ 612 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ; ‘BE STRONG.” THEOPHILUS PARR, M. A. Deut. 31: 6, 7, 23; Joshua 1; 6, 7, 9, 18; Haggai 2: 4; Zech. 8: 9, 13; Acts 1:8; Eph. 6: 10. There is no foolish tautology in the Bible. The repetition of this phrase h significance to which we shall do well to take heed. Observe the places where repetitions of this phrase occur and you see that they group themselves at three ef in the history of God’s people, namely, the conquest of Canaan, the return from Exile, and the establishment of the Christian Church. It is this fact that makes the exhortation of special fitness for the present ocee We are on the eve of the twentieth century, a century which you young Chri Endeavorers may specially call your own. To some of us the greater part of i behind. But life is before you in all its possibilities of usefulness and blessing; you the grand inheritance. We venture to say that the twentieth century marks an € in the history of the Church and the world. In the world the nations have been brought more closely together. The a of steam and electricity in railways, steamships, and telegraphs has wrought wot in this century. Then the development of the power of the press has brough thought of the world together. With this there has been the remarkable growth of the sentiment of huma We say this notwithstanding the painful fact of war now being waged; for neve the misery of war been so vividly realized by the community as in this one. It social life the better treatment of the sick, the weak, and the poor indicates the pro; in the minds of men of the principles of Christ. : ; Inside the Church the signs are clearer still. By the Church we mean the company of followers of Christ, in every denomination and of every nation, wh in living union with their living Lord. These are coming together and manifestin real unity of their common life in Him. To change the metaphor, the great ar the Church of God at the bidding of this Commander-in-Chief is being mobilized. units are brought together, the regiments are wheeling into line, and the vast has been brought into readiness for action. As surely as the providence of God prepared the way for the people of Isr: take possession of Canaan, as surely as the hand of God prepared the wa the re-possession of Palestine by the Jews returning from the Exile. as sure the world was prepared for the advent of Christianity, and the Church of Gor fitted by the baptism of Pentecost to take possession of the world for Christ, so‘ this nineteenth century has been one of preparation, and the call of God comes 1 Church to set up the Kingdom of God amongst men. For this the exhortat given with renewed force—‘Be strong in the Lord.” ! Not the least of the signs is that there is a clearer perception amongst Us | real work of the Church. THE CHURCH NOT AN EMIGRATION SOCIETY. The old idea largely prevailing years ago was that we were a great emig society, whose mission was to proclaim the glories of the heavenly world, and I grace of God to prepare men for it. Be Strong—Parr. 613 v ‘e do not minimize the value of the hope of heaven. It cheers us along the path It sheds a glory on the struggle and the toil. But our read work is here. The of our Christ is to set up His kingdom on earth, and to rid the world of kly we can emigrate to a happier sphere, but to labor and to strive to make the il emigrate to his own place, and let Christ have His own. Ve do not shut our eyes to the greatness of the task before us. It means largely ansformation of the government of the world. How powerful are the vested s of evil, and how governments may be influenced by them, is seen continually. so small a measure of reform as the protection of young children from part of ¢ temptations of the drink traffic, Christian men may well take heed. We may do a tle by our votes, but our great work is to change the voters of the community. nie y must be transformed, which means in the ultimate that human nature is ‘to ransformed. There are giants to be conquered, great walled cities to be taken. ii may He say, “Be strong.” From anyone else the command would be a mockery, our natural strength is small. But He who gives the order gives the power to ite it. He is the Creator, the Regenerator, the Inspirer of the souls of men. WHERE SCIENCE IS IMPOTENT. The work is pre-eminently one for spiritual power. Mere intellectual strength by li is as helpless as physical. Place the mightiest of our men of intellect, the most ‘ned of our men of science, before a poor outcast of the slums, and bid them siorm that poor creature into a man and make him what God would have him to and they would be as helpless as the cleverest doctor by the side of a corpse. It is ritual change that is to be wrought, and this requires spiritual power. The ength, then, by which we are to work is that of spiritual life—life that has its origin ist, and that He promises to give to us. The keywords of physical strength in gin and development are health, diet, exercise and judgment. So in the spiritual the first requirement is health. PURITY IS POWER. sligion, the heart must be clear of sin. We must commence right here. The first of the Holy Spirit, whose power is vouchsafed to us by the promise of the Lord, renew the soul in holiness. For this there must be on our part a full surrender im. Many here can testify with abounding thankfulness that we have some ure of the Spirit, we have realized somewhat of His blessed influence, but we more, we earnestly desire the fulness of power. That fulness is promised unto us. go everything of self and sin, and by faith do ye receive the Holy Ghost. The rd “receive” might even be better rendered “take.” The Spirit of the mighty Lord p es nt with us this morning, and the word to us is, Take ye the Holy Ghost. Oh, fill me with Thy fulness, Lord, 5 Until my very heart o’erflow. _ Oh, blessed strength that comes of full surrender and full endowment of the Spirit 30 d! The peace of God so possesses the soul that poverty and pain alike fail to dg t in his crop of flax to save it from being spoiled by the rain. His answer was, have no flax; it is God’s flax, and if He likes to wet it He can.” Frances Ridley tgal smiled in her sufferings, saying: “I take my pain, dear Lord, from Thee,” er soul was strong in peace. The drudgery of arduous toil becomes transfigured abiding glory of the Lord. a _ by the united earnest prayers of twos and threes! In the early days of our Church 614 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. CONSECRATED CULTURE, The development of strength is on the lines of rightful diet and exercise. But ot us never lose sight of the main principle of spiritual power by living union with Christ. “Be strong in the Lord.” If the channel of life is to grow there must be God. Caramels and sweets may be very nice in their way as an occasional luxury, but the strong man knows that a diet of these would be fatal to his strength. So let us be careful of our spiritual food. A little wholesome fiction or light reading may b useful as a recreation, but if we would grow strong we must have the wholesome die’ of the daily study of the Bible and of books that make us think. What we could desire in our Christian Endeavor Societies is a development ol consecrated culture. The world will never be converted by twaddle and inanity, how ever well-intentioned. We want the highest possible learning and mental power, all filled with the Spirit of God—all bred in humble dependence upon Him. BE A SPIRITUAL ATHLETE. Then, further, be strong by using your strength. As the athlete in his trainin seeks to bring out the strength of all his muscles, and so adopts a variety of exercises so let us not be content always with the work to which we have been accusto ed Let us attempt unusual things. The phrase “I can’t” is often but an excuse that really means “I don’t want to try.” Paul said to his son in the gospel, “Exercise thyself t godliness,” the word exercise being exactly the word we use in athletics, gymnastize In all these things we shall realize the value of true fellowship. In our efforts in th outside world for the bettering of humanity we may be ready to co-operate with an and all that will work with us. In the Church we have a circle somewhat narrower but the fellowship is closer. We may become stronger by union with all those love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth. Again, in an inner circle, still in fellowship with the members of our own society we may greatly help one another. But there is a fellowship closer still, the fellowship say, of two kindred souls that enter fully into each other’s deepest longings and desires The memorable example of the friendship of David and Jonathan will be in your mind It is said of Jonathan with his friend that “he strengthened his hand in God.” THE FOWER OF UNITY. Surely it was in view of such fellowship that Jesus gave the promise “That if twe of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be don for them by My Father which is in heaven.” There is power in unity. The closer th unity the greater the spiritual power. What glorious achievements have been wrough when open-air preaching was not so common as now, two of our missionaries wert engaged in evangelistic work in Berkshire, working in separate districts. They m with opposition in every place. They preached the gospel in the streets of the village and towns, and were pelted and persecuted in every place. One night they me together for consultation; the prospects were dark indeed. At the close of their tal | one said, “Let us have a turn of prayer before we go.” They went into a field, anc there poured out their souls to God. As the night wore on they became desperate it their pleadings, until one rose to his feet in the holy victory of faith, exclaiming “Brother, Berkshire’s taken! Berkshire’s taken!” They parted. But from that hou the tide turned in their favor, and success attended their efforts. Oh, for the strengtl of mighty faith! ; CONSECRATED COMMON SENSE. : In the application of this strength let us not forget that we must use wisdom an prudence. We need first of all spiritual power, but we need also consecrated commot sense to direct it. As illustrations of this see the work of Mr. Moody, the social worl ; ‘ 4 Be Strong—Parr. 615 the Salvation Army, and now, most vividly before us today, the great Christian ndeavor movement, a splendid example of the right use of means to ends. Let us learn a lesson of the politician who strives to capture an election, or the mmercial man who strives to capture business. Our work is to win the election for irist, to capture the custom of men’s hearts and lives for Christ, and for this we need I gth of mind and heart. There is no room in the Christian Endeavor movement or ‘the Church for dudes and dolls (Lord save them!); we want strong men and omen: the mens sana in corpore sano. Look up this morning to your King and Lord. He, the Great Captain, is calling ‘in the advent of this new century to take the world for Him. In the dark days of Italy’s struggle for freedom the patriot leader Garibaldi ithered together a multitude of the people and addressed them: ‘Men of Italy, I cail ju to follow me to the fight. It may be to hardships, poverty, rags, wounds and sath; but it is for Italy, for freedom!” And they responded: “Viva I'Italia!’”’ They c follow him, they did find poverty and hardships, many of them found wounds and ath; but Italy was free! So our Captain calls us today; not to ease and Juxury, but to follow Him. It may e to hardships and to suffering; yea, to some it may be even to death itself, but it is t liberty! Liberty for the world! It is for Christ, for His eternal kingdom. What shall we say? O Lord, we will follow Thee now—and forever! : [This sermon by Theophilus Parr is said by a London newspaper to have been ich that Hugh Latimer might have delivered it at St. Paul’s Cross. Mr. Parr is of sw South Wales.] 616 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE GOD THAT ANSWERETH BY FIRE. MARK GUY PEARSE. “The God that answereth by fire.’—I Kings 18: 24. It was Elijah himself who proposed the test. The people readily accepted it. On the summit of Carmel, withered and scorched in that long drought, there gathered the host—in front the robed priests of Baal and behind them the men of Israel. And up against the sky that never a cloud had dimmed for so long there rose the stern prophet; lifting his arm appealingly to heaven his summons rang out upon the stillness —How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Not a voice made answer from the other side. Then again Elijah speaks and challenges the people to take a bullock and lay it upon an altar and put no fire under, and he will take another—and the Lord that answereth by fire let Him be God. From priests and people came the ready response accepting the challenge. “Thag well spoken,” they shouted, and began at once to make ready. Here are some lessons suited to aii times, certainly not least to our time. The God that answereth by fire. I. The religion of God must bring the proofs of its Divine origin. Elijah stands as the very type and emblem of the religion of God; it is always in the world as a daring intruder; a stern reformer; a troubler and a disquieter of Israel; crashing unsparingly upon ‘sin everywhere, however rich or respectable; th plague of the easygoing. Such a disturber of the peace must carry his credential: with him. This religion is a hurler of lightnings and @ protest of thunder agains dead forms, however beautiful; against dead creeds, however orthodox; against dead Churches, however old. It cannot live without being met with the angry question “Who made thee a Judge and a Ruler over us?” It comes like its Master, overthrow ing the tables of the moneychangers and scattering the seats of the dovesellers, and driving out the sheep and the oxen. Then up start the stalwart defenders of the faith, alarmed about their vested interests, and demanding, “By what authority does Thou these things?” 7 Look at the very nature of this holy religion. It comes with a demand so lofty, so searching, and yet so humiliating. It tells the man in all the pride of his intellect that he has no power to see the kingdom of God, much less to enter into it, until he is born again. It makes light of all his round of outside-ism—the meats and drinks, the robes and services—and tells him that his heart is full of murder an adultery and lies, and that no toiling agony of his own can make it clean. It heeds not the costliest and most splendid services, and tells him if ever he is to be save it must be by the merit of Another. Its language is so imperative,—thou shalt. demands the innermost will of man,—thou shalt love. It claims every faculty an power of the man,—thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and min J and soul and strength. It claims the man in every relationship and round of life,— and thy neighbor as thyself.. This religion is so pure and spiritual. No beauty of service, no kind of worship, no profession of faith avail anything unless the spirit worship Him, the heart love Him, the life glorify Him. Its demand for faith is so peculiar and apart from all our ways of seeing and suspecting. Perhaps every The God that Answereth by Fire—Pearse. 617 itterance of the Lord Jesus as we dwell upon it opens and unfolds an infinite freasure of wisdom and truth and tenderness; but none is more amazing than those strange words spoken when the Baptist had sent to enquire whether He were indeed the Christ. Jesus healed many of their plagues and infirmities and cast out many evil spirits, and then He bade the messengers go again and show John the things which they had seen and heard. Then He Whom the angels worship, Who upholdeth al things by the word of His power, looked forth upon the crowd and added, Blessed is he whosoever is not offended in Me. _ Further, Christianity by her very triumphs gives the challenge of the world a greater force and urgency. These are two blessings which Christianity has brought to many lands and is surely bringing to all—liberty and light. The more perfectly en are brought into freedom the more naturally will they ask the ground of claims ke these. And as the light of education spreads the more thoughtfully will they ask it and the more intelligently must they be answered. Let no one be so utterly foolish as to sigh over this, confounding enquiry with doubt. Because the slave is ained to an unquestioning obedience, is liberty therefore a peril? Because light ets men thinking for themselves, is light therefore an evil? Do not let us talk as if were in any degree possible. Thank God for light; it is the wise men who when myrrh and frankincense. It is the freest men who can render the most worthy because the most willing service. Christianity is lost when it takes to coercion. But let us be well assured that light and liberty do make it more than ever needful that ‘the Church of God should carry in the forefront the unmistakable proof of her Divine origin. Rome, ever quick to discern the signs of the times, sought to meet the growing demand with a growing proof of authority by voting the Pope infallible. The need is as real for us as for Rome, the need of a manifest authority. Science happily does not necessitate doubt, but science does beget and must beget a spirit of ‘imvestigation. And that Christianity must ever be the first to welcome and rightly Satisfy. The gracious Master’s invitation to be the first disciples is still the Church’s _imyitation to all—Come and see. And that which satisfied the first disciples shall ‘Satisfy the simple seekers of every age,—the living Christ. Every age must have its own proof. The Church cannot inherit the evidences, ‘slie must create them. The prophet does not stand and tell the people of the wonders that God had wrought for their fathers in Egypt and the Red Sea. He does not remind ‘them of the wilderness and the manna, of Jordan and Jericho. The past is dead and ‘buried, and knows no resurrection. All that might only swell the triumph of the enemy. “Where is the God of Israel now?” they might have asked in derision,— “What can you show in these enlightened days?” For every age claims a monopoly of wisdom; they were the dark ages until we came upon the scene. We live now; in former times there were only other people. The early triumphs of Christianity do not greatly concern the mass of men and women now. They were ignorant people, easily imposed upon. There were ghosts then, and witches, and no gaslight, But now the schoolmaster is abroad, where is your power? In these intellectual and scientific days your poor superstitions have lost their charm; their spell is broken; your words fail to cast out the devils. And the world is right, quite right. If the Gospel cannot do today what it did -aforetime it is a failure. What is it to tell me of Bethesda’s ancient fame, if I come and find no expectant crowd, and no sign of the angel, and no cripples healed, and mone laughing in the gladness of new life? I conclude naturally enough that Bethesda is a failure: that it may do for an ornamental fish-pond, but the less it is | talked about the bettter. The only evidence of Christianity that ean satisfy me is that ‘it does as much for me as it has ever done for others. If the Church of God lives 618 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. at all, she lives by the breath of the Almighty. If that inspire her she can do as great wonders as ever. If that be not in her then in spite of tradition she is dead, dead —a corpse only, a thing to be got rid of as speedily as possible, a thing of which God and man alike may say,—Bury the dead out of my sight,—and the sooner the better. — II. The appointed proof. Now the priests of Baal make ready their sacrifice. The bullock is slain and stretched upon the altar. This, too, was all that Elijah was to have. Until the fire came the religion of Baal and the religion of Jehovah were alike. The religion of God has nothing but the fire to mark her off from the false religions of the world. And of the two all the advantage is on the side of Baal. The royal patronage - and the popular favor, the priests of Baal, and the glittering attractions are with the false god. Let the religion of God lack the fire from heaven, and she is but a poor thing and can be beaten at every point. She must call in the State to prop her up with purse and power and Acts of Parliament, or she will faint and die. When early Christianity lost her fire she borrowed from heathenism her altars and priests, her festivals and some of her foremost doctrines. She was born in the fire, and in the fire only can she live and thrive. The priests of Baal had all the further conditions of success. Theirs is the passionate earnestness, the furious persistent prayer, the fierce self-denial, the agony of entreaty. ‘“‘O Baal, hear us!” rings their cry; and they cut themselves with knives and leap frenzied on the sacrifice. In these matters, too, heathenism may often put the worshippers of God to the blush. So poor a thing is our religion without the fire— alike in pomp and imposing array, in earnestness and self-sacrifice. Are not the three Hebrew children a picture of the Church of God in all ages? Three of them amongst the thousands of assembled idolaters; the air filled with the cries of the heralds and rol of drums and blare of trumpets. Above all. towers the glittering image of gold and all the hosts of people are prostrate before it. Then the three, bound hand and foot, stand before the angry king. Is this the religion of Jehovah, with but three helpless representatives,—and they strangers in a strange land? But look again, they are in the fire. The flames play about them; now the cords are consumed and they are free and walk triumphantly. And lo! in their midst is a Presence more radiant than the furnace glare: there walks with them One like unto the Son of God. The king gazes with awe; the people are fixed in wonder. The image of gold is a for- gotten idol, and every heart yields its homage to Jehovah. He is supreme. And the heralds ring out the new decree,—There is none like unto the God of Israel. But now comes the time of the man of God. Baal’s priests have spent themselves. The prophet stoops to repair the altar of the Lord. One man repairing with rough stones a ruined altar. Ah, look again. See what the religion of our God can d without. She can do without numbers. Kingly favor, princely patronage, troops Of followers—her strength is not in these. One consecrated heart is more than the hun- dreds of robed priests and the thousands of noisy worshippers. Wealth? All that wa’ on the side of Baal: silver and gold went for little that day. The wealth of Ahab and the lavish hand of Jezebel were worth less than one poor prophet whom the ravens fed or who had to beg a cake of a poverty stricken widow. No good work of God ever yet stood still for the want of money when the Church had the baptism of fire. And what a plain service it was! No ritual and stately ceremony. Architecture and sublime music and lofty intellectualism and impassioned oratory—the victory of that day depended no jot or tittle upon these. It depends no jot or tittle on them now. Then out rang the bold words of the prophet—“Fill four barrels with water, and pour it upon the sacrifice and upon the wood.” And up from the sea they bring the barrels toilfully and splash the water forth upon the altar, drenching: it and filling all the trench. It is good to look upon this prophet, to see his sublime faith in his God. f re a The God that Answereth by Fire—Pcarse. 619 Brother, fear not, the religion of our God can stand any amount of cold water. The devil always keeps those four barrels full, and there are always ready hands to fling it ‘over sacrifice and altar. There is the contempt of the haughty, there is the scorn of the worldling, there is the indifference of the ignorant, there are the sharp criticisms and attacks of the clever people. Let them pour on. Why, timid soul, art thou scared, fearing that all hope of the fire from heaven is gone forever! Surely thou knowest not what the fire from heaven is like. ‘ But hark! It is the time of evening sacrifice. The great sun goes down to the sea, reddening all the earth and sky. And*now the man of God prays, “Lord God of _ Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day, that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O _ Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God and that Thou “hast turned their hearts back again.” Then forth from the reddened sky there fell the fire of the Lord and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it they fell 2 on their faces, and they said, “The Lord, He is the God,—The Lord, He is the God.” ~ This is ever the proof appointed by God, and this is ever the proof accepted by -men—The God that answereth by fire. - Look at the sacrifice stretched on the altar. It is dead and beyond all power of life;—a thing blood-stained and repulsive. What can you do with it? Bring your robed priests with chanted hymns and mystic sign—and what shall that avail? Bring the orator and let him declaim about it—what difference shall that make? Bring your arguments and strong reasons, collect the opinions of the greatest intellects of the ages,—shall that check for a moment the corruption to which it is hastening? Bring your groups in agony of earnestness, frenzied and leaping,—yet it is all unchanged. But there comes the fire—then all is transformed. As if a thing of life, it goes leaping heavenward. Purged and purified, now is it upborne as on wings. No longer hushed in death, it sings with a hundred tongues of flame. Helpless no more, now is it inspired with a force that is resistless, and the stones melt, and the water that would quench it is “licked up.” There is no withstanding a proof like thatthe force that transforms from death to life, the power that unlooses the hold of earth and bears the earthy heavenward; men everywhere believe in that religion, and it is the only religion that men do believe in. Find a force that can make bad men good and drunken men sober and greedy men generous,—that brings into the vain and frivolous a sense of life’s tremendous import; a power that makes the proud brotherly, and teaches even the grumbler to sing: you may be sure that such a religion will do its own arguing and will carry its own conviction everywhere. Mr. Wesley tells us that at Epworth On one occasion a wagon-load of Methodists were brought before the magistrate. “What have they done?” asked the magistrate. That was a point which the prosecution had not considered. Then said one, “Please, sir, they converted my wife. Before she went amongst them she had such a tongue! But now she is as quiet as a lamb.” “Take them back,” said the magistrate, ‘take them back and let them convert ail the scolds of the parish.” Forms of worship, arguments on the evidences of religion, -oratorical disquisitions,—what are they beside a woman whose ill-temper has been cured. Look at the sacrifice and see when the fire comes the completion of the work. There is not just a bit touched here and there, so that with many it should be a doubtful matter if the fire had fallen at all. There was not only a fancied smell of something burning, and the singeing of a hair. It fell upon the sacrifice, and it con- sumed the dust and the stones and it licked up the water of the trench. We must have the fire that not only lays hold of the man, but of all about him; the transforming fire that not only goes to the innermost heart of the man, but that reaches the outer- ’ FF 620 _ Pulpit Power and Eloquence. most doings and relations of his life. The religion that fails to transform the whole life is sure to be suspected, perhaps even scorned. Whatever theories the churches may hold, the world has for the Christian but one standard and that is entire sanctifi- cation. It trips and stumbles over the defects of Christian people and makes no allowance for them. The world’s conviction and the world’s conversion depend upon the holy lives of religious people. And here the world is one with the Word of God, —“Thus saith the Lord, Then shall the heathen that are left round about you know that I am the Lord when I am sanctified in you before their eyes.” We want the fire — that comes upon the man to reach to the stones and dust of his house, and to the stones and dust of his office, and to the stones and dust of his workshop. The fire must purify all his dealings And not a consuming only is it,—we want a fire that will be available for the shivering world, to warm and bless and gladden it. The church needs above everything else and the world demands this completeness and thorough- ness—that alike in business and in home, in master and in workman, in mistress and maid, in pleasure and politics, all shall be true and pure and honest and faithful. Do not mistake warmth for fire. There may be a glowing enjoyment of religious services; a delight in some Christian enterprise and service; an earnestness that mani- fests itself in many forms, but warmth cannot take the place of fire. Warm feelings and warm desires are a poor substitute for the fire from heaven. Warmth does not master; it does not transform and consume. Warmth gives no light; warmth has no | power to create new sources of heat and light. Our warmth may be carried up to blazing point, yet without the fire from heaven it shall avail nothing. Preaching cannot secure this. All religions and irreligions can preach. It is not even preaching the Gospel. Are we not sometimes beaten down with the sense of the feeble instrument that is placed in our hands for such a great work? The foolishness of preaching—what is it? What are the words that any man can utter against the forces of evil? What are words against the might of evil begotten in the blood, wrought into the nature, holding men captive as with chains of iron? How can our words cast out the devils of selfishness and pride, or cleanse the foul leprosy oi lust, cor raise those who are dead and buried in sin? Do not think only of the great masses of people that lie outside our reach, bu: of the men and women who come and listen to us Sunday after Sunday, who believe all that we can tell them and yet are not transformed! What can we do against this mysterious lethargy? How arouse these from their sleepy indifference? Thunder at them and blaze in your fierceness,—and they thank you for your earnestness, praise the sermon and go com- fortably home to dinner, and tomorrow are as they were yesterday, with no new ~ aspiration, no new vision, no fresh girding of themselves for God. What is lacking? Everything, if preaching be all. We must have the fire from Heaven. The Gospel is the truth applied by the Holy Ghost. The truth on fire alone can burn its way into. 1 the heart, glaring in upon the unconcerned and making him horribly afraid; wrapping about the place of the sinner’s false security and leaving it a blackened mass; falling upon him who thinks himself in need of nothing,—rich, robed, respectable—and lo, ’ he is poor and naked and miserable and blind, groping his way shivering to the Lord of heaven, crying for the white robe and the gift of sight. Our preaching is a ‘dreary failure without the fire from heaven. j How may we get the fire? This is surely the great question which concerns every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. For this to be within our reach and yet not to be secured is an awful responsibility, and awful condemnation. The want of the world is this—men and women who will be God’s lightning-conductors, lifting their heads. above the clouds and bringing down the fire that can set earth ablaze. There is a fable of one of old who stole from the altar of the gods the sacred flame and brought rie down to earth, That fable is to be the simple and sober reality for all disciples of The God that Answereth by Fire—Pearse. 621 Jesus Christ. Do let us rouse ourselves, every one, and make this the matter of our most eager thought and deepest longing,—how can I get this fire of God? The incident teaches us the power of one man. It was no time of great and gen- eral revival such as the Church of God has known—a time when all the tides and currents of men’s thoughts seem to set heavenward; when spiritual influences seem to pervade the air and meet us everywhere. Far otherwise was the condition of things. All was dead, utterly dead. We have seen how that Ahab and Jezebel had set them- selves to make the worship of Baal the national religion. On every side the people had yielded to this abomination. Here was one man, thinking himself the only one left on the Lord’s side, yet this is he who brings down the fire. One man—we cannot transfer our responsibility. The church with which we are connected may be very dead; the people about us may be swallowed up in money-making or luxurious living; or they may be utterly dispirited; those who could help us may be our greatest hindrances. Well, that may sadden us,—yet may we not find in these very circum- stances that which brings us into a kinship with the prophet? If we have something like Elijah’s opportunity, let us seek Elijah’s victory. Of this be quite sure—no circumstances can excuse us. Do you complain further that you have no influence, that you are not rich, that you have no gift of organization, that nobody takes any notice of your suggestions, and nobody takes any interest in what you try to do? Well, Elijah was poor, poorer than most of us probably, since he had to beg a crust of bread from a widow woman. “But alas,” you sigh, “I am not an Elijah.” Perhaps we might ask ourselves honestly whose fault that is. But the question is this—what are you going to do? Putting your circumstances at the worst, and putting yourself at the weakest—what are you going to do? Give up in despair? Let things drift in the hope that somebody may come to mend matters? Why should you not be that somebody? Is not this God of Elijah yours—the God that answereth by fire, is He not within your reach? The blackest form of atheism is to believe in God and yet to despair of doing any good. Things are never at such pass but that one man with God to help him can do a great deal to mend them. Accept your position and put the matter to the test. The God of Elijah can do as much for you as for the prophet of old and is as glad to help you. Seeking as Elijah sought we shall surely find what Elijah found. See further that this power does not depend upon office. Not as a prophet nor as a priest does Elijah stand that day. As a matter of fact he was neither prophet nor priest. It does not seem that he was ever anointed with holy oil or ordained to any office. The word of the Lord came to him,—that was all. He heard the word of God and uttered it. He brought no new revelation of God nor any great prediction concerning Israel. No poetry filled his soul like that of David and Isaiah and Ezekiel; ‘no visions of the future glowed before him. Nor was he a born leader of men like Moses and David and Gideon. He stands before us a man with one gift that made him what he was—the power to pray. This privilege is ours as much as his. It is not limited to the prophet’s office nor to the priest's anointing; this is the gift that all alike may claim. This is the holy calling wherewith we all are called; the one thing with regard to which we do all stand on the same ground; wise and simple, high and low, have here a like position and an equal responsibility. When on the day of Pente- cost the fire fell from heaven it fell alike on each of them. Not just on St. Peter, and then as he might choose to bestow it in orderly succession and according to exact priority, the grace flowing in its appointed channels. Water is easily led, but fire | has very little regard for appointed channels and is no respecter of persons. Here Office is nothing. Let us everyone take it to himself, layman as much as minister, 622 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. poor as much as rich, low as much as high,—I am responsible—as responsible as any living man—for this fire from heaven. As surely as I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, so surely is every promise of this power made to me; and every condition of receiving — it is one that can be fulfilled by me as much as by any. Here office counts for nothing. It is one man given up wholly to God. There is a phrase that is almost peculiar to Elijah and his successor Elisha. It leaps from their lips as their watchword. As the Lord liveth before whom I stand,—that was the secret of this man’s strength. It is with these words that Elijah comes, startling Ahab at his first appearing at the gate of Naboth’s vineyard. This man lived in the presence of God. He stood waiting, hearkening unto the voice of the Lord, then went forth girt with the might of the Most High to fulfil it. This made Elijah the man he was—this waiting to know and this resolute going forth to obey. The man belonged to God, and his life- service was to do to the letter what God bade him. That is ever the man who brings down the fire from heaven. , Do we turn from it lightly, certain that such a life is impossible in a condition like ours: that it would quite unfit us for business and the thousand claims of daily life? How could we attend to the trivial things of earth and yet live a life of such high communion with heaven? Well; if it be so, and we are disciples of Jesus Christ, why such a hasty decision on that side? If one of these must be given up, why should the voice of the world instantly prevail? Is the Most High God to be so easily set aside? Can we find any place for Him other than this,—that He be supreme and always first: that His will be always considered and His word always obeyed. Shall we dare to set a limit to His claims and say, Thus far will we yield to God, but no ~ further? But there is no conflict here. Be quite sure that nothing but this innermost — surrender of ourselves to God can put us in our right place towards Him. And nothing but being in our right place towards God can put us in our right place towards anything else. The work of the world will be undone or overdone: we shall be slayes ~ or tyrants in the world except as God Himself do hold the very throne of the heart — and sway us by His will. The only true life possible for us is a life of absolute surren- der to Him. God can do great wonders with any man who is given up wholly to Him. But what can God do with less than this? What grace can flow through chan- nels that are choked; or what is it that we dutifully keep this end’ clear if the other end fall short of the river of God which is full of water? There are thousands of Christians who might each one be as an Elijah of God, and they are drifting indolently through life muttering idle excuses and bitter complaints. Here was a man with a great faith in God. How marked is the contrast between the calm confidence of the prophet and the fierce desperation of the priests of Baal. “‘And they took the bullock that was given them and they dressed it and they called on the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, O Baal, hear us. And they leaped upon the altar which was made..... And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them.” “And it came to pass at the time of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet drew near and said, Lord God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel.’ How restful is this confidence! It is the quiet trust of one who talked to God face te face as a man talketh to his friend. Only in a life of communion with God is this placid faith found. He rests in the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Israel. All that God has ever been to any, all that He is to us. His resources are available for us today. We too have a great God, the Almighty. Nothing is too much to ask of Him; nothing is too much to expect from Him. The great miracles of the past are not written to mock us. The wonders that He did in our fathers’ days and in the old time before them are put within our reach. The God that Answereth by Fire—Pearse. 623 e And this faith was seen in the further plea,—‘‘Let it be seen that I am Thy servant and that I have done all these things at Thy word.”’ Obedience is the outcome of faith, yet it is also true that faith is rooted in obedience. The man has faith in the great law ___ of seed-time and harvest, therefore he goes forth with the plough expecting a harvest. But he expects a harvest also because he has complied with the conditions. If I go forth and do what God bids me in a simple dependence upon His help I may come back without the shadow of a doubt that God’s purpose shall be accomplished. The Gospel of the blessed Lord is entrusted to a human ministry, and from the first has been entrusted to the ministry of very simple people. It needs no subtlety, no splendid skill. It asks only whole-hearted obedience and the blessing of God must come. “I am Thy servant,” said Elijah. “This is no experiment of mine. If it were I might be very doubtful. But, O God, this is Thy bidding and it cannot fail.’””’ The Gospel is no experiment. It is God’s infallible remedy for the sins and sorrows of the world. And if we set forth that Gospel in the strength of God, be sure that signs ~ and wonders must follow in the name of the Holy Child Jesus. The fire comes when the sacrifice is laid on the altar. So was it of old and so is it still. The live coal that purged the lips of Isaiah was taken with the tongs from off the altar. It was when Christ had died and risen and ascended to the Father that there came the gift of the Holy Ghost. Our resting-place and standing-ground is beside the cross of Jesus Christ. There is the great manifestation of God’s love; the measure of His desire for the world’s salvation is there. There is the power of God for the salvation of men. There is the awful proof of the world’s sin; there is the great declaration of the righteousness of God for our forgiveness. It is only when we preach Christ and Him crucified that we can claim the convincing power of the Holy Ghost. ‘He shall testify of Me,” saith Christ. So was it in the days of the apostles; while they testified of Christ the fire of God fell upon the people. Here let us take our - stand with a new resoluteness beneath the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us give up our whole being, our soul and mind and strength to this, making it our ambi- tion and our passion, by the utter surrender of ourselves to God, by the life of com- munion with Him, by earnest prayer and by -estful faith to claim for our own this gift of the fire of God, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Let us dwell upon the greater assurance of triumph which is ours. : The appeal of the prophet i: to the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. For Abraham's sake God would hear the petition and deliver the people. They lay within the holy covenant which had been established by God with His servant, and the God of Abraham bends to bless the children of Abraham. But ours it is to plead an infinitely greater name. Not the servant but the Son, the Well-beloved and Only- begotten is our plea. We draw near to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Much more shall we for His sake expect and claim the fire from heaven. Have you seen where the Lord Jesus Christ has set the Church, His bride, for its keeping? At His cross there stood the mother, watching through her tears His dreadful agony; her own heart pierced and torn. And looking on her pitifully, Jesus saith to John, “Behold thy mother,” and to her He saith, “Behold thy son!” But for the Church, His bride, no human eye is watchful enough; no human arm is strong enough; no human love and wisdom can suffice. St. Peter cannot be to the Church what St. John is to the mother. Therefore He saith, “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom thou hast given me. .. . Neither pray I for these alone, but for all of them that shall believe on me through their word.” So hath He entrusted the Church to the sacred keeping of the Almighty Father. Little wonder now that the pledge should be ours: ““Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name it shall be done unto you.” “If of old, when Elijah prayed to the God of Abraham, there fell the fire, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Lord, we believe to us and ours The apostolic promise given; We wait the Pentecostal powers, The Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Behold, to Thee our souls aspire, And languish Thy descent to meet: Kindle in each the living fire, And fix in every heart Thy seat. 4 £ ahaa a | ‘ Be 624 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. am } | \ [Mark Guy Pearse was born at Camborne, Cornwall, educated privately Wesley and Dodsbury colleges; also studied medicine. He entered Wesleyan m in 1863, serving a number of churches, until ten years ago he became missio St. James Hall, in connection with the West London Mission. He has writ dozen or more novels of religious life, and several volumes of his sermons have b published.] q \ * t t =e > GOD’S CHILD, THE CRIMINAL. or W. B. PICKARD. ; “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. _ For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.”—Psa. 103: 18, 14. “a “Our Father which art in heaven..... thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”—Matt. 6: 9. It is not difficult to conceive of the race in its infancy, as incapable of any knowl- edge of God. In stages, the measure of which cannot be taken, man under the brooding of the Spirit slowly progressed to a point where God became a fact in his conscious life. Of necessity, man’s vision of the Deity is colored by the media through which the light falls upon his eyes. The God of primitive man was a primi- tive God, for man can see only so much of the Infinite as he is capable of seeing, for the same reason that a child can know only so much of his mother as his own growing mind is capable of knowing. ‘For the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.” Beginning at zero the human thought of God rose by slow and oft hindered degrees till it reaches the high level of the Old Testament song, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.’’ The distance is immeasurable that separates such a view of the Almighty from the one in which He appears as a powerful tribal Deity, a passionate, revengeful, and irresponsible Oriental monarch, who elects without reason to exalt some to the place of highest honor, and decrees without justice, to debase others to lowest serfdom. High as is the thought of the Hebrew singer, God's child is capable of still loftier ascent. The Psalmist in his “Like as a Father,” gives an early glimpse of the sublime revelation made to man, the Fatherhood of God. From the lips of the Son falls the prayer that floods the human heart with that highest and last conception, “Our Father.” This vision is not qualified. He is not “like as a Father,” for Jesus bids you think of Him and speak to Him as “your Father.’”’ He teaches men that God thinks of them as His children. “Your heavenly Father” is the Master’s designation of God. This is no empty figure of speech but a term that sets forth a relationship actual and vital. Humanity turns its face to the skies and with filial spirit cries “Abba Father,” and from the opening heavens comes the answer of divine parenthood, ‘““My Child.” Great as is this truth it is but half the truth. The brotherhood of the race is the eternal corollary of the Fatherhood of God. ‘‘All we be brethren” is the golden hemisphere that added to “Our Father” completes the circle of revelation. Clear as seems the meaning of the Gospel message, it has required ages of retarded growth for the followers of Christ to understand its fullness. Like children learning to read we have skipped the hard words and misunderstood the easy ones. Surely the Christian world, with a blaze of light falling upon the page, will never dare to rise in judgment against our pagan brothers who have tried to decipher the mystery of being, standing through the ages in the dim light of earliest dawn. Nor will we forget, while we think of the debased and desolate creatures about us, the Master's command, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” In opening the direct discussion of the theme, God’s Child, the Criminal, we need to remind ourselves that fatherhood is not dependent upon the character 9. the “ a; 626 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. child. The good boy has no monopoly of relationship. The bad boy is his father’s i” son, and may even bear in striking degree his father’s likeness. He may resist, rebel, and run away, he may dishonor the family name which he bears, he may cut himself — off from his home and heritage, but he is still a son. He may be born deaf, dumb and blind, or idiotic, or he may be crippled in life’s struggle, or bear in his body some loathsome disease, he may never have known that he had a father, but none of these things annul relationship. Herein is the supreme message of Jesus to the’ world. All © men, in all ages, of all conditions, of all colors, are to be taught to pray, “Our Father.’ God has never disowned any child of His. No headstrong prodigal has — ever gone so far into the far country that the Father’s love has not pursued him, — He may be shut within prison walls and bear the stigma of crime, but God is his Father and Jesus Christ his elder brother. The most dangerous character, the most q hardened “repeater” is God’s child, the criminal. To deny this is to cut ourselves — off from all hope. ; : Fatherhood involves obligation. The common law recognizes the responsibility — of the parent to his child and of the child to his parent. But always the obligation — of parenthocd precedes the obligation of childhood. The fact that we are in the world carries with it our right to a share in our Father’s care and love. By no theo- 4 logical fiction can a good God be excused for hating any child of His. God is under eternal obligations to be a Father to every earthly child. To prove this Jesus Christ lived and served and died and lives again. God’s child, the criminal, is no exception to this universal rule. Prison walls cannot be made thick enough to shut out God’s care for His own. He loves men not because they are good but because they are His children. It is a function of fatherhood to sympathize with the weakness, ignorance and sufferings of childhood. No child has ever lived who did not need the compassionate care of parental love. The poet of the Psalms tells us that God is like a human father because He pities us. What child of grace is so favored, so good, that he has — not felt the need of this divine compassion? What foolishness, what blundering, what — wickedness have we not been guilty of? How near we have come to crossing that invisible line that separates the criminal from his brother and yet have escaped. “We > ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient and deceived,” is the confession of Paul, — a confession the best of us need to make. Surely we cannot deny to our less fortunate brothers the pity of divine Fatherhood. God pitieth His criminal children, “for He knoweth their frame, He remembereth that they are dust.” Man is only taking his — first lessons in the great volume of heredity and environment. God reads the book © from the beginning. He knows, He never forgets, the influence of birth and early © training on His child the criminal. Adelaide Proctor sings the sad story of multitudes — of earth’s children when she says: } “God gave to earth a gift; a child, Weak, innocent, and undefiled,— Opened its ignorant eyes and smiled. It lay so helpless, so forlorn, Earth took it coldly and in scorn, Cursing the day when it was born. wie Cpey Feat oe She gave it first a tarnished name, For heritage a tainted fame, Then cradled it in want and shame.” Had you been born amidst the squalor, hunger, blasphemy and drunkenness of — the slums would you be in God's house today? If your only lessons in ethics had mM 4 ‘ “ae God's Child, the Criminal—Pickard. 627 a _ been disregard of law, human and divine, would you now be a reputable citizen? If you had begun your career where was printed upon your yinched and hardened features the official notice that you had been “mortgaged to the devil before you were born,” would intelligence and purity now beam from your face? Let each one in this ‘presence say to his own heart, “Who maketh thee to differ from another and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?” God knows that all of His criminal children _do not come from the slums and He remembers that a home of luxury without disci- pline is a dangerous place in which to be born. God pities the poor children of rich parents who give to their offspring nothing but gold, the very spending of which lays the foundation for future criminality. One of the darkest-and most pathetic stories in the history of the world is the treatment accorded those who go astray. The criminal treatment of criminals is a topic that can never be discussed except in barest outline. Society, by its theological motions, its false standards, its cruel practices, its penal laws and methods, has made it easy for men to do wrong and hard for them to do right, and when once they have gone astray, impossible for them to reform. Society licenses schools of crime in greatest numbers where the people are least able to resist; it calls the victims of its Own institutions into a court room where hover criminals who feed on crime; the guilty one is thrown into jail, often a moral pest house, from which none ever emerge without a contagion of crime he did not take with him. At last society turns God’s child out again, branded as a felon, the only place open to him, the saloon, and the only company willing to receive him, men who like himself are passing through the grades of the school of crime. Letourman utters a stern denunciation, but one whose truthfulness we dare not challenge, when he says: “The criminal would not exist, or at least very rarely, if he were not produced by society itself.’ God knows that the wonder is not that criminals exist but that the number is not far greater than it is. God could not be a true Father to His earthly children if He were not interested in their recovery from sin and its consequences. Hence we have a right to look for the inauguration of movements, the ultimate end of which is the restoration of the wanderer to the character and privileges of sonship. There must be born in him from above a new desire, a new purpose, a new hope. He must have a chance to make a new beginning. Jesus commenced His ministry by preaching, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The repentance of the Gospel is a very different thing from the penance of the theologian. It is not a call to suffer self-inflicted pain that we may render an equivalent for our sin and thus escape torment, but rather it is a call to re-think—to change our minds concerning sin, as a preparation for promotion into the kingdom of Christ. Forgiveness is not a way to keep out of hell but an open door into a higher life. The foundation of the appeal is in the fact that no man is either so bad or so good that he may not improve. Jesus taught the same doctrine to the man of lofty character and to the woman of degraded habits. Science restates this old Gospel when Fiske declares that the improvableness of man is his distinguishing characteristic. The kingdom of heaven is always at hand. Here is inspiration for the highest and hope for the lowest. Shall we accept this opportunity for ourselves, but deny it to those less favored? Is God’s child, the criminal, to have no chance to repent that he too may enter the heavenly kingdom of honesty, purity, faith and the service of his fellow men? Is the old dogma of despair, “Once a criminal, always a criminal,” to hang like the pall of night over the 750,000 persons annually convicted of crime in the United States? Are the 100,000 persons, largely young men, now within our prison walls, beyond all hope? Surely no lover of his God and of his brother will accept a notion so destructive of the foundations of the Gospel. For two thousand years men have prayed “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That the answer has been long delayed is only seeming. 628 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. The path of progress is one of evolution rather than of revolution, Those who look for an answer to that prayer in some cataclysmic catastrophe have been and are sure to be disappointed. But to those who read aright the great movements of God in history there have appeared proofs indubitable that the kingdom of the Father has come upon the earth. Such an organization as the Prison Reform Association is a specific answer to the Lord’s prayer. It is evidence of the establishment of the king- dom of our Father’s love among men, for man’s pity for his fallen brother is proof of man’s likeness to his divine Father. Such an institution is an expression of remedial grace that shows the coming of the heavenly kingdom. All who are pre- pared enter joyfully therein. The principles of prison reform are not new. It is the application of them that is a novelty. In fact the divine order of procedure is followed so exactly that one wonders why it has not always prevailed. Today, enlightened society deals with its ward, the criminal, as God deals with His child, the sinner. To some of these striking analogies we now direct attention. The beginnings of the criminal instincts are early seen. The first offense occurs during youth. The criminal is a child in years, in judgment, in self-control and in) moral sense. He is not the powerful brute of popular tradition, whose very grossness is the occasion of his crimes, tabulations of anthropological statistics show him to be under-sized and under-vitalized. He became a criminal, not because of strength but because of weakness. It is a defect and not an excess, arrested development and not over-development, that are the occasions of criminous outbreakings. Crime, like insanity, is associated with certain well-defined, abnormal "physical conditions. In the light of modern science the criminal is a sick child. He isa patient and the reforma- tory is a hospital for the cure of his malady. How like the old teachings of Scripture do these new findings sound! The sin- ner is sick. His rebellion is the delirium of sin, for when he comes to himself he comes to his Father. ‘‘Forgive them, they know not what they do,” is the prayer of profound: insight and compassion which the dying Savior offers for His guilty murderers. God pities His sick children. With increasing emphasis we read the Gospel of wholeness preached by the Master. There is new meaning in the fa that Jesus paid so much attention to the mental and physical conditions of mem. With some, healing preceded forgiveness; with others, forgiveness came first im order. In either case healing and pardon were granted that sin might be conquered Jesus laid startling emphasis upon the duty of His followers to minister to the bodies of men. The hungry must be fed, the naked clothed, the sick healed and the insane restored to reason; and all this in the interests of the higher life of humanity. The power to do this was a part of the “greater works’ He prophesied for His followers. Thus the work of the Great Physician was but the forerunner of the modern scientific movements which are helping men to holiness by helping them to health and sanity It is an established fact that certain abnormal physical conditions tend to certain types of crime. It is equally true that by careful attention to hygiene, nutrition, exer cise and mental occupation, structural changes take place which, by restoring the physical to normality, reform the criminal and cure the patient. Every soul begins in and is shaped by a human body. Why should it be thought a thing incredible to re-shape the moral nature by obedience to the laws of God? Prison reform is but a concrete expression of the Father’s love, who in pity seeks to heal His sick child, the criminal, and thus restore him to his place in the divine family. “Arise and walk,” “Go, sin no more,” is still the message of Christ to a palsied humanity. The old idea in punishment was retaliation and vengeance. It was an eye for ar eye, and a tooth for a tooth. This primitive notion is fast giving way to the saner an¢ more divine conception that sees in all penalty a method for the protection of society oF God’s Child, the Criminal—Pickard. 629 and the reformation of the wrong-doer. It is inconceivable that the pitying Father of the Psalm and the loving Father of the Gospels could punish sin with any other end in view than the good of His children. Love seeks not her own. To administer penalty as a vindication of the majesty of government is unrelieved barbarism. A good government does not need such vindication, nor do such methods produce the expected results. God is not seeking to save His dignity but His children. He is not willing that any should perish. On the other hand this idea of the ends of disciplinary justice has nothing in common with that sickly sentimentality that coddles the sinner and insults God by calling Him an indulgent parent. This is gush and not Gospel. God's pity is not an exhibition of weakness but an expression of the saving strength of the Holy Father, whose pity for the sinner is but the other side of His righteous wrath against sin. The discipline of life is real. The way of the transgressor is hard. He that will not work neither shall he eat. The wages of sin is death. All this is a definite expression of a divinely ordained disciplinary process, the object of which is to teach every child of God to pray, “Father, thy will be done.” Punishment may be administered in implacable-anger: discipline is the specific effort of love to transform the ignorant child into the likeness of the Father. Of Jesus Himself it was said that “He was made perfect through suffering.” It is enough that the servant be as his Lord. Here again is a striking picture of the motives and methods of modern criminolo- gists. For the state to administer punishment as vengeance is a barbarian phase. To carpet with velvet the cell and spray with rose water the idle and unrepentant criminal, while he leisurely dines upon the luxuries of the season, is a morbid senti- mentality, akin to the criminality it encourages. Human justice is nearest the divine when it seeks to protect the innocent and reform the vicious. Society must be saved from the contagion of its sick members, hence it builds a reformatory, a hospital, in which they may be detained while a cure is taking place. The vicious need protec- tion from society to whose errors so much of the world’s wrong doing is primarily traceable. Many a drunkard seeks relief from the saloon by voluntarily taking refuge behind prison walls. The criminal often needs protection from his friends, whose mistaken treatment and false ethics make a cure impossible. The criminal, like the delirious patient, needs protection from himself. The insane left to themselves and their friends, seldom recover, but placed in charge of experts in a hospital, their chances for restoration greatly increase. Yet no judge who commits a patient to the care of such an institution ever thinks of vengeance or feels that the majesty of an offended law has been vindicated. The only thought possible is the true one in dealing with crime, the desire to protect society and cure the criminal. The universal prevalence of this spirit, which is the spirit of the Lord’s prayer, is that for which the prison reformer ever prays. In dealing with His child, the sinner, God makes use of time as a factor in the process of salvation. No child who has lived long in the far country can develop instantly the ability to appreciate the full privileges of sonship. It requires something more than quick repentance to make a saintly character out of a riotous sinner. The hungry prodigal may appreciate the fatted calf but it will take a life time to teach him to appreciate the Father’s love. Men may be converted instantly but transformation is a process limited only by the duration of the immortal life. Continuous liberty is the fruitage of continuous obedience. The divine Father cannot give His child a character, for character is a growth in which choice is a permanent factor. ‘As many as receive Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God.” There is no man so good that he has not had reason to say, “Before I was disciplined I went astray but now have I kept thy law.” On the other hand the unthinking and rebellious child may hear love’s entreaties, and see love's sacrifices and suffer love’s discipline 630 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. without being in the slightest danger of repenting. No plan has ever been revealed by which God proposes to make bad people good without their own consent; and who shall assume to measure the utmost depths of the abyss of human resistance to divine grace? “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life” is a solemn judg- ment that will be true so long as the child prefers swine-herding to sonship, The central point in the present day movements for prison reform is the determi- nate sentence. In the ideal plan criminals are committed not for some specific term of months or years, but until they are genuinely reformed. This method rests upon the broad foundation that the ends of justice and the protection of society are fully met when the criminal so changes his mind that he becomes a self-respecting and self-supporting citizen. Society’s first duty to the insane patient and his friends is to” place him in a hospital. Its second duty is to adopt those methods of treatment which experience has shown to be miost likely to cure. A third and equally imperative obli- gation is to release the patient as soon as he is cured, but never till then. This is the divine method of discipline that underlies the modern methods of dealing with the vicious classes. The convicted criminal should be imprisoned; while in prison, every effort should be made to cure him; when his record gives evidence of a disposi- tion sufficiently reformed so that he can be trusted with liberty, parole him; if the cure proves permanent, forgive and release him; if he prove incapable and incorrigible, after long and patient efforts to save him, detain him for life, no matter how slight his first offense. Our right to keep a man in prison stops when he ceases to be a criminal, and while he remains a criminal we have no right to turn him loose to prey upon society and insure his own destruction. The practical workings of this system have revealed the startling fact that the average criminal dreads the indeterminate sentence, He revolts against any plan that suggests reformation. By years of training in wrong-doing his heart is fully set in him to do evil. He refuses, at first, to join in a campaign against himself. He does not want to be good. But the indeterminate sen- tence sets before him an open door. He sees everywhere the inspiring promise, This do and thou shalt live. The majority beginning to do, slowly begin to live. They come to themselves at last. After discouraging failures and inspiring victories they walk forth, free men, ready to testify, ““All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.”” But some are incapable and incorrigible. No motive appeals to them. They wax worse and worse. Deliberately and repeatedly they condemn themselves to a hell of life imprisonment at hard labor, — their only companions, rebellious spirits like themselves. The statistics of the reform-— atories that are being operated upon this scientific and therefore divine order, show conclusively that as high as eighty per cent of the persons so treated do really reform and go out into the world honorable and useful members of society. In many ways the old ideals and methods involve a criminal treatment of crime, actually hindering — reformation rather than helping it, and increasing crime rather than decreasing it, That only is a method worth saving which saves. r. Ideas must become incarnate to influence humanity. Abstract notions of good- — ness are impotent to save. The Word must become flesh and dwell among us. Fath-— erhood can only be revealed through sonship. He that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father. God’s revelation of Himself finds its consummate expression in the man Christ Jesus. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. When God would teach His children a great truth He first pours it into a great heart. Voltaire says, ‘“When God wished an idea to make the circuit of the world he first kindled it . in the heart of a Frenchman.” The secret of every reform is an incarnation. Again, the movement we study bears the imprint of the divine. From every side comes the testimony that the success of prison reform is in the embodiment of its high z- a God’s Child, the Criminal—Pickard. 631 ideals in a strong, pure and sweet personality. A theory of reform is as futile to save men as a theory of nutrition is to feed them. The machinery of a model reformatory, with corrupt political henchmen to manage it, will be a source of peril. Every reform- atory that does not need reforming, must have at its head and among its workers, persons qualified by spirit and special training to exemplify the essential elements of a redeemed manhood. God's child, the criminal, can only be saved by the transform- ing power of direct contact with God’s child, the righteous. Prisoners, like children and animals, read character at sight. They feel goodness and reality and detect cant and hypocrisy with intuitive swiftness. Alas, when persons with base hearts are set to make good men out of the weak and wicked. Mrs. Ellen C. Johnson, for many years the devoted and successful superintendent of the Sherborn reformatory for con- vict women in Massachusetts, relates an incident in her experience that teaches its own lesson. A woman was committed to her care who resisted all the influences brought to bear upon her to induce her to obey the rules of the institution. She remained obdurate and indifferent. Mrs. Johnson had had painted for the chapel a life-sized picture of Jesus forgiving the sinful woman. It was a striking work of art, and when properly placed and lighted, its figures stood out with realistic effect. On the evening that the picture was to be unveiled, she had the rebellious creature seated in a position where she would have the best possible view of the painting, and then seated herself near the patient that she might watch the result. After briefly telling the story, the lights were turned on and the veil gently drawn aside, revealing the figures of the kneeling penitent and the strong, but tender Savior in the act of saying, “Neither do I condemn thee; go thy way; from henceforth sin no more.” The effect was magical. A subdued applause burst from the audience which quickly subsided into a profound hush. The leaden face of the incorrigible woman suddenly flushed and lighted up as though a flame had been kindled within the depths of her being. With eyes suffused with tears and with gaze fixed upon the scene, she did not heed the signal for retiring, but remained riveted to her place by that vision of the forgiving love of the Master. A new era had dawned in her life. There was begun in her that hour a reformation that broadened into a transformation. Under the sweet spell of a vision of love her deprived and depraved heart was changed until later she was dis- charged, cured. Blessed is the one who so incarnates his Heavenly Father's saving and health-giving grace that his criminal brothers and sisters may be won thereby to a life of virtue, purity and service. We come to the crowning fact in the program of Fatherly grace. God’s remedial love is primarily preventive. It is no part of the divine plan that men should be thrown into the fire that the goodness of God may be displayed in their rescue. We are not to sin that grace may abound. Nay, rather, grace most abounds in the life that has been saved from the necessity for such salvation. It is no part of our ritual to worship the prodigal son, even though we rejoice with heaven over his return. The occasion for rejoicing would have been greater had he never gone astray. Christianity sets a child in the midst and says, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” There are those who have never been conscious of living in any other than filial rela- tions with God. This is the highest point of Christian experience. When this experi- ence becomes universal the will of the eternal Father will be done in earth as it is in heaven. All advocates of prison reform plead for such modifications of our present social conditions as will make it impossible for God’s children to become criminals. Divine’ as is the work of restoration, the work of prevention is more divine. The father who with criminal carelessness permits his children to contract a contagious malady has poor claim to paternal love because he succeeds in nursing back to life one of the Stricken group. We are praying with new emphasis the old prayer, “Lead us not into 632 .Pulpit Power and Eloquence. temptation.” This prayer will be fully answered when every child born into the world has an even chance to be good. It is the teachableness of the young that makes the — perpetuation of the criminal possible. It is the teachableness of childhood that makes the salvation of the criminal classes a possibility. Here is a bit of carbon. Which | shall it be, soot blacking the white walls of the city, or, diamond, sparkling with brill- iancy upon the finger of the king? The elements are the same. Charcoal, educated and disciplined, becomes diamond. Charcoal, neglected and untrained, is common soot. Our Father pities His children for He remembers that they are dust; and pity: ing He seeks to inspire us to give every lump of common carbon a chance to become: | a diamond of dazzling purity. The children born in the slums do not become crim- inals because they were born there, but because they live there. The startling state- ment is made that not ten per cent of the criminals now in a large penal institution are the children of criminals. Environment is far more potent in shaping character — than heredity. The duty of society is not simply to rescue occasionally one from the slums but to save the slums by making them impossible. : be half done. Then offer to young Ne fier same protection and training outside the reformatory walls that are given within, and the work will be finished. Alas, as it now is, the number of criminals is daily increasing. Prisons can scarcely be built fast enough to receive the recruiting army of the vicious; and all this, not because th world grows worse but because we are not wise enough to follow the divine order of prevention and cure. If one half the annual expenditure entailed by crime in the United States could be spent in scientific methods of prevention, a sweeping stride in the forward movement would be taken. Let us pray for grace to do our duty. The great Howard, good as he was great, dying in 1789, said: “Lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave and let me be forgotten.” But such lives can never be forgctten. No good life is ever lost. It lives again in the larget move ments of the next generation. Let us thank God that the shadows on the old dial above Howard’s grave announce that the day is hastening forward. There is no power that can halt its onward march. The world’s golden age is in the path of th rising sun. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Let us by Christ-like devotion to our God and our brother, hasten forward the slow-moving hours. Brothers, be nc E impatient. The sun-dial has no message for us save as the shadows fall upon its” silent figures. Shadows are children of the sun. Therefore, for sunshine and shadow . we devoutly give thanks as we hopefully await the coming of high noon, when in God’s family there will be no criminal children. [Ward Beecher Pickard, D. D., pastor Epworth Memorial Church, Cleveland, born in Rochester, N. Y., June 1, 1853. His ambition for a college education was ne realized, and began saute ina printing one Several years later he was called to 1 $300. He was given degree of D. D. by Mount Union College. This sermon was delivered before the National Prison Congress, and ae great deal of attention among a large audience of men who have to do with criminals] (633) - 4 ¥ > THe BELIEVER’S UNION WITH THE LORD. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D. Daniel Webster, when asked what was the greatest thought that ever impressed his mind, replied, “The greatest thought that ever took possession of my intellect is ‘my personal responsibility to God.”’ If I were asked what is the greatest thought that ever took possession of my own mind I think I should say, that it is my personal union with Jesus Christ. The thought that possessed Webster was the thought of ‘duty and of danger. But the thought that most overwhelms me is one of transcendent privilege and delight—heaven on earth. We talk a great deal of consecration. But, in the highest sense, there is not a living man or woman that can consecrate himself or herself. There is just one thing we can do: We can separate ourselves unto God, but His must be the work of consecration. And I would, by God's grace, bring to you a refreshing word of God that may be an antidote to wounded spirits that winced under the sharp sword thrusts of the morning, an uplifting and healthy thought—one thought that may assist you in your own separation, and give you increased faith to count on God to add the conse- cration. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, sixth chapter and the seventeenth verse, are these words: “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit,” that is, one spirit with God. The analogy is drawn from the marriage relation. He that is joined unto his wife is one flesh; but he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. That text possesses to my mind a very great importance and beauty for two great reasons. In the first place, because it is the key to both of the two Epistles to the Corinthians. It introduces every thought of any consequence from the opening verse of the first chapter to the closing verse of the last chapter. And the second charm that this text has is, that, in those ten words, ‘He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (eight words in Greek), there is more sublimity, of magnificent and inspiring truth, than in almost any other equal number of words in the New Testament, and, especially, the climax of all representations of the unity of the believer with Christ. May God help us to follow the lead of the Holy Ghost for a little time, in considering this text. It is a great thing to get hold of the key that unlocks one of God’s inspired books. For each one of these books is itself a House of the Interpreter, and, if you can get the Interpreter Himself to go with you through His house and unlock all the various apartments of it, and show you the beauties that are in them, there is perhaps no more transcendent privilege given to the sons of men. I. Take this conception, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit,” and consider it as, first, an expression of our unity with the Lord. There are seven forms of figure which, in the New Testament, set forth this union of Christ with the believer, and they run through the whole range of possible figures of speech. There is one that is drawn from the purely animal kingdom,—the sheep and the shepherd (John 10). There is one that is drawn from the vegetable kingdom,—the vine and the branches Qohn 15). There is one drawn from the mineral kingdom,—the building and the living stone (Ephesians 2). There is one that is drawn from the human form,—the body and its members (Ephesians 4). There is one that is drawn from the family relation,—the family and its members, or the state or commonwealth and its citizens . 634 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. (Ephesians 2:3). There is one that is drawn from the marriage relation,—the brid and the bridegroom (Ephesians 5). But you go through all these representations, and touch the climax only when you get to this sixth chapter and seventeenth verse. of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, ‘He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit’ You will see that all the other figures of speech suggest a union of which it is at leas conceivable that such union may be broken. The sheep may be separated from shepherd, the branches may be cut off from the vine, the stones may be taken out of) the temple, the family may be scattered and its members alienated, the members of the body may be severed from the body, even the bride and the bridegroom may divorced, but how are you to separate spirit? Where is the line of cleavage whe you are to part or divide spirit? In Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, when we reac chapter he shows the Holy Spirit penetrating a believer’s life, teaching the believer to talk to God, and say, “Abba Father,” teaching him to walk with God, and breath out his prayers to God, teaching him he is one with God in the holy harmony of eternal plan and purpose, then he ends by. saying, “Who shall separate us from the love of God? For, if the Holy Ghost abides in me, I am the Lord’s, and we two are one spirit. Who, then, is going to separate us?” This sixth chapter, seventeen verse, of first Corinthians, is a commentary on the eighth chapter of Romans. II. Now look at this text as a key to these two epistles. The train of thoug is profoundly beautiful and yet divinely simple, and the references in these two epistles are so scattered at regular intervals that they may be easily remembered by the slig! est effort,—for example: There are seven great points of light in these two epistl and they all have to do with this one central text. The first is in the second chapt of the first epistle, the next is in the sixth chapter, the next is in the twelfth chapter, and the next is in the fifteenth chapter,—you see they are separated by convenient dis- tances through the body of the epistle, as though it were not safe to mass ali these magnificent truths in one place, or concentrated light. You have got quite a littl space to get over the impression of the first great blessed truth before you c under the power of the next. When you come into the second epistle you find t more of these points of light: the first in the third chapter, the second in the sixth third in the twelfth, so that the location is easy to remember without even taking note. tL a These seven great blazing points of light all are reflections of the glory at the one saying: “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit;” and all that I shall tty to do is to give an outline of this thought as the Lord has opened it to my mind. has been so great a blessing to me, the greatest blessing I think I ever got out of New Testament, that I yearn to impart the blessing to others. “He that is joine the Lord is one spirit.” Observe, first of all, that this is literally true. There is a fashion that people of saying, “‘such and such statements are only figures of speech.” But do you know that, w Hee the Holy Ghost uses figures, the figurative means more than the litera 1? It is because the literal terms do not grasp or convey the grandeur of God’s thought, that He resorts to figures which appeal to the imagination and bring in a whole world of suggestions in order to give us some more adequate idea of what oi means. He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit, is literally true. When Holy Spirit comes into the believer and takes possession of him, the Spirit of God a the spirit of the believer are wedded, joined in eternal union, in an inseparable union,— wedded, so that, in the sight of God, the two are henceforth one. That is the precis« & t. - ” The Believer’s Union With the Lord—Pierson. 635 os / jought. And well may we ask God for the grace to consider and apprehend any ght so awful in its glory and grandeur. Now let us trace, one by one, the seven of development of this thought, the seven conspicuous points of light in these two epistles. The basal thought of the whole is, that, if the Spirit of God and the apis of man are united by faith in Christ, then of course there must be upon the spirit of the Christian a mighty impression of the Spirit of God. And moreover we can all see that something of the attributes that belong to the Spirit of God must reproduce or, at least, reflect themselves in the experience of the believer, If, for instance, it were possible tonight that the spirit of Isaac Newton, or of Mendelssohn, or of Michael Angelo should take possession of men, and should, by some mysterious divine decree, wed my spirit in inseparable union, the proof and fruit of that would found in the fact that I would think philosophically as Newton did, that I would compose musically and perform instrumentally as Mendelssohn did, and would become skillful with pencil and chisel as Michael Angelo was. And it is incon- ceivable, if the spirit of any one of these great men should be wedded to my spirit, that the effect of that wedlock would not appear in my character and in the life that I lead. That is the great thought of both these two epistles,—the believer’s spirit and the Holy Spirit of God unite in holy wedlock and become one, and the Spirit of God in and through the spirit of man manifests godlike attributes and qualities. For instance, in the second chapter of the first Epistle, we are taught that the Spirit of God reveals to the spirit of man divine knowledge. In the sixth chapter we are taught that the Spirit of God puts the impress of God's patent right of owner- ship on the spirit of man that He thus unites to Himself, and even on his body. In the twelfth chapter we are taught that the Spirit of God working through the spirit of man uses man’s spirit and body for His purposes, conferring upon the human disciple divine endowments. And so the first verse of the twelfth chapter is this: ‘‘Concern- ing spiritual gifts I would not ye should be ignorant.” Then in the fifteenth chapter we are taught that the Spirit of God leaves His impression even upon the body that He makes His temple, so that, though that temple now has in it carnal elements and is going to be pulled down and dissolved in the grave, it is to be reconstructed entirely out of the spiritual elements in the resurrection, as God’s holy temple. That is the doctrine of the resurrection. If we go on, into the second Epistle, in the third chapter, we are taught that the power of the Spirit of God is seen in that mightiest exhibition of power,— transformation. Beholding as in glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image. Then in the sixth chapter we are taught that the fact that the Holy Spirit weds our spirit, insures the holiness of the human spirit, which must reflect the holiness of the Spirit of God. In the twelfth chapter we are taught that, as the Spirit of God weds the spirit of man He imparts the bliss of God, so that one may hope for some such experience even on earth as Paul had, when he was caught up to the third heaven and while yet in the body saw and experienced unutterable things. Such is the line of thought, simple enough to be easily remembered, and yet un- locking all the grand apartments of the Holy Spirit in these two epistles. I will add that I have tried that key on every verse in the two letters to the Corinthians, and I have never experienced such an unlocking of any two books to my own mind as in daily studying those two epistles with that key in hand. Consulting brevity and simplicity, let us cast ourselves on the Spirit's help and for a little time look closely at what all this means. First of all let us remember that spiritual does not mean intellectual, pertaining to a man’s spiritual nature in contrast to his physical being, but in the Epistles to the Corinthians spiritual always means that which is possessed of, controlled and molded by, the Holy Spirit. A spiritual man is a Spirit possessed man, the spiritual body is a Spirit controlled body, 636 Pulpit Power and Eloquence, a spiritual life is a life thrilled with the Spirit of God, a spiritual mind is a mind t responds to the thoughts and aims of the Holy Spirit. This is the force of the wi spiritual, which occurs in the two Epistles to the Corinthians sixteen times out twenty-six, or more than half the times of its use, in the entire New Testament, 1. Now what is the doctrine of the first Epistle, second chapter? That a 1 of this world, the natural man, though he may be a prince of this world, who. been trained in the best of its colleges, though he may have the greatest endowm by nature, and the greatest attainments by culture, is still a fool as to the t knowledge of God. Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, and the thought of m hath not conceived,—notice,—not one eye, or ear, or heart, but, if you take t all together, all that the eyes of men have seen, or the ears of men have heard that the thoughts of men have conceived, from Adam until now,—if you put results of human observation and imagination together,—_that would not repre the equivalent of one drop of the essence of the true knowledge of God which th Spirit can impart. On the other hand, take a little babe in Christ, that knows nothing about hui learning, has been through no schools of human culture, and that little child, tat by the Holy Ghost, will penetrate the deep things of God,—for, what the eye or or heart hath never known, God reveals unto the disciple by his indwelling Sg The whole of the second chapter is occupied with this thought; in that chaptei are told that the spiritual man discerneth these things, but he himself is discet of no man. If you are a spiritual man or woman, you are a stranger to every wo! man or woman; they do not understand your nature, or character, or motives purposes. The very people to whom you come to bring a blessing from God turn from you, because they do not discern or understand you or your message. natural man is as insensible to the higher truths of God as a blind man is t glory of a sunset, or as a deaf man is to the music of the cathedral; and the first of all is to acknowledge that I can know nothing definitely of the mysteries of until I am taught by the Holy Spirit; but, if my spirit and the Spirit of God ai wedded in eternal and inseparable union, the first proof and fruit of it will be th the Spirit will take the things of God and show them to me. “I thank Thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes.” I remembered that Dr. Doddrid said, that when he came to any passage of scripture that he did not understand, on which he found no light in commentaries, he used to go to one of the humbl men of his congregation, entirely unlearned in schools of men, but taught school of God, and he would say, “What do you think of that passage?” 1 never once failed to get light on the obscurest mysteries of the Word of Gc Therefore, if you want to understand the Bible, get on your knees and read it your knees, or, if you do not literally search it on your knees, let your soul be down before God, and you will learn more in one hour of prayerful communi with the Spirit than in all the schools of human culture in a thousand years. a One of the mistakes of modern criticism is this: that men are taking Bible as though they could understand the mysteries of it as ‘readily as they understand Homer, or Milton, or Virgil, or Shakespeare,—that is a funde misconception, and leads to fundamental mistakes. 2. The second great lesson we are taught in this first Epistle is in the si chapter, namely, that the Holy Spirit abiding in us leaves on us the stamp of Go proprietorship. We are here reminded that our body becomes, by the Spirit's dwelling, His temple. There are two things which pertain to the ownership a house: The first is the purchasing of it, and the second is the inhabiting ot In this case, the owner is God, and He has paid His price for the house, and th 1.4 x 4 The Believer’s Union With the Lord—Pierson. 637 “moves into the house, and claims it as the occupant, so that there is no disputing s ownership. These two thoughts are what the Epistle presents in chapter six, are bought with a price,” etc. The body of the believer is the house of God, for first He purchased the believer's body and soul, and then the Holy Ghost moved 3 and took possesion. And you are to think, not of your soul, mind, heart, will, md conscience only, as God’s house, but of your body as His temple. There never as a grander, a more awe-inspiring thought that ever took possession of me, than at, while I am speaking to you, this body is actually the occupied habitation of ‘Holy Spirit. If I say a word that is wise and spiritual, the Spirit speaks in me,— pugh these eyes He sees, through these ears He hears, through these hands He , and through these feet He walks. How can a man give his body to the pur- s of sensuality and sin, when he feels it to be the actual residence of the Holy frit, the Spirit’s consecrated temple? ' _ There are some beauties of the Word of God that only Greek students can see, and nc the latter means the Holy of Holies. And when the Spirit says your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, He uses not the former, but the latter and more sacred of those words. He calls your body His Holy of Holies. In the second chapter of the Gospel of John, when the Son of God says, “Destroy this temple, and in three - I will raise it up,” the word is the same ( vadv). The Holy Spirit calls the jody of a believer the Holy of Holies, as Christ called His own body, because the Holy Spirit is within the believer as He was in Christ. The sacristan (or sexton) of such a temple must be careful to keep the dust from accumulating there, and permit nothing to enter that defileth or worketh abomination, or maketh a lie, anything that will dishonor that unseen and divine Spirit who inhabits that body as His temple. Tf you can find any more sanctifying thought than that, I know not where. 3. What is the third of these great conceptions? Look at the twelfth chapter and read about spiritual gifts. There the ruling thought is that the Spirit abiding in every disciple distributes spiritual gifts and spheres of service. You are to look upon every gift you possess as of God, and as bestowed for His uses and glory. In the seventh chapter the kindred thought is presented with regard to the secular callings of life, as here, of spiritual service. If a man is a master or servant he is to regard himself as so placed of God in his worldly calling, and to be content where he is, and as the Lord hath distributed to every man, so let him walk, and in whatsoever calling he is found, therein abide with God. Taking the two chapters together (7, 12). we learn that both our worldly and spiritual spheres of life represent divine vocations and imply divine gifts or qualifications. Those who see that truth in the light of such teaching will never more call anything about their life “secular” and, by the grace of God, I for one never henceforth will. If this body is taken possession of by the Holy Ghost, whatsoever I touch is thereby sacred. When you sit down to a meal, it ought to be a sort of sacramental meal. For what are you eating, but to keep this house in vigor and strength for the Holy Spirit’s uses? If you write a letter what business have you to write a letter in which you cannot honor God? Is not the Holy Ghost moving the hand that pens the letter? If I expect the Spirit to anoint ‘and use this tongue for the proclamation of the message of salvation, how can I use this tongue for any purpose dishonorable to that message, or to Him that inspired it? How can I pervert any member of Christ to the service of Satan or sin? Such a conception of the Spirit’s distribution of work and spheres and tools of service makes all toil sacred. _ A friend went one morning into Sir Robert Peel’s apartments when he was prime minister, and found him with the great despatch box of Parliament before a 638 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. him, bowed over it in prayer. He apologized, begging pardon for intruding his private devotions. Sir Robert said, “These are not my private devotions, th are my public devotions. I was just giving the affairs of state over into the h 1¢ of God, for I couldn’t manage them alone.” There was a man who in the office of state abode therein with God. A friend of mine went ‘nto a hardware store in Philadelphia, to get a coal shor and said, as he tried the temper of one, “Is this a first-class shovel?” The propri said, “You would better look at it. I do not think you know much about shoy Notice whose name is on that shovel—it is his make. He is a first-class Chri i man and he makes a first-class Christian shovel.” That maker of shovels is superintendent of a large Sunday-school in Philadelphia, and an elder in a Pres tian church, but he prays about the quality of wares that go out of his factory well as about the quality of the words that go out of his lips, in teaching a Sun school. He abides in his calling with God. I believe we have not begun to know what the deep meaning of the Spit God is, in such teaching. In the book of Zechariah we read that the poets in th Lord’s house shall be as sacred as the bowls that receive the blood of the vi tim: offered on the altar, and that every pot in every house in Jerusalem shall be as sacre as the pots or bowls around about the Lord’s altar. This means simply this: ‘Th you as inhabited by the Holy Spirit, to whose spirit the Spirit of God is joine eternal wedlock, shall regard everything you touch as sacred,—shall no more out the duties of the kitchen from the circle of holy toil, than the duties of the puly and shall regard nothing to which God calls you as menial drudgery, as unwo the child of God. When we get that conception, everything we touch will be sa and we shall “‘practice the presence of God,” which Jeremy Taylor calls the “ instrument of holy living.” 4. In the fifteenth chapter we have another conception connected with union with the Lord, namely, that the Spirit leaves His stamp of proprietorshi: this body. The other day, in conversation with Dr. W. G. Moorehead, I heard say that there was no place in the Bible where it teaches that the Spirit of having once taken possession of a believer’s body, ever leaves it; and he sugg that even when that body is lowered into the grave the Spirit of God still poss it, and that is the secret of its glorious destiny, when, leaving corruptible eleme behind, it shall come forth a spiritual body, perfectly fitted for the Holy Spiri residence. And he adds that, if anybody is disposed to dispute this theory, he v still maintain that the Spirit at least hovers over that grave, until that day wh suddenly at the voice of the archangel he shall instantly bring that temple out its apparent ruins in the beauty and glory of resurrection life and power. When the great Dr. John M. Mason buried his son from the hall of Lafane College, and the young men went to carry the body out through the aisle of church, he said, “Young men, walk softly; you bear the temple of the Holy Ghost.’ My brother; the Holy Spirit having once left on your body the stamp of God’s prietorship and ownership, that body forevermore belongs to God. It is the te of God that He is going to look after and bring forth in beauty when the a process is complete, whereby all carnal elements are purged away. 5. We now come to the fifth of these great lessons, as found in the second Epistle, third chapter: God’s Spirit abiding in Me assures My transformation into God’s image. We read that “where the Spirit of God is there is liberty,” liberty not for us to do as we please, but liberty for Him to accomplish the things that He will. Take the figure of a camera as an illustration of the transforming process. How do you get a picture? You put a sensitive plate in the camera, with a cloth thrown over the front, then you place before it the object you would photograph and let in ‘the as The Believer’s Union With the Lord—Pierson. 639 ght. You must have four things in order to take a photograph: the sensitive plate, he camera, the object to be photographed, and light to assure an impression. So, if fou are to be changed into the image of God by the Spirit of God, you must have a livine object or image—the Christ; you must have the light—the Spirit; and the ensitive plate—the receptive human spirit made sensitive by the Spirit of God to livine impressions; and then the camera of the Word, the medium between the divine mage and the human soul. Thus beholding and reflecting that image more and more rou take the impression of the image until by and by you represent permanently that mage in your own spiritual character. The spirit of man brought thus into contact vith the likeness of Jesus Christ as seen through the Word is impressed by it, until, yy and by, the spirit of man incorporates that likeness to Christ into itself. Let me say ight here that there can be no real growth in grace except so far as the Word of God s used. You may just as well try to get a photograph without a camera. You might lave your sensitive plate, the light, the object, you cannot get your picture without hat camera. There is a neglect of two things in these days which is very alarming: yrayer that makes and keeps the soul sensitive, the study of the Word of God, that ransmits the image of God into the soul. Nothing shows power like transformation of worthless material into beautiful and aluable products. Take the Stradivarius violin. He went out in the forests around bout him and selected more than forty different kinds of woods; he had trained him- elf by the eye and touch so that he could detect the density of the wood, its age, and iber, and estimate its resonant faculty, so that he knew just where to put each of those lifferent kinds of wood in the violin. The belly and back, the sides, the bridge, the yottom, the neck and head, the keys, all made of different kinds of wood, so that the oper equilibrium might be maintained in all parts of the violin, and the most perfect armony and responsiveness. I have no hesitation in saying that the violin is the nost perfect instrument ever made, upon which there never probably will be any urther advance in the matter of perfection, as for a hundred years there has not been _ change made in its construction by way of essential improvement. The glory of Stradivarius was that he could take ordinary common woods and make them into an nstrument that most perfectly resembles the human voice and responds most sympa- hetically to all the moods of the human soul. So God takes human beings with their Irunkenness and sensuality, and blasphemies and lying, and all forms of wickedness, ind makes them without blame or blemish in His sight, unreprovable even in His ight, responsive to His Spirit. 6. Now in the sixth chapter of the second Epistle, we are brought to that central, il-controlling thought, Separation unto God. How is this thought brought before is? Look at the last part of that sixth chapter. “Be ye not unequally yoked together vith unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? What part hath he that believeth vith an infidel?” and so on. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Paul ises five words from the Greek tongue to express the one idea of separation: what fel- owship; what communion; what concord; what part; what agreement, All these words 1e uses. There are five questions, and their one answer is the same: there can be no 0ssible union between such contraries. And what is the grand conclusion? ‘‘Where- ore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the inclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” And now look at the opening of the seventh chapter. Is there a grander exhortation in the New Testament? ‘Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” He bids us 640 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. ~ to separate ourselves so completely unto God, that there shall be no filthiness of the flesh (outward), or of the spirit (inward), and that holiness shall be complete. : How searching are these words! Think, for instance, of the filthiness of the spirit—how the memory, which should be a storehouse for the honey of the Word, a treasure house of evil, polluted with the unholy relics of the past; how the imaging tion, which should be God’s own artist, aiding faith by the representation of divine realities, is perverted to be the tool of Satan; how the conscience itself, God’s court on earth, is bribed and silenced in the interests of sin, and the will weakened and para- lyzed by habits of evil. How sublime is the truth, that the Spirit, dwelling in makes spirit, soul, and body His own, so that the body is a house of God with God’ name on the door-plate, and being God’s we are to be separate unto God in every: thing, and touch no unhallowed thing, but be cleansed from all filthiness of outward and inward life. 7. The twelfth chapter presents the closing lesson of the seven; the Holy Spiri indwelling makes the believer capable of heavenly bliss even on earth. Paul, because united to the Lord by the Holy Spirit, had even while on earth actual foretaste of heaven, a vision of Paradise. And so far as we can discover reckoning back “fourteen years ago,” that ecstatic trance seems to locate itself at th time of the stoning at Lystra (Acts 16.) What a thought! that, just at the time wher he virtually suffered martyrdom for Christ, and was stoned and left for dead, he ¥ caught up to the third heaven! ; This whole question of getting possession of the Holy One is just as simple A, B, C, to the man or woman who actually wants to be holy. If you are ready to indwelt and separated unto God, as the temple of the Holy Spirit, in everything y do to ask what the will of the Holy Spirit is, to look upon your eyes as too sacreé dt be appropriated to the unholy look, to look upon your ears as too sacred for unhol; hearing, and to look on your hands and feet as too sacred to be appropriated for am purposes of the devil; and if you will constantly hold yourself before this blesse image of Christ, and:commune with Him through the Word of God, God will B es you with Himself—you may even know somewhat of the experience of Paul during hi celestial visions, when he was exalted to the third heaven. Are you willing to b stoned for Christ? It may be that in that stoning comes your translation to that thir heaven. Are you willing to be reviled, and revile not again? Are you willing to hav your own friends turn against you, and even traduce and defame you—are you wil to accept this for Christ’s sake? The Spirit is willing to make you holy—the imag of holiness is before you for contemplation, the camera by which holiness is to b reproduced in your life is in your very hands. But you must have silence alone wi God. And he who submits to the separation unto God, which is our part, will fin God faithful. He will accomplish the consecration, which is His part, and perfect u in holiness. Bb [Arthur T. Pierson was born in New York March 6, 1837; graduated Ha milto College. He served churches at Binghamton, Detroit, Indianapolis; Bethany Chure Philadelphia, and Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, and it was thought that would succeed Spurgeon. He is editor of Missionary Review of the World and considered the leading authority on missions. Among his published works are th Life of George Muller, numerous volumes on missions, Many Infalliable Proofs, et This sermon was reported for The Northfield Echoes and is reproduced here b permission. ] % if . 4 ‘ THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE. 5 HENRY C. POTTER, D.D. c “And the Lord came and stood and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, for thy servant heareth.”—lst Samuel 3: 10. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God.’—Romans 13: 1. The antithesis here, as you will see, is between the individual and what I suppose we must call society, or the state. And this is one eminent value of the volume in which we find it. The earlier pages of that volume, however archaic their style, can never be outlawed, for they are the eternally impressive story, in many guises and under many forms, of the way in which the soul awakes to consciousness. A country- man of your own, to whom I am glad, here, to own my indebtedness, has said in his Essays on The Limits of Individual Liberty, that: “The dawn of conscious life in society, as in the man, is the beginning of a new era. To some societies, as to some men, this dawn never comes. Continuing to be merely physical organisms they develop passively and blindly. In some societies, as in some men, conscious life never seems to pass certain bounds. Of the one class we have examples in nations which have never been civilized; of the other in those oriental nations whose brilliant civilizations have never emerged from childhood. But in no instance does either the man or the society become fully conscious.”* Now the verse which I have read from the book which bears his name, brings us to the moment when the youth Samuel became fully conscious. It is not hard to imagine what his life must have been until that moment. He was, by birth and lineage, an inheritor of that thing which often, singularly enough, seems to have a subtle power to stifle the spiritual instinct and consciousness—an ecclesiastical routine. Day by day this boy, dedicated to the ministry, as we should say, returned to the sacred place, was busied about the holy furniture and paraphernalia of religion—trimmed the lamp, doubtless, in the temple and wondered why it was kept burning—followed the footsteps of his aged master, the priest, Eli, and marvelled, as he saw the feebleness and senility of the old man— marvelled, with that fine and instinctive acuteness which is so often the unsuspected gift of youth—whether the functionary and his august duties had any vital relation— yes, and wondered more—what it all meant—what God was like, whether He ever really spoke to men—whether He would, some day, speak to him?—wondered and strained his soul to catch some note out of the all-encompassing silence—wondered and waited, and hearkened, until he heard! There can be no more supreme moment in any human history than such a ‘moment. . The things with which most of us are ordinarily concerned are, essentially, so secondary and secular, that I suppose there are few of us here who, amid the dryness and the drudgery of it all, have not ached for the hour when to us, as to Samuel, there might come the Voice that singled us out of all the world, calling us by name and making us sensible of that paramount, solitary, august relation which binds together the parent and his child! | It was the office of the religion of Israel, first of all, to reveal that relation—to emphasize, and to illustrate it. The august and solitary figures of Abraham, of Moses, *The Limits of Individual Liberty: Montague, p. 90-91. 642 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. of Joshua, of the great teachers and preachers whose clear note of warning or command rings through the pages of Isaiah and his compeers; these are what a us first in that story of how a race of bondinen found their way to be the rule their time. These men, with Samuel, had heard God speak to them. Alone, Samuel was alone, they had waited for his fuller disclosure of Himself—alone they discovered the evils of their time, confronted them, denounced them, and pre for them their sure and inevitable result. They were men who, in one sense, sti much apart from, and above their time; and whose power, doubtless, resided lars in a certain lofty isolation from their generation, which was itself a unique element ir the influence which they exerted. 2 And at the first thought, nothing could be in more perplexing contrast with attitude than those other words which I have just read and which St. Paul ser his letter to the infant Church in Rome. Contrasted with earlier and scarcel imperial states, the Empire of Rome presented much the same forms of evil that threatened them and which had ultimately destroyed them. There were in assembled in that city of the seven hills which rivalled, if they did not exceed, that had gone before them from Sodom onward. And worst of all, the throne, visible authority, the scepter and the armies of a king, stood sometimes for cr as monstrous and for wickedness as rank and wide-spread as any that had stain histories of Ninevah and Babylon. “And yet,” writes one to whom all this and corruption must have been as much more revolting than to any prophet o older time, as his vision was clearer and more unerring, “Let every soul be sw unto the higher powers. There is no power but of God. The powers that be ordained of God.” Of course, the primary explanation of such words is to be found in the imn situation that provoked them. The men to whom they were written, we must fr ber, were Israelites mainly, to whom the Roman yoke was doubly hateful and rent. They were no brutal pagan captives, of servile lineage, and of godless nurt They were already the subjects of a sovereignty at once supreme and all-encomp ing. Because Israel was a democracy they could not be, save in a limited secondary way, the subjects of any other than God. And when the next relig came, and the Messiah, long promised and long waited for, dawned at last upo world, when the new message of hope and spiritual emancipation broke upon souls, it was no wonder that the chain, the oath, the allegiance that bound them to Caesar’s throne, galled and chafed them almost beyond endurance. ; “But no matter,” says the apostle, “you may not break or disown it. Here yo are, after all, in Caesar’s territory. Here you live, surrounded by Caesar’s govern ment; honor and obey it. Government there must be—the governing powers ther must be—recognize and respect them, “For there is no power but of God. Th powers that be are ordained of God.” Or in other words, the alternative of civ’ order, just as it is with the alternative of any other order, is chaos. Society stef up out of barbarism into the realm of social, municipal, imperial law, by an instin so sure and unerring that it reveals its divine origin. The peoples that hate lav and that irk against rule and order, are the peoples that stay savages. You are | have and enjoy your spiritual liberty, but you are to have it under those extern restrictions of individualism which, even in their most harsh and corrupt furms, ha’ not quite lost the lineaments of that divine source from which finally all authori comes. The subject thus stated sets before us the relations of the individual and society, in all our life of today, to authority. Apparently, the question of those rel tions, under the different forms of rule or of authority which prevai: in our time, is warious one, but essentially, it is identical. No despotism has ever been so absolute The Individual and the State—Potter. 643 and it is certain that it never will be—as to ¢xtinguish that longing for the freedom of the individual, the story of the struggles for which makes up at once the pathos and he tragedy of history. We have come, indeed, upon days when the continuance of that struggle, in view of all that has been conceded to men in the way of personal rights and individual liberty, seems to be hardly any longer necessary. But the question still remains whether the constitution of our modern society, as most of us here today, whether living on one side or the other of the line that divides you and me know it, has, by all this various progress and emancipation, attained to its highest and best development. - It is this question of which I wish to speak for a few moments this evening. Here is one who cries with Samuel, “God has spoken unto me.” In silence, in visions of the night, as to one chosen and singled out; God has shown to me his mind,— concerning my own duty, concerning the social order, concerning great evils and injustices; and I must be free to own His voice and to do His will, as I understand them. That is the passionate note of the social reformer ever since the world began. Yes, and as of old, here, over against such an one is the civic authority, the inherited order, the slow-moving custom and tradition of the state. It is the problem of our generation, I venture to think, to strive to reconcile these two. But first let us strive to understand the problem. I have endeavored to set it before you in the person of the solitary Samuel hearkening for a voice which comes to him as the voice of God; and in the person of the apostle St. Paul, bidding his Chris- tian converts be obedient to the law of a heathen state. We may approach more nearly to the substance of the question which here challenges us, if we recognize the antithesis in the men. The first of them stood, undoubtedly, for a society, a state, a national life in almost its most elementary form. The other stood, on his human side, for that marvellous development of civic order which we know as the Roman empire. But what had made that empire was the coherence of rule, the sovereignty of authority, the triumph of law. And St. Paul, statesman as well as apostle, was able to recognize that such a result could have been achieved in no other way. He, too, had heard a voice. He, too, had owned a call,—solitary, singular, sovereign—which had chosen him out and bidden him 2way, as personally and as wonderfully as Samuel had been called. But it had not bidden him to break with his time. It had not summoned him to renounce his Roman citizenship. Still less had it bidden him to raise his hand against its social order. He came to his generation, rather to breathe into it a new spirit, to transform it by a new life; but not to disown its organized forces and powers, nor to destroy them. He came, in one word, to reveal to men, by all his life and ministry, the harmony of the individual freedom with the triumph of a righteous civic authority. It is that great struggle and endeavor, men and brethren, in your England and in my America, which has been the glorious story of these later centuries of the race to which we both belong. If there are countrymen of my own within the sound of my voice this evening they will not need to have me remind them that this fourth day of July is an anniversary in our American history which no one of us can ever be willing to forget. If I speak of it in this place, hallowed to us by love and precious memorials of our greatest and best, and in this presence, I venture to believe that I do so with the entire approval of the venerable and venerated scholar and divine, as whose guest, and by whose invitation, I stand in this pulpit this evening. He would not have me to forget, nor to hesitate to recall to your memories, that on this day, one hundred and twenty-one years ago, a young nation sprang out of your English lives, which, though she wrenched herself resolutely away from her mother’s con- rolling hands, had, nevertheless, already learned at the knees of that mother the great | nd enduring traditions which have made of her a free people. The right of popular 644 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. representation;—the concept of an authority tempered and informed by a com consent;—the unity of liberty of action with oneness of allegiance to the chief tive of the people, whether he be king, or prince or president,—all these were th which she did not invent;—they stood for ideas which she did not discover, bu principles which had their root in free England and took their rise among your people. But what now was the one great problem with which, whether in methods of illustrating these principles, or in ours, that young nation was confror It was, I maintain, the problem of reconciling the instinct of individualism an of the need of a common subordination. Believe me, it is the problem which cone us both today. Human society in its best estate, whether here, in England, or él where, but supremely, I think, in your land and mine, divides itself into two class First there are those who, in the phrase of one of your own teachers to whom I already referred, *“have reproduced the brilliant paradox of the French Rev: that the individual is very good;—that society is very bad. Leave man, they the monitions of his own unprejudiced reason, of his own warm and kindly i These will guide him aright, while states and churches will only lead him astray .... Society exists in order to make the individual free. Once the individual himself free, he will develop everything that civilization requires. His unsal desires will constrain to industry; the multitude of workers will involve comp: and competition will stimulate to their growth all the virtues and all the facull man.” ‘ It must be owned that by this time we have had sufficient experience of the « of such a theory of life, and that it can hardly be contended that it has vindicated On the contrary, there is a large, and I am not sure that there is not a growin both with us and with you, that believes, often passionately, that the world is from too much individual liberty. The artisan and the laborer believe it; and to prevent freedom of action by their brother workmen. The capitalist be and combines with his brother capitalist to freeze out his smaller competitor; al along the line of human interests and activities it seems, sometimes, as tho dominant note were coming to be “You must not have your own way, and your own talk, and determine your own wage, nor seek to be free of your neig Well, in a very high and real sense, you must not. Our modern improve upon earlier forms of organized civic life—whether they take on monarch republican characteristics, is of only secondary consequence—must not fram selves for the good of the individual separately or independently of the goo whole. And just here it is that the words of our apostle run up into their meaning. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher power.” Ah, yes, O, 1 woman, but what are the highest powers—whether above you or in you? For wt does the scepter of the ruler—whether governor, president, king—in the last analy of its force, stand, but for the voice of God—forever the highest power of all, in His law, speaking in His word, speaking in all human history, and most a) speaking in the person of His Son. And what is its message in Him but ¢ €! proclamation of His human brotherhood with all mankind, and yours and mine Him. But what are the laws of human brotherhood but these: “As free and t using your liberty as the cloak of maliciousness.” “If the truth therefore shall me you free, ye shall be free indeed.” “Took not every man on his own things, | every man on the things of others.” “Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfill law of Christ.” These are the laws of the new era which, when men will both o them and live them, are destined to re-create human society by harmonizing indiv ual freedom and a beneficent social order, and so to usher in the kingdom that is | to be—the kingdom of God the Father and the dominion and republic of Jesus ‘Chr * Montague. Individual Liberty. Int. 3. The Individual and the State—Potter. 645 In hastening the day of that millennial joy, men of Britain and men of America ay surely be glad to strive together and to prepare the way for it. It is not legislation, member, on your side of the Atlantic or mine, that is needed so much as the growth “i he fraternal temper. That temper, I maintain, is the temper of mutual gentleness ‘ fairness, and what I may call, for want of a better word, hospitable-mindedness, ot contempt on your side, nor jealous resentment on ours,—not studied indifference ith you or studied misrepresentation with us, will build the better civilization that is be, but that temper of mutual right-mindedness which, going forward hand in hand, 1S its keeping far more than any human force or forces, realm or realms in all the orld today, the better destinies of the race. Has it ever occurred to any of those f whom I speak tonight that there is a certain large and prophetic significance in a cent incident in our common literary history? The best account of you empire as sea power has been written, I believe it is admitted, by an American.* The best story of Democracy in America has been written by an Englishman. 7 These, rely, are triumphs in a mutual strife for excellence of which we can not have too any. May the spirit that has wrought in them prevail in all our future. There are me who would have it take form in more explicit alliance. But forms are, in ch a case, of very secondary consequence. Said a great statesman of your own, e other day, when I spoke to him of the recent marvellous extibition in connection ith the Queen’s Jubilee, of your colonial peoples and their achievements: “You k me if it will not draw us more closely together? Yes, I trust so, in many ways. ut not too closely, I hope. Large ships need to be anchored by long cables.” Who n tell whether there would have been any such day as we Americans are keeping on is fourth of July, if you had been willing to hold us with a little longer cable? But lat is written is written; and ours, now, may well be one common concern for our mmon future. May God teach us how to make it really great and glorious, and at we may, may He inspire us both, to weave anew the three-fold cable of a mmon faith, and law, and love, for all mankind, into a bond that nothing shall stroy. In such a hope let me borrow the words of your own poet, as he bids ngland sing them to her more immediate children: “Draw now the three-fold knot upon the nine-fold bands, And the law that ye make shall be law for the rule of your lands. This for the waxen Heath, and that for the wattle bloom, This for the maple leaf, and that for the southern broom. Now must ye —_ to your kinsmen and they must speak to you, After the use of the English in straight-flung words and few. Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, Baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise. Stand to your work, and be wise—certain of sword and pen, Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men.”’$ [Henry Codman Potter was born at Schenectady, N. Y., May 25, 1835. His ther was Bishop Alonzo Potter, of Pennsylvania. He was educated at the Episcopal cademy, Philadelphia; Theological Seminary, Virginia, and has taken degrees at nion, Harvard and Trinity, also Oxford and Cambridge, serving churches at Greens- irg, Pa., Troy, N. Y. and Boston; secretary to the House of Bishops for twenty ars and for four years coadjutor to his uncle, Horatio Potter, Bishop of New York. e is author of a number of works and his interest in municipal government and vic righteousness makes him the leading ecclesiastic in the east. This sermon was preached in Westminster Abbey, July 4, 1897, and is reproduced sre from manuscript. ] * Mahan. +Bryce. t Rudyard Kipling. The Seven Seas. p. 17. 646 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. THE HEALING WATERS. WILLIAM MORLEY PUNSHON, D.D. “And it shall come to pass, that everything that liveth, which moveth, whithane soever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and everything shall live whither the river cometh.’—Ezekiel 47: 9. 4s The last clause of the verse is that to which I especially direct your attention: “And everything shall live whither the river cometh.” Md I have somewhere seen a picture which, in brief words and from dim memories only, I will endeavor to describe. The scene is in the far East, the hour just when the earth is lighted up with that rare Oriental sunrise which we Westerns love to see; the time, the sultry August, when the fierce sun has it all his own way, and when the earth has a sickly cast upon it, as if it fainted almost beneath the intensity of the glare; the plain is scorched and arid, the river pressing within its sedgy banks seems to have hardly strength enough to propel its sluggish stream. There, on an eminence, beneal hh a group of ancestral palms, is a knot of Egyptian peasants, swarthy and muscular, their eyes strained wildly towards the south, in which quarter there seems to be an inde- scrible haze, forecasting the shadow of some atmospheric or other change. Why wait they there so eagerly? Why is their gaze fastened distinctly upon the point where the river glimmers faintly on the horizon’s dusky forehead? Because they are conscious from the experience of years, that the time has come for the inundation of the N They do not know how it will be swelled; they are not able to tell the source fro which the tribute is distilled, how in the far Abyssinia it gathers its volume of waters; but as certainly as if their knowledge was profound and scientific, they calculate upon the coming flood. And they know, too, that when the flood does come, that arid plain shall wave with ripening grain; there shall be corn in Egypt, and those blackened pastures will be gay with such fertile plenty that the whole land shall eat and be satisfied, “for everything shall live whither the river cometh.” So marvellous shall be the transformation that the Turkish description of the Egyptian climate shall almost hold good; that for three months it is white like pearl, for thee months brown like musk, for three months green like emerald, for three months yellow like gold. This picture has struck me as furnishing us with a very graphic representation of Ezekiel’s vision embodied in the experience of Eastern life. Nothing certainly can better image the moral barrenness of the world and the wilderness of sin than that plain upon which the consuming heat has alighted, withering the green herb and inducing the dread of famine. Nothing can better set forth the life and healing of the Gospel of Christ than the flow of that blessed life-giving river; and nothing can better show the attitude befitting all earnest Christian men than the attitude of these peasants, eager and earnest, watching the first murmurings of the quiescent waters that they might catch and spread the joy. There is, of course, a spiritual application of the vision, which appears to have been intended in the glowing language of Ezekiel, and that spiritual application is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, made effectual by the Holy Ghost for the healing and for the salvation of men. You remember that, under the same similitude, the Gospel is frequently presented to us in the pages of the Word. After the similitude of living The Healing Waters—Punshon. 647 water, its blessings were promised to the Samaritan woman; the stranger who lifted up his voice in the feast said that in the heart of each believer there should be a foun- tain springing up into everlasting life; and in identity between the seer of the Old Testament and the evangelist of the New, John saw a river of water of life, clear as _ crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. We do not err, there- fore, if we present to you these holy waters as emblematic of the scheme of perfected atonement, made vital by the Spirit of God, and adapted for the salvation of men. In this aspect of it, meditation for a few moments upon the source, the progress, and the efficacy of the healing waters, will not be out of place today. There is said to haye been a copious fountain upon the west side of the city of Jerusalem. At this fountain, which was called Gihon, Zadok and Abiathar, priests of _ the Lord, stood by the side of the youthful Solomon, and, with many holy solemnities, _ proclaimed him king. The prudent Hezekiah, foreseeing that in time of war its waters _ might be cut off by an enemy, conducted them by a secret aqueduct into the city. _ David found in the purifying virtues of-the fountain one of his choicest inspirations when he struck his harp and sang, ‘‘There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the holy place, the tabernacle of the Most High.” Now, it may be _ that there was some subtle connection of thought between this fountain and the vision which floated before the senses of Ezekiel, as the stream was from the foundations of the temple, and from the foundations of the holy house in the vision the prophet saw the healing waters spring. Be this as it may, the truth is significant to us that through the temple come to us the tidings of blessing, that the tidings do not originate in the temple, but have their source and origin that is invisible and afar. In God’s provision for the restoration of the fallen race there are both instrumen- talities and efficient agencies. He has appointed means, and although there is no innate power in means as God’s appointed channels of blessing, they are not to be despised. There is not now, as in the Jewish dispensation, any central spot where the holy oracles exclusively speak and where religion preserves its most precious and _ hallowed memories; the prestige and the sacredness of the old Jerusalem have passed away for ever, but the means of grace are invested with a sacredness that is peculiarly their own. There are special promises of favor yet for those who wait upon God and for those who call upon His name. They deprive themselves of a large inheritance of blessing, and are deeply criminal withal, who forsake the assembling of themselves _ together in the place where the ordinance of preaching is celebrated, where the sacra- A ments are duly administered, and where prayer is wont to be made. The ordinances i of religion may be, and very often are, observed only with external decorum. The song may be the formal verse, the prayer may be lip-service merely, and the whole service may be a Sabbath compromise with conscience and for a week’s indulgence in sin, but to the true-hearted and to the contrite it is from the temple that the healing waters flow. The heart, ignorant of God and of its own duty, dimly conscious that the recon- ciliation for which it pants must come to it through the merits of another, hears of Him in the temple, and is glad. The contrite one, loathing his former practices of _ iniquity, bows tearfully in the temple as he says, “The foolish shall not stand in thy sight, and thou hatest all the workers of iniquity; but as for me, I will worship toward thy holy temple.” Here, as in a spiritual laver sea, the polluted soul is cleansed by & the washing of water and the word. Here the poor children of sin smile through their tears as they are satisfied with the goodness of His house, and the lame halts “no longer as he emerges from this Bethesda of the paralyzed whose waters have been sent from on high. It is between the cherubim that God especially shines; it is among the golden candlesticks that God walks to bless His people. Here, as in a gorgeous and well-furnished hall of banqueting, believers eat of the fatness of % ” aa ‘is the only source of life, and that means, unless He vitalizes them, are but the letter 648 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. His house and drink of the river of His pleasure; in the temple is at once the highest instruction, the sweetest comfort, the closest fellowship with God, and the amplest preparation for heaven. Brethren, your presence in the temple this morning proves that the way to it isa familiar road to you—but do you love its courts? are they homes to you—homes of endearment and of blessing? “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than the dwellings of Jacob.” A gate more than a house—that is the Lord’s arithmetic in reference to the temples of His presence. ‘“The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” Are your likes like His? or like His servant’s—the holy psalmist—“that you may dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple,” as the oracle where your eager minds may discover the perfection of truth, as a shrine where your enamored hearts may behold the perfection of beauty? Of! they who love the temple are the likeliest, standirg on its banks, to trace the source of it as it issues from the throne. So much for the instrumental agency. While we appreciate the advantages of the temple, while. we rejoice in the flow o! the healing waters, we must remember always that they issue from the foundations of the house, and that their springs are in the everlasting hills. In other words, that God that killeth—the shadow of good things to come. You are sufficiently instructed in the things of God to know that He has confided the great work of human redemption to no agency that is less powerful than His own; for, while the atheist cannot find God, while the deist is deaf to His revelation, and while the pantheist reduces Him to an abstraction, the heart of a good woman leaps up within her at remembering that all around her there is God—a living, personal, omnipotent, gracious God. One of the glorious beliefs which fence round our own individual faith, as with a rampart of impregnable strength, is this: that ever since the revelation of Christianity this tear-stricken world of ours has been not many days orphaned of a present God In olden time, God spake to the world in symbol, in vision, by thunder and by fire but even amid the comparative dimness of the Mosaic economy, the Son of God, as if impatient to begin His great work of redemption, paid preliminary visits to the scene of His future incarnation, and took upon Him the form of an angel, while yet the full- ness of time had not come for Him to take upon Him the form of a man. In the day of His flesh He perfected the work of atonement by one offering for sins for ever, n | ing no repetition, losing none of its rich crimson through the lapse of years. By one offering for ever, He gave the world at once its sublimest morality and its mo spotless example; vanquished death by dying, and gave the proof of the victory by resurrection out of a baffled tomb, and then, having furnished the instrument of propa- gation, and having promised the agent of propagation, He ascended up on high. Through the interval, heavy and trying to the expectant twelve, but not many da according to the calendar, the promise of the Father bridged over the chasm betwe the ascent of the Son and the descent of the Spirit. It was a solemn hush, like t stern silence that reigns along the line of battle between the hoarse word of comma: and the fierce onslaught upon the foe. The Savior had said upon the cross, “Tt finished,” and, as a token that it was finished—a token that neither men nor de’ could gainsay—He snatched up the thief by His side, and took him with Him as th first fruits of the Pentecost; and then, when He had chosen His disciples, and furnished them with every qualification for their great work, what was His language? Strange scene! “Go! but tarry. Do not march undisciplined and without a leader. Wai until, like the mysterious stranger that appeared before the camp of Gideon, the Caf tain of the Lord’s host shall come. Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from en high.” And suddenly and richly that baptism of fine ¢ The Healing Waters—Punshon. 649 came—fell upon the anointed ones in the upper room, was kindled by their instrumen- tality in many hearts in Jerusalem, and has gone burning on until now. Oh! do you not see the fullness and the richness of the provision? The world could not be trusted without a God in it, and so, not many days after, God the Son went up, and God the Spirit came down. The issues pending were so solemn, the results of failure would have been so appalling to the universe of God, that there must be a present Deity in order to carry on the great work in the world; and so, while the atheist cannot find God, while the deist is deaf to His revelation, and while the pantheist deprives Him of His personality, here is God, the Holy Ghost, as the Christian’s living representative of God, as the great Inspirer, not of the ancient seers only, but of the modern truth, and as the great, constant, living Agent in the conviction and in the conversion of souls. Brethren, so soon as Christ had ascended up on high, the fullness of the Spirit came down. Is it not a comforting truth: ‘We believe in the Holy Ghost?” Is there any one who would wish us to blot that article out of our creed? Was there ever a time when it was more necessary for us to affirm it to the teeth of men, and in the face of hostile confederacies of error and of scorn? “We believe in the Holy Ghost.” What else would assure our confidence amid the insolence of error and the haughtiness of scorn, amid the craft of demon hate and hostile conspiracies of evil, amid the audacious wickedness of our own hearts, amid earth’s fickle people and earth’s banded kings? What else would fortify our trust in the Word, which has within it every element of opposition to ungodliness, but no element of triumph over evil? . Men say that truth is power. It is not: alone, it is as feeble as the pliant osier or as the bruised reed against the banded malignity of men; but let the Spirit come into it, and then it overcomes speedily, is brave, and is mighty to prevail. Brethren, that Spirit is in the truth which I preach in your hearing today. He has promised to apply the truth to every conscience and to every heart. Let us honor Him by asking for His presence. Prayer will be a profitless litany, praise will be a foolish tinklirng of cymbals, and our whole devotional service will be a bootless trouble unless He come down in the midst of us with His inspiration and with His blessing. We shall still dishonor God, we shall still be greedy to do evil, we shall still follow in the trail of the serpent, we shall still fall into a recompense of doom, unless the Holy Spirit inspire us. The prayer of the stammerer will be eloquent, the most tuneless strain a doxology, and the meanest offering an acceptable sacrifice, if only He inspire them; the darkness of the ignorant shall be enlightened, the distress of the contrite shall be soothed, the way of the perplexed shall be straightened, the wound of the apostate shall be healed, and visions of brightness shall break upon the dulled eyes of the dying, if only the Divine Spirit—God the Holy Ghost—be there. Here, then, are the instrumental and efficient agencies for the propagation of the Gospel of Christ—the flowing river, and the source of the river. “Everything shall live whither the river cometh.” It issues out of the temple; but its springs are away from the foundation of the house, far off in the ever- lasting hills. Let us notice, secondly, for a moment or two, the progress of the healing waters. You notice that in the vision the progress of it is presented to us as gradual and con- stant. The prophet saw the waters flowing first to the ankles, then to the knees, then to the loins, and then it was a river that could not be passed over; even a river for a man to swim in. The progress was gradual and constant. There was no ceasing of the flow; there was no ebbing of the waters; they gradually and constantly flowed in an ever-deepening stream. This is a description of the Gospel of Christ, small and feeble in its beginnings. Trembling but earnest fishermen were its first preachers; wealth, rank, patronage, and power were all arrayed against it; Czsars conspired to strangle it, and armies marched out against its fugitive sons. ‘age in which we live. Here and there and yonder there have been manifestations of 650 Pulpit Power and” Eloquence. Jerusalem filled with the doctrine; Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Athens Rome, all trembling beneath its denunciations of their vices within a century of its Founder’s death. “We are but of yesterday,” says Tertullian in his apology, “and we have filled your cities, islands, towns, and boroughs; the camp, the senate, and the forum.” Writers of the second century speak of the whole world of the Roman Empire as filled with the doctrine of Christ, and it is known that Constantine placed the cross upon the imperial banners, establishing Christianity as the religion of the state, and at the close of the fourth century, when Julian gasped out his celebrated dying cry, it was not the apostate only, it was the world that the Galilean had over come; and although after the establishment of Christianity there came an eclipse of faith, and blemishes disfigured somewhat the comeliness of the bride of Christ, yet its gradual progress among the nations did not cease. One after another they heard its tidings and submitted to its sway; insensibly it moulded the institutions of society and stamped upon them its own beauteous image; sanguinary codes were relaxed, unhol traffic was terminated, cruelty had its arm paralyzed and its sword blunted; fraud, lust, and drunkenness became no longer things of glorying, but things of shame; and there was a gradual uplifting in the moral health, as if men felt the bracing air-waves of a new atmosphere, and they wondered whence the healing came. , Oh! it was the river that did it all, flowing on, now in the gurgling brook, and now on the open plain, now fertilizing the swards upon its banks, and now rejoicing in the depths of its own channel, imperceptible almost in the increasing volume of its waters to those who gazed upon it every day, but to those who gazed upon it only at intervals, seeming to be widening and deepening every hour that it has rolled. And it is rolling still. Perhaps there never was an age of such quickened activity and privilege as the the healing power of the Gospel. You see the cloud rising and bursting over this and over that hill of Zion, in plenteous showers of blessing. Is it not so? Churches that for years have been languid have been quickened into a warmth of life which has astonished them, and the heart of old formalities has been smitten like the rock of Horeb, and the crystal waters have flowed forth even in the wilderness to rejoice the hearts of men. Ministers who have toiled disheartened, for years and years sowl the seed, as they fancied, upon the rock where it baffled the skill of the husbandm have been bringing their sheaves with the reaper’s bursting gladness, and everything has told that the moral summer of the world has been coming. And what is it all? Oh! just the flowing of the ancient river coming past our homesteads, its waters spark- ling in the healing sun, and the melody of the daughters of music on its banks making glad the city of our God. Now, brethren, if this be so, there are two solemn thoughts here.: Do not rej in the progress and forget the application: the one encourages our trust, the o reminds us of our responsibility. If it be really so that God has appointed that Gospel should spread and progress in the world, and if we get fastened into our spiri a conviction that this Gospel shall and must triumph, the only thing for us to mind that we are in the partnership, in order that, as workers together with God, we m be sure and have our share in the recompense when the sowers and the reapers shall rejoice together. Oh! if we could only get this thought fastened into our spirits, we should be preserved from unusual elation in the time of apparent prosperity, and from unusual depression in times of apparent languor. Opposition may crumble into dust, or, like mountains of ice, may melt before the warmth of the sun, while public ee changeful ever and always, may applaud the heroism or laugh at the fanaticism of the Church; legislation may benefit or may brand godliness (it has done both, and it will do both again with equal heartiness and with equal facility); the choicest of the : The Healing Waters—Punshon. 651 | ~ Church's youth may press into the ranks of the ministry, with a holy emulation to be __ baptized for the dead, or it may leave the ministry to be recruited from the ranks of the comparatively mean and unlettered, themselves preferring opulence and lettered ease; the spirit of revival may spread like a beacon blaze from hill to hill, or it may be thwarted by indifference, or thwarted equally by the excesses of fanaticism of its votaries; good men may fall in quick succession out of Zion—but the Gospel goes on through all vicissitudes; it wins its widening way; it is never languid, although its _, advocates fail; it marches with the ages, or they wonder at finding it ahead of them in the great course of civilization, progress, freedom, and heavenly endeavor. Its doctrines never become antiquated, its face never shrivels up, and just as it was in the beginning, it is today. Time writes no wrinkle on its azure brow; there is immortal youth about it, and a fitness for the world of the nineteenth, as for the third, century. There is no modern error that can set itself up insolently without meeting the fate of Dagon before the ancient Ark. Christianity can be trusted by the world today as by the world of the early apos- tolic age; there is nothing can master it; there is nothing can retard or overcome it. It can gather its triumphs still, just as it was wont to do, from the very dregs and refuse of society; and if it wants its choicest apostle, it can take*hold of the blasphemer, the persecutor, and the injurious man, and lift him up into an apostleship, higher than they all. It saves sinners still; it comforts believers now; it shines with sweetest lustre in the chamber of affliction, and its praises are gasped from pale beds of death. Oh! you can trust the Gospel! If you believe that it is destined to prevail, and that the power of the Holy Ghost within it shall never suffer it to die, then, calm and free from tumult, catch somewhat of the spirit of the Master. All the troubles of the world do not affect Him. This man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down.” Men do not sit when their work is going on; they are standing as long as there is anxiety about that. But “this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down, expecting.” O the sublimity of that imperial quiet! “The heathen rage down below; it does not move Him.” He sits “expecting.” “The kings of the earth take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed.” Nota muscle of His face moves; He sits “expecting.” “The people’ (worse than all external opposition), the people them- selves, “imagine a vain thing.” He that sits in the heaven still sits expecting until His enemies be made His footstool. He knows that the end will come; He has done His work, and He is satisfied; already He sees before Him of the travail of His soul, and the duty of imperial quiet which the Master has assumed should be the attitude, so far as the anticipation of the future triumph of the Gospel is concerned, of the Master’s people too. You will not be discouraged if your faith is strong, and if, with a living personality of consciousness, you believe in the Holy Ghost. Well, then, the second thought reminds you of your responsibility. How impressively it comes upon you! Being heirs of such a heritage as this, born in such a day of privilege, around which so many solemn associations and beliefs gather, surely there must be responsibility devolving upon us; for it is a law of God’s govern- ment that wherever there is power, there is a use and a mission for that power. Oh! it is a great thing to live in times like these, but it is a greater thing to be fit to live in times like these. It is impossible to live in such an age, an age when no ordinary privileges are enjoyed, when there is a special unction attending the ministration of the Word, where there are large and manifest workings of the Holy Ghost, without entailing an added responsibility to do anything which our fathers have done. We are the Chorazins and the Bethsaidas of the present in whom all God’s mighty works are done, and if the ancient Capernaum has a successor at all it will be surely in the 652 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. nations where the light of Gospel truth has long been shining, and where the country — spreads her zegis over the worshippers, that none may dare to make them afraid. The question, then, presses itself upon all: Am I holier, am I more spiritually- minded, do I get heavenlier by my privilege day by day? The waters have been flow- ing past my homestead for years and years; am I perishing or thirsting by their side? Have I never stooped to drink them yet? Brethren, the waters wear the stones (that is a wonderful passage); but they are stones still, although worn. The waters do not change their nature, and what water cannot change it petrifies. Have you never heard of the dropping wells that have been outpouring continually for years, converting the — mosses upon the shelvy rock into the richest emerald that your eyes gazed upon? But what is the ground underneath? Cold, hard stone. And there are some consciences that have sat so long under the sound of the Gospel, that they shall never be broken, not even by the hammer of the Word. May God save us from such a doom! These thoughts have come, almost when I did not reck of them, in reference to the efficacy — of these healing waters. It is not necessary, therefore, for me at any length to enlarge. It has been almost impossible to avoid allusion to them in a former part of the discourse. The places, however, into which the waters flowed are very striking. They 4 did not direct their course into spots that were very slightly defective, and, therefore, — J very readily healed; they did not impart a partial and temporary life under very favorable circumstances. They flowed into the desert and into the sea; into the desert — where no stream had flowed before; into the Dead Sea in whose sad, sluggish waters nothing which had breath could live. Thus their mission was to supply all that was lacking, and to purify all that was impure. : How complete and effectual the healing! ‘Everything shall live whither the river cometh.” And this is true of the Gospel of Christ. There is no desert of worldliness — which the Gospel cannot purge from its pollution and transform into a receptacle of © life. The completeness of the healing is one of the most agreeable of its characteristics, and furnishes to those who rejoice in it their loftiest materials of praise. The world % is a vast valley—a valley of the dead, without motion, without strength, without hope; 1 but there is not one of those unburied corpses that may not be quickened into life. “Everything’—am I bold to affirm it?—‘‘everything may live whither the river cometh!’ The Gospel has life in it for all. Its voice can reach to the furthest wards — of the sepulchre, and there is no catacomb that is too remote, too crowded, or too loathsome to be visited and to be emptied; however long death may have had sway, 4 the Gospel can chase it from the heart—ay, though time may have resolved the dust into dust again, and though the soul, like a mummy of the Pharaohs, may be swathed in its embalmment for many centuries of years, everything shall live whither the river Y cometh. ; Not only may each man be brought under the influence, but each part of each man may be redeemed: light for the understanding, that it may no longer be darkened by the clouds of speculative error; light for the imagination, that it may quench its — strange fires in the blood of the Lamb and snatch from the altar of His cross a brighter — and more hallowed flame; light for the memory, that it may be haunted no longer by the ghostly scenes and spectral thoughts of evil, but that it may hoard with miser’s care every fraction of knowledge and transform it into an argument for God; life for the affections, that they may spend the bloom of their intensity of love on an object upon which they can expatiate without fear of idolatry, and without fear either of treachery or change; life for the whole nature, that it may rise from the death of sin into the better life of God; life for the soul, that it may not be sullied even by the shadow of death, but that, in the pure white light of the Redeemer’s presence, it may go upward and upward into the sacred, high, eternal noon of heaven. “Everything fe ie The Healing Waters—Punshon. 653 shall live whither the river cometh.” It shall flow into the desert, the life of God shall be implanted in the wilderness, and the whole nature shall be so turned about, that the barrenness shall become a bloom. ‘Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.” It shall flow into the sea, _ and though the proud waters resist its influence, it shall overcome their frantic billows, and in spite of them shall heal it of its plague. Some of you may have seen what I conceive to be an illustration of this, as I have seen, in nature’s bounteous kingdom. I stood some years ago, on a bright summer's day, at the meeting of the waters near the city of Geneva, where two rivers meet, but do not mingle, the Aar and the Rhone. One with its beautiful water of heavenly blue, which it is almost worth a pilgrimage to see, and the other muddy, partly from the glaciers, of which it is largely composed, and partly from the clay soil which it upheaves, come meeting together from two several points. For miles and miles they go, with no barrier between them except their own innate repulsions; they meet, but do not mingle. Now and then one makes a slight encroachment into the province of the other, but is speedily beaten back again; like mighty rival forces of good and evil do they seem, and for a long while the struggle is doubtful; but if you will look far down the valley, into a quiet little nook, you find the Rhone has mastered, and covered the whole surface of the river with its own emblematic and beautiful blue. I thought, as I stood there and gazed, and there was a grand illustration of the ultimate triumph of truth over error; and in meditating upon this vision of Ezekiel, and reading that those healing waters shall flow into the sea and heal it, the scene rose up before me fresh and vivid, as if I had seen it yesterday, and as my own faith was confirmed, and my own apprehension quickened by the memory, I have sought in these few words to impart some of the vividness of the apprehension to you. ‘Everything!”,—oh! it is a beautiful thought, and I can rest in it because God has spoken it, otherwise the plague of my own heart would weigh me down; otherwise the great, the giant temptations that impart to my soul a struggling bitterness which no stranger may know, might well cause me to despond—“everything shall live whither the river cometh.” No impurity, no leprosy, no death which cannot be healed by the flowing of this life-giving river. There is hope for every one of you. Perhaps there has straggled into this room this morning some one whose life has been a treason and an outrage upon all the traits of humanity; some one who is looked upon even by society around him as a very Pariah, whom a high-caste Brahmin would hardly stoop to look upon, and would gather up the fringes of his robes as he passed him by, but to whom, as I speak this morning, the Holy Spirit has come, and has impressed upon him a strange, strong agony of desire to repent and reform. My brother, there is hope for thee, though thou hast far gone in evil; though thou hast blasphemed thy Maker, and trampled under foot the blood of the covenant, counting it an unholy thing; though thou hast gone so far that thou art almost standing upon the verge of the bottomless pit; though the ground is unsteady as if an earthquake slumbered beneath it; though the yell of demon voices sounds hoarsely in the distance, and the tramp of demon feet appears to be coming nearer and nearer, exultingly to claim thee as their prey—now in this crisis of your fate, one cry, one upward glance of penitence and faith, the silent whisper of prayer, and He who gives the penitence and imparts that faith will lift thee up out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay; He will set thy feet upon the rock of ages; will lift thee up higher that thou mayest sit in heavenly places in Christ, so that all the world, looking at thee and the Savior who has delivered thee, may say: “Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?” Who of you will accept this salvation now? “Everything shall live whither the river cometh.” 654 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. you are to find some of their channels. By God’s blessing, those of you who love tl Lord, and have taken upon you the vows of discipleship, are here this morning t receive the tokens of a Father’s lowes in the Father’s house, at the Father’s table. ing hall—and His banner over you is love. The communion that you are to celebrate this morning is not a test of member ship in the Church; it is the feast of the faithful, when the Father spreads the board and all the sons and daughters come round, and feel the pleasure of His countenance the spoil. ” Come and renew your faith again; come and pay your vows again! David, in the olden time, was bewildered with the multitude of God’s mercies, and said, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?” how soot he came to the answer: “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name | of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people. May He descend in the fullness of His real presence, and let us feel that the world i not today orphaned of a God! Amen. [William Morley Punshon, D. D., was born at Doncaster, in Yorkshire, May 28 ! 1824, and spent his youth as clerk in a counting-house. At eighteen he exho te spiritedly as a local preacher, and soon received a pastoral charge. In 1851 he called to Sheffield, and a few years later his fame secured him a London pasto His discourses are carefully thought out and elaborated in all details, commi exactly to memory, and are delivered with a vim and magnetic power which captiva the feelings and entrance the wills of his hearers. He accepted the presidency of the the following year.] THE LONELINESS OF CHRIST. FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON. “Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.”—John 16: 31, 32. There are two kinds of solitude: the first consisting of insulation in space; the other, of isolation of the spirit. The first is simply separation by distance. When we are seen, touched, heard by none, we are said to be alone. And all hearts respond to the truth of that saying, This is not solitude; for sympathy can people our solitude with acrowd. The fisherman on the ocean alone at night is not alone, when he remembers the earnest longings which are rising up to heaven at home for his safety. The traveler is not alone, when the faces which will greet him on his arrival seem to beam upon him as he trudges on. The solitary student is not alone, when he feels that human hearts will respond to the truths which he is preparing to address to them. The other is loneliness of soul. There are times when hands touch ours, but only send an icy chill of unsympathizing indifference to the heart; when eyes gaze into ours, but with a glazed look which cannot read into the bottom of our souls; when words pass from our lips, but only come back as an echo reverberated without reply through a dreary solitude; when the multitude throng and press us, and we cannot say, as Christ said, “Somebody hath touched me;” for the contact has been not between soul and soul, but only between form and form. And there are two kinds of men, who feel this last solitude in different ways. The first are the men of self-reliance—self-dependent—who ask no counsel, and crave no sympathy; who act and resolve alone, who can go sternly through duty, and scarcely shrink, let what will be crushed in them. Such men command respect: for whoever respects himself constrains the respect of others. They are invaluable in all those professions of life in which sensitive feeling would be a superfluity; they make iron commanders, surgeons who do not shrink, and statesmen who do not flinch from their purpose for the dread of unpopularity. But mere self-dependence is weakness; and the conflict 1s terrible when a human sense of weakness is felt by such men. Jacob was alone when he slept on his way to Padan Aram, the first night that he was away from his father’s roof, with the world before him, and all the old broken up; and Elijah was alone in the wilderness when the court had deserted him, and he said, “They have digged down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword: and I, even I, only am left, and they seek my life to take it away.’’ But the loneliness of the tender Jacob was very different from that of the stern Elijah. To Jacob the sympathy he yearned for was realized in the form of a gentle dream. A ladder raised from earth to heaven figured the possibility of communion between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God. In Elijah’s case, the storm, and the earthquake, and the fire, did their con- vulsing work in the soul, before a still, small voice told him that he was not alone. In such a spirit the sense of weakness comes with a burst of agony, and the dreadful conviction of being alone manifests itself with a rending of the heart of rock. It is only so that such souls can be taught that the Father is with them, and that they are not alone. There is another class of men, who live in sympathy. These are affectionate 656 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. minds, which tremble at the thought of being alone: not from want of courage nor from weakness of intellect comes their dependence upon others, but from the intensity of their affections. It is the trembling spirit of humanity in them. They want not aid, nor even countenance, but only sympathy. And the trial comes to them not in the shape of fierce struggle, but of chill and utter loneliness, when they are called upon to found lodgment yet in the breasts of others. It is to this latter and not to the former class that we must look, if we would understand the spirit in which the words of the text were pronounced. The deep Humanity of the Soul of Christ was gifted with those finer sensibilities of affectionate — nature which stand in need of sympathy. He not only gave sympathy, but wanted it, — too, from others. He who selected the gentle John to be His friend—who found solace in female sympathy, attended by the women who ministered to Him out of their sub a stance—who in the Trial hour could not bear even to pray without the human presence, — which is the pledge and reminder of God’s presence, had nothing in Him of the hard, — merely self-dependent character. Even this verse testifies to the same fact. A ste spirit never could have said, “I am not alone: the Father is with me;” never wou have felt the loneliness which needed the balancing truth. These words tell of struggle, an inward reasoning, a difficulty and a reply, a sense of solitude—“I shall be alone;” and an immediate correction of that: “Not alone: the Father is with me.” There is no thought connected with the Life of Christ more touching, none that seems so peculiarly to characterize His Spirit, as the solitariness in which he live Those who understood Him best only understood Him half. Those who knew H best scarcely could be said to know Him. On this occasion the disciples though’ Now we do understand, now we do believe. The lonely Spirit answered, “Do ye mn believe? Behold the hour cometh that ye shall be scattered, every man to his ow and shall leave me alone.” Very impressive is that trait in His history. He was in this world alone. I. First, then, we meditate on the loneliness of Christ. II. On the temper of His solitude. 3 1. The loneliness of Christ was caused by the Divine elevation of His chara ‘er. His infinite superiority severed Him from sympathy; His exquisite affectionatenes made that want of sympathy a keen trial. There is a second-rate greatness which the world can comprehend. If we take two — who are brought into direct contrast by Christ Himself, the one the type of human, the other that of Divine excellence, the Son of Man and John the Baptist, this becomes clearly manifest. John’s life had a certain rude, rugged goodness, on which w written, in characters which required no magnifying-glass to read, spiritual exc The world, on the whole, accepted him. Pharisees and Sadducees went to his baptis a The people idolized him as a prophet; and, if he had not chanced to cross the path of a weak prince and a revengeful woman, we can see no reason why John might not. have finished his course with joy, recognized as irreproachable. If we inquire why it was that the world accepted John and rejected Christ, one reply appears to be, that the life of the one was finitely simple and one-sided, that of the other divinely complex. — In physical nature, the naturalist finds no difficulty in comprehending the simple structure of the lowest organizations of animal life, where one uniform texture, and one organ performing the office of brain and heart and lungs, at once, leave little to | perplex. But when he comes to study the complex anatomy of man, he has the labor of a lifetime before him. It is not difficult to master the constitution of a single country; but when you try to understand the universe, you find infinite appearances of contradiction: law opposed by law; motion balanced by motion; happiness blende with misery; and the power to elicit a divine order and unity out of this complex = “ The Loneliness of Christ—Robertson. 657 variety’ is given to only a few of the gifted of the race. That which the structure of man is to the structure of the limpet, that which the universe is to a single country, the complex and boundless soul of Christ was to the souls of other men. Therefore, to the superficial observer, His life was a mass of inconsistencies and contradictions. All thought themselves qualified to point out the discrepancies. The Pharisees could not comprehend how a holy Teacher could eat with publicans and sinners. His own brethren could not reconcile His assumption of a public office with the privacy which He aimed at keeping. “If thou doest these things, show thyself to the world.” Some thought He was “a good man;” others said, ““Nay, but He deceiveth the people.” And hence it was that He lived to see all that acceptance which had marked the earlier stage of His career—as, for instance, at Capernaum—melt away. First, the Pharisees _ took the alarm; then the Sadducees; then the political party of the Herodians; then the people. That was the most terrible of all: for the enmity of the upper classes is impotent; but when that cry of brute force is stirred from the deeps of society, as _ deaf to the voice of reason as the ocean in its strength churned into raving foam by the winds, the heart of mere earthly oak quails before that. The apostles, at all events, did quail. One denied; another betrayed; all deserted. They “were scattered, each to his own:” and the Truth Himself was left alone in Pilate’s judgment-hall. Now learn from this a very important distinction. To feel solitary is no uncom- mon thing. To complain of being alone, without sympathy, and misunderstood, is general enough. In every place, in many a family, these victims of diseased sensibility are to be found, and they might find a weakening satisfaction in observing a parallel between their own feelings and those of Jesus. But before that parallel is assumed, be very sure that it is, as in His case, the elevation of your character which severs you from your species. The world has small sympathy for Divine goodness; but it also has little for a great many other qualities which are disagreeable to it. You meet with no response; you are passed by; find yourself unpopular; meet with little communion. Well! Is that because you are above the world—nobler, devising and executing grand plans, which they cannot comprehend; vindicating the wronged; proclaiming and living on great prirfciples; offending it by the saintliness of your purity, and the unworldliness of your aspirations? Then yours is the loneliness of Christ. Or is it that you are wrapped up in self—cold, disobliging, sentimental, indifferent about the welfare of others, and very much astonished that they are not deeply interested in you? You must not use these words of Christ. They have nothing to do with you. Let us look at one or two of the occasions on which this loneliness was felt. The first time was when He was but twelve years old, when His parents found slim in the temple, hearing the Doctors and asking them questions. High thoughts were in the Child’s soul: expanding views of life; larger views of duty, and His own destiny. : There is a moment in every true life—to some it comes very early—when the old routine of duty is not large enough; when the parental roof seems too low, because the Infinite above is arching over the soul; when the old formulas, in creeds, cate- chisms, and articles, seem to be narrow, and they must either be thrown aside, or else transformed into living and breathing realities; when the earthly father’s authority is being superseded by the claims of a Father in heaven. That is a lonely, lonely moment, when the young soul first feels God—when this earth is recognized as an “awful place, yea, the very gate of heaven; when the dream- - ladder is seen planted against the skies, and we wake, and the dream haunts us as a sublime reality. : You may detect the approach of that moment in the young man or the young woman by the awakened spirit of inquiry; by a certain restlessness of look, and an eager earnestness of tone; by the devouring study of all kinds of books; by the waning | 658 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. of your own influence, while the inquirer is asking the truth of the Doctors a d Teachers in the vast Temple of the world; by a certain opinionativeness, which is austere and disagreeable enough; but the austerest moment of the fruit’s taste is that in which it is passing from greenness into ripeness. If you wait in patience, the sour will become sweet. Rightly looked at, that opinionativeness is more truly anguish the fearful solitude of feeling the insecurity of all that is human; the discovery that life is real, and forms of social and religious existence hollow. The old moorings are torn away, and the soul is drifting, drifting, drifting, very often without compass, except the guidance of an unseen hand, into the vast infinite of God. Then come the lonely words, and no wonder, “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” “4 2. That solitude was felt by Christ in trial. In the desert, in Pilate’s judgment- hall, in the garden, He was alone; and alone must every son of man meet his trial-hour, The individuality of the soul necessitates that. Each man is a new soul in this wor untried, with a boundless Possible before him. No one can predict what he ma " become, prescribe his duties, or mark out his obligations. Each man’s own nature has its own peculiar rules; and he must take up his life-plan alone, and persevere in it in a perfect privacy with which no stranger intermeddleth. Each man’s temptations are made up of a host of peculiarities, internal and external, which no other mind can measure. You are tried alone; alone you pass into the desert; alone you must beat and conquer in the Agony; alone you must be sifted by the world. There are moments known only to a man’s own self, when he sits by the poisoned springs of existence, “yearning for a morrow which shall free him from the strife.” And there are trials more terrible than that. Not when vicious inclinations are opposed to holy, but wher virtue conflicts with virtue, is the real rending of the soul in twain. A temptation, which the lower nature struggles for mastery, can be met by the whole united force of the spirit. But it is when obedience to a heavenly Father can be only paid by disobe- dience to an earthly one; or fidelity to duty can be only kept by infidelity to some — entangling engagement; or the straight path must be taken over the misery of others; or the counsel of the affectionate friend must be met with a “Get thee behind Satan:’—O! it is then, when human advice is unavailable, that the soul feels what it is : to be alone. | Once more: the Redeemer’s soul was alone in dying. The hour had come—they were all gone, and He was, as He predicted, left alone. All that is human drops fro us in that hour. Human faces flit and fade, and the sounds of the world become co fused. “I shall die alone’—yes, and alone you live. The philosopher tells us that atom in creation touches another atom; they all approach within a certain distance then the attraction ceases, and an invisible something repels—they only seem to touc No soul touches another soul except at one or two points, and those chiefly external a fearful and lonely thought, but one of the truest of life. Death only realizes t which has been fact all along. In the central deeps of our being we are alone. II. The spirit or temper of that solitude. 1. Observe its grandeur. I am alone, yet not alone. This is a feeble and sen mental way in which we speak of the Man of sorrows. We turn to the Cross, and # Agony, and the Loneliness, to touch the softer feelings—to arouse compassion. You degrade that loneliness by your compassion. Compassion! compassion for Him! Adore if you will—respect and reverence that sublime solitariness with which none but the Father was—but no pity; let it draw out the firmer and manlier graces of the soul. Even tender sympathy seems out of place. 2 For even in human things, the strength that is in a man can be only learnt when — he is thrown upon his own resources and left alone. What a man can do in conjtinc- tion with others does not test the man. Tell us what he can do alone. It is one thing i The Loneliness of Christ—Robertson. 659 ‘to defend the truth when you know that your audience are already prepossessed, and ‘that every argument will meet a willing response; and it is another thing to hold the truth when truth must be supported, if at all, alone—met by cold looks and unsympa- thizing suspicion. It is one thing to rush on to danger with the shouts and the sympathy of numbers; it is another thing when the lonely chieftain of the sinking ship sees the last boatfull disengage itself, and folds his arms to go down into the majesty of darkness, crushed, but not subdued. _ Such and greater far was the strength and majesty of the Savior’s solitariness. It - was not the trial of the lonely hermit. There is a certain gentle and pleasing melan- choly in the life which is lived alone. But there are the forms of nature to speak to him; and he has not the positive opposition of mankind, if he has the absence of actual sympathy. It is a solemn thing, doubtless, to be apart from men, and to feel eternity rushing by like an arrowy river. But the solitude of Christ was the solitude of a crowd. In that single Human bosom dwelt the Thought which was to be the germ of the world’s life—a thought unshared, misunderstood, or rejected. Can you not feel the grandeur of those words, when the Man, reposing on His solitary strength, felt the last shadow of perfect isolation pass across His soul:—*My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Next, learn from these words self-reliance. ‘Ye shall leave me alone.” Alone, then, the Son of Man was content to be. He threw Himself on His own solitary thought: did not go down to meet the world; but waited, though it might be for ages, till the world should come round to Him. He appealed to the Future, did not aim at seeming consistent, left His contradictions unexplained:—I came from the Father:— I leave the world, and go to the Father. “Now,” said they, “thou speakest: no proverb:” that is, enigma. But many a hard and enigmatical saying before He had spoken, and He left them all. A thread runs through all true acts, stringing them together into one harmonious chain: but it is not for the Son of God to be anxious to ‘Prove their consistency with each other. | This is self-reliance—to repose calmly on the thought which is deepest in our bosoms, and be unmoved if the world will not accept it yet. To live on your own convictions against the world, is to overcome the world—to believe that what is truest in you is true for all: to abide by that, and not be over-anxious to be heard or under- stood, or sympathized with, certain that at last all must acknowledge the same, and that, while you stand firm, the world will come round to you—that is independence. It is not difficult to get away into retirement, and there live upon your own convictions; Nor is it difficult to mix with men, and follow their convictions; but to enter into the world, and there live out firmly and fearlessly according to your own conscience—that is Christian greatness. There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian. We shrink from the consequences of truth. We look round and cling dependently. We ask what men will ) think; what others will say; whether they will not stare in astonishment. Perhaps they | will; but he who is calculating that will accomplish nothing in this life. The Father— the Father which is with us and in us—what does He think? God’s work cannot be done without a spirit of independence. A man is got some way in the Christian life when he has learned to say humbly, and yet majestically, “I dare to be alone.” Lastly, remark the humility of this loneliness. Had the Son of Man simply said, T can be alone, He would have said no more than any proud, self-relying man can say; but when He added, “because the Father is with me,” that independence assumed another character, and self-reliance became only another form of reliance upon God. Distinguish between genuine and spurious humility. There is a false humility which says, “It is my own poor thought, and I must not trust it. I must distrust my own reason and judgment, because they are my own. I must not accept the dictates of ‘ 660 Pulpit Power and Eloquence. my own conscience; for is it not my own, and is not trust in self the great fault of ou fallen nature?” Very well. Now, remember something else. There is a Spirit which beareth witness in our spirits; there is a God who “is not far from any one of us;” there is < “Light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world.” Do not be unnatu rally humble. The thought of your own mind perchance is the Thought of God. Ti refuse to follow that may be to disown God. To take the judgment and conscience of other men to live by, where is the humility of that? From whence did their con science and judgment come? Was the fountain from which they drew exhausted « you? If they refused like you to rely on their own conscience, and you rely upon it how are you sure that it is more the Mind of God than your own which you have refused to hear? , Look at it in another way. The charm of the words of great men—those grand sayings which are recognized as true as soon as heard—is this, that you recognize th as wisdom which passed across your own mind. You feel that they are your thoughts come back to you, else you would not at once admit them: ‘‘All that floate across me before, only I could not say it, and did not feel confident enough to asserti or had not conviction enough to put into words.” Yes, God spoke to you what did to them: only they believed it, said it, trusted the Word within them, and you di not. Be sure that often when you say, “It is only my own poor thought, and I ar alone,” the real correcting thought is this, “Alone, but the Father is with me,”—ther fore I can live by that lonely conviction. There is no danger in this, whatever timid minds may think—no danger of mistak if the character be a true one. For we are not in uncertainty in this matter. It been given us to know our base from our noble hours: to distinguish between th voice which is from above, and that which speaks from below, out of the abyss of our animal and selfish nature. Samuel could distinguish between the impulse—quite ¢ human one—which would have made him select Eliab out of Jesse’s sons, and th deeper judgment by which “the Lord said, Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stature, for I have refused him.” Doubtless deep truth of character 1 required for this: for the whispering voices get mixed together, and we dare not abide by our own thoughts, because we think them our own, and not God’s: and th because we only now and then endeavor to know in earnest. It is only given to habitually true to know the difference. He knew it, because all His blessed life He could say, “My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the wil Him which sent me.” ; The practical result and inference of all this is a very simple, but a very deep oF the deepest of existence. Let life be a life of faith. Do not go timorously abo inquiring what others think, and what others believe, and what others say. It see the easiest, it is the most difficult thing in life to do this—believe in God. God is n you. Throw yourself fearlessly upon Him. Trembling mortal, there is an unkno might within your soul, which will wake when you command it. The day may co when all that is human—man and woman—will fall off from you, as they did fr Him. Let His strength be yours. Be independent of them all now. The Father with you. Look to Him, and He will save you. : [Frederick William Robertson was naturally permeated with the spirit of fear: lessness, manliness and ardor, having been the son and grandson of English militar officers. He was emphatically a Christian soldier—brave, impulsive, chivalrous, 4 wholly unselfish. To these characteristics were added the gifts of great grasp thought, keen intellectual incisiveness, rare independence of character, acute sensibility fr | The Loneliness of Christ—Robertson. 661 : to the beautiful, child-like purity of soul, and a tongue nerved with spiritual fire. Born in London, February 3, 1816; educated at Oxford; at first seeking, but after- wards declining, an army commission; repeatedly battling against a keenly sensitive, overwrought nervous temperament; a curate for four years in Cheltenham; a six years’ _ incumbency in Trinity Chapel, Brighton, ending with his death at the early age of thirty-seven, August 15, 1853. Such is his biography, in brief.] Ot Oe EO EEE EEE OOO Oe 7" pen enn