tae wer eae co 4 one eee at FUME oe Sadie erie 8 ot A, oe i tae A Pam an inn en eect tig ag ts New nt? ¥. Se Ia AM ee ee Soha metnerine lay nig Eo The cS a ee = Be ey 1 ood Hare, Julius Charles, 1795- E55. The mission of the Comforte? aS Batt | ne : - i) Vv awes Weer } re . ¥ r] } vile v1 re) Mar? at es ' jane: 7 ~ - he A 3 ‘ nyuey tent arch sf . eens Dit y wD pk POR. Op ar Nay ODS TA A BO bia ; 4 r a 4 toh en Lar | a ae A nL eee i iy Mice: A Wk ie ee A hee a etd i oa if) '. 2 { f Cine | i Mi ’ o A 2 ¢ ‘a ‘= s f h ¥ oS : y j ; 3 Mi Py , it 7 } 7 47 rt an . t 4 hn thy Ps Py al i'r ’ 5 i | Y a Ly } 4 bh Viel { i 7 '. 7 ; The ill PAs bt Pry et | he ra r \ oy ; 1 ‘ at i Ae BP H Li i ip) ty ‘ I ary, . we A Le ; ay aN PA oh) ‘ “y af ; i ee ia Ms ' ba AL fal 1 ony { ; i | 1, Aull a ’ Lh | } } i i ey L A j - Ara ¢ eo i) ibe Uri : mt ‘ Ls th A f he bis <7 a ro) i ia a { Hy oy ri PP y rie We 4phedu i NP ie ot 1h: nye ou , A Wee TT Watte® die, j ; Ta! Cay te eal) Se Dey ay J ay oe ; 7 wer : j > OUR \ fi i i) a pie rf ret 1 aw Si € » " ve Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/missionofcomfort0Ohare_0O MISSION OF THE COMFORTER, Welsh N Orn hes. 2 , MOTTIGN. CRALVMAD OT SOG ee r | _ i ove Bere « ear BTiS roms ” , 7 . Y. a rr “om £eirs ‘% rt wate , Are. ~ ey? — MeCN “AADRRIRA GHD Seo Cat AIGA AT ; : * a Lageee: SS ee \ t ¥ P a . row 4 . é e j E 4 * Ph 2 z \ | f : | oy vied "s eer ‘i. q . + fF ©. St, oe . + t ben a . ns ¢ _ a * * é r) : f : ’ ay S. a . ; - - .W.1 OOM Gaz G20 Ovi THIRTO MOTD cBeaw OA, Roce 2 e THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER, NOME ES BY JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. ARCHDEACON OF LEWES, RECTOR OF HERSTMONCEUX, AND LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE. FROM THE SECOND LONDON REVISED EDITION, WITH THE NOTES TRANSLATED FOR THE AMERICAN EDITION, BOSTON: aU De AGNE D4 LN CO Li Ne 59 WASHINGTON STREET. 1854, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS. —— ee ————— TO THE HONORED MEMORY OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER, WHO THROUGH DARK AND WINDING PATHS OF SPECULATION WAS LED TO THE LIGHT, IN ORDER THAT OTHERS BY HIS GUIDANCE MIGHT REACH THAT LIGHT, WITHOUT PASSING THROUGH THE DARKNESS, THESE SERMONS ON THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT ARE DEDICATED WITH DEEP THANKFULNESS AND REVERENCE BY ONE OF THE MANY PUPILS WHOM HIS WRITINGS HAVE HELPED TO DISCERN THE SACRED CONCORD AND UNITY OF HUMAN AND DIVINE TRUTH. “a < = wes ne | a 2 en = =-I4 = ce * - “ ae Le’ 7) =; + % 7 ‘ y as “a Ox we ; : ‘/ 7 = ° ’ ~ x ‘ - f ie . st .- i , +. 7 ‘ : af d 7 Z 5 € i ; 1 bid ~ i *., : a ” ss : it : . ws Ks, % P e : ~ . i pare Ph j * ¢¢ 4 5 SSir » 7 . 4 +> TES ! - + : tal , ; pry reyy Fe ai tri ty ~ = Sonne 9 . ; 44) (42 teri? “cya, * ; 9 1 4 } 23% fs FRS AE: . ; * > i | "> * : i3 ai. 7 a é f PREFACE ~ TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. Tue Mission of the Comforter, now offered to the friends of Christ in this land, is, with one exception, a reprint of the last English Edition. In that edition about sixty pages, extracted from several eminent Greek, Latin, and French authors, were given in the original languages. It has been thought desirable to place these extracts within the reach of all who may read the work. They have therefore been translated, so far as this could be done without counteracting the purpose for which they were cited. 'Those who are favored with learning and leisure, may regret the performance of this labor; for it is always pleasant to see the very words which a great writer has em- ployed, to “ hear him speak in his own tongue wherein he was born;” but if the small number who would have preferred the original to a version, bear in mind the greater satisfaction and profit which the work as now published will afford to the many, the course we have taken will be duly appreciated. Two or three passages in the following work seem to imply the author’s belief in baptismal regeneration. We allude to them merely for the purpose of express- ing our regret, that this papal error should be found Vill PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. in a mind otherwise so clear, discriminating, and pro- testant. We must also dissent from Archdeacon Hare’s opinion, that it is the duty of a church to re- vise from time to time, for her members, our version of the Scriptures. Whatever advantage might result to any single denomination from such a course, would be more than counterbalanced, we fear, by the evils which would follow the want of a standard version and the many sectarian translations which must soon appear. With these sight abatements the Mission of the Comforter is a work of rare excellence. For affluence of thought and language, for breadth of view and vigor of imagination, for earnestness of tone and sym- pathy with the deeper truths of our holy religion, for soundness of theology and outspoken love to the great doctrine of faith in Christ, for adaptation to men of this age and country, who yet breathe the air of spir- itual freedom though half-forgetful of their birthright, and for scriptural views of Him through whose invis- ible presence and aid the church triumphs and Chris- tians are sanctified, — for these and similar charac- teristics, this book will take a very high place, we think, in the judgment of all. May the Holy Spirit, whose Mission it aims to portray, make its words convincing to the world and refreshing to the people of God. Ay ras Newton CENTRE, Dec. 10, 1853. } PREFACE TO THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. Turse Sermons on the Mission of the Comforter were preached before the University of Cambridge in March, 1840. My original intention was to point out, in the concluding Sermon, how the work of the Com- forter in all its parts is fulfilled by His taking of the things of Christ, and showing them to us. But, to treat this subject adequately, it would have been re- - quisite to show how Christ, as God manifest in the flesh, and as the Reconciler of man to God, is, and ever has been, and ever must be, the one Principle and Source of all life and of all light, both collectively and individually, in His Church; and such a theme was far too vast for a single sermon. Indeed, beside the inexhaustible fulness of this truth, when contem- plated in itself ideally, and in its relations to the fallen state of man, and to the history of the Church, the exposition of it would have led to a consideration of those false notions of Christ’s personality, which re- gard Him as the mere Founder of a system, whether moral, or philosophical, or religious, and place Him Xx . PREFACE TO THE at the head of it, but leave the system to work itself out through the impulse it originally received. ‘This would have superinduced an examination of the most recent form of Socinianism, the Straussian, which, after denying the Son and the Spirit, has ended by denying the Father also, and has rolled out of the chaos of Pantheism into the blank abyss of Atheism. To contend against and to exterminate this primary error, under all its forms, by the assertion of the di- vine personality of Christ, of the redemption and reconciliation He has wrought for mankind, and of His abiding presence in His Church through the Spirit glorifying Him, and to establish these primary truths on irrefragable grounds, philological, historical, and philosophical, as well as theological, is the great work of our age: and all who are striving for the truth are bringing their contributions of one kind or other for the erection of this heavenly temple. It would be a blessed reward if any thing in this volume may in any way forward the carrying on of this work. T'o the Sermons I have appended a considerable body of Notes. Several questions of theological and ethical interest having been touched on in them, as alone they could be, cursorily and generally, I wished to support the opinions expressed by more definite arguments, and by the authority of wiser men. As there is so much difficulty and obscurity in the brief, pregnant verses, in which our Lord declares the three- fold work of the Comforter, I thought it might be SECOND LONDON EDITION. Xi useful to give a sketch of the manner in which those verses have been interpreted by the chief divines in the various ages of the Church, and that, if this sketch were illustrated by extracts from those divines, it might aid the theological student in forming an esti- mate of the kind of light he may expect from the principal periods in the history of Theology. For, while the revived study of the theology of earlier ages, if carried on critically, with a discernment of that) which each age had to effect toward the progressive unfolding of the truth, in its world-embracing heighth and depth and breadth and fulness, cannot be other-' wise than beneficial; on the other hand, if, as we have seen happen in a number of instances, the end of this study is merely to make us repeat by rote what was said in the fourth century, or in the four- teenth, instead of becoming wiser, we shall become foolisher. Even the swallow’s twitter and the spar- row’s chirp are pleasanter than the finest notes of the mocking-bird. So the merest truisms of our own age are better than the truths of former ages, unless these are duly appropriated and assimilated to the body of our thoughts. Our intellectual food also, if it is to nourish and strengthen us, must be thoroughly di- gested. They who complain of this, and call it pre- sumption if we exercise our understandings on the lessons handed down to us, and do not receive them implicitly in reliance on the wisdom of our teachers, might as rationally call it presumption in us that we xii PREFACE TO THE do not swallow our food, without allowing our auda- cious teeth to masticate it, and our gastric processes to separate the nutritive part from the excremental. For such an unreasonable, spurious humility there is but one natural home. They who swallow the the- ology either of the Fathers, or of the Middle Ages, in the gross, find themselves out of place in a Protestant Church; and while they wish to revive the Church of the Middle Ages, and confound faith with credu- lity, they are just fitted for the surrender of their rea- son and conscience to the arbitrary mandates of the Papacy. In the course of the Notes several occasions pre- sented themselves for speaking on questions which have been agitated in the controversies of the day; nor have I shunned them. Above all I have felt it an especial duty to call the attention of my readers again and again to the inestimable blessings of the Reformation, as evinced in the expansion of theology, no less than in the purification of religion. ‘There are times indeed when one may be willing to throw a veil over the faults and sins of another Church; even as in the ordinary intercourse of life one is will- ing, in the hope of better things, to overlook much that may have been very reprehensible in a neighbor. But if the neighbor challenges scrutiny, if he reviles his betters, if he inveigles others to join him in revil- ing them, he must bear the penalty which he draws down on his own head. In like manner, now that SECOND LONDON EDITION. xii the battle of the Reformation is renewed, now that the Reformers are attacked with unscrupulous igno- , tance and virulence, now that the principles which animated them are impugned and denied, now that | the whole course of events previously and subse- quently, as well as at the time, is strangely misrep- resented and distorted, it becomes necessary to defend the truth, not only by asserting its majesty and repel- ling its foes, but also by carrying the war into the enemy’s country. Ifit be put as a question still hanging on the balance, whether our Church is a true Church, or whether the Church of Rome is the only true one, we must not allow false charity to deter us from bringing forward the marks which prove the Church of Rome to be in so many of its features ut- terly antichristian. Here it is right to state that the observations on the development of Christian doctrine in Note G were printed long before the publication of Mr. New- man’s work on that subject. Their purpose was to help the reader in forming a correct notion on a mat- ter, on which, it seemed to me, very erroneous opin- ions had been promulgated in Mr. Newman’s Sermon before the University of Oxford, and in the writings of some of his followers, opinions caught up some- what hastily and superficially from certain German Romanists, without a clear perception either of their grounds or their tendencies, or even of the truth they involved; while the extraordinary inferences drawn 2 x X1v PREFACE TO THE from them made the very word development a by word of alarm with the opposite party. T’o Mr. Newman’s recent work I have purposely avoided all reference. Other occasions for speaking of it will arise, if indeed there be any necessity of adding to what has already been said by my brother-in-law, . Mr. Maurice, in the Preface to his Warburtonian Lectures, and by Professor Butler in the excellent series of Letters which he has inserted in the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette. } Another object which I have kept j in view more or less, while collecting the materials for the Notes, has been to furnish the theological student with a few hints or guideposts, so to say, when he enters into the region of German theology; which many are wont to regard as a vast wilderness peopled with “ Gorgons and Hydras and Chimeras dire.” ‘That the views conveyed in Mr. Rose’s denunciation were utterly erroneous, we were taught in some measure by Dr. Pusey in his answers, the most valuable theo- logically of his writings. Ignorance, however, has not been silenced, and, when it is maledicent, is sure to find a credulous auditory; and thus even Mr. Dewar’s worthless book is quoted and extolled as an authority. That there is an enormous mass of evil, of shallow presumption, of ostentatious folly, of wild extravagance, in the German theology of the last half century, I have no disposition to deny: nevertheless, they who know what has really been done in Ger- SECOND LONDON EDITION. . XV many since the publication of Kant’s great work, © must also know that in Germany the mighty intel- lectual war of Christendom has been waged, and is now going on. If the host of evil has become sub- | tiler and more audacious, the army of the faith has also become much stronger; and able champions of the truth are continually raised up, who defend the truth, not by shutting their eyes to its difficulties, and hooting at its adversaries, but by calmly refuting those adversaries, and solving the difficulties, with the help of weapons derived from a higher philology and philosophy. In the wish of introducing some of these better German divines to the English reader, I have availed myself of such opportunities as occurred for inserting extracts from them, many of which, T trust, will be found to justify the foregoing com- mendation. _ Of recent English writers, the one with whose . sanction I have chiefly desired, whenever I could, here or elsewhere, to strengthen my opinions, is the great religious philosopher, to whom the mind of our generation in England owes moré than to any other man. My gratitude to him I have endeavored to, express by dedicating the following Sermons to his memory; and the offering is so far at least appro- priate, in that the main work of his life was to spir- itualize, not only our philosophy, but our theology, to raise them both above the empiricism into which they had long been dwindling, and to set them free from Xv1 PREFACE TO THE the technical trammels of logical systems. Whether he is as much studied by the genial young men of the present day, as he was twenty or thirty years ago, I have no adequate means of judging: but our theo- logical literature teems with errors, such as could hardly have been committed by persons whose minds had been disciplined by his philosophical method, and had rightly appropriated his principles. So far too as my observation has extended, the third and fourth volumes of his Remains, though they were hailed with delight by Arnold on their first appear- ance, have not yet produced their proper effect on the intellect of the age. It may be that the rich store of profound and beautiful thought contained in, them has been weighed down, from being mixed with a few opinions on points of Biblical criticism, likely to be very offensive to persons who know nothing about the history of the Canon. Some of these opinions, to which Coleridge himself has ascribed a good deal of importance, seem to me of little worth; some to be decidedly erroneous. Philological criticism, in- deed all matters requiring a laborious and accurate Anvestigation of details, were alien from the bent and habits of his mind; and his exegetical studies, such as they were, took place sat a period when he had little better than the meagre Rationalism of Hich- horn and Bertholdt to help him. Of the opinions which he imbibed :-from them, some abode with him through life. These, however, along with every thing SECOND LONDON EDITION. XVli else that can‘justly be objected to in the Remains, do not form a twentieth part of the whole, and may easily be separated from the remainder. ‘Nor do they detract in any way from the sterling sense, the clear and farsighted discernment, the power of tracing principles in their remotest operations, and of refer- ring all things to their first principles, which are man- ifested in almost every page, and from which we might learn so much. There may be some, indeed, who fancy that Coleridge’s day is gone by, and that we have advanced beyond him. I have seen him numbered, along with other persons who would have been no less surprised at their position and company, among the pioneers who prepared the way for our new theological school. This fathering of Tractari- anism, as it is termed, upon Coleridge well deserves to rank beside the folly which would father Ration- alism upon Luther. Coleridge’s far-reaching vision did, indeed, discern the best part of the speculative truths which our new school has laid hold on and ex- aggerated and perverted. But in Coleridge’s field of view they were comprised along with the comple- mental truths which limit them, and in their con- junetion and coérdination with which alone they retain the beneficent power of truth. He saw what our modern theologians see, though it was latent from the vulgar eye in his days: but he also saw what they do not see, what they have closed their 9Q* XVill PREFACE TO THE eyes on; and he saw far beyond them, because he saw things in their universal principles and laws. I know not whether I need remark that the Ser- mons are of course complete in themselves, and that, though the Notes are suggested’ by them, and are intended to illustrate them, they are not meant to be read so as to interrupt the argument of the text, but may more suitably be reserved till afterward. Herstmonceux, Whit-Tuesday, June 2d, 1846. In republishing these Sermons on the Mission of the Comforter, I have separated them from those which were subjoined to them in the first edition ; and I have reserved the overgrown Note in vindica- tion of Luther for a volume by itself. ‘To the other Notes a few additions have been made, of which the most important are extracts from Stier’s admirable Exposition of our Lord’s Discourses. I have also added an-index, in compliance with wishes expressed in several quarters. My recognition that there is any thing good in German Theology, and my attempt to point out where that good is to be found, have excited some vehement denunciations, as I expected, from those who know nothing about it. One of these I an- swered, in a Pamphlet, which the conduct of my SECOND LONDON EDITION. X1x assailant led me to head with the words of the Ninth Commandment. My answer was followed by a reply in the next number of the English Re- view. But when gross misrepresentations, after be-— ing thoroughly exposed, are unretracted, and attempts are made to defend them by shuffling evasions, no benefit can arise from the centinuance of such a con- troversy. May the Spirit of Truth watch over our Church, and preserve us from all the subtile tempta- . tions of the Father of lies! Never were such temp- tations more deceptive than now: never had he more emissaries stalking abroad. He lies in wait at the door of every heart: he tries to creep in under the guise of some holy feeling. Nevertheless let us hold fast to the conviction that, though he is the Prince of » this world, yet he has been judged. Herstmoncevx, November 12th, 1850. i ka te gst rouse Le ie > * ay ; a as iio oe [oyna St ontd ne one aes j riers } ~ i Ld a ilehcuwer Ar + 3 AAD eR bie : ihe i. 5 aS mY i¢ pay Ri Ayrton _ geht Vr Bi atottirronitity, ee | ui Paaeorss eld 2y CONTENTS. SERMON I. THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. John xvi. 7. ; PAGE Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that Igo away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you; butif I depart, 1 willsend Him to you. . . : 25 SERMON II. THE CONVICTION OF SIN. John xvi. 8, 9. When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgment; of Sin, because they believe not in Me. ; : ; : : ‘ : : ee SERMON III. THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. John xvi. 8, 10. When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin. and of Righteousness, and of Judgment; of Righteousness Ps fo) : 3 D >) tes) 5) because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more. ; : 102 SERMON IV. THE CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT. John xvi. 8, 11. When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgment; of Judgment, be- cause the Prince of this world is judged. : : : . 142 XxXll CONTENTS. SERMON V. THE THREEFOLD CONVICTION OF THE COMFORTER, John xvi. 8-11. When the Comforter is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgment; of Sin, because they believe not in Me; of Righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; of Judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged. ; : ; : : errr Nore A. Analogies to the Expediency of Christ’s Departure. tee Note B. On John xvi. 13. Errors in our Translation from the use of a Latin version. How the Spirit will lead us to all Truth. Note C, Christ’s exaltation consequent on His departure. His promise to Peter. : : : : i : d : : Notes D, E, F. Expediency of Christ’s departure with reference to the Apostles. : : : : : : 2 Nore G. ‘Bearing of John xvi. 7 on the Procession of the Holy Ghost. — On the gradual Development of theological doctrines. — Misuse of Arguments from Metaphors. Nore H. On John vii. 39. On the gifts of the Spirit prior and subse- quent to Christ’s Ascension.—On the exegetical value of the Fathers, of the Reformers, of our Divines in the 17th and 18th centuries, of the German Rationalists, and of the German Diyines of the present day. : : ; ° . 173 221 224 231 235 240 CONTENTS. Xxlli Nore I. On John xiy. 15, 16,17. Change wrought in the Apostles by the Spirit. : : : ; : ‘ : : : : 326 Nore J. On the expediency of Christ’s spiritual departure. . ° 340 ‘N Note K. On the meaning of the name Paraclete. - : : : 348 ‘ Nore L. On the meaning of ééyyery in John xvi. 8. www 8 Note M. On the subjects of the Comforter’s conviction. . Te 370 Nore N. On 1 Corinth. xiv. 24. On the meaning of mgopytsvely, iOvatng. On the dignity of Preaching. On Christian Ex- pediency. : : : ; : ‘ ‘ : : : 375 Nore O. On Titus We 9, a e . e ° ° e e >. se 885 Nore P. On the World as reproved by the Comforter... ‘ : 385 Nore Q. On the conviction of Sin: catena of interpretations. On unbe- lief as the parent of sin. : F ; : : 7 389 Nore R. On the comfort of the Comforter’s reproof. > : és a ALG Note 5. On Plato’s expulsion of Poets from his Republic. . . 420 XX1V CONTENTS. Nore T. On the excessive admiration of Power. Note U. On the necessity of living Righteousness. Note V. On Plato’s views concerning Marriage. Nott W. On the Comforter’s conviction of Righteousness. ow) Notre X. On the moral effect of calamities. Nore Y, On the conviction of Judgment. Note Z. Inefficacy of suffering to subdue sin. Notre AA. Augustin on John xii. 31. Nore AB. On the continual work of the Comforter. Nore AC. On the triple conviction of the Comforter. Nore AD. The existence of witches not incompatible with the Judement of the Prince of this world. ° . 423 434 436 437 461 463 482 483 484 487 492 Sele lM O Nk THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. NEVERTHELESS I TELL YOU THE TRUTH: IT Is EXPEDIENT FOR YOU THAT IGO AWAY. FORIFI GO NOT AWAY, THE COMFORTER WILL NOT COME TO YOU; BUT IF I DEPART, I WiLL SEND HIM TO You. — John xvi. 7. Turse words, it will be remembered, stand in the middle of that divine discourse, in which our blessed Lord, on the eve of His crucifixion, endeavors to cheer and lift up the hearts of His disciples, opening their eyes at the same time to see further than they had ever yet looked, into the mysteries of the King- dom of Heaven. In the verses which follow, He goes on to declare what are to be the workings of the Comforter here promised. The whole passage, though it is not without difficulty, is a rich treasure of the most precious truths, bearing both on the deepest questions of doctrine, and on the practical discipline of our hearts and lives. Therefore, know- ing no subject of wider and more lasting interest, — inasmuch as its interest is coéxtensive with the Church of Christ, and will last to the end of the world, while it comes home to the conscience of every faithful member of that Church,— JI have thought that it might not be unprofitable to call your attention, during the present Course of Ser- 3 26 THE EXPEDIENCY mons, to this promise of the Comforter ; whose com- ing, as it was to be so great a blessing to the imme- diate disciples of our Lord, has in like manner been the source of infinite blessings through all ages in the Church; and whose work in the heart of every true believer has been the very same which is set forth in the verses immediately after the text. May He, who alone can, even the Comforter Himself, who is the Spirit of Truth, teach me to discern the myste- ries of that grace, which He is ever pouring on the Church of Christ! May He open my lips to speak the truth! and may He carry that truth with power and with conviction to your hearts! On that last evening, when the work, which the Son of God had come down from heaven to perform, was drawing to its close, He tells His disciples of the heavy sorrows and afflictions which were hanging over them. He tells them, more plainly than ever before, of that greatest and heaviest sorrow, that they were to be separated from Him,— how He was about to go away, and how, whither He went, they could not come, at least not for a time. He tells them also of the tribulation and persecution which they would have to endure in the world, — how the time was coming when whosoever killed them would think he did God service. But He does not tell them all this to the end that their hearts should be troubled, that they should grieve and faint at the thought of the trials which awaited them. His words to tis.His servants, who trust in Him and love Him, are never meant to give pain. ‘Though they may be bitter in the mouth, they are always medicinal, and, unlike the book eaten in the apoca- OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. hired lyptic vision, turn to sweetness within. His purpose, in speaking to His disciples of the sufferings which were to fall upon them, was, that, when all came to pass according to His word, they should not be offended and startled, so as to lose their hold of the truth, but should remember how He had told them of every thing beforehand, and thus even in their sufferings should find fresh proofs of His divine wis- dom and knowledge; so that, having their faith in Him enlivened and strengthened more and more by every trial, they might be of good cheer, and in Him might have peace. With this purpose, in order that they might have a sure hope to lean on, when dan- ger was gathering round and assailing them, He speaks to them again and again of a great consola- tion and blessing which they were to receive, of a Comforter, another Comforter, whom the Father would give to them, and who would abide with them forever. This Comforter, He says to them, is the Spirtt of Truth. He is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name; and He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever Ihave said to you: and He will testify of Me. And so measureless and priceless were the blessings which this Comforter would bestow, that our Lord assures His disciples, it was expedient for them, it was for their advantage, that He should go away: for unless [go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but, if I depart, I will send Him to you. No other words could have expressed so strongly what a rich and gracious and peerless gift that of the Comforter was to be. For never was there any intercourse or communion upon earth between man 28 THE EXPEDIENCY and man, the blessedness of which could for a mo- ment be compared with that found by the disciples in the presence of their Lord. Although Jerusalem, with her priests and her doctors, —the expounders . of the Law which prepared the way for Him, and the ministers of the sacrifices which foreshowed Him,— would not. listen when He wished to gather them beneath the wings of His love, the fishermen of Galilee had listened to His call, and had come to Him, and had found shelter. As they had forsaken ail for His sake, in Him they had found far more _than all. They had found shelter, even as children find shelter beneath the guardian care of their pa- rents. ‘They had found every thing that a child can receive from the wisest and most loving of fathers, only of a more perfect kind, and in a higher degree, —help in every need, relief from every anx- iety and care, support under every distress, consola- ion under every affliction, an abundant, overflowing supply for every want of body’and soul, of heart and mind, ‘They came to Him for food; and He gave them food wherewith to feed thousands: yea, desti- tute as they were, and although the wilderness was spread around them, He gave them spiritual food wherewith to feed the whole world through all the generations of mankind, and worldfuls over and / above. They complained to Him of the fruitless- ness of their labors, how they had toiled, and toiled, and taken nothing; and at His word they drew in such a draught, that they were dismayed at their sue- cess, and began to sink beneath its weight. They cried to him in their terror at the storm which was raging around them; and the winds and the waves OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. 29 were hushed by the breath of His omnipotent word. In Him they had the fulness of Truth and Grace and Wisdom and Peace and Love, yea, the fulness of God, dwelling with them, talking with them face to face, bearing patiently with all their infirmities, upholding them against their own frailties and per- versities, warning them against all dangers, and, . when through neglect of his warning they fell, lifting them up again, strengthening their hearts and souls, pouring His light into their understandings, and guiding and leading them onward in the way of ‘everlasting life. Time after time too they had been taught by grievous experience, that, safe and strong and clearsighted as they were by the side of their Master, when away from Him they were still feeble and helpless and blind. Yet, notwithstanding all this, notwithstanding the blessings which the disci- ples were daily and hourly receiving from the pre- sence of their Lord, notwithstanding the many sad proofs they had seen of their own ignorance and weakness when out of His sight, still, such was the riches of the grace which the promised Comforter was to bestow on them, that, for the sake of obtain- ing that grace, it was expedient for them, Jesus tells them, it was better for them, that He should go away and leave them, so that the Comforter might come to them in His stead, and might dwell with them and in them. This must have sounded very strange in their ears. They must have been unwilling and unable to be- lieve it. They could not but think at the moment, that no happiness would ever be like the happiness they had found in their daily communion with their or 30) THE EXPEDIENCY Master, —that no calamity could be like the calam- ity of being parted from Him. Thus, when they heard His saying, sorrow filled their hearts. 'There- fore our Saviour enforces His words with an un- wonted strength of assurance: Nevertheless I tell you the truth. We had always told them the truth. He was full of truth; and, whenever He spake, truth was in all His words. Nay, He was Himself the Truth, the eternal Truth of God. Yet on this occa- sion, seelng their sorrow, knowing how deep and:bit- ter it must be, He vouchsafed to give them a special solemn assurance, that, as His words had always been true, so were they now, and so would they who believed them find them, as they had always found them to be. Incredible as it must needs seem to them, vehemently as their hearts revolted from the thought that any thing could make amends to them for the loss of their Master, still He told them the ~ truth: it was expedient for them, it was for their good, for their great moral and spiritual good, that Tle should go away, and that they should be sepa : from Him. But how could this possibly be? How could it- be for the good of the disciples that Jesus should go away, and leave them to themselves? He had been every thing to them. He had raised them out of the ignorance, to which they were born. He had taught them to know and to worship God, as God had never been known and worshipped by man, — to know Him as the God of love, and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. He had fed them with the twofold bread of earthly and of heavenly life. He had been their Guide, their Teacher, their Guardian, their ever- OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. SL present, all-sufficient Friend. All their hopes, all their trust, all their thoughts, all their affections, all their desires, were bound up in Him. How could it be for their advantage, that He should go away and leave them ? | Let us consider whether there is any thing in the ordinary relations of human life, that can help us to understand this. If we look through those relations, the one nearest akin to that in which the disciples stood to their Master, is plainly that which was just now compared with it, between children and their parents. He had been every thing to them, as parents are to their children; and they had looked to Him, had trusted in Him, had cast all their cares upon Him, as children, without taking thought for themselves, trustfully cast all their cares upon their parents. Now, according to the divinely constituted order of the world, the time, we know, comes for all children, when their entire dependence and reliance upon their parents must cease. The time comes, when they must pass from under the eye of their parents, and walk alone. And it is expedient for them that this should be so. As it is expedient for children, that at first they should be carried in the arms of their mothers, and that then they should walk in leading-strings, or with some other like sup- port, and so should learn by little and little to walk alone, and that for a long time they should do every thing in strict obedience, according to the commands of their parents, as though they had no will of “their own, so, on the other hand, as they advance toward years of discretion, is it expedient that the human helps, on which they have been accustomed to. lean oe THE EXPEDIENCY wholly, should one by one be taken away from them. Constant watchfulness and directions are succeeded for awhile by occasional watchfulness and directions ; commands are superseded by counsel; and after a time we no longer have even the counsel of our natural monitors, but are left to the exercise of our own judgment, and to the advice of such friends as the course of life may bring across our path. Such is the order which God has appointed for the life of man: and this order is expedient (a.) We know that it must be so, seeing that He has ordained it; and we can perceive moreover why it is so. Not be- cause it is the glory of man to have a will of his own, and to walk by the light of his own understanding, beneath the supreme, unchecked sway of that will. A Heathen indeed might say this, and might allege strong grounds for his assertion; though even he, if he desired to walk rightly and steadfastly, would have subordinated his own understanding and will to the manifestations of a higher Understanding and a higher Will discernible in the institutions and belief of his countrymen. But we have a revelation of the perfect Wisdom and perfect Will of God. An at- mosphere of eternal Truth compasses us about. We are born in the midst of it: we are taught to breathe it from our childhood: and the great aim and busj- ness of our lives should be to bring our understand- ing and our will into harmony with it, to set them at one with it. Far assuredly is it from expedient that man should be left to the guidance of his own dim- sighted understanding, and to the sway of his own headstrong will. But, as the reason why children are bound to obey their parents with a full, implicit, un- OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. 30 swerving obedience is, that their parents for the time stand in the stead of God to them,—whence we further perceive what is the rightful limit to that obe- dience, namely, when the parent’s command is plainly contrary to an express commandment of God, —as, I say, they who know of no father but an earthly one, must obey that earthly father, who is the author, supporter, and guardian of their life,—so, on the other hand, when they have been taught to look up to Him who has vouchsafed to call Himself our Heavenly Father, — when they have been taught to see His love, and to know His will, — it is expedient for them that they should pass from under their com- plete subjection to their earthly father, in order that they may live more consciously and dutifully in the presence, beneath the eye, and under the law of their Heavenly Father.. It is expedient for them that they should pass from under the immediate control of their earthly parents, not in order that they may do their own will, but that they may do the will of God,— that the shadow may give place to the substance, the earthly type to the heavenly reality, —in order that they may live more entirely by a longer-sighted, further-reaching Faith. Now the relation between the disciples and their Divine Master was like that between children and their parents in this among other things, that it was a relation rather of sight than of faith; or-at least of faith which was wrapped up in sight, and which had not as yet unfolded itself into distinct consciousness. ‘ The faith they had hitherto been called upon to ex- ercise, was not a faith in One who was absent, but in One who was always by their side, whom they saw 34. THE EXPEDIENCY with their eyes, and heard with their ears, and who was daily working visible wonders before them. Hence, their faith having never been trained to see Him when He was absent, and to trust in Him when He was far off, it failed, as soon as they were out of His sight. When He was upon the mount, they were unable, through their unbelief, to heal the boy who was possessed by the evil spirit, When He was _ asleep, they were afraid lest the sea should swallow them up. And though they fancied that they loved Him above all things, though they fancied that nothing could ever lure or drive them away from Him, that they could brave every danger, and bear every suffering, rather than forsake Him, yet, no sooner did the soldiers lay hold on Him, than they fled. Such was the weakness of their fancied strength : having never been tried, at the first trial it gave way. Moreover their relation to their Lord was like that between children and their parents in this also, that, as they had ever found a ready, pre- sent help in Him for all their wants, He stood in the _ place of God to them, as a father stands to his child. \ It is true, He also was God. This however they | knew not. They did not regard Him as God, but much more as a man, like, though far superior in power and wisdom, to themselves. Hence, as it is expedient that a child should rise from a visible to an invisible Object of Faith, and that his obedience to an earthly should be transfigured into obedience to a Heavenly Father, so was it expedient that the love and reverence which the disciples felt for their earthly Lord, should be transfigured into love and reverence for a Heavenly Lord, — for the same Lord, OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. 30 not for a different. For the Comforter was to testify of Jesus, was to bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever Jesus had said to them, was to glorify Jesus, was to receive and show them the things of Jesus. Still, though, when Jesus departed from them, they were not to go to a different Master, — though He who had been their Master hitherto was to continue their only Master unto the end, — yet to them, in their eyes, He was to be different. He was no longer to be Jesus of Nazareth, but Christ, the Eternal Son of God. ? I have been likening the change, which befell the disciples when their Lord was taken from them, to that which happens when a child passes from under the government and control of its parents to the exercise of self-government and self-control. This comparison, it seems to me, may help us materially in understanding how it was possible for that change to be expedient for them, and by what process it was to become so. Therefore we will dwell a little longer upon it, more especially as it will give rise to. some considerations bearing closely on our position in this place. In the case of the disciples the change was sudden and rapid, and was completed at once. Tn the common journey of life on the other hand, we all know, the transition is very gradual. Years roll over our heads while it is going on; and there are several stages in its progress. Such is God’s gra- cious plan for fostering and maturing the growth of His reasonable creatures. Such is the care with which he has girt us round. “ Parents first season us: then Schoolmasters Deliver us to Laws.” These several stages however are not, — at least they ought 36 THE EXPEDIENCY not to be, removals into a different region of life. They ought not to be cut off one from another. Rather should each succeeding state be an expan- sion of that which went before, even as the bud expands into the blossom, and as the blossom, after shedding its robe of beauty, expands into the fruit. At each step indeed we meet with sundry tempta- tions to reject and look back with scorn on the past. Our vanity prompts us to do so, being flattered by the thought of our having recently achieved an emancipation from a moral and intellectual bondage, to which, through our feebleness and helplessness, we had been compelled to submit. The charms of novelty, the fascination of the present moment, of our present thoughts, of our present feelings, of our present circumstances, which acts almost overpower- ingly upon weak minds, to the extinction both of the past and the future, would make us give ourselves up to that moment altogether. Yet the only way in which we can make head against the crushing tyranny of the present, is by holding firmly to the past, to that which was living and permanent in it, merely casting away what was outward and acci- dental. That which has been the good spirit of the past, should abide with us as a cuardian angel through life, manifesting itself more and more clearly to the soul, as we rise from one step to another. Then alone will every change be expedient. The first momentous change in a boy’s life is that when he passes from under his father’s roof to school. This is expedient and fitting in his case, in order that he may be trained betimes for the habits and duties, the energy and the endurance of active life, - OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. OL and in order that he may learn to look upon himself, not merely as a member of a family, but as bound by manifold ties to his fellow men; so that the idea of a State, and of himself as a member of the State, may gradually rise up within him ; while the instruc- tion he receives teaches him to connect himself in thought with all past generations, and to view him- self as a member of the human race, linked by innu- merable ties of obligation to those who have gone before him, and bound to repay that obligation by laboring for his own age, and for those who shall come after him. In the other sex, whose duties through life are to be mainly domestic, and who are not designed to take part in political or professional activity, such a separation from home is not desir- able, unless under peculiar circumstances. But for the healthy and manly development of a boy’s cha- racter, in a rightful sympathy with the nation he belongs to, it seems to be almost indispensable, so that nothing short of a singular felicity of circum- stances can make amends for it; not indeed unac- companied with danger and difficulty, but for this very reason necessary, as the training of Winter is to a-sapling, which is to grow into a noble tree, and to stand the blasts of centuries. Although however itis expedient for the boy to pass from his father’s house to school, are not the feelings and thoughts, the affections and principles, which animated and guided him when at home, still to animate and guide him at school? Most pitiable would his lot be, if they did not. He would have no affection, no. reverence. His affection for his schoolfellows can only be a transfer of a portion of that which he has. 4 38 THE EXPEDIENCY learned to feel for his brothers; his reverence for his master, a transfer of a portion of that which he feels for his parents. And woe to him, if he does not cherish that reverence, which many things will tend to impair and destroy! One part of his life at school, that which lies in his intercourse with his master, will be altogether unprofitable to him and lost, nay, will be hurtful, unfitting his soul for being a habita- tion of reverent feelings through life. And still more certain woe to him, if the impressions of his new companions efface those of his home! ‘Then, and through his whole life, should the image of his parents and brethren be enshrined in the sanctuary of his heart. Woe to him, also, if he forgets the | principles which he imbibed at his mother’s knees! ~ If he clings to those principles, he may maintain a ie steady course amid the temptations which will beset a him. Else he will drift along, like a fallen leaf, the sport of every casual impulse, a moral and spiritual vagrant. The next stage in the progressive unfolding of the character, at least for the higher classes, according to the institutions of modern Europe, is, we all know, when the boy comes forth from the strict discipline and control of school, to complete that education ‘which is to fit him for the duties and struggles of active life, in some place of study resembling this University. This is the stage, which you, my young friends, have now reached. You have quitted the constant discipline of school, and that course of study every part of which was prescribed to you by your master; and you have entered on a freer mode of life: you are left more to your own judgment in OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. 39 the regulation both of your studies and of your con- duct. And this change also has been expedient for you. On this point perhaps you would all readily agree with me: at least you would allow and main- tain that the change has been a pleasant one. Possi- bly however the reason why you think the change a pleasant one, may not be exactly the reason why it is expedient for you to go through it. Nay, your rea- son for deeming it pleasant might rather, if we take a Christian point of view, be a reason for deeming it inexpedient; so far namely as that reason comes into play. For why are you glad of the change? May I not say, to express the reason in a word, you are glad, because it made you your own masters? Now this would indeed be a worthy reason for rejoicing, if you had truly become your own masters, —if you had acquired a greater dominion over your thoughts and feelings and actions, —if those portions of, your nature, which ought to exercise supremacy over the rest, those powers which, as belonging to the divine image within you, constitute your real selves, your Reason and your Conscience, were become the lords of your being. But if your ground for rejoicing is, that you have acquired greater facilities for indulging an unreasoning and unreasonable will, for pampering every craving appetite, and following every wayward desire, then, so far as this has been the effect of the change, assuredly it has been any thing but expedient. It has been necessary: it has been inevitable: but the very circumstances in your situation which you would select as motives for rejoicing, are those which you are especially called to contend against and sub- due. Nor would you, by such a change, have be- AO THE EXPEDIENCY come your own masters, but your own slaves. It would have overthrown the legitimate, monarchal constitution of your being, to set up the ochlocracy within you in its stead. This however is the blessed advantage afforded you by the institutions of this place, that here you have many helps and encour- agements to train you for the exercise of self-govern- ment,—that you have the guardian guidance and watchful superintendence of persons of greater wis- dom and experience, anxious to steady you in the paths of good, and to preserve or call you back from evil,—and that the whole system of our daily life, while it allows you a certain degree of liberty, im- poses a certain degree of salutary restraint. I am aware, there is much in the habits and spirit of the age, and of your rank in society,—and you will probably find much in some of your companions, — which has an opposite tendency, and holds out per- nicious temptations to laxity and self-indulgence. But so much the more does it behove you to cleave with grateful and dutiful reverence to those protecting institutions and to that guardian authority, which God has mercifully appointed to uphold your frail strength at this critical season of your lives. Indeed this is the peculiar advantage which our universities have over those in other countries, that they form a regular step in the progressive development of free- dom, a medium between the constraint of boyhood at school and the absolute unconstraint of manhood in the world. You are here in a sheltered creek, in which you may practise yourselves in a boat of your own, before you launch out into the broad sea of life. But the greater your advantages and privileges may OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. Al be, the greater also is your responsibility. The orderly and obedient habits, which you learnt at home in your childhood from the necessities and instincts of nature, and which were imposed upon you at school by the authority of your master, you should here impose upon yourselves. This is of no little importance, even with regard td your studies, If you would render them profitable, they should be orderly, steadily pursued, and in a determinate course ; which in this atomic age of literature is more diffi- cult than ever before. But important as discipline is for a strong and sound growth of the intellect, it is still more important for that moral health and strength, whereby you may be enabled to stand hereafter amid the assailing temptations and tumult of the world. As the lessons in the various rudiments of knowl- edge, which you have learnt in former years, have become a substantial part of your minds, and shape and mould your thoughts, without any special act of reflection or volition, and often without any conscious- ness, so should your moral habits be in like manner amalgamated with your moral nature, and should unconsciously regulate and determine your conduct on every, even the slightest occasion. ‘Thus would the child indeed be “father of the man:” and this would be the true discipline and preparation for free- dom; which none can enjoy outwardly, except he who has it in himself; and which consists in the orderly, harmonious, unchecked, unconstrained move- ment of the heart and soul and mind in the path marked out for them by God. We have been looking at several instances, in which the changes, occurring in the ordinary course * 42 THE EXPEDIENCY of our lives, are in some measure analogous to that which befell the Apostles when our Lord departed from their sight. In each we have seen that the feel- ings and rules, which at first are impressed upon us by present objects, are designed to become living ele- ments and principles in our hearts and minds; and that, when a sufficient time has elapsed for the in- ward principle to gain some degree of strength, the outward authority, which imposed and enforced the rule, is taken away. ‘Thus far therefore, with a view to this end, it is expedient, abstractly, that these changes should come to pass. Nevertheless in very many cases, we must make the sad acknowledgment, they do not prove expedient in fact. That which, according to the divine purpose manifested in our in- stitutions, was intended for our good, does not pro- duce the good it was meant to produce. And why does it fail? It was expedient for the Apostles that Jesus should depart from them, to the end that what they had hitherto regarded with more or less of a carnal eye, should become a living spiritual presence and power in their souls. But how was this effect to be wrought? Was our Lord’s departure to produce it? ‘The very thought of their loss cast them down, and filled them with sorrow and dismay; and when they had been separated. from Him before, they had been taught the lesson of their own weakness. Even after His Resurrection, although they had seen that wonderful proof that the way to power and glory passes through suffering and self-sacrifice, — although our Lord Himself had expounded the Scriptures to them, and shown them how this had been determined and revealed from the beginning, — and although He OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. A3 had breathed the Holy Ghost into them, and declared at the same time that the Kingdom which He had come from the Father to establish, and which He now sent them to establish, was one the great ordi- nance of which was to lie in the remission of sins, and which was only to be spread thereby, — still these things do not seem to have accomplished any decisive alteration in the frame and temper of their spirits. On the day when our Lord was taken up into heaven, they had not ceased to look for the restoration of the visible kingdom of Israel. Norcan we in the least conceive that the change was to be brought about by any act of their own will, or by any process of their own understanding. Jor it was their will and their understanding that required to be changed and enlarged and set free: and so far were they from being able to effect this work by themselves, that they had withstood every attempt to effect it, and had continued blind beneath the light of those blessed words, which have since opened the eyes of mankind. Assuredly, if the disciples had been leit to themselves, our Lord’s departure would not have been expedient for them. Rather would it have been like the departure of the living soul, after which the body is motionless and powerless, and decay and dis- solution soon commence. The reason, our Lord tells the disciples, why it was expedient for them that He should go away, was, that, when He was gone, He would send the Comforter to them; He would send them the Holy Spirit of God, who would bring back to their remembrance whatever He had said to them, and would lead them to the whole truth (s). For this reason, and for this alone, His departure was ex- 2 NL Ad THE EXPEDIENCY pedient, which otherwise would have been the great- est of calamities. Hence, my friends, we may perceive the reason why the changes in the course of our ordinary life, although designed and fitted to be expedient, are so often the contrary. ‘The removal of the boy to school, of the youth to the university, will not be beneficial, but very injurious, unless the things which he had heard before are brought to his remembrance and dwell in him; unless, when the rule, and the au- thority which enforced it, are taken away from over his head, the principle, which was the spirit of that rule, comes forth as a living law in his heart. - No institutions and ordinances, however wise the end contemplated in them, and however judiciously they may be adapted as preparatives to that end, will work any good of themselves. ‘They are only means whereby the Spirit of God works good in those who yield their hearts and wills to them. Great and pre- clous as are the benefits which the institutions of this place are designed and fitted to bestow, you will lose the most precious part of these benefits, the part which would be the most lastingly salutary to your character, unless you look upon them as a gift of God, as an ordinance of God, —as one of the means whereby the Spirit of God would bring back to your remembrance the truths which you were taught in your childhood,—as one of the steps whereby He would gradually lead you to the whole truth. Through His mighty operation, we know, it was soon proved that in this, as in all other things, Jesus did indeed tell His disciples the truth, and that it was most expedient for them that He should go away. OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. A5 The Book of Acts is the proof that it was so; and no proof was ever completer. Terrible as the blow was, overwhelming and irreparable as the loss could not but seem to the natural eye, that very loss was soon tured by the power of the Spirit into their endless and inestimable gain. The Master, whom they had lost, they found anew. But they found Him, not as a mere man, with the infirmities of the flesh, having no form or comeliness, to make men de- sire Him. They found Him as God, as the Eternal, Onlybegotten Son of God, sitting at the right hand of the Father, governing all things with the power of the Father, and at the same time as their Saviour and Redeemer, and as the Redeemer of all mankind. They found Him, whom the Jews had crucified, made by God both Lord and Christ (c). Greatly too as their Master was changed and glorified in their eyes, scarcely less great was the change which took place in their own hearts and souls, in the bent and strength of their characters, and in all their feelings and de- sires, when the promised Comforter had come to them. ‘The fiery baptism of the day of Pentecost consumed and purged away the dross and weak- nesses of their nature; and they came out as silver refined and purified seven times by the fire. Out of fearfulness, they were made bold: out of blindness, they were enabled to see. Instead of being fright- ened, and shrinking and hiding themselves, they now came forward in the eye of day, and openly preached Him whom the Jews had crucified: and they re- joiced with exceeding joy that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus. Therefore was it expedient for the disciples that A6 THE EXPEDIENCY Jesus should go away from them. And as it was_ expedient for them, so through them has it been for mankind, and in divers ways. Foy as, by the coming of the Comforter, the Apostles were led to the whole truth, hereby they were enabled to lay up those trea- sures of truth, which have been the riches of all sub- sequent generations. Through the coming of the Comforter were they seated on their thrones, where they have been the examples, the teachers, the guides of the Church for all ages(p). Nay, if Jesus had not gone away from them, we see not how the Gen- tiles would have been called into the Church. So long as He remained upon earth, the earnest desire of His disciples must needs have been to abide con- tinually within hearing of His blessed words. At the utmost they would have gone forth from Him for a brief while, to return anon into His presence; and thus their preaching would have been confined, as it was during His life, to Judea. Not till He was taken away from them, did they learn to feel that He was with them, not merely in Judea, but in every part of the world. So long as He was living upon earth, He might give light to the country round, like a beacon upon a hill. But it was only from His sun- like throne in the heavens, that He could pour light over every quarter of the globe. It was only from thence that His voice could go forth throughout all the earth, and His words to the end of the world. It was only when He was lifted up, that He could draw all men to His feet. Then alone could the founda- tions of His Church be laid so deep and wide, that all nations could be gathered into it (#). Thus there are several arguments, which, even -_- OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. A7 when we are judging by the light of our own under- standing, guided by the analogies of human life, and by the events which actually ensued, may satisfy us that it was indeed expedient for the disciples that Christ should go away from them. It was expe- dient for them, because it is expedient that men’s hearts should be trained and disciplined by hard- ships and sufferings and afflictions; because it is expedient that they should learn to live by faith in Him who is unseen (Fr); because moreover it was expedient, in order to their fulfilling the counsel of God, and spreading the glory of his salvation, that they should not be confined to a single country, but should go abroad among the nations, branching, like the river which flowed out of Paradise, and compassing all lands. Thus much we may easily discern. We can discern too that the power, whereby the great loss sustained by the Apostles was tured into their greater gain, did not lie in themselves, but came to them from a_ higher source, even from the Comforter whom Jesus sent to them. ‘Through the working of that Comforter, the manifold afflictions, which would otherwise have stunned and crushed them, became the means of purifying and elevating their hearts. Through the working of that Comforter, they lived thence- forward a higher life, by faith in Him, whom they had seen with their eyes, whom they had looked upon, and their hands had handled, and whom they now knew to have sat down at the right hand of God. Through the working of that Comforter, they received boldness and wisdom to go forth over the earth, preaching with tongues of fire, kindling the AS THE EXPEDIENCY hearts of the nations, confounding the wise and the mighty, and bringing to nought whatever was then established on the thrones of power and knowledge. But our Lerd’s words are, For, if Igo not away, the Comforter will not come to you; but, if L depart, Twill send Him to you. In these words there is a depth of meaning far beyond what we have yet attained to: but they are words which we must not - approach, except with humble and reverent awe, taking off the shoes in which we are wont to walk along the highways and byways of human thought. For they relate to the mysteries hidden in the bosom of the Godhead, to the part which the several Per- * sons in the ever-blessed ‘Trinity bear in the gracious work of our Redemption. From other passages of Scripture, as well as from the text, we learn that the gift of the Holy Ghost was connected in some mys- terlous manner with the completion of Christ’s work upon earth. Thus St. John, in a former chapter, (vii. 39,) says, with reference to the promise that the Spirit should be, given to such as believe in Christ, the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified: which agrees exactly with what 4 we read in our text, that, if Jesus had not gone away, the Comforter would not have come. If we endeavor to understand the whole process of our ‘ Redemption, so far as it is set forth in Scripture, it would seem to have been ordained in the eternal counsels of God, manifested as they are, and must needs be, to us under an order of succession, that the sacrifice of Christ should be offered up,— that the full victory over sin, under every form of assail- ing temptation, should be gained by Christ in behalf, ~ OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. AY and as the Head and Representative, of all man- kind, — before those special gifts of the Holy Ghost, which were to be the glory and the blessing of the New Dispensation, were poured out of the treasury of heaven. Such appears to have been the order appointed in the counsels of God: for such was the order in which the events took place. Such too was the order of the prophetic announcement. The Messiah was to go up on high, and to lead captivity captive, and then to receive gifts for men, that the Lord God should dwell among them. Accordingly, when the fulfilment was come, St. Peter, in his ser- mon, declared that Jesus, being exalted by the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Ghost from the Father, had shed forth what the people on the day of Pentecost saw and heard. Moreover we find, in the verses immediately after the text, that a main part of the lessons which the Comforter was to teach, related to facts which did not receive their full accomplishment, until our Lord ascended into heaven. Indeed the great purpose of the mission of the Comforter, it would appear from . those verses, was to declare the whole scheme of salvation to mankind, to reveal it in all its fulness to. their understandings, and to graft this knowledge as. a living, sanctifying reality in their hearts; so that, were it only on this account, the completion of Christ’s work would be an indispensable preliminary to the mission of the Paraclete, who throughout this. passage is spoken of as proceeding, not from the Father only, but from the Father and the Son (@). Many gifts of the Holy Ghost had indeed been already bestowed on man, even under the old Cove- 3) 50 THE EXPEDIENCY nant; above all, the gift of prophecy, whereby holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Pet. i. 21). So too it was declared of John the Baptist, that he should be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb. And our Saviour Himself, in one of the passages above re- ferred to, says to the disciples, L will pray to the Father; and He will give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because i seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. ‘The disciples are here told that they already knew the Comforter. He was already dwelling with them; for they had already received several gifts, which none can receive except from the Holy Ghost. But the gifts they had hitherto received, like the gifts which had proceeded from Him during the earlier dispensation, were in the main external, such as the power of working miracles (u). The higher gifts of \ the Holy Ghost, — that transforming power of faith, “\ which nothing can awaken except a lively insight \ into the sacrifice and mediation of the Saviour, — and those spiritual graces whereby the life of Christ is fashioned in our souls,—had not yet been vouch- safed to them. The Holy Ghost from that time forward was to come down, as he came down at the baptism of Jesus, like a dove, and to abide upon the souls of those who believe in Christ. He was | to come to them, and to dwell in them, converting their earthly tabernacles into living temples of God (1). At all events such is the order in which the work OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. ol of our regeneration must now take place. We must be buried by baptism into the death of Christ, before we can rise again in newness of life. We must be justified through faith in the death of Christ, before we can be sanctified by the indwelling of His Spirit. The Spirit of sanctification is only given to those who have already been washed from their sins in the all-purifying blood of the Lamb. Hence even at this day there are many, for whom it is expedient that Jesus should go away from them, and for the selfsame reason for which it was expe- dient that He should go away from His disciples. Perhaps I might say that even at this day there is no one for whom this is not expedient, or at least for whom it has not been so at some period of his life. For we are all of us, even those who have been brought up with the greatest wisdom, and the most diligent culture of their religious affections, far too apt to look at Jesus Christ in the first instance, in the same light in which the disciples mostly looked upon Him, while He was with them in the body, as a man like ourselves, a perfect man indeed, but still a mere man, who came to teach us about God, and the things of heaven, and the way of attaining to them, and to leave us an example, that we might follow his steps. We read the story of His life in the Gospels; and even our natural hearts are struck and charmed by the surpassing beauty of His character, by His purity, His meekness, His patience, His wisdom, His unweariable, self-forget- ting activity in every work of love. In our better and more serious moments, when the Bible is in our hands, or when we have been stirred by some elo- Sy THE EXPEDIENCY quent picture of the graces manifested in His life, we wish to be like Him, to do as He did, to obey His commandments, at least a part of them, the part which requires the least self-sacrifice and self-denial. All the time indeed we may be in the habit of acknowledging with our lips that Christ is God, not merely in the public profession of the Creed, but whenever our conversation turns upon religion, and whenever we bring the question distinctly before our minds. Yet we scarcely think of Him as God. We litile think what that acknowledgment means or implies. Our thoughts are solely fixed on the excellence of His human character: and inasmuch as we admire Him, and wish to be like Him, we fancy we may take rank among His true disciples. Nay, we even begin to fancy that we have some- thing in common with Him, that our admiration renders us like Him. ‘Thus we glorify human nature for Christ’s sake; and we glorify ourselves as sharing the same nature with Christ. Meanwhile we think little of his death, except on account of the virtues which He manifested before His judges and on the cross. Now he who thinks of Christ in this manner, if he happens by nature to be of a kindly disposition, may at all times really try to imitate Him, even as he might try to imitate any other good or great man in history. At times, when brought more immediately and consciously into Christ’s presence, by hearing or reading about Him, such persons may be. kindled to a longing, and even to an effort, to resemble Him. There are many such persons in the world: there are many assuredly in this congregation. Among the young, especially in ae as SA OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. a3 the educated classes, this, or something like it, is the ordinary state of feeling with regard to the Saviour. Yes, my young friends, I feel confident that there are many, very many amongst you, who think of our blessed Lord after this fashion, who admire and revere and love the peerless graces of His character, who would rejoice at times to enrich your own character with a portion of those graces, but who have no lively consciousness that Christ is your God, that He is your Saviour, that He died for your sins to bring you to God,—who do not feel that you need His help, who never seek to enter into a living communion with Him, nay, who have no conception what can be meant by such a com- munion. Accustomed as you are to contemplate the noblest and fairest examples of humanity, that History and Poetry have set up for the admiration of mankind, — accustomed to meditate on the bright- est intuitions wherewith Philosophy has solaced her journey through the wilderness of logical specula- tion, — you are wont to think of the virtues exhibited in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as of the same kind, only superior in degree, purer and more perfect. Now this fair ideal of excellent humanity may indeed be a blessing to you for a time, a light to your understandings, and a joy to your hearts, — as the contemplation of all virtue, of whatsoever is lovely and noble, will ever be to a genial and gener- ous spirit. "Were you living in a happy island, in an Elysium, where sin was not, and did not cast her shadow, Death, — were there no evil spirit lurking in your own hearts, and ever and anon rising and shaking himself, and shattering the brittle crust with ine 54. THE EXPEDIENCY which amiable feelings and conventional morality may have covered them over, — were there no herd of evil spirits howling and prowling on every side: around you, tearing the vitals of society, mangling every soul they can seize, while others more craftily put on the mask of pleasure and gain and honor, and use every art in fawning on our self-love, —in a word, had you no immortal souls slumbering beneath the painted sepulchre of mortality, were you not made in the image of God, and fallen from that image, were you the mere insects of time,—then indeed it might be sufficient for you to bask in the light of an earthly sun. But the light of that sun will pass away from you: the vapors of sin will hide it from your sight: the glaring lights of the world will draw you afar from it: and ere long you will find a night of thick, impenetrable darkness spread over you and around you, unless you have a living faith in the Sun of Righteousness, whom neither light nor dark- ness can conceal, and who shines all the brighter npon the soul when every thing else seems cheerless and hopeless. Foy all such persons as have no other knowledge of Christ, no other faith in Him, than that which I have just been describing, it is most expedient that Jesus should go away from them. It is expedient for them that the man Jesus, the fair ideal which they have formed of perfect wisdom and virtue, which has shone as an example before them, and which they have fancied themselves able to follow, should pass away from their minds, — that they should feel its in- adequateness to strengthen what is weak in them, and to supply what is wanting,—-in order that, by OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. 50 the teaching of the Spirit, opening their eyes to be- hold their own wants and those of all mankind, they may be led to seek Jesus and to find Him, no longer as a mere J'eacher and Example, but transfigured © into their God and Saviour and Redeemer. It is ex- pedient for them that some great calamity, be it what it may, —some crack, through which they may look into their own souls, and into the soul of the world, — should befall them, —if so be they may learn thereby that no human virtue can uphold them, no human wisdom comfort them, and may thus be brought to seek a Divine Saviour and a Divine Comforter (s). So long as they regard Jesus, whether consciously or unconsciously, as a mere man, they will fancy that something approaching at least to His excellence will be attainable by man. Hence they will be content to walk by their own light, to lean on their own arm, to trust in their own strength; and they will not open their hearts to receive the true comfort of the Holy Ghost. We must feel our need of a Comforter, as the Apostles did when bereft of their Lord, before the Comforter Himself can be a Comforter to us. We must be brought to acknowledge our weakness, our helplessness, our sinfulness, — not merely our own personally, which, if others have surmounted theirs, might also be surmounted by us, — but that of our nature, of our whole fallen race, which, as such, we shall understand to be irremediable by any exer- tions of our own, — before we can pray earnestly for strength and help and purity from above. That is to say, we must lose Christ as a man, to regain Him as God. We must turn from His life to His death, and to the meaning and purpose of that death, not merely ob THE EXPEDIENCY OF CHRIST’S DEPARTURE. as exhibiting the consummation of human patience and meekness, but as fore-ordained by God from the beginning to be the central act in the history of man- kind. We must learn to know and feel how that death was borne for our sakes, and for the sake of all mankind, to deliver us from the bondage of sin, to bring us out of the dark dungeon of our carnal, sel- fish nature, into the light and joy and peace and love, which flow forever from the face of God. We must learn to perceive how totally different Jesus, even in His human nature, as the Son of Man, was from all the rest of mankind; how He alone was pure and holy and without sin; how in Him alone the fulness of the Godhead dwelt. In a word, we must seek through faith to be justified by the blood of Christ, and, casting off all pretensions to any righteousness _of our own, to put on His perfect righteousness : and then the Spirit of God, the Comforter, who is the Spirit of Truth, will come and dwell in our hearts, and purify and sanctify them, so that they shall be- come living temples of God. SERMON Il. THE CONVICTION OF SIN. WHEN THE COMFORTER IS COME, HE WILL CONVINCE THE WORLD OF SIN, AND OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND OF JUDGMENT; OF SIN, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE NOT IN ME. — John xvi. 8, 9. In my former sermon I began to speak to you con- cerning the mission of the Comforter, whom our Lord, on the evening before His crucifixion, promised to send to His disciples, and whose coming was to be so great a blessing, that it was for their advantage that He should leave them, in order that the Com- forter might come to them in His stead. We con- sidered how it was possible that this should be; and we found that, according to the divinely-constituted order of human life, it is wisely and beneficently ap- pointed that the outward helps and supports, by which in the first instance we are guided and upheld, should be taken away from us one by one, to the end that we may learn to live more and more by faith in that which is invisible, trusting and leaning, not on our own strength of understanding or of will, but on the wisdom and power of the Spirit of God. We then endeavored to discern, so far as we may by the light of Scripture, how and why, according to the 08 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. counsel of God, the sending of the Spirit was or- dained to be consequent upon the departure of the Son, so that the Son should return to His heavenly throne at the right hand of the Father, before the Holy Ghost came down in that special, more abun- dant outpouring, which was to be the power and the glory of the Christian dispensation. And we were led in conclusion to mark how the same evangelical order still prevails in the spiritual life of individuals, how we are still over-apt in the first instance to fix our thoughts on the mere humanity of our Lord, and how in such cases it is still expedient and necessary that we should lose the Man Jesus, so that we may be led by the Spirit to acknowledge and worship Christ, the living God. As it is necessary that the trust in human righteousness, in human virtue, in human strength, not merely in our own, but in that of our whole fallen race, should be stripped from the soul, before it can be clothed anew in the divine righteousness of Christ, and as no man is sancti- fied by the Spirit of Christ, until he has been justi- fied by the righteousness of Christ, — in like manner it was the will of God that Christ should die for our sins, should rise again for our justification, and should go up into heaven, before our souls could be lifted up by His Spirit from earthly things to heavenly, and enabled to enter with Him into the presence of the Almighty Father. Thus do all the Persons of the Ever-blessed Trinity vouchsafe to take part in the gracious and glorious work of our Salvation. The Father sent the Son to die for us. The Son became Incarnate in the Form of a Man, to deliver man from his sins, and to bring THE CONVICTION OF SIN. | oY him to God. He, the Firstborn of the whole Crea- tion, became the Firstborn of His Church, and went up into heaven to be the Head and Ruler of that Church: and to that Church He, in the unity of the Father, gave, and evermore gives His Spirit, to be ~ the Source of her life and power, of her faith and wisdom and holiness. Upon that Church the Spirit ‘bestows all the graces of the Kingdom of Heaven, sanctifying that blessed Communion of the Faithful, who have found the forgiveness of their sins through the Atoning Sacrifice of the Saviour. But the Spirit, is not merely the Spirit of Holiness to those who are in the Church: He is also the Spirit of Power, ’ whereby the Church is strengthened for her warfare against the world: and only through the help of the Spirit has the Church been enabled to carry on that warfare, and to bring the world to the obedience of faith. Indeed it is only through the power of the Spirit, that the power of the world has been over- come in any single soul. It is only through the working of the Spirit, that any one has ever been brought to the knowledge of Christ as his Saviour. As none can come to the Father except through the Son, so none can own in his heart that Jesus Christ is God, except through the conviction wrought in him by the Spirit of God, the Comforter. ‘he manner in which this conviction was and still is to be wrought, and the several steps in the process by which the Gospel was to confute the wisdom and to cast down the pride of the world, are declared by our Lord in the verses which follow immediately after His promise, that, when He had departed, He would send the Comforter to His disciples. And 60 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. when He is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judgment; of Sin, be- cause they believe not in Me; of Righteousness, be- cause Igo to My Father, and ye see Me no more; of Judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged. These words are not indeed designed to set forth the whole working of the Spirit in the Church. They do not speak of the.gifts which are bestowed on all’ such as come in sincerity of heart to Christ. ‘They do not speak of that holiness, which is the peculiar gift of the Spirit of Holiness. They do not speak of those excellent fruits of the Spirit, which are enu- merated by St. Paul,—of that love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness and kindness and good faith and meekness and temperance, which are the sure growth of all such trees as are planted by the Spirit of God. Our Lord is speaking mainly with reference to the help which the disciples were to receive from the Comforter in their warfare against the world. Having told them of the violent opposi- tion and persecution they would have to encounter, He goes on to tell them of the assistance they were to receive from the Paraclete, who was to be their Comforter, their Advocate, their Patron and Guar- dian and Protector (x), who was to speak through their mouths, and with whose living sword they were to conquer the world, as the commanders of the great army of faith: When He is come, He will convince the world of Sin, and of Righteousness, and of Judg- ment. Thus these words declare the threefold opera- tion by which the Church was to subdue the world, to cast down the strongholds of its enmity to God, and to prepare it for receiving the adoption of grace. — 2 er = THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 61 But inasmuch as we are all born in the world,— inasmuch as by nature we all have that carnal heart, which is enmity against God, which needs to be sub- dued in every one of us, and which, even when sub- dued, is never wholly eradicated, — hence the warfare of the Church against the world was not to be tran- sient, but permanent, was not-to be carried on merely against those who lie beyond her limits, but was to be waging perpetually, more or less, against the spirit of the world in the hearts of all her members. Nor has any man ever been brought to a thorough recep- tion of the grace of the Gospel, until he has been convinced of Sin and of Righteousness and of Judg- ment by the Spirit of God. Nay, so long as thet world retains any hold on our hearts, so long as there is any evil root of carnal-mindedness in them, so long do we need the aid of the Spirit, to convince us again and again of Sin and of Righteousness and of Judgment. In these words, by which our Saviour describes the operation of the promised Comforter, I have thought it advisable to adopt the reading given in the margin of our Version, supported as that reading is by the general consent of commentators on the passage (1). In the received text, you will remember, the work of the Comforter is said to be, to reprove the world of Sin and of Righteousness and of Judgment. 'The reason which induced our translators to prefer this rendering to the other, may perhaps have been, that they thought the declaration, that the Spirit should convince the world of Sin and of Righteousness and of Judgment, is too widely at variance with the fact; seeing that the chief part of the world is still without the pale of the F 62 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. Church, and that, even within the Church, the num- ber of those in whom a living spiritual conviction of Sin and Righteousness and Judgment has been wrought, is by no means the largest (m). The mean- ing of ihe verb reprove however falls far short of the original verb éheyzeur, which in a very remarkable passage of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, where it is used in the same sense, and almost in the same relation, as in the text, we translate by convince. If all prophesy, we there read (xiv. 24), and there come in an unbeliever or an ignorant man, he is convinced by all, he is searched by all(x). ‘The words which follow prove, that the conviction here spoken of, as being wrought by the power of preaching in the heart of an unbeliever, or an ignorant beginner in Christianity, who happened to come into a Chris- tian congregation, is the very same which in the text is ascribed to the operation of the Comforter, and for the producing of which, prophesying or preaching is ever one of the chief instruments employed by the Spirit. And thus, St. Paul continues, the secrets of his heart are made manifest ; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and declare that God is truly 1m you. Besides, reproving the world of sin is a most inade- quate description of the working of the Spirit. We did not need that the Spirit of God should come down from heaven, to reprove the world of sin. ‘The words of men, the thoughts of men, the eloquence of men, would have been sufficient to do this. Every preacher of righteousness, from the days of Noah down to the present day, has gone about reproving the world of sin. Everybody who in any age has THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 63 led a just and holy life, not merely one positively and absolutely so, but one in any way marked in com- parison with his neighbors, has reproved the world of sin, at least by his deeds, even though he may never have felt called to do so by his words, though he should never have lifted up his voice against sin, in the ears of the world. Nay, it is not necessary that a man should himself be holy and righteous, in order that he should cry out against sin. The unholy may do so: the unrighteous may do so: the greatest and chiefest of sinners may be the loudest in sending forth their voice through their hollow mask in reproof of their neighbors. Poetry had reproved the world of sin: indeed this is the special business of two of its branches, comedy and satire. Philosophy had reproved the world of sin: and at the time when the Spirit of God began His great work of convincing the world of sin, the reproofs of Philosophy had be- come severer and more clamorous, yet also vainer than ever, as she sat on her stately throne in the Porch. But what is the world the better for all this laborious reproving? How much does the world heed it, or care for it? No more than the crater of Kitna cares for the roaring and lashing of the waves at its feet. The smoke of sin will still rise up, and stain the face of heaven, — the flames will still burst forth, and spread desolation far and wide, — although the waves of reproof should roll around it unceas- ingly for century after century. In fact the whole history of man has shown, that reproof, when there is no gentler and more penetrative power working along with it, instead of producing conviction, rather provokes the heart to resist it. To reprove the world 64 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. of sin therefore is a task no way worthy of the Spirit of God; seeing that it is a work which may easily be wrought without His special help, and which has been wrought in all ages without it; seeing too that it is a work, which, when it is accomplished, is of little avail, but passes over men’s hearts, like the wind over a bare rock, scarcely stirring so much as a grain of dust from it, and which has so passed for age after age from the beginning of the world until now. Moreover, while this part of the operation of the Spirit is thus imperfectly expressed by the words, reproving the world of Sin, it is not easy to connect any definite meaning with the latter clauses of the sentence, which, according to our Version, would declare that the office of the Comforter is to reprove the world of Righteousness, and to reprove the world of Judgment. If the first clause of the sentence stood by itself, the word in our language, which would answer the closeliest to the original, would per- haps be to convict: the Comforter will convict the world of Sin. Yet even this would not give the full meaning of the passage: for the conviction was not to be wrought in the minds of others, whether as judges or as mere lookers on, but in the mind and heart of the world itself The Comforter also did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world. When however we take the second and the third part of the operation of the Spirit into account, I cannot find. any word in our language so well fitted for embracing the three cases, as that which our Translators have put in the margin: the Com- forter will convince the world of Sin, and of Right- eousness, and of Judgment. Only the Greek word ; ‘ 4 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 65 implies, more distinctly than the English does ac- cording to modern usage, that the persons in whom the conviction is to be wrought will resist it. This however is always an adjunct of the sense in the scriptural use of the word, as where St. Paul says — that a bishop should be able to convince the gain- sayers (o). Further we must bear in mind that in this, as in many other of our Lord’s promises, a thousand years are regarded as one day. That which was to be effected by His Spirit in the Church during the whole course of ages down to the end of the world, He concentrates, as it were, into a single point of space, and a single moment of time; even as our eye, with the help of distance, concen- trates a world into a star (pe). For it was not by the Tempter alone that all the kingdoms of the earth and their glory were shown to Jesus with the prom- ise of their being given to Him. God also showed them to him always. His Father showed Him how the kingdoms of this world were to become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ, over which He should reign forever and ever. This was the joy and the glory for the sake of which He endured the Cross, despising both the shame and the glory of this world, for the joy and the glory He was to bestow on the saints who shall reign with him for- eve To reprove the world of sin, I have said, is a work by no means worthy of the Spirit of God. But to convince the world of Sin, —to produce a living and lively conviction of it, —to teach mankind what sin is, — to lay it bare under all its masks,—to trace it through all the mazes of its web, and to light on it 6 * + 66 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. sitting in the rmnidst thereof, —to show it to man, not merely as it flashes forth ever and anon in the overt actions of his neighbors, but as it lies smouldering inextinguishably within his own bosom,—to give him a torch wherewith he may explore the dark chambers of his own heart, —to lead him into them, and to open his eyes so that he shall behold some of Sin’s countless brood crouching or gambolling in every corner, — to convince a man of sin in this way, by proving to him that it lies at the bottom of all his feelings, and blends with all his thoughts, that the bright-colored stones, with which he is so fond of decking himself out, and which he takes such de- light in gazing at, are only so many bits of brittle, worthless glass, and that what he deems to be stars are earthborn meteors, which merely glimmer for the moment they are falling ;— to convince the world of sin, by showing it how sin has tainted its heart, and flows through all its veins, and is mixed up with its lifeblood ;— this is a work which no earthly power can accomplish. No human teacher can do it. Con- science cannot do it. Law, in none of its forms,- human or divine, can doit. Nay, the Gospel itself eannot do it. Although the word of God is the sword of the Spirit, yet, unless the Spirit of God draws forth that sword, it lies powerless in its sheath. Only when the Spirit of God wields it, is it quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, * piercing to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, a discerner of the thoughts and purposes of the heart. Therefore, as the work of convincing the world of sin is one which nothing less than the Spirit of God can effect,—and which yet must be eflected THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 67 thoroughly, if sin is to be driven out from the world, — our Saviour was mercifully pleased to send the Com- forter to produce this conviction in mankind. At first thought indeed, when we hear that’ the Comforter was sent to convince the world of sin, we ean hardly refrain from exclaiming, Of sin? What! + can there ever have been a time in the history of the world, when the world needed that the Holy Spirit of God should come down from heaven, in order that it should be convinced of sin? Was there ever a time when man could cast his eyes east or west or north or south, without secing hosts of sins swarm- ing and buzzing around him in every quarter? when he could look at what his neighbors were doi ng, when he could look into his own heart, and not behold the very sight, which we read that God saw in the days of Noah, that the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth? Was there ever a time when man needed a light from heaven, wherewith to discern that this world, which was made to be the house of God, and in which man was set to minister as the high-priest, by offering up continual sacrifices of de- vout thanksgiving and a reasonable obedience, had been converted by him, its apostate high-priest, into a den of thieves, in which Covetousness, and Lust, and Ambition, and Pride, and Gluttony, and Drunken- ness, and Falsehood, and Envy, and Malice, and Cru- elty, and Revenge, are ever holding their hellish revels? So at first thought one might exclaim: but a moment’s reflection will teach us that there hag indeed been such a time. Most true though it be, that never and nowhere has God left Himself with- out a Witness, to convince the world of sin, yet too 68 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. often has that Witness been utterly unheeded: too often has its voice been drowned, as the song of a lark would be by the roar of a mill stream. The waters that are whirled round by the mill-wheel, can- not hear the lark singing to them from the heavens: nor can we, when we are tossed and dashed about by the world’s never resting wheel, hear the voice of the Witness that God has set for Himself in our hearts. ‘Therefore did God come and speak in the thunders of the Law from Sinai. He came and set | up another Witness for Himself, to convince the world of sin, an outward Witness, a Witness that could not be paltered or tampered with, that could not be bribed or drugged or lulled, a Witness that spake in a voice plain, cold, mighty, all-pervading, and unquenchable as Death. Its voice was like the voice of Death; and Death was its sanction and its penalty. Yet, although God had sent this great Witness, to convince the world of sin, the world still continued unconvinced. For why? Because the Law forbids the outward act, whereas the seat of sin is in the secret places of the heart. The Law says, Thou shalt not kill: but man will still hate. The Law says, Thou shalt not commit adultery : but man will still lust. The Law says, Thou shalt not steal: but man will still covet. The Law says, Thow shalt not bear false witness: but man will still he and de- ceive. The Law, from its very nature, can hardly take cognizance of those evil desires, that concupis- cence in the heart, of which outward acts of sin are merely the issue and manifestations: and so long as the Law stands alone, so long as there is no heart- searching, prophetic Witness to work along with it THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 69 in convincing the world of sin, men will easily be- guile themselves into believing that, what the Law does not expressly forbid, it allows. Moreover the Law works by fear; not by that fear, which is a - part of love, and which cannot be separated from it, the reverential fear of offending and paining Him whom we love,—the fear which would endure any hardship, any suffering, rather than offend Him: not by this fear does the Law work, but by: that base and cowardly fear, which is a part of selfishness, the fear of being punished by Him, of whom we take no thought, except in that we fear Him. The Law therefore could not convince the world of sin, as sin, as a thing to be abhorred and shunned on account of its own hatefulness and godlessness, but merely as a thing to be dreaded and avoided on account of the punishments attached to it. So that, even after } the Law had been delivered, there was still great need of another Witness, a Witness that could | search the heart, and turn it inside out, and bring | forward all the abominations contained in it,—a_ Witness too that should appeal, not to its selfish | fears, but to every germ of good left in it, to its love, \ to its gratitude, to its pity, to its hope, to its more generous desires and aspirations, —a Witness that should pick up every little fragment of God’s image still remaining in it, and should piece them all to- | gether, and make a new whole of them. Such was> the Witness that the world needed: and such was” the Witness that God in His infinite mercy sent, to ; convince the world of sin. oh I was asking just now, Can there ever have been a time in the history of the world, when it was need- 70 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. ful that the Spirit of God should come down from Heaven to convince the world of sin? But may we not with better reason reverse the question, and ask, Has there ever been a time in the history of the world, when it was not needful that the Spirit of God should come down from heaven to convince the world of sin? a time when the world has been, or could have been, convinced of sin by any lesser power? Nay, has there ever been a single man, from the days of Adam until now, who has not needed that the Spirit of God should come to him to convince him of sin? Has there ever been a single man, who has been able to find out the sinfulness of sin by himself, of his own accord, at his own prompting, with no other guide than his own heart and understanding? Or, —to bring the question home to ourselves, — are there any of you, my brethren, who have been con- vinced of sin? I trust in God, there are many, very many. For, unless you have been convinced of sin, you can never have entered beyond the outskirts of the Kingdom of Heaven. If you have not expe- rienced that conviction, if you do not feel it now, the Gospel, it is most certain, cannot to you be the wis- dom and the power of God unto salvation; Christ Jesus cannot have been made your Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption. A man who had been born ina prison, and had spent his whole life in it, might not be aware that there was any thing peculiarly dismal in his lot: but should he be delivered from his prison, he could never forget that he had once been a captive, and now is free. Therefore he who knows not that he once was in bonds, must still beinthem. At all events how many oe if THE CONVICTION OF SIN. ral soever there may be among you, who have indeed been convinced of sin, —and God grant that there may be very many, and that their conviction may daily become deeper, and that their number may _ continually increase !— you however that have been so already, by whom were you convinced? Not by yourselves assuredly. You rather fought against the conviction, at one time struggled to refute it, at another tried to evade it by all manner of excuses, often, it may be for years, have driven it from your thoughts. Not by yo own consciences. If they ever flattered, you listened to them gladly ; if they reproved, you turned away. Not by any teachers or monitors with whom this world has supplied you. The pride and shame of the natural man revolt against the thought of a human eye spying into the dark places of his heart, and, since in some things such monitors must needs be mistaken, in others will ever be too harsh, comforts itself with the persuasion that the partial error in the indictment vitiates it al- together. Nor have you been convinced of sin even by the word of Life, full of life and truth and warn- ing and admonition as it is, which has been stored up for us in the Bible. Any one of these witnesses may indeed have been the means employed in work- ing the conviction in you; but none of them can have wrought it, any more than a hammer can strike, without a living hand to wield it. Only when) wielded by the arm of the Comforter, is the word of God indeed like a hammer, that breaks the stony’ crust of the natural heart in pieces. If your con-| viction has been effectual, — if it has pierced through | the depths of your soul, —if it has laid hold on your Fred THE CONVICTION OF SIN. Will, and stripped off its tough scales, and made it bow| | its stiff neck, and taught it to shrink from the sin of which it has been convinced, and to love and to seek after the beauty of holiness, — that conviction must have come to you from above; it must have been wrought in you by the Spirit of God. Yet we too have still the same witnesses to con- vince us of sin, that were abiding among mankind in ages of yore, before the coming of the Saviour. We have the voice of Conscience sighing through every fresh crack that we make in God’s image in our hearts, and conspiring with our Reason and Imagination, and every other nobler faculty, to ad- monish us that we are betraying our duty, that we are outraging our better feelings, that we are mar- to admonish us ring our true, aboriginal nature, that we are polluting our souls, and withering and rotting our hearts. But is this enough to convince aman of sin? Is it enough to produce that strong, living, practical persuasion of the hatefulness of sin, and of our being in its hateful bondage, which alone can be called conviction? Alas! Conscience is so wasted by year long neglect, and crushed by reiter- ated violation, that it scarcely ever utters its warn- ings and reproofs, except against fresh overt acts of sin. It seldom takes notice of our habitual sins: still less does it rouse us to contend against that sin- fulness, which is inwrought in the natural heart. And what is the power of Conscience, even against open outbursts of sin? Does not the drunkard know, if he will but consider that he is degrading himself below the beasts of the field? Does not he know that he is quenching his reason, that he is nancies meneame 5 : 2 } 4 ia i gailen gi, THE CONVICTION OF SIN. Te blinding the light of his understanding, that he is cankering all his better feelings, that he is giving up the reins of his will to any fierce passion which may chance to seize on them, that he is sowing the seeds of all manner of diseases, and provoking Death to come and reap the crop? And yet, certain and +- indubitable as this is, the knowledge may not im- probably never have constrained him to drink a single glass the less: nay, he is just as likely to drink the more for it, that he may smother, and harden himself against the qualms it gives him. Does not the libertine and the adulterer know, that he is defiling himself, and defiling the partner in his crime,— that he is defiling her whom he pretends, and may perchance believe that he loves, with the foulest and most ignominious impurity? Does not he know that he is snapping the holy bond, by which alone the families of mankind are held together in peace and happiness? Does not he know that he is rudely tearing off the blossoms of that one fair plant, which our first parents brought with them out of Paradise, the sacred plant of pure conjugal love ? And yet, the more atrocious the crime, the purer the happiness he is blasting, the more innocent the vic- tim, the greedier, the more impetuous, the more sin- thirsty he will be. What avails it that Conscience should tell her beads? he goes on sinning all the while. No, my brethren; Conscience assuredly has no power to convince sinners of sin. When she is uttering her most righteous words, she often is only casting pearls before swine. The passions of the carnal mind are fretted and _ irritated by the sight of 7 74. THE CONVICTION OF SIN. what is so unlike themselves, and trample them im- patiently in the mire. Thus powerless is Conscience for the warfare against sin. It will indeed lift itself up for a while, ie? it has been rightly trained, to resist the first en- croaches of sin. As the waters gather around, and begin to heave and swell, it struggles for a while to keep its head above them: but the struggles become fainter and fainter, while the waters rush on more fiercely and tumultuously, until at length it sinks beneath them. Whatever strength it may have, independently of Christianity, is confined to a very few choice spirits. In the great body of mankind it is all but extinct: and, where it is not so, it does not speak of sin and sinfulness, but rather of virtue and the dignity of human nature. In all too it greatly needs guidance, instruction, illumination: for its voice is merely a kind of tribunician veto, forbidding that which is recognized to be wrong: but it has no vote in the council of the mind, no discernment in itself to determine what is wrong. For this knowl- edge it is dependent on our other faculties, intellec- tual and moral: and they, although they were all designed to be servants and witnesses of Righteous- ness, and though they cannot fulfil their constitutive idea, unless they are so, yet are too easily perverted and depraved into the servants and witnesses of Unrighteousness. The Imagination, which ought to purify our affections, and to raise us up above the narrownesses of the Understanding, and the debase- ment of our carnal nature, may too easily become the inflamer of our passions. Being the chief con- een ee THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 7) nective link between the visible world and the invis- ible, ordained “to glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,” it still often turns away from its appointed task of spiritualizing the senses, and stoops to the ignoble drudgery of sensualizing the spirit. And that the Understanding is over-ready to quit the straight road, and wriggle along the crooked paths of evil, we learn from the example of the ser- pent, that was more subtile than any beast of the field; an example which has had such hosts of fol- lowers, that they who especially professed to be teachers of wisdom, became Sophists. Or shall we say that the Law at all events must needs be sufficient to convince the world of sin? For we too have the Law, speaking to us in divers ways, and by divers voices. We have the Law of God, the very same Law which was delivered to Moses on the Mount. We have the Law of God, as written in the ordinances of Nature, according to which almost every sin is sure to be visited sooner or later by some sort of punishment even in this world. We have the Law of the land. We have the Law of public opinion, by which many sins are doomed to shame, by which many sinners are branded and become outcasts. We have the Law of human affection and esteem, whereby love and friendship and honor are awarded to the amiable and the deserving, and are forfeited by the unamia- ble and the reprobate. We have the purest and holiest of all Laws, the Law of the Gospel, with all its comfortable assurances, and all its blessed promises, the Law delivered on that Mount, which spake better things than Sinai of old. But are any 76 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. of these Laws sufficient to convince the world of sin? No; nor all of them put together. ‘They may convince the world of some sins. ‘They may make some persons abstain from some sins. But they will never convince the world of sin, nor make any one abstain from it altogether. One reason of this is, that all these laws, except the last, set their face only against certain sins,—it may be graver or lighter ones, more definite, or more comprehen- sive, —it may be against a greater or a less number of them. But they do not set their face against sin itself, as an indwelling disease in the heart, alto- gether distinct from every outward act and mani- festation. They do not attempt to grub up the root of sin, and to clear away the multitudinous fibres of that root spreading on every side, and curling and twining about every feeling and every desire. They are content, some of them, with lopping off the branches, others with hewing down the stem. But sin is not like a fir, which has but one stem, and which, if you cut it down, never shoots up again. You cannot destroy it, as the Asiatic king threatened to destroy Lampsacus, itvog Todx0y, at once, summarily, by an outward act, by the axe or the sword. On the contrary, if you merely cut it down, new suckers are sure to spring from it, and it gets many stems instead of one: if you merely prune the branches, it will soon become more luxuriant than ever. ~So long as the evil spirit is cast out by any other power than the Spirit of God,—so long as the house from which he is cast out remains empty, and the Spirit of God does not come to take up His abode in it, —so long as it 1s THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 77 merely swept and garnished, priding itself on its own cleanness and neatness,— so long is the casting out of no avail. The evil spirit will assuredly come back anon, with other spirits worse than himself. In spite of all that Law can do, when destitute of the higher sanctions of Religion, the vices of a nation in the decrepitude of its civilization will be far worse than those which stained it when first emerging from barbarism. The Law of Moses, as set forth in the Old Testament, we have already seen, cannot convince mankind of sin. It forbids certain sinful acts. It may withhold us from committing those acts by the punishments it threatens. Or it enjoins certain ob- servances, which however, as enjoined by Law, can only be outward. But a man might keep all the commandments of Moses: so far as the letter goes, he might stick to the letter of the whole Law: and yet he might wholly neglect the weightier matters of it, justice and mercy. We are not told that the Pharisee said what was not true, when he boasted of his legal righteousness: we are not told that he had broken any one of the commandments: the Publican no doubt had: and yet the Pharisee in ‘God’s eyes was a sight more offensive than the Publican. For in the Pharisee, as in his whole sect, we see the tendency of the Law, not to pro- + duce the conviction of sin in those who conformed ° to it, but to puff them up with a vain persuasion of righteousness, —a tendency akin to that of the Stoical philosophy, and shared by every kind of righteousness, except that of faith. It is true that St. Paul speaks of the Law as a schoolmaster to ¥j * 78 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. lead us to Christ, and that the way in which it leads us to Him, is by convincing us of sin, through our inability to fulfil it. But this is only when the length and breadth and depth of the Law is set before us by the Spirit of God, whereby we learn how incapable we are of fulfilling it. St. Paul him- self, until he received the conviction of the Spirit, believed himself to _be blameless in regard to legal righteousness (Phil. iii. 6). When speaking a while back of the commandments, I stopped short of the tenth; and it may perhaps have struck you that the tenth commandment, even according to the mere let- ter, does go further than the outward act, and lifts up its voice against the sinful desire in the heart. Never- theless the tenth commandment is far from enough to convince the heart of sin. At the utmost it will condemn our evil desires at the time when they are grown to a head, and are tempting us to wrong oth- ers. So long as they are pent up in our own bosoms, so long as they do not amount to a wish of depriving our neighbor of that which is his, our hearts will readily believe that there is no harm in their evil de- sires, —that they may indulge in lust, so that it be not after a neighbor’s wife, — that they may indulge in covetousness, so that it be not after a neighbor’s. property. The world swarms with the servants of Mammon and of Ashtaroth, who do not feel that there is any condemnation of their practices in the letter of this commandment. But if the Law of the Old Testament,—that Law by which man gained so much clearer, dis- tineter, and fuller knowledge of sin, —is insufficient to convince the world of sin, much more must the THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 79 same hold with regard to every form of human Law. All such Law deals solely with outward acts with those outward acts which are hurtful to society, its end being the preservation of social order, and the repression of whatever would infringe it: such acts~ Law forbids under threat of punishment.’ This is its only sanction, its only way of enforcing its com- mands. If a man however be withheld from break- ing the Law, if he be kept out of prison, by no higher motive than the fear of punishment, he may be quite as bad, if not worse, than many of those who are cast into it. Although too the hatred of God against sin be manifested in divers ways in the order of na- ture, in the framework of society, in the principles whereby men are guided in their dealings and feel- ings toward each other, — though some sins are pun- ished almost infallibly by the loss of health and strength, some by public shame and reproach, some by the forfeiture of those joys which spring up under the steps of such as walk along the path of life in unity, — still all this is very far from enough to con- vince the world of sin. The various voices of the world, which I have just mentioned, merely condemn some sins, but take no account of others. Pain fol-t!~ lows some sins: shame follows some sins: but some are almost held in honor. Affection, in the present irregular condition of men’s hearts, is seldom meted out with much regard to worth. In fact all these Laws, and even the pure and holy Law of the Gos- pel, may sound year after year through the hollow caverns of our hearts, without awakening one spirit- ual feeling in them, without stirring the waters so that they shall rise through the network of weeds 80 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. spread over them, without arousing any thing like genuine shame, and lively contrition and repentance. In that beautiful poem, which I have already cited, by one of the meekest and holiest spirits who ever adorned the Church of Christ upon earth, we have an enumeration of the many graces wherewith God surrounds and guards us in a Christian land; and at the same time we are admonished how vain they all are to convince us effectually of sin. Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us: then Schoolmasters Deliver us to Laws: they send us bound To Rules of Reason, holy Messengers, Pulpits and Sundays, — Sorrow dogging Sin, Afflictions sorted, Anguish of all sizes, — Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, — Bibles laid open, — millions of Surprises, — Blessings beforehand, —ties of Gratefulness, — The sound of Glory ringing in our ears, — Without, our Shame, — within, our Consciences, — Angels and Grace, — eternal Hopes and Fears. Yet all these fences, and their whole array, One cunning bosom sin blows quite away. It would take me too long,—though the time might not be ill spent, — to go minutely through this rich list of the graces and blessings, with which God encompasses us from our cradle to our grave, for the sake of convincing us of sin, and of drawing us away from it, from its slavery and its punishment, from sin and death and hell, to the path of life and the glories of heaven. Parents, with their ever- watchful love, sheltering us under their wings until we have strength to quit our native nest, — Teachers, who train us in the way wherein we are to walk, and fit us for discerning it, — Laws, that set the mark THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 81 of death upon sin, — Reason, that would deliver us from the mere bondage of Law, and make the ser- vice of duty a free and willing service, — the messen- gers of the Gospel sent into every corner of the land to call us to the knowledge of God, and to the grace of Christ,—the word of God proclaimed to His people, when they are gathered together in His house, — Sundays, with their holy rest and peace, their many heavenly voices, their prayers and sacra- ments, — the sorrow and abject misery which follow at the heels of sin, — the afflictions with which God visits His children, sorted to suit their special needs, and to unravel the cords with which the world holds them down, — anguish, greater or less, according as we require it and have strength to bear it,— the delicate network of human order and earthly mo- tives, which offer a kind of counterpart to the order and motives of heaven, and which check us against our will in manifold unthought of ways when we should otherwise rush into sin, —the Bible laid open in every house, and meeting our eyes at every turn, — the millions, yes, the millions of surprises, showered like stars over the face of life, and evermore remind- ing us of God’s wondrous goodness and mercy, and warning us to think of death, and teaching us the ruin of sin,—the blessings which are poured out upon us beforehand, as a foretaste of the joys of heaven, long ere we have learned to love God and to serve Him, blessings of love and innocent gladness and a peaceful conscience, bestowed so bountifully even on childhood, — the ties of gratefulness, as well as of duty, whereby God makes the voice of nature herself declare that we must needs love Him who 82 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. has so loved us,—the song of the angels ringing in our ears, Glory to God in the highest, and telling us of the glory in store for those who have found peace through the good-will of the Eternal Father, — the shame which pursues sin without,—the stings of Conscience within, — the many servants of God that are sent to comfort us with their timely ministra- tions, — the Grace bestowed on us in baptism, and which the Holy Spirit, if we hinder not His purpose, would ever increase and strengthen in our souls,* — and finally, in order that we may not be dazzled or crushed by the fleeting hopes and fears of this pre- sent life, the hopes and fears of eternity, — these are the cherubim wherewith God has surrounded our Eden, to keep the Tempter from approaching it. Yet all these fences, and their whole array, One cunning bosom sin blows quite away. Seeing therefore how utterly powerless every thing human is, how powerless every Law is, even the holy Law of God, to convince mankind effectually of sin, —that is, to open our eyes, so that we shall see all its loathsomeness, and all its snares, so that we shall see its power over us and in us, and the living death which that power brings upon all such as yield themselves to it, and may thus be led to flee from it as from a pestilence, and to guard against it as we should if a plague were creeping and sweeping through the land,—it is a work by no means un- worthy of the Spirit of God, — for it is a work which nothing but the Spirit of God can accomplish, — to convince the world of sin. For, although even in the * See Preface to American Edition. THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 83 natural man there is a spirit that lusteth against the flesh, yet the flesh in the natural man is from the first far more powerful than the spirit, and is always lusting against it: and the flesh is daily fed and fat- tened by the world, which affords slender nourish- ment to the spirit: and every victory it gains makes it stronger and prouder, so that the spirit at length is almost extinguished within us, even as a glow-worm would be extinguished by falling into a muddy pool. Yet, unless man were convinced of sin, the salvation wrought by Christ would be of no effect. Without this conviction by the Spirit, in vain would the Son of God have come in the flesh; in vain would He have died on the cross for the sins of mankind: man- kind would not, could not have been saved. They could not, because they would not. Unless a man be well aware that he is laboring under a disease, he will not think of asking for the remedies which might cure him: nor will he take them, although you hold them out to him, and although their efficacy may have been proved in a multitude of cases, more especially if they happen to be distasteful to his vitiated palate. If he mistakes the convulsive fits of a fever for the vigor of health, he will not consent to practise that abstinence by which his fever might be subdued. Nor, unless we are fully convinced that our souls are tormented by a deadly, clinging disease, and that no earthly power or skill can heal them, shall we think of applying eamestly for health to the only Physi- cian of souls. This brings me to consider, though it must needs be briefly and very imperfectly, in what manner the Spirit convinces the man of his disease, in what man- 84 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. ner He convinces the world of sin. If a man isa prey to a mortal disease, which breaks out in blotches and sores, there is no use in merely plastering over the sores: you must go to the root of the disease, and attack it in its strong holds. Else, being checked from venting itself outwardly, it will rage the fierce- lier within. Just so it is with sin. There is little profit in telling a man, who is walking after the lusts of the flesh, that such or such an act is wrong. Un- less you go to the root of sin within him, from which all these wrong acts spring, even though you should persuade him to break off some bad practices and habits, you will do him little real, lasting, essential good. Notwithstanding this reformation, as he will deem it, he may continue just as sinful, just as thorough a slave of sin as ever. Nay, his case may be still more hopeless: for his having overcome a bad habit or two may beguile him into fancying that he is the master of his own heart, can sway it which way he chooses, and has only to will, in order to be- come a paragon of virtue. ‘Therefore, when the Spirit of God came to convince the world of sin, _ what was the sin He began with convincing men of? If any of us had to convince a person of the sinful- ness of the world, how should we set about it?) We should talk of the intemperance, and licentiousness, and dishonesty, and fraud, and falsehood, and envy, and ill-nature, and cruelty, and avarice, and ambi- tion, whereby man has turned God’s earth into a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. These however are not the sins, of which the Spirit of God convinces the world: because all these might be swept away: and yet, unless far more was done, the a =. Cr THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 8 world would continue just as sinful as before. All these sins, this terrible brood of sin, were indeed to be found in every quarter of the earth, so far as it was then peopled, in our Lord’s days, no less plenti- fully than they are now. They had swollen them- selves out, and rose up on every side in the face of heaven, like huge mountains: they flowed from coun- try to country, from clime to clime, like rivers: they spread themselves abroad like lakes and seas, lakes of brimstone and dead seas, within the exhalations of which no soul could come and live. “Whitherso- ever the eye turned, it saw one sin riding on the back, or starting from the womb of another. This was the Babel which all nations were busied in build- ing, —and the confusion of tongues did not hinder them,—a Babel underground. They went on dig- ging deeper and deeper, until its nethermost story well nigh reached to hell, and was only separated from it by a thin, crumbling crust. Nevertheless the Spirit of God, when He came to convince the world of sin, and to bring that conviction home to the hearts of mankind, did not choose out any of these open, glaring sins, to taunt and confound them with. He went straight to that sin, which is the root and + source of all others, want of faith, the evil heart of unbelief. When the Comforter is come, He will con- vince the world of sin, because they believe not in Me. Now this is a sin, which the world till then had never dreamed of as such: and even at this day few take much thought about it, except those who have been convinced of it by the Spirit, and who therefore have been in great measure delivered from it. For they who have spent their whole lives in thick spirit- 8 86 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. ual blindness, and whose eye is still dark, cannot know what the blessing of sight is, and therefore can- not grieve at their want. They alone, who have emerged into light, can appreciate the misery of the gloom under which they have been lying. Thus, un- til we have begun to believe, we cannot know what unbelief is, its misery, its sin, its curse. Want of fy + faith is a sin of which no law accuses _us.. Con- science does not accuse us of it. Even among those who desire that the confession of their sins shall not be an empty form, but a reality, and who, with this purpose, are wont to review their conduct, that they may seek forgiveness for their recent misdeeds, very 4; few, Lam afraid, take much account of their want of faith. The chief part look solely to their sins of commission, mainly to the evil deeds they may have done, then to the evil words they may have spoken, sometimes, it may be, to the evil thoughts and feel- ings they may have harbored in their hearts. Ifa person can tax himself with any act of intemperance or impurity,—if he remembers that he has given way to his anger, — that he has swerved from truth, — if he is distinctly conscious of having indulged in proud or vain or envious imaginations, he will feel that he has something for which he specially needs forgiveness. If he has no such definite charge to bring against himself, he will faney his score is clear. Yet our excellent Confession should make us equally mindful of our sins of omission, of the things which we ought to have done, and which we have left un- done. This latter half of our sins, it is to be feared, very many think little or nothing of; though these are far the larger and more numerous half of the two, THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 87 and no less deadly than the other, even as hunger, if unfed, is no less deadly than sickness. Nor can they be overcome by any one without unceasing watch- fulness and prayer: indeed they need this all the more from our aptness to leave them unnoticed, They are the more numerous half, numerous in the very best of us; and as for those, who are not endea- voring earnestly to walk in the law of God, and seek- ing the help of His Spirit that they may be enabled to wall therein, their sins of omission eat up the whole of their lives. The whole of their lives is one black blot, one vast sin of omission, broken here and there by sins of commission flashing through it. Now these sins of omission do not merely comprise, as at first thought we might incline to suppose, the many things which, if we had made a right use of our time and opportunities, we might have done, but which, through indolence, from giving up our hearts to worldly things, from lukewarmness or self-indul- gence, we have failed to do; although even this would be an appalling list. For when did a day pass over the head of any one of us, in looking back on which with a searching eye he would not have found manifold reason to say? —I might have shown kindness to such a person to-day; and I did not: —I might have relieved the wants of such another; and I did not : — Imight have softened anger by mild words ; and I did not: —I might have upheld the cause of the oppressed; I might have defended those who were evil spoken of ; and I did not: —I might have encouraged such a person in good; I might have labored to with- hold or withdraw another from evil; and I did not :— Lmight have been more diligent, more obedient, more 88 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. zealous of good works: I might have shown more reverence to those above me, more indulgence to those below me: I might have done all this; and therefore tought to have done all this. For whatever we can do in the service of God, and for the good of our brethren, according to the discreetest economy of our time, with due regard to the various claims upon it, we ought to do.» The only way in which we can show our thankfulness to God for His inestimable goodness in preparing good works for us to walk in, is by striving to walk in them with all our might. Yet this is not all. As in positive sins, in sins of commission, we sin in deed and word and thought, so in negative sins, in sins of omission, do we like- wise sin, not only in deed and word, but also in ; thought. Now this last head of sins, the sins of omission in thought, contains the great prime sin, of which the Comforter came to convince mankind, the sin of unbelief, the sin of want of faith, the sin of living without God in the world. Laws, inasmuch as by their nature they deal only with that which manifests itself outwardly, in deed or in word, take no cognizance of this sin. Conscience, which only sounds when some positive sin is trampling upon it, is silent about this. Therefore, if we were to be con- vinced of it at all, pressing was our need that the Spirit of God should graciously vouchsafe to con- vince Us. But how comes this to be the great prime sin, the mother sin of all sins? ‘Think, brethren, a moment where we are; think what our business is here. We are in God’s world; we are God’s creatures: but yet we are cut off from God. We are, as it were, ia a THE CONVICTION OF SIN. &9 outcasts from God, shut up in the prison of the body, and bound heart and soul and mind with the chains of the senses. The walls of this our prison hide Him from us. We can neither see Him with our eyes, nor hear Him with our ears: still less can our smell or taste or touch bring us into His presence. Therefore our great business here on earth is to live by faith: for only through faith can we live in the presence of God. When we look through the cham- bers of this our prison, we find that in it, however stunted and pining with long confinement in an alien atmosphere, there is still an understanding which has some faint power of discerning the ways of God, and a heart which may be brought to feel some faint motion of love for God. If we believed in Him, we should be better able to discern Him, and far better able to love Him. But inasmuch as Wwe cannot perceive Him with our senses, we need the eye of faith. Faith should lift us out of the prison of the body, and free us from the bondage of the senses, and bear us up into the presence of Him, whom no eye hath seen, or can see. Moreover, as God alone is good in Himself, as He is the only ‘Fountain of all good, so that nothing is good except what comes from God, and is received and held in communion with Him, itis plain that, where there is no faith, there can be nothing truly good. The bond of union with God is snapped. The one chan- nel, through which good can flow into our hearts, is eut off Hence we must be like members severed from their body: every thing about us must have the taint of death, must partake more or less of the nature of sin. Now what is the state of the world ol 90 THE CONVICTAN OF SIN. with regard to faith? /Surely the world is without faith. Until our heayfs have been renewed by the Spirit of God, faith, in this its highest relation, as faith in God, is very weak in most of us, in many almost an utter blank. Therefore do we give up our mind to dig in the quarries of the body, and our heart to work in the hulks of the senses. We clothe ourselves in the convict-dress of the lusts of the flesh, and put out the eyes of the reason, and tie a clog to the heels of the understanding, and clip the wings of the imagination, and muzzle ‘the will, and tar and ' feather our feelings with the dust and dirt of the earth. If we had faith in its full life and strength, — if our faith were indeed the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, —if it gave a body to the future and invisible, so that we could see it as with our eyes,—if our understand- ings were opened to behold heaven and hell, with the same clearness with which we behold the sky over our heads, and the earth under our feet, —if we could feel the blessedness of communion with God, the unutterable woe of separation from Him, as livelily and intensely as we feel the pleasures and pains of the senses, — it would be impossible for us to sinfAs it is declared that the pure in heart shall segfCiod, so if we had that faith which would enable us to see God ever standing at our right hand, and compassing us about with the arms of His power and love, how could we be otherwise than pure in heart? For impurity, of whatsoever kind, sin, of whatsoever kind, is the turning away from God. It is turning our thoughts away from God, and fixing them ever on other objects than God. It is turning THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 91 our heart away from God, and giving it up to some- thing apart from God,—to something that we love, not in God and through God, as His creature, and His gift, in humble thankfulness to the Giver, but without God, and against God, and in despite of God, without a thought of Him, against His will, in despite of His commandment. It is taking our faith away from God, and placing it in something else, — the believing that there is any thing real, any thing true, any thing lasting, any thing good and worthy and lovely, except God, and that into which He is pleased to pour out from the riches of His surpass- ing excellences, — the believing that happiness may be found in something beside communion with God, and dutiful obedience to His will. For this is the curse of unbelief’ We will not believe the truth; and therefore God has given us up to believe all manner of lies. There is nothing too gross, too senseless, too wild and extravagant for us to believe. We believe that the fleeting pleasures of the flesh are more substantial and precious than the enduring joys of the spirit,—that the fitful admiration and favor of feeble man are more to be desired than the grace and love of Almighty God,—that earth is truer and more real than heaven, —that a life of a few years is longer and of more importance than a life through eternity, — that the scarred and bloated carcase of sin, with its death’s head, and its stinging snakes coiling restlessly around it, is lovelier and more to be desired than the pure and radiant beauty of holiness. Yes, alas, we assuredly do believe these lies: we believe them, all of us, more or less: the natural man believes them wholly; and we never 92 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. get so far quit of the natural man, as to escape from the last maze of this never-ending labyrinth of false- hood. By our conduct we show almost daily, in one way or other, that we do believe these lies. Yeq if we had faith, this would be impossible. For faith, while it taught us that God is to be loved above all things, and that a union with God is to be desired above all things, would at the same time teach us that whatever draws us away and separates us from God, is to be shunned and cast out and abhorred. Thus faith takes the charm out of every temptation, and turns its sweetness into bitterness, its honey into gall. Were a cup of pleasant wine put into your hands, and you knew for certain that a deadly poison was mixed up with the wine, which would rack you with the fiercest pains, and ere long tear soul and body in sunder,—who would drink it? who would not dash it from him forthwith? Yet, if we had but faith, we should know and feel that sin is deadlier than the deadliest poison, that it racks us with fiercer pains, and gives us over to a more terrible dissolution. For it cuts us off from God, from Him who is the only Source of all blessing and peace and joy. Hence it is, because our want of faith, and the consequent estrangement from God, is our prime, original misery and sin,— because it is the curse, through which man’s heart only brings forth thorns and thistles, — because it is the occasion, if not the cause, of every other sin, from all which Faith would - infallibly preserve us, — and because, if we continued without faith, even though every other sin were thoroughly purged from the earth, a fresh brood THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 93 would immediately spring forth,— therefore it was that, when the Spirit of God Came to convince the world of sin, the sin He chose out to be the special object of His conviction, was want of faith. Our Lord’s words, however, I may be reminded, are not that the Comforter will convince the world of sin, because they believe not in God, but because they } believe not in Me (a); so that this was the oreat sin< of the world, the sin of which it was to be convinced, that it did not believe in Christ. That is to say, it did not believe Him to be the Incarnate, Onlybegot- ten Son of God, the appointed King and Saviour of mankind, and did not believe in Him as such, as God manifest in the flesh. For God, as He is in Himself, in the mystery of His own unapproachable being, as He dwells in the bright abyss of His own timeless eternity, — He, before the glory of whose face the archangels veil their eyes, — He, whom none has known or can know, except the Onlybe- gotten Son, and the Spirit who is One with the Father and the Son,— can hardly become a distinct object even of faith to man. It is only when He vouchsafes to come forth out of His absolute God- hood, in the Person of His Son and Spirit, — when He spreads out His mantle through space, and bids world after world start forth from it, and blossom in unfading lightt—when He gathers together the waters of His Eternity into the channel of Time, and commands the days and the years to ripple and roll along them,—it is only when He shows forth His eternal power and lordship in the beauty and order of the universe, in the manner in which matter is made to bow its stubborn neck to law, and to be- 94 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. come instinct with motion, and to yield to the trans- forming powers of lffe,—in the manner in which worlds, and systems of worlds, and countless systems of beings in each world, are made to work harmont- ously together, revealing an unfathomable Unity as the groundwork of infinite diversity, —it is only as He declares Himself to man by the Law written © in his heart, and»comes to him amid the desert of this sensual life in the still small voice of Conscience, — it is only as God has been pleased to make Him- self known by these manifold witnesses, whom He has set up for the manifestation of His glory, that man, without some more special revelation, could know any thing or believe any thing of God. Nor could all these revelations, wonderful and glorious as they were, avail to produce a living faith in any child of man. For a living faith implies an immediate, conscious, personal relation: but all the above-men- tioned revelations, except the last, are universal, in which every finite being is swallowed up in the Infinite, like the stars in the Milky-way. On the other hand, God’s revelation of Himself, when He stamped His own image on the soul of man, became so marred and faint after the Fall, that man entirely lost sight of its heavenly Original, and regarded it as the creature of his own mind. ‘Therefore, when God was pleased to reveal Himself more especially to man, He revealed Himself at once as standing in a ~ direct relation to man, the God of a chosen family, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the God of a chosen people, and at the same time as the Author and Giver of a Law, to which the Law in the heart gave answer, and wherein it recognized its original. THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 95 And at length, in the fulness of time, He revealed Himself in the person of His Onlybegotten Son, taking our nature upon Him, entering into the com- munion of all our sorrows and infirmities, and plac- ing Himself in the most immediate personal relation to all mankind as their Teacher and King, and to each individual child of man as his Redeemer and Saviour. Moreover, in order that all things might be reconciled to God and to each other by His great Atonement, He declared Love to be the living principle of the Law; thereby setting all the affections of the heart at one with the ordinances of duty, and teaching us that every act of obedience to God’s Law is not merely enforced on us by the fear of His power and | wrath, but is exactly what, even without any posi- | tive injunction, our own hearts, if duly enlightened and purified, would have imposed upon themselves. Here a difficulty comes across us. In referring just now to our Lord’s declaration that the pure in heart shall see God, lremarked that the converse also is true, and that they who see God must be pure in heart. In fact every impurity is like a cloud, spread- ing before our spiritual eye, and blotting out God from our sight. Thus it is only by purity of heart, that we can attain to seeing God; while it is only through faith, whereby we are enabled to see God, that our hearts can be purified. This is one of the dilemmas of perpetual occurrence, when an idea is subjected to the operations of the understanding, which breaks it up into parts, and contemplates the parts under the category of succession, whereas in themselves they are one, without a before or after, Unless God dwells in our hearts, and hallows them 96 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. \ with His presence, they cannot be otherwise than im- pure; yet, unless they are pure, God cannot dwell in ' them. For this reason, when the Comforter came to Naini convince the world of sin, the sin, of which He con- / vinced the world, was not that they did not believe in God: for in God, the Unknown God, the Absolute, Infinite, Self-existent Author of all being, cut off and shut out from Him as they were, they could not have any lively faith. Wherefore, after having manifested Himself to mankind in divers ways, in the fulness of time, when the world by a multitude of contrary and often conflicting processes had been ripened for the reception of a reconciling faith, God sent forth His Onlybegotten Son, who was the Express Image of His Person, that in Him men might believe, and through Him in the Father. Hereby he left our un- belief utterly without excuse. Seeing that we were so totally estranged from Him, that the narrowness of our minds could not recognize Him as God, nor the feebleness of our hearts lift them up to Him as such, He sent His Son to dwell amongst us in the form of a Man, that we might know Him in whom we were to believe. Seeing that we shrank in awe from the contemplation of His Infinitude and Om- niscience, or lost ourselves in star-gazing thereat, Christ came to us in the form of a Servant, to prove to our unbelieving, carnal minds that what is most godlike in God is not His power. ‘T’o wean our hearts from tle love of the world, to teach us the worthlessness of its pomps and vanities, He came, not as a King, according to the earthly notion of royalty, setting up His throne on the necks of prostrate na- tions, wafted aloft by their admiring shouts, and Oe a he eae Fe ee THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 97 clothed either in outward riches and grandeur, or in the riches and grandeur of a commanding intellect and an imperious will, but in a lowly estate, without form or comeliness, the Son of a ca ‘penter, poorer than the poorest person in this congregation, a Wan- derer on the face of the earth, not having where to lay His head. Thus came He, who was the Son of God. ‘That the justice and holiness of God might not scare us, He came as the Messenger of pardon and peace. That the burden and shame of our sins might not keep us away, He called on us to cast the burden upon Him, and Himself bore the shame on the cross. He came to reconcile us to God, to teach us what God is, and how we may become like God, and live as becomes His children. He showed us that God is Mercy and Love, that we are to become like God by living a life of merey and love, that we are to behave as the children of God by a dutiful, ready obedience to the will of our Heavenly Father. Perfect God, He was also Perfect Man, the Image of His Father, and a Pattern for all who desire to become the children of His Father. This therefore, since the coming of Christ, is the great, the inexcusable sin of the world, that they will not believe in Christ. Faith in God, we have seen, is the source of all spiritual life, which can only flow from communion with Him; and the want of that faith is the barrenness, out of which all sin springs. Without that faith we have nothing to stand on, nothing to hold by. Our reason has no assurance of an all-controlling Law, our life no heavenly Arche- type, our heart no eternal Home. From that faith however we have departed so far, that of ourselves 9 98 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. we can never regain it. We can no more bring our- selves to believe in God, than we can mount after the eagle up the crystal stairs of the sky. We may indeed be borne up by the wind, but only into a cloud, from which the next moment we may fall plumb down into the bottomless pit. In Christ, on the other hand, we may believe. ‘That 1s to say, the Godhead is browght down to us in Christ in a man- ner that does not surpass the reach of our hearts and minds. Nor is there any thing in Christ to frighten us away from Him. All His words are full of mercy and love; and He is ever calling us to come to Him. Although we are sinners, the shame of our sins must not make us fear to approach Him: for it was to sin- ners He especially came, to call them to repentance and newness of life. Therefore, if we will not be- lieve in Christ, there must be some deep-rooted power of sin within us, that keeps us away from Him. It must be, that we love our sins, and will not forsake them. It must be, that we shun God, and will not allow the dew of His love to refresh us, — that we will not be won by His mercy, — that we make light of His pardon, and scorn His peace. Among those who stay away from Christ, who sill not believe in Him, who will not come to Him, the motive of the chief part has ever been, that they are destitute of the consciousness of sin, and of all thoughts and wishes rising above the objects of the senses, or else that they love their sins, and are de- termined to cleave to them, in despite of all that God can do to draw them away. Others there are, who will not believe in Christ through pride and self- righteousness. Others have involved themselves inex- : THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 99 tricably in the labyrinthine abstractions of a sceptical understanding. Some will say, in their high-swelling imaginations, that they need no Redeemer, no Ran- som, no Reconciler, no Atonement, no Pardon, — that they can find the way to God by themselves, — that they can build up a tower of their own virtues, a grand and gorgeous tower, virtue above virtue, the top of which shall reach to heaven. Such men there have been more oy less in all ages; and the way their devices have been baffled has ever been the same, by the confusion of tongues. They have been unable to understand one another's language. When one of them has asked for bread, his neighbor has given him a stone; when asked for a fish, he has given a serpent; indifference and scorn, instead of sympathy and encouragement: The hand of each has been against his brother. There has been no unity of spirit amongst them, but variance and strife and railing: they have never entered into the bond of peace. This is the other form of sin, by which men are kept away from Christ. The great mass stay away, because their hearts are paralyzed and crumbled by carelessness and self-indulgence, or rot- ted by the cankering pleasures of sin; the few, be- cause their hearts are hardened and _ stiffened by pride. The former cannot believe in Christ, the lat- ter will not. Of both these sins, and of every other form of sin by which men are withheld from believ- ing in Christ, the Comforter came to convince the world. The Comforter! Does it seem a strange name to any of you, my brethren, for Him who came on such an errand? Does it seem to you that, in convincing you of your sins, instead of comforting 100 THE CONVICTION OF SIN. you, He must needs cover you with shame and con- fusion, and make you sink to the ground in unutter- able anguish and dismay? No, dear brethren, it is not so. ‘hose among you whom the Spirit has in- deed convinced of sin, will avouch that it is not. They will avouch that, in convincing them of sin, He has proved that He is indeed the Comforter (Rr). If the conviction and consciousness of sin arises from any other source, then indeed it is enough to crush us with shame, and to harrow us with unim- aginable fears. But when it comes from the Spirit of God, it comes with healing and comfort on its wings. Remember what the sin is, of which He con- vinces us, — that we believe not in Christ. All other conviction of sin would be without hope: here the hope accompanies the conviction, and is one with it If we have a deep and lively feeling of the sin of not believing in Christ, we must feel at the same time that Christ came to take away this along with all other sins. He came, that we might believe in Him, and that through this faith we might overcome the world, with all its temptations, its fears and its shame, as well as its pleasures and lusts. And O what comfort can be like that, which it yields to the broken and contrite spirit, to feel that the Son of God has taken away his sins,—that, if he has a true living faith in Christ, they are blotted out for- ever, and become as though they had never been? What joy, what peace can be like this, to feel that we are not our own, but Christ’s? that we are be- come members of His holy body, and that our life has been swallowed up in His? that we can rest in His love with the same undoubting confidence with THE CONVICTION OF SIN. 101 which a child rests in the arms of its mother ? that,’ if we believe in Him, we have nothing to fear about the feebleness and falling short of our services? for that He will work out our salvation for us; yea, that He has wrought it out. Who then is he that con- demneth? It is Christ that died for us, to take away our sins, and is risen again for us, to clothe us in His righteousness, and sitteth at the right hand of God, ever making intercession for us, that we may be sup- ported under every trial and danger, and strengthened against every temptation, and delivered from the sin of unbelief and all other sins, and girt with the righteousness of faith, and crowned with all the graces which spring from faith, and at length may be received into the presence of the Father, into which our Elder Brother has entered before us. To whom, as He dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, ever pleading in behalf of His Church, and to the Spirit of the Comforter, whom He has sent to sanctify that Church, and to bring the world into it by the convic- tion of Sin and of Righteousness and of Judg- ment,—in the Unity of the Eternal Godhead, — be all glory and thanksgiving and blessing and adora- tion now and forever. , O- SERMON III. THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. WHEN THE COMFORTER IS COME, HE WILL CONVINCE THE WORLD OF SIN, AND OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND OF JUDGMENT; OF RIGHTIOUS- NESS, BECAUSE I GO TO MY FATHER, AND YE SEE ME NO MORE. — John xvi. 8, 10. Tue first work of the Comforter, as set forth by our Lord, when He promised to send the Spirit of Truth to His disciples, is to convince the world of sin: and we have seen what need there was of this conviction, how greatly the world needed it, how it could not be wrought by any other power, and con- sequenily how it was necessary, for the fulfilment of Christ’s gracious purpose to save the world, that the world should be convinced of sin by the Spirit of God. liver since the Fall, the world has been lying under sin. ‘This was the crushing mountain cast upon the race that had rebelled against God, a moun- tain which sprang out of their own entrails, the root of which was in their own hearts. Beneath it they pined and groaned in their forlorn anguish. Beneath it ever and anon they heaved, and tried to shake off some portion of the burden. At times, when a higher power stirred them to more than ordinary efforts, some clefts and fissures were rent in the mountain, and they caught glimpses of the heavens, which it THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 103 mostly shut out from their sight. But such glimpses were brief and fleeting: they were seldom caught, except at the season when the heart of a nation was teeming with the vernal energies of youth: ere long the mountain of sin closed over it again: new sins shot out to choke up the clefts and fissures: the darkness seemed to become still thicker and more hopeless: and they, who before had reared and strug- gled against it, sank in torpid despondence into the abysmal sleep of death. Even at best man only strove to overcome some particular sins, not to over- come and utterly cast away sin itself. For why? Sin was his own child, the offspring of his own cor- rupt nature: and though he was able to make out that some of its features were unsightly, and some of its limbs distorted, he could not recognize, — no parent can,—that it was altogether a monster. Being degenerate himself, he perceived not that sin was not the rightful birth of his own true, aboriginal nature: for he knew not what that nature ought to have brought forth. He saw not, he had never seen, any pattern of righteousness, by comparison with which he might have discerned his own image, both in its heaven-born purity, and in its earth-sprung de- formity. He knew not what he ought to have been ; and so he could not feel a due shame and horror and loathing at the contemplation of what he was. Such was the state of the world, when the Com- forter came from heaven to convince it at once of Sin and of Righteousness: and such also, more or less, is the state of every soul, until the Spirit of God comes to it to work the same twofold conviction. In this, as in other respects, the life of each individual 104 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. is a sort of likeness and miniature of that of the race. In every man there is a growth of sin, rooted in the depths of his heart, and which has sprung up from thence contemporaneously with the first awaken- ing of his consciousness, so that he cannot even con- ceive the possibility of being without it. He cannot by nature even conceive it possible that he should ever act from other motives, or with other aims, than those which come from this root of sin. And this root of sin is not single, but complex. or in every man there is a root of selfishness. He will seek his own good, or what he deems to be such, not the glory of God, not the upholding of Order and Law, not the manifestation and establishment of Truth, not, least of all perhaps, the good of his fellow-creatures. Nay, they who call themselves philosophers, tell him that he cannot act from any other motive, that he must seek his own good, that the notion of seeking any thing else is a fantastical delusion, and that the only differ- ence between wisdom and folly, between viriue an vice, is, that wisdom and virtue are longer-sighted, and fix on remoter and more lasting benefits, on stars, instead of ignes fatui. Hence, so long as we follow the impulses of our nature, we are apt to refer every thing to some selfish end, to our own pleasure, to our profit, to our advancement and exaltation.’ We do this, as the main business of our lives; and we think it right and fitting so to do: we are told on all sides that it is right and fitting: we have no conception that it can be wrong: we cannot even dream of act- ing otherwise: and thus it is utterly impossible, until eur hearts and minds are lifted out of this state of darkness, that we should have a true conviction oe! Se ee THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 105 either of sin or of righteousness. Again, in every man there is a root of worldly-mindedness. The world is in all our thoughts; and God is not. It rushes upon us with an overwhelming torrent: it en- ters into the soul through our eyes, through our ears, through every inlet of the senses, through all our instincts, through all our wants, which crave after the things of this world, through all our natural affec- tions, Which fix on the creatures of this world: and thus it smothers and almost extinguishes every germ of feeling that would lead us to something higher, to something beyond the reach of the senses. Hence our aims, our purposes, our wishes, our hopes, our fears are all hemmed in by the world, and summed up init. A vigorous effort is requisite to shake off this crushing weight even for a moment, to look even for a moment through this bright, gaudy mask, which so dazzles and fascinates the senses: and what shall prompt us to make such an effort ? what shall endue us with strength to persevere in it? Even when voices come to us and tell us of another world, the unceasing din of this world overpowers them: we fancy they must come from a region of dreams and shadows, which the daylight of real life dispels: and thus, as years roll on, and every year draws a fresh, hard layer around the central spirit, we become more and more thoroughly persuaded that this visible world is our only home. Unless some higher power enable us to shake off the yoke of the world, each of us grows by degrees to deem of himself’ as only one among the myriads of horses set to drag on the cha- riot of 'Time,—to deem that his only pleasure is to snatch what provender he can, as he rushes along the 106 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. way,—that his only glory is to surpass his yoke- fellows in speed, — and that anon, when his strength fails, the chariot will pass over him, and millions of hoofs will trample him to dust. Moreover in every man there is a root of carnal or fleshly-mindedness. fis soul is drugged from childhood upward with the stimulants and opiates of the senses; and he looks upon it as right and becoming and inevitable to de- sire such pleasures, to seek after them, to indulge in them, so that it be not intemperately and hurtfully. In every man’s heart there is this triple root of sin ; —no one who knows his own heart will dispute it;—the root of selfishness, from which spring self- indulgence, self-will, self-esteem, and the whole brood ; of vanity and pride;—the root of worldly-minded- [ — ness, which issues in ambition, in covetousness, in the love of money, in the desire of advancement, of , honor, of power;—and the root of carnal-minded- ness, from which, if it be not cut down betimes, and kept diligently from shooting up again, the lusts of the flesh will sprout rankly, and overrun and stifle the soul. In their excess, indeed, when these vices become injurious to a man himself, or to others, they are reprobated by the judicious and sober-minded. But when they are kept under a certain control, so far are they from being reprobated, that the man who so controls them is counted worthy of admira- tion. ‘These too are the motives and incentives con- stantly urged and appealed to in men’s dealings with each other, even, alas! in the processes of edu- cation; which is too often a systematic training and exercising of the young in habits of selfishness, of worldly-mindedness, nay, not seldom of carnal-mind- THE CONVICTION OF RIGITEOUSNESS. 107 edness, whereby those vices acquire an uncontested sway in the heart. For they who are themselves worldly-minded and carnal-minded, cannot under- stand how it is possible to act upon others by any mo- tives save those the force of which they themselves acknowledge, whips and spurs, bribes and blows, the hope of reward and the fear of punishment. They cannot understand how a heart can be drawn, when no other force is applied to it than the unseen cords of love. Not knowing the power of God, not know- ing how that power is essentially and indissolubly one with His holiness, they think they shall never be strong enough to contend against the powers of evil, unless they enlist some of those powers on their own side. They cannot believe that there is any sure plan of driving out or keeping under one devil, ex- cept by calling in the aid of another. Thus children are made to walk from the first in the way in which they should not go. The very processes of educa- tion bear witness to the radical corruption of our nature. ‘hey show that evil has spread through every region of our thoughts, until we cannot even conceive the possibility of doing without it; so that, in seeking strong medicines, we can find none but poisons. ‘The child is brought up under the persua- sion that he is altogether a child of this world, that he is so, and cannot be otherwise, and is not even to think of being otherwise. He is made indeed to learn a lesson out of a book, which tells him that he is a child of God, and the heir of a heavenly King- dom; and he is bid to reverence this book as sacred. But this, he is compelled to conclude, must mean that the lesson has no manner of bearing on the 108 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. affairs of this world, and is only designed to be laid by in some remote cellar of his mind, that 1t may serve him instead when all things of higher value and more pressing interest are swept away. For the present he is unremittingly admonished that his main business is to get a permanent footing here on earth, to appropriate as much as he can of the goods of this world, to lift himself up as high as he can in the eyes of his neighbors. Such is the ordinary - course of education even in this Christian land; and almost all the changes, almost all the improvements, as they have been deemed, which have been made in our systems of education since the beginning of this century, have only tended more and more to eall out and inflame the worldly stimulants of action, more and more to draw the student out of the quiet garden of loving contemplation, into the throng and pressure of emulous contention. Thus wofully does our mode of education, which in a Christian land ought to aim at convincing the heart and mind from the first both of sin and of righteousness, tend in all its stages, from the nursery up to the university, to confound the ideas of the two, setting up what is deemed a middle term be- tween them as the object of aim and worship, but what in fact is the mere offspring of sin, masking 1t- self in the garb of righteousness. For hell is ever striving to rise up into a likeness of heaven; but there are no steps or shadings off by which heaven can descend from its ethereal purity to the borders of hell. And then, when the youth, who has been thus trained, comes forth into the world, he finds the same deficiencies and the same confusion in the in- THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 109 stitutions and practices of society, which have already proved so delusive and pernicious to him. For civil society, being the creature of this world, and having its ground and its end in this world, inevitably re- gards its members as children of this world, and in all its dealings with them treats them mainly, if not absolutely, as such. Moreover its chief immediate purpose is much rather protection from evil, than the exercising of any positive influence for eliciting or promoting good. I speak not of what it ought to be, according to the highest idea of the body politic, but of what it ever has been, and is. Even laws, which are the utterance of the moral voice of the State, confine themselves to prohibition and repres- sion. ‘hey do not attempt to cultivate the fields of righteousness, but merely to erect a palisade and net- work against the inroads of crime, driving in new stakes, and weaving new meshes, in proportion as evil devises new snares and new modes of attack. Their language is, Thou shalt not, speaking to him who is inclined to violate them, and seldom enjoin- ing any thing good, because it belongs to them to be imperative; whereas good cannot be enforced; it being of the very essence of good to be free and spontaneous, not to spring from constraint and com- pulsion. On the other hand, while the very efforts which society makes for the sake of righteousness, are thus confined to that which is merely negative, he who walks abroad in the world, and listens to its voices, and mixes in its doings, finds a universal con- spiracy, I might almost call it, in behalf of sin, against holiness and godliness. He finds the habits, the manners, the customs, the practices of men, all 10 , 110 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. leagued in favor of this world, all combined to hold up the prizes of this world as the sole objects of de- sire and endeavor. He finds false notions of honor, false views of propriety, false estimates of interest: duty is left out of account: heaven is condemned to remain within the church-door. The whole language of conversation is infected with this taint; and it might fill a thoughtful man with sadness, if not with despondency, to observe how subtily it insinuates it- self into the commonest remark on the conduct of others, to hear how people reason and jest and praise and blame, as though it were utterly inconceivable that a man should act from any motive, except such as have respect to his own temporal advantage. Thus the evil tendencies of our nature are rooted and confirmed; and the vices which spring from them are perpetuated, and transmitted from genera- tion to generation. Instead of checking and sup- pressing them, the customs of society rather foster and strengthen, and in a manner legalize them; so that they could not but spread more and more wide- ly, and become ranker and more ineradicable, with the increase of civilization, unless the Comforter were ever unweariably pursuing His gracious work of convincing the world of sin and of righteousness. We have seen in the last sermon, what great need there was, what great need there ever has been, and still is, that the Holy Spirit of God should come down from heaven, to convince the world of sin. We have seen how utterly impossible it was for this conviction to be wrought in the world, how impossi- ble it is for such a conviction to be wrought efficiently and sufliciently in any single heart, by any other THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 111 power than that of the Spirit of God. The remarks just made may assist us in perceiving that there was no less need of the help of the Spirit, to convince the world of righteousness; and moreover that there is still the same need of His help, in order that this conviction may be graven in deep and living char- acters on each individual soul. We need the help of the Comforter to do this, because no other power can; and because, unless we are indeed convinced of righteousness, as well as of sin, the work of the Spirit will be imperfect and fruitless. For why are , we to be convinced of sin? why does the Holy Spirit vouchsafe to work this conviction in us? Not in order that we may continue in sin; but in order that we may flee from it, —in order that, discerning how hateful it is, how terrible, how deadly, we may flee from it with fear and loathing, and seek shelter in the blessed abode of righteousness. But the natural man knows of no such abode: he knows of no righteousness, of nothing really deserving the name. As on the one hand he has no distinct and full conception of sin, so on the other hand has he none of righteousness. He has no notion of the blackness of the one, no notion of the white, saintly purity of the other: all morality with him is of a dull, misty grey: his virtues and vices run one into the other; and it is often hard to know them apart. As his conception of sin seldom goes beyond the outward acts, the vices and crimes which spring from it, and takes little count even of these, until they are full grown ; so his righteousness also is for the most part made up of outward acts, and of forms and rites EZ THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. and ceremonies, a thing of shreds and patches, full of holes and darns. The cause which makes man incapable of con- ceiving a true arid perfect idea of righteousness, has come before us already. A muddy pool, a cracked and spotted mirror will not reflect a distinct and pure image. That which is exalted so far beyond the reach of our nature, cannot have place in any of our thoughts. Man cannot even frame such an idea as an object of intellectual contemplation: much less ean he embody it as an object of love and worship for his heart. A slight glance at the chief facts pre- sented by the history of the world may suffice to - show that this is so. For suppose the case had been otherwise,— suppose that man had been able to form a distinct and lively idea of righteousness, — where should we look with the expectation of finding the personification of that idea? Surely we should look to the objects of religious worship, to the gods before whom men have bowed down. Surely we might reasonably imagine that the gods worshipped by each nation would express the most perfect idea it could form of righteousness. And what do we find? There is hardly a sin by which human nature has ever been degraded, but man in his blind mad- ness has given it a throne in the hearts of his gods. As though he had retained a dim consciousness that he had been made in the image of God, he inverted the truth in such manner, that each nation made its gods in its own image, investing them with its own attr butes, with its own weaknesses and passions and vices. Lust, and Fraud, and Hatred, and Envy, and Jeal- THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. ha ousy, and Bloodthirstiness were seated in huger dimensions among the inhabitants of heaven. These however, it may be objected, were the frenzies of rude, barbarous ages; and as each nation became more enlightened, it elevated and purified its concep- tions of its deities. ‘To a certain extent this is true. At the same time, in proportion as the idea of the Deity was refined and purified, it also lost its power, by losing its affinity to humanity, and fading away into an abstraction. Such is the God of Philosophy. Philosophy rejects the clue afforded by the declara- tion that man was made in the image of his Maker. Entirely indeed it cannot; for man cannot form a conception of any qualities, beyond those of which he finds the stamp in his own consciousness. But the qualities which Philosophy ascribes to its God, are mostly those which are the least peculiarly hu- man, those which man shares in no disproportionate degree with the rest of the creation, above all, power; to which it assigns certain attributes, mostly nega- tions of the conditions of time and space. In its re- coil from the gross anthropopathy of the vulgar notions, it falls into the vacuum of absolute apathy. Hence there is nothing in the God of Philosophy, any more than in the national and popular gods of the Heathens, that can convince the world of right- eousness. / Poetry, however, which culls the fairest flowers of human life, and brightens them still more with the glowing hues of the imagination,—has that no power to convince the world of righteousness? None. It is an ordinary remark, that, when any thing like the delineation of a perfect character is attempted in LAD 114 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. poetry, it is vapid and lifeless. Tor it loses all re- semblance to human nature, and wanes away, like the God of Philosophy, into a skeleton clothed in shadowy abstractions. A tincture of evil would seem almost necessary to render men objects of sym- pathy. And this is the reason why the prince of philosophers excludes poets from his ideal republic; because the main sources of their interest le in the contentious passions of men; and because, instead -of convincing the world either of sin or of righteous- ness, they rather glorify many of men’s vices, and draw their readers away from the contemplation of the philosophic idea (s). Yet Philosophy itself has been utterly unable to convince the world of righteousness. . Nay, 1t has been utterly unable to convince itself thereof. From the very first indeed, as soon as man began to make his moral nature an object of reflection and examina- tion, Philosophy endeavored to lay hold on some idea of righteousness, and to claim the homage of mankind for it; and almost contemporaneous with this attempt on the part of Philosophy was that of Sophistry to stick up some carnal notion in the room of the spiritual idea; which notion, as being nearer akin to man’s carnal nature; has ever met with readier acceptance than the idea which approached nigher to the truth. One of these false and idola- trous notions, which, as. you will remember, was set up by some of the bolder sophists, and which the great Athenian philosopher laid on the rack of his searching dialectics, was, that Might is Right. This is the doctrine of righteousness which, one may sup- pose, would be proclaimed by a conclave of wild Ye oe THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 115 beasts, the lion’s doctrine, and the tiger’s. Yet, amid the ever-revolving cycle of error, it has been promul- gated anew of late years. As though Christ had never lived, as though the Holy Spirit had never come down to convince the world of righteousness, it has been again asserted in our days that Might is Right. Do we then need that the son of Sophronis- cus should rise from his grave, to expose this mis- chievous fallacy.over again? Surely he has exposed it thoroughly, not for his own age merely, but for- ever. Surely, my friends, you, in this Christian land, in this seat of Christian learning, will none of you allow yourselves to be imposed on by so gross and glaring a delusion. This is indeed merely another expression of the same carnal: mind which would merge all the attributes of the Godhead in naked power. But we know that, though the strong wind ‘rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, yet the Lord was not in the strong wind. Nor was He in the earthquake: nor wa He in the fire. In what then was He? In the still small voice: and this is one of its holy utterances, — Right is Might. As sure as God liveth, as sure as the Holy One of Israel is the Lord of Hosts, the Almighty, Right is Might, and ever was, and ever shall be so. Holiness is might: Meekness is might: Patience is might: an faibity 3 is might: Seliedénial and Self-sacrifice is might: Faith is might: Love is might: every gift of the Spirit is might. The Cross was two pieces of dead wood; and a helpless, unresisting Man was nailed to it: yet it was mightier than the world, and triumphed, and will ever triumph over it. Heaven and earih shall pass away, but no pure, holy deed, or Fa a a ee 116 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. word, or thought. On the other hand might, that which the children of earth call so, the strong wind, the earthquake, the fire, perishes through its own vio- lence, self-exhausted and self-consumed; as our age of the world has been allowed to witness in the most signal example. For many of us remember, and they who do not have heard from their fathers, how the mightiest man on earth, he who had girt himself with all might, except that of right, burst like a tempest-cloud, burnt himself out like a conflagration, and only left the scars of his ravages to mark where he had been. Who among you can look into an infant’s face, and not see a power in it mightier than all the armies of Attila or Napoleon? There is a kindred error however, my young friends, by which many at your age have been fascinated and blinded, against which therefore I would fain warn you. Yours is the age at which the intellect takes the greatest strides, at which its growth is the rapid- est. Your main business here is to cultivate it; and if you are diligent in availing yourselves of the means within your reach, you see its empire extend- ing almost daily before you. You are invited into a temple where the wise and bright-minded men of all ages and nations, the heroes in the world of thought, are seated around, uttering their sweetest and most potent words in your ears; and you are evermore re- minded how Nature has revealed herself to them, how Fame has crowned them, how mankind have mounted by the marble steps of their writings from ignorance to knowledge, from weakness to power. Thus an aptness to prize intellectual energy as the supreme object of human endeavor is one of the THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. ALi chief temptations whereby you, especially the more vigorous among you, are beset. Moreover the whole scheme of education in this place attaches a high, — let me say, an inordinately high value,—to such power; and several of the nobler tendencies of youth, its spirit of enterprise, its disinterestedness, its ideal- ism, conspire too readily therewith. Hence at your age men have ever been prone to regard intellectual eminence as the criterion of worth. Above all are they so prone in days like ours, when there is such a restless craving for novel excitement, and such a dearth of sound, stable, time-hallowed doctrines; so that the reverence, which of yore was paid to acknowl- edged truth, is now often at a loss for an object, un- less it can find one in some individual teacher. You will be tempted to regard genius, or what you may deem to be such, as an excuse, if not a warrant, for all manner of moral aberrations. You will be tempted to believe that genius is a law to itself, and to transfer this proposition from the intellectual re- gion, where alone it has any propriety, to the moral. In the intellectual world, it is true, the highest genius is a law to itself. But then bear in mind that.it must be a law to itself; whereas this assertion is mostly brought forward with a view of maintaining that genius is exempt from all law. As Love is the ful- filling of the law, not by neglecting, but by fulfilling it, — by entering into it, and animating and pervading it, and infusing a living power into its forms, not by standing aloft, and looking down or trampling on it,—so 1s Genius the fulfilling of the laws of the intellectual world, discerning them by an involuntary, and almost unconscious intuition, and embodying 118 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. them in some creation of its own. In the moral order of things on the other hand genius is a perilous eminence, as precipitous as it is lofty. Being mostly united to acuter sensibilities, it receives all impres- sions, evil as well as good, more vividly ; and from a latent consciousness that it ought to penetrate to the core of things, it submits reluctantly to the restraint of conventional usages and established institutions. | Yet its superiority, instead of emancipating it from moral obligation, increases its responsibility. In this, as in other things, much will be required from him to whom much is given. The receiver of ten talents has to bring in ten more, and then to rule over ten cities. When a man is endowed with such a portion, one of the fairest and most precious, of earth’s riches, he is especially called upon to show forth his thank- fulness: for precious indeed it is, if rightly em- ployed; whereas, if it be squandered, if it be misap- plied and perverted, it sharpens our woe, and deep- ens our shame. ‘The possessors of eminent intellect- ual gifts are the more bound to employ their gifts diligently and faithfully in the service of the Giver, letting the light which he has set up within them shine abroad for His glory, and for the enlightening of their brethren. At the same time it behoves them to exercise peculiar watchfulness, lest they enter into temptation, lest they fall into the snares by which their path is surrounded, and which to them are still more dangerous than to others. Among the most miserable and abject of men, as numerous examples in the history of literature show, have been those who, having a certain allotment of talents, betrayed the trust reposed in them, prostituted their faculties THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 119 to the service of the world, became venal, unprinci- pled, reckless, and gradually wasted away, until they were a mere wreck in soul and mind, —till their hearts were burnt out, and they retained nothing but the dregs of their former understandings. Many of these had set out with no ignoble purpose, not a few with something of a generous ardor: only, having been taught to believe that they might worthily de- vote themselves to the pursuit of fame, they naturally and unresistingly became a prey to vanity, and were tainted more and more with its sordidness, its jeal- ousies, its hypocrisies. At present, when new re- gions of thought are perpetually opening before you, you may fancy that so they will continue to open, and will ever fill you with fresh delight. You may deem that life cannot be spent more honorably, or more happily, than in striving to circumnavigate the intellectual globe. But this is not so. Mere specu- lation after a time loses its charm: we feel that it is unsatisfying: we find out that there is something within us beside the machinery of thought, and that, unless that other portion of our nature be allowed to act freely, the machinery of thought itself rusts and gets into disorder. Nor can the mere intellect curb and subdue the senses, which will often run riot and cast it to the ground, maimed and shattered. When the heart is sound and healthy indeed, when the soul is turned Godward,— when our minds, built upon the rock of an undoubting faith, endeavor to discover the manifestations of Him in whom they believe, ac- cording as He has chosen to manifest His will, whether in the outward world, or in mankind, in their nature or their destinies, — then such speculations 120 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. will be a source of joy that will never fail, never lose its freshness. But only then. It is only the path of the righteous, whether it lies through thought or through action, that shines more and more unto the perfect day (‘r). The time will not allow me to examine the other manifold ways in which Philosophy has proved her incompetence to convince the world of righteous- ness. Nor indeed can it be requisite to do more than remind you of that system, which has been brought forward under various forms, evermore shooting forth new heads, as soon as one has been cut off, from the earliest times down to the latest, and which not only avows this incompetence, but makes a boast of it, absolutely denying that there is such a thing as righteousness attainable, or even conceivable by man, denying that there is any such thing as right and wrong inherently and essentially so, denying that man can do any thing or desire any thing as right or wrong in itself, or from any other motive than his own personal pleasure or advantage. This philosophy, which has tried to complete and perpetuate the work of the Fall, and has set its hand and seal to the deed whereby we were cut off from God, declaring that there is nothing in man whereby he can hold communion with God, or even desire such communion, — for he who sought it upon selfish grounds would be self-doomed to utter isolation, — this philosophy, which thus opposes the work of Christ, and tells men that the act of self-sacrifice, whereunto Christ has called them, is a fantastical dream, and a sheer impossibility, — has been taught, we know, even in this Christian land ; it has been THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. {3 taught, alas, even in this University. There can hardly be a sadder proof of the antichristian spirit of the last century, than that this antichristian system of philosophy should have been proclaimed authori- tatively in a University, where the great body of the teachers must not only be members, but ministers of the Church. Blessed be God however! there are signs which bode that ere long it will be wholly driven out from hence. Among the changes which have taken place here of late years, —where much has been changed for the better, and something, it may be, for the worse,— none has filled my heart with such satisfaction, none seems to hold out such an assurance of good to our students, as that which promises that this University will again become a school of sound, high-principled, Christian moral philosophy. Nor can I discuss the characteristics of that Sys- tem, of nobler origin and tendency, which did indeed. attempt to do something in the way of convincing the world of righteousness, but which failed, as it could not avoid failing, for this among other reasons, that there was no true, living idea of righteousness made manifest to man, of which it might convince the world (uv). Its righteousness was a righteous- ness of the understanding. Therefore was it a righteousness of pride. For there is an aptness in the understanding to look down upon all things, as tools and instruments wherewith it may deal at will, as empty shells the chief use of which is to embody and clothe its truths: nay, it can hardly refrain from assuming that the act of understanding implies a superiority to that which is understood. Therefore. 11 Pita 3 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. too was this righteousness a righteousness of insula- tion. ‘For the understanding has no sympathy, no fel- low-feeling with other existences: it cares solely for the forms of things, or rather for its own forms, which it discerns in the mirror they present to it: the business of the understanding is to look far off; the further, the more pleasure it takes in what it sees: that which is near and familiar, it disregards: it is heart- less and homeless. Therefore moreover was this righteousness a righteousness of lifeless abstractions, instead of living realities, cleaving to modes and words, rather than to principles, magnifying the _ formal in all things, to the disparagement of the essence and spirit. It was a self-righteousness, that is, no righteousness at all,—a righteousness in its own eyes, which can never be a righteousness in the eyes of God, —a righteousness in which the im- pure was to purify the impure, and the unjust to justify the unjust. And as it has been seen in all nations, and in the systems of all philosophers, that no human understanding, not even the etherial one of Plato, could discern the divine affinities in the affections, or set itself in harmony with them (v),— as the primary crack between the heart and the understanding, which ensued upon the usurpation of the latter, drawing man away to the love of knowledge as a power in himself, from the love of the Object of knowledge, has run through the whole human race, so that they have never been reunited, except by the atonement of Christ, — thus did this philosophy show its incapacity to convince the world of righteousness, by giving up the best parts of our nature as izretrievable into the hands of the enemy, THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 123 throwing wife and children and brothers and sisters and friends, and the whole world, overboard, for the sake of preserving its own worthless self to float in desolate self-complacency on a plank in the Dead Sea. | Hence we perceive what need there was that the Spirit of God should undertake the task of convine- ing the world of righteousness. For no other power could. Philosophy could not: Poetry could not: Religion, in the corrupt forms in which it prevailed among the Heathens, could not: the aspect of life could not. They could not yield man the spectacle of Righteousness as a living, active reality, nor even as an idea for contemplation. Meanwhile the Law, sounding with its naked Thow shalt not, and knock- ing at the ears of those who were living in daily commission of the acts it forbade, was convincing the world of unrighteousness. This however was not enough to fulfil the merciful purpose of God. The righteous God loveth righteousness. He loves to behold His own image in His creatures. He made this earth to be the abode of Righteousness; and He was mercifully pleased to decree that it should not be given up to Sin, but that Righteousness should dwell upon it, Righteousness in its highest perfection, even His own Righteousness, pure and holy and without spot. Therefore this was the second work of the Comforter. As He came to con- vince the world of sin, because no other power could, so did He come to convince the world of righteous- ness, because this too was a work which He alone could accomplish. When the Comforter is come, He will convince the 124 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. world of righteousness. The sin, of which the Com- forters was to convince the world, was the sin of want of faith, of not believing in Christ. Accord- ingly He was to convince the world of its own sin. Was He also to convince the world of its own righteousness ? That could not be. Where sin is, righteousness is not, at least no true, pure, genuine righteousness; and the Comforter can only convince of the truth. As the sin of the world was its want of faith, so on the other hand righteousness can only come to it through faith; and the reason why the world from the beginning has been so barren of righteousness is no other than this, that it has not been animated by a strong, living principle of faith. Want of faith, we have seen, is the great sin of the world, and the one prime source and fountain- head of all other sins. This is the cankerworm, which has been gnawing at the heart of the world, ever since our first parents gave ear to the voice of the Tempter, beguiling them to withdraw their faith from the word of God, and to place it in the deceit- ful shows of the senses: and hence it is, by reason of our want of faith, by reason of this cankerworm gnawing at our heart, that all our blossoms have been so pale and blighted, and all our leaves so shrivelled. We have seldom strength to produce what is fair in itself, much less what shall be vigor- ous enough to resist the blasts of temptation. In every age of the world, under all the forms of social life, and all the gradations of culture, this has been the great sin of mankind. It was so before the coming of Christ. Mankind did not believe in God. They did not believe in His power and wisdom as ee oe. THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 125 set forth in the visible works of the Creation. "When the heavens declared His glory, men turned a deaf ear to their tale. Although the firmament showed His handiwork, they could not see the finger of God there. Nor would man believe in the image of God, in which he himself was made. He would not be- lieve in the oracles of God, when his conscience uttered them within him. He had so dishgured that image, and had confounded those oracles with so many discordant sounds, that he was utterly unable to separate the true from the false, and to recognize each as that which it was. And when the Son of God came upon earth with His fan in His hand to do this work for man, to declare the truth in its purity, and to manifest the perfect Image of God, still the world would not believe in Him. Still the world eried, This is not God... this is not our God... this is not such a God as we have fashioned for our- selves, of gold and jewels, of lightning and thunder, of lust and blood. This God has none of the spirit of ° agod. He is so meek, so gentle, so patient, so hum- ble, so mild, so forgiving, so merciful... there is not a great man upon earth who would not be ashamed to be like Him. This was the sin of the world, when Christ was walking upon earth. They would not believe in Him. They would not believe that He was the Incarnate Son of God. They would not believe that the Wisdom and the Love of God had become Flesh in Him. They would not believe that the Maker of the Universe would appear in the form of a Servant. They would not believe that the Lord of all Truth and Holiness would shed His blood for the sins of mankind. So utterly estranged Lai 126 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. were they from the idea of righteousness, that, when the Sun of Righteousness was showing forth His glory in the midst of them, they knew him not, but denied and blasphemed Him, imputing His divine acts to the powers of evil. They listened to the cor- rupt imaginations of their own hearts, which had framed an image of God so totally different from the true Image made manifest in the life of Christ ; and obstinately refusing to believe in Him, they plunged into the nethermost chasm of crime, and crucified the Lord, in whom they would not believe. And as want of faith was the sin of the world before the coming of Christ, a sin the parent of all other sins, and undermining the very desire, defacing the very conception of righteousness,—as it was the sin of the world during the life of Christ, con- summating itself in the attempt to destroy the great . Object of Faith, to the end that it might wallow undisturbed in all manner of falsehood, in the false- hoods of sense and selfishness, in the falsehoods of the passions and appetites, in the falsehoods of cu- pidity and ambition, in the falsehoods of supersti- tion and idolatry, in the falsehoods of hypocrisy and formal observances, — so has want of faith still been the sin of the world ever since Christ went up into heaven. Still the world has not believed in Christ: still at this day it does not, will not believe in Him. Stil at this day this is the great sin of mankind: and by reason of this sin all their other sins abide with them, and cleave to them, and cannot be driven out of them. And what shall we say of ourselves, brethren? Is this our sin, or no? Can we assert that we are altogether free from it? that we do in- THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. I Fe deed believe in Christ? No human judge can pro- nounce. But there is One who can, even He who reads the heart. He knows whether we believe in Christ, or no. ‘To man the only evidence is, do we live by that faith? He who really believes in Christ must needs live in that faith, and by that faith; and therefore he will not live in the service of sin, but in the service of righteousness. Here a question arises, how comes it that so large a part of the Christian world are still lying in the bondage of unbelief? in the bondage of that unbe- lief which makes them the slaves of sin? How comes it that the world does not burst the chains of this bondage, and clothe itself with the wings of faith, and mount through the pure region of right- eousness, rejoicing in its freedom, to the foot of that throne where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God? How comes it,—may I not ask, brethren, — how comes it that, even among us who have been baptized into the name of Christ, among us who meet together week after week and day after day to worship the Father in His house, — among us who have so‘often been called to have our souls refreshed and strengthened by His blessed Body and Blood, — how comes it that even among us there are so many, who...start not at the word... yes, start, ye to whom it may apply! and O that your hearts would indeed start once for all out of their fleshly sockets! ... how comes it that even among us there are so many, who do not believe in Christ, who have no real, living, practical faith in Him,—so many there- fore, who are still steeped in their sins, who are still floundering helplessly about in the midst of their 1238 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. sins, even as though Christ had never come to re- deem them? ‘The reason of all this is, that the world, —that we,— have turned away from the Comforter, when He has come to convince us of the sin of not believing in Christ. Our belief in Christ, such as itis, has not been wrought in us by the Spirit of God. We believe in Christ, because our parents taught us to believe in Him, because it is our national faith, because we have been bred up in it from our childhood, because our understandings have been persuaded of His divine power by the wonderful miracles which He wrought. But what is the value of such faith, if it be no more than this? Will it take away our sins? will it clothe us in the armor of righteousness? ‘This is a question we can easily answer, at least if 1t be put to us in another shape. Does it take away our sins? does it soften and fertilize our hearts, so that they bring forth the fruits of righteousness? Surely they who are con- scious of having nothing beyond this traditional, conventional, historical faith, must answer, Vo; no more than the water in a bucket will refresh the whole country when parched with a long drouth. The water which is to refresh a land parched with drouth, must come from above. The faith which is to refresh and renew a soul dry and parched through a long continuance in sin, must come from above also. Until we have been convinced of the sin of unbelief by the Spirit, we shall never know the hal- lowing power of faith. Until we. are convinced of sin, for not believing in Christ, we cannot be con- vinced of righteousness, because Christ is gone to the Father. THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 129 As the sin, of which the Comforter came to con- vince the world, is of a totally different kind from every thing that the world calls sin, which the world, so long as it was left to itself, never dreamt of as such, nor does any heart, left to itself, so regard it, — while yet it is the one great all-in-all of sin, the sin by which men are cut off and utterly estranged from God, the sin through which they grow downward toward hell, instead of growing up- ward toward heaven, —so on the other hand is the righteousness, of which the Comforter came to con- vince the world, totally different in kind from every thing that the world accounts righteousness, —a righteousness such as the world in the highest rap- tures of its imagination never dreamt of, a righteous- ness moreover by which the effect of sin is done away, and man, hitherto cut off and estranged from God, is reunited and set at one with Him. The Comforter will convince the world of righteousness, our Lord says, because Igo to the Father, and ye see Meno more. In these words we perceive what is \ the righteousness, of which the Comforter came to convince the world. Not of its own righteousness: - one might as fitly convince a cavern at midnight of light. The Comforter is the Spirit of Truth, and can only convince of the truth. But the world’s as it is a sin righteousness is a lie, hollow as a whited sepulchre, tawdry as a puppet in a show. Different opinions have been maintained on the question, of whose righteousness the Comforter was to convince the world (w); but to my own mind the words which follow seem to settle the point: He will convince the world of righteousness, because I go to the Lather. 130 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. Of whose righteousness? Not of the world’s as- suredly. Christ’s going to the Father could no way be a proof of the righteousness of the world. On the contrary it was the fullest, completest, most damnatory of all proofs of the world’s unrighteous- ness and iniquity. It was the proof, that Him, whom the world condemned, God justified,—that the Stone, which the builders rejected, God made the Headstone of the corner,—that Him, whom the world had lifted up on high on a cross of shame, God lifted up on high to a throne of glory in the heavens, — that Him, whom the world cast out, nail- ing Him between two thieves, God took to Himself, and set Him in the heavenly places far above all principality and power, — yea, took Him up to Him- self, into the Unity of His Eternal Godhead, between Himself and his Holy Spirit. Never was the right- eousness of the world so confounded and set at nought, as when Christ went to the Father, when He, to whom Barabbas was preferred, was thus shown to be the beloved Son and the perfect Image of the Allholy, Allrighteous God. But while Christ’s going to the Father was a proof of the unrighteousness and desperate wickedness of the world, it was also a proof of righteousness, namely of His own pure and perfect and _ spotless righteousness. It was a proof that He was the Holy One who could not see corruption. . It was a proof that He could not possibly be holden by death, any more than it would be possible to hold the sun by a chain of darkness; and therefore that, as Death, the ghastly shadow which ever follows inseparably at the heels of Sin, fled from His presence, He must Or ie of” he THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. TSE needs be also without sin. It was a proof that, while the world desired a murderer to be granted to them, He whom they denied was the Holy One and the Just. The effect of sin from the beginning, the effect which it always had wrought and always must work, was to cut man off from God, to throw a great gulf between man and God, which no man, continuing in the weakness and under the bondage of sin, can ever pass over. It had made man blind to the sight of God, and deaf to the voice of God. It had driven him out from the garden of Eden, that is, from the presence of God: for none but the pure in heart can see God; none but the righteous can dwell with God. Therefore, when Christ went to His Father, when He was taken up into heaven to live in the bosom of God, this of itself was a proof that He, who was thus exalted, must have fulfilled all righteousness ; that His righteousness was not like the righteousness of men, speckled and spotted and covered with scratches and rents, like a sheet of old blotting-paper, but pure, and without stain or spot. This then was the righteousness, of which the Com- forter came to convince the world, the righteousness of Him in whom the world would not believe, of Him whom the world had crucified. Pilate had found no fault in Him; yet Pilate had delivered Him up to be crucified. The Jews had been unable to charge Him with any fault: yet the Jews had crucified Him. They saw nothing but the hideous mists and phan- toms of their own passions, of their own envy and hatred and malice; they clothed Jesus in the dark hues of those passions; and then they nailed Him to the cross. Not knowing what righteousness was, 132 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. they could not recognize it when it came and stood in a visible form before them. Loving unrighteous- ness rather than righteousness, they tried to quench the light of righteousness, and could not find rest until they trusted they had built up a thick firma- ment of darkness around them, and extinguished the heavenly ray which God had sent through the dark- ness to scatter it. 3 | Hence, because the world thus obstinately refused to believe in the righteousness of Christ, was it need- ful that the Comforter should come to convince the world thereof; so that He might be declared with power to be the Son of God, according to the Spirtt of Holiness, which was thus manifested to be in Him, by His resurrection from the dead; and that this de- claration might be made known {¢o all nations, to bring them to the obedience of faith in Mis name. Here however the same question crosses us, which crossed us at the end of the last sermon: how could He, who came to convince the world of the righteous- ness of Christ, be rightly called the Comforter, at least with reference to this portion of His work? At other times, when exercising His power for other purposes, He might show Himself to be a Comforter. But what comfort could there be in His convincing the world of that, which was the sure judicial proof of the unutterable crime it had been guilty of? At first thought it would seem as if the conviction of Christ’s righteousness could only bring shame and confusion on those by whom He was crucified. And even to us,—although we were not present in the body at His crucifixion, and so far were not guilty of it,— although we did not lift up our voices and So THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 138 join in the murderous cry of the Jews, — still, if the righteousness of Christ were nothing more than His own righteousness, the contemplation of such a per- fect pattern of all that is excellent and pure and holy would rather seem fitted to cast-us down in utter hopelessness, than to comfort us, at least at the mo- ment when the conviction of our own exceeding sin- fulness has just been brought home in full force to our souls. It might rather tempt us to exclaim with Peter, Depart from us; for we are sinful men, O Lord. Nevertheless, as our Lord tells us, it is indeed the Comforter, — nor is the name used here without its appropriate force, — who convinces us of the righteousness of Christ. For why? Christ’s right- eousness is also our righteousness, if we will cast away the sin of not believing in Him, and receive His righteousness as our own by faith. He is the Lord our Righteousness. He did not come down to earth to lead a holy and righteous life for His own sake. He was all Holiness and all Righteousness from the beginning, yea, from all eternity, dwelling in the bosom of the Father, full of grace and truth. But He came down to earth to lead a holy and righteous life for our sakes, in order that we might become sharers in His Righteousness, and that so He might raise us along with himself to His Father and ours. It was for us that He was born: for us He went about doing good patiently and unweariedly in spite of hatred and scorn and persecution: for us He bore all the hardships and crosses of life: it was for us that He bowed His all-holy neck, and entered through the gates of time and space into the form of weak and frail humanity: for us He submitted to be 12 134 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. tempted: for us He overcame sin: for us He allowed the shadow of death to flit over His eternal spirit: for us He burst the bonds of death, and rose again from the grave, for our justification, for our righteous- ness, that we might believe in Him, and might be ae come righteous thereby: it was for us too that He | went up openly to His Father, and sent His Holy Spirit to convince us of His: righteousness: for us also does He ever’ sit, the Sun of Righteousness, in the heavens. When the sun rises to convince the world of light, he does not keep his light to himself: he does not journey through the sky merely to con- vince the world that he himself is light. He sheds his light abroad on all that will unfold themselves to receive it: he pours it into them, that they may have it in themselves, and manifest it to each other, and behold it in each other. So too does the Sun of Righteousness. His Righteousness spreads from the east to the west: it fills the heavens, and covers the earth. On all who will open their hearts to receive it, He sheds it. For their sakes He gained it; and He pours it out abundantly upon them. Therefore is the Spirit, who convinces the world of the righteousness of Christ, most truly called the Comforter. In convincing us of sin, we saw, He convinces us that we are dead in trespasses and sins, — dead, so that we lie in them as in a grave, utterly unable to raise ourselves out of them, —so that our souls, were they left to themselves, would rot, and crumble and fall to pieces. Hence this conviction, if it stood alone, would be full of sorrow and dis- may. Ifthe Spirit merely convinced us of our sin- ful acts, of our vices, of our crimes, He would not THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 135 be the Comforter. For they have so coiled round every part of our being, and mixed themselves up with our very heart’s blood, that we cannot shake them, or strip them, or even flay them off But in convincing us that our prime sin, the root and spring of all our sins, is want of faith, He lets in a gleam of light; He enables us to perceive an outlet; He kindles a hope in us that, if we can but believe, the sinfulness of our nature may be subdued. We are no longer doomed to a vain struggle between a conscience muttering more and more faintly, Sin not, and a carnal heart shouting more and more imperi- ously, J will sin. We are taught that there is One who will help us through this struggle, if we will but believe in Him, even the Onlybegotten Son of God, who dwelt upon earth for the very purpose of breathing a new life of faith into us, of setting a liv- ing Object of faith before us; so that in every need and peril, whithersoever the chances of the world may waft us, we shall see God, not afar off in the heavens, in the clouds of speculation, or the dim twilight of tradition, but close by our side, as our Example, our Guide, our Friend, our Brother, our Saviour and Redeemer; that we shall know God, not merely as a Lawgiver, commanding us to over- come sin, but as a Pattern showing us that it can be overcome, and how, and as a mighty Helper ever ready to enable us to overcome it. In like manner, if the conviction of righteousness which the Spirit works in us were merely the conviction of God’s righteousness, or of Christ’s, we could only fall to the ground with awestruck, palsied hearts : we could no more venture to look upon Christ, than the naked 136 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. eye can look upon the sun. But when we are thoroughly convinced that Christ’s righteousness 1s our righteousness, the righteousness which He pur- poses to bestow upon mankind,—that He came to fulfil all righteousness, not for His own sake, but for ours, in order that He might give us all that we lack out of his exceeding abundance,—then indeed a bright ray of joy and comfort darts through the heart, startling the frostbound waters out of their yearlong sleep. ‘Then the soul, which before was as a wilderness and a solitary place, solitary, because God was far from it, — yea, the barren desert of the heart rejoices and blossoms like the rose. All its hidden powers, all its suppressed feelings, so long smothered by the unresisted blasts of the world, . unfold like the roseleaves before the Sun of Right- eousness; and each and all are filled and transpierced with his gladdening, beautifying light. In order however that this may be fulfilled in us, the conviction of Christ’s righteousness must indeed be wrought in us by the Spirit of God. We must be thoroughly convinced that He is our Righteous- ness, our only Righteousness. It is not enough to believe that He was a very good and holy man. We believe that many men have been good and holy, that Noah was so, that Abraham was) so, that Joseph was so, that St. John was so, that St. Paul was so. But their righteousness is of no avail to us: it cannot help us out of our sins. Therefore our conviction of Christ’s righteousness must be of a wholly different kind from our belief in the righteous- ness of any other man. On the other hand it must be of a different kind from our conviction of the ee ee THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 137 righteousness or justice of God: for this, coming upon the conviction of our sins, would merely affix the death-warrant to the condemnation which our conscience pronounces against us. Whereas the belief in the righteousness of Christ is the means by which we are to be raised out of our sins, and to receive justification in the sight of God. Hence these two works of the Comforter, the conviction of our own sins, and the conviction of Christ’s right- eousness, go one along with the other, and cannot be divorced or parted, neither being accomplishable without the other. For it is by the contrast of Christ’s righteousness that we are enabled most clearly to discern our own all-pervading sinfulness ; and it is by the conviction of our own sinfulness that we are brought to recognize the divine perfec- tion, and our own need, of the righteousness of Christ. In some souls one work may seem to be prior, in others the other. According as we turn our eyes, the light may seem to rush upon the darkness, or the darkness to fly before the light; while the two operations are in fact coinstantaneous. But whichever conviction may have been, or have come forward into consciousness as the earliest In any particular case, each must be continually enlivening and strengthening the other. There are those who are sinking like Luther under a crushing sense of sin, before the assurance of the forgiveness obtained by the righteousness of Christ dawns upon them, There are those to whom Christ will manifest Him- self in the first instance, as He did to St. Paul, in His heavenly glory. But in either case, where the work is the work of the Comforter, the second con- 12* gent tttpe 138 THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. viction will follow close upon the first. The convic- tion of sin will be followed by the conviction of the forgiveness which our Allrighteous Saviour has pro- cured for us; which latter conviction alone turns the former into a wholesome discipline of humility: and when Christ vouchsafes to arouse us by manifesting Himself in His glory, it is still as He whom we have persecuted by our sins. The conviction of Christ’s righteousness will ever be one of the chief means employed by the Comforter to bring us to a con- viction of our sinfulness; while on the other hand it is absolutely necessary that we should be brought to this conviction of our sinfulness, before we can dis- cern our need of a righteousness, which is not our own, but is to descend upon us from above. So long as aman is not convinced of sin, of his own sinfulness, irremediable by any efforts of his own, — so long as he is not convinced that he has no real. righteousness in himself, that he is not what he ought to be, nay, that he is totally unlike what he ought to be,—so long as he is content to live the — common, amphibious, half and half life of the world, which is neither one thing nor the other, a miserable border-land between good and evil—so long as he goes on staggering to and fro between opposite sins, neither hot nor cold, believing with his lips, and unbelieving in his heart, doing right for the sake of the world, wearing the garb of outward decency and a self-satisfied honesty or honorableness, — so long he can never be really convinced of the righteousness of Christ. We must feel that without Him we can do nothing; that through our sins we have cast our- selves out from the presence of God; and that of rie Cs | ee -—e e THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 139 ourselves we can no more return into His presence, than we can fly up and bathe in the fountains of light which are ever welling from the heart of the sun: we must feel that the Law is placed, like the flaming sword at the East of the Garden of Eden, turning every way, writing its sentence of condemna- tion against every deed and word that issues from the heart of man, and thus keeping the way of the Tree of Life: we must feel that we neither have nor can have any righteousness of ourselves to jus- tify ourselves: then alone shall we be brought to yearn for, then alone shall we indeed be convinced by the Comforter of the righteousness of Christ. And how are we to become partakers of that righteousness? Christ is ready, is desirous to be- stow it upon all; but how are we to receive it? Even as we receive every other heavenly gift, by faith. The Comforter shall convince the world of righteousness, says our Lord, because I go to the Father, and ye see Me no more. In that He went to the Father, He gave the most certain demonstration of His righteousness. In that we see Him no more, He renders it easier for us to make His righteous- ness ours. Were He still living upon earth, were He walking about before our eyes, it would not be so. It was not so with His brethren: they did not believe in Him. It was not so with His chosen apostles: so long as He continued present with them in the body, they did not receive Him into their souls; they did not put on His righteousness. Therefore was it expedient for them, as we have already seen, that He should go away. lor, so long