f:54:^"'>\'S-' ^^ AND Other Sermons 3, S-g-.oSr. from t^e fetfirarg of (pxoftBBOx nXHmam (BXifPer (]f)d;rton, ©.©., &fe.®. ♦ ^eeenfe^ 61? (Utte. $a;rfon to f 3e feiBrarj? of (Princeton C^eofogicaf ^eminarg 3c©6 jH^; GIVEN TO CHRIST OTHER SERMONS. JOHN W. PRATT, D. D. WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND LABORS. NEW YORK: ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET. COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY M. W. PRATT. EDWARD O. JENKINS' SONS, Printers and Electrotypera, so NORTH WILLIAM ST., NEW VORK. PREFACE. If the writer of these sermons had published thein himself, doubtless they would have had many imper- fections removed ; but as that could not be, in compli- ance with numerous requests, I give them just as they were prepared for the various congregations to which he preached ; with the daily prayer that God will use them, and feeling assured that could his voice 7iow be heard, his language would be that of Dr. Bonar: "Not myself, but the truth that in life I have spoken, Not myself, but the seeds that in life I have sown, Shall pass on to ages, all about me forgotten Save the truth I have spoken, the things I have done." M. W. Pratt. Louisville, Ky., 1888. (3) BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. BY C. A. STILLMAN, D.D. The Eev. John Wood Pkatt, D.D., was born at St. Mary's, Georgia, on the 12th of May, 1827. He sprang from an honored ancestry ; on his father's side from the grand old Puritan stock recognized as the chief glory of Old and Kew England, and on his mother's from the English gentry, that class which has been called more noble than " The Nobles." His father, the Kev. Horace S. Pratt, was a Presbyterian min- ister and Professor of English Literature in the University of Alabama at the time of his death in 1840. His mother, Jane Wood, died when he was only one year old, so that his maternal training devolved upon his second mother— a most intelligent, godly, and in every way estimable woman. His early youth gave indications of the ability which marked his after-life. When only seventeen he graduated with distinguished honor at the Uni- versity of Alabama. While a mere boy he consecrated himself to the service of Christ, and very soon resolved to prepare hunself for that profession in which he became pre-eminent. Having completed his theological course at Princeton, E". J., he was licensed by the Presbytery of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, May 6, 1848, six days before he reached his majority. The youthful preacher soon attracted attention by his discourses, which were rich in elo- quent diction and sound instruction. He was called to the church at Marion, Alabama, in October, 1849. Such was his aptness to teach that he was elected to the Professorship which had been made vacant by the death of his father ten years before, viz., that of English Literature and Belles-Lettres. He accepted this position and became distinguished for the clearness of his instruc- tions, and at the same time an eminent example of the art of elo- quence which he taught. (6) 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Prof. W. S. Wyman, of the University of Alabama, says of him at this period": " When the Kev. John W. Pratt became the Professor of Eiighsh Literature at the beginning of the collegiate year 1850-51, I was a member of the senior class. After I was graduated in 1851 I became a member of the Faculty, and I con- tinued to be a colleague of Mr. Pratt during the whole of his fifteen years' stay in the University. I feel, therefore, quite competent to speak of him during this part of his life. It was the duty of the Professor of English Literature to teach Khetoric, Logic, Ancient and Modern History, and the History of English Literature, to supervise the writing of Essays and Orations by the three higher classes in the University, and to train the classes in Oratory. Mr. Pratt was only twenty-three years of age when he entered upon the important duties of this professorship. He had the enthusiasm of youth and a great love for his work. He was himself an eloquent orator, the master of a polished style, and remarkably well read for one of his age in the great masters of Enghsh Literature. At the outset he was fortunate enough to inspire his pupils with something of his own ardor in the study of the great exemplars of a pure English style. From causes not necessary to be mentioned here, the Department of English in the University had been for ten years previously in a languish- ing condition. The writing of Essays had been regarded by the students as a heavy task ; and the revision of them by the Pro- fessors in charge for the time being had been for the most part perfunctory. Practice in oratory had been confined to the dec- ?amation of select pieces by the classes once a month before the President of the University. Mr. Pratt at once introduced a new and thorough system for the revision of original compositions, the result of which proved to be so excellent that the same system has been retained with but slight modifications to the present time. In Oratory he began to train every student separately and systematically. Prior to Mr. Pratt's time the Department of Khetoric had been limited to the study of some short superficial book on literary criticism. His best work here was the introduc- tion of a thorough treatise on the art of Invention, a book which required hai'd study to master, but the beneficial results of the hard study were soon manifested in the disciplined intellects of the advanced scholars. Mr. Pratt was deeply interested during his residence at the University in the moral and religious im- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7 provement of the students. He organized classes for the study of the Bible among the students, and trained them in the lessons. The students' prayer-meeting was, as I well remember, conducted by him, and was for a long time held at his house." Mr. Pratt occupied this chair until 1865, when the University was suspended by the ravages of the Civil "War. It was during this period he accumulated the store of varied learning which rendered his preaching so profound and instructive. He never made any display of it, for he despised pedantry, but it gave weight, accuracy, variety, and beauty to his exposition of divine truth. He by no means forsook the ministry while Professor. He loved to preach, and he was often called upon. He preached frequently in the city, but he was especially fond of his little rural charge, preaching with equal acceptability to all classes of people. He charmed and edified the most plain and unlettered, and attracted the most highly cultivated, because he preached the simple Gospel with transparent clearness and earnestness. Many have regretted that so much of the prime of his life was spent in the class-room, but he was thereby acquiring his higher education for the pulpit, and for those triumphs of sacred eloquence which crowned his usefulness and made him famous in after-life. At the close of the war circumstances led him to open a school in Brooklyn, N. Y. In the second year of his stay there he re- ceived and accepted a call to the cultivated and important church in Lexington, Virginia. Eev. James H. Smith, of Lexington, Virginia, writes of his work there : " It would have been difficult for him to find a centre more favorable for sending out his influence in wide and far-reaching streams, than he found in the church at Lexington. Washington and Lee University, situated there, held within her halls three hundred students, and the Virginia Military Institute three hundred more. His peculiar gifts were exactly those best calculated to attract and influence young men. Every resident of Lexington, and every student of either of these schools during the years of his ministry there, will remember without prompt- ing, how intense was the interest excited and maintained by his preaching. All classes in the community, people of every differ- ing faith, and people of none, were drawn to his services. Old men, whose time-seared hearts had grown callous with long in- difference, exhibited an unwonted sensibility. Young men dis- 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. covered with deliglit that the truths of revelation furnish worthier themes for a higher eloquence than can be inspired by subjects less supreme. It would be harder, perhaps, to calculate the harvest of this ministry than that of most others, for the sower planted, not in a single field, but stood as it were on a mountain and cast his seeds to the winds, which bore them wherever the Southern youth there congregated around him have made their thousand homes." He continued to be a diligent student and prepared all his public exercises with extraordinary labor and care. The discern- ing stranger who happened to hear him at the weekly prayer- meeting on the stormiest night, had as fair an opportunity of es- timating his powers as those who sat before him in the crowded church. He spoke words thoroughly credible when he declared that he always did his iest. He prepared " beaten oil " for the sanctuary — hence the finished and enduring character of his dis- courses, which could stand the most rigid criticism, and which all his hearers and readers feel assured will secure them a place in the permanent literature of the pulpit. His sermons will live and will continue to delight and edify the Church. In place, however, of any further estimate of our own, we prefer to insert the following true and beautiful tribute from the Hon. J. Ran- dolph Tucker, who had ample capacity and opportunity to form a correct judgment, having been a member of his church while he lived in Lexnngton, Virginia : " The death of Dr. Pratt was sincerely a grief to me, for I liad been privileged to know him for years as pastor, preacher, and friend. He was a very remarkal)le man in the endowments of his mind, as well as in the qualities which made up his character. He had an acute and subtle analytic power, which enabled him to discover the germs of truth, and to detect the concealed errors in the logic of his opponent. This keen insight into the subject of his criticism or of his discussion, made his discourse as clear as the sunlight. About his thought, and about his expression of it, there were no clouds of doubt or of uncertainty. Ko one could fail to see what he saw, to understand what he thought, for it was the pure diamond idea reflected in the mirror of a style which was simple, yet ornate in its strong, fervid, and classic rhetoric. He was logical, and yet imaginative, original, sug- gestive, and fertile in his conceptions, and powerful in setting BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. . 9 them forth with all the beauties of expression with which a thorough education and refined literary taste could invest human thought. " He was a genuine Calvinist, and so strongly held the Pauline type of the Christian faith that his mind never wavered in the most profound speculations, and his heart was anchored on the 'Rock of Ages,' with implicit and humble trust. The grand truths of the Bible he held with an intellectual enthusiasm which stirred his whole nature with a deeply sympathetic thrill, and which sometimes shook his bodily frame with visible emotion ; and yet, though his mind was so nerved by the grandeur of truth, his sympathetic nature was alive to the appeals of distress and affliction. In the chamber of sickness and death he poured the oil of consolation upon the wounds of bereavement with gentleness, judgment, and tender sympathy. As a man he was brave, manly, candid, and sincere. He was liberal in his charity and generous without stint. As a friend he was constant and reliable, because while warm in his regard his feelings never swayed his judgment. " As a preacher of the Gospel he was cogent in reasoning, lu- minous in expression, critical in exegesis, earnest in exhortation, and always and eminently instructive, practical, and Scriptural. He adhered to the written word with fidelity, and condemned with force and without compromise all the so-called rationalism which wandered from the Scripture into the mazes of a specula- tive and false philosophy. As a pastor he was discreet, conserva- tive, and practical. He was not obtrusive of counsel, but ever ready to give it ; nor intrusive into the domestic habits of his people, yet ever willing to advise in regard to them. He sought to lead men to the great Teacher to be taught by Him, and never did it by ignoble appeals to fear, nor by an unworthy play upon the animal emotions of his hearers. He preached the truth as it is in Jesus, as the best thing for the man ; with which he would have peace and eternal rest, without which he must have unrest and eternal despair. Such is my imperfect estimate of Pr. Pratt. His memory is one of great value to me, in the insti-uc- tions I received from him, in the guidance I derived from his counsel, and in the support I had from his friendship." After six years in this important field he accepted the Presi- dency of Central University at Richmond, Kentucky, a young 10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. institution established bj the Synod of Kentucky, To its organ- ization and management he devoted himself for six years, and found an ample held for bis large experience and eminent scho- lastic and practical ability. At the same time he occupied for three years the pulpit of the Presbyterian church of Richmond. This was his last connection \vitli college work. Professor L, G. Barbour, of Central University, said of him : " He had in a high degree two qualities not always conjoined, but both of them needful in the constitution of a first-class teacher : great quickness of apprehension and unusual breadth of view. He saw into the lesser and intricate points of a subject, and his eye swept over the broad relation of its parts and divi- sions ; hence he gave clearness of detail and logical method in mass. When I first knew him at Princeton Theological Seminary he was noted for vivacity and humor. In his latter years a gleam of his old manner would occasionally flash out and remind me of his early manhood. Add to this his great geniality and unaf- fected goodness of heart which made him so popular among the students of Central University, and you will have some of the prime elements of a teacher." Resigning his Presidency in 18T8, he supplied for some time, during the absence of the pastor, Eev. T. H. Skinner, D.D., the pulpit of the Second Presbyterian church of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he fully sustained his already great reputation as a preacher. Indeed he so impressed himself upon a number of Christian gen- tlemen of that city that they induced him to attempt a novel en- terprise, to bring into contact with the masses his strong and attractive presentation of Gospel truth without interfering with the regular exercises of the churches. For this purpose the im- mense Music Hall was rented, and a service held every Sunday afternoon. It proved all they had hoped for. The attendance was seldom less than three thousand, and often reached five, gatliered from all churches and from all ranks in society, includ- ing multitudes not accustomed to attend any religious service. Here he found the grandest field for the exercise of his splendid powers. His noble intellectual face attracted every eye. He commanded perfect order and universal rapt attention. His strong, clear, melodious voice, always perfectly modulated, reached every ear and rung out with distinct enunciation, force- ful emphasis, and often with tremulous notes as he proclaimed BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. H tbe glorious Gospel of the blessed God. He made no failures, was always equal to himself, and was manifestly made " a pol- ished shaft in Jehovah's quiver," and doubtless pierced many a doubt-clad mind and many a sin-hardened heart. In 1881 he became the successor of the distinffuished Dr. Stuart Robinson as pastor of the Second Church in Louisville, Kentucky. It is needless to say that in this important charge he continued to exercise his extraordinary gifts and labors as Christ's minister for Christ's people and for the conversion of sinners. The following extract, taken from an address delivered at a con- gregational meeting by Col. Bennett H. Young, will best show the estimation in which he was held by this church : " The Southern pulpit, in the past thirty years, has produced many widely renowned theologians and preachers. Part are dead and some remain with us, but Dr. Pratt, in some respects, was surpassed by none. As a writer of sermons, in my opinion he had no equal in the American pulpit. There was a pathos, tenderness, eloquence, combined with a comprehension of man's spiritual and moral forces, which placed him in the very front rank of modern preachers. " In the elaboration of truth, as set forth in our standards ; in the application of doctrine to daily life and as a solace in human sorrow ; in the dignity and grandeur of the mental and spiritual powers of man, his sermons are a marvel, not only of oratorical finish, but of philosophical acumen and discrimination. His discourses on the value of human life in its relation to God, the resurrection, and man's destiny here and hereafter, are produc- tions which will do credit to any age and any man. " Confiding in his nature, tender and gentle in all his emotions, affectionate in disposition, firm in his Christian faith, with an unconditional consecration to the cause of Christ, he was a re- markable and unusual character, one the Church should reverence and remember, and one whom his friends will never forget. " I am aware that these are strong terms I have used in refer- ence to my departed friend, but he was worthy of all of them, and his life has been a blessing to the Church and a comfort and pleasure to those who knew his personal worth and his earnest, constant Christian testimony. " In a less restricted field than was given him he would have shone with increased brilliancy. He possessed the power of stir- 12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ring and developing the strongest and highest spiritual aspira- tions, and none ever heard his words who did not feel impressed with nobler ideas of God and truer and better conceptions of man's duties and responsibihties to his Creator and Redeemer. Wherever he preached, his pure gospel, his zealous, beautiful life, and his strong intellectual force will long be felt in the hearts and characters of his hearers. " Nor should his efforts be permitted to die. The thoughts of such a mind justify and demand preservation and pubhcation, and the force of his words will influence and direct a better life in those who may read, long after his name and his works are for- gotten." He supplied the Second Church in Memphis, Tennessee, for several months the last year of his life. In the eloquent words of Judge Heiskell we see the impression he made on this people : " My acquaintance with Dr. Pratt extended only through the few months he ministered to us last summer. In that brief period I learned to respect, to honor, and to love him. Hso man I «ver met impressed me more profoundly. I do not hesitate to say he was one of the most scholarly men I ever knew. While his sermons were masterful in substance, his terse and elegant style made them always charming. His diction was ornate, chaste, and wonderfully graceful. His sentences, burdened with logical reasoning and rich and helpful thought, flowed easily and felicitously. He never paused for a word, and always chose the one most suitable to express his meaning, so that the profundity and dignity of his utterances were made thoroughly interesting and enjoyable by the appropriate language in which he clothed them. He was a rhetorician, an orator, and, what seems almost a lost art, he was an admirable reader. But these accomplish- ments were but the trappings of the sincere faith and Cliristlike spirit that breathed in every line and word that he uttered. If his prayers were always eloquent, it was because they were the simple pleadings of the child of grace, kneeling at his Father's feet, beseeching His favor. His help, and His protecting care. His daily life was a living epistle, ' known and read of all men,' of the beauty, symmetry, and power of our holy religion. In- deed, he came as near the perfect minister as any one I ever knew. " With all this and through all, his deep humility and broad BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 Christian charity made him lovely and beloved by all. Such a man never dies. He only leaves us — to live. The good that he does lives after him and for ever." The Kev. M. H. Houston, D.D., our Secretary of Foreign Mis- sions, writes of him : " In the removal of Dr. Pratt from among us we have lost one of the noblest, most generous and interesting men I ever knew. It was always a pleasure and privilege to me to be with him : he was always kind, always faithful as a friend, always in- structive and stimulating, and I loved him. He was a prince among preachers and among men, and the whole Church must mourn his departure." Dr. K. P. Farris speaks of him " as one of his dearest friends, a man who honored me with his confidence, a man in whom I could confide, whose naturalness I admired, whose high attain- ments I recognized and respected, whose grand preaching I en- joyed and boasted of." The Rev. Dr. Basil Manly, of the Baptist Church, the friend of his youth, wi-ites of him : "In the year 1837, at the reorgan- ization of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, when my father became President of the University, the only personal re- quest he made of the Trustees was, to appoint the Rev. Horace S. Pratt, of Georgia, to be one of his colleagues. The intimacy and confidence already subsisting between them was only in- creased by their association in the work of the University. Their diverse characteristics and tendencies made each the complement of the other. It would sometimes be remarked, when Dr. Pratt had preached in the morning and Dr. Manly in the evening, that they had had first ' the feast of reason,' and then ' the flow of soul.' Boy as I was at the time of Professor H. S. Pratt's death, I was impressed by the fact that my father mourned over him as I do not remember his mourning over any similar bereave- ment ; and one of my most distinct recollections of those early days is the funeral sermon which he preached in honor of his friend in the old capitol at Tuscaloosa, with the characteristic text, 'Alas, my brother.' The friendship of the parents was naturally inherited by John and myself as boys. Together in our plays, in our studies, in our plans and hopes, even occupying for a time the same room in college, we grew up in the utmost intimacy, notwithstanding he was a year or two my junior. And 14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. even subsequently to college life we spent tlie greater part of our time in the Theological Seminary together in the venerable shades of Princeton. From the time of leaving Princeton our lives necessarily drifted somewhat apart. Both of us have been busy men, deeply absorbed in important duties, and having little leisure for seeking social enjoyment outside of the immediate sphere of our labors. He soon became an honored and success- ful teacher, and occupied for years, under my father's presidency, the chair of English Literature which his father had filled, re- newing and continuing the intimacy of those earlier years of which I have spoken. Subsequently, during the presidency of Dr. L. C. Garland, Professor Pratt continued to give his valued services to the University, and did as much as any man of his time to train the rising generation of Alabamians for meeting nobly the responsibilities of life. His impress is felt still on hundreds of students there. Of the latter periods of his life others can speak better and more appropriately than I. My memory clings to the picture of the genial, venturesome, affec- tionate boy, who was the most cherished friend of my boyhood's days, of the young man in college and seminary who shared and lightened my labors by his presence, and of the grand and impressive preacher, who thundered forth the terrors of God's law, or urged with eloquent persuasiveness the invitations and comforts of the Gospel ; who made us forget om*selves, forget Lim, forget all our surroundings, and realize only the presence and authority of Almighty God, whose messenger he was. With a voice of remarkable clearness and force, a countenance that blazed with emotion while speaking, a delivery in which art had succeeded in concealing art, and nature spoke unimpeded ; and above all, with a compactness and energy of thought, and a sacred fidelity to the Divnne Word, which commanded at once the intel- lects and the consciences of men, — he was emphatically and em- inently a Master of Assemblies, During the brief period of his afternoon services at the Music Hall in Cincinnati, the immense crowds which he attracted and held, and the profound im- pression produced, gave evidence of a power for popular effect which had hardly been suspected in the quiet and scholarly College Professor, I cannot but think it desirable that some of the choice discourses of such a preacher as he was should be pre- served in a permanent form, not only as a memorial of him most BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 16 dear and appropriate to preserve his memory among tlie friends that loved him, but ,as a means of extending and perpetuating his work, and of enlarging his influence, so that 'he, being dead, may yet speak.' " These are the testimonies of men competent to appreciate the force, truth, and originality of Dr. Pratt's character and preach- ing. Yet if all the bereaved whose sorrows he consoled ; if all the poor and humble ones, who helpless to explain the mystery of his power, were joyfully able to di-aw peace from his word ; if all the souls whose doubts he drove back forever into the night from which they had come, and all the hearts whose indifference he melted, were to send up their tribute, it would be weightier by far, even than that of these thoughtful analysts of the secret of his success. His pastorate at Louisville ended his regular work. His health gave way under his heavy pastoral duties. He went to Europe with the hope of restoration, but in 1883 he resigned this, his last charge. Yet even then he continued to preach whenever and wherever he had opportunity : sometimes for a few weeks, and sometimes for a few months at a time, for he was resolved to give his whole life to the cause of Christ, and to die in harness. He died at his home in Louisville, Kentucky, March 24, 1888. There was no gloom in his sick-room, and Ave could not believe that death was really coming. "When spoken to of dying, he said, " Why, I have no fear of death ; it has no terrors to me. I have fixed all that years ago, and if I had not, on this bed would be no place to do it." He talked of dying in the same natural way he would speak of any other act he expected to per- form. The evening before he died, in talking to a friend he said: It was such an inexpressible comfort to him now, when too weak to grasp any truth very strongly, to have these grand doctrines come unbidden to his mind. So long had his mind been stored with the consolations of Divine truth for the comfort- ing of other hearts that he now found them adequate for his own supply. Dr. Pratt was twice married. His first wife was Mary Grace Crabb, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She left two children — Grace Winthrop, now Mrs. Clay Stacker, of Clarksville, Tennes- see, and Edwin Alberti Pratt, of Louisville, Kentucky. His sec- ond wife was Mai-ia Lindsay Waddell, of Lexington, Vu-ginia. 16 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. She with two children, Harry Waddell and Nettie "Wood Pratt, survive him. Of four sisters and one brother, only one sister is now living — Mrs. James "W. Lapslej, of Alabama. Dr. Pratt was a man of marked characteristics, not always understood — and perhaps he did not care enough for that — but his intimate friends knew, appreciated, and loved him. He was a man of large and free-hearted benevolence. An instance de- serving record is that, after the emancipation of his slaves, he made generous provision for them, and some of them still enjoy that kindness, and will continue to do so while they live. All his fonner servants love and cherish him tenderly. In private life he presented the rare combination of a man full of common sense, eminently practical and systematic in all his business habits, and at the same time deeply absorbed in all the religious and literary work which engaged his thought and attention. He kept himself fully abreast of the times on all questions of interest before the public. With nothing of professional cant about him, he invited discussion on religious subjects with those who seldom met, and never sought the company of Christian j)eople. There are two particulars in which he was unlike many great preachers : first, as a Pastor he was a methodical and conscientious visitor of his flock ; and second, while his sermons were so grand and so grandly delivered, he by no means slighted the other pai'ts of the public worship, but filled them all with beauty and power. He was a dear lover of sacred music, and showed great taste in the selection for the service of song. His Scripture-reading was equal to an eloquent commentary. But the prayer surpassed all. It was more than a sermon, simple, humble, reverent, earnest, comprehensive of all classes and topics, yet never tedious, but always refreshing and helpful to devotion. These were never in his view the mere preparatory services to the sermon, l3ut were witli him the solemn worship of God. He heard himself, and he strove to make his neople hear, " the stately steppings of Jehovah " in His sanctuary. The sermons which follow give a true idea, not of his delivery, which cannot be reproduced, but of the substance of his preach- ing. The reader of these sermons who never heard him preach can never be Ijrought up to the vantage-ground on which they will read for whom every sentence will be informed and inter- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 preted by the memory of that matchless voice and irresistible delivery. He always preached the grand and profitable themes of the Gospel. This selection is made not to bring out his great- est efforts, but to present a comprehensive and systematic view of evangelical truth. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1888. CONTENTS. PAGE I._G-rvEN TO Christ, or Election 25 "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." — John vi. 37. II._God's Sovereignty 39 "The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice." — Psalm xcvii. 1. "The Lord reigneth ; let the people tremble." — Psalm xcix. 1. in. — Regeneration 50 " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be bom again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."— John iii. 3. rV.— Faith 57 "Precious faith."— 2 Peter i. 1. v.— Justification 65 " Being justified by faith, we have peace with God."— Rom. v. 1. VI.— Conviction 72 "I remembered God and was troubled." — Psalm Ixxvii. 3. VII.— Peace 82 "Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace." — Job xxii. 21. VIII.— Pardon 89 " For Thy name's sake, Lord, pardon mine iniquity ; for it is great."— Psalm xxv. 11. IX.— Look and Live 97 "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted Tip ; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."— John iii. 14, 15. (19) 20 CONTENTS. PAOE X.— Grace Eeigning 105 "For sin shall not have dommion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under Grace."— Eomans vi. 14. XI.— True Freedom 117 "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."— John viii. 36. Xn.— Light 131 " Ye are the light of the world."— Matthew v. 14. XIII.— Preparing an Ark 142 " By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house ; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." — Hebrews xi. 7. XIV.— The Sabbath 155 " The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sab- bath."— Mark ii. 27. XV.— What is Life ? 165 " Man shall not live by bread alone." — Matthew iv. 4. XVI.— Fragments 180 "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." —John vi. 12. XVII.— The Glory op God 189 "Whether therefore ye eat, or di-ink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."— 1 Corinthians x. 31. XVIII.— The World and the Soul 201 " What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his ovm soul ? or what shall a man give in ex- change for his soul ? "—Mark viii. 36, 37. XIX.- Special Providence 210 "And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness." — 1 Kings xxii. 34. XX.— Influence 223 "And that man perished not alone in his iniquity." — ^Joshua xxii. 20. CONTENTS. 21 XXI.— Stewardship (A New- Year's Sermon) 238 " Give an account of thy stewardship."— Luke xvi. 2. XXII.— Consolation 257 "And the cup was found in Benjamin's sack."— Gen. xliv. 12. XXIII. — Resurrection 265 " The Power of His Resurrection."— Philippians iii. 10. XXIV.— Heaven 279 ' ' In my Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."— John xiv. 2. Prayers. 296 "MOREOVER, WHOM HE DID PREDESTINATE, THEM HE ALSO CALLED : AND WHOM HE CALLED, THEM HE ALSO JUSTIFIED : AND WHOM HE JUSTIFIED, THEM HE ALSO GLORIFIED."— Rom. vm. 30. (23) I. GIYE:N^ to CHRIST. " All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." — John vi. 37. It is a very general, but erroneous, belief that Calvinists get all their "bard" theology from the Apostle Paul. I would, there- fore, have you observe that the text is the language of our Lord himself. In it. He mentions a class of persons who seem to enlist His special affection. They are those whom God the Father had given Him. He mentions them again in the thirty-ninth verse of this chapter. " And this is the Father's will, which hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." And, in the seventeenth chapter of this same Gospel, He refers to this same class five times, in the following words : " That He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him "; " I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest me out of the world ; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me ; I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given me "; " Those that Thou gavest me I have kept "; " Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am." And, in the tenth chapter of this same Gospel : " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand ; my Father which gave them me is greater than all." Now, here is a most interesting class of persons of whom our Lord is speaking. Let us see what can be said about this class on the authority of Christ himseK. (25) 26 GIVEN TO CHRIST. 1. All that the Father giveth Him shall come to Him ; i. e., shall have faith in Him; for this is what coming to Christ means. 2. Of all these, He should lose none, but would raise them up at the last day. 3. He would give eternal life to as many as the Father had given Him. 4. He would manifest the Father's name to them, and they should keep His "Word. 5. They alone were the objects of His prayer to the Father. He expressly excludes the rest of the world. " I pray not for the world, but for themP 6. They are " kept," so that none of them is lost. Y. It was the will of Christ that they should be forever with Him to behold His glory. 8. As His sheep. He knew each individual of the flock ; they hear His voice, and they follow Him, and they are safe in Bis care, so that no man can pluck them out of His hands. Thus, we see, in regard to this interesting class of men whom Christ describes as given to Him, that they have faith in HIbi ; that they follow and obey Him ; that they are secure in the pos- session of eternal life ; that they will be raised in a glorious xh^ urrection at the last day ; and that they will be forever with Christ in heaven to see His glory. Now, it is perfectly clear that all this can be said only of those who are saved through the atonement of Christ. These things cannot be said of any men except those who, having believed on the Lord Jesus Chi'ist, have eternal life. It follows, then, inevitably, that all those who are saved were, in some sense, given to Christ by God the Father. The only point that I insist on here is, that the description of those given to Him by the Father corresponds in every particular with what the Scriptures say in regard to those who are finally saved. The statement, you see, does not touch the question whether few, or many, or all are saved. It only asserts that all who are saved are designated by Christ as given to Ilim hy God the Father. If all men are at last saved, as the Universalist maintains, then all men were given to Christ. If only a portion GIVEN TO CHRIST. 27 of the race is saved, then that portion was, in some sense, given to Christ. The two classes, " the saved " and " the given to Christ^'' are exactly coterminous and identical, like two circles of the same diameter put one above the other. Whoever belongs to the one class belongs to the other. Whoever is excluded from the one class is excluded from the other. Now, in regard to this class of persons, who may be indiffer- ently designated as " the saved " or as " the given to Christ,^^ there are some things that are self-evident. 1. If they were given to Christ, it must have been as individ- uals that they were thus given, and not as a class. As men are not saved in masses as such, neither could they have been given to Christ in an indistinguishable mass. They nmst have been given to Him as individuals. This is made evident by the fact that He says : "Z know my sheep.'''' The figure is drawn from pastoral life. In Palestine, the shepherd was identified with his sheep far more than is the case in this country. He knew all his sheep by sight, and each sheep had a name ; and when he called them by name, they knew him and recognized his voice. Now, although the shepherds of our country know their sheep by sight, and say there is as much difference in the faces of sheep as of men, they have not, as a rule, attained the art of teaching their sheep to recognize their names. But it is not so in the East. There the shepherds can call any particular sheep by name, and it will leave its pasturage and its companions and come to him. Hence, our Lord refers to a well-known fact when He says : " The sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them out." Then, immediately afterward, He says : " I am the good Shej)herd and know my sheep, and am known of mine,^^ implying that He knows aU those whom the Father hath given Him hy their names. 2. But, if all those whom the Father gave Him were given to Him hy name, then it follows, of necessity, that this class must consist of a definite number. To conceive of an indefinite num- ber of names is an absurdity. The way in which we arrive at an enumeration of the men in an army, or in a congregation, or in 28 GIVEN TO CHRIST. a conntry, when the census is taken, is by setting down their names. As soon as the names were enrolled, we can fix the number exactly ; we know precisely how many are in the list. This is perfectly clear, so that I need not dwell on it a moment. 3. Another thing seems to follow just here. If all men had been given to Christ by the Father, such careful specification of them by name would not have been necessary. If the whole race, without exception, had been included in the gift, it would have been enough to designate them simply by the generic title of m€ii. But our Lord distinctly says that all men were not thus included in the paternal gift, for He says to the Jews : " Ye 'be- lieve not, because ye are not of my sheep^ and, in another place, He says : " I pray not for the world, but for them wliich Thou hast given me," clearly showing that all men were not included in this gift ; and, in another place, still more distinctly. He des- ignates them as ''^the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world^'' i. e., they were separated from the mass of mankind. Now, from the fact that those given to Christ out of the world are known by name, it follows, of necessity, that they must have been selected out of the mass of mankind. The only way in which it was possible to give to Him a definite number of Individuals, whose names were known, was to call their names, one by one. And this implies a selection — a passing by of others whose names were equally known to God, but whom He did not choose to give His Son from out of the world. Now, everything that I have said thus far is based directly on the very language of Christ himself. Let us, before we go a step farther, see what we have established. (1.) That Christ speaks of a body of men given Him by the Father, selected from out of the mass of men whom He calls " the world?'' (2.) That this body of men given to Christ is identical with those wlio are saved, inasmuch as the description given of them corresponds exactly with that elsewhere given of those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. (3.) That they were given to Christ as individuals, and not as a class. GIVEN TO CHRIST. 29 (4.) That they were given to Him hy name, and that He knows the name of each. (5.) That the number of them mnst be definite. It is impossible to deny any one of these propositions if all that Christ says about those " given to Him by the Father " is kept in mind. I. And now the question arises, When were these men given hy the Father to the Son ? This is to be answered by referring to another name which our Lord applies to this class of men. "We have seen that they are composed of those whom God selected from among the mass of mankind. I^ow our Lord calls this class of men His " electP He speaks of the " elect whom God hath chosen." As there can be no other class of men in whom God delights except those whom He hath given to His Son, it is cleai* that the " elect whom He hath chosen " must be the very same men whom He hath given to Christ, l^o amount of ingenuity in the torturing of Scripture to suit a purpose can evade the conclusion that the " elect " of whom our Lord often makes mention are the same men selected by name and given to Him by the Fatlier as " His sheep.'''' The elect, according to our Lord, are those for whose sake the days of trouble and darkness at the end of the world are to be shortened ; they are those whom, of all mankind, it will be impossible for false christs and false prophets to deceive ; they are those whom the angels are to gather together from the four winds and from the uttermost part of the earth at the day of judgment. It is clear, then, that they are the very same men whom God selected out of mankind to give to His Son. The question, when they were given to Him, is to be answered then by answering this question, "When were they selected or chosen ? " This question the other Scriptures answer in a hun- dred different forms. The elect were selected " before the foun- dation of the world "; i. e., from all eternity. Paul tells us all we can desire to know on this subject. He says, Eph. i. 4, that they were " chosen in Him before the foundation of the world "; and in another place he speaks of them as those whom God hath 30 GIVEN TO CHRIST. " chosen from the leginningP And the Apostle John, in the Revelation, speaks of those whose "names are written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world" (Rev. xvii. 8). From these Scriptures we learn definitely that those whom the Father gave the Son were selected from among men before the foundation of the world. If they were selected from among men from all eternity in order to he given to Him, they were given to Him then., and promised as His inheritance then, hemg then mentioned hy name. II. But God knew that these men, chosen out of the world, would be sinners exactly like those from among whom they were selected. On what ground, then, could a God of inflexible justice elect them to life and glory % The answer to this question brings to view what is known as the " Covenant of Redeimption." Ac- cording to this covenant, entered into between God the Father and God the Son, in the counsels of eternity, Christ engaged to take the place of all God's elect, and fulfil for them obedience to the law they had broken, and suffer for them the penalty which they had incurred. He becomes the Shepherd of His .■flock through an express agreement made between Him and the Father, by which, as a good Shepherd, He " lays down His life for His sheep." And now you will be able to understand that passage in the thirteenth of Hebrews : " Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep., through the hlood of the everlasting cove- nant.''^ He became the Shepherd of the flock in virtue of a covenant ; and this covenant was sealed with blood ; and although His blood was not yet actually shed, yet its virtue was already recognized by God the Father; for His engagement to shed His blood in the fullness of time was regarded by the Father the same as its actual shedding, and hence He is called a " Lamb slain from tlie foundation of the world." The purpose of election is very comprehensive. " It was the purpose of God to bring His people to holiness, to sonship, and to eternal glory. But He never intended to do this irrespective GIVEN TO CHRIST. Ql of Christ. On the contrary, it "was His purpose, as revealed in Scripture, to briug His people to their exalted privileges through a Redeemer. It was in Christ as their head and representative they were chosen to eternal life ; and, therefore, in virtue of what He covenanted to do in their behalf. There is, therefore, a federal union between Christ and His people — i. e., a union aris- ing out of His covenant with the Father by which they become His sheep. His possession — which is antecedent to their actual union with Him, and which is the source of the actual union. God gave a people to His Son in this Covenant of Eedemption. Those included in that covenant, and because they are included in it — in other words, because they are in Christ, as their head and representative — receive in time all the benefits of redemp- tion. Then* subsequent voluntary union with Christ hj faith is not the ground of their federal union with Him, but, on the con- trary, their federal union is the ground of their voluntary union. It is, therefore, in Christ / i. e., as united to Him in the Cove- nant of Redemption that the people of God are elected to eternal life and to all the blessings therewith connected. Much in this same sense the Jews are said to have been chosen in Abraham. Their relation to Abraham and to God's covenant with him were the ground and reason of all the peculiar blessings they enjoyed. So their covenant union with Christ is the ground of all the ben- efits which the people of God possess or hope for. They loere chosen in Christ as the Jews were chosen in AhrahamP — (Hodge.) Let us stop just here and recapitulate the propositions estab- lished, to wit : That there is a definite number of men, whose names have been written in the Lamb's Book of Life from the foundation of the world, whom God the Father gave to His Son, to constitute His flock, in an everlasting covenant, by the terms of which Christ engaged to take their place, and by the shedding of His blood redeem them from the punishment due to their sins ; and by thus taking their place He became their representative and federal head. As their representative. He receives promises for them, even the promise of eternal life, and claims for them, as 32 GIVEN TO CHRIST. rightfully belonging to Him, all the blessings promised in His Covenant with tlie Father. III. The question now arises, and it is perfectly pertinent: "Why should God the Father elect some of om* race to these un- speakable blessings, and pass others by? Why did He write certain names in the Lamb's Book of Life from the foundation of the world ? Why did He leave out of the list of the myriads who are saved, the names of thousands who are lost ? Why did He choose some and not all ? There can be no doubt of the fact that He did do it ; now why ? Li reply to this question, I remark that we are to look for the reason, why God does one thing rather than another, to the same source of information from which we learn that He does it at all. In other words, there is no room for speculation on a subject which is a matter of pure revelation. God tells us why He did this thing of which we are speaking ; He elected some and passed others by, " according to the good pleasure of His will." lie did it simple/ because lie chose to do it, and He does not see fit in His Word to give any other reason. Men have undertaken to vindicate the justice of God in the purpose of election on philo- sophical grounds. God himself does not seek thus to vindicate His own character. He claims the right of selection, and that without rendering any other reason than this: ^^ I will have 'mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have comjpassion on whom I will have compassionP As in the case of Esau and Jacob, before either was born, or had done any good or evil, God said : " Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated "; " That the purpose of God according to elec- tion might stand, not of works, but of him that ealleth "; just so in the case of those given to Christ, God prefers one to another, without any reference to the character which they will have after they are born. But some man will say, " This is a frightful doctrine." That depends upon circumstances. It is not frightful to the true peo- ple of God.* But no matter how the doctrine may be regarded * On the train from Cincinnati to Lexington, an old man took his seat be- GIVEN TO CHRIST. 33 by you, here it is in the Bible. And the true Church of Christ in all ages has held this doctrine as one of the most precious in the Word of God. I shall not quote from our standard authors what they say on this subject, because you expect to find Presby- terian writers speaking strongly upon it ; I shall simply quote from the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, just to show you what those who are usually supposed to hold all strong doctrine in its mildest form say in regard to election : " Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) He hath constantly decreed by His counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting sal- vation as vessels made to honor." This is the statement of the doctrine. Now for the comment upon it. " As the godly con- sideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is f»ill of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly mem- bers, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it does greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it does fervently kindle their love toward God : So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them cither into desperation, or into wretchedness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation." (Art. xvii.) lY. And now the questions which have given a great many very serious concern are : If the number of elect is fixed and definite ; if their very names have been recorded in a book side me. In the course of a long conversation he said : " Sir, if the doctrine- of Election is eliminated from the Bible, you might as well blot out all Scrip- ture." He was unknown to me, nor did he know who I was. I afterward learned from him that he was a preacher in the Christian (Campbellite)- Church. 34 GIVEN TO CHRIST. opened before the foundation of the world, how am I to know whether my name is among the number ? if it should happen not to be included among them, what is the use of my trying to secure salvation ? and if it is among them, why should I give myself any uneasiness on the subject ? To this I answer that the whole Hst of the elect is among " the secret things that belong unto the Lord our God." It is none of your concern who constitute the whole body of those given to Christ. " But those things which are revealed concerning them do belong to you and to your chil- dren forever." Now, the text reveals concerning the elect the only thing important for you to know. This is it, ^^All that the Father hath given me shall come to meP To come to Christ is only another form of statement for faith in Christ. This is a perfectly clear matter of revelation — that the moment a man believes in Christ, that very moment it is proved, so far as he is concerned, that he is one of the elect. If you want to settle the question definitely * and prove that you are one of the elect, all you have to do is to accept Christ as your Saviour. Just come to Jlim., and the question of your being among the number of those " given to Him " is forever at rest. Here, you see, is the visible mark which Christ has fixed upon all who are chosen in Him ; they come to Ilim ; and He adds the assurance, " Him tliat com- eth to Me (the Greek is more encouraging than the English; '■'•Ilim who is coming " — Him who is on his way to me), I will in no wise cast out." That is to say, if you ever come to Christ, you are secure in His hands ; for your coming only once proves that you are among the number given to Him, and He says : " Of all those that Thou hast given me I have lost noneP f Mark •t. e.. If you want to "make your calling and election sure "(2 Peter i. 10). On this passage Alford makes the following comment : " Both calling and election, in as far as we look on tliem from the lower side, not able to penetrate into the counsels of God, are insecure unless estab- lished by holiness of life. In Ilis foreknowledge and purpose there is no in- security, no uncertainty ; but in our vision and apprehension of them as they exist in and for us, much, until they are made secure in the way here pointed out; for doing these things, 'if ye do these things, ye shall never fall (stumble).'" It is not to the real security of the elect that Peter has refer- ence, but to their own assurance of security. t "None of them is lost, but the son of perdition/' (John xvii. 12). The GIVEN TO CHRIST. 35 the form of statement. He does not say, Ifone are lost, though this is true, and He does say this in another place ; but, " / have lost none." As if He had said : " Their being kept in my hands is my work now, after they come to me. I hold them safe in my Almighty grasp. Mine they are, I hold them fast, and no man is able to pluck them out of my hands." We may without irrev- erence fancy the great Redeemer standing with the Book of Life in His hands, in which the names of those given Him have been written ; and, as one after another emerges from the mass of un- believers and professes faith in Him, we may imagine Him, as it were, checking off their names, and to the designation " elect of God," adding His " own new name," " sa/oed and redeemed hy the Mood of my everlasting covenant." So that the record will now stand, not only " elect of God," but '''•justified hy faith," " to whom there is now no condem/nation." Y. Now you are prepared to see how this doctrine is adapted and intended by God to console His people in their hours of spiritual darkness and despondency ; how in the language of the Episcopal symbol, which I have quoted, it is " full of sweet, mistake which Arminians make in regard to this passage consists in suppos- ing that this part of the verse contains an exception to what is declared in the words coming immediately before. A reference to the original will at once show their error. If " but " meant except, the Greek would read plen tou Jiuiou, instead of " ei me ho huios." Compare with this passage Luke iv. 25 : " Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, but unto none of them was Elias sent save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow." Again, verse 27 : " Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus, the prophet ; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian." Again, Revelation xxi. 27 : " There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatso- ever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie ; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of Life." In each of these texts, the latter clause is not an exception to what is asserted in the former, but asserts a different fact. The following is plainly their meaning : " Many widows were in Israel in the daj'^s of Elias, but unto none of them was Elias sent ; but (he was sent) to Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow." " Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus, the prophet ; and none of them was cleansed, but Naaman the Syrian " (was cleansed). " There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, etc., but they (shall enter in) which are written in the Lamb's book of Life." 36 GIVEN TO CHRIST. pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons." For it is often the case that the true believer walks in great darkness. Sometimes such is the state of his health that he is overwhelmed with religious despondency ; or sometimes he is surprised into sin by Satan's getting the advantage of him ; and, judging of his state of grace by his own feelings, he fears that he is no child of God. "Well, he can look back and remember that once in his life he did really and truly come to Christ. He can have no doubt about that fact in his ex])erience ; he knows as well as he can know anything that once he did have real communion with his Redeemer. But now all is changed. He walks in darkness and Bees no light. At such a time in his experience is it not a blessed thing to know that, although his feelings have changed, so that he has no sensible experience of divine love, Christ's love to him is unchangeable ? to know that, having once really come to Christ, he is surely among the number whom He will never cast out ? that " having loved His own which were in the world He loves them unto the end " ? to be persuaded that " neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate him from " Christ's love for him ? This is the triumphant reply which he can make to Satan when he would tempt him to despair. This is the rejoinder he can make to his own accusing conscience. With the assurance that no one can " lay anything to the charge of God's elect " he can hurl defiance at hell and devils and all his accusers. God has justified him, and He who alone has the right to condemn him has died for him, and is at the right hand of God making present intercession for him. It is said by some that the preaching of this doctrine will en- courage men to sin, and lead to licentiousness. To this I have two answers to give, either of which by itself ought to be suffi- cient. First : Christ was not afraid of this result when He taught this doctrine. Second: I appeal to history. Do the men and the churches that hold this doctrine exhibit any laxity in their lives i "Was GIVEN TO CHRIST. 37 Paul a licentious, careless Christian ? was Luther ? was Calvin ? was the saintly Toplady, who wrote the hymn, " Rock of Ages, cleft for me " ? was John Knox ? or Bunyan ? or Chalmers ? or Hall ? Or the men who heard their preaching and believed their doc- trines — were they men who continued in sin that grace might abound ? Is Calvinistic Scotland — where the covenant of grace and the eternal election of God's people are the key-notes to all the theology they learn and the preaching they hear — is Calvin- istio Scotland inhabited by a people who are distinguished by laxity of morals and looseness of life ? Oh, no ! It is too late in the history of the world to say that this doctrine leads to licen- tiousness ; for wherever it has been enshrined in the heart of a people's piety, there you find the most moral, grave and pious people on earth. Why, what is it that has impressed upon the people of the Valley of Virginia characteristics, which make them a people peculiar for their hardy virtues, their indomitable courage, their purity of morals, their integrity of character? How are we to account for this homogeneousness in virtue f Partly by the fact that this valley was peopled so generally by a race of men who hold in its entireness the great and impregnable system of doctrine, for which their ancestors, the " Men of the Covenant," shed their blood at BothweU Bridge. Were the men with whom Stonewall Jackson * prayed before going into battle, the men of whom Jackson was the type and leader, the " patient infantry," behind whom Bee commanded his fleeing battalions to rally — were they men of dissolute or immoral lives ? " Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." My brethren, when these great doctrines shall lose their hold on the heart of the Presbyterian people of this country, you may write " Icha- bod " on their banners, for their glory will have departed. But this doctrine is not only a source of great peace and com- fort to the believer in his hours of spiritual darkness and deser- tion ; it is a panacea for all the ills of life. For it is a part of the doctrine that "all things work together for the good of those" who are the elect of God. It banishes the word calamity * This sermon was preached to the church in Lexington, Virginia, in which Stonewall Jackson had been an elder. 38 GIVEN TO CHRIST. from their vocabulary. Notliing can be to them a disaster. The fire, the storm, the earthquake, the pestilence, and the famine ; war, poverty, sickness, and death ; the loss of friends, the de- struction of property, although to the eye of sense they may seem evils, can be to them productive only of good. "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." Nothing can really harm them. All holy angels are commissioned to be their ministering spirits : all devils are commanded, " Touch not mine anointed and do them no harm." All things are theirs ; the world, life, death, things present and things to come ; all are theirs, because they are Christ's and Christ is God's. Do you not see that the man who holds this truth in his heart is really superior to all the ills of life ? How is it possible to disturb the peace of that man who knows upon the authority of God that all the events of his life are ordered for his good, and that he himself is safe in the arms of Jesus ? How is it possible to make that man unhappy who persists in construing every dispensation of Providence as an evi- dence of the divine favor ? How can you ruffle the repose of a man whose faith is a talisman by which he transmutes everything into a blessing bestowed by paternal love ? Oh ! whatever else you relinquish, never give up your faith in this great doctrine which you receive direct from the Bible, and which your ancestors cherished with passionate devotion. Think of the loving-kind- ness of your God now in the midst of His temple. " Walk about Zion, and go round about her, tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks ; consider her palaces ; that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God forever and ever : He will be our guide even unto death." IL GOD'S SOYEREIGNTT. " The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice."— Ps. xcvii. 1. "The Lord reigneth ; let the people tremble."— Ps. xcix. 1. These two texts teach the same doctrine ; but from the doc- trine two opposite lessons are derived, — a fact which illustrates the principle that the same truth when looked at from different points of view, is adapted to produce very different effects in the mind of the beholder. The doctrine of these texts is the Sovereignty of God. In view of this Sovereignty the earth is called to rejoice and to fear. " The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice "; " let the people tremble." I shall first explain the doctrine, and then show why it may be the occasion of joy and of fear. " The Lord reigneth " is an ascription of unlimited dominion to Jehovah. If there were one spot in the vast universe which is free from His control ; if there were but one atom floating in the far-off realms of space which is not pervaded by His presence and moved by His finger, it would be impossible to say with truth, " The Lord reigneth." This doctrine of absolute and uni- versal dominion of God is affirmed more explicitly in other pas- sages, which entering into minuter detail describe the empire of God as extending through every portion of the universe. I. What is the nature of this dominion ? Is it simply a physical control ? That is, does God, in the simple exercise of His omnip- otence, work His will only in things He has made ? Is it gen. eral, or is it also special ? Does it extend to thoughts as well as (39; . 40 GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. to things ? Does it embrace men and angels, as well as worlds and sidereal systems ? Is it a dominion of right only, or is it also a dominion of power ? That is, has God only a moral right to govern His universe? or does He invariably secure the accom- phshment of His will ? When all these questions come to be answered by different schools of theology, you will find some disposed to deny some of the logical consequences of the general doctrine that the Lord reigneth. Without mentioning any of the erroneous views which men have advocated in reply to these and similar questions, I proceed to unfold the true Scriptm-al doctrine in regard to the Sovereign- ty of God. Two elements are contained in the Sovereignty of God : un- limited ])ower and absolute authority. The power of God is called His omnij)otence — His strength to accomplish any of His purposes. His sovereignty includes not only this, but also Plis moral right to exercise His power. The first is, so to speak. His physical power ; the second is His moral power or authority. The distinction is intelligible, because it is one constantly recognized in human relationships between the governor and the governed. Now, as it is essential to the stability of every human government that power and authority shall be vested in the same person in order to constitute him as a sovereign ; so we must concede to God infinite power and abso- lute moral right, in order to conceive of Him as the sovereign of the universe. If power without right rules over a kingdom, we call it usurpation. If legitimate authority without power to en- force its claims undertakes to rule a kingdom, anarchy must fol- low. In the dominion of God, in which there can be neither usurpation nor anarchy, He sits sovereign in virtue of infinite power and absolute authority concentred in Him. A third element in the Sovereignty of God is evolved in answer to the question, " According to what law does God exer- cise His power and authority?" If God is controlled in the exercise of His power by any considerations that lie outside of Himself, the Psalmist could never have said : " The Lord reign- GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. 41 etb." Kow the Apostle Paul in so many words affirms that God works " all things after the counsel of His own will "; i. e., that He is self-determined. More specifically, the ioo7'h of creation is ascribed to His sov- ereign pleasure. " Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasm-e they are and were created." "The Lord made all things for Himself." So also the work of redemption and the publication of the Gospel into the world, are ascribed to the same motive ; as the Apostle tells us in the Epistle to the Ephesians : " Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will "; " having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself." He created the world just because He chose to create it ; He preserves it just because He chooses to preserve it ; and He re- deems His people just because He chooses to redeem them. " For of Him, and by Him, and through Him are all things." The Sovereignty of God, then, consists in His infinite power and right to execute a will determined solely by His good pleasure. II. "Who and what are the subjects of God's dominion ? The Scriptures say " all things." Does this mean only the material universe, or does it include rational creatures ? The Scriptures are full of assertions of God's control as reaching to all the creatures He has made. If this is so, of course His dominion extends over the whole race of men, over all angels and over all worlds. ]^ow, while it is easy enough to believe that all physical nature is under His supreme control, so that He orders the movements of every atom and the revolution of every orb, some minds find it very hard to understand His sovereignty in reference to man. The difficulty may be stated thus. Inanimate nature is pass- ive, incapable of resisting the plastic hand of its maker. But in creating man, God made a being endowed with a free will of his own ; and when this free being fell from his first estate, in which his will was always coincident with the Divine mil, he, retaining 42 GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. his freedom of -will, instead of delighting to do the will of God, now deUghts in frustrating it and refusing to obey it. Thus it would seem that by endowing man with free agency, God has conferred upon the creature the power of limiting His absolute sovereignty — first, by doing what is contrary to His will ; and secondly, by refusing to do what He enjoins. If it is true that men in the exercise of their free agency can frustrate the Divine will, then whatever may be God's aid/ioi'ity, He cannot secure the accomplishment of all His will. He has made a machine that has gotten away from Him so that He cannot control it. Now, although this is a very difiicult problem, one that has never been solved, I ask your attention to the following consider- ations, which, although they do not solve the problem, may lead you to believe the doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty over the free wills of His creatures. 1. If you deny this doctrine, you are compelled to deny the explicit statements of God's Word. " He turneth the king's heart as the rivers of water are turned." " It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His own good pleasiu-e." 2. To deny the free agency of man is equally opposed to Scripture and to the consciousness of the whole human race. No amount of argmnent to the contrary could convince any human being that in all his conduct he does not act freely. 3. But why should men believe the latter proposition and reject the former ? When both truths are taught in the Word of God, and stand on the same authority, why not receive them both as true ? The doubter is ready with the answer. He cannot see how these propositions can be made to agree with each other. I have somewhere read that among the many wonderful en- dowments of Napoleon Bonaparte, he possessed an extraordinary power of vision, so that he could discern objects that were visible to ordinary eyes only with the aid of the telescope. On one occasion, while discussing with his marshals the plan of a cam- paign from which he expected most brilliant results, they con- fessed tlicmselvcs unable to see how his plans could be executed. He stepped to the window, and pointing to the planet Jupiter, he GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. 43 said, " Do you see the four satellites of that planet ? " " No," they replied. " But," said he, " I see them," Thus it is with us short-sighted men. God reveals truths in His Word which we find it hard to reconcile; and in opposition to the clearest teachings of His Word, we dare to doubt, because we, the pigmy insects of a moment, cannot see how they can be made to har- monize. It may be our duty to believe some things that we can- not see. Since God has said so, it is one's duty to believe that He is a Sovereign and man a free agent, although we cannot see how these things consist with each other. His thoughts are not as our thoughts. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts. III. The Sovereignty of God being clearly taught in Scripture, the question is pertinent. How does God manifest or exhibit it ? I answer — 1. By the giving of a Law, God claims to be a great king : and by giving the law to all His creatures without any exception, He proclaims Himself a universal King — King of kings. 2. The arbitrary character of some of God's laws is a claim of sovereign authority. Some of God's laws are founded in the nature of things ; such, for example, as the obligation to love Him and to worship Him, and to love our fellow-men and to do them no harm ; but there are others which have no such natural congruity, and are founded on no other ground than that so He wills it. The prohibition to Adam to eat of the fruit of a certain tree, the law of the Sabbath, the Jewish ceremonial law, were arbitrary in their nature, and were striking exhibitions of God's sovereignty. 3. The abrogation of some of the laws He has given ; e. g., the revoking of the ceremonial law, or the change in the method of His dealing with mankind by the substitution of the Covenant of Grace for the Covenant of Works, is one of the highest dis- plays of His Sovereignty. 4. God manifests His Sovereignty by punishing every trans- gression of His law. In human governments some criminals escape punishment. This is a sign of a weak government. But 44 GOD 'S SO VEREIGNTY. in the Divine government all sin is pimisbed ; and this proves it to be infinite and absolnte. 5. God manifests His Sovereignty in His Providential govern- ment of men. AVhy does He make one rich and another poor ; one robust, another invalid ; one white, another black ; one free and another a slave ; one vn&e. and another foolish ; one an Amer- ican and another a Hottentot ? Why does He give you the Gos- pel and withhold it from the Bushmen 1 Are you any better by nature than the uncivilized heathen ? "Why then ? Simply be- cause He is a Sovereign and does whatsoever He chooses. All the inequalities among men and among nations, all calamities and all prospo-ity, all promotion and all dishonor, all the vicissitudes of human life, must be referred to the " good pleasure " of God, and are exhibitions of His Sovereignty. 6. The Sovereignty of God was most conspicuously displayed in His sending His Son into the world for the salvation of sinners. Kobody will dare affirm that God was compelled to do this. He might, if He had chosen, have left us to perish in om* sins. Or if we suppose that something in the character of God or in the claims of the Divine glory made it necessary for Him to make Bome illustrious display to the intelligent universe of His mercy, •why did He select fallen men instead of fallen angels as the objects of His mercy ? Herein was a striking exhibition of His sovereign good pleasure. T. The Sovereignty of God is manifested in the fact that only some men are chosen to be saved in Christ, while others are suf- fered to perish. This predestination of some men to eternal life is the most distinguished manifestation of the Sovereignty of God. Just here I fancy I hear an objector lift up his voice in protest. He says, " I do not deny the general doctrine of God's Sovereignty ; but I must dissent from this particular aspect in which you now present it." In short, he holds to God's Sover- eignty in everything but the matter of man's salvation. He can- not see how sovereignty in election can be reconciled with God's impartiality. Neither do we. I agree with him at once. I admit that for God to choose from among guilty beings, all equally ill- deserving, some to everlasting life, while He passes others by, is a GOD 'S SO VEREIGNTY. 45 striking exhibition of partiality ; and I claim for God, as sov- ereign, the right to l)e partial. " But," says the objector, con- sulting the dictionary, " partiality is a preference springing from the will and affections rather than from a sense oi justice.''^ Pre- , cisely so. The election of God's people is an act of preference springing from His own will and from His own good pleasm'e, without any reference to the claims of justice, which concludes all alike under condemnation. " But then," says the objector, " this discrimination is unjust." To this I reply, It would be unjust in a judge, but not in a sovereign. A judge could not condemn one criminal while he suffered another equally guilty to escape. But this very thing a sovereign may do, and does, with- out being called in question. And so may God, the great Sover- eign, choose some whom He intends to save, while He leaves others to their just condemnation. " But then," says the ob- jector, " the ends of justice are defeated if only one offender goes free." True, the ends of justice would be defeated if any solitary transgression of the law of God goes unpunished. How, then, does God vindicate His justice, while He thus exercises His sovereignty ? I answer. By providing an atonement, a sacri- fice, a fulfiller of the law, both as to its precepts and penalty, to stand in place of His elect ones, in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. When God as Sovereign elected some unto life. He did not forget His character as judge ; the solemn demands of justice were too sacred for even Him, the Sovereign, to set the law aside, (as is done in every act of executive clemency among men) ; He still required that the penalty of His law should be paid, if not by the guilty themselves, in the person of His own dear Son. And thus the Sovereignty of God is further illustrated by His setting aside the old covenant of works, the terms of which were, " Do this and live," and putting in its stead the cov- enant of grace, the terms of which are, " Believe on Christ and live." Thus, you see, God, as Sovereign, chooses from among guilty men some whom He has determined to save ; as Sovereign, changes the covenant of works for a covenant of grace, (by which arrangement alone the salvation of any can be made possible), in 46 GOD 'S SO VEREIGNTY. order that He may save His elect ones : as Sovereign, accepts the work of Christ in their behalf in place of their obedience and punishment; and then, as Judffe, justifies all who believe in Jesus ;— thus showing to all men and all angels and all devils how God the Judge may be just and yet a justifier of the ungodly. And now, " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ? " God has justified them. " Who is he that condemneth ? " But the objector answers, " There is no dispute between us as to the ground of sinners' justification ; but we differ as to the ground of God's election of the sinner to justification." The objector is bound to admit that the Scriptures speak of an election ; but he says God elects men because He foresees that some will believe on Christ and become holy, while others will reject Christ and remain im- penitent. This is a very plausible and very intelhgible explana- tion of the matter ; but it is liable to the fatal objection that there is not one line of Scripture to support it, and numberless Scrip- tures that deny it. The Scriptures have a great deal to say about faith as the result of election ; of holiness as the consequence of election ; but never in a single instance of the relation as re- versed. The same thing cannot be the cause and the effect of some other thing. Faith and holiness cannot be the foreseen cause of our election by God and the result of that election. The one surely must precede the other. And when the Scriptures say, "According as He hath chosen us in Christ before the foun- dation of the world in order that we should be holy," they can- not mean that He has chosen us because lie foresaw that we would be holy. If this was what the Apostle meant, why did he not say so? Why does he everywhere say just the opposite? Why does he say, " hath predestinated us that we should be holy," " that we should be conformed to the image of His Son," " that we should be to the praise of His glory" ? Why does he, guarding against this very error, say, " not of works, lest any man should boast," " that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth " ? What does the Apostle mean when he says, " Whom He did foreknow. He also did predestinate to he conformed to the image of His Son "; " Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called, and GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. 47 whom He ca]led, them He also justified ; and whom He justified, them He also glorified " ? Is the daylight the cause of the sun ? or is the sun the cause of daylight ? Now faith and holiness are the result of election, just as day is the result of the rising sun. The objector now shifts his ground and says : " But faith and good works are the conditions of salvation, and God certainly saves some and condemns others, because some beheve and others do not." To this I reply, True, but why do some believe and others reject Christ ? He will reply : " Because God not only gives the means of grace, but accompanies them by the efficiency of His Spirit." I press the question : " But why does He give the influences of His Spirit to some and not to all ? " He will reply : " Because He has decreed by grace to prepare men for glory." But why decree to prepare some and not all ? And he must at last admit that it is all because of God's good pleasure ; and if at last driven to the wall, he is still ready to rebel against the sovereignty of God, I can go no farther in argument, but must adopt the language of Paul in his argument with this very objector and say : " Nay, but oh ! man, who art thou that repli- est against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor ? " Oh ! my hearer ! it is only in moments of rebellion against God that men do thus reply against Him. We know with the certainty of intuition that we are as clay in the hands of the potter, and when we ask, Why was I made the subject of converting grace? Why did the Spirit strive with me and not with them ? your hearts will ac- knowledge the Sovereignty of God, and you will say : " Because He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth." And when you sit at the table of the Lord, you must sometimes inquire : " Lord, why am I a guest ? Why was I made to hear Thy voice And enter while there's room, While thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come ? " And your hearts must respond ; 48 GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. " 'Twas the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced us in ; Else we had still refused to taste, And perished La our sin." Tes ! it is all of sovereign grace. " It is not of him that will- eth nor of him that runneth ; but of God that showeth merej." And therefore in the salvation of men, God makes the most signal display of His Sovereignty. TV. I have left but little time for showing why the Sovereignty of God should be the occasion of rejoicing to His people and of trembling to His enemies. In conclusion I remark that God's Sovereignty should make us rejoice, because it is exercised in per- fect harmony with infinite goodness, wisdom, and love. Amidst our perplexities, cares, sorrows, disappointments, and bereave- ments, how sustaining, how exhilarating the reflection that the Lord reigneth ! In the dark days of the Keformation, Luther stayed his soul on this great doctrine. He said : " TJie Lord reigneth, and I know He loves His Church better than I love it ; and why should I fear that He will not take care of it 1 All the dispensations of God's providence and grace are only so many straightforward steps to the accomplishment of good for us. Like the wheels and bands in a great machine, some of which are turning one way, some another ; some going up and some going down, yet all contributing to produce the perfect result ; so all things in the great machinery of Providence are co-operating to accomplish God's purposes of good to His people. What a source of rejoicing to know that He reigns over all ! " Some of you do rejoice that you have such a Sovereign. But I fear there are some here who are saying, I do not like this doc- trine. It presents God in such a terrible aspect to me, that in- stead of winning my love, it makes me hate God. Well, you know the Apostle says : " The carnal mind is enmity against God." If this is the eflFect of the doctrine on your heart, it only proves that you have that carnal mind that hates the God of the Bible. If the doctrine of God's Sovereignty is terrible to you, don't you see that this proves the doctrine true? for the Psalmist says: "The Lord reigneth, let the people trembled "Ah!" you say, " we could rejoice in the Sovereignty of God, if we were GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. 49 only good ; but we are wicked ; and as sucli we cannot delight in the thought that we are in the hands of a sovereign God." "Well, then, why remain wicked ? Why not be good ? Why not make friends with this Almighty Sovereign ? Why not lay hold upon His strength, and be at peace with Him ? I appreciate the full force of the reply which I know is in your minds. You are saying. How can we change our hearts and love God, and accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour, if it is true, as you just now told us, that God sovereignly bestows the grace of faith, and that it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy ? Well, ray dear friend, I cannot help it; I cannot help you out of the terrible diffi- culty, and it is for this very reason that you are helpless in the hands of a sovereign God, that you have need to tremble. Your only help is to be found in God himself. If you will only bow before His Sovereignty, and, like the publican, cast yourself on His mercy. He will graciously incline His ear to you and grant you His converting grace that your soul may live. Shall I give you the words wherewith you may approach Him in prayer? Come to Him with language like this : Pass me not, O gracious Father, Sinful though my heart may be ; Thou might'st curse me, but the rather Let Thy mercy hght on me, Even me. Pass me not, O tender Saviour, Let me love and cling to Thee ; I am longing for Thy favor, When Thou comest, call for me, Even me. Pass me not, O mighty Spirit, Thou canst make the blind to see ; Witnesser of Jesus' merit, Speak the word of power to me, Even me. Love of God, so pure and changeless, Blood of God, so rich and free, Grace of God, so strong and boundless, Magnify them all in me, Even me. m. eegeneratio:n". "Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."— John iii. 3. There is a wonderful harmony between all the doctrines of a sound system of theology. It is no insignificant proof of the truth of any science that all its doctrines are consistent with each other, and cohere in one compact harmonious whole. The Scriptures contain religious truths, which being arranged in scien- tific form, constitute what is called a system of theology. If any one of these great truths or doctrines is omitted, the whole system falls to pieces, just as an arch tumbles down if one of the bricks is taken out. The text contains one of the great truths which is essential to any correct theory of the plan of redemption, — viz. : the necessity of the " new birth." But this doctrine would be utter- ly unintelligible and incredible were it not that we learn from the Scriptures another doctrine — viz. : the depravity of the whole human race. Deny this doctrine, and the doctrine of the neces- sity of regeneration, or being born again, is an absurdity. Hence those who teach that infants are born innocent and perfect, and fall into sin simply through the force of example, are perfectly consistent in teaching that the new birth of which the text speaks is simply a reformation of life and habit. Those who teach this error hold that this result is brought about by " moral suasion "; i. e.^ a persuading of the sinner to abandon the error of his way. I should despair of convincing any man that he must be born again in order to see the kingdom of God, who is not persuaded (50) REGENERATION. 6t of the total depravity of human nature. I shall not undertake to show that this is the doctrine of the Bible. David says : " Be- hold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." " The wicked are estranged from the womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born." The doctrine pervades the whole Bible. It is one of the constructive ideas of inspiration, which are not so much here, or there, as everywhere. It is like the blood in the human body. Draw it out of the system and you may as well bury the system in the grave. The doctrine rever- berates from the first chapter in Genesis to the last in the Reve- lation. Expunge it, and you may as well vacate the office of the Holy Ghost in the work of man's redemption. If any holy being were asked, what is the distinctive character- istic of man ? his answer would be, " Sin." It is not weakness, it is not misfortune, it is not suffering, it is not death ; it is sin. And indeed, if there is one truth on which the mind of the whole human race is agreed, it is the fact of depravity and sin, and the necessity of a radical change in his nature to fit man for the pres- ence of God. Assuming as conceded the depravity of all men without excep- tion, I desire now to enforce the doctrine of the text. What is regeneration ? It is a work done in a man by the Spirit of God. It differs from justification in this, that the latter is done oviXjfor a man, and changes his state in relation to God's law. Regeneration is not a change in relations, but a change in the man himself ; it gives him a new character. As the change is in the soul, and not in the body, it is per- fectly clear that no mechanical operation performed on the body can produce this change. Many persons have a vague idea that in some mysterious way baptism can secure this result. But our Lord distinctly teaches that a man must be born of " water cmd the Spint." There is one aspect of this truth wliich is of great practical value. Let me illustrate it by the case of the converted drunk- ard. Before his conversion he was the victim of two diseases : one a corrupt and depraved heart ; the other, a disordered bodily condition, brought about by long intemperate indulgence. Now 52 REGENERATION. when tlie Spirit of God entered his soul and changed his spiritual nature, this mighty work did not cure his diseased body. He has the same insatiable longings for the intoxicating bowl which he had before his conversion. If now, by the grace of God, he has the strength to persevere in habits of sobriety, his body will in the end regain its healtlif ul tone, and he will become a sober man. But the cure of the nervous disorder is not the direct work of the Spirit ; it is the result of his being " strengthened with all might by the Spirit in the inner man." If, however, at any time the nervous disorder should again conquer the regenerate nature, and the man should be overtaken in his old fault, this is no decisive proof that he is not a true child of God. I make this remark not to encourage any one to dally with temptation, but to encourage any who may have fallen back into a vicious habit from which he once was rescued, and who now fears that God has cut him off, to rise up again and with humble reliance on Divine grace to fight his old enemy. Again, regeneration does not change the faculties or suscepti bilities of the soul. The man loves, desires, hopes, fears, rejoices, grieves, proposes, and wills just the same as before his change of heart : but these emotions, passions, and purposes are now fixed on new objects. Hence, the Apostle says to the Thessalonians ; " The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God." They had been worshippers of idols and they had " turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." The act of worship was the same, but it was now directed to God. In reply, therefore, to the question : AVTiat is regeneration ? I Bay that it is a real, mighty, miraculous renovation of the soul by the direct agency of the Spirit of God, which reverses the whole current and bent of the affections, desires, and purposes, so that the man who experiences it may say, ' Old things have passed away ; behold, all things have become new." The text declares that without this change no man can see the kingdom of God. There are only two destinations in the great future which awaits you beyond the grave. Exclusion from the kingdom of God implies inclusion in the kingdom of Satan. " Ex- cept a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." REGENERATION. §8 I think the reason why the f ulfihnent of this condition is indis- pensable can be made apparent to any reasonable mind. 1. Admittance into heaven is an immediate introduction into the presence of the Holy One, to hold familiar intercourse with Him, to attend upon His court, and to serve Him continually. To be qualified for this near and intimate association with Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, the man must be not only a pardoned sinner, but must be personally holy in char- acter, presenting nothing offensive to the eye of the divine holi- ness. Hence David says, " Lord, who shall abide in Thy taber- nacle ? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill ? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart." " For Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness ; neither shall evil dwell with Thee ; the foolish shall not stand in Thy sight." The Apostle says that " the carnal heart," that is, the unregenerate man, " is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Think of the manifest incongruity of the Divine Being surrounding His throne with those who hate Him and despise His government, and you will readily admit that " except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." " Holiness becometh Thy house, O Lord, forever "; " and there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie." 2. But we are forced to the same conclusion by considering the character of the unregenerate man and the character of the society in heaven. The kingdom of God is peopled by perfectly holy beings. Their constant occupations are such as are congenial to pure and holy spirits. An unregenerate man is not a fit asso- ciate for those holy intelligences that stand around the throne. Let me illustrate. Here is a family reared amid the kindliest influences. It is composed of a father, who is the type of every- thing noble, refined, and elevated ; a mother, the model of all that is pure and beautiful in woman ; daughters that are lovely beyond their sex, just budding into womanhood, and sons who have been kept unspotted from the world. On the other hand, here is a base, corrupt, unprincipled liber- tine ; a man without education, culture, or refinement ; with low 54 REGENERATION. tastes and depraved appetites. Now, why is he excluded from this family circle ? Manifestly, because he is not a fit associate for the elevated and good. Why does he not desire or seek to enter there ? Simply because he has no taste for the society he would meet within the precincts of that Christian home. "Why would he be miserable if compelled to enter that household as an inmate, and engage in the employments of its members ? Simply because he could take no pleasure in the pursuits that engage the refined, the elevated, and the good. Now heaven is a holy place, and those who dwell there delight in hohness. The angels are " holy angels." Glorified saints are said to be as the angels of God in heaven. Is an unrenewed, de- praved man a fit associate for them ? Would they not turn their backs on him, and, fleeing from his presence, leave him in the solitude of his own vileness ? These holy angels and spirits of just men made perfect are constantly engaged in acts of adoration, in studying the perfec- tions of God, in the exercise and expression of supreme love to God, in the vocal utterance of His praises. How can a man whose heart is unholy engage in these services ? If he does not delight to do the will of God here, will he delight to do it there ? If he does not take pleasure in the study of God here, will he take any more pleasure in the study of His perfections there ? If his language now is, " Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways," can such a temper be fit for heaven, where nothing but thoughts of God will fill the minds of glori- fied spirits ? Then, again, how can he engage in the worship which constitutes so large a part of the employment of saints and angels ? What is the angels' song ? " Holy ! holy ! holy ! Lord God of Hosts." Can the corrupt, depraved man join in this chorus? What is the song of the saints? " Hallelujah ! Salva- tion, and glory, and honor, and power unto the Lord our God ! Hallelujah ! For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." How can the heart that hates God echo this hallelujah ? The tongue can never be tuned to praise while the heart is evil. God must be glorified in us before He can be glorified by us. Don't you see that the unrenewed man would be miserable in REGENERA TION. 56 heaven if forced to enter there ? Is he not unhappy in the so- ciety of the pure and holy here on earth ? Why should he be happy in their society hereafter ? Is not the occupation of the pious a weariness to him here ? Why should it be any more agreeable to him there ? Is not the Sabbath as a day of holy rest an object of aversion to him ? How then will he delight in the eternal Sabbath ? He would be miserable in heaven ; for heaven consists in nearness to God and in the beatific visions of His Son. Could he delight in nearness to God who all his hfe has lived without God, or be happy in looking upon Jesus Christ who all his life turned his back on Christ ? No ! no ! He would be wretched in heaven. Chain him to the foot of the Eternal Throne, and he would cower beneath the gaze of the Holy One. Bind him with fetters to the very right hand of Him in whose presence is fullness of joy and pleasures for ever- more, aud he would shriek in agony and call on rocks and moun- tains to fall on him and hide him from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne. That burning eye which looks on sin with abhorrence would blanch his cheek with terror ; that awful frown would kindle hell in his bosom, and he would pray to be released from imprisonment in the presence of a holy God, that he might flee from the brightness of His glory as darkness flees be- fore the rising sun. " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." One thought more and I have done. Hell is a place of misery. And one of the bitterest drops in the cup of woe is, that, while the lost soul longs after the enjoyment of sensual delights, there will be a total privation of them. Heaven is the perfect grati- fication of holy tastes which have begun to be cultivated on earth. Does the drunkard expect that heaven will afford him the ex- citement of the intoxicating cup ; or the libertine that it wiU be a Mohammedan paradise ; or the covetous man that it will be a place for him to buy and sell and get gain ? Certainly not. Yet they all hope in some way to be finally happy. But happiness consists in the satisfaction of the desires and appetites, in the gratification of the tastes and propensities of the soul. They know full well that heaven cannot gratify these sensual and 56 REGERERATION. sordid tastes and desires. Is it not true that even those who do not admit the necessity of regeneration do in fact expect in some mysterious way to be so changed at death that heaven will be a place of happiness even for them ? And what is this expec- tat^'on but an unconscious affirmation of the doctrine of the text, " Ye . list be born again" ? Ye must be changed in your tastes, desires, and character before ye can enjoy the kingdom of God. Oh ! my hearer, abandon the unfounded hope that at death you will undergo any such change as will make you " meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in Hght." There is no sanctifying power in death. '' As the tree falleth, so shall it lie." " He that is unjust will be unjust still ; he that is filthy will be filthy still ; he that is righteous will be righteous still ; and he that is holy will be holy still." If you would see the kingdom of God you must be born again this side of the grave ; for " ex- cept a man (a mayi, not a disembodied spirit,) be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." IV. FAITH. "Precious faith." — 3 Pet. i. 1. In this discourse I shall answer two questions : First, What is Faith? Second, Why does the Apostle call it precious ? I. The word faith is used in several distinct senses in the Scriptures. Sometimes, it means simple assent to the truth of the Bible ; sometimes, a temporary impression in regard to God and His love; sometimes, the power to work miracles; while ^^ the faith^'' means the whole summary of Christian doctrine. The text has reference to none of these, but to that specific act of the soul by which a sinner is justified at the bar of God on the ground of the righteousness of Christ imputed to him, and which to distinguish it from all other acts of the soul, is called " saving faith." 1. Saving faith differs from every other act of the soul, in that while each of the others may be produced or caused by natural means, it is the result of supernatural inworking of the Holy Ghost, mysteriously accompanying the truth with His own pow- erful demonstration, and divinely convincing it of the excellence, beauty, and all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. 2. Saving faith differs from every other act of the soul, in that •while one is simply an act of the intellect assenting to truth, and another, a state of the emotions, it is the act of the intellect, the heart, and the will — ^the act of the whole soul with all its powers harmoniously discharging their appropriate functions in relation to the object. (57) 58 FAITH. 3. Saving faith differs from all those acts of the soul some- times mistaken for it by a diversity as to the object on whicli it terminates. Thus, he who beUeves that the Scriptures are true, simply assents to a logical proposition ; he who thinks he is in a state of peace because he has felt so happy in attending upon ex- citing religious services, simply believes a proposition which may or may not be true. The object upon which saving faith termin- ates, is not a historical fact, nor a proposition nor a form of words, but a. person, a hving being, to whom we may say, "I be- lieve Thy word, I approve Thy law, I embrace Thy precious promises, because Thou hast spoken the word, Thou hast enacted the law. Thou hast uttered the promises ; I love Thee, because Thou hast loved me ; I give myself to Thee, because Thou hast given Thyself for me; I cast myself upon Thine everlasting arms, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength ; I trust my life, my soul, my all to Thee forever : for I know Avhom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him against that day." The expressions used in Scripture to describe the exercise of faith show that it is something very different from simple belief in a proposition. "Have faith in God," "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," " Look unto Me," " Keceiving Christ," " Eating of Him," " Com- ing to Him," "Embracing Him," "Fleeing unto Him," "Lay- ing hold of Him," — all clearly show that Faith is differentiated from all acts of belief by involving as its essential element confi- dence in a person, as distinguished from belief in a truth em- bodied in words. Now we may have confidence in a human as well as in a Divine person. Hence there is a human faith and a Divine faith. When a client conmiits a cause to an advocate and relies on his professional skill for a favorable verdict, thei'e is something different from mere hel'ief ; and this "something" \& faith — faith terminating on 2i person as its object. An American man-of-war was once lying becalmed in the Mediterranean. The son of the captain, a playful boy, amused FAITH. 59 himself daily by climbing the rigging. One day, with the thoughtlessness of childhood, he ascended to the very top of the mainmast, and stood upon the giddy summit swaying to and fro with the gently-heaving billow. His father saw him from the deck, and knowing from experience that it would be impossible for him to stoop down from his perilous perch to regain his hold upon the mast, without falling headlong to the deck, he shouted to him, " Jump ! I command you, jump into the water ! " The boy looked down to assure himself that it was his father that spoke, and then, with an instantaneous bound, he leaped, cleared the deck, plunged into the sea, and was saved. Here was some- thing different from belief. It was faith manifesting itself in prompt obedience. Precisely the same act of the soul termin- ating on God is that Divine faith of which the Bible speaks. Faith in the last analysis is the act of confiding in a person ; — human, when the person is a man ; divine, when the person is God. This explanation of faith will enable you to understand the 11th chapter of Hebrews — in which faith is represented as underlying all those heroic doings and sufferings of the Old Testa- ment saints, " of whom the world was not worthy." " By faith, Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain ; by faith, Enoch was translated ; by faith, Woah built an ark ; by faith, Abraham obeyed, and went from his own land, not knowing whither he went ; by faith, he offered up Isaac ; by faith, Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter ; by faith, the Israelites passed through the Eed Sea ; by faith, heroes, kings, and prophets subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens ; by faith, women received their dead raised to life again ; and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword ; they wan- dered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute, af- 60 FAITH. flicted, tormented ; they wandered in deserts and mountains, and in dens and eaves of tlie earth." Kegarding faith as a principle implanted in the soul by the Holy Spirit, the essence of which is confidence in a person, we can see how it is the germ of the many developments ascribed to it by the Apostle in the foregoing enumeration of Faith's con- flicts and victories. This we could not understand, if faith were merely a belief of truth. So that I am justified in saying that Faith is not belief, but it is a cause of which belief is only one of the many effects : — the root out of which belief and many other graces grow. You believe one man's statement, because you have confi- dence in the man himself; you disbelieve another's, because you lack confidence in the man himself. And so the Chris- tian believes the Word of God, because he has confidence in God — the personal God — the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Now, as any fundamental principle in the soul makes itself known in various ways ; — as benevolence, for example, may wear a thousand smiling semblances ; so faith exhibits itself outwardly in various forms — sometimes by believing the truth, because it is revealed by God ; sometimes by relying on His promises ; some- times by prompt obedience to His commands ; sometimes by filial love and reverence ; sometimes by acceptance of Jesus Christ as a Saviour. Faith is confidence in God, in all His offices, as Crea- tor, Preserver, and Benefactor ; or as Moral Governor, Redeem- er, and Sanctifier. And justifying, or saving, faith is that specific act of the soul, in which, fixing upon God, the Redeemer, as its object, it flees to His cross, trusts to His righteousness, bows to His will, and clings to His everlasting arm. II. I come now to the second question I propose to answer : "Why does the Apostle Peter call faith " precious" 2 1. Because it cannot be obtained in the way other valuable ac- quisitions are made. Gold cannot buy it. Labor will not pro- cure it. Birth, talents, learning, will not acquire it. It is pr3- cious, because nothing which has a tangible value in this world FAITH. 61 can be exchanged for it. By grace ye are saved tlirongh faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Let me ilhistrate. A great banquet has been provided through the munificence of a merchant prince. Tlie invitations cost y nothing to those who receive them. They cannot be purchased with money. So precious are they, that if they could be bought, hundreds would pour out gold for the privilege of admission to the great supper. None can enter except the favored few. Is the invitation worth nothing because it costs nothing ? Nay, it enhances its value that it can be obtained only as a gift. Belief in the truth of the Bible may be attained by a study of the overwhelming proof of its authenticity and inspiration ; but " precious faith," the " faith of God's elect," as the Apostle calls it, comes not " of the will of the flesh, nor of the \vill of man " (John i. 13), but of the " demonstration of the Spirit." 2. But if faith is precious on account of its origin, it is no less precious on account of its results. (1.) It is the instrument of our justification before God's law. "We are justified by faith in the atoning Saviour. In order to realize the full meaning of these words, you must in imagination project yourself forward to that great day, when on a great white throne, the Judge of all the earth shall sit to pass sen- tence upon men for the deeds done here in the body. The question that will then agitate every bosom will be, "Wliere- with shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God?" One shall say, " Lord, in Thy name have I prophesied, and done many wonderful works "; another, " I have sacrificed burnt-offerings and poured out rivers of oil "; another, " I have given my first-born for my transgressions — the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul "; another, " I have been charitable, ami- able, philanthropic "; another, " I have fasted and prayed, have worn hair-cloth, and scourged myself with bloody rods, have done many ' works of supererogation,' and many penances." Oh ! my friends ! in the blazing light of eternity, all these " righteous- nesses" will look like " filthy rags." But there shall appear another before that august tribunal, eg FAITH. who will say : Lord, if Thou art strict to mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand ? And when God shall open the book of judgment, his faith shall say, "Lord, I place the death of Jesus between me and Thy judgment ; otherwise I will not con- tend or enter into judgment with Thee." And if God shall say, " But thou art a sinner," his faith shall reply, " Lord, I put the death of the Lord Jesus between me and my sins, and I offer His merits in place of my own, which I ought to have, but have not." And if God shall say, " But I am angry with thee," his faith will reply, " Lord, I put the Lord Jesus between me and Thine anger." And then his faith shall be counted to him for righteousness. But in reality, the believer shall not wait till that great day to be vindicated before that high court. Even now, while on earth, his sins are cancelled and his justification is com- plete. He does not walk in chains expecting future deliverance. The moment he trusted in Jesus as a Saviour his chains were struck off, his sins were blotted out, and his name was written in the Lamb's book of life ; and then his faith was " the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." " Precious faith ! " (2.) Faith is precious, because it gives conscious peace with God. The believer is no longer afraid of God. Why should he be afraid of God ? It is God that has justified him ; and shall his justifier lay anything to his charge ? Then, as a necessary consequence, comes peace of conscience. For when God is pacified, his own conscience is also pacified, and then through faith, he realizes the " peace which passeth all understanding." " Precious faith ! " (3.) Faith gives communion 2lX^^ fellowship with God. As the mutual intercourse between men depends upon the confidence subsisting between them, so our communion with God depends upon our affectionate confidence in Ilim as Preserver and Re- deemer. And as it is the first impulse of our nature to flee to the person in whom we most confide, to whisper our sorrows in his ear or to claim his sympathy with our joys, so the soul that trusts in God communes with Him in secret, or talks with Him by the wayside. Although he may use no speech or language, FAITH. 63 and his voice be not heard, yet, like Enoch, he "walks with God," holding sweet, but mysterious colloquy. (4.) Once more. Faith gives a man power with God ; because one of the strongest principles of a rightly constituted nature is never to disappoint any confidence justly reposed in it. Why, who is there that would not protect a fawn pursued by the hunter, if it should leap into his arms and with liquid eye ap- peal for succor ? or a dove, pursued by a hawk, if it should fly into and nestle in his bosom? An appeal by innocence, by helplessness, or by distress, in which the individual abandons himself with entire confidence to us, is the very strongest ap- peal that can be made to our nature ; and very often it will be met by the greatest sacrifices not only of individuals but of great nations. Let any refugee from political European tyranny come to our shores and confide himself to the American people for protection, and let him be pursued by Austria or Russia, or by the world in arms, and the whole people would arise hke a living wall around him, and he would be taken only when they had trampled down a nation of dead men. Shall men do this? and will not God stretch forth His arm over those who nestle under the shadow of His wing ? Heaven and earth may pass away, but not a hair of the head of that man who puts bis trust in God shall ever fall to the ground. Sooner, far sooner, would God blot out the universe than He would disappoint the authorized confidence of the most insig- nificant of His creatures. Precious faith! which gives to feeble man such power with God ! Learn then where to look to-day. Don't harass yourself with the question, " Do I really have faith?" You do yourself harm by this self-inspection. Turn away from yourself and look to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. Look aloft ! Look aloft ! If with the peni- tential Psalmist you say, " But my sin is ever before me," turn away from it and gaze on that Saviour whose glory and whose grace are most conspicuously illustrated in that He is able and wilhng to save even you. 64 FAITH. * Cling to the Mighty One ; Cling in thy gi*ief . Cling to the Holy One ; He gives relief. Cling to the Gracious One ; Cling in thy pain. Cling to the Faithfvd One ; He will sustain. Cling to the Living One ; Cling in thy woe. Cling to the Loving One ; Through all below. Cling to the Pardoning One ; He speaketh peace. Cling to the Healing One ; Anguish shall cease. Cling to the Bleeding One ; Cling to His side. Cling to the Eisen One ; In Him abide." V. JUSTIFICATION " Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." — Rom. v. 1. This text assumes that bj nature men are not at peace with God. I shall not consume time in proving this. In your hours of quiet reflection, you all confess that all is not right between you and your Maker. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die"; and as all have sinned, all must die, unless some means can be devised by which they can escape the penalty of sin. God cannot abolish His law to suit your case. He has declared that Pie will " by no means clear the guilty." There is no hope in this direction. Yet the Gospel comes to you and says, Here is a scheme devised by God, and executed by His Son, by wliich you who are really a guilty sinner, may be treated as if jon had never sinned at all. This scheme is called a plan of Justification. Now what is Justification ? It " is an act of God's free grace, wherein He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us, and received by faith alone." It is very clear from the use of the word " Justification," both in Scripture and in our common talk, that it has respect to the violation of law. We never speak of our being justified in doing an innocent act. We always say it in reference to something, contrary to law. If a man kills another, he is at once arrested^ Why ? Because he has done what the law forbids. But suppose' he did it in self-defence ? He is at once released on the ground that he was justifiable. But even though everybody knew this, beforehand, this does not exempt him from arrest and trial. He is liable to punishment until he shall be by law pronounced (65): 66 JUSTIFICATION. " justified." Observe, the Court does not say that the man did not kill his neighbor ; it simply declares that although he did kill he cannot be legally punished. Now the Bible uses the word " justify " in the same sense exactly. In Scripture usage a justified man is not one who is not a sinner ; but one whom for good reasons God will treat as if he had never sinned. Justification is an act of God. " It is God that justifies," says Paul. It is an act of God declaring the sinner Just — i. e., declaring him released from the clutches and the penalty of the Law. Now listen carefully to a very import- ant statement. God stands in two different relations to all His creatures on this earth. First, He is their King ; secondly, He is their Judge. As King, He makes the Law. As Judge, He administers and executes the Law. Now, although I have been preaching to you constantly about the " pardon " of sin — and this use of the word is right, as it is the Scripture term — yet, speaking accurately, I say, God never pardons sin. Pardon is the act of a sovereign who forcibly steps in between the criminal and the execution and sets the law aside. Justification is the act of a just judge who declares that the law has no claim upon the accused. Pardon releases the criminal at the very moment that he is acknowledged to be guilty. Justification releases him on the ground that he is accounted just. Pardon supposes guilt ; Justification is a formal declara- tion of freedom from guilt. In Pardon the law is set aside. In Justification the law is satisfied. Pardon remits a just penalty. To justify is to declare that the infliction of the penalty would be unjust. In no language spoken on earth do the words to pardon and to justify mean the same thing. If they did mean the same thing, then we must admit that the law of God may be dispensed with. For a pardon is the remission of a sentence the execution of which justice demands ; of course the law would be set aside if justification and pardon were identical. But the Bible is uniform in the declaration that the law is immutable both as to its commands and its penalty, — that there can be no remission of the penalty without a complete satisfaction of the JUSTIFICATION. 67 demands of the law. As, therefore, the law cannot be set aside, that act of God which justifies the sinner must be something different from pardon. Now the account which the Scriptures give of Justification shows that this view is correct. Justification is a dispensation from the penalty of the law, and a restoration to the favor of God, on the ground of the sinner's presenting a righteousness — that is, presenting before the law the very thing that the law demands. Pardon is the act of mere sovereignty, and does not demand any satisfaction to the law. Justification is founded on a full satisfaction to the law ; and, ei^go, it cannot be pardon. Another important distinction is this : Pardon simply remits a penalty. The pardoned criminal is an outcast from society. He is looked upon with suspicion and distrust. Have you never seen how hard it is for a pardoned felon to regain the lost confidence of his fellow-men ? But justification not only remits a penalty ; it actually confers a title to the rewards of actual holiness : so the justified are not only delivered from hell, but have a clear title to heaven. This is in perfect consistency with strict justice. The law demands a perfect righteousness, and promises eternal life to every one who complies with this demand. Now in justification the sinner is provided with a per- fect righteousness — the very thing that the law demands — there- fore he who is justified has a right to demand admission into heaven. The everlasting doors are thrown open wide, and the ranks of the angels give way ; the fiery cherub sheathes his sword to allow any one to enter and ascend who appears clothed in the righteousness of God, the Son. Who dares bar his entrance now ? It is God that has justified him. Who dares condemn him ? Thus you see that pardon and justification have only one point of resemblance, in this — that both release the criminal from pun- ishment. Here are the points of difference : Justification is the act of a just judge. Pardon is the arbi- trary act of a sovereign. Justification recognizes the claims of justice. Pardon tramples on justice. Justification rewards. Pardon simply releases. To justify the sinner is the only way 68 JUSTIFICATION. in wliicli God, as a just Judge, can save him. Do you not see tliat I was right in saying that in the strict use of words God cannot be said to pardon ? Now you ask very pertinently : How can God remain just and yet be a justifier of a man who is acknowledged to be un- godly ? This brings us to the very marrow of the Gospel. The Apostle tells us that Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The Scriptures say distinctly that nothing we can do will avail to make us just before God ; that we are justified solely on the ground of the righteousness of Christ. This is the doctrine of the Old Testament as well as of the ISTew ; for Isaiah, the prophet, calls Christ the " Lord our Eighteousness." Now, I want to answer another question that has come into your minds : " How can the righteousness of one person be the ground of the justification of another ? " " God requires me to be holy." " How can the righteousness of Christ satisfy this demand upon me ? " I answer, it cannot, unless it can be " im- jputecV to me : unless I can be accounted to have it though in- herently destitute of it. You ask again, " Is not this a mere sham ? Can a just and holy God give me credit for what I do not really have ? " I answer. He can, provided you are so united with Christ, that He stands as your representative. You all understand this doctrine of representation ; what the Senator from Kentucky does in Congress the people of Kentucky are accounted as doing. The world holds you responsible for his acts ; although you may not know at the time what he is doing. They are imputed to you. You know the old law maxim, What one does by an agent, he himself is accounted as doing. But how does Christ become your representative? I answer, by your electing Him to take your place. This election of Jesus Christ as your representative in the high court of heaven is called " faith." By this act of faith, you become united with Him. His righteousness is your righteousness. His bearing the penalty of your sin is your bearing it. By means of this union with Christ as your representative, you are legally accounted as JUSTIFICATION. QQ doing and suffering all that He did and suffered for yon. It is to this the Apostle refers when he says, " I am crucified with Christ"; and again, " Therefore we are buried with Him by bap- tism into death "; that is, as our baptism is the outward sign of our profession of faith in Christ, when we are baptized we be- come so united with Him, that His death is our death, His burial our burial. Thus faith, union with Christ, imputation of His righteousness to us, and justification, are all distinct, but essential links in the great chain of man's redemption. And as these two, — faith, the act of man, and justification, the act of God, — are at the two ends of the chain, the one on earth, the other in heaven ; the Apostle, omitting the intermediate links of the series, says : " Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God." I have been answering your questions, now I want you to answer mine. "Will you accept salvation on these terms ? Do not say, " I will think about it and tell you some time soon." You must come to this at last, if you are ever saved at all. You must consent to be saved as a sinner, without a ray of your own righteousness. If you ever feel good enough to merit salvation, you may be sure that this self-righteousness will make you stumble before you reach the cross. A man never feels so vile as at the instant he casts himself on Christ. By grace ye are saved through faith. Now, I want every unconverted man, woman, and child, before he leaves this house, to answer this question to his own heart : '^Am I willing to abandon every other ground of hope and trust to the righteousness of Christ ? " There is nothing mysterious or unintelligible in what I ask you to do. It is exactly like any other determination you may form. It needs no long prepara- tion, no praying, no humbling of yourself before God, no fast- ing, no moaning, no laceration of soul or body. You do not need to prepare for it by long and bitter penitence, by painful and protracted self-examination, or by a month or a week spent in the endeavor to break off bad habits. You cannot prepare yourself to receive the righteousness of Christ. Christ holds out no hope to the man who tries to make himself righteous. He did not come to save the righteous. A righteous man does 70 JUSTIFICATION. not need salvation. The salvation of the Lord Jesus is a sal- vation for sinners. Such an idea as salvation by works, by merit, by making yourself worthy to receive the righteousness of God— wliy, this frustrates the grace of God ; it subverts the Gospel. It would reverse the song of the redeemed in heaven ; for that song is, " Unto Him who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, be glory and dominion." But if you are to prepare yourselves for grace, your song would be, " Unto myself, who have made myself fit for salvation, and wor- thy of God's mercy ; unto me be all the praise and the glory." What a travesty of the Gospel this would be ! A missionary among the Indians was visited by a proud chief, who had been deeply convicted of sin by the Spirit of God. The savage, while trembling under a sense of guilt, was unwilling, like a great many civilized people, to take of the water of life freely. He brought his wampum to the missionary and ten- dered it as a peace-offering to God. The man of God shook his head and said, " No, God will not accept this as an atonement for sin." He went away, but came again, bringing his wife and all the peltry he had taken in hunting. The missionary still shook his head, and again the wretched sinner withdrew. But the Spirit gave him no peace, and he returned once more to offer his wigwam, his wife, his children, and all that he had, to have " peace with God." The missionary still shook his head. The chief stood for a moment, his head bowed down in despair, and, raising his eyes to heaven, his heart poured forth in a cry of un- reserved surrender, " Here, Lord, take poor Indian too." To this, my friends, you must come at last, if you would " have peace with God." *' But drops of grief can ne'er repay The debt of love I owe ; Here, Lord, I give myself away, 'Tis all that I can do." One word of counsel : I never preach the Gospel without confidently expecting some soul to be converted. I have no doubt that some of you have accepted Jesus Christ this day. Now, hear what Jesus says: JUSTIFICA TION. 71 " Whosoever confesseth me before men, Mm shall the Son of Man confess before the angels of God ; but he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God." But one way to confess Christ before men is to do so publicly in the Church of God. Come, then, to the church of your father and of your sainted mother, or to the church where your wife has been praying for you, lo ! these many years, or to any Christian church near which you live, and cast in your lot with it, saying : " People of the living God, I have sought the world around, Paths of sin and sorrow trod, Peace and comfort nowhere foiind: Now to you my spirit turns, Tui'ns a fugitive, unblest ; Bretlu'en, where your altar bums, Oh ! receive me into rest." VI. CONYICTIOK " I remembered God and was troubled." — Ps. Ixxvii. 3. All men seek congenial objects of meditation. If at any time unpleasant subjects are forced upon their attention, either by ac- cident or by the mysterious law of the association of ideas, they are speedily expelled from the mind as unwelcome intruders. As the happiness of most men depends upon their peace of mind rather than upon their external surroundings; and as all men seek happiness by an instinct of nature, it is natural that they should endeavor to banish from their minds all thoughts that might endanger their wonted tranquillity. This will account for the aversion to serious meditation which characterizes the larger part of mankind. It fully explains that habitual lethargy in regard to matters of religion which we find so common among men of the world. Men cannot reflect upon their origin, their duty, and their destiny, without thinking about God ; and think- ing about God is adapted to produce trouble — not metaphysical trouble — that intellectual travail which attends the comprehen- sion or the solving of some mystery or some perplexing problem ; but that trouble which comes from a restless, disquieted con- science ; the uneasiness of a wounded spirit, which inspired ^\ns- dom tells us is hard to bear. Hence the Psalmist says : " The fool hath said in his heart, ' there is no God ' "; i. (?., he says so in his desires, not in his intellect. It is only in his heart that the atheism resides. He wishes that there were no God ; hence he would fain believe that there is no God, and his practical life is moulded insensibly into an habitual forgetfulness of God. For _ . (72) CONVICTION. 73 the same reason, as the Apostle says, the heathen " did not Uke to retain God in their knowledge." This aversion to God of the natural heart manifests itself in every class of men. When they "remember God they are troubled," and therefore they banish thoughts of God from their minds. The expedients by which they seek to do this, may be all reduced to two classes. First, there is speculative Atheism. Among men of a reflect- ing turn of mind, the questions, whence am I ? and whither am I going ? often suggest tliemselves. These questions at once bring God to the mind. If the thought of God thus suggested is dis- tressing, they often seek a refuge in what they regard a rational scepticism ; or, if they cannot force themselves into the absurdity of Atheism, they deny the God of the Bible, and make for them- selves a god of whom they may speak without fear, and whom they may remember without " being troubled." But a far more common as well as a more invulnerable for- getting of God is the Atheism of the fool who says in his feel- ings and desires, " There is no God." It is the practical ignoring of God in His distinctive character — not the theoretical denial of His existence — a knowing of God and yet not glorifying Him as God — the outward acknowledgment, the habitual, inward for- getting of Him. This is the most prevalent form of Atheism, and the secret cause of it is disclosed in the text : When men "remember God they are troubled''^:, or as Job expresses it, " When I consider, I am afraid of Him." A calm, deliberate analysis of the Divine character, and of our relations to the Divine Being, is adapted to awaken the emotion of fear in the breast of the natural man. Wicked men seem to think frequently of God. They do not hesitate to utter His name on the most trivial occasions ; and, so far from being troubled by them, such recollections of God give them no concern whatever. It is not to such impious recollec- tions of God that the Psalmist alludes, nor even to the common recognitions of God that flit through the minds of all men. So far from exciting a sense of uneasiness, such transient reminis- cences familiarize the mind with His august and reverend name, 74 CONVICTION. and only aggravate the habitual irreverence. But if men could only be induced to replace these transient and unmeaning thoughts of God by one hom-'s serious contemplation of the Divine character, they would find tliat the experiment is adapted to disturb their quiet, to harrow up their fears — in short, to give them "trouble." If any of you who hear me, doubt this, let me invite you to such a remembering of God ; and if you will faithfully and in- telHgently follow me in the course of thought which I shall sug- gest, you may perhaps be ready to echo the language of the text : " I remembered God and was troubled." Arrest the current of your listless thoughts, and " consider and be afraid of Him." In order to think profitably of God so as to be aflPected by a meditation upon His character, we must think of His several at- tributes as they are revealed in His Word. I invite you, there- fore, to think of some of those Divine attributes, the remem- brance of which is adapted to produce uneasiness in the mind of a sinner. 1. The God of the Bible is a Being of immaculate hohness and purity. Now it is the instinct of an unholy being to dread the presence and slxun the approach of one that is holy. It is not necessary to explain why this is so. It is enough to know that it is so. It accords with the observation and experience of every one of us. The aversion between the holy and the unholy is mutual. The antipathy is equal. And as a being of perfect purity can regard a sinful being only with abhorrence, the sinner knows that the pure eye of the Holy One is looking on him with disapproval. Hence a vivid recognition of the holiness of God is always followed by the pungent and painful conviction of sin. We cannot look at His purity without the immediate conscious- ness of our own vileness. As soon as Adam heard the voice of a holy God in the garden, he looked upon his own nakedness with shame oxxAfear ; so when we fix our minds upon a holy God, we at once look inward at our own uncleanness. In the broad glare of the sunshine, we see filthiness on our garments that was invisible in the darkness of the night. But this is not all. The CONVICTION. 75 sense of sin awakened in the human bosom by the contemplation of a holy God, is immediately succeeded by the sense of guilt. The sinner then feels hke stubble before consuming lire. This experience is not confined to the wicked man. The best and holiest men upon a vivid perception of this Divine attribute are filled with trepidation and dismay on account of the contrast presented in themselves. When Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon His throne high and Hfted up, and heard the seraphim lauding this attribute, crying one to another, " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts," he cried, smitten with fear and with deep conviction of personal sin, " Woe is me, for I am undone : be- cause I am a man of unclean lips," and he had no peace until he received angelic assurance of the purgation of his iniquity. This conviction of sin and consequent sense of guilt produce mental trouble, because the sinner knows that a holy God must of neces- sity abhor him. He can have no pleasure in wickedness. He is of '* purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon in- iquity." He "hates all workers of iniquity." And even though His hatred of the j?(?/'«(?w<ike yours ? Kow, what must you do that you may inherit eter- nal life ? Listen, while I tell you. Let us, in imagination, ascend Mount Hor, near whose base are encamped the hosts of Israel. The wide extended plain of the Arabah stretches out before us to the border of Edom. It is dotted all over with the tents of sleeping Israel. The day is just dawning ; and as the eastern belt of the mountains begins to glow with the first rays of the morning sun, the Hebrew children stir in their tents, and go out to collect the manna, which lies like hoar-frost on the ground. But their soul " loatheth this light bread "; and the want of water adding thirst to their sufferings, they begin to speak against God and against Moses, saying, " Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" Suddenly a cry is heard. It is echoed and re- echoed throughout the vast encampment. " The serpents ! the serpents ! " The air is filled with flying, fiery reptiles, whose 102 LOOK AND LIVE. sting brings anguish and sudden death. They creep from the fissures in the earth ; they dart out from the clefts of the rocks ; they crawl to the pallet where the infant is sleeping ; they coil around the limbs of stalwart men ; they pierce the bosoms of helpless women, and leave the death-wound behind. The poor people are hopeless and helpless. They cannot destroy the ser- pents, for they are innumerable ; they have no antidote for the strange poison ; they despair, they die. They cry to Moses for help. He intercedes for them with God. God commands him to erect upon a pole, so that all may see it, the image of the fiery serpent carved out of brass ; and the command is issued to all the people, " Look upon this brazen serpent and live." " And it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." Upon what easy terms these poor distressed Hebrews saved their lives ! They had only to lift their dying eyes and fix them on this image ; and this they might do without money and with- out price, and without moving from the spot where they were standing. Looking was all they could do. The cure was imme- diate. They did not merely begin to get better ; the moment they looked they were well. Nobody could explain how this was. Those who were bitten did not wait that they might un- derstand before they looked, how looking could save them. They looked first and at once. And if they did not understand how it was, afterward, they knew that they were well. Now Christ himself declares that in the same way, by looking at Him, you may have eternal life. He it is that has prescribed the simple condition of believing on Him. " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him "; — observe it is " be- lieveth," instead of looketh. You see that believing is equiva- lent to that eager, longing look, which the dying Israelite would cast toward the brazen seiT^ent. Have you never seen the elo- quence of a look far exceed the power of speech ? Have you never seen the dying man, too w^eak for words, tell his heart's desire, without words, in a look ? Have you never been over- come by a wistful look of your little boy, when he looked and LOOK AND LIVE. 103 looked, but was afraid to say a word lest you should answer " no " ? Well now, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is just that look of desire, as the soul sees Jesus Christ set forth in the Gospel. " If you can remember how you felt as a little child, while you timidly plead by a look, when you dared not utter your wish, and you perceive that your present desire for salvation is like that, — then this is ' believing.' " Now why should you say, " How can this simple act of faith save my soul ? " The efficacy of the act depends on God's ap- pointment. Can you not believe that a thing is, without know- ing how it is ? Let me then hold up before your eyes the antitype of the brazen serpent. If any of you are mourning over your guilt and are full of anguish, raise your behoving eyes to Him who is lift- ed up in this assembly, and one look will enable you to dry your eyes forever. You who may be groping in darkness, look there to be enlightened. You who are weak, look and be strong. You who are polluted, look and be pure. You who are hard- hearted, look at Him hanging on the tree, and be melted into contrition and love. You who are agonized with doubts as to whether you are a child of God, look and gain a firmer assurance of your adoption. Whatever your infirmities or sorrows, or sins, from every part of this Hall, oh ! look to Him who is hfted up in the midst of this congregation. As the serpent was lifted up in the centre of the camp, so Christ has been lifted up in the centre of the world, that all eye3 from east and west, from north and south, might fix on Him. There He hangs, and every lacerated vein bleeds balm for the healing of the nations. And when in your terror or in your agony you cry out, " What must I do to be saved ? " from the top of the bloody cross, hear the echo, " Be saved," " Look unto me, and be ye Baved, all ye ends of the earth." While millions of eyes are turned thither from all regions of the globe, and millions of souls are healed by a look, how like that wondrous scene in the wilderness ! And while ten thousand eyes glisten with tears of 104 LOOK AND LIVE. joy as they look and are saved, " How shall you escape if you neglect so great salvation ? " Oh ! remember, it is life eternal that is staked on this simple act of believing, and death, eternal death, that hangs on your refusal. And though you may weary of hearing this oft-repeated, fa- miliar story, yet I will follow you with it till you take the final plunge into the gulf of despair. So that the last sound you shall hear from my lips while on this side of perdition shall be, " Behold, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away, which taketh away, the sin of the world." X. GRACE REIGOTNG. " For sin shall not have dominion over you ; for ye are not under the law, but under grace." — Romans vi. 14. Law is a rule of action prescribed by a supreme power com- manding what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong, with a penalty annexed for its violation. The law referred to in the text is the moral law of God. " It ia a shallow attempt to fritter away the meaning of Scripture to say that by ' law ' here, Paul means only the ceremonial law." "•'' " To be under law means to be under its authority, and under its constraining influence. The Apostle means to say we are under neither. We are not only free from its objective authority, but from its subjective influence." f The assertion of the Apostle, then, is that believers are not under that law which is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments. A very startling statement ! It seems to countenance the heresy of John Agricola, who in the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury originated the doctrine known as Antinomianism, He taught that the law is of no use or obligation under the Gospel dispensation ; that good works do not promote our salvation, nor do bad ones hinder it ; that repentance is not to be preached from the Decalogue, but only from the Gospel. The Antinomian sect sprang up in England during the protectorate of Cromwell, and extended the system of hbertinism much farther than Agric- ola did. Some of them maintained that if they should commit any kind of sin, it would do them no hurt, nor in the least affect * Plumer. f Hodge in loco. (105) 106 GRACE REIGNING. their eternal state : — that it is one of the distinguishing charac- teristics of the elect that they cannot do anything displeasing to God. Of course such an interpretation is monstrous, especially as the Apostle in this very connection is unfolding the doctrine of sanctification. Tlie subject of the relation of believers to the moral law has been the theme of much discussion. The reason of this is, that the New Testament seems to contradict itself. Thus we find our Lord saying, " Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For, ver- ily, I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least command- ments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Stronger language could not be used to assert the abiding force and obli- gation of the law. So, too, we find the Apostles always enforc- ing the duties prescribed by the law. Thus the Apostle James exhorts the disciples " not to speak evil of the law or to judge it, but to fulfil it." The Apostle Paul says, he himself is " under the law to Christ "; and he presses on his converts at Kome and in Galatia the exercise of love, on the ground of its being " the ful- filling of the law." Yet, this same Apostle, in writing to Timothy, says, that " the law is not made for a righteous man (that is, for the justified believer), but for the lawless and dis- obedient, for the ungodly and for sinners," etc. (1 Tim. i. 9). And in the Epistle to the Eomans (chap. vii. 6), " Now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." Then the text, " Ye are not under the law, but under grace." There must be some way of reconciling state- ments so apparently contradictory. Their perfect harmony, I hope to make apparent in this discourse. In what respect, then, can it be said that believers are free from the Moral Law ? I answer : GRACE REIGNING. 107 1. Believers are not under the law as to the ground of their condemnation or justification hefore God. It is not to the law, but to Christ, that they are indebted for pardon and hfe ; and re- ceiving these from Him as His gift of grace, they cannot be brought by the law into condemnation and death. The reason is that Christ has, by His own pure and spotless obedience, done what the law in the hands of fallen humanity could not do. He has brought in the everlasting righteousness, which by its infinite worth has merited eternal life for as many as believe on Him. " There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." " Whosoever believeth upon Him, is justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses " (Rom. viii. 1 ; Acts xiii. 39). Or in the stronger and more comprehensive language of Christ himself, " He that hear- eth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlast- ing life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life " (John v. 24). It is sometimes said that we, as distinguished from the saints under the old dispensation, are delivered from the law as a cov- enant of works, and there is an implied contrast between our condition and theirs. This language is adapted to mislead ; for it seems to imply that as the law certainly formed the basis of a covenant with the Old Testament Church, its being so formed made it something else than simply a rule of life, and warranted the Israelite to look to it in the first instance, at least, for life and blessing. This, however, was not the purpose for which the law was given as a covenant among the Jews. Deliverance from the law, as a rule of condemnation or of justification, marks no essen- tial distinction between the case of believers under the Old, and that of behevers under the New Testament dispensation. That is, it was just as true of. Abraham and of David that they were not under the law, but under grace, as it is true of believers now. Strictly speaking, the Church never was under the law as a cov- enant. It was only a mistake of the carnal members of the Church to suppose so. We are just as much under the law now, as was any member of the Jewish Church, — no less, no more. He was not under the law in the sense that by doing the works 108 GRACE REIGNING. of the law he could have been justified ; neither are we. He was, and we, alike, are naturally under law to God ; and as trans- gressors of law liable to punishment. But through the grace of God in Christ, we are not so under it, if we have become true believers in Him. "We have pardon and acceptance through faith in His blood ; and even though in many things offending, and in all coming short, yet while faith abides in us, we cannot come into condemnation. To this effect are all the passages which treat of justification, and declare it to be granted to the ungodly as a free gift of grace in Christ, without the deeds of the law. 2. But this is not the only respect in which believers are free from the law. In this sixth chapter of Romans, the Apostle dis- tinctly teaches that helievers are not tinder the law as to their walk and conduct. In this respect also he affirms that we are dead to the law and are not under it, but under grace ; " the grace of God's indwelling Spirit, whose quickening energy and pulse of life take the place of the law's outward prescriptions and magisterial authority." The Apostle teUs us in other places that the " hnv is not made for the righteous ": that believers " have the Spirit of the Lord, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Christ says, " If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed"; i. e.^ free from the law as a condemning power, and free from it as a commanding power. An old divine has very forcibly expressed it thus : " Our Lord Jesus put Himself under the commanding power of the law, and gave it perfect obedience, to deliver His people from under it. God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law. That they then should put their necks tinder that yoke again cannot but be highly dishonoring to this crucified Christ, who disarmed the law of its thunders, defaced the obligation of it as a covenant ; and, as it were, grinded the two stones upon which it was wrought to powder." I know this will strike some of you as new doctrine. It is, however, no newer than Augustine, and Luther, and Calvin. But you will ask, " Is not this dangerous doctrine \ Where now is the safeguard against sin \ May we not do as we list, oblivious GRACE REIGNING. 109 of any distinction between holiness and sin, or even denjnng its existence as regards the cliildren of God, on the ground that where no law is, there is no transgression?" The Apostle's reply is, " God forbid "; so far from it, freedom from the law T has for its sole aim deliverance from " sin's dominion " and " fruit unto holiness." Let me state the doctrine in the language of one of the ablest divines of the Free Church of Scotland. " The truth fully stated is simply this : When the believer re- ceives Christ as the Lord, his Righteousness, he is not only justi- fied by grace, but he comes into a state of grace, or gets grace into his heart as a living, reigning, governing principle of hfe. What, however, is this grace, but the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus ? And this Spirit is emphatically the Holy Spirit : holi- ness is the very element of His being and the essential law of His working. Every desire He breathes, every feeling He awakens, every action He disposes and enables us to perform, is according to godliness. And if we are only sufficiently possessed of this Spirit, and yield ourselves to His direction and control, we no longer need the restraint and discipline of the law : we are free from it, hecause we are superior to it. Quickened and led by the Spirit, we of ourselves love and do the things which the law requires." Does not nature itself teach substantially the same lesson in its line of things ? The child, so long as he is a child, must be sub- ject to the law of his parents : his safety and well-being depend on his being so ; he must on every side be hemmed in, checked, and stimulated by that law of his parents ; otherwise mischief and destruction will infallibly overtake him. But as he ripens toward manhood, he becomes freed from the law, because he no longer needs such external discipline and restraint. He is a law to himself, putting away childish things, and of his own accord acting as the parental authority, had he still been subject to it, would have required and enforced him to do. In a word, the mind has become his, from which the parental law proceeded, and he has consequently become independent of its outward pre- scriptions. And what is it to be under the grace of God's Spirit, but to have the mind of God— the mind of Him who gave the 110 GRACE REIGNING. law simply as a revelation of what was in His heart respecting the holiness of His peoj^le ? So that the more they have of the one, the less obviously they need the other ; and only require to be complete in the grace of the Spirit in order to be rendered wholly independent of the bonds and restrictions of the law. Or think again of the relation in which a good man stands with respect to the laws of his country. In one sense, indeed, he is under them ; but in another and higher sense, he is not — he is above them, and moves along his course freely and without con- straint as if they existed not. For what is their proper object but to prevent, under severe penalties, the commission of crime ? Crime, however, is already the object of his abhorrence ; he needs no penalties to keep him from it. He would never harm the person or property of his neighbor, though there were not a single enactment on the statute-book. His own love of good and hatred of e^al keep him in the path of rectitude, and not the fines, imprisonment, or tortures, which the law hangs around the path of the criminal. The law was not made for him. Precisely so is it with the man who is under grace. The law considered as an outward discipline, placing him under a yoke of manifold commands and prohibitions, has for him ceased to exist. But it has ceased in this respect, only by taking possession of him in another. It is now within his heart. It is " the law of the Spirit of life in his inner man"; emphatically, therefore, " the law of liberty ": his delight is to do it, and it were better for him not to live, than to live otherwise than the tenor of the law requires. We see in Jesus the perfect exemplar of this free- will service to heaven. For while He was made under the law, He was so replenished with the Spirit, that He fulfilled it as if He fulfilled it not ; it was His very meat to do the will of Him who sent Him ; and not more certainly did the law enjoin, than He in His inmost soul loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Such, also, in a measure, will ever be the case with the devout believer on Jesus — in the same measure in which he has received of the Master's Spirit. Does the law command him to bear no false witness against his neighbor ? He is already so renewed in the spirit of his mind, as to speak the truth in his heart and be GRACE REIGNING. HI ready to swear to Ms own hurt. Does the law demand through all its precepts supreme love to God and brotherly love to men ? Why should this need to be demanded as a matter of law from him who has the Eternal Spirit of Love bearing sway within, and may therefore be said to live in and breathe an atmosphere of love ? Like Paul, he can say with king-like freedom, " I can do all things through Christ strengthening me ": even in chains, I am free : I choose what God chooses for me : His will in doing or suffering, I embrace as my own ; for I have Him working in me both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is to this freedom from the law as a command that the prophet Jeremiah refers, " After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and will be their God and they shall be my people ; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, K710W the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more" (Jer. xxxi. 34). To the same intent is the promise of God by the prophet Ezekiel, " And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." "When the Apostle says, " Ye are not under the law," he does not teach that the law is abolished. He merely says that, through grace, believers are not under it. In one place he exhorts be- lievers to " fulfil the law of Christ." Conformity to the law's requirements is held forth and inculcated as the very perfection of Christian excellence. For it is not as if there were two, — the law and the Spirit — contending authorities or forces drawing in separate, distinct lines. On the contrary, they are essentially and thoroughly agreed — emanations, both of them, of the un- chansino; holiness of Godhead — the one in its outward form and character, the other its inward spring and living pulse. What the one requires, the other prompts and qualifies to perform. And as the law at first came as an handmaid to the previously existing "Covenant of Grace," so does it still remain in the hand of the Spirit to aid Him in carrying out the objects for which He condescends to dwell and act in the bosoms of men. The law of the Ten Commandments and the law of the Spirit 112 GRACE REIGNING. of life in Christ, both saj, " Do this." But here is the differ- ence ; the one says, " Do this, and live "; the other sajs, " Live and do this." The one says, " Do this/br life "; the other says, « Do this/;'om life." * If all this is true, the question arises, of what use is the law to those who are really under the Spirit ? I answer : the law would be of no use, if the work of spiritual renovation were perfected in us. But since imperfection still cleaves to the child of God, the outward discipline of the law cannot be dispensed with. There are three different respects in which, although free from the law, we need the law. Here again, I quote in part from Dr. Fairbairu. 1. " We need the law to Jceep us under grace. The law waa not only our schoolmaster to iring us in the first instance to Christ ; but it is now our guardian to keej) us to Christ, by con- tinually forcing upon us the conviction that we must in every respect be the debtors to grace and grace alone. And just in proportion to the clearness with which we discern the breadth and spirituality of the law, and our utter inability to meet its demands, does it serve this end of driving us for peace and con- solation to Christ alone." 2. " The law is useful to restrain us from the commission of sins, either through the power of some lingering lust, or through ignorance that they are sins. ' By the law is the knowledge of sin.' It is true that in the subject of grace there can be no habitual inclination to live in sin ; for he is ' God's workmanship in Christ Jesus, created in Him unto good works '; he ' delights in the law of God after the inward man ; but there is a law in his members (^. e., in his carnal nature), warring against the law of his mind '; and the moral law with its discipline comes in to supply the imperfections of the spirit and to curb the remain- ing tendencies to sin." 3. " The third use of the law is to hold up before the mind a clear representation of the holiness which believers should ever * "Marrow on Modem Divinity," p. 174. GRACE REIGNING. US be striving to attain. The law stands before them with its reve- lation of holiness, like a faithful and resplendent mirror in which they may see without danger of delusion or mistake the perfect image of that excellence which they should ever be exhibiting. ' We are free, — we have the Spirit, and are not subject to bond- age.' True, but free, only to act as the servants of Christ : — free, but not to introduce anything we please into the service of God ; free, but to worship Him only in spirit and in truth ; free, but not to withhold from Him that proportion of our annual income which He has expected from His Church in all ages ; free, but not to observe one day in ten, instead of one in seven as a day of sacred rest. If you are really filled with His Spirit, the love of God must have been so breathed into your soul as of necessity to make it your delight to do whatever you can for His glory, and to engage in the services which bring you into near- est fellowship with heaven. And the law is of use to tell you what to do, in order to do this. It tells you what you cannot know by the mere illumination of the Spirit ; but what the sanctifying power of the Spirit inclines you to do as soon as you learn from tiie law that this is the will of God." Now, perhaps, you are able to see the difference between the law as a command with a penalty attached to its infraction, and the law as a rule, or as a guide to Christian conduct. The whole moral law as a command is abolished for every believer ; and the whole moral law in all its spirituality is in full force as a rule. It is said of Luther, that when this truth first dawned on his mind, it gave him such relief from the pangs of his tortured conscience, " he considered himself as standing at the gate of Paradise." A very homely illustration may aid you to grasp this distinction more firmly. The law as a command is like the rails on a railroad, which force the carriage to keep a certain di- rection on penalty of disaster if it flies the track ; the law as a rule is like a finger-board at the fork of a turnpike, pointing out the right direction, which vsdll be spontaneously followed by the traveller who desires to reach his home. This doctrine is of the highest importance, and serves to dis- tinguish those who are trying to keep the law from a servile fear 114 GRACE REIGNING. of God's judgments, and those who, not being under a bondage of fear, find it " their meat and drink to do the will of their Fa- ther in heaven." If all believers could apprehend the truth which I have this day endeavored to set plainly before you, the whole complex- ion of the Church would be changed. It is because so many only half believe the doctrine that they go downcast and mourn- ing over their religious condition. Show me a line in the New Testament that encourages a Christian to entertain for a moment a feeling of sadness, or doubt, or despondency. The whole tone of New Testament Christian experience is that of jubilant tri- umph. Its language is, " Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice." " Ah ! " some of you say, " this is addressed to those who can find something in their high attainments for which to rejoice." I say, No such thing ; it is addressed to any man who has re- ceived Jesus as his Saviour, before he has made attainments of any sort. It was appropriate to the thief on the cross, to the jailer of Philippi, to the poor publican as he returned from the temple justified rather than the good Pharisee who had made high attainments in piety. I say, it is addressed to any one of you who has faith in Christ only like a grain of mu-tard-seed. Well may you rejoice ; for you are not in the realm of the law ; you are in the kingdom of grace. "Why do the laws of China give you no concern ? Because you owe no allegiance at Pekin. In like manner, the moral law ought to inspire you with no dread. You owe no allegiance to Sinai. You are in the king- dom of grace, and your allegiance is due to Mount Zion. " For ye are not come to the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words : but ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, to God the judge of all, a!id to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel." This is the glorious kingdom of GRACE REIGNING. t\S grace — a kingdom which has no law and no penalties — a king- dom in which the very name of punishment is excluded from its vocabulary, because obedience is spontaneous and love to Christ the constraining impulse. Love being the law, His yoke is easy and His burden light. Now, you see the force of the Apostle's reasoning : " Sin shall not have dominion over you ; for ye are not under the law, but under grace," A strange reason to the minds of those who do not understand the doctrine. " You shall cease to sin, because the law commanding you not to sin is, for you, abolished and destroyed " ! ! ! The very law which you supposed was ordained to deter you from sin is ground to powder. The tables of stone are broken a second time ; and yet, says the Apostle, ye shall not sin against them. Wonderful paradox of Divine grace! And yet as easily explained, as it is superlatively wonderful. For the same Spirit of grace, by whose instrumentality alone you have been constrained and enabled to receive Christ and thus have been transferred from the domain of law into the domain of grace, — this same Spirit writes the law anew in your heart, and makes you a law unto yourself ; and thus by His quickening and sanctifying power constantly operating in you, generates sponta- neous obedience to the will of Christ which is in perfect accord with the abolished law. What need now to remind you to keep the Sabbath holy, when a day in His courts is better than a thousand, and you had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness? What need now to enjoin upon you to "have no other gods before Him," when the language of your inmost soul is : " Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee" ? Wliat need now to remind you that the second Commandment is like unto the first, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," when ye have heard from Christ His new commandment, "that ye love one another"? What need now to tell you that God has always expected at least a tenth of His people's income to be devoted to Him when you "thus judge that if one died for all, then all died; and that He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto 116 GRACE REIGNING. themselves, but unto Him that died for them "; when the Spirit of Christ that is in you prompts you to sing, " Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small ; Love so amazing, so Divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all "? Oh ! brethren, if you only apprehended the full meaning of the text, you would be delivered not only from the bondage of fear, but from bondage to the world. AVliat a scene of holy work for Christ this congregation would present ! What entire consecration of everything ! What holy joy ! What a busy em- ployment of all the talents ! Not from constraint, but from pure, irrepressible, overflowing love to Him who hath redeemed you from the curse of the law, and introduced you into the free king- dom of grace, and made you not subjects, but " Sons of God." XI. TEUE FREEDOM. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." — John viii. 36. There is no word, the meaning of which is so little under- stood, as the word freedom. Thousands are slaves who boast that they are freemen. In the conversation between our Saviour and the Jews recited in this chapter, they made an empty boast of their descent from Abraham, and seemed proud that they were never in bondage to any man. Forgetting that they had lost their civil liberties, they gloried in the fact that they were not in a state of domestic slav- ery. Like thousands among us at the present day, they thought that freedom consists in the absence of external restraint — a state of irresponsibilitj to any authority. Now this opinion carried out to its logical results would make the savage state the perfec- tion of liberty, and consequently the highest form of human ex- istence. To such an erroneous estimate of the true nature of freedom, the Scriptures justify us in opposing the grand proposition that t7me liberty consists in voluntary subjection to legitimate au- thority. A child who is subject to his parent whom he loves and whom he joyfully obeys, is free in the true sense of the term. A wife who yields a loyal obedience to her husband, is also free. A subject who yields a voluntary homage to his ruler, whether he be President or King, or Imperial Despot, is free. In his last discourse to the children of Israel, when all the (117) 118 TRUE FREEDOM. tribes were gathered at Shecbem, Joshua said : " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." They were free to choose, but they must choose to serve, to serve either the gods of the Ammonites or the God of their fathers. True liberty, I repeat it, consists not in freedom from restraint, but in voluntary subjection to legitimate authority. This definition is apphcable alike to personal liberty and civil liberty, and at your leisure you may subject it to the most rigid criticism, and you will find that it will stand the test at the bar of history, of common sense, and of Scripture. Without pausing now to justify this definition, I proceed upon the assumption of its soundness. If this definition is correct, if liberty in the creature consists in subjection to lawful authority, then most men are slaves. Even under the mildest form of civil government, men may be, and thousands are, slaves. They may be free from physical restraint ; there may be no bodily servitude ; but to real freedom they may be entire strangers. This was what our Saviour intimated to the Jews when they claimed that they had never been in bondage. He distinctly denies their proud claim. Passing from the region of the secular, the civil, and political, and rising at once to a view of their spiritual con- dition, in answer to their indignant demand, " How say est Thou, Ye shall he made free? " Jesus answered them, " Yerily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin." My object in this discourse is to analyze spiritual bondage and spiritual freedom, to show you the elements in each, and to lead you by the contrast to seek the glorious liberty of the children of God. Liberty, I have said, consists of two essential elements : First, voluntary subjection ; second, subjection to legitimate authority. A state or condition in which either of these elements is absent, is a state of bondage. Now this state of bondage is the condition of all who are not the children of God. In the first place, all such persons are in subjection to sin. Sin rules in them as the dominant master of all their actions. Sin pervades all their purposes. Sin animates all their hopes. Sin gives color to all their desii'es. Sin leavens all their emotions TRUE FREEDOM. ng and affections. Sin directs their whole course of conduct ; it gives character to every product of their intellect, their imagin- ation, and their fancy. Every power of their souls is under the dominion of sin. But this subjection is voluntary, and one of the elements of slavery would thus seem to be wanting. For no man can say, that when he yields himself up as the servant of sin, any power from without coerces his will. Oh no ! it is your boast that you are free agents, and this it is that renders your bondage to sin not only a misfortune, but a crime. But if your servitude to sin is voluntary, how then according to our definition can it be called a condition of slavery ? I answer, in the first place, because the other element in true freedom is wanting. The sinner is the voluntary slave of sin, but sin is a usurper / you have voluntarily subjected yourselves to an illegitimate authority. What right has sin to claim lord- ship over you who belong to God as your rightful Master ? In becoming the servants of sin, you have thrown off your allegiance to God, and as He is your only rightful M^ter, you are slaves. But in the second place, in a very important sense, your servi- tude to sin is involuntary. That is, it is not engaged in with the full consent of all the powers of your nature. Both reason and conscience protest against it all the time. In the interval be- tween the revels of the passions, reason lifts her voice and tells you, sin is folly and madness. Conscience, with still small voice, distinct but low, utters her protest against this subjection to sin, and declares that it is wrong and ruin. Now the structm-e of man essentially considered, the original constitution of his soul, and the design and meaning of that constitution, are not to be mistaken. Keason and conscience are his ordained guides ; he knows and feels that God ordained them to be his guides, and their utterances are in themselves above everything else. Hence a created mind whose will acts in obedience to conscience and rea- son, rises to the true ideal of a perfect moral being. This is the highest freedom ; it is power, it is glory. The will in any being is truly free and truly strong, when it is thus determined and controlled. When, then, the will is in subjection to these ordained author- 130 TRUE FREEDOM. ities — these vicegerents of God in the soul, the whole man is in perfect harmony with the original constitution of his nature, and he is free in the highest conceivable sense. But in the um-egen- «rate soul there is a continual schism ; for although reason and conscience assert their right to rule supreme, they can put forth no activity out of themselves to control the will. They can only present truth and duty to the mind ; they cannot coerce the re- bellious will into conformity with their decisions ; and sin, or the total depravity of man's nature, gains the mastery, stifles the pro- tests, drowns the voices of these heaven-appointed guides, and the man is thus bound in chains by sin and becomes his slave. In this sense his bondage is a forcible coercion of his nature. If by any spiritual legerdemain the service of sin could be made to appear reasonable and right, the struggle in the soul would cease, and this bondage to sin would lose one of its most bitter ele- ments. But since this is impossible, the service of sin will always be in one sense involuntary, as long as reason and conscience pro- test against it. It is indeed true that a man may be brought so far under the dominion of sin, that he seems to have yielded up every power of his soul, so that he seems to take delight in his chains ; but it is not necessary to prove that his condition is irk- some, in order to prove that it is a real slavery. In the third place, the service of sin is a slavery, because no man can free himself from it at pleasure. This is the most pain- ful and most terrible element in spiritual bondage. To know that in one sense you choose it, and to know at the same time that even if you try, you cannot shake off your chain — this, this is a bondage indeed. Men do resolve again and again, that they will free themselves from this t}Tant. But after all their struggles, he retains his hold upon them. How often has this been the case with you, my hearer ! Have you not again and again resolved that you would abandon your sinful life and be- come virtuous and good, and after frequent and protracted effort have you not reached the settled conviction that you are prac- tically unable to free yourself from this galling yoke ? Ah ! the evil is found, by expenence, to lie beyond the reach of the convictions of the reason and the demands of the conscience. TRUE FREEDOM. 12I Tou have realized, as have all who have made similar efforts, that sin has possession of your tastes, inclinations, affections, and desires; that you are slaves to sin, because these elements in your nature are totally depraved and corrupted. Kow, as no amount of direct effort on your part can change your heart, you can never free yourself from this state of slavery any more than the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots. The consciousness of every man authenticates this statement, without any appeal to the Word of God for confirmation. Here, then, are all the elements of the most abject slavery. First, subjection ; second, involuntary subjection ; thu-d, in- voluntary subjection to a usurper; fourth, a subjection from which you cannot free yourself; and to render it more bitter and degrading still, " involuntary subjection to a usui'per, from which you cannot free yourself, and yet voluntary to such an extent as to render the slave morally guilty for remaining a bondman." This, this is a slavery from which a man may well groan to be free — well might he cry out in the agony of his fruitless strug- gles for deliverance, Oli, wretched man that I am ! who shall de- liver me from this body of death ? This would seem to be enough to justify the declaration that most men are slaves ; but this is not all. The slavery to sin is only one of the chains which bind the sinner. This subjection to a tyrant and usurper brings the man into a state of bondage to another, but in this case a legitimate au- thority. It brings him directly under a bondage to the law of God. Here the authority is legitimate ; but the bondage is wholly involuntary. In this case the tliraldom is that of a criminal as contrasted with the freedom of a loyal subject. The latter is bound, too, by the law, and as long as he obeys it, he is protected by the strong arm of his sovereign in the enjoyment of life and liberty, and in the pursuit of happiness. He who transgresses that law is bound ; but bound by its penalties. He is restrained of his liberty by the prison-walls which the law has provided for those who tlirow off its allegiance. This is the 122 TRUE FREEDOM. bondage of him who has become the servant of sin. He has rendered himself obnoxious to the penalties of the law which he was bound to obey, by swearing fealty to another and a hostile power. He is a traitor under arrest awaiting his trial and his doom. He is a captured fugitive, cowering under fear of the lash. He is a prisoner on parole ; but not set free— a convict whom justice may spare from immediate punishment, but against whom the law has pronounced the sentence of condemnation. Now, consider some of the elements of terror in this bondage to the Law of God. What I wish you to do, is to look steadily at the facts of your condition as bondmen under a violated law. First. The first fact is that this bondage to the law is a state of actual condemnation to an eternal punishment. You act as if your case were not yet adjudicated, as if sentence had not yet been pronounced against you. But, my hearer, the Scripture de- clares that you are condemned already. You seem to think that the probation which God gives you is precisely similar to that which He gave to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden ; and that you are free to choose for yourselves, whether you shall be classed among the loyal subjects of your King, or whether you will renounce His authority ; whereas, the very truth is, that you are criminals, arrested, tried, convicted, and condenmed ; and only awaiting the execution of a sentence which has been delayed at the sovereign pleasure of God. You stand as if coolly bal- ancing in your mind, whether or not you will choose to be lost ; whereas the very truth is, that you are already lost. You seem to act as if you supposed that you may at any time release yourself from captivity to the law of God, and walk forth to freedom the moment you choose to signify your willingness to renew your oath of allegiance to the Sovereign whose authority you Lave renounced, whose law you have broken ; whereas, if, from this hour forward, you should keep the whole law, you would Btill be a condemned criminal and justly exposed to Divine wrath. It is because you do not realize this, that you sit here uncon- cerned about your spiritual condition. Oh ! if you unconverted men and women in this assembly could realize that you are lost TRUE FREEDOM. 123 sinners, lost sinners, sinners upon whom the wrath of God is actually abiding — oh ! terrible words ! — the wrath of God ! you would be unable to restrain your cries, — you would fill this vaulted roof with wailing and lamentation, and prostrate your- selves in supplication, crying out, God be merciful to us sinners. And this leads me to speak of another element of terror in this bondage to the law. It is a bondage from which you cannot redeem yourselves. You began life bankrupt, and every hour of your existence has only plunged you deeper into debt. Like those imprisoned for debt, the very condition in which you have been placed has pre- cluded the possibility of your ever liquidating your obligations. Repentance will not free you from this bondage, any more than the regrets of the spendthrift will deliver him from the debtor's prison. Absolute and complete reformation of hfe, were this possible, will not release you, any more than tlie payment of all your future expenses will settle the debts you have heretofore contracted. Here, then, is another fact of dreadful import in the sinner's bondage to the Law of God — nothing he can do will release him from its dreadful penalties. Now, men realize these truths with different degrees of dis- tinctness at different times. Hence there is a third element in this bondage to the law which is more or less operative in making it oppressive. In proportion as a man is conscious of his expos- ure to the penalty of the law and of his inability to satisfy its demands, he is brought under what the Apostle calls a bondage of fear. He lives all his lifetime in servile dread of God's vindic- tive wrath, or as the Apostle has it, " through fear of death is all his lifetime subject to bondage " (Ileb. ii. 15). This apprehension of the wrath to come is more vivid at one time than at another, but its influence is never wholly absent from the soul. It poisons every cup of pleasure, and dashes every draught with an element of bitterness ; it is the thorn that lies half concealed beneath every rose — the sting that envenoms life's happiest hours. It is this fear of death that sits like a nightmare upon your spirits and that casts a dark shadow over 124 TRUE FREEDOM. your wbole pathway through hfe. It reveals itself on your coun- tenances, and even in your gayest hours the shrewd physiog- nomist can discern the traces of its presence in the permanent lineaments of your faces. They who thus live in bondage to the law are aptly described by our Saviour as " weary and heavy laden." You often try to shake this burden off ; and when ab- sorbed in business or intoxicated with the pleasures of life, you do succeed in forgetting it for a moment; but when released from the struggles of the market and the toils of the counting- room, you sit down to calm reflection ; or when suddenly arrested by the death of some one whom God has struck down either in His love or His wrath, this fear of death and of coming judgment casts a shadow upon your souls. Here, ihexi., are the three prominent features in the sinner's bondage to the law : {a.) Present condemnation and consequent exposure to instant wrath. (5.) Utter inability to redeem himself. (c.) Servile dread of death and its consequences. Here, then, is a threefold bondage of the unregenerate and un- forgiven sinner — a slavery to sin, to the law, and to the fear of death. Have I not proved the proposition with which I began, that most men are slaves? Let us now contrast with this wretched condition the glorious liberty of the children of God. From this slavery the Son of God came to set us all free. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free in- deed, free indeed ; t. ^., the freedom which the Son gives in- volves all the elements of true freedom. This freedom is not a condition of irresponsibility, or of exemption from the claims of law ; but it consists essentially in a voluntary subjection to the legitimate sovereign of the soul. It is a freedom which is se- cured by the actual dethronement of the usurper, sin, and the actual redemption of the sinner from his bondage to the law. As our bondage was a twofold bondage to sin and to God's law, the freedom which the Son confers is a twofold enfranchisement. TRUE FREEDOM. 125 The first chain which is knocked off by the Son ' is the chain of the law. Christ redeems us from the curse of the law, i. e. from its condemnation. Hence, says the Apostle, there is there- fore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. By nature, we were the children of wrath, but now God lias accepted us in the beloved. At the very instant at which we became the children of God, by faith in Christ, we were redeemed by His vicai'ious atonement from the penalty of the law ; we entered at once, on the instant, into a new relation to God ; we came under a new dispensation, which is one of grace and pardon. "We are no more under the law, but under grace. The moment we become united to Christ by believing on Him, the penalty of the law, so far as we are concerned, is abrogated and the demands of the law upon us are fully satisfied. As the debts of a wife must be discharged by her husband ; and as by her mai'riage all her maiden obligations are at once transferred to him, so the believer being married to Christ, and having become His bride, becomes a '■''femme covert^'' and is no longer respon- sible to the law. Says Luther, " Everything which Christ has becomes the property of the believing soul. Everything the soul has becomes the property of Christ. Christ possesses all blessings and eternal life ; these are, therefore, thenceforward the property of the soul. The soul has all its iniquities and sins ; these become thenceforward the property of Christ. It is then that a blessed exchange commences. Christ the Almighty and Eternal taking to Himself by the nuptial ring of faith all the sins of tlie believer, those sins are lost and abolished in him ; for no sin dwells before His infinite righteousness. Thus by faith the believer's soul is delivered from sins and clothed with the eternal righteousness of her bridegroom, Christ. Oh, happy union 1 the rich, the noble, the holy bridegroom takes in marriage his poor, guilty, and de- spised spouse, delivers her from every evil, and enriches her with the most precious blessings." By one single blow Christ, the Son, redeems us from captivity to the law, knocks off our chains, opens the prison door, and we become as really free from the guilt of sin as if we had never sinned at all. This was the freedom of which Isaiah spoke when 126 TRUE FREEDOM. he represents the great deliverer as saying, " The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath appointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." This is the first element in the freedom wherewith Christ makes His people free. So far as they are concerned, the penalty of the law is abolished. My Christian brethren, you have heard all this before. Do you, however, realize the full import of these truths ? Do you know that the true children of God are at this moment as free from all liability to punishment as if they had already reached their home in heaven ? Now, is not this almost too good to be true ? But it is true. Hear ! oh hear, ye disconsolate believers, hear again the glorious Gospel, the glorious good neios, which I am commissioned to sound once more in your ears — proclaim it to every weeping Christian whom you may meet. There is now., i. e., at the present time, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that hath justified them, who is there to con- demn them ? Do you believe this, and do you realize this, and yet remain a poor, desponding, downcast mourner ? Oh ! the thing is impos- sible. I do not mean that it is impossible for you to mourn, although you are really pardoned. Many a poor child of God does mourn, not because he does not believe this truth, but be- cause it is a point he longs to know, — Am I His, or am I not ? But what I do mean is, that if you realized what it is to be par- doned, if you only knew how full and complete is the transfer of your guilt to Jesus, you would dry your tears forever and never weep any more. If you only knew the full import of the doc- trine ; if you could only realize that God does not half-way jus- tify a believer, that He pardons him fully and freely for every Ein, and regards him as forever redeemed from the law, you would become a joyful, cheerful Christian ; you would return to your houses this day with songs and everlasting joy upon your heads. TRUE FREEDOM. 127 But tlie work of our enfrancliisement would be only partially accomplished if Christ freed us only from the curse of the law. You remember our bondage is twofold. We were also under the dominion of the usurper, sin. Now, to complete the work, Christ fulfils to believers His promise that " sin shall not have dominion over them." Christ dethrones this tyrant, unseats this usurper by the actual exertion of a, supernatural power in the soul. He changes the heart, regenerates the affections, and re- leases the will from its bondage to Satan and to sin. This regen- eration of the soul is a real, miraculous work, wrought- in the bosom of every man whom God has justified in the eye of the law. By strildng off the first chain, Christ freed us from the penalty ; by a second blow, He frees us from the power of sin. In the first act of justification. He gives us a righteousness without us ; in the second, He works a holiness icithin us. The former is a cause of which the latter is an effect ; our justification is effected by Christ as a Priest, and has sole reference to the guilt of sin ; our sanctification is effected by Him as a King, and has respect to the dominion of sin. The former act deprives sin of its damning power ; the latter of its reigning power. In the former act. He magnifies the law and makes it honorable ; because the law has legitimate authority and cannot be set aside ; it must be equitably satisfied. As a priest, He makes atonement to its in- sulted majesty and buys us out of our captivity. But in the latter act, He comes riding as a victorious king to dethrone sin, the usurper, and to vindicate His rightful dominion in the soul. By sending His Spirit into these hearts. His people, who were once the willing slaves of sin, are made His willing subjects in the day of His power, and He tears them away from the grasp of their former tyrant. They are led by Him as captives ; but rejoicing captives, voluntary subjects to their rightful Sovereign, and thus they enter upon the glorious liberty of the children of God. Grace reigns triumphant, and they are free from the power of sin. This is the triumphant reply which the Apostle gives to all Antinomians, and to those who would charge him with Antinorai- 128 TRUE FREEDOM, anism. He declares that those who are justified and thereby freed from the penahj of sin, shall be also freed from the domin- ion of sin. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound ? God forbid. They who are dead to the guilt of sin shall be pow- erfully delivered from its predominant influence. They are not now under the law, but under grace ; and therefore they shall have that holiness which is not the fruit of the law, but is the re- sult of that liberty wherewith Christ hath made His people free. Christ has now become the absolute master of their hearts, and He promises that He will reign in them by the invincible power of victorious grace. Being made free from sin, says the Apostle, they become the servants of righteousness (Rom. vi. 18). But you ask, If all this is true, how do you account for the fact, admitted by all, that true believers are liable to sin, and do actually commit grievous sin? To this I reply by an illustration. When a tyrant has been dethroned, the effects of his misrule are visible long after he has ceased to reign. His evil influence is operative for many years after his supremacy has been destroyed. This, I think, is a fair illustration of the manner in which sin dwells in believers long after their deliverance from its bondage. It dwells in them as a dethroned, but not as a dead tyrant, who is continually warring with the spirit to regain his lost ascend- ency. But, blessed be God ! we have His word and promise that sin shall never regain his dominion. We shall be kept, by the power of God^ not by our own power, through faith unto salva- tion. Having begun a good work in us. He will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. i. 6). If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. And now what becomes of the third chain that bound us — the fear of death ? Why, that falls off of itself. Oh death, where is now thy sting ? The true believer no longer fears this once dreaded enemy. He knows indeed, that for a time he must yield his body to the grave, but there are no terrors now that lie beyond it. His fears have all been conquered by the ., TRUE FREEDOM. 129 power of that cross whereon his debt was paid and his sins were slain. Death is now to him the gate to endless joy — the way of nearest approach to the court of the monarch whom he loves. He is no longer a slave, but a son. He obeys because he loves. He renders homage, but it is not servile. He walks a freeman, an heir of God, within the very palace of his King. He is now the brother of the Captain of his salvation. Nay, he is himself a king. Plis inheritance is incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away. He is an heir of God, a joint heir with Jesus Christ. The Son has made him free, and he is free indeed. Glorious hopes inspire him. He walks the earth erect, and conscious of his noble destiny. All things are his, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, things present, things to come, all are his, he is Christ's, and Christ is God's. He rises superior to the ills of this present life ; he masters and triumphs over all the evils of his earthly lot. He reckons that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be com- pared with the glory that shall follow. He is free because* the love of Christ is his constraining motive. He is happy because he knows that nothing can separate him from God's love. His galling chains have all been broken, and he is now led by the cords of love. This is liberty indeed, the glorious liberty of a willing subject — a full deliverance from his former bondage con- sistent with justice, satisfactory to God, and therefore satisfactory to the believer's own conscience. No longer the slave of sin, his accusing, condemning con- science is pacified ; his reason is satisfied, and the old schism in his soul is at an end. Being justified, he has peace with God and peace with himself. Being renewed, and sanctified although only partially, he is filled with spiritual joy. Being adopted as a son, he has access to God. He has freedom and enlargement in his communion with God. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Now there is no- happier being on earth than he whom the truth has thus made free.. It would be easy to show, if the time would permit, the histor- ical as well as the logical connection between spiritual and civil freedom. In proportion to the prevalence of these doctrines l30 TRUE FREEDOM. among a people, will they demand and secure political liberty. No king, no despot, is able to enslave a nation of Christ's free- men. Souls emancipated from sin and Satan are not the materi- als out of which Russian serfs and Italian lazzaroni can be made. Let men once learn the lesson that the " Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins," and that they need no priestly interces- sor to come between them and their God, and the figment of a sin-forgiving church, which for centuries held men in civil as well as ecclesiastical bondage, is exploded. It is to the promulgation of the great doctrine of our text, and the great system of theology which is bound up in it, that we owe the civil liberty which we this day enjoy. I need not remind you that this is the anniversary of the day * on which our fathers rose up in the majesty of insulted nature, to vindicate the rights of man. The political prin- ciples in the maintenance of which they shed their blood, and to which they pledged " their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," were tlie direct outgrowth of their religious con- victions — convictions which they inherited from the great lead- ers of the Reformation. If you would transmit unimpaired to your children the liberties you now enjoy, you must cherish as a sacred legacy the faith of your revolutionary sires. Let it then be inscribed on your banners, and let it mingle with the shouts of a jubilant nation, " If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." * Preached in the Music Hall in Cincinnati on Sunday, July 4, 1880. XII. LIGHT. " Te are the light of the world." — Matthew v. 14. Our Lord is here addressing His disciples and the multitude who had gathered together to listen to His wondrous words of truth and grace. It cannot be that He intended to apply what He says in this and the preceding verse to all His hearers indis- criminately. Many of them were the wicked people, who, after- ward, had a hand in His death. Most of those who listened were not the salt of the earth, and were far from being in any sense the light of the world. The transition from the general address to the whole multitude to the special address to His disciples is made at verse eleven, in which He pronounces a benediction upon those who suffer for His sake. Ye who in your poverty have hungered for and obtained righteousness; ye who have been addressed as having, like the prophets before you, the in- gratitude, scorn, and persecution of the world as your earthly re- ward ; ye who correspond in character with those whom I have just pronounced " blessed," " ye are the light of the world." In another place Christ says of Himself, " I am the light of the world," and in the Old Testament prophecies He is called the "Sun of Righteousness"; and the aged Simeon, when holding Him an infant in his arms, describes Him as a " light to lighten the Gentiles." In what senses, then, does Christ compare His disciples to light? I. Light is the appropriate emblem of purity. Of all the works of God, none approaches light in its freedom from every- thing like impurity. Philosophy tells us that it may be analyzed 132 LIGHT. 80 as to exhibit in its component rays the colors of the rainbow ; but even these are free from all appearance of defilement. We speak of pure, white light. Poetry uses it as the emblem of un- approachable, immaculate innocence. It contracts no stain from the foulness of any medium through which it may pass, nor does it pollute anything upon which it may fall. Even the purest water may be rendered foul and unfit for use ; the air of heaven may be tainted with unwholesome vapors ; and thus both air and water may become the vehicle of disease and the cause of death ; but light emerges from the medium through which it passes as unsullied and inoffensive as when it first gushed forth from the orb in which it originated. It falls on the petals of the lily, and leaves no stain upon their velvety surface ; it falls on the damask of the rose, and it blushes in unsullied beauty ; it kisses the fair cheek of the maiden, and her virgin purity is undefiled ; it falls on the black cloud, and, lo ! it becomes a radiant glory ; it falls on the dark, blue moun- tains, and the far-off heights are clothed in untarnished gold ; it falls on the dew-drop, and the green sward is decked with spark- ling gems ; it falls on the cataract as the dark waters plunge into the abyss, and the white foam reflects it back to the eye of the beholder, unsullied by the contact. Thus light is a beautiful emblem of that moral purity which contracts no stain from contact with pollution, and which lends its own lustre to whatever comes within the range of its benign influence. II. Light is used as an emblem of hnowledge. Ignorance is likened to darkness. As those who are in the dark see not, and consequently know not the objects wliich surround them ; and as those who walk in the light have a clear perception of external objects, the figure is eminently appropriate. Says Isaiah : " To the law and to the testimony ; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them "; i. «., they are des- titute of knowledge. So the Psalmist says : " The entrance of Thy words givetli lighV^ ; *'.ower of His resurrection. The Christian Church is the colossal structure reared upon this foundation, deep as the granite basis of the world. " If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is vain." But preaching has not been vain ; faith has not been vain. The preaching of this risen Christ has revolution- ized human history ; it has brought a new power into social, do- mestic, and political life. Of the two doctrines, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, — the one inspired among all men indig- nant horror, the other unbounded scorn. Consider what these doctrines have overcome : First, " Judaism with its long and splendid history, rolling back from the heroic struggles of the Asmonean princes to the magnificence of Solomon ; nay, back- ward to the day, when, with uplifted spear, Joshua had bidden the sun to stand still on Gibeon ; and Abraham, obeying the mysterious summons, had abandoned the gods of his fathers^ in 276 RESURRECTION. Ur of the Chaldees. The rod of Moses, the harp of David, the ephod of Samuel, the mantle of Elijah, the graven gems on Aaron's breast, the granite tables of Sinai, the hving oracles of God — all these were the inheritance of Judah ; and who was this crucified Nazarene about whom some miserable Galileans testi- fied that He had risen from the dead, that He should dare to as- sail an immemorial faith like this ! But still, Judaism survived His resurrection for only forty years. The blood of the King whom they had crucified, fell like a rain of fire from heaven upon them and their children," Secondly, they encountered Paganism, with its mercenary priests, its proud philosophy, its favorite vices, its tyrannous politics, and its abominable and debauched social life. Yet, un- aided by anything external, the doctrine of a risen Jesus won. " Without one earthly weapon, Christianity faced the legionary masses, and tearing down their adored eagles replaced them by the sacred monogram of her victorious labarum / made the cross, the instrument of a slave's agony, more glorious than the laticlave of consuls or the diadem of kings "; without eloquence, silenced the subtle dialectics of the Academy ; and without knowledge, the encyclopaedic ambition of the Porch. And when, after essaying argument, and rhetoric, and railing, and irony, and invective in vain. Paganism resorted to brute force and crushing violence, even then Julian, the last of the persecuting pagan emperors, died prema- turely in the wreck of his broken powers with the despairing words upon his pallid lips, as he flung toward heaven a handful of his clotted blood, " Yicisti Galiloie^'' " O Galilsean, thou hast conquered ! " Then after triumphing over external foes the doc- trine of a Divine Kisen Redeemer encountered foes in its own household, and the Arian apostasy threatened the very existence of the Church, while Athanasius seemed to " stand alone against the world." But there were thousands of the true people of God who constituted the church that had not bowed to Baal, and mouths that had not kissed him ; and the great heart of the Christian multitude remained sound. Then came the avalanche of the northern barbarian invasion ; and it seemed to the eye of man as if the church must perish. RESURRECTION. ^rt But in the language of Gibbon, " The progress of Christianity was marked not only by a decisive victory over the learned and luxurious civilization of the Roman empire, but over the warlike barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who first subverted the em- pire and then embraced the religion of the vanquished." Then in the seventh century came Mohammedanism, with its trooping beauties and heaven of lust ; then Atheism in the fif- teenth century, when Christendom had ceased to be Christian, and priests, turned atheists, made open scoff of the religion they professed ; when a Cardinal Bembo could speak of Christ as " Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter "; and Pope John jested with his secretary on the " profitableness of the fable of Christ." All seemed lost and dead, when the voice of Luther's indignation shook the world. The hierarchy fell ; but the power of His resurrection, by which we are justified, saved the Church. And so I might go on, did time permit, and show you how down to this very moment the energy of Christ's resurrection has been reforming apostate civihzations ; and when it did not reform, has been purging out pestilence from the reeking atmos- phere with fire and storm. Other religions have withered into dishonored decrepitude ; but Christianity, with continuous reju- venescence, has renewed her strength like the eagle, has run and not been weary, has walked and not been faint. If ever, through her own faithlessness, she has fallen before her enemies, she has risen, Antseus-like, with new vigor, and " shaken her invincible locks." She cannot die, because, by the power of His resurrect tion, she is endued with the " power of an endless life." The power of His resurrection has left its imprint upon the very calendars of all Christianized nations. As His birthday was the beginning of a new era, so that in every letter you write, in every legal document you pen, in every legislative enactment that is engrossed, in every historical event that is recorded, even infidels are compelled to acknowledge the " year of our Lord ": so at the beginning of every week all Christendom recognizes the " power of His resurrection," in observing as sacred the day when He entered into His rest and ceased from His labors, as 278 RESURRECTION. God did after the first creation. When busy commerce in all our crowded marts folds her arms, and the din of trade is hushed in the still Sunday morning ; when church-bells ring out their gladsome tones in honor of the day ; when even law refuses to enforce contracts made in violation of the sanctity of this dies nan, how can we doubt the power of His resurrection ? Yes ! the Chi-istian Sabbath, with all that this involves, observed by 300,000,000 of the human race, attests the " power of His resur- rection." *' ' Christ the Lord is risen to-day,' Sons of men and angels say ; Raise yom- joys and triumphs high, Sing, ye heavens, and, earth, reply. " Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; Christ has burst the gates of hell ; Death, in vain, forbids Him rise, Christ hath opened Paradise. " HaU the Lord of earth and heaven! Praise to Thee by both be given 1 Thee we greet triumphant now I Hail the Resurrection Thou." XXIV. HEAYEK "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you." — John xiv. 2. If we were informed by a competent authority tLat a large part of our present life on earth is to be spent in another coun- try, different in every respect from the land of our birth, where greater happiness than we ever experienced would fall to our lot, where the society with which we should associate would be more agreeable and congenial, the employments in which we should engage more interesting and exciting, the range of our thought more extended, and the objects of desire and affection more ele- vated and exalted, — we should certainly be most deeply inter- ested in learning beforehand all that might be known in regard to that untried country of which we w"ere to become the deni- zens. How eagerly would we read every book which could give us any information respecting it ! How anxiously would we in- terrogate every pilgrim returning from that distant shore ! How carefully would we treasure up in our memories every piece of intelligence which might reach us in regard to the climate, the society, the politics, the laws, the government, the religion, the fashions, the customs of our future home ! Now, what I have presented in the form of a mere supposi- tion is in reality a sober fact. We are informed by a competent authority, that each one of us who is a Christian, will, after a longer or a shorter period, be immediately transported to another and a better country than that which we now inhabit, where our condition, character, associations, and employments will be ma- terially modified and changed. "We are informed that the place to which we are thus destined is called Heaven. And it is not (279) 280 HEAVEN. strange that we should be anxious to know all that may be known about this, which is to be our future eternal abode. "While we speak of heaven as if it were a place of which we know everything, is it not true that many of us have very vague, shadowy, dim, unsatisfactory conceptions of the state of the blessed dead and of the place where they are to spend their eternity ? Perhaps this incertitude is unavoidable and pertains of necessity to our present imperfect intellectual development. All the knowledge we can have of heaven must come to us through a written revelation. But a revelation can be made to us only in words; and human language is a very imperfect me- dium for the conveyance of conceptions wliich have no pattern on earth with which we can compare them. Another reason for the vagueness of our notions respecting heaven is that the Scriptures nowhere undertake to give us a description of it, except in the highly figurative language of the Revelation of St. John, which no one understands, and which it is probable it was not meant that we should understand. While these figurative de- scriptions are unintelligible, they are not on that account to be neglected or despised, for they convey to us some general idea of the splendor, the beauty, and the bliss of the New Jerusalem. Now, while all this is true, it is clear that God has not left us entirely in the dark with respect to the place and state of the soul after death. He has revealed so much as is necessary to ex- cite our desires to reach that heavenly abode, and to stimulate us to that patient continuance in well-doing by wliich we shall reach glory and honor and immortality beyond the grave. Let us endeavor to gather together the scattered rays of light and bring them into one focus. I. The Scriptures clearly teach that heaven is a place ; i. e., that somewhere in the universe there is a central spot, where are congregated together holy angels and the spirits of just men made perfect. " We sometimes hear and read such statements as this : Heaven is a state as well as a place. Such propositions have no meaning." * They are words which are not intended to * See Harbaugh on Heaven. HEAVEN. 281 convey thought, but are used simply to conceal the absence of all thought. I do not know what is meant by saying Heaven is a state. To my mind, it is equivalent to a negation of thought. Now, let us look at the proofs from Scripture that heaven is a place. (1.) In the text, our Lord says, " I go to prepare a place for you." This language is not figurative ; the word I go implies an actual departure from one place to another. If the point from which He departed was a place, the point toward which He went must be a place also. So, too, the word ^^ place " is used in its literal sense. It is the ordinary Greek word for a locality, used constantly to designate a precise spot or situation. From this passage alone, then, we are warranted in concluding that heaven is a place. (2.) But again, that heaven is a place, is proved by the re- vealed truth that the bodies of Enoch, of Elijah and of our Lord are in heaven. Now, a body is a substance which has rela- tions to place. It is bounded by limits ; it is here, and not there. It has spatial relations. As the bodies of Enoch and EHjah did not experience death, they were not chemically decomposed. They did not see corruption. The particles which composed those bodies were never separated from each other ; the flesh and bones and muscles and nerves must have retained their organic connection with each other, and do retain them to this very day and hour. The statement in Genesis with regard to the translation of Enoch is not decisive — there it is simply said that Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him ; the same form of ex- pression is applied to those who died — that they were not. But St. Paul relieves us of all doubt by the distinct assertion that on account of his faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found, because God had translated him ; i. e., his actual physical body was removed /row this earth and carried away ; and if it was carried away it must have been carried to some place, and that place must be heaven. The narrative of the translation of Elijah is succinct and clear. Standing with Ehsha on the bank of the river Jordan, and in view of fifty young 282 HEAVEN. men who composed the school of the prophets, he is visibly placed by angels in a fiery chariot drawn by horses of fire and forcibly separated from his companions and in a whirlwind car- ried up to heaven. He wore a mantle ; that mantle was com- posed of woolen or silken fibres — it was matter, and Elijah's body was matter, consisting of flesh and bones and blood. The ma/ntle which he wore was thrown out of the chariot and feU upon Elisha, symbolically to denote that he inherited from his master the prophetic spirit, and also because no doubt this fabric of wool or silk could not be carried up to heaven. Now, the mantle came back to the earth and was taken up and worn by Elisha; but the flesh and bones and blood of the translated prophet went with his soul into heaven. The young prophets asked permission to hunt for the body of Elijah. Elisha, who knew that the body of Elijah was taken away from the earth, discouraged the search, but after being importuned by them con- sented to it, and after an unavailing search of three days, in his case as in Enoch's, Elijah was not found : because God had trans- lated him, i. e., his hody to heaven. Now the body of Elijah was a substance, having relations to s^axie a.jid place f' it was not annihilated ; it was not decomposed ; it underwent no corruption ; in its physical entireness it was snatched SiW2Lj from this earth and borne to some other place through the air. It was seen 926 years afterward by Peter, James, and John, in company with Moses, on the Mount of Transfiguration, in familiar conversation with our Lord. It went and it came back ; and it must have gone somewhere and come from somewhere — that somewhere must have been a, place, and that pla