BX 9178 .T33 C6 1883 
 Taylor, William M. 1829- 
 
 1895. 
 Contrary winds 
 
 I r- \ \ 1 c_ 
 
NOW READY— 4th EDITION. 
 
 LIMITATIONS OF LIFE 
 
 AND OTHER SERMONS 
 
 Bt WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D.. LL.D. 
 
 with a find portrait on steel bt ritchie. 
 
 Crown 8vo Vol., 400 Pages. Extra Cloth, $1.73. 
 
 Copies sent postpaid on receipt of price. 
 
CONTRARY WINDS 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SERMOiN'S 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 PASTOR or THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE, NEW YORK CITT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 
 
 714. Bkoadway 
 
 1883 
 
Copyright, 1883, et 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 
 
 PIIES3 Of J. J. LITTLE 1 CO., 
 N09. 10 TO aO ASTOB PLACE. NEW YOSK. 
 
PEIXTCS 
 ,B£C. NOV 1883 
 
 THEOLOGICAL 
 
 TOIT ^\ 
 
 lOO'J > 
 
 ^Min:^?-^ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The favorable reception given to tlie former volume 
 entitled " The Limitations of Life and other Ser- 
 mons" has moved me, at the urgent and repeated 
 solicitation of my friends the Publishers, to issue a 
 companion to it in the shape of the present work. 
 The discourses here presented to the reader were 
 delivered in the ordinary course of my ministry, and 
 have been chosen simply because of their bearing on 
 topics of great present importance, and because of 
 the testimonies to their helpfulness which I have 
 received from many who heard them. They are 
 printed now as they were preached at first, for the 
 good that they may do, and my prayer is that the 
 Spirit of God may accompany them with his quicken- 
 ing and upbuilding influences. 
 
 Wm. M. Taylor. 
 
 Broadway Tabernacle, 
 New York, October, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Contrary Winds 7 
 
 Chaff or Wheat ? 21 
 
 Christ before Pilate — Pilate before Christ 37 
 
 Captivities and How to Improve them 51 
 
 Personal Independence the Result of Divine Redemption 65 
 
 The Untrodden Path 80 ** 
 
 i-^he Past Irrevocable 93 
 
 The Vision of Elijah 107 - 
 
 The Pleasures of Sin 121 "• 
 
 Affliction as Related to Life 136 
 
 Opportunities and their Limit 150 
 
 The Harvest of Retribution and Reward 169 
 
 Debtors 186 
 
 The Revelation at the Bush 200 
 
 True Greatness 215 
 
 The Seal of the Spirit 229 
 
 Drifting 245 
 
 The Inductive Study of the Scriptures 260 
 
 /^An Open Door for Little Strength 279 
 
 The Sorrowful " If " 293 
 
 The Hidden Support of Life 309 
 
 The Rectifying Influence of the Sanctuary 325 
 
 The Responsibilities of Life 341 — 
 
 These Things Done and Others Not Left Undone 356 
 

 CONTRAEY WINDS. 
 
 Matthew siv. 24. — The wind was contrary. 
 
 To get at all the lessons wliicli are suggested by 
 tliese words to those who care to go beneath the 
 surface of the narratives of Scripture we must have 
 a clear conception of the whole circumstances con- 
 nected with the spending of this night of toil, by the 
 disciples, on the Lake of Gennesaret. They had just 
 returned from their first preaching tour though Gal- 
 ilee ; and as, in the exuberance of their joy, they 
 were telling Jesus " all things both what they had 
 done and what they had taught," the followers of 
 John the Baptist came with the sad tidings that Herod 
 had caused their master to be put to death. This 
 news at once revived in the Lord the remembrance of 
 John's nobleness, and suggested to him the nearness 
 of his own crucifixion. He saw that, with him too, 
 matters were hastening to a crisis ; and, therefore, that 
 he might prepare himself for that which was before 
 him, and fortify his disciples against the difficulties 
 and disappointments that were in store for them, he 
 took them with him for a season of rest and retirement 
 to the eastern side of the lake. 
 
 But the inconsiderate selfishness of the people gave 
 him no opportunity for relaxation, for as soon as they 
 saw him setting out in the boat they started to walk 
 round the head of the loch in great numbers, and, imme- 
 diately on his landing, they crowded about him as they 
 had done at Capernaum. Nor did he thrust them from 
 
8 CONTEARY WINDS. 
 
 him; but, after having taught them till far into the after- 
 noon, he was so moved with compassion for them that 
 he furnished a feast for them by miracle from the five 
 loaves and two fishes, which were all the provisions 
 available at the moment. The efi'ect of this suj)er- 
 natural work was great. It roused the enthusiasm of 
 the people to the highest pitch, so that they exclaimed 
 "This is of a truth that prophet that should come into 
 the world " : and they wished " to take him by force 
 and make him a king." His own disciples, too, seem 
 to have been unwontedly stirred. With their as yet 
 carnal ideas regarding his kingdom, they were all too 
 ready to second and supjDort the proposal of the mul- 
 titude ; and so, for their own sakes, as well as to prevent 
 the crowd from rushing into a reckless enterprise, he 
 sent them away to cross the lake by themselves, and 
 after dismissing the people to their homes, he went up 
 alone into the mountain to soothe and refresh his 
 spirit by fellowship with his Father. 
 
 While he was thus engaged, however, his disciples 
 were called to contend with a furious storm, of a kind 
 not uncommon on the sea of Galilee. That lake lies 
 low, being, in fact, six hundred feet beneath the level 
 of the Mediterranean, and the water-courses on its 
 banks have cut out deep ravines which act like funnels 
 to draw down the winds from the mountains, so that 
 the storms are often both sudden and severe. On the 
 present occasion the wind came down with such fury 
 that even strong rowers, like the fishermen apostles, 
 could make little way against it, and after " toiling " 
 for nine hours they had made no more than three 
 miles. Thus it was with them until the fourth watch, 
 when the Lord came to their relief, walking on the 
 waves ; and after he entered the boat, the wind 
 ceased, and they speedily reached " the other shore." 
 
CONTBARY WINDS. 9 
 
 Now, with these facts in mind, let us see what help 
 we can derive for our daily lives from this toilsome 
 rowing of the disciples against a contrary wind. 
 
 I. Very evidently, the first thing here suggested is 
 that the way of duty is not always easy. In saying 
 that I do not allude to the inner difficulties which we 
 have frequently to overcome before we enter upon the 
 path of obedience, but rather to those hindrances 
 which come upon us from without, while we are r 
 honestly trying to go forward in the course which, be-/ 
 lieving it to be commanded us by God, we have begun. 
 These disciples were not very anxious to get into the 
 boat at first. They had to be " constrained " by the 
 personal effort of their Master himself. Had he not 
 exerted on them such an amount of pressure as to 
 make them feel that they would be going against his 
 will if they should stay, they would much rather 
 have remained with him. But after they had entered 
 the boat, and had begun their rowing, there is no- 
 reason to believe that they were slack at their work. 
 The smallness of the progress which they made was 
 owing, not to anything about them, but only to the 
 sudden uprising of a storm of contrary wind. 
 
 Here, then, were men doing what had been clearly 
 commanded by the Lord ; doing it too because they 
 felt that they could not refuse without wounding his 
 heart ; doing it, as there is reason to believe, with all 
 their might ; and yet hindered by influences external 
 to themselves, and altogether beyond their control. 
 Now, when we put it so, we see in a moment that the 
 situation of these disciples is not uncommon. I 
 venture to say that there is no one here of any 
 lengthened experience who has not had many days in 
 his life when " the wind was contrary " unto liim. We 
 1* 
 
10 CONTEAKY WINDS. 
 
 have had a duty laid upon us. It has not been of our 
 own choosing. If we had been left to our own im- 
 pulses we would much rather have done something 
 else, but in a marvelous manner we have felt ourselves 
 "shut up" to its performance. We have not been 
 able to get past it. We have entered upon it because 
 we felt we must do so. Our loyalty to the Lord has 
 " constrained " us to undertake it ; and yet, almost as 
 soon as we begin, "the wind becomes contrary," and 
 we have to contend with the greatest amount of diffi- 
 culties, so that we are prone to cry " Why is this ? 
 Have we mistaken altogether the indications of God's 
 Spirit as to our duty in the case ? and if we have not, 
 how comes it that he has hindered us in this 
 fashion ? " How often one begins the day with the 
 clear conviction that some important thing must be 
 done by him before the evening ! He enters upon it 
 early in the morning, but he has not proceeded far 
 when he is interru23ted ; and he has scarcely dismissed 
 one intruder before another is announced. Thus it 
 continues all the day, and at its close he sighs, and 
 says, " Ah ! me ! the wind was contrary." And the 
 next day may be a repetition of the same, so that he 
 is tempted to make a choice between two conflicting 
 obligations, and to neglect one for the sake of meeting 
 another. 
 
 And what is sometimes true thus of a single day in 
 our history, may be so, also, of a whole section of life. 
 Take the case, for example, of a youth in his choice of 
 a profession. He is ingenuous, conscientious, prayer- 
 ful. He does not wish to take any course of wliich 
 his Saviour would not approve, and at last he feels 
 himself shut in, suppose, to the ministry of the gos- 
 pel. It is not that he is attracted toward it by any 
 of its outward advantages ; but that he is impelled 
 
CONTEAKY WINDS. 11 
 
 into it by ttat inner consecration that will not let Mm 
 stay out of it. He hears the Master's call, not in any 
 mystic voice, but in that irrepressible " I cannot but " 
 which springs up within him. He seems to himself 
 to be drawn on by an irresistible attraction. He 
 could not be happy, he could not say to his con- 
 science that he had obeyed God, if he did not yield. 
 And yet, after he begins to prepare himself for the 
 work to which he thus devotes himself, he is beset 
 with difficulties. Perhaps the parents who have here- 
 tofore cheerfully supported him are beggared by some 
 commercial crisis, and can help him no more ; or the 
 death of a father may have thrown the weight of a 
 household on his shoulders ; or some accident — as 
 men call it — on the railway or in the steamboat may 
 lay him for months, or perhaps longer, on a bed of 
 weakness. And so he too, while following what he 
 believed to be the v/ill of God, is made to feel, to his 
 own dismay and depression, that " the wind is con- 
 trary." 
 
 "What a thrilling illustration of the same thing 
 we have in the case of the Apostle Paul and his visit 
 to Pome ! He had long desired to go to that city, not 
 from motives of curiosity, or from any wish to secure 
 worldly fortune, but simply that he might help the 
 Christians there by giving them some spiritual gifts, 
 and might at the very center of the empire touch for 
 Christ some springs of influence which would vibrate 
 to its outermost circumference. Nor is this all. In 
 that desire he had been encouraged by his Lord ; and 
 so, feeling it to be clearly his duty, he sets out for 
 Jerusalem, intending to go thence to the imperial city 
 by the directest route. But all the way thither he is 
 met by entreaties not to go, and even by prophecies 
 of coming evil. On his arrival there he is impdsoned 
 
12 CONTRAKY WINDS. 
 
 in the castle of Antonia. And though, on the second 
 night after his apprehension, the Lord stood by him 
 and assured him that he woukl still get to Rome, yet 
 he had to go through two years of imprisonment and 
 through peril of shipwreck and long delay at Malta 
 to his destination. That was a dreary duration of 
 contrary wind ; and I often wonder what Paul thought 
 as he looked back on the clear assurance which he re- 
 ceived from his Master that he should go to Rome, 
 and then glanced at the chain by which he was 
 bound, and the untoward influences by which he was 
 surrounded. Did no misgiving ever arise in his heart 
 as to whether or not he was right in seeking to go to 
 Rome ? Or, if he was unwavering in that conviction, 
 was he ever tempted to think that God had no control 
 over the occurrences of human life or the elements of 
 nature? Or, feeling himself unable to unravel these 
 mysteries, did he take refuge in his own words of be- 
 lieving assurance, " We know that all things work 
 together for good to them that love God, who are the 
 called according to his purpose " ? I cannot tell. 
 But I can clearly see what a trial came to him tliu:s 
 from hindrances in the very providence of God which 
 kept him from doing that which God himself had laid 
 upon him. 
 
 And many of us who have sought the "further- 
 ance of the gospel " among our fellow men, in obe- 
 dience to the injunction of the Lord, have seemed 
 to be providentially retarded in the same way. We 
 begin, say, in a spirit of simple devotion to Christ, 
 and because he has so brought the matter to our door 
 that we cannot pass it on to another, some effort for 
 the evangelization of the careless in our neighbor- 
 hood. We are sure we are seeking a good end, but 
 " the wind is contrary." We are met with freezing 
 
CONTKAKY WINDS. 13 
 
 indifference among those from wliom we expected co- 
 operation. One difficulty is suggested after another, 
 and so soon as we surmount one obstacle another 
 makes its appearance. We never seem to get into 
 plain sailing; always there are breakers ahead, or 
 something to be guarded against. If it all depended 
 upon us, we should go on with energy ; but alas ! our 
 energy evaporates in a large degree in holding those 
 constant negotiations and taking those continual pre- 
 cautions which are needed in order to keep everybody 
 sweet and to prevent friction. Let any one set out in 
 earnest to do anything positive or aggressive for 
 Christ, and all experience declares that before he has 
 gone far he will have to face a contrary wind. These 
 are the conflicts which must have given birth to the 
 following lines of Faber, and the mere repetition of 
 his words may be itself a comfort to us : 
 
 " Oh! it is hard to work for God, 
 To rise and take His part, 
 Upon this battle-field of earth. 
 And not sometimes lose heart. 
 
 " He hides himself so wondrously, 
 As though there were no God : 
 He is least seen when all the powers 
 Of ill are most abroad. 
 
 " Or, he deserts us at the hour 
 The fight is all but lost, 
 And seems to leave us to ourselves 
 Just when we need Him most. 
 
 " Yet, there is less to try our faith 
 In our mysterious creed. 
 Than in the godless look of earth, 
 In these our hours of need." 
 
 II. Now, what shall we say to sustain ourselves amid 
 an experience like that ? This, at least, we may take 
 
14 CONTRARY WINDS. 
 
 to ourselves for comfort, namely, tliat we are not re- 
 sponsible for the wind. That is a matter outside of 
 us and beyond our control, and for all such things we 
 are not to be blamed. Now, that takes the sting out 
 of the trial. It does not diminish the difficulty ; it does 
 not make the prosecution of our work less arduous ; 
 the " toiling in rowing " will be demanded all the 
 same, but there will be more heart, and better, for its 
 continuance. Nothing breaks the spirit like conscious 
 guilt ; but, on the other hand, nothing braces it like 
 conscious integrity. If a difficulty rises before me iu 
 God's providence, apart from any agency or culpa- 
 bility of my own, then I am in better mood to meet 
 and overcome it than I should be if I recognized iu it 
 some result of my own folly. A feeling of this sort, 
 I think, must have throbbed in Paul's heart when 
 he wrote to the Eomans, " If it be possible, as much 
 as lietli in yoit, live peaceably with all men." He had 
 known what it was to have men fired with antagonism 
 to him, but he had known also the riches of the con- 
 solation that consists in the consciousness that he had 
 done nothing to deserve it ; and so he would have his 
 readers see to it that when they were hindered it 
 should be by a " wind " which they did not raise, 
 and not by a " breeze " which they had themselves 
 created. And the same thought must have been in 
 Peter's mind when he bids his readers be careful that 
 when they suffered it should be for " well doing" and 
 not for " evil doing." The obstacles which we make 
 for ourselves are those which give us the sorest pain ; 
 but though that for which I am not responsible may 
 be a great hindrance to me, it can never be a 
 real personal burden. One may grumble about the 
 weather, — though even that would be a sin, — but in- 
 convenient though disagreeable weather is, we do not 
 
CONTEAEY WINDS. 15 
 
 number that among our sorest aflflictions. The con- 
 trary wind is in God's providence, and is to be made 
 the best of ; nay, so soon as we recognize that it is in 
 God's providence, we will make the best of it. 
 
 But another thought, suggested by the history from 
 which my text is taken, comes to our support here, 
 this, namely, that the attention required for bearing 
 up against the contrary wind may take us, for the tin^ 
 being, out of the way of some subtle temptation. 
 Think of the circumstances out of which these disci- 
 ples had just come. The multitude desired there and 
 then to take measures for the proclamation of Christ 
 as a King ; and, with their low and earthly notions of 
 the sort of kingdom which Messiah was to establish, 
 the near prospect of his entrance in this way upon it 
 had a strange fascination for the disciples. They were 
 eager for just such a denouement as the great mass of 
 the people wanted. How eager is evident from the 
 fact that, on the following day, after their Master had 
 refused to be a mere temporal ruler, and had thereby 
 so estranged many from him that they "went back 
 and walked no more with him," he was moved to 
 say to the twelve, as if he saw some signs of wavering 
 even in them, "Will ye also go away ?" So we gather 
 that he sent them away across the lake that night, and 
 left them by themselves to contend with adverse winds, 
 just to keep them out of harm's way, and to give them 
 something else meanwhile to think of than the glitter- 
 ing allurements of worldly greatness. And how often 
 have we seen that a contrary wind has done the same 
 thing for ourselves ? "We have not been conscious 
 of it at the moment ; but after the toil has been long 
 past, and we have been able, from the height of some 
 later vantage ground, to look back upon the whole ex- 
 perience, and put everything in it into its proper per- 
 
16 CONTRAEY WINDS. 
 
 spective, we can see tliat it came just in time to prevent 
 us from being moved by some dear deceitful dream 
 tliat was at the moment magnetizing us by its influ- 
 ence. We lament the interruptions that have kept us 
 from finishing the work which we had laid out for a 
 day, and feel almost aggravated at the delay ; yet some- 
 how, through the experience of these very interrup- 
 tions, we have been kept from doing that work Id a 
 way that would have brought dishonor on ourselves, 
 or given the enemies of the Lord occasion to blas- 
 pheme. The mode which at first had a strong charm 
 for us did in the interval lose its attraction, and wiser 
 thoughts j)revailed in the end ; or the work grew in 
 our idea by the delay, so that it became something 
 grander than, without that, we could have thought of 
 making it. 
 
 So, again, when we have been held back by sick- 
 ness, or other providential restraint from accom- 
 plishing that on which, as the servants of God, we 
 were resolutely bent, we have lived to find out that, if 
 that hindrance had not come just then, we should have 
 been in danger of preferring personal ambition to the 
 ajDprobation of the Lord. And, in general, all such 
 adverse providences have operated in keeping us 
 nearer the mercy-seat, and in leading us to depend 
 more implicitly, or, as the hymn has put it, to " lean " 
 more " hardly," on the supjDort of the Lord. Let us 
 not forget, therefore, that the buffeting with an adverse 
 wind has in it a preventive influence, wdiicli may help to 
 keep us from something worse. Better far a strong 
 head-wind than a fog ; for in the fog an iceberg may 
 be veiled, and collision with that would be destruc- 
 tion. But, here, the fog may be, as in the case of 
 these disciples it was, in the vague and misty notions 
 which we may have of Jesus and his kingdom ; and 
 
CONTRAEY WINDS. 17 
 
 anytliing that takes our thoughts away from the 
 secret dangers lurking in all such speculations is a 
 blessing, no matter how rough the experience may be. 
 But still another thought comes to our support 
 here, for there may be much in contending with a con- 
 trary wind, like that which we have been describing, 
 to prepare us for higher service in the cause of Christ. 
 Look once more at these disciples. Up till this time 
 they had been in visible companionship with the 
 Lord, from the hour when they had been called to 
 follow him, with but the exception of that preaching 
 circuit from which they had just recently returned. 
 But he was not to be with them thus all through their 
 lives. The day was coming when he would be cruci- 
 fied ; and though, after his crucifixion and burial, 
 there was to be a resurrection from the grave, yet that 
 was to be followed by his ascension into glory, after 
 which he would no more be with them in the body. 
 It was needful, therefore, that, before that time ar- 
 rived, they should have some experience of what it 
 was to be absent from him ; and in this night upon 
 the deep they had what I may call a rehearsal in 
 symbol of some of the difficulties with which they 
 would have to contend after he was taken up into 
 heaven. He withdrew to the mountain to give them 
 a foretaste of what should come when he went up to 
 heiaven ; and I have a firm conviction that much of 
 that persistence of the apostles in the face of perse- 
 cution which so strongly impresses us as we read the 
 early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles had its 
 root in the remembrance of what they had learned in 
 this night's contending with adverse winds on the 
 Galilean lake. This was one of their first experi- 
 ments in walking alone, and it helped to steady them 
 afterwards. 
 
18 CONTRAEY WINDS. 
 
 Now, it is quite similar with many believers yet. 
 Take the case of a young man studying for the min- 
 istry, and compelled, in the course of his curriculum, 
 to do battle with difficulties ; and those who have had 
 such a fight to go through will tell you that no college 
 or seminary could ever have given them so valuable a 
 prej)aration for their life work as that conflict secured 
 to them. Those five years of waiting between the 
 obtaining of his license to preach and the securing of 
 a parish, which seemed at the time even to Thomas 
 Guthrie to indicate that he had mistaken his profes- 
 sion, were, as he himself afterwards declared, among 
 the most useful to him of all his early life ; for during 
 a part of these he " walked the hospitals " of Paris, 
 and so fitted himself for work in the dens of the Edin- 
 burgh Cowgate ; and during the rest, he conducted a 
 bank in his native town, and so familiarized himself 
 with business that he could speak with wisdom and 
 intelligence to men of every occupation, and of all 
 ranks. And the same is seen in many other men. 
 The very necessity of rowing against the wind devel- 
 ops new strength, and brings latent resources into 
 play. It is questionable if John Kitto would ever 
 have been an author had it not been for " the con- 
 trary wind " of deafness which blew upon him from 
 the time that he was twelve years old ; and so much 
 have difficulties to do with the development of char- 
 acter, and the attainment of a sphere of exalted 
 usefulness in the world, that we may say that the 
 greatest of all misfortunes that can befall a youth is 
 to have nothing but good fortune. It may help to 
 nerve us against despondency, therefore, to know that 
 our present conflicts are the prophecies, if we but 
 fight them bravely through, of future eminence. 
 
 But once more here, as we bend to our oars while 
 
CONTRARY WINDS. 19 
 
 the wind is contrary, we may take to ourselves tlie 
 comfort that the Lord Jesus is closely watching us. 
 The parallel passage in Mark tells us that " he saw 
 them toiling in rowing." They did not know it, for 
 it was dark. But it is written here for our support 
 in similar circumstances. "He saw them toiling in ^''*" 
 rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them." If 
 they had known that it would liave put new heart 
 into them ; for they would have felt sure that no harm 
 would be suffered to come to them beneath his eye, 
 and they would have been convinced that whenever 
 he saw it to be necessary he would come to their 
 relief. But precisely that, this narrative as a whole 
 is designed to teach us. It tells us that though Jesus 
 is unseen, he is still looking down with interest upon 
 us ; that he is making intercession for us before the 
 heavenly mercy seat ; and that in some way, at the 
 right time, he will come to succor us. So we may 
 leave all care about the issue, and attend, meanwhile, 
 to the rowing. That is our present duty, let us there- 
 fore hold to it steadily, bravely, hopefully. Nor let us 
 be disappointed if the fourth watch of the night should 
 come before help appear. Belief will come ; so again I 
 say, let us work hopefully. There is all the difference in 
 the world between working with hope and without it ; 
 or, using the language of Scripture, between a living 
 hope and tlie hope that is dying or dead. The sailor 
 on the raft sinks into inactivity so long as there is no 
 vessel in sight ; but let a ship appear on the far hori- 
 zon and immediately he is alert, and seeks by every 
 means in his power to attract the attention of those 
 on board, if haply he may be saved. In the same 
 way, if we lose the hope of Christ's help we shall 
 give up rowing against the wind. But as hope revives 
 within us we shall put forth more strength. Let 
 
 ^0. 
 
20 COXTRARY WINDS. 
 
 those in a beleaguered garrison be signaled that relief 
 is near, and though they be on the verge of starvation, 
 they will hold out until it comes ; and so let a Chris- 
 tian keep hope, and he will keep persistence, for here, 
 too, comes in that pregnant saying of the Apostle, 
 " we are saved by hope." "What a contrary wind that 
 was which blew on Milton during the long years of 
 his blindness ! Yet he held on, and held out. Here 
 are his words : 
 
 " Yet I argue not 
 Against Heaven's band or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of lieart or bope, but ?till bear up and steer 
 Eight onward." 
 
 And his glorious epic was the magnificent outcome. 
 Thus let us hold on, no matter what we are required to 
 contend against, and let us rest assured that at length 
 Christ Avill come to us with such strengthening influen- 
 ces that we shall rise to something nobler than with- 
 out our struggle we could ever have attained. Let us, 
 then, toil on ! It is but a little while at the longest. No 
 contrary wind can last forever. By and by Christ will 
 come to us, and then there will be peace. Yes, and 
 after a time we shall reach " the other shore " ; and 
 when we touch that we shall be done with difficulties. 
 So, as the father of the well-known Andrew Marvell 
 said, just before he entered the boat in which, as he 
 was crossing the Humber, he went down and was 
 drowned, " Ho ! for Heaven ! " What though the 
 waves be rough ? Ho ! for heaven ! What though the 
 wind be contrary ? Ho ! for Heaven ! What though 
 the labor be exhausting ? Ho ! for Heaven ! 
 
 And when tbe sbore is won at last, 
 ^Yho will count tbe billows past ? . 
 
 Nov. 28, 1880. 
 
CHAFF OR WHEAT? 
 
 Jeremiah xxiii. 28. — The prophet that liath adream, let him tell a 
 dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. 
 What is the chaff to the wheat ? saith the Lord. 
 
 The propliet Jeremiah lived in evil days. He was, 
 in fact, almost the only witness-bearer for Jehovah in 
 his generation, for the people had sunk into uttermost 
 depravity, and were fast ripening for judgment. At 
 the time when he uttered the words of my text, Jehoi- 
 achin, the grandson of Josiah, was upon the throne of 
 Judah, which he filled for only four months ; and 
 Nebuchadnezzar was preparing the expedition whicli, 
 within a few weeks, was to take Jerusalem captive, 
 and to carry to Babylon, as prisoners of war, many 
 thousands of its citizens. In vain the prophet raised 
 his warning voice. To no purp ose did he entreat the 
 jDeople to return unto the Lord, and the monarch to 
 make peace with the Babylonian emperor. It was his 
 lot, Cassandra-like, to foretell things which no one 
 would believe ; and to have his efforts thwarted by 
 men of whom better things might have been expected. 
 For his most pronounced antagonists were among those 
 who had been educated as prophets, and who called 
 themselves the servants of the Lord. Ever as he gave 
 his message they stood forth to contradict him, and 
 claimed that they and not he truly represented the 
 mind of Jehovah. They despised him, and said, " The 
 Lord hath said ye shall have peace ; and they said 
 unto every one that walked after the imagination of 
 
22 CHAIT OR WHEAT? 
 
 liis own heart, No evil shall come upon you." Bui 
 he affirmed concerning them that thej "spake a 
 vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of 
 the Lord " ; and, as the test between them, he made 
 his ajDpeal to the results. They were continually ex- 
 claiming " I have dreamed ; I have dreamed !" " Well 
 then," he cries to the people, "let them tell their 
 dreams, and let me proclaim God's word ; then out of 
 the issue ye shall know which of us is his rightful 
 messenger. 'The prophet that hath a dream, let him 
 tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him sj)eak 
 my word faithfully ; what is the chaff to the wheat ? 
 saith the Lord.' Put it to the test of experiment, 
 and try it by the results produced in each case, then 
 ye shall know which is the true prophet and which 
 the false." 
 
 But primarily applicable as these words are to the 
 utterances of Jeremiah, we may broaden them out so 
 as to include under them the whole word of God ; and 
 we may challenge all human dreams which men 
 have set up in antagonism to it with the same 
 confidence ; and say " What is the chaff to the 
 wheat? " As the Saviour himself has expressed it, " by 
 their fruits ye shall know them." The Baconian 
 principle is that everything is to be received which 
 stands on the basis of exj)eriment ; and, judged by their 
 results, we never need fear for the Sacred Scriptures, 
 for in their own proper department they are " wheat," 
 and everything which men have put in their place 
 and set up against them is " chaff." This is the testi- 
 mony of human experience as a whole, and in a day 
 when multitudes are seeking to put the Bible once 
 again uj^on its trial, it may be well to bring this out 
 prominently before your attention. 
 
 My theme, then, this morning is the superiority of the 
 
CHAFF OR WHEAT? 23 
 
 divine word to the merely liuman dreams by wliicli men 
 liave sought to disj^lace it. But, before I enter upon it, 
 let me carefully define what I mean by "human 
 dreams." I do not include under such an appellation 
 the discoveries of science which have made this cen- 
 tury illustrious. So far from being " dreams," these are 
 well-accredited facts ; and they are a part of God's 
 revelation to men as really as are the writings of 
 prophets and apostles. They have not come to us in 
 the same way, indeed, and no supernatural influence 
 was required either to perceive them or to communicate 
 them. But nature, as some call it, is in my view only 
 the first volume of God's book, and everything which 
 is really found in it contributes to a better under- 
 standing of him. Still, just as the Bible was not 
 designed to teach men science, so science is not com- 
 petent to instruct men in those subjects which are 
 distinctively treated of in the Bible, and when it 
 enters into that department, science is a mere dreamer, 
 even as many who are well acquainted with the Script- 
 ures are no better than dreamers when they speak of 
 scientific topics. I refer now, therefore, not to the 
 discoveries of science, but rather to those views regard- 
 ing God, and the soul, and the hereafter which multi- 
 tudes in our times are seeking to put in antagonism to 
 the word of God, — and I say that these "human 
 dreams " when tested by experience are found to be 
 chaff, while the word of God, when similarly tried, 
 is discovered to be wheat. Now let us see whether 
 I can make good my assertion. I shall arrange my 
 statements under one or two particulars. 
 
 I. In the first place, then, I remark that the human 
 dream is empty ; but the divine word is substantial. 
 Chaff is a mere husk, but wheat is all grain. So the 
 
24 CHAFF OR WHEAT? 
 
 antagonists of the Bible deal in vague sj^e dilations, or 
 emj^ty negations ; wliereas the Scriptures are positive 
 and satisfying. The agnostic says that we cannot know 
 anything save that of which we can take cognizance 
 with our bodily senses ; and so he relegates the world 
 of spirit, and even the existence of God, into the 
 category of the unknown and the unknowable. The 
 atheist deals in absolute negation, and affirms that 
 there is nothing but the visible, and the here, — 
 no God, no soul, no future life. And the sceptic 
 alleges that there is utter uncertainty as to whether 
 there is a God, a soul, or a hereafter. Now, this 
 being the case, it is no calumny to say of these 
 systems that they are empty things. They have 
 nothing in them on which a man can lay hold. They 
 are as unsubstantial as a dream ; as shadowy as a 
 vision of the niglit. But the Scriptures, on the other 
 hand, are positii'e. Their very first utterance — 
 "In the beginning God" — brings God into the 
 front ; and there is that within us which is respon- 
 sive to their assertion of his existence. His I Am 
 awakes an echo in ourselves which is not only the 
 assertion of our own spiritual being, but the recogni- 
 tion of his. Moreover the Scriptures speak to our 
 consciences in such a way as not only to reveal our 
 sinfulness, but also to unfold the way of forgiveness ; 
 and, by the resurrection of Jesus Clirist from the 
 dead, they bring the future life to light — so that what 
 was before a perhaps, or a mere possibility, becomes 
 an absolute certainty. 
 
 But you may say all that is mere assertion. Well, 
 let it be put to the proof. Try the human dream in 
 the hour of bereavement. What has it to say to 
 the mourner weeping over the casket that holds his 
 dead beloved ? I challenge infidelity to utter then a 
 
CHAPF OK WHEAT? 25 
 
 word wliicli lias in it a single particle of comfort for 
 the stricken one. If lie choose to repress the in- 
 tuitions of his own nature, and shut his eyes to the 
 evidences of intelligent design which exist in the exter- 
 nal world, one may affirm that there is no God. 
 But what comfort is there in that at such a time ? If 
 he please to turn away from the proofs which so 
 plentifully exist in support of the credibility of the 
 Gospel narratives, another may allege that the whole 
 story of Jesus Christ is a myth, and that his resur- 
 rection from the dead is a delusion : but what conso- 
 lation is there in that under such an experience ? If he 
 desires to say something kindly, a third may speak of 
 the " common law," and sadly refer to the universality 
 of death : but what is there in that to dry a tear ? and 
 who can wonder at the indignation with which the 
 poet treated it, when, in words which seem to suggest 
 that he had this very text in mind, he cries : 
 
 " One writes, that ' other friends remain.' 
 
 That 'loss is common to the race/ 
 
 And common is the common place 
 And vacant chaflf, well meant for grain. — 
 That loss is common would not make 
 
 My own less bitter — rather more: 
 
 Too common : never morning wore 
 To evening but some heart did break." 
 
 But now, suppose the friends have been walking to- 
 gether in the faith of Christ, and one has been taken 
 and the other left. Draw near to the survivor, and say, 
 " Let not your heart be troubled ; ye believe in God, 
 believe also in me. In my Father's house are many 
 mansions ; if it were not so I would have told you. I 
 go to prepare a place for you. We know that if our 
 earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
 have a building of God, an house not made with 
 2 
 
26 CHAPF OR WHEAT? 
 
 Lands, eternal in tlie lieavens." And what is the re- 
 sult ? The tears flow on, but the bitterness is taken 
 out of the sorrow. The memory is transmuted into a 
 hoj^e ; for the parting is seen to be but for a season, 
 while the reunion is to be forever. The loved one is 
 missed; but even in the sadness caused by the ab- 
 sence there is a bright anticipation of the happy be- 
 yond. Now, as I contrast these two ways of dealing 
 with sorrow, am I not warranted to say, " What is the 
 chaff to the wheat ? " "No doubt," you reply, " but that 
 does not prove that the Scripture revelation is true." 
 And to that I answer, that there is more of proof in it 
 than you think for, since its adaptation to meet the 
 need of the mourner is itself an indorsement of its 
 worth. The specific in medicine has won its recogni- 
 tion when it is seen to be unfailing. In like manner 
 the power of the Gospel to comfort the mourner es- 
 tablishes its claim to be received as the divine specific 
 for his grief, and he will not give it up unless he gets 
 something better in its place ; least of all will he part 
 with it for that which is unsubstantial as an airy 
 nothing. 
 
 II. But, in the second place, I remark that the human 
 dream is destitute of nourishment for man's spiritual 
 nature, while the divine word is strengthening, and 
 ministers to its growth. Chaff does not feed ; but 
 wheat gives nutriment. So mere speculation has in 
 it no educating and ennobling influence. It occupies 
 the mind without strengthening the character. The 
 man who indulges in it makes no progress ; but, in- 
 stead of flowing onward with the current, he is caught 
 in some whirling eddy, round which he is continually 
 revolving. The sceptics of to-day are no farther on 
 than those of the early centuries; and agnosticism 
 
CHAPF OR WHEAT? 27 
 
 was as fully developed in ancient Athens as it is in 
 any of our modern cities. But the Christian believer 
 grows. His character is ever gaining new develop- 
 ment. He never reaches his ideal, but still " follows 
 after." The human being lives by faith. He must 
 believe something. He cannot move a single step 
 otherwise ; and when he loses all faith he comes to a 
 standstill. That is a general law, and so we need not 
 be surprised to find it hold in reference to spiritual 
 things. Scepticism puts an arrest on progress. It 
 stimulates the critical faculty into excess ; and, instead 
 of stirring a man up to the formation and development 
 of his own character, it makes him a mere anatomist 
 of the characters of others. I think, if you examine, 
 you will find that the great majority of mere critics 
 have become so through their lack or loss of personal 
 religious faith. What a contrast, in this regard, there is 
 between the lives of the two Frenchmen, Vinet and 
 St. Beuve ! They were companions in youth, and, in- 
 deed, friends through life. But St. Beuve lost his 
 religious faith, and became a literary critic, one of 
 the very best of critics, indeed, yet cnly a critic, de- 
 lighting the readers of his " Causeries du Lundi " 
 with his expositions of the systems of other men and 
 his estimates of their worth ; but Vinet, who retained 
 his faith to the last, became a producer himself, added 
 something great to the thought and work of his time, 
 and earned the right to be called the " Chalmers of 
 Switzerland." 
 
 Now that is a typical instance. But if you wish to 
 find my statement confirmed by an American experi- 
 ment, take the case of those who went into the Brook 
 Farm enterprise, and you will find that the growth 
 of them all had been checked by speculation ending 
 to a greater or lesser extent in unbelief. They all had 
 
28 CHAIT OR WHEAT? 
 
 tlie critical faculty sharpened ; but they were all, even 
 then, at their full growth, and they never got farther. 
 They had little or nothing of the constructive about 
 them ; and the most they have done, either in litera- 
 ture or in society, has been in the way of criticism. 
 Their work has been serviceable to those who are 
 already believers, and who knew how to take advan- 
 tage of it for their constructive purjjoses ; but they did 
 little in that way themselves. To the same class be- 
 longs that eminent English philosopher who has lately 
 been visiting our shores, and who, after having been 
 entertained by the evolutionists of our country, set sail 
 yesterday for his home.* You read, I doubt not, with 
 interest, his exceedingly thoughtful remarks about 
 Americans in the interview with which he honored a 
 privileged reporter. Among other wholesome truths 
 he said, regarding fitness for free institutions, " It is 
 essentially a question of character, and only in a sec- 
 ondary degree a question of knowledge." And again, 
 in regard to indifference among the people to 
 public abuses, he reiterated the opinion, " Not lack of 
 information, but lack of certain moral sentiments, is 
 the root of the evil." This emphasis of character is 
 most admirable; and in that, as you well know 
 from my frequent references to it, I thoroughly agree 
 with him. His diagnosis is excellent ; but what does 
 he propose as the remedy? How are we to get this 
 character and these moral sentiments ? Alas ! in 
 answer to such questions he is very largely silent. 
 He has a small sneer at " the little which religious 
 teachers have been doing these two thousand years," 
 and a vague inference from biological truths to the effect 
 " that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties of 
 
 * The reference is to Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
 
CHAPF OR WHEAT? 29 
 
 tlie Aryan race will produce liere a more powerful 
 type of man than lias liitlierto existed" ; and that is 
 all ! So moral sentiments are to be the growth of a 
 mixture of races, and the only hope for us of the 
 present generation is that we are in the way of evolv- 
 ing for the far-off future a very high ultimate form of 
 national life. Said I not truly that in all these men 
 the critical was the predominant quality, and that 
 they had little or nothing of the constructive in them ? 
 Evolution ! as well may a man endeavor to lift him- 
 self by his own garments as seek to elevate him- 
 self through such means. Nothing can be evolved 
 that has not first been involved ; and though it may 
 " split the ears of the groundlings " to talk of the 
 little that religious teachers have done, there is noth- 
 ing that can make character or elevate the race like 
 the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. What made 
 the Pilgrim Fathers, and gave its character to New 
 England? Was it not the faith of the gospel of the 
 Lord Jesus ? It is true, indeed, as our own poet has 
 said, that 
 
 "God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for his planting, 
 Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation." 
 
 But they were " the believers " who remained. Their 
 faith made them the " fittest " to survive. And to men- 
 tion no more, what made Scotland, and put its people 
 in the van of Europe? Was it not the same faith 
 in the same gospel ? The truth is, that all that has 
 been secured in character during the last eighteen 
 centuries, in the way of deepening, broadening and 
 elevating it, has been secured in connection with the 
 efforts of religious teachers. The progress of the 
 past has been owing more to the word of God than 
 to all else combined ; and so, even in the face of Mr. 
 
30 CHAPF OR WHEAT? 
 
 Spencer's allegations, I dare to ask, "Wliat is tlie 
 chaff to tlie wlieat ? " 
 
 III. But this leads me to remark, in the third place, 
 that the " human dream " has no aggressiveness in it 
 to arrest or overcome the evils that are in the world, 
 but the divine word is regenerating and reform- 
 ing. " Is not my word like as a fire ? saith the Lord, 
 and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? " 
 A venerable old man, who has been during the 
 greater part of a long life before the public, and 
 who has been highly respected by all his asso- 
 ciates, is now lying seriously ill.* He has been 
 known mostly as a politician ; but within the last 
 six years he has given very serious attention to re- 
 ligious matters, and in a long conversation which 
 I had with him some months ago he delighted me 
 with the insight which he gave me into his spiritual 
 experience. His eye was dimmed, for he was nearly 
 blind ; but his mind was clear and bright as ever, and 
 I will not soon forget the radiance which illumined 
 his countenance when I thanked him for a letter on 
 this very subject which he sent two years ago to the 
 Neio York Herald, and which is now printed as a tract 
 by the American Tract Society. I speak of Mr. 
 Thurlow Weed ; and I am glad here to direct atten- 
 tion to his words, since no one can accuse him of pro- 
 fessional prejudice, and every one must accept him as 
 a competent and unbiased witness. Let me quote 
 the following sentences, illustrative of the regenerat- 
 ing influence of the truth : " Our city furnishes many 
 examples of the beneficence of religion. Forty years 
 ago a locality too well known as the ' Five Points,' 
 
 *Mr. Weed died a few days after this sermon was delivered. 
 
CHATF OR WHEAT? 31 
 
 witli a population of several thousands, was the home 
 of the vilest of the vile, and the resort of others 
 equally debased. Men, women, and children, of all 
 nationalities and colors, herded together, differing 
 only in the degrees of crime and the depths of prof- 
 ligacy habitually practised. Their days were passed 
 in either idleness or depredations. Their nights were 
 spent in dance-house debaucheries. All healthy or 
 wholesome influences were excluded. Children grew 
 up to become either street beggars or inmates of the 
 almshouse, and their parents filled penitentiaries and 
 prisons. These orgies continued year after year, de- 
 fiant and aggressive, until that pandemonium was in- 
 vaded by Christian men and women whose patience 
 would not tire, whose courage was indomitable, and 
 whose devotion has been rewarded by a moral and 
 religious reformation so complete that no part of our 
 city is now more quiet and orderly than the once 
 dreaded ' Five Points.' Thousands of children, then 
 growing up either vagabonds or culprits, are now at- 
 tending schools, in which they are stimulated by pre- 
 cept and example to live industrious and virtuous 
 lives. Instead, therefore, of going forth idle, igno- 
 rant, and vicious children to prey upon society, the 
 destitute and orphan children of the ' Five Points,' 
 prepared for usefulness by moral and religious train- 
 ing, find happy homes in our rapidly-developing 
 "Western States and Territories. 
 
 " Again,* eight years ago. Water Street and its sur- 
 roundings northward from Peck slip had a notoriety 
 almost as unenviable as that of the 'Five Points.' 
 That region was rife with drunkenness, burglaries, 
 pugilism, and their kindred vices. Jerry McAuley 
 
 * Now ten. 
 
32 CHAFF OE WHEAT? 
 
 was conspicuous in all that was wicked and demoral- 
 izing. He had the reputation of being a terror to the 
 j)recinct, a reputation which, by his own confession, 
 was deserved. But this disturber of the public peace 
 was converted, and then he resolved to devote the re- 
 mainder of his life to the service of his Master, and, 
 with a faithful, affectionate wife as a helper, he has 
 given himself to labor for the salvation of others. For 
 a long time the hisses and howlings of his former asso- 
 ciates seriously disturbed his meetings, but courage, 
 perseverance and patience finally prevailed, and his 
 work now progresses without interruption. The gen- 
 eral character of the neighborhood has been improved ; 
 its social and moral tone and atmosphere have been 
 purified. Sailor boarding-houses have been reformed. 
 Sailors now carry their Bibles with them to sea. 
 Moody and Sankey hymns are sung in forecastles. 
 Hundreds of half-naked and hungry wives and chil- 
 dren, by the conversion of drunken husbands and 
 fathers, now rejoice in comfortable and happy homes. 
 The Mission church is crowded every w^eek day and 
 evening, and three times on Sunday, with intelligent 
 Christian men and women, who, rescued from garrets 
 and gutters, are now reputable citizens, enjoying the 
 fruits of their industry, and relating with grateful 
 hearts the miseries of their past, the joys of their 
 present, and the hopes of their future. By all who 
 * went to scoff, but remained to pray,' Jerry McAuley 
 and his exemplary wife are regarded with affection, 
 and will be remembered with gratitude."* 
 
 * Mr. McAuley has since removccl to the Cremorne Mission in West 
 Thirty-second Street, where he carries on a work equally remarkable 
 with that above described ; while Mr. O'Brien has succeeded him in 
 Water Street, with, if possible, still more marked success than his 
 predecessor had. 
 
CHAPF OR WHEAT? 33 
 
 These are some of the recent fruits of the gospel 
 in reformatory and regenerating work, of which we 
 are ourselves eye-witnesses. But now, where shall 
 we look for anything like similar results from those 
 who are the votaries of the human " dreams " of ag- 
 nosticism, scepticism or infidelity? "What has any 
 one of these done to improve the characters of indi- 
 vidual men, or elevate society, or bless the world? 
 And had not Mr. Weed a right to conclude his letter 
 with this challenge : " And now I invite the advocate 
 of infidelity, or any of his followers, to inform the 
 public how and to what extent they have profited by 
 his missionary labors in this city ; what salutary re- 
 forms he has inaugurated, or even suggested ; or in 
 what manner and to what extent he has contributed 
 to the general welfare or happiness of his fellow- 
 citizens " ? 
 
 There is an annual record of Christian work in this 
 city, issued by Mr. Lewis Jackson, of ' the City Mis- 
 sion, which may illustrate the same thing. It is an 
 extensive document, and represents many agencies, 
 and much expenditure of effort and of means. It 
 shows, too, that large results have been secured ; but 
 where is the report of similar doings among the 
 " dreamers of dreams " ? What hospitals have they 
 reared ? what missions have they inaugurated ? what 
 sinners have they reclaimed? You read, as I did, 
 with deepest interest, those recent articles in the Neio 
 York Times about our city churches. Many things in 
 them were glaringly inaccurate, but some were calcu^- 
 lated to awaken very serious thoughts in our minds ; 
 yet one was to me matter of devoutest gratitude, and 
 that was the fact that by these churches two mil- 
 lions and a half of dollars are given annually for 
 enterprises of benevolence, which have for their ob- 
 3* 
 
34 CHAFF OE WHEAT? 
 
 ject not merely the physical, but also, and especially, 
 the moral and spiritual welfare of men. All these 
 agencies are in full operation, and all of them are 
 attended, through the blessing of God's Spirit, with a 
 larger or smaller measure of success. What is agnos- 
 ticism, or scepticism, or infidelity attempting in the 
 same direction ? and what success would any of them 
 meet, if it should make the effort ? I ask these ques- 
 tions without any fear for the answer, and here 
 again I dare renew my challenge : " "What is the chaff 
 to the wheat? saith the. Lord." Let the advocates of 
 infidelity either do more than we have accomplished, 
 or let them forever hold their peace. 
 
 IV. But I have time only to name my fourth re- 
 mark, which is, that the human dream is short-lived, but 
 the divine word is enduring. Chaff 13 easily blown 
 away, but the wheat remains. And so the " little 
 systems " of human speculation " have their day and 
 cease to be " ; but " the word of the Lord endureth for- 
 ever." Each new antagonist, as he has arisen, has 
 boasted that he would destroy the influence of the gos- 
 pel ; but, somehow, he j^asses away, and it continues. 
 Like some impregnable fortress, in the hollows around 
 which you may pick up specimens of the various 
 missiles which from age to age have been hurled 
 against it, whilst its walls remain unbroken, the 
 word of God has withstood for centuries the attacks 
 of many successive armies of antagonists. The assail- 
 ants have gone— the Book abides ; and as of old it 
 was written, so we may write again — " They are dead 
 who sought the young child's life." The arguments 
 of the first antagonists of the gospel are now read 
 only in the pages of the apologists who replied to 
 them. And in more recent times, how many ad versa- 
 
CHAFF OR WHEAT? 35 
 
 ries liave advanced to assail it, with liauglity boasting 
 that it would speedily be defeated, but witli the 
 same result? Voltaire said that it took twelve men 
 to establish the gospel, but he would show that one 
 man could overthrow it. Yet the gospel is here 
 studied by millions, and how few now read Voltaire ? 
 A certain German rationalist alleged that the gospel 
 was not worth twenty-five years' purchase ; but half a 
 century has gone since he wrote, and the gospel is 
 more vigorous than ever, while he is forgotten. Again 
 and again, in the estimation of its adversaries, it ought 
 to have been demolished ; but it will not die, for there is 
 deep truth in Beza's motto for the French Protestant 
 Church, which surmounts the device of an anvil sur- 
 rounded by blacksmiths, at whose feet are many 
 broken hammers, and which I once heard Frederick 
 Monod translate thus : 
 
 "Hammer away, ye hostile bands : 
 Your hammers break, God's anvil stands." 
 
 Now, what does your boasted doctrine of the survival 
 of the fittest say to this ? Come ! do not flinch, but 
 carry it through. Is not the inference from your own 
 principle irresistible — that by its survival the gospel 
 has proved its fittestness ? — and may I not, therefore, 
 repeat my challenge : " "What is the chaff to the 
 wheat? " 
 
 But what is the inference from all this ? Can we 
 express it better than in the words of the text : " He 
 that hath my word, let him speak my word faith- 
 fully " ? Let us first of all seek to possess it for our- 
 selves, and then let us present it faithfully to our fellow- 
 men. If we would see its power, we must preach it 
 as we have received it from the Lord. It was to this 
 
36 CHAIT OE WHEAT? 
 
 same Jeremiali tliat Jehovali said: "Preach tlie 
 preaching that I bid thee ; diminish not a word " ; 
 and the most successful evangelist the world ever 
 saw was he who could say with truth, "I have not 
 shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." 
 So let us imitate his example, and set forth before 
 men the whole truth as we find it in this book. Let 
 us exjDose the dreadful nature and evil consequences 
 of sin ; let us publish the good news of salvation 
 righteously wrought out by God, in love, for all who 
 choose to accept of it ; let us show that such salvation 
 is to be had alone through faith in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ; let us exalt the life-giving agency of the Holy 
 Spirit, by whom alone men are quickened into newness 
 of life — and let us enforce all these statements by the 
 solemn sanctions of eternal judgment. Then we may 
 expect to see God's arm made bare again, as in former 
 days, in the conversion of multitudes ; and even if in 
 that expectation we should for a time, like Jeremiah, 
 be disappointed, we shall have at least the consola- 
 tion that we have delivered our own souls and have 
 sown seed which shall yet germinate in the hearts and 
 lives of men. And now may God help us to lay these 
 things to heart, that his name may be glorified. 
 Amen. 
 
 November 13, 1883. 
 
CHKIST BEFOEE PILATE— PILATE 
 BEFORE CHRIST. 
 
 Matthew sxvii. 22. — Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do, 
 then, with Jesus, which is called Christ? 
 
 During my late visit to mj native land I had tlie 
 great enjoyment of seeing, and somewhat carefully 
 studying, Munkacsy's famous picture of " Christ Be- 
 fore Pilate." Rarel}^ if ever, have I been so much 
 moved by a work of art ; and I propose this morning 
 to give to you, as nearly as I can recall it, the sermon 
 which it preaclied to me as I sat and silently contem- 
 plated the figures, which, even as I looked at them, 
 seemed to grow before me into life. 
 
 But, first, I must try. to describe to you the picture 
 itself. The canvas is- large, and the figures, all of 
 which are on the line of sight, are of life size. The 
 scene is in the pavement or open court before the 
 governor's palace, which was called in the Hebrew 
 tongue Gabbatha, and in which, after all his elTorts 
 to wriggle out of the responsibility of dealing with 
 the case, Pilate ultimately gave up Jesus to be cruci- 
 fied. At one end of the court, on a raised bench, and 
 dressed in a white toga, Pilate sits. On either side of 
 him are Jews, each of whom has a marked and special 
 individuality. The two on his left are gazing with 
 intense eagerness at Christ. They are evidently puz- 
 zled, and know not well what to make of the myste- 
 rious prisoner. On his right, standing on one of the 
 seats, and with his back against the wall, is a Scribe, 
 
38 C HEIST BEFOKE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 
 
 whose Countenance is expressive of uttermost con- 
 tempt, and just in front of tliis haughty fellow are 
 some Pharisees, one of whom is on his feet, and pas- 
 sionately urging that Jesus should be put to death, pre- 
 sumably on the ground that, if Pilate should let him 
 go, he would make it evident that he was not Caesar's 
 friend. Before them again is a usurer, sleek, fat and 
 self-satisfied, clearly taking great comfort to himself 
 in the assurance that, however the matter may be 
 settled, his well-filled money-bags will be undisturbed. 
 Beyond him stands the Christ in a robe of seamless 
 white, and with his wrists firmly bound; while be- 
 hind, kept in place by a Roman soldier, standing with 
 his back to the spectator, and making a barricade 
 with his spear, which he holds horizontally, is a mot- 
 ley group of on-lookers, not unlike that which we may 
 still see any day in one of our criminal courts. Of 
 these, one more furious than the rest is wildly ges- 
 ticulating, and crying, as we may judge from his whole 
 attitude, " Crucify him ! crucify him ! " and another, a 
 little to the Saviour's left, but in the second row be- 
 hind him, is leaning forward with mockery in his 
 leering look, and making almost as if he would sjDit 
 upon the saintly one. There is but one really com- 
 passionate face in the crowd, and that is the face of a 
 woman who, with an infant in her arms, most fitly 
 represents those gentle daughters of Jerusalem who 
 followed Jesus to Calvary with tears. Then, over the 
 heads of the on-lookers, and out of the upper part of 
 the doorway into the court, we get a glimpse of the 
 quiet light of the morning as it sleeps upon the walls 
 and turrets of the adjacent buildings. All these fig- 
 ures are so distinctly seen that you feel you could 
 recognize them again if you met them anywhere ; and 
 a strange sense of reality comes upon you as you look 
 
CHEIST BEFOKE PILATE — PILATE BEFOEE CHRIST. 39 
 
 at tliem, so that you forget that they are only painted, 
 and imagine that you are gazing on living and breath- 
 ing men. 
 
 But, as you sit awhile and look on, you gradually 
 lose all consciousness of the presence of the mere 
 on-lookers and find your interest concentrated on 
 these two white-robed ones, as if they were the only 
 figures before you. The pose of the Christ is admir- 
 able. It is repose blended with dignity ; self-pos- 
 session rising into majesty. There is no agitation or 
 confusion ; no fear or misgiving ; but, instead, the calm 
 nobleness of him who has just been saying " Thou 
 couldst have no power at all against me, except it 
 were given thee from above ; therefore he that de- 
 livered me unto thee hath the greater sin." The face 
 alone disappoints. Perhaps that may be owing to the 
 lofty ideal we have of the Divine Man, so that no 
 picture of our Lord would entirely please. But though 
 the painter has wisely abandoned the halo, and all 
 similar conventionalisms of art, and has delineated a 
 real man, for all which he is to be highly commended, 
 yet the eyes which look so steadily at Pilate as if they 
 were looking him through, seem to me to be cold, 
 keen, and condemnatory, rather than compassionate 
 and sad. It is a conception of the Lord of the same 
 sort as that of Dore, in his well-known picture of the 
 leaving of the Praetorium, and the eyes have not in 
 them that deep well of tenderness out of which came 
 the tears which he shed over Jerusalem, and which 
 we expect to see in them when he is looking at the 
 hopeless struggle of a soul which will not accept his 
 aid. It is said that the artist, dissatisfied with his first 
 attempt, has painted the Christ face twice ; but this, 
 also, is a partial failure, and here, so at least it seemed 
 to me as I looked upon it, is the one defect in his 
 
40 CHEIST BEFOEE PILATE — PILATE BEFOEE CHRIST. 
 
 noble work. But if there is this defect, it is one which 
 it shares with every other effort that human art has 
 made to delineate the Lord. The Pilate, however, is 
 well-nigh faultless. Here is a great, strong man, the 
 representative of the mightiest empire the world has 
 ever seen, with a head indicating intellectual force, 
 and a face, especially in its lower part, suggestive of 
 sensual indulgence. There is ordinarily no want of 
 firmness in him, as we may see from the general set 
 of his features ; but now there is in his countenance a 
 marvelous mixture of humiliation and irresolution. 
 He cannot lift his eyes to meet the gaze of Christ ; and 
 while one of his hands is nervously clutching at his 
 robe he is looking sadly into the other, whose fingers, 
 even as we look at them, almost seem to twitch with 
 perplexed irresolution. He is clearly pondering for 
 himself the question which a few moments before he 
 had addressed to the multitude, " What shall I do with 
 Jesus which is called Christ ? " He is annoyed that 
 the case has been brought to him at all, and as he 
 feels himself drifting on, against his own better judg- 
 ment, toward yielding to the clamor of the multitude, 
 he falls mightily in his own conceit, and begins to 
 despise himself. He would, at that moment, give, oh, 
 how much ! to be rid of the responsibility of dealing 
 with the Christ, but he cannot evade it ; and so he sits 
 there, drifting on to what he knows is a wrong de- 
 cision, the very incarnation of the feeling which his 
 own national poet described when he said, " I see and 
 approve the better course ; I follow the worse." 
 Thus, as we look at these two, we begin to discover 
 that it was not Christ that was before Pilate so much 
 as Pilate that was before Christ. His was the testing 
 experience. His was the trial ; his too, alas ! was the 
 degradation ; and at that coming day when the places 
 
CHEIST BEFORE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 41 
 
 sliall be reversed, wlien Christ shall l3e on the judgment 
 seat, and Pilate at the bar, there will still be that deep 
 self-condemnation which the painter here has fixed 
 upon his countenance. It is a marvelous picture, in 
 many respects the most remarkable I ever looked 
 upon, and, even from this imperfect description of it, 
 you will easily understand how as I sat intent before 
 it it stirred my soul to the very depths. 
 
 But now, with this portrayal of the scene before us 
 let us see if we can account, first, lor the hesitation of 
 Pilate to give up the Lord, and then for his final 
 yielding to the clamor of the people. Why all this 
 reluctance on his part to send Jesus to the cross ? He 
 was not usually so scrupulous. A human life more 
 or less gave him generally very little concern. He 
 had all a Koman's indifference for the comfort of those 
 who stood in any respect in his way ; and had no com- 
 punction, as we know, in mingling the blood of certain 
 turbulent Jews with the very sacrifices which at the mo- 
 ment they were offering. Had Christ been a Roman 
 citizen, indeed, he would most likely have been very 
 watchful over his safety, for in regard to all such the 
 imperial law was peculiarly strict, but the life of a mere 
 Jew was a very small thing in his estimation. Where- 
 fore then, this unwonted squeamishness of conscience ? 
 It was the result of a combination of particulars, each 
 of which had a special force of its own, and the aggre- 
 gate of which so wrought upon his mind that he was 
 brought thereby to a stand. 
 
 There was, in the first place, the peculiar char- 
 acter of the prisoner. A very slight examination 
 had been suflicieut to convince him that Christ 
 was innocent of the charge which had been brought 
 against him. But in the course of that examina- 
 
42 CHRIST BEPOEE TILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 
 
 tion mucli more than tlie innocence of Christ had 
 come to view. He had manifested a dignified pa- 
 tience altogether unlike anything that Pilate had ever 
 seen ; and his answers to certain questions had been 
 so strangely suggestive of something higher and nobler 
 than even the most exalted earthly philosophy that 
 he could not look upon him as a common prisoner. 
 He was no mere fanatic; neither was he after the 
 pattern of any existing school, whether Jewish, Greek, 
 or Koman. There was about him an " other-world- 
 liness" which brought those near him into close 
 proximity, for the time, with the unseen ; and an 
 elevation which lifted him above the tumult that was 
 howling for his destruction. Probably Pilate could 
 not have described it to himself, but there was some- 
 thing which he felt unusual and exceptional in this 
 man, marking him out from every other he ever had 
 before him, and constraining him to take a special 
 interest in his case. Add to this that his wife had 
 sent to him that singular message — " Have thou 
 nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered 
 many things this day in a dream because of him," — a 
 message which, in those days of mingled scepticism 
 and superstition — -for the two always go hand in hand — 
 must have produced a deep impression on his mind. 
 Moreover, there seemed some fatality about the case. 
 He had tried to roll it over upon Herod, but that 
 wily monarch sent the prisoner back upon his hands. 
 He had attempted to release him, as the passover 
 prisoner for the year, but neither was there any outlet 
 for him in that, for the people had jDreferred Barab- 
 bas. And so the responsibility had come again to his 
 own door, and could not be passed on to another. 
 Still again, he saw that the Jews were acting most 
 hypocritically in the matter. It was a new thing for 
 
CHKIST BEFORE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 43 
 
 them to be zealous for the honor of Caesar, and he 
 could easily see through the mask they wore, into the 
 envy and malice which were the motives for their 
 conduct. The deeper he went into the case he dis- 
 covered only the more reason for resisting their 
 importunity, and, however he looked at it, his plain 
 duty wa« to set the prisoner free. 
 
 "Why then, again we ask, was his perplexity ? The 
 answer is suggested by the taunt of the Jews, " If thou 
 let this man go thou art not Caesar's friend ; whoso- 
 ever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar." 
 He foresaw that if he resisted the will of the rulers 
 he would make them his enemies, and so provoke 
 them to complain of him to the emperor, who would 
 then institute an inquiry into his administration 
 of his office — and that he was not prepared to face. 
 He had done things as a governor which would 
 not bear the light, and so at the crisis of his life he 
 was fettered by deeds of the past from doing that 
 which he felt to be the duty of the present. You may, 
 perhaps, remember that expression of the prophet, 
 which thus reads in the margin : " Their doings will 
 not suffer them to turn unto their God";* and that 
 other, which affirms, concerning Israel : " Their own 
 doings have beset them about."! Now, these descrip- 
 tions niost accurately define the cause of Pilate's per- 
 plexity here. His conduct in the past had been such 
 that he had not the courage to take any course which 
 might lead to an investigation of that. If he could 
 deliver Christ without provoking that, then he would 
 most cheerfully do so ; but if by delivering Christ he 
 would provoke that, then Christ must be given up to 
 the cross. Hence his perplexity at the first, and 
 
 * Hosea v. 4. f Ibid, vii. 2. 
 
44 CHRIST BEFORE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 
 
 lience, also, liis yielding in tlie end. His past mis- 
 deeds had put liim virtually into the power of those 
 who were now so eager for the condemnation of the 
 Christ. On three several occasions his arbitrariness 
 had been such as all but to instigate a rebellion 
 among the people, and his cruelty and contempt for 
 justice, when he had a personal end to gain, were sure, 
 npon appeal to the emperor, to be severely punished ; 
 so to save himself from banishment and disgrace, if 
 not even death, he delivered over Jesus to the will of 
 the JeAvs. He wdshed to do right in this case more 
 than ever he had wished before ; there was something 
 about it which in his view made it more important 
 that he should do right now than ever before ; but 
 through all his past official life he had, by his 
 enormities and oppressions, been unconsciously weav- 
 ing round himself a net, in the meshes of which he is 
 now inextricably caught. His guilty conscience made 
 him a coward at the very time when most of all he 
 wanted to be brave. He had come to his " narrow 
 place," where he could turn neither to the right hand 
 nor to the left, but must face the naked alternative 
 " yes " or " no " ; and he fell because in his former 
 life, when he was thinking of no such ordeal, he had 
 sold himself by his evil deeds into the power of the 
 enemy. 
 
 Now, what a lesson there is in all this for us ! Men 
 think that they may live for the time being as they 
 jDlease, and that at a convenient season they can re- 
 pent and turn to God. But the present is condition- 
 ing the future, and making it either possible or the 
 reverse for us to do right in the future. He who neg- 
 lects the laws of health every day, and lives in intem- 
 perance and excess of all kinds, is only making it abso- 
 lutely certain that when fever lays him low he will 
 
CHKIST EEFOKE PILATE — PILATE BEFOEE CHEIST. 45 
 
 die, for he lias eaten out tlie strength of his constitu- 
 tion bj his follies. And, in the same way, he who sets 
 all morality at defiance in his ordinary conduct only 
 makes it inevitable that when his convenient season 
 does come, when his time of privilege and testing does 
 arrive, he will fail to rise to the occasion, and be swept 
 away into perdition. The tenor of our ordinary life 
 determines how we shall pass through exceptional 
 and crucial occasions, therefore let us bring that up 
 to the highest level by doing everything as unto God, 
 and then we shall be ready for any emergency. 
 
 Nor let me forget to add here, that in spite of all 
 his efforts to keep back investigation, Pilate's day of 
 reckoning with the emperor did come. The Jews 
 complained of him after all, in spite of his yielding 
 to them now ; and as the result he was banished, and 
 afterwards, so tradition says, he committed suicide. 
 Thus the ordeal and the disgrace came, notwithstand- 
 ing all he did to avert them, and he had not under 
 them the solace which he might have enjoyed if only 
 he had stood firm on this great and memorable occa- 
 sion. Therefore let us all, and especially the young, 
 take to ourselves, as the first lesson from this deeply 
 interesting history, that we should be careful not to 
 hamjDer ourselves for the discharge of duty in the 
 future by the guilt of the present. By our conduct 
 now we are either coiling cords around us which shall 
 hold us fast at the very time when we most desire to 
 be free, or we are forming and fostering a strength 
 of character which, through God, will triumph over 
 every temptation. If " to be weak is to be miserable," 
 it is no less true that to be guilty is to be weak. Pre- 
 serve yourselves, therefore, from this danger, and seek 
 above all other things to keep your consciences clean ; 
 then when you need all your strength for a crisis, you 
 
46 CHEIST BEFORE PILATE — PILATE BEFOKE CHEIST. 
 
 will not sit, like Pilate here, in nervous perplexity, be- 
 moaning your helplessness even while you yield to the 
 adversary ; but you will shake the temj)tation from 
 you with as much ease as the eagle shakes the dew- 
 drop fi'om his wing. Keep yourselves pure : so shall 
 your youth be full of happiness, and you shall go 
 forth out of it with no encumbering past to clog the 
 wheels of your endeavor. How happy he whose youth 
 time thus leaves him with a smile and sends him 
 forth upon the duties of manhood with a benediction ! 
 But he, how miserable ! whose early years heap bitter 
 maledictions on his head, and push him forward into 
 active life with a conscience already laden with guilt, 
 and a soul as weak before temptation as a reed is be- 
 fore the wind. 
 
 But while there is thus in this history a lesson for 
 all time, I think Munkacsy, by the appearance of his 
 wondrous picture now, has made it evident that there 
 is also something in it specially adapted to these 
 modern days. It is with artists in the choice of their 
 subjects as it is with ministers in the selection of 
 their themes. Both alike, consciously and uncon- 
 sciously, and most frequently perhaps, unconsciously, 
 are affected by the spirit of their age. The atmos- 
 jjhere — literary, moral, political, and religious — which 
 is round about them, and which they are daily breath- 
 ing, does, insensibly to themselves, so influence them 
 that their thoughts are turned by it into a channel 
 different from that in which those of a former gen- 
 eration flowed. Hence, whether the painter would 
 admit it or not, I see in this picture, at this juncture, 
 at once a mirror of the times and a lesson for them. 
 The question of Pilate, "What shall i do, then, with 
 Jesus which is called the Christ ? " is pre-eminently 
 
CHEIST BEFORE PILATE — PILATE- BEFORE CHRIST. 47 
 
 the question of the present age. No doubt we may 
 say with truth that it has been the question of all the 
 Christian centuries, and each one of them has faced it 
 and solved it after its own fashion. It has tested the 
 centuries even as it tested Pilate, and those in which 
 Christ was rejected have been the darkest in the 
 world's history ; while those in which he has been 
 hailed as the Incarnate God have been the brightest 
 which the earth has ever seen, because irradiated 
 with truth, and justice, and benevolence and purity. 
 But though we are always prone to exaggerate that 
 in the midst of which we are ourselves, it seems to me 
 that in no one age since that of the primitive church 
 has this testing question been so prominent as in our 
 own. All the controversies of our times, social, philo- 
 sophical, and theological, lead up to and find their 
 ultimate hinge in the answer to this inquiry, " Who 
 is this Jesus Christ ? " If he be a mere man, then 
 there is for us nothing but uncertainty on any subject, 
 outside of the domain of the exact sciences ; and we 
 must all become agnostics, holding this one negative 
 article of belief, that nothing can be known about 
 anything save that of which we can take cognizance 
 with the bodily senses. But if he be Incarnate God, 
 then he brings with him from heaven the final word on 
 all subjects concerning which he has spoken ; and 
 though in his person he is the mystery of mysteries, 
 yet, once received, he becomes forthwith the solution 
 of all mysteries, and faith in him is at once the satis- 
 faction of the intellect and the repose of the heart. It is 
 perfectly natural, therefore, that all the controversies 
 of the day should turn on him. The Lives of Christ 
 which have been written during the last thirty or forty 
 years would make in themselves a very respectable 
 library ; and the cry even of the sceptic is, " I could get 
 
48 CHRIST BEFORE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 
 
 on very well with unbelief, if I only knew what to make 
 of Christ." Yes, that is just the difficulty. Christ is here 
 in the Scriptures a character portrayed in literature ; 
 he was in the world for thirty-three years, and lived a 
 life excej)tional in every respect, but most of all in the 
 moral and sj^iritual departments, so that of him alone 
 l^erfection can be predicated ; he has been ever since 
 a most potent factor in history, for through his influ- 
 ence all that is pure, and noble, and exalted, and lovely 
 and of good report, has come into our civilization. 
 Now, these things have to be accounted for. If he 
 was only a man, how shall we explain them ? and if 
 he was more than a man shall we not take his own 
 testimony as to his dignity and mission ? If we are 
 to be unbelievers, we must account for Christ on 
 natural princijjles ; but if we cannot do that, then 
 we must receive him as he claims to be received. 
 There is no alternative. Those in the age who have 
 the spirit and disposition of Pilate will anew reject 
 him ; but those who are sincere and earnest in their 
 inquiries will come ultimately out into the light, for 
 " if any man be willing to do his will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine whether it be of God." 
 
 And what is true of the age, as a whole, is true 
 also of every individual to whom the gospel is pro- 
 claimed. For each of us, my hearers, this is the 
 question of questions, " What shall I do with Jesus 
 which is called Christ ? " Shall I reject him and live 
 precisely as if I had never heard his name ? or shall 
 I accept him as the Lord from heaven in human 
 nature, trust in him as my Saviour, and obey him as 
 my king ! I must do the one or the other ; and yet 
 how many are seeking, like Pilate, to evade the ques- 
 tion? They try to escape the responsibility of deal- 
 
CHEIST BEFOEE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHKIST. 49 
 
 ing witli it as a direct alternative of yes or no. But 
 as one has well said, " necessity is laid upon us. The 
 adversaries of Christ press upon us to give our ver- 
 dict against him. We are troubled and perplexed, 
 for we have long heard about him, and have had each 
 of us his own convictions. We would still remain neu- 
 tral. We try — and try in vain — to escape from the 
 spirit, the conversation, the literature, the question of 
 the times. Again and again we wash our hands. But 
 neither our silence nor our actions are of any avail ; 
 and so we are found sitting, conscious of the presence 
 and the claims of our Saviour, and, like Pilate, not 
 daring to look at him, as we puzzle over the answer 
 which we must give to the question that is being 
 forced upon us — Who ^'s this Jesus Christ ? " Per- 
 haps this description accurately portrays some one 
 here this morning. If so, let me give him one part- 
 ing word. It is this : You cannot evade the decision, 
 
 BUT BE SURE THAT YOU LOOK AT THE ChRIST BEFORE YOU 
 
 GIVE HIM UP. Nothing is so remarkable in the pict- 
 ure to which I have so often this day referred as the 
 evident persistency with which Pilate keeps his eyes 
 from Christ ; and few things are so saddening as to 
 meet with men who profess to have, and really have, 
 difficulties about Christ, but who have never read the 
 gospels or the New Testament with any attention. 
 Let me urge you, therefore, to study these gospels and 
 epistles before you give your voice against the Lord, 
 and I am very sure that if you ponder them thoroughly 
 you will soon accept him. Give over trying to solve 
 all the difficulties and so-called discrepancies in the 
 Scriptures which form the stock-in-trade of the infidel 
 lecturer — all these are but as dust which he raises 
 that he may blind your eyes to the really important 
 question, " Who is Christ ?" Settle that, and if you 
 3 
 
50 CHEIST BEFOEE PILATE — PILATE BEFORE CHRIST. 
 
 do, all other difficulties will vanisli. Turn your face 
 to the light, and the shadow will fall behind you. 
 Look at the Christ before you giv^e him up. And 
 remember, if you do reject Christ, you have still 
 to account for him. It is unreasonable for you, if 
 you believe only in the natural and material, to leave 
 such a phenomenon as Christ unexplained. Yes, and I 
 must add, if you reject him you must yet account to 
 him. Go, then, and ponder this text ; yea, may it 
 continue sounding in your inmost heart until you have 
 determined to receive and rest upon him as your 
 only Saviour, and say to him, like Thomas, " My 
 Lord and my God." 
 
 OCTOBEK 15, 1883. 
 
CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPEOYE 
 THEM. 
 
 Jeremiah sxix. 10-14. — For thus saith the Lord, That after sev- 
 enty years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform 
 my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. 
 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, 
 thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. 
 Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I 
 will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me and find me, when ye 
 shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, 
 saith the Lord : and I will turn away your captivity, and 1 will 
 gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I 
 have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the 
 place whence I caused you to be carried away captive. 
 
 When God sends his people on a pilgrimage, lie 
 gives tliem a staff to support them by the way. So, 
 after ten thousand captives had been taken by Neb- 
 uchadnezzar from Jerusalem to Babylon, he caused 
 his servant Jeremiah to write them the letter which 
 is contained in this chapter, and in which he cheers 
 them with the prospect of ultimate deliverance. They 
 had been very unmindful of his covenant, and most 
 disrespectful to his prophet, yet he had not forgot- 
 ten them, and through the instrumentality of the 
 messenger whom they had formerly despised he sends 
 them the strongest consolation. Now, in all this we 
 discover certain similarities to our own exjDerience, 
 and I am sure that you will not accuse me of any 
 unwarrantable accommodation of the passage which I 
 have just read, if I seek to bring out of it some great 
 
52 CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 
 
 truths wliicli liokT in all circumstances, and whicli are 
 profitable both for warning and for comfort. 
 
 I. To begin with, then, we may describe every real 
 affliction which comes upon the Christian as a cap- 
 tivity. We have now, indeed, no such deportations 
 as those made by Eastern warriors when they carried 
 the populations of conquered countries away from 
 their homes to foreign lands. They designed thereby 
 to break up the sentiment of nationality among the 
 captives themselves, and to remove from the newly 
 acquired provinces all incitement to insurrection ; 
 while, at the same time, they strengthened the centers 
 of their empires by the addition of skilled artisans, 
 scholars and agriculturists. Those who were thus 
 removed from their native homes were for the most 
 jDart generously treated. They were regarded as col- 
 onists rather than as slaves ; nevertheless, they were 
 taken whither they did not desire to go, and they 
 were prevented from going to the land after which 
 their hearts were longing. It is not wrong, therefore, 
 to speak of them as captives. They were led through 
 experiences into which they would never have gone of 
 their own accord, and they were held back from the 
 pleasures and occupations to which they would will- 
 ingly have returned. That was the essence of their 
 captivity. But is it not also the essence of every sort 
 of affliction ? To be in a condition which we never 
 should have voluntarily preferred, or to be held back, 
 by the power of something which we cannot control, 
 from that which we eagerly desire to do, — is not that 
 tlie very thing in an experience which makes it a 
 trial? Take bodily illness, for example, and when 
 you get at the root of the discomfort of it, you find it 
 in the union of these two things : you are where you 
 
CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 53 
 
 do not want to be, and wliere you would never have 
 thouglit of putting yourself, and you are held there, 
 whether you will or not, by the irresistible might of 
 your own weakness. No external force has been ex- 
 erted upon you ; no sentinel keeps visible guard at 
 your chamber door to prevent your exit, yet you are 
 a prisoner as really as if you were encelled in the 
 Tombs. You do not relish the situation. There is 
 nothing in it, in itself considered, to attract you to it. 
 You would not have been in it if you could have 
 helped it ; and now that you are in it you cannot go 
 about your ordinary duties. Your business has to do 
 without you. The appointments you have made have 
 to go unkept. The transactions you expected to com- 
 plete have to be let alone. You are a captive. 
 
 But the same thing comes out in every sort of 
 affliction. You are, let me suppose, in business per- 
 plexities. Well, that is not of your own choosing. If 
 you could have accomplished it, you would have been 
 in quite different circumstances. But, in spite of you, 
 things have gone crooked. Men whom you had im- 
 plicitly trusted, and whom you would have had no 
 more thought of doubting than you have thought now 
 of doubting your mother's love to you, have j)roved 
 deceitful. Or, perhaps, the partner whom in days 
 gone by you had been the means of enriching has 
 turned against you, and is seeking to worry you into 
 the sacrifice of that which you know is really yours. 
 And so you are at a standstill. You have been car- 
 ried from the Jerusalem of comfort to the Babylon of 
 perplexity, by no effort of yours, nay, perhaps, against 
 the utmost resistance on your part, and now you can 
 do nothing. Your resources are locked up, if they be 
 not lost, and when your symjDathies are moved for 
 some suffering fellow-man, or for some deserving 
 
54 CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPEOVE THEM. 
 
 cause, or for some Christian enterprise, you feel tliat 
 you cannot give as you did formerly, or it may be 
 that you cannot give at all, — that is, you are a captive. 
 So sometimes, also, our providential duties are a 
 kind of affliction to us. We had no choice in deter- 
 mining whether we would assume them. They came 
 to us, unbidden, at least, if not undesired, and they 
 have chained us to themselves, so that when we are 
 asked to take part in some effort for the benefit of 
 others we are compelled to say " No." We would a 
 great deal rather have said "Yes" : it is a trial to us 
 to refuse ; but we are hemmed in by prior and press- 
 ing obligations, and we cannot do otherwise. Which 
 of us knows not an experience like that ? The chain 
 that binds us may be one that has come to us clearly in 
 the way of Providence. Yet for the moment we would 
 that we were free. Our very most sacred responsi- 
 bilities — God help us ! what weak creatures we are ! 
 — are sometimes felt by us as fetters which hold us 
 back from enterprises of great pith and moment. 
 Thus this old captivity, which marked an era in the 
 history of God's ancient people, and which forms the 
 theme of so many plaintive psalms, repeats itself, in 
 some degree, in the life of every believer, and our 
 modern trials furnish us with a key wherewith, we 
 may unlock for ourselves the prophetic casket in 
 which such treasures of consolation are laid up. 
 
 II. For now I proceed to remark that every captiv- 
 ity of which the Christian is the victim will have an 
 end. Jeremiah here declares that after a set time of 
 seventy years the enforced absence of the people from 
 their own land would cease. And the student of 
 ancient history knows that this all came to pass. At 
 the date at which the prophet wrote, indeed, there 
 
CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 55 
 
 was, to human view, but little likelihood that such 
 a change would come. Nebuchadnezzar was in his 
 glory. The Babylonian empire was at the zenith of 
 its splendor, and it did not seem probable that it 
 would be speedily overthrown. Yet, in a w^onderful 
 way, Cyrus, who had been called the servant and the 
 shepherd of the Lord by Ilaiah, obtained possession 
 of the dominions of Belshazzar, and the very first year 
 of his Babylonian reign was signalized by the issue of 
 that famous decree which gave the Jews permission 
 to return to their own country, and encouraged them 
 to rebuild the temple of their God. Now, in a similar 
 way, we may be sure that sooner or later our provi- 
 dential captivities will come to an end. " Time and 
 the hour run through the roughest day." "Be the 
 day weary, or be the day long, at last it ringeth to 
 even-song." It is but a little while, at the longest, 
 and we shall be where " sorrow and sighing shall for- 
 ever flee away." This state of limitation, this con- 
 flict between our aspirations and our abilities, is not 
 to last forever. We may hope that it will come to an 
 end even here uj)on the earth, but we may be sure 
 that it will not continue beyond the grave. And 
 there is much even in that thought to give us comfort. 
 " The things concerning us have an end." Not for- 
 ever shall we be in bondage to the weakness of the 
 body, hampered by its liability to disease, and hin- 
 dered by its proneness to fatigue. Not always shall 
 we be at the mercy of the unscrupulous and dishon- 
 est. Not continually shall we be held down by the 
 encumbrances that overweight us here on earth. For 
 in the fatherland above we shall work without weari- 
 ness, and serve God without imperfection. So in the 
 prospect of that home we may well be reconciled for a 
 season to the discomforts of our present exile. 
 
56 CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 
 
 But, wliile there is miicli in tliis view of the case to 
 sustain us, we must not lose sight of the moral end 
 which God has in view in sending us into our cap- 
 tivity, Mark these words of the Lord, " I know the 
 thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace 
 and not of evil, to give you an expected end," He 
 sees the result from the beginning, even as at the first 
 the eye of the artist beholds the finished statue in the 
 rough block of marble that has just come to him from 
 the quarry ; and all the afilictions which he sends are 
 but like the hammer-strokes of the sculptor, each of 
 which removes some imperfection or brings some new 
 loveliness to view. Observe how it was with the 
 Israelites in the case before us. During all the years 
 of their history, from the very exodus on to the cap- 
 tivity, their besetment was idolatry. Ever and anon 
 they were falling into the worship of some of their 
 neighbors' gods ; sometimes they followed Baal, and 
 sometimes, as in the days of Ahaz, altars were erected 
 on the very roof of the Temple, apparently for the 
 worship of the heavenly bodies. But from the time 
 of their removal to Babylon all that disaj)peared. 
 Their captivity gave the death-blow to their idolatry, 
 and thenceforth they worshiped only God. More- 
 over, their absence from Jerusalem, and the cessation 
 of their Temple ritual, threw them back on God him- 
 self, and from this date prayer assumed an importance 
 among them that it had not before possessed. Cut off 
 from access to the house of God, they sought God him- 
 self the more earnestly, and found, in very deed, that he 
 was not confined to temples made with hands. Now, 
 also, the written word began to be studied by them, 
 and synagogues for its weekly public reading were in- 
 stituted among them. Thus they increased in spirit- 
 uality of character ; they learned to walk more by 
 
CAPTrVITIES AND HOW TO IMPEOVE THEM. 57 
 
 faith and less by sight ; and the forms of their relig- 
 ion, instead of being ends in themselves, became to 
 them only the means of ministering to their fellowship 
 with Jehovah. 
 
 Now, is it not precisely in these ways yet that God, 
 through affliction, works out the sanctification of our 
 souls ? Ah ! how many of our idolatries he has re- 
 buked and rectified by our captivities ! We had been 
 worshiping our reputation, and lo ! an illness came 
 which laid us aside, and our names were by and by for- 
 gotten, as new men came to the front ; and then, learn- 
 ing the folly of our false ambition, we turned from the 
 idolatry of self to the homage of Jehovah. Or, we 
 had made an idol of our business. We had great 
 ideas of what we should make of it, and we thought 
 of leaving it as a legacy to our children, and perpet- 
 uating our name in connection with it ; but now it is 
 in ruins, and as we see the jDerishableness of earthly 
 things, we turn to Him who is unchanging and eter- 
 nal. Or, we had made a god of our dwelling, and by 
 some reverse of fortune it is swept away from us, just 
 that we might learn the meaning of that old song of 
 Moses, " Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in 
 all generations." 
 
 How many portions of his word, also, have been 
 explained to us by our trials ! There is no com- 
 mentator of the Scriptures half so valuable as a cap- 
 tivity. It unfolds new beauties where all had ap- 
 peared to be beautiful before ; and where formerly 
 there was what we thought a wilderness, it has re- 
 vealed to us a fruitful field. The old psalms have 
 quavered for us with a new pathos as we sat by our 
 " Babel's stream," and have sounded for us with a 
 new joy as we found our captivity turned as the 
 streams in the South. The man who has seen much 
 3* 
 
68 CAPTivrriEs and how to improve them. 
 
 affliction will not readily part with liis copy of the 
 word of God. Another book may seem to others to 
 be identical with his own ; but it is not the same to 
 him, for over his old and tear-stained Bible he has 
 written, in characters which are visible to no eyes but 
 his own, the record of his experiences, and ever and 
 anon he comes on Bethel pillars or Elim palms, which 
 are to him the memorials of some critical chapter 
 in his history. How many of us, too, might say with 
 truth that we had never really prayed until God sent 
 lis into captivity ! Our worship had been outward, 
 formal, cold ; a thing of duty, not of sincerity ; an 
 affair, shall I say, of luxury rather than of need? But 
 now we have found out what the mercy-seat means, 
 and know that prayer is the surest and the sweetest 
 solace in the hour of perplexity. This is God's " end 
 and expectation " in our captivity ; and when that is 
 realized is there one among us who would affirm that 
 the result is not worth the price ? By such experi- 
 ences it is that Christians are made ; and if we would 
 be great in holiness, we must lay our account with the 
 discipline through which alone that greatness can be 
 given. Nor must we imagine that God is changed 
 toward us while thus he is dealing with us. In all 
 and through all he is working for our good, that at 
 the last he may present us to himself without spot 
 or wrinkle or any such thing ; and whensoever we are 
 ajDt to suspect him he falls back upon his own con- 
 scious love to us and says, " I know the thoughts that 
 I think toward you, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, 
 to give you an expected end." 
 
 III. But now we must not forget to add, in the 
 third place, that if we would have such results from 
 our captivity, there are certain important things 
 
CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 59 
 
 wliicli we must cultivate. "What these are will appear 
 if we look narrowly at the verses which form my text, 
 and at those by which they are immediately pre- 
 ceded : 
 
 I mention first among them a willing acceptance 
 of God's discipline, and patient submission to it. It 
 would seem that before the date of Jeremiah's letter 
 there were among the captives certain persons claim- 
 ing to be prophets or diviners who were seeking to 
 incite them to revolt against their conqueror, and 
 promising that thereby they would have a speedy 
 return to Jerusalem ; but Jeremiah endeavored to 
 impress upon them that the shortest way to their 
 deliverance lay through a contented accommodation of 
 themselves to their new circumstances, and a patient 
 endurance of their trials. So he says to them, Make 
 the best of your position — " Build ye houses and dwell 
 in them ; and plant gardens and eat the fruit of them " ; 
 and, so far from hatching schemes of rebellion, " Seek 
 the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be 
 carried away captives and pray unto the Lord for 
 it ; for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." 
 
 Now, in the same way, if we are to receive benefit 
 from our captivity we must accept the situation and 
 turn it to the best possible account. Fretting over 
 that from which we have been removed, or which 
 has been taken away from us, will not make things 
 better, but it will prevent us from improving those 
 which remain. The bond is only tightened by our 
 stretching it to the uttermost. The impatient horse 
 which will not quietly endure his halter only strangles 
 himself in his stall. The high-mettled animal that is 
 restive in the yoke only galls his shoulders ; and every 
 one will understand the difference between the rest- 
 less starling of which Sterne has written, breaking its 
 
60 CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO BIPEOVE THEM. 
 
 wings against the bars of its cage, and crying, " I can't 
 get out," "I can't get out," and the docile canary that 
 sits upon its perch and sings as if he would outrival 
 the lark soaring to heaven's gate, and so moves his 
 mistress to open the door of his prison-house and give 
 him the full range of the room. He who is constantly 
 looking back and bewailing that which he has lost, 
 does only thereby unfit himself for improving in any 
 way the discipline to which God has subjected him ; 
 whereas the man who brings his mind dow^n to his 
 lower lot, and deliberately examines how he can serve 
 God best in that, is already on the way to happiness 
 and to restoration. This is a most important con- 
 sideration, and it may, perhaps, help to explain why 
 similar trials have had such different results in 
 different persons. One has been bemoaning that it 
 was not with him as in months past ; while the other 
 has been discovering that some talents have been left 
 him still, and has been laying these out for his Lord. 
 One has been saying, "If I had only the resources 
 which I once possessed I could have done something, 
 but, alas ! they have gone " ; the other has been solilo- 
 quizing thus : " I can at least do this, and if I put it 
 into the hand of Christ, little as it is, he can make it 
 great " ; and so we account for the misery and useless- 
 ness of the one, and the happiness and usefulness of the 
 other. Nor will it do to say that this difference 
 is only a thing of temperament. It is a thing of faith. 
 The one recognizes the hand of God as a loving father 
 in his affliction ; the other sees nothing but his own 
 calamity, and that only increases his affliction in the 
 end. 
 
 Thus, paradoxical as it may appear, acquiescence 
 in adversity is the best way out of it; for he who 
 accepts the situation and begins on the lower level 
 
CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 61 
 
 to do liis best has already stepped on tlie first round 
 in the ladder up which he is to ascend to a renewal 
 of prosperity. This is true, as every one will admit, 
 in temporal things, but it is no less true in spiritual 
 matters, for not until we have forgiven God for the 
 wrong which we imagine he has done us, or rather 
 not until we have come to see that there was no 
 wrong in his discipline, can we receive the full meas- 
 ure of the blessing which he desires to bestow upon us. 
 But the second thing to be cultivated by us, if we 
 would secure the full benefit of the trial, is unswerv- 
 ing confidence in God. If we doubt him we at once 
 become the prey to despondency, impatience, and re- 
 bellion. We are ready then to take counsel of false 
 prophets and diviners, and to open our hearts to 
 every kind of evil. But so long as we hold fast our 
 faith in him, everything that comes upon us will in 
 the end only minister to our spiritual growth. " He 
 that belie veth shall not make haste ; " and the man 
 who has the fullest persuasion that the providence 
 of God is universal, including everything in his lot, 
 while at the same time it is directed to a special end, 
 namely, the greatest good of those who truly love 
 him, will " hold still," no matter what may come upon 
 him. Thus this unfaltering trust in God is intimately 
 connected with the willing acceptance of our captivity, 
 to which I have just alluded, and so it comes to be 
 closely allied also with that progress in holiness 
 which it is the great design of our afflictions to pro- 
 mote. And why should we not trust God ? He has 
 given us his word, and that ought to be enough ; but, 
 as if in accommodation to our weakness, he has 
 confirmed that promise by his oath, and has at the 
 same time opened up a way, through the cross of his 
 own Son, by which he may righteously keep his 
 
62 CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 
 
 pledge. So we liave no ground for suspecting liim ; 
 and if we do distrust liim, we can have no better re- 
 assurance of liis faithfulness than that which this 
 verse affords : " I know the thoughts that I think 
 toward you, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to 
 give you an expected end." Brethren, ponder well 
 these words. They are unique even in the sacred 
 Scriptures, and they have a comforting influence such 
 as few other passages possess. Years ago they came 
 to my own heart with peculiar power, and the Bible 
 now would scarcely be the same book to me if I could 
 not find them in it, and fall back upon the assurance 
 they give. They are almost like a soliloquy of Je- 
 hovah, in which he comforts himself, under the sus- 
 picions and accusations of his wavering people, by 
 the consciousness of his own loving purposes. As if 
 he had said, "You may think of me as you please ; 
 you may utter hard things against me, and accuse me 
 of having a controversy with you ; but no matter. I 
 know all that is false, I know the thoughts that I 
 think toward you, and whatever you may allege to the 
 contrary, they are thoughts of peace and not of evil, 
 to give you an expected end." Now, may it not be 
 with some of us that we have failed to receive the 
 full benefit of trial just because we have been mis- 
 judging God ? Confidence in your physician is itself 
 more than half the cure, and trust in God is abso- 
 lutely essential if we would gain benefit from his dis- 
 cipline. Yet because a change in men's conduct toward 
 us is usually the indication of a difference in their dis- 
 position toward us, we think that God has ceased to 
 care for us when he puts us into trial or sends us into 
 captivity. But it is not so. To-day the medical man 
 gives his patient liberty to take anything he chooses ; 
 to-morrow he cuts off all indulgence, and uses severe 
 
CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM. 63 
 
 and painful remedies ; but does lie care the less for 
 him because he thus changes his treatment, or has his 
 purpose regarding him undergone an alteration ? Not 
 at all. In both cases he is equally earnest to have 
 his health restored. And it is quite similar with God 
 in his dealings with his people. He is not an 
 amiably indulgent father, giving his children what- 
 ever they ask just because they desire it ; but he is 
 a wise and judicious educator, who gives or denies 
 according as he sees it will promote the training of 
 his pupils for the higher life of heaven. So let us 
 trust him, and beneath every other sentiment of our 
 souls let there be that of humble submission to his 
 will, not because it is inevitable, but because it is for 
 our good. 
 
 The last thing needed by us if we would derive the 
 full benefit from our captivity is fervent prayer. Hear 
 these words, " Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall 
 go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you, 
 and ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search 
 for me with all your heart." Now, as I have already 
 said, this was all fulfilled in the case of the captive 
 Jews. They did seek God with all their hearts, and 
 they did enjoy the blessing promised them by the 
 mouth of Ezekiel, in that chapter of his book that 
 is such a wonderful anticipation of the Gospel. It is 
 noteworthy, also, that out of the songs in the Psalter 
 which are not the production of David, a large pro- 
 portion belongs to the age of the captivity. The peo- 
 ple thus did turn to God, and he ivas found of them 
 because they sought him with the greatest earnest- 
 ness. So let us make our captivities, whatever they 
 may be, the occasions of new jjrayers. Let us take 
 them to God, not in a formal and superficial manner, 
 but really and sincerely, emptying our hearts before 
 
64 CAPTIVITIES AND HOW TO QIPEOVE THEM. 
 
 liim, and pleading his promises even as Daniel took 
 Jeremiah's prophecy which we have to-day been con- 
 sidering : and who can tell but he will give us not only 
 the relief we seek, but also such revelations of his 
 grace and goodness as shall correspond to the vision 
 of the seventy heptades with which the Babylonian 
 prime minister was blessed ? No calamity can be to 
 us an unmixed evil if we carry it in direct and fervent 
 prayer to God, for even as one in taking shelter from 
 the rain beneath a tree may find on its branches fruit 
 which he looked not for, so we, in fleeing for refuge 
 beneath the shadow of God's wing, will always find 
 more in God than we had seen or known before. It 
 is thus through our afflictions that God gives us fresh 
 revelations of himself ; and the Jabbok ford, which 
 we crossed to seek his help, leads to the Peniel, 
 where, as the result of our wrestling, we "see God 
 face to face," and our lives are preserved. 
 
 I cannot but feel that these truths are designed for 
 some one here to-day. I came from the country with 
 quite another sermon for this morning's service. But 
 after I reached my home this discourse came to me, 
 and would write itself, whether I would or not. So I 
 know it is meant for some one, though I know not who 
 he is. I draw the bow at a venture, but as I do so the 
 hands of the Master, unseen, are over mine, and the 
 arrow, which to-day is one of deliverance and not of 
 destruction, will surely find its mark. Take it to thy- 
 self, O captive, and he will give thee " songs for sigh- 
 ing," and turn for thee " the shadow of death into 
 the morning." 
 
 June 9, 1878 
 
PERSONAL mDEPENDENCE THE RE- 
 SULT OF DIVmE REDEMPTION. 
 
 1 Cor. vii. 23. — Ye are bought witli a price ; be not ye the servants 
 
 of men. 
 
 The first Gentile converts to Cliristianitj had to 
 confront many perplexing problems arising out of 
 their relationship to those who remained heathens, 
 and their daily contact, in one way or another, with 
 the institutions of paganism and the enactments of 
 imperialism. It is not wonderful, therefore, that in 
 their difiiculty as to what they should do in certain 
 matters, the members of the church of Corinth had 
 applied for advice to the Apostle Paul ; and the coun- 
 sels which he gave to them were, as indeed might 
 have been expected, pre-eminently wise. One of the 
 things concerning which they had specially desired his 
 guidance was marriage, and the chapter from which 
 my text is taken is almost exclusively devoted to that 
 subject. It is remarkable at once for the broad prin- 
 ciples which it lays down, and for the recognition 
 which it gives to the modifying influence of excep- 
 tional circumstances. Indeed, so largely does this 
 last element enter into the discussion of the subject, 
 that, unless we take into account what Paul has else- 
 where written on the dignity and importance of the 
 married relationship, we might be apt, from the pe- 
 rusal of this chajDter alone, to take away an entirely 
 erroneous impression respecting his views. But we 
 
66 PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE 
 
 have to remember that mucli that he has here ad- 
 vanced was for a then " present necessity," and with 
 that thought in mind it is not difficult to distinguish 
 between the great abiding jDrinciples which he lays 
 down for all time, and the hints which he has given 
 to guide his correspondents through a temporary 
 difficulty. He affirms that, in their circumstances, at 
 the time, celibacy would be the prudent course for 
 the Corinthian believers ; yet he declares that he was 
 not authorized to issue to them any command to that 
 effect. Each must judge for himself, and act accord- 
 ingly ; and they might all have the comfort of the 
 thought that, whether they married or not, there was 
 no sin in taking either alternative. Only, if they did 
 marry, he would remind them that, by the law of God, 
 the tie between husband and wife was for life, and 
 was not to be broken, save for the one great reason 
 which the Lord Jesus specified. He affirms also that 
 if for any other cause husband and wife should sepa- 
 rate, it was the duty of both to remain single, and 
 make no other connection. How different all that is 
 from the divorce laws in some of our States, and how 
 much these laws are doing to poison family happi- 
 ness, and degrade public morality, I will not now 
 pause to point out. I will only say that while such 
 laws remain unrepealed the States in which they 
 exist have too much glass in the walls of their own 
 houses to make it safe for them to throw stones at 
 the Mormons. 
 
 Another question which emerged from the circum- 
 stances in which some of the Corinthians found them- 
 selves was this : What was to be done in cases where 
 the wife had become a Christian, while the husband 
 continued to be an idolater? or where the husband 
 was converted, while the wife remained a j)agan? 
 
THE EESULT OF DIVINE REDEMPTION. 67 
 
 And to that Paul's reply was tliat even in such in- 
 stances the indissolubleness of the marriage tie re- 
 mained, and that the believing partner was to continue 
 in the relationship. If the unbelieving wife did not 
 object to dwell with a believing husband, he was not 
 to put her away, and if the unbelieving husband did not 
 refuse to dwell with a believing wife, she was not to 
 think of leaving him. If a separation came, it was 
 not to be the act of the believer. But if the unbe- 
 lieving party to the contract broke it, of his own 
 motive, by wilful desertion, for no other reason than 
 the Christianity of the other, then the clear statement 
 is made, " a brother or a sister is not in bondage in 
 such cases." And the ground on which this advice is 
 given by Paul is the same as that suggested by Peter 
 in dealing with the same question. The apostle of 
 the circumcision thus writes : " Likewise, ye wives, 
 be in subjection to your own husbands ; that if any 
 obey not the word, they also may, without a word, be 
 won by the conversation of the wives " ; and in a sim- 
 ilar strain Paul says here, " What knowest thou, O 
 wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband ? or how 
 knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy 
 wife ? " 
 
 The apostle, you observe, says nothing what- 
 ever here about, and gives no encouragement to, the 
 deliberate choice by a believer of an unbelieving part- 
 ner ; but when, both having been unbelievers, the 
 husband or the wife should be converted while the 
 other remains as before, his unequivocal advice is 
 that the believer should continue the relationship, 
 and make the best of its opportunities for Christ ; and 
 in reference to all similar questions of what may be 
 termed casuistry in a good sense his great law is, 
 " Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he 
 
68 PEESONAL INDEPENDENCE 
 
 is called." His first duty is to sanctify that, and 
 through the performance of that duty God will open 
 to him a higher opportunity. This law he applies, 
 first, ecclesiastically, to the questions between Jew 
 and Gentile, and affirms that it is not necessary for 
 the Jew to abjure his Jewish customs when he be- 
 comes a Christian any more than it is for the Gentile 
 to become a Jew in order to be a thorough follower 
 of Christ. Then, advancing to ground that was still 
 more delicate, he shows its bearing, socially, in regard 
 to slavery, saying, " Art thou called, being a slave, care 
 not for it ? but if thou mayest be made free, use it 
 rather." Do not, as if he had said, by any violent or 
 dishonorable means seek to regain your freedom ; but 
 let your solace in your bondage be, that the Christian 
 is the Lord's freeman. Still, do not despise liberty, 
 for in itself that is better than slavery. If, therefore, 
 you can peacefully and Christianly secure your free- 
 dom, thankfully embrace it, and let your spiritual 
 ballast be in the reflection that the believing freeman 
 is the slave of Christ. 
 
 Thus the apostle clearly indicates that Christian- 
 ity is a regenerating force for the individual, and 
 only through that a reformer of society. It was 
 not to create a sudden revolution that should over- 
 turn everything as with the shock of a devastating 
 earthquake ; but it was to bring on a gradual change, 
 working like the leaven in the meal on individual 
 particle after particle, until the whole mass should 
 be leavened. " God hath called us to peace " was 
 the ajDostle's watchword in all such matters ; and 
 any one who knows the social condition of the Koman 
 Empire when he wrote this letter, and thinks on the 
 influence of his words on that, and on the countries 
 into which, in after times, the gospel has been intro- 
 
THE BESULT OF DIVINE REDEMPTION. 69 
 
 ducecl, will be forward to admit that they were not 
 only admirably judicious, but eminently far-seeing. 
 
 All this I have said, not only that I may lay bare to 
 you the intellectual and s]3iritual strata in which the 
 words of my text lie ; but also that I may bring up 
 before you principles of social and civil economics 
 which are far too frequently lost sight of in these 
 days. We are so impetuous in our eagerness to gain 
 certain ends that we take what seems to us the short- 
 est way, though that may lie through strife and misery. 
 But " he that believeth shall not make ' such ' haste." 
 He Avill abide in his calling and serve God there, wait- 
 ing for results. These may not come at once, but they 
 will come, and when they do they will prove by their 
 wholesomeness and their permanence that they were 
 worth waiting for. 
 
 Now, it is in connection with the commanded prefer- 
 ence of freedom to slavery, when that can be secured, 
 that Paul says, " Ye are bought with a price ; be not 
 ye the servants of men " ; as if he would have put it 
 thus : use freedom rather than slavery, for Christ has 
 bought you, and it is well to keep yourselves for his 
 divine ownership. But the words thus appropriate to 
 Paul's primary purpose have a much wider range 
 than that here given to them, and the longer one 
 thinks on them the more significant they become. 
 They suggest the truth that spiritual redemption is 
 the root of personal independence ; and to the eluci- 
 dation of that — opposed as it is to many modern 
 notions about Christianity — I shall devote the remain- 
 der of my discourse. 
 
 First, let us look at the assertion " Ye are bought 
 with a price." This is one of the ways in which, 
 in Scripture, the great effect of Christ's death in 
 
70 PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE 
 
 tlie room of sinners is described. Tliat wliicli, in 
 modern theological phraseology, we have called the 
 atonement, is spoken of in the word of God in 
 four different, yet not inconsistent, aspects. It is 
 
 / called a sacrifice, as when Christ is said to have borne 
 our sins ;* and is designated by the Baptist as " the 
 Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world."t 
 
 '■^ It is styled a redemption, as when Paul says, "In 
 Christ we have redemption, through his blood, even 
 the forgiveness of sins, "% and when the Lord himself 
 affirms that " the Son of man came to give his life a 
 ransom for many."§ It is characterized, as a declara- 
 tion of God's righteousness in the forgiveness of sins, 
 that " He might be just and yet the Justifier of him 
 that believeth " ;l| and the same phasis of it is presented 
 to us when the apostle alleges that IT" it pleased the 
 Father, having made peace by the blood of his cross, 
 by him to reconcile all things unto himself," for the 
 making of peace by the blood of the cross was some- 
 thing prior to and in order to the effecting of the re- 
 conciliation, and must, therefore, be equivalent to the 
 declaration of righteousness whereby he is just and 
 yet the Justifier of the believer. And finally, it is all 
 traced up to the love of God, " "Who gave his only be- 
 gotten Son that whosoever believeth on him might 
 notj^erish but have everlasting life. "*'^^ Thus the death 
 of Christ did not j)urchase God's love for sinners, 
 but manifested that love, and opened for it a right- 
 eous channel through which it might flow to guilty 
 men. 
 
 * 1 Peter ii. 24. § Matthew xx. 
 
 t John i. 29. | Rom. iii. 26 
 
 X Eph. i. 7 ; Col. i. 14. IT Col. i. 20. 
 
 ** John iii. 16. 
 
THE RESULT OF DIVINE REDEMPTION. 71 
 
 Now, the mere fact tliat this vast subject is presented 
 to us in so many different ways is a proof that no one 
 mode of speech can fully describe its character ; and 
 the great source of the discussions which have been 
 held regarding it is that each of the disputants has 
 adopted one of these statements concerning it, as if 
 that contained the whole truth about it and involved 
 in it the negation of all the rest. But the true induc- 
 tive spirit is that which accepts all the four, and main- 
 tains that the atonement is the great whole which holds 
 them all in harmony. Christ's death was the mani- 
 festation of God's love, in the provision of an all-suffi- 
 cient sacrifice for human sin, whereby his righteous- 
 ness is declared in the forgiveness and salvation of be- 
 lieving men — usually called their redemption. In this 
 way of putting the matter, the redemption will de- 
 scribe the result in the case of believers of their 
 acceptance of Christ as their sacrifice ; and that is 
 borne out by the use of the word in many passages of 
 Scripture. For in one place we have " waiting for the 
 adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body ; " and 
 again, believers are said to be "sealed until the 
 day of redemption " ; while more than once we have 
 "redemption" identified with "the forgiveness of 
 sins." The Redeemer is Jesus Christ, the price is 
 his precious blood, and the redemption is the re- 
 sult of his payment of that price in his abso- 
 lute ownership of those whom he has thus pur- 
 chased. This ownership involves on his part the be- 
 stowment of pardon and salvation upon them, and on 
 theirs the giving up of everything which is incon- 
 sistent with his service according to Peter's words, 
 " Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible 
 things as silver and gold, from your vain conversation 
 received by tradition fi'om your fathers ; but with 
 
72 PEESONAL INDEPENDENCE 
 
 the precious blood of Christ ; "* and tliat exliortation 
 of Paul, "Ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify 
 God in your bodies and your spirits which are God's."t 
 The language, of course, is figurative, and if, in the 
 case of an ordinary analogy, it is not possible, as 
 Macaulay says, to make it go on all fours and run it 
 out into every little detail, we may be sure that any 
 such attempt is hoj)eless here. It was in seeking to 
 do that, as is well known, that the theologians of the 
 Middle Ages — and even some of the post-Reformation 
 era — fell into the atrocious absurdity of affirming that 
 the redemption price of Christ's blood was paid to 
 Satan, because sinners are held captive by him at his 
 will. So we must be warned by their example, and walk 
 warily. The following things, however, seem to me to 
 be clear, namely : that the price is the blood of Christ ; 
 and that the effect of the payment of that price is that 
 believers belong body, soul, and spirit to Christ as his 
 purchased property or possession ; while the act 
 of payment appears to me to be equivalent to that 
 "making peace by the blood" which Paul has spoken 
 of as a declaration or manifestation of righteousness 
 made by God in the setting of "Christ forth as a propi- 
 tiation for the forgiveness of sins through faith in his 
 blood. But in the words of my text, the apostle, 
 without caring to press the analogy so far as to specify 
 to whom or why the price was paid, gives prominence 
 to the result in the case of believers — "Ye are 
 bought"; or, as he has elsewhere put it, "Ye are not 
 your own " — you belong, by right of his purchase, to 
 Christ ; your intellects are his to be instructed by 
 him ; your consciences are his to be regulated by 
 him ; your lives are his to be ruled by him, ab- 
 
 * 1 Peter i. 18. f 1 Cor. vi. 20. 
 
THE EESULT OF DIYINE REDEMPTION. 73 
 
 solutely and entirely you are his. Now at first sight 
 that reads like a consignment of us to the most abject 
 slavery ; for no human oppression can thoroughly en- 
 chain the spirit. But here it must be remembered that 
 what on the Lord's side is a purchase, is on the be- 
 liever's side a voluntary consecration, and that the 
 Master is not a man but the God-man, with whom op- 
 pression is impossible. Thus it comes about that this 
 divine ownership of us by Jesus is the charter of our 
 deliverance from our fellow-men, and the paradox that 
 the service of Christ is perfect freedom is made good. 
 " Ye are bought with a price ; be not ye the servants 
 of men." 
 
 Now in looking at this inference from the fact of 
 our redemption by Christ, we must beware, on the 
 very threshold, lest we fall into mistake. Paul does 
 not mean to say that all manner of service of men is 
 inconsistent with our ownership by Christ. We have 
 only to read his exhortations to servants in his vari- 
 ous epistles to be convinced of that. What he desires 
 to allege is that Christ's property in us emancipates 
 us from abject slavery to men in every form which 
 is inconsistent with that property. No man can de- 
 prive us of that which already belongs to Christ; 
 and it is through the assertion of that principle by 
 Christians that all the victories of religious freedom 
 have been won in the world. 
 
 Take, for example, the slavery of the intellect, as 
 that was attempted to be fastened upon men by 
 authority in matters of faith. You know the degrada- 
 tion to which popery reduced the people in this depart- 
 ment ; and you know, too, how the yoke was broken 
 when Luther and his compeers in other lands ex- 
 alted the gospel, and told their hearers that it was 
 their blessed privilege, as Christ's blood-bought ones, 
 
74 PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE 
 
 to take tlieir belief from liim. For the riglit of pri- 
 vate judgment, as they expounded it, was not the 
 liberty of every man to think as he j)leased, but the 
 inalienable privilege of the believer to take the 
 truth from the lips of his Lord. And you can 
 see, at once, how this same principle delivers us 
 to-day from the yoke of party and the dictation of 
 men. If I am a redeemed man, I belong to Christ, 
 and have no master but him. I refuse, then, to be 
 told by any man what I must believe. I refuse to 
 allow any man to come between Christ and me to in- 
 terpret his words. I have to do directly and imme- 
 diately with Christ alone. What he says to me I 
 will accept simply because he says it ; but I will have 
 no interference from others, since that is a dis- 
 honor to him. This is as different from rational- 
 ism, on the one hand, as it is from Romanism, and 
 every other ism which arrogates to itself intolerance 
 and authority, on the other. Rationalism repudiates 
 Christ, and takes only what pleases itself ; Roman- 
 ism enthrones a human infallibility which lays down 
 the law as to the interpretation of Christ ; but the 
 consciousness that'I am bought with a price enthrones 
 Christ over my intellect, and I take my faith implic- 
 itly and immediately from him. He has purchased 
 me wholly for himself, and by that purchase he has 
 emancipated me from the interference of men, for 
 now I follow him. There may be doubt in a man's 
 mind as to whether he will accept Christ's redemp- 
 tion or not; and after he has accepted redemp- 
 tion, there may be doubt in his mind as to the mean- 
 ing of some of Christ's sayings ; but when he has 
 accepted Christ as his Saviour, and has come to 
 a clear understanding of what Christ has affirmed, 
 the redeemed man receives that ; and claims, right- 
 
THE RESULT OF DIVINE REDEMPTION. 75 
 
 fully too, that in receiving it, be shall not be 
 troubled with human intervention. That does not 
 mean that if by following this rule he is led to the 
 adoption of views inconsistent with the terms on 
 which he holds his position, say as a minister in a 
 church, he has still a right to hold that position. As 
 an honest man, in such a case he will give up his 
 position, counting the loss as nothing for the sake of 
 Christ, and, in doing that, he will secure the resjoect of 
 every one ; whereas by taking the opposite course he 
 will forfeit the confidence of all who love righteous- 
 ness ; and if he draw down upon himself remonstrance, 
 or discipline, or disfellowship, he has no more right 
 to call out that he is persecuted than one who breaks 
 a contract has to complain of injustice when he is ar- 
 raigned before a court of law. Thus the personal inde- 
 pendence in matters of faith which is secured for us by 
 our redemption is different from rationalism, which 
 repudiates all authority in religion, and from latitudi- 
 narianism, which acts as if it were quite a proper 
 thing for one who has received a position on a cer- 
 tain condition, to retain that position even when tlie 
 condition annexed to it has been broken. And yet 
 this liberty, thus regulated by allegiance to Christ, is 
 a very real thing, for it keeps the man in his own 
 proper orbit, throwing off human intolerance on the 
 one side, and accepting divine direction on the other. 
 If he yielded to the one, there would be slavery ; if 
 he abjured the other, there would be license ; but 
 the course he takes is one of freedom, and the result 
 secured by taking it differs as much from latitudi- 
 narianism as the Eeformation from Popery differed 
 from the first French Revolution. 
 
 But leaving now the department of the intellect, I 
 think it is easy to see how the principle on which I 
 
76 PERSONAL ESTDEPENDENCE 
 
 am now insisting leads directly and immediately to 
 liberty of conscience. If I am bouglit with a price, 
 then my conscience is Christ's. He alone is its Lord, 
 and I am bound to hold it sacredly for him. That 
 is the holy of holies of my nature, wherein none but 
 the Divine High Priest may enter ; and when he 
 sprinkles his blood of atonement there, he marks it 
 as inalienably his own. What I solemnly in the light 
 of his word and by the illumination of his Spirit feel to 
 be my duty, that I must do because I am his, and no 
 power is to be allowed to coerce me into the violation 
 of these sacred convictions. This was the principle 
 which the English Puritans maintained ; and this too, 
 only more as it respects the church, j)erhaps, than in- 
 dividuals, was the ground on which the Scottish Cove- 
 nanters planted themselves. It cost them a great deal 
 to hold it ; but their loyalty to Christ gave them their 
 courage, and in the end they won their victory. Men 
 sneer nowadays indeed, when in these old histories 
 they come across the phrase " the headship of 
 Christ," and, pronouncing it with sniveling ridicule, 
 they style it the very essence of cant. But that 
 phrase was for the men who used it the crystallization 
 of the princij^le that is beneath Paul's words " ye are 
 bought with a x^i'ice," and when they unfurled their 
 banner it bore upon it the strange unworldly device 
 "for Christ, his Crown, and Covenant." Their strug- 
 gle, therefore, was not like that of Tell in Switzerland, 
 or of Wallace in Scotland, or of Washington and his 
 comrades in America, for merely natural or national 
 rights, glorious as all these conflicts were. Their 
 struggle was not for any claim of their own, but for 
 Christ's redemptive right of ownership over their 
 consciences. They resisted unto blood because they 
 wished to preserve the sacred kingdom of their souls 
 
THE RESULT OF DIVINE REDEMPTION. 77 
 
 from being polluted and profaned by otlier lordship 
 or royalty tlian tliat of Jesus ; and by their effort to 
 secure that they attained also to civil freedom. 
 The outcome of that conflict is seen to-day, not only 
 in the difference between the Great Britain of the 
 present and that of two hundred years ago ; but also 
 here in America, for the Declaration of Independence 
 and the Constitution of this Kepublic, with its recent 
 amendments, are only the expansion and development 
 of the work which these blood-bought men began. 
 Sneer now, if you dare, at " the headship of Christ " ! 
 or ask me now, will you, if I am not talking in para- 
 doxes when I speak of Christ's absolute ownership of 
 his redeemed ones as the root of personal independ- 
 ence and well regulated freedom ? 
 
 But, not to mention other illustrations of this 
 principle, you may see finally how it operates in 
 emancipating us from slavery to worldly fashion, or to 
 the public opinion of men. For if we belong to 
 Christ, and if we are only sure that he would have us 
 pursue a certain course of conduct, what does it mat- 
 ter to us what others think or say regarding us ? 
 There is, I know, such a thing as a love of singularity 
 for its own sake, or a contempt of fashion, even in 
 things indifferent, simply because it is fashion, or a 
 defiance of public opinion only to insult it. But 
 Christianity gives no countenance to any of these 
 things. Paul in all things non-essential became 
 all things to all men that he might by all means 
 save some : and we may be very sure that no princi- 
 ples advocated by him would ever condemn such 
 conduct in others. But when fashion would usurp the 
 place of Christ, or when we are moved more by the 
 consideration of the good will of our fellows than we 
 are by regard to the Master's word, — then we are 
 
78 PEKSONAL INDEPENDENCE 
 
 disloyal to liim and are robbing liim of that which 
 he has purchased by his blood. Now, it is from that 
 unmanly deference to customs and oj)inions, when 
 conscience says that it is right to ignore them, that the 
 sense of Christ's ownership sets us free ; and every 
 man who says " no " to those influences which Christ 
 has commanded him to resist is as really fighting 
 for liberty as were the " minute-men " in the days of 
 the devolution ; and is as true a hero as those who 
 bled at Marathon or Leuctra. Aye, and if he fight 
 on he may yet work out emancipation for multitudes 
 besides himself. See how much has been accom- 
 plished in this way by our Christian Temperance men. 
 They have not only earned their own freedom — so that 
 now there is nothing unfashionable in their course — 
 but they have made their position such that no one 
 needs be ashamed to take it, thereby, as I believe, 
 diminishing temptation in many homes. Nor should 
 we forget others who have wrought out like emanci- 
 pation for their fellows. I never meet a Friend 
 with his peculiar dress and his methodical speech 
 without having some admiration for the stand he has 
 taken. It may be that now that which was in the outset 
 a j)rotest against formalism has itself become a form. 
 It may be that what was a real voice in the case of 
 George Fox and his first disciples has too largely now 
 become merely an echo. It may be that there is as 
 much pride to-day in wearing that quaint attire as 
 there was in the fashion of the period against which 
 it was a protest. But still there is a right noble 
 history beneath the broad-brim. The position of its 
 wearer was taken originally out of regard to Christ's 
 redemptive right over his people ; and the outcome of 
 it is seen in the fact that in every struggle for liberty, 
 humanity, education, and the personal protection of 
 
THE RESULT OF DIVINE REDEMPTION. 79 
 
 the weak, you will find a Quaker in the foreground. 
 So his personal independence was rooted in spiritual 
 redemption, and bore its fruit in the larger liberty of 
 the nation. Ah ! if we were to remember always that 
 we belong to Christ, from how many dangers we should 
 be set free, and how many temptations we should then 
 overcome with ease ! Take, then, this truth with you, 
 ye men of business, into your daily conduct, and when 
 others taunt you with being under restraint because, 
 as belonging to Christ, you cannot do what they would 
 ask, tell them that you are really battling for a larger 
 liberty, and that the stand you make is, in that aspect 
 of it, even more truly for their advantage than would 
 be your yielding to their desires. And you, ye 
 young men whose cry is for liberty ; whose aspiration 
 is for manhood ; and whose watch- word is independ- 
 ence, learn here how you can find all three safely, 
 surely and permanently through the acceptance of the 
 redemption of Christ. The most absolute devotion to 
 Christ is the most complete declaration of individual 
 independence ; even as the defiant rejection of Christ 
 on the score of liberty issues in the most degrading 
 form of slavery. These things may seem to be con- 
 tradictory, but they are true, and they have been often 
 demonstrated to be so in the history alike of indi- 
 viduals and of the race. Make your choice between 
 them, and do not let yourselves be beguiled by first 
 appearances, for here, too, the prize is in the leaden 
 casket, and the highest liberty is to be found in that 
 which is the lowliest service. Therefore choose to 
 be ransomed by Christ that you may be delivered 
 from servitude to men. 
 
 January 9, 1881 
 
THE UNTEODDEN PATH. 
 
 Joshua iii. 4. — ^Ye have not passed this way heretofore. 
 
 Aftee their weary wilderness journey of forty years, 
 tlie tribes of Israel had come to the Jordan, the cross- 
 ing of which was noAV the only difficulty that lay be- 
 tween them and the promised land. Strangely con- 
 flicting must have been their emotions during their 
 three days' encampment by the river side. As they 
 looked back upon the past thankfulness would predomi- 
 nate, though the absence of their old men, and notably 
 that of Moses and Aaron, would tinge their gratitude 
 with sadness ; as they gazed upon the far landscape, 
 and thought of the time when the fertile fields of 
 Canaan would be all their own, hope would whisper 
 to them of the blessings which were yet in store for 
 them ; but when at length their eyes rested on the 
 rapid river raging in autumnal flood, as if defying 
 them to joass over its waters, everything else would 
 be forgotten in the immediate i)eril that was before 
 them, and the one great absorbing question with them 
 all would be, " What shall we do in these proud swell- 
 ing waves ? how shall we ford that broad, deep, rapid, 
 roaring river ? " 
 
 To meet that state of heart among them, Joshua 
 issued minute directions to the host. He told them 
 that the priests bearing the ark of the covenant would 
 go before them, and he commanded that they were to 
 follow at the distance of a thousand yards, assuring 
 them that, as they did so, the Lord himself would 
 
THE UNTRODDEN PATH. 81 
 
 make a passage for them. But to ensure their care- 
 ful attention to his instructions he added, " Ye have 
 not passed this way heretofore." As if he had put it 
 thus: "This is anew experience for you; there has 
 been and there can be no opportunity of rehearsing 
 for it ; it is the first thing of its kind that has come in 
 your history, therefore be sure that you keep a clear, 
 open space between you and the ark, so that each of 
 you may see it, and may be cheered and encouraged 
 by the consciousness of the presence of Him whose 
 glory hovers ever symbolically over it." They had 
 become perfectly familiar with the order of march in 
 the wilderness, so that each tribe could now almost 
 mechanically take its place ; and elevated as the pillar 
 of cloud and fire was, they could all see that with 
 ease, whether they were near to it or far away from 
 it ; but, in this instance, the ark was to be the means 
 of their deliverance, and, borne as that was upon 
 men's shoulders, if they followed close upon it only 
 those in the few foremost ranks would be able to get 
 a glimpse of it. Hence that it might be fully in the 
 view of all, an open space of two thousand cubits was 
 to be reserved between it and the crossing host. Had 
 they been well acquainted with the matter, had it been 
 the second or third time in their experience that they 
 had crossed a river thus, there would have been less 
 need to give such particular admonition, but as they 
 were to be in circumstances entirely new to them, as 
 they were to pass over an untrodden path, peculiar 
 care was requisite. The event justified the assurance 
 of Joshua, for, when the feet of the priests touched 
 the water, the river stood still, and when the people 
 reached the other shore they raised a memorial with 
 stones taken from the bed of the Jordan to attest to 
 future generations the goodness of their covenant God. 
 4* 
 
82 THE UNTRODDEN PATH. 
 
 Now from this memorable incident in Israel's his- 
 tory we may deduce a general princij)le wliich will be 
 very helpful to ourselves. The crossing of the Jordan 
 may stand for any new experience of peculiar uncer- 
 tainty through which a man is required to pass ; the 
 ark of the covenant, with its mystic symbol of God's 
 presence hovering over the blood-stained mercy-seat, 
 may be taken as representing God's presence with his 
 people, as reconciled to them through Jesus Christ ; 
 and the direction to keep the ark in view while cross- 
 ing the river, may for modern life, be formulated into 
 the maxim that in all new and untried circumstances 
 our true safeguard is to let nothing come between us 
 and the perception of the truth that God is in Christ 
 reconciling the world to himself, and guiding his 
 people to safety and immortal blessedness. Frequent- 
 ly, in the course of a man's life, he is brought to a 
 standstill before some new difficulty of wliich till 
 then he has had no experience. Things which he has 
 to do or suffer every day become familiar to him, and 
 he acquires a facility in reference to them ; but when 
 he has some duty to discharge of a delicate and im- 
 portant character, and like to nothing that he has 
 ever had before, or when he has a trial to bear which 
 is different from every other which he has been called 
 to endure in the past, there comes a time of thought- 
 ful pause, like those three days spent by the Israelites 
 on the bank of the Jordan, during which he asks him- 
 self how he is to discharge the duty or to endure the 
 cross. Now at such an emergency here is the answer 
 that is given by this ancient story : Put the ark of 
 God in the river before you, and keep it fully in your 
 sight, then though it be overflowing all its banks, you 
 shall go over dry shod. This is the thouglit which 
 to-day I mean, by God's help, to vivify and illustrate. 
 
THE UNTEODDEN PATH. 83 
 
 With, the Redeemer as our atoning sacrifice and our 
 priestly intercessor clearly before our faith-eye, we 
 are safe not only in pursuing the beaten track of daily 
 life, but also in entering upon and passing over new 
 and untried pathways. Let us take a few instances. 
 
 There is the young person leaving the parental 
 home and beginning independent life. The lad has 
 known all the exj)eriences of school, and has, perhaps, 
 also made trial of business duties, while yet his even- 
 ings and mornings have been spent in the loved 
 society of the family circle ; but now he is to go forth 
 a stranger to an unknown city, mayhap even to cross 
 the ocean to a foreign land. The faces he is to look 
 upon he has never before seen ; the duties he is to 
 discharge he has never before performed ; the dangers 
 he is to encounter he has not heretofore met ; the 
 temptations he is to be exj^osed to he has never 
 yet confronted ; everything is to be new. Hence, 
 whatever else there may be in his heart, there 
 is beneath, unspoken and almost unspeakable, a 
 nervous anxiety as to what is before him, and as to 
 liow he shall get through it. High hope will brighten 
 the future for him with its visions of honor and 
 success. There will be a natural and laudable self- 
 gratulation at the assumj^tion by him of the respon- 
 sibilities of manhood, and he may be able so to 
 repress his feelings in bidding father and mother fare- 
 well that a superficial observer may think that he is 
 setting out in highest spirits ; but in the depths of 
 his soul there will be, and the more thoughtful he is 
 the more there will be, a solicitude about the future, 
 and he will be ever considering how he will fill his 
 new position with honor to himself, satisfaction to all 
 concerned, and glory to God. Now to all, in such 
 circumstances, there comes the principle which I 
 
84 THE UNTRODDEN PATH. 
 
 have deduced from this interesting portion of Script- 
 ure narrative. Keep the ark clearly before you, 
 young man, and you have nothing to fear. Let your 
 heart ever turn to the Lord Jesus, let your soul ever 
 feel the constraining influence of his love ; let your 
 eye ever rest upon his holy example ; let your faith 
 ever fix itself upon his atoning death, and that will 
 make darkness light before you, and crooked things 
 straight, and rough places smooth. The mariner who 
 can use his quadrant can always tell where he is if he 
 can but get a glimpse of the sun at noon-day ; and 
 you may always know your way if you keep unclouded 
 before your faith eye the Sun of Righteousness. 
 "What the pocket compass is to the traveler over the 
 trackless moor, that the sight of the ark is to the 
 Christian. Let nothing, therefore, intervene between 
 you and that. Do not allow gain, or pleasure, or 
 honor, or fashion, or applause to come between you 
 and your covenant God. Wherever you are, look to 
 him, and go not where you cannot get a clear and un- 
 interrupted view of him, for with him in sight it will 
 be safe for you to go where foot of man has never 
 trodden, but without him you will be sure to stumble, 
 even though your path should lie along the broadest 
 and the smoothest and the most frequented highway. 
 But tbat I may not seem to imj^ly that only young 
 men have anxiety in beginning what I have called in- 
 dependent life, we may farther aj^ply this principle to 
 the young woman, on the day when she leaves her 
 father's house to be the center of the home circle of 
 another. What hopes have gravitated toward that 
 day ! what preparations have been made for it ! what 
 congratulations have been uttered regarding it ! Yet 
 now that it has dawned there is, at her heart, a flut- 
 tering of strange anxiety. She knows the life that is 
 
THE UNTRODDEN PATH. 85 
 
 passed, but what life sliall tliat "be wliicli lies all un- 
 discovered and unexplored before lier ? Tliat is the 
 question which, will press itself in upon her thoughts, 
 and which gives to her countenance the absent ex- 
 pression that seems so peculiar. All is mirth and 
 gayety around her. Her parents will not let her see 
 any of the shadow that rests upon their spirits at 
 parting with her. Every one is loading her with pres- 
 ents and following her with good wishes. Her hus- 
 band's face is beaming with unalloyed delight, and 
 she tries to reciprocate his joy. But, in spite of her- 
 self, she feels a palpitating solicitude about the future. 
 It is not that she has any, the slightest, element of 
 distrust in him with whom she has linked her lot, but 
 rather that she distrusts herself, and is questioning 
 whether she is equal to the new duties that devolve 
 upon her. So on the very verge of the river she 
 seems to stand with " reluctant feet," as if she hardly 
 dared to cross. But here there comes the principle 
 of which I have been speaking. Let her put the ark 
 in the river and keep that in sight, and all will be well. 
 Let her resolutely look to Jesus as her Saviour and 
 sovereign, and the duties of her new life will become 
 easy. No matter what cares or crosses may come, 
 with Christ in sight nothing can come wrong ; and if 
 she will only keep earthly things from hiding him 
 and his salvation from her view, she will find that she 
 carries everywhere with her a quiet happiness in her 
 heart, and that, like Spenser's Una, 
 
 — " her angel face. 
 As the great eye of heaven, shines bright, 
 And makes a sunshine in a shady place." 
 
 The most perplexing things will become easy when 
 we see Jesus in them ; but if we let him be hidden 
 
86 THE UNTKODDEN PATH. 
 
 from US by any influence whatever, then the merest 
 trifle may become a fretting source of never-ceasing 
 misery. 
 
 But, passing from the consideration of the entrance 
 on a new sphere of life, the principle on which I am 
 now insisting is admirably appropriate to the case of 
 those who find themselves face to face with a difficult 
 duty such as has never before confronted them. In 
 general every man's life, after he has fairly set out 
 upon its labors, has what we might call an " even ten- 
 or." There is an ordinary routine of work to be done. 
 Every day is very much like every other ; and after 
 a time his anxiety almost disappears, because he feels 
 himself able to meet the general demands which are 
 made upon him. But now and then this tranquil- 
 lity is interrupted. Something comes that he has not 
 forecast. There is a danger before him the like of 
 which he has never faced. There is a work to be done 
 of which he has had no experience. He is distrust- 
 ful of himself in the matter. He knows not wheth- 
 er he shall be equal to the exigency. He is, as the 
 psalm expresses it, " at his wits' end." He is like the 
 medical man before a new and unheard-of disease, 
 or like the young seaman, when for the first time the 
 dreaded hurricane comes howling down upon him. 
 He knows not what to do. Now here again our prac- 
 tical maxim becomes valuable. Send the ark before 
 you and keep it in sight. Kemember Jesus and his 
 atoning death. Think of the mercy-seat, and of him 
 who sitteth thereon as " the hearer of prayer." Let 
 the truths about Christ and his sacrifice and interces- 
 sion fill your soul. Open your hearts for the recep- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit, and then you will be guided 
 as safely through your difficulty as were the tribes 
 through the swollen river. Men of business ! here is 
 
THE UNTEODDEN PATH. 87 
 
 a most useful directory for you. Amid the cares and 
 liarassments of your daily engagements, you are too 
 apt to think that religion and the work of Jesus have 
 nothing to do with such concerns ; and so, even in 
 times of hitherto unexperienced difficulty, I fear that 
 it is only rarely that you think of looking to him. 
 Too often, indeed, it is not until, in the attempt to 
 cross the river without his help, you are borne away 
 by the flood, that you dream of calling upon him; 
 whereas, if you had only thought of him in time, he 
 would have given you strength to breast it, or he 
 would have parted it before you and led you over it 
 dry-shod. Not for spiritual difficulties alone, not for 
 religious duties merely, as men too commonly use 
 these words, does our maxim hold. To the Christian 
 every difficulty is a s^^iritual difficulty, and every duty 
 is a religious duty, and so in every emergency he is 
 warranted to look to Christ; nay, he is guilty of a sin 
 not more against God than against himself, if he does 
 not. The ark is as much in its proper place in the 
 counting-house as in the family or in the church ; 
 and if in your business perplexities you had more re- 
 course to Jesus directly and immediately, without let- 
 ting any intervening human element come in to hide 
 him from your thoughts, you would more frequently 
 have deliverances to tell of, and would find yourselves 
 singing "new ebenezers" to his praise. Depend upon 
 it, you will not soon lose yourselves if you keep him 
 in view. Some years ago a party of travelers were 
 passing over one of the Swiss mountains. After they 
 had gone a considerable way it began to snow heavily, 
 and the oldest of the guides gravely shook his head, 
 and said, " If the wind rises we are lost." Scarcely 
 had he spoken when a gale arose, the snow was 
 whirled into multitudinous drifts, and all way marks 
 
88 THE UNTKODDEN PATH. 
 
 ■were obliterated. Cautiously they moved on, not 
 knowing wliere tliey were, and almost giving them- 
 selves up for lost. At length one of the guides, who 
 had gone a short w^ay before them to search out the 
 path, was heard shouting, " The cross ! The cross ! 
 "We are all right." And what had the cross to do 
 with it ? It "was one of those religious memorials 
 ■which -we so frequently meet in Eoman Catholic coun- 
 tries, and this one, set up at first by some j)rivate 
 individual for a personal reason, had become at length 
 a "well-known and easily recognized landmark for the 
 traveler. Hence the moment the guide saw it he 
 knew where he was, and what direction to take. But 
 what was true of that symbol in their case is true in 
 all instances of the thing which it signifies; for we 
 may always know where we are when, with our faith 
 eye, we can see Christ crucified. That reveals every 
 peril, and pierces through every disguise of evil. That 
 bars the way to every dishonor, and barricades the 
 entrance to every pathway of iniquity. Keep that, 
 therefore, in uninterrupted view and you will never 
 lose your way. Get hold of the principles which un- 
 derlie the work of the Lord Jesus as the Redeemer of 
 men ; receive into your hearts the Holy Spirit whom 
 he has promised, then difficulties wdll become easy, 
 and your way will be opened up before you as you 
 move forward ; for as the rod of Moses divided the sea, 
 and the mantle of Elijah parted the waters of Jordan, 
 even so faith in the crucified Eedeemer will find or 
 make a way in every emergency. 
 
 But, taking another line of remark, the maxim to 
 "w^hich I have referred may be applied to those who 
 are called upon for the first time to bear some heavy 
 triah Sorrow, in some form or other, 77iust come upon 
 us in the world. But the commonness of it does not 
 
THE mTTEODDEN PATH. ^ 89 
 
 make its experience a whit less bitter to tliose wlio 
 are required to drink its cup. No matter liow many- 
 others have suffered before us, our first acquaintance 
 with grief is ever keen and poignant. It may be occa- 
 sioned by different causes, and each one thinks he 
 could better have borne it if it had taken him in some 
 other form. In some it may be produced, as it was 
 occasionally in David's experience, by the treachery 
 of friends ; in others, by the ingratitude and ungod- 
 liness of a disobedient son ; in others, by the painful 
 and peculiar illness of those dearest to them ; in others, 
 by personal affliction ; in others, by the visit of the 
 angel of death to their home. But, however it comes, 
 the first experience of sorrow is a thing that cuts 
 the soul to the quick, and leaves upon the heart an in- 
 effaceable record. Like the highest tide upon the 
 shore, it sweeps up with it the remains of the lower, 
 and leaves its mark longest upon the strand. I dare 
 say there are few here who do not know from their own 
 histories how true these words are. Thus, to take 
 one illustration from those I have just mentioned, 
 how terrible the earliest acquaintance with bereave- 
 ment ! It is a solemn time when first Death knocks at 
 our door for admission, and will not be gainsaid, and 
 whoever be his victim, whether a venerable parent, or a 
 beloved partner, or a darling child, the anguish of the 
 moment is intense. I shall never forget, while mem- 
 ory lasts, the strangeness of the experience through 
 which I passed when first the reaper " whose name 
 is Death" came into my home, and " with his sickle 
 keen " cut down, at one thrust, two of my children. 
 The stroke blinded me for the moment, and I was like 
 one utterly forlorn ; but when at length I opened my 
 eyes, I saw the ark in the river, and that instantly 
 steadied me. I knew then where I was, I remem- 
 
90 , THE UNTRODDEN PATH. 
 
 bered tlien that lie who liad done it was my covenant 
 God, to whom I had given my little ones in baptism, 
 and since he had chosen so to accept my gift, I asked 
 myself why I should be dismayed? From my own 
 experience, therefore, I can attest the efficacy of this 
 consolation, and commend it to all who are in trouble, 
 more especially to those who have been bereaved. 
 Let the truth symbolized by that ark be but accepted 
 in simple faith, and even in the moment of utter deso- 
 lation there will come the calmness of resignation, 
 and the confidence which only the hope of reunion 
 with our loved ones can imjDart. This alone can avail 
 us at such a time. The sympathy of friends is sooth- 
 ing and sweet, the kindly offices rendered by self-for- 
 getting neighbors are valuable, and the memory of 
 them is laid up in the holiest recesses of our hearts ; 
 but these alone would not take the sting out of the 
 sorrow, or the bitterness out of the cup. Only the 
 revelation made by Jesus, in and through his life, 
 death, and resurrection, as the substitute of men, can 
 lift the heart out of its sadness and link the recollec- 
 tions of the happy past with the hopes of the golden 
 and glorious future. No matter what else we look to, 
 we shall still find ourselves in the swelling of the 
 river ; but the moment we see Jesus our feet stand 
 on dry ground. He assures us that our loved ones 
 live still, only in a higher and more blessed condition, 
 and he awakens thus within us a desire to depart and 
 to be with him and them. 
 
 This leads me naturally to remark, in the last place, 
 that the maxim which I have been illustrating may be 
 applied to our own death. That is an experience which 
 must be always unknown to us until we die. How- 
 ever many we may have seen depart, the path to our- 
 selves must be strange and untraversed. Nothing can 
 
THE UNTRODDEN PATH. 91 
 
 acquaint us with it save the treading of it for ourselves. 
 But Jesus, by his own death and resurrection, has 
 put the ark before us, and looking at that we shall 
 find the river dry. Brother ! sister ! you must die ! 
 That experience you must pass through, not as the 
 Israelites crossed the Jordan in the midst of a crowded 
 company, but alone. O, see to it that you can keep 
 Christ in view, for he alone can then sustain you. 
 Through death he has himself delivered them who, 
 through fear of death, have been all their lifetime 
 subject to bondage. These, too, are his precious 
 words : " When thou passest through the waters I will 
 be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not 
 overflow thee. When thou passest through the fire 
 thou shall not be burned, neither shall the flame 
 kindle upon thee." " I will never leave thee nor for- 
 sake thee." By the free gift of pardon he has taken 
 the sting out of death, and by his resurrection from the 
 dead he has robbed the grave of its victory. What, 
 then, have we to fear ? When we can see him we can 
 calmly sing : 
 
 " The hour may be nigh when our bosoms, faint heaving, 
 Shall breathe their last sigh in the peace of believing. 
 And Thou, from our pillow all darkness dispelling, 
 Wilt calm the rude billow of Jordan's proud swelling. 
 Hallelujah to the Lamb who has brought us a pardon. 
 We will praise him again when we've passed over Jordan." 
 
 But there may be some here who have never yet 
 made Jesus their saviour by simple trust in him ; and 
 to them I must address one parting word. You have 
 had many difficulties to confront in the past. You 
 know how you failed before them. When your busi- 
 ness went from beneath you, and you had no prop to 
 lean upon, how dreary were you then without the 
 Lord! When your child died, and all the world 
 
92 THE XJNTKODDEN PATH. 
 
 seemed to you draped in sadness, how utterly pros- 
 trate were you tlien in the consciousness that you had 
 no hold on Christ ! When you were laid aside with 
 serious sickness, and you thought that you should 
 die, how was your heart filled with dread at the pros- 
 pect of meeting God ! Oh, let the experience of the' 
 past warn you for the future ! If you failed under the 
 lesser trials, how will you endure the greater ? " If 
 thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied 
 thee, how shalt thou contend with horses ? and if in 
 the land of peace wherein thou trustedst they wearied 
 thee, what Avilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan ? " 
 " None but Christ ; none but Christ," said Lambert 
 at the stake ; and there is none else can be a real 
 helper unto you, either in life or death. Put the ark 
 before you, then, and keep it full in view. That only, 
 but that always, will make the channel dry. 
 
 December 30, 1877. 
 
THE PAST IRREVOCABLE. 
 
 Detjt. xvii. 16. Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. 
 
 These words in tlieir primary application are a pro- 
 liibition. Tliey occur in that section of Deuteronomy 
 wliicli lias been supposed by certain modern critics 
 to prove tliat tlie book, as a whole, is not the work of 
 Moses, but belongs to a much later period in Jewish 
 history. Forecasting the future, and contemplating 
 the contingency that after their settlement in Canaan 
 the tribes would desire a king, like other nations, the 
 great lawgiver, guided by the Spirit of God, lays 
 down the principles which, in such a case, they were 
 to follow, and specifies certain things which their 
 king should particularly guard against. But if we 
 admit the possibility of the supernatural in the shape 
 of prophecy at all, there is absolutely nothing in all 
 this inconsistent with the common belief that Moses 
 himself gave these directions ; and if we deny the 
 possibility of the supernatural altogether, the ques- 
 tion goes farther back than the matter of the author- 
 ship of Deuteronomy, and becomes one involving 
 the existence and personality of God himself. That, 
 however, is not a matter of criticism, but of philoso- 
 phy; and just as on a trial for high treason the 
 prosecutor does not feel himself bound to enter on 
 a long argument to prove the legitimacy of the 
 government, so when objections of the kind which 
 I have indicated are raised against the authenticity 
 of certain portions of the Scriptures, the defender 
 
94 THE PAST EREEVOCABLE. 
 
 is not required to establish anew the possibility 
 of the supernatural. If reasons of another sort are 
 given, these must be weighed and answered ; but 
 if, on the simple ground that all prophecy must have 
 been written after the event, it is proposed to deny 
 the earlier date of the book which contains a predic- 
 tion of it, then we may safely dismiss the plea as in- 
 admissible, at least at that stage ; and so refuse to be 
 diverted from our purpose by the attempt to debate 
 any such question. This volume, as a whole, pro- 
 fesses to be a revelation from God. If there be no 
 God, or if it be impossible for him to make known his 
 ■will to men through a book sealed by miracles and 
 prophecies, then there is an end of the matter. But 
 if there be a God, and if the possibility of his work- 
 ing miracles and giving through his servants predic- 
 tions of future events be conceded, then there is no 
 relevancy whatever in the objection to the Mosaic 
 authorship of this book, on the ground that here we 
 have a reference to a state of things which did not 
 exist until centuries after Moses lived. This con- 
 sideration, then, removes the question from the 
 region of criticism altogether, and makes it not so 
 much one of Moses or not Moses, as of God or no 
 God. 
 
 But while the matter of the kingdom did not come 
 up until long after Moses' day, there is in this injunc- 
 tion against the multiplication of horses, with its 
 appended explanation, something which to my mind 
 clearly indicates that the prohibition belongs to a 
 date immediately subsequent to the journeyings of the 
 people through the wilderness. So far as the history 
 makes manifest, there was not, in the days of 
 Samuel, any tendency among the people to go down 
 again into Egypt. Amid all their struggles with sur- 
 
THE PAST lEEEVOCABLE. 95 
 
 rounding tribes under the Judges, we never read of 
 any desire among the Israelites to call in the aid of 
 those who had formerly been their oppressors. But 
 it was otherwise immediately after the exodus ; for 
 then the burden of their exclamations in any time of 
 trial always was regret that they had left Egypt ; and 
 even in the very year before they entered Canaan, 
 within twelve months of the time at which Moses 
 spoke these words, when they were suffering from 
 thirst, they cried, "Wherefore have ye made us to 
 come uj) out of Egypt to bring us into this evil place ? " 
 So in the words here used concerning the king : " He 
 shall not multiply horses unto himself, nor cause the 
 people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should 
 multiply horses," there is that which is clearly 
 Mosaic, as resting on his knowledge of the repeated 
 hankerings of the people after the material comforts of 
 their house of bondage. Here was a reason admirably 
 appropriate in the mouth of one who had heard the 
 murmurings of the tribes at being deprived of the good 
 things of Egypt, but scarcely such as would have been 
 given by a person writing at the beginning of the 
 Jewish monarchy. The prediction relates to things 
 a long way before ; but the argument by which the 
 injunction accompanying it is enforced rests upon ex- 
 periences which, to Moses, were still things of yes- 
 terday. 
 
 I have referred to these matters only because of 
 the prominence into which recent controversies have 
 brought this section of the book of Deuteronomy ; and 
 because I think that sufficient attention has not been 
 given to the point which I have just brought out. 
 
 But now, leaving this discussion, which is per- 
 haps more appropriate for the lecture-room than for 
 the pulpit, let me, before proceeding to outline the 
 
96 THE PAST lEREVOCABLE. 
 
 train of tliought wliicli the words of my text have sug- 
 gested to me, put distinctly before you the great 
 lesson which this prohibition enforces. It tells us 
 that they who have left Egypt must never return 
 thither. The Christian convert must keep clear of his 
 old bondage-house. He must have nothing more to 
 do with sin. Having named the name of Christ, he is 
 to depart from all iniquity. From and after the 
 " henceforth " of his conversion he must not serve 
 sin, but must live unto him who died for him, and 
 rose again. The time past of his life must suffice to 
 have wrought the will of the flesh. There must be 
 no steps backward ; no casting of " longing, lingering 
 looks behind " ; no hankering after former indul- 
 gences. He has enlisted under the banner of the 
 Lord Jesus, and must be loyal to the great captain 
 of his salvation. His heart is not to be divided be- 
 tween Christ and the world, but having left Egypt he 
 must "henceforth return no more that way." Nay, 
 so thorough must the renunciation be that he must 
 keep away from everything that has a tendency to 
 allure him back, even although, in itself considered, 
 it may not be a sinful thing. There is in itself no 
 harm in the use of horses. They are noble animals. 
 They were, moreover, designed by the great Creator 
 to be subservient to the comfort and convenience of 
 men. Yet because, in those early days, horses could 
 be had in perfection only in Egypt, and because the 
 going thither for them might awaken the old longing 
 in them for those worldly comforts which had formerly 
 beguiled them into, or reconciled them to, their slave- 
 ry, the law is laid down for the King of the He- 
 brews, and through him for the people themselves, — 
 "Ye shall not multiply horses." 
 
 Now, similarly, the Christian is to keep away from 
 
THE PAST lEREVOCABLE. 97 
 
 everytliing that lias a tendency to draw liim back to 
 the slavery of tlie world wliicli lie lias renounced. 
 No matter if it should be a thing which is in itself as 
 harmless as the use of a horse, yet if it bring him 
 into associations and alliances which endanger his 
 holiness, or weaken the force of his protest against 
 sin, he is to keep away from it. He is to look at 
 things not in the abstract, but in connection with 
 their tendencies and surroundings ; and so as respects 
 fashions, amusements, beverages and employments, 
 he is to give up those which would bring him into 
 dangerous fellowship with the ungodly and the de- 
 praved. To make sure of his not entering Sodom he 
 must not even "pitch his tent toward" it. To guard 
 against his going back to Egypt he must not " mul- 
 tiply horses." To prevent his returning to sin he 
 must not go in the way that leads to it. Here is a 
 jDrinciple far-reaching and important, and I am thank- 
 ful that it has come up now, when, as it seems to me, 
 with returning prosperity in the country we are in 
 danger of being sucked back into the world's ways. 
 Take it, I beseech you, and act upon it, that you may 
 keep yourselves pure and undefiled. 
 
 Thus far I have been dealing with the text in its 
 primary and proper application ; but when, in connec- 
 tion with the service of this morning, it first suggested 
 itself to my mind, its words shaped themselves to me 
 as a simple statement rather than as a positive prohi- 
 bition ; and, in that sense, they seemed to me to be 
 peculiarly appropriate to the closing year. We have 
 come very near the end of another cycle of recorded 
 time. Before another Sabbath dawns we shall have 
 entered upon a new year, with all its unknown duties, 
 responsibilities and trials ; and as we stand to-day 
 5 
 
98 THE PAST lEREVOCAELE. 
 
 looking back upon tlie past, tliere comes out of it a 
 voice wliich says, "Ye sliall liencefortli return no more 
 tliis way." This I know is an accommodation of tlie 
 words, ratlier tlian an interpretation of tliem, and yet 
 it is, in my judgment, important enough to have our 
 serious and solemn attention. The past is lived. "We 
 cannot go back over it again. "We cannot unwind it 
 to a certain point, and there start afresh to face the 
 same difficulties and meet the same responsibilities as 
 those which we have had to encounter. Not even 
 the power of Omnipotence can jDut us where we were 
 twelve months ago, or roll back the year that we may 
 live it over again. The wheels of Time's chariot have 
 ratchets to them, and they move only forward. The 
 incidents, opportunities, and events of the past are 
 irrecoverably gone, and " we shall henceforth return 
 no more that way." 
 
 Now, I can conceive that to some of us there may 
 be relief and even comfort in this assurance. The 
 experiences through which we have come may have 
 been such that we cannot wish for their renewal. The 
 path over which we have passed may have been so 
 rough, and steep, and dangerous that we cannot con- 
 template traversing it again without a shudder. When 
 I was in Chamonix, last summer, a friend who had 
 crossed the glacier and come down by the " Mauvais 
 Pas," on which the iron railing jjut for the safety of 
 travelers had parted from its fastenings in his grasp, 
 assured me that he would not go through that expe- 
 rience again for all that earth could give. And there 
 may be not a few among us who feel just in the same 
 way concerning some chapters in our last year's life. 
 We are, perhaps, thankful to be through them, but 
 we do not wish to repeat them. "We feel regarding 
 them as one does who has come safely out of a 
 
THE TAST IKREVOCABLE. 99 
 
 terrible railway accident, or who sets his foot on land 
 after a dangerous and tempestuous voyage. We are 
 glad that we have escaped, but, even although we 
 should escape another time, we do not desire to be 
 again in the same peril. Take any one of those ter- 
 rible catastrophes, so many of which occurred last year 
 in this neighborhood, and ask those who came out of 
 them unscathed whether, with the assurance of sim- 
 ilar preservation, they would relish a repetition of 
 their experience, and they will answer, with a solemn 
 intenseness, "No! not for worlds!" One hears, as 
 he replies, the rumble of the falling hippodrome ; 
 another sees again the flames of the burning ship, and 
 the passengers leaping in wild haste and confusion 
 into the waters ; and yet another seems to feel anew 
 the waves choking his cry for help. These memories 
 give almost a passionate vehemence to their gratitude 
 as they cry : " Thank God that is all over ! " For them, 
 therefore, there is comfort in the thought that " they 
 shall henceforth return no more that way." 
 
 Some, too, may have had such a time of labor and 
 anxiety that they are glad to think that it is now be- 
 hind them and not to be renewed. If they had known 
 of it before they entered on it they would have shrunk 
 from it, and now that they have had actual trial of it 
 they say that they could not do it over again. They 
 are grateful to God that they did not break down 
 under the strain, but they have had enough of it, 
 and henceforth, whatever comes, they must carry a 
 lighter load. There are not a few, also, whose past 
 months have been so filled with afilictions that they do 
 not hanker after a repetition of them. They have 
 hardly ever been out of the sick room ; or they have 
 been compelled to look day by day on the gradual 
 decay of dear ones whom they have had ultimately to 
 
100 THE PAST IRREVOCAELE. 
 
 follow to tlie grave ; or the pressure of -worldly anxiety- 
 has been so heavy upon them that the rolling back of 
 the year and the renewal of its trials would be to them 
 a thing to be deprecated rather than to be desired. 
 And some there are who have had such a fierce fight with 
 temptation, and have come out of it, victorious indeed, 
 yet with such exhaustion that they cannot but re- 
 joice in the thought that now it is all behind them in 
 " the irrevocable past." They are glad for the result, 
 but they would not willingly go back into the agony of 
 the conflict, any more than we in this land would like to 
 pass again through those terrible years when North 
 and South met each other in hostile array on so many 
 bloody fields. So this text, taken as an assurance that 
 we cannot re-live our lives, or go again through the ex- 
 periences of the past, has in it an element of comfort. 
 It is a relief to know that some things are over and 
 done with. It is an unspeakable satisfaction to think 
 that whatever new trials may be in store for us, those 
 in the past have been borne, and are not to be borne 
 again. 
 
 But there is another side to the subject, and that is 
 full of solemnity, not unattended with sorrow. For in 
 the past there are many things which now we wish 
 had been otherwise. Our afterthought has shown us 
 much to which our forethought was blind ; but we can- 
 not alter anything now. All is done ; and nothing be- 
 hind us can be undone. The past is always seen more 
 correctly after it has become the j)ast than it was when 
 it was present ; and so, as we take a review of the year 
 now nearing its close, we perceive more clearly where 
 we have failed, or in what we have been to blame, than 
 we did at the time when we were in the thick of the 
 things themselves. "We mark positive sins now where 
 
THE PAST IKEEVOCABLE. 101 
 
 "we saw perhaps only slirewdnesses or matters of pru- 
 dence at tlie moment. We can tell now where we 
 missed opportunities of doing good in the service of 
 God and our generation which we scarcely observed 
 as we came up to them. And we have to mourn over 
 the fact that many of our most sacredly formed reso- 
 lutions have been sadly broken. If we could only put 
 these things right now ! If we could only take back 
 with us the experience which we have since acquired, 
 and begin again, say, at the commencement of last 
 year, how different would its record be made by us ! 
 But that cannot be. We shall " return no more that 
 way " ! What is done is done. Lost opj)ortunities 
 cannot be recalled, and no cement of human device 
 can mend a broken vow. Ah ! what a sad reflection 
 have we here. No matter how tenderly you may now 
 feel, young man, you cannot go back and undo the 
 follies of these months, nor can you arrest their con- 
 sequences ! You cannot recall the profane word ; you 
 cannot wipe out the impure act; you cannot undo 
 the sins you have committed. The past remains fixed, 
 unalterable ; not to be washed out by tears, nor to be 
 amended by repentance. 
 
 What then ? What is to be done with it ? I answer, 
 that if we cannot cancel it, we can confess the evil 
 that is in it, and seek through Jesus Christ forgiveness 
 for that. If we please, we can obtain, through the 
 great atonement, acceptance with God notwithstand- 
 ing our sins. We never can get rid of the fact that 
 they have been committed ; but we may be cleansed 
 of the guilt of committing them. We may be re- 
 ceived by God precisely as if we had never sinned ; 
 and so the sting of our guilt may be extracted, and 
 the past may cease to be a clog upon our spiritual 
 progress. By faith in Jesus we may be enabled in a 
 
102 THE PAST lEREVOCABLE. 
 
 very true sense to forget even our sins ; and, tak- 
 ing the good out of our experience, we may make 
 the future so full of the service of our generation that 
 God may seem almost to "restore to us the years 
 that the locust has eaten." The reformed drunkard 
 can never go back and undo his own intemperance. 
 It will forever be a fact that he sinned in that par- 
 ticular way. But in Christ he may obtain forgiveness 
 and regeneration, and when, like a Gough, or a Bunt- 
 ing, he gives his life to the reclaiming of those who 
 are now in the degradation out of which he has been 
 raised, he has, in a sense, brought good out of his 
 evil, and has made even his sinful past subservient 
 to his present usefulness. The thief can never make 
 it true that he never stole ; but he may obtain forgive- 
 ness from the Lord, and may by the Holy Ghost be 
 renewed after the image of Christ ; and when, like a 
 Jerry McAuley, he gives his days and his nights to 
 labor for the conversion of the criminal population of 
 the city, he too is showing that even out of the darkest 
 chapters of a man's history may be drawn that which 
 may make him specially useful to some classes of his 
 fellow men. Now what is so conspicuously true in 
 instances like those which I have named may become 
 true also in the case of all the evils that are behind 
 us. We cannot undo them, yet we can prevent them 
 from undoing us. We cannot cancel them, but we 
 can have them forgiven, and we can, by God's grace, 
 secure the wisdom which will enable us to utilize our 
 experience in connection with them for our own 
 good, and for the benefit of others. When we are con- 
 verted from them we may be able by the blessing of 
 God to strengthen our brethren all the better from 
 our having fallen before them. This is, of course, no 
 excuse for any one's committing sin ; neither does it 
 
THE PAST IKREVOCAELE. 103 
 
 in any way undo the sin ; but it casts it beliind us and 
 keeps it from fettering us in our future progress ; yea, 
 it makes it even a minister to our usefulness. So, 
 even if we cannot go back to repair the past, we may 
 gather wisdom from it to make the future more 
 blessed. 
 
 And then, turning the thought which the words of 
 my text express, we may make it full of admonition 
 to ourselves for the future. We are about to enter 
 upon a path in which there will be no possibility of 
 retracing our steps ; let us be very careful, there- 
 fore, where we jplant our feet. We have only once 
 to live ; therefore let us live to purpose. The day 
 that dawned this morning will never dawn again. 
 The opportunities which it brought with it will never 
 come again ; and if we fail to fill it with the service it 
 requires of us there will be no possibility of return- 
 ing into it to repair the mischief. The year on which 
 we are about to enter will come only once ; if, there- 
 fore, we trifle away any of its hours, or abuse any of 
 its days, or miss any of its opportunities, the evil is 
 irreparable. So let us seize every moment as it comes, 
 and use it as we shall wish we had done when we look 
 back upon it from eternity. Remember, the year does 
 not come to you all at once, in twelve months at a 
 time, nor even in twelve distinct installments of a 
 month each ; no, nor yet in three hundred and sixty- 
 five separate portions of a day apiece : but in individual 
 moments. Do not, therefore, lose the moments in 
 thinking that you will secure the year ; but consider 
 that the year is to be redeemed by the consecration of 
 each moment to the Lord Jesus. Fill every day with 
 his service. Meet every duty that confronts you as a 
 duty to be performed for him. Face every trial that 
 
104 THE PAST IKKEVOCABLE. 
 
 comes to you as a trial to be endured for him. Bear 
 every affliction that falls upon you as an affliction to 
 be suffered for his sake. Think not that by and by 
 you will turn to him, and that will secure life as a 
 whole for him ; but let every moment be his, and that 
 will be giving him the life. I referred a little while 
 ago to the fall of the hippodrome wall, and in this 
 connection I am sure many of you will recall the re- 
 markable words which were found in the note-book 
 of one of the victims of that accident to this effect : " I 
 expect to pass through this life but once ; if, therefore, 
 there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing 
 I can do, to my fellow human beings, let me do it noiv. 
 Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass 
 this way again." Some of you, too, will remember 
 the lines of Horatius Bonar in which the same thought 
 is expressed : 
 
 " Not many lives, but only one, have we. 
 
 One, only one ; 
 How sacred should that one life ever be, 
 
 That narrow span. 
 Day after day filled up with blessed toil. 
 Hour after hour, still bringing in new spoil." 
 
 But there is no enforcement of this trutli to be com- 
 pared with that which comes from the example of our 
 Lord himself. These are his words: "I must work 
 the work of him that sent me while it is day : the 
 night Cometh when no man can work " ; and so con- 
 stantly did he act out that resolution that when the 
 time of the crucifixion arrived he could say not only, 
 " Father, the hour is come," but also, " I have glorified 
 thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou 
 gavest me to do." For every hour he had his appro- 
 priate work, and so the life and the work were finished 
 together. And when you ask how that was accom- 
 
THE PAST IKKEVOCABLE. 105 
 
 plished you may find tlie open secret in his saying to 
 Ms followers, " My meat is to do the will of him that 
 sent me, and to finish his work." On that he lived, 
 and therefore for that he lived. His first recorded 
 words were these : " Wist ye not that I must be 
 about my Father's business?" and to that he kept 
 himself until the last. More than food, more than rest, 
 yea, better than life itself to him, was the doing of that 
 will; and when we fully imbibe his spirit our lives 
 will come to be, like his, rounded into finished com- 
 pleteness and filled with blessing and beneficence to 
 our fellow men. Remember that for everything God 
 gives you to do there is a day when it can be done, 
 and a night when the doing of it is no longer possible : 
 so seize the opportunity and do everything in its own 
 day. It is told of Dr. Samuel Johnson that he had 
 engraven on the dial-plate of his watch these two 
 Greek words, vv^ apx^rai^ " the night cometh," in 
 order that every time he looked upon it he might be 
 stimulated to greater activity by the anticipation of 
 death. But, though that use of the phrase is very sug- 
 gestive, its reference may be greatly widened. For 
 every duty there is a day when it can be performed, 
 but if that day be trifled past and the duty left undone, 
 there comes a night which says, " Ye shall henceforth 
 return no more that way." God give us grace to lay 
 this more earnestly to heart, and then when death 
 comes we shall not be haunted by the ghosts of neg- 
 lected opportunities or embittered by the pangs of un- 
 availing regrets. This is the true Christian philosophy 
 of life, and I would exhort you to adopt it, and begin to 
 act upon it to-day. Remember that you cannot go back 
 a single step to make the past different in the least de- 
 gree ; therefore let each step as you take it be in " the 
 right way " : a step of which Christ will approve ; a steji 
 5* 
 
106 THE PAST IKKEVOCABLE. 
 
 which will bring you nearer to liim ; a step which will 
 take you into higher experiences, and furnish for you 
 a nobler vantage ground for usefulness ; and, as you 
 look forward to the commencement of another year, 
 let your aspirations shape themselves into this simple 
 supplication : 
 
 " O Saviour, Christ, I pray thou wilt be near 
 To consecrate this newly opening year ; 
 may thy love, omnipotent and free, 
 Bind every fiber of my heart to thee, ' 
 
 And every power and every wish complete 
 Be laid in full surrender at thy feet." 
 
 December 26, 1880. 
 
THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 1 Kings, xis. 12. And after the fire a still small voice, 
 
 " Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we 
 are," and at no time are we more convinced of that 
 than when we find him here at Horeb. Not long be- 
 fore, he had been on the top of Carmel, where he had 
 gained a decisive victory over the priests of Baal ; 
 but now he has fled from the post of duty, and the 
 cruel threat of a vindictive woman has frightened him 
 almost into despair. We might well wonder at this, 
 and speak of it as a moral incongruity, if not also as a 
 psychological impossibility, if we did not ourselves 
 know from experience something of those alternations 
 of ebb and flow in faith and feeling which seem to be 
 inseparable from the excitement of public life in the 
 service of the Lord. After such a day as that on Car- 
 mel, followed as it was by his earnest wrestling with 
 God for the coming of the rain, and his long race be- 
 fore the chariot of Ahab to the gates of Jezreel, a 
 reaction was sure to come, and, as the hollow corre- 
 sponds to the hill, so in one who was by nature so 
 intense as Elijah the depression was sure to be ter- 
 rible when it did come. Yet, let us not do him injus- 
 tice by imagining that he was most deeply distressed 
 about his own individual interests. It is true that 
 once and again he refers to his belief that he alone 
 was left in Israel to be jealous for the Lord God of 
 hosts, and that they sought his life. But he valued 
 his life only in so far as he could use it in securing 
 the triumph of Jehovah's cause, and it was because 
 
108 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 that seemed to liim to be lost that lie was so dreadfully 
 cast down. His lieart was set on tlie regeneration of 
 Israel. He had, as he believed, inaugurated a great 
 reform, and he supposed that God would carry it to 
 immediate success. But instead of that he found Jez- 
 ebel as determined, as unscrupulous, and as cruel in 
 her antagonism as ever, and thinking that the conflict 
 would have to be fought over again, he became dis- 
 pirited, and fled. He expected that from the moment 
 of his Carmel victory everything would go right, and 
 that the whole people would enthusiastically declare 
 themselves, not by an emotional cheer, but by a life- 
 long determination for Jehovah ; but when he found 
 that this was far from being the case, he gave up the 
 struggle, and went into the wilderness. Strange as it 
 may seem in one whose great and repeated message 
 was " The Lord God of Israel liveth," he forgot to 
 take Jehovah himself into the account, and for the mo- 
 ment he acted as if the indifference of the people and 
 the bitter opposition of Jezebel were mightier than 
 Omnipotence. Possibly, too, he had been trusting too 
 mucli in mere power, and so, when he found that it 
 had not changed the heart of the nation, he fell into 
 despondency. 
 
 Now, such being his state of mind, we cannot but 
 admire and adore the wisdom of the course which the 
 Lord took with him. "When he lay beneath the juni- 
 per-tree the angel did not upbraid him, but ministered 
 to his wants in the kindest manner, and let him rest 
 awhile ; then, after preparing for him a second repast, 
 he led him to Horeb, where the very associations of 
 the place with the greatest events in the history of 
 Moses might preach to him of the majesty and yet the 
 mercy of the Most High. Then, when before him, as 
 erst before Moses, the Lord passed by, his glory was 
 
THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 109 
 
 once again seen to be especially in liis goodness, for 
 lie was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the 
 fire, but in " the still small voice," to teach his servant 
 that, however useful these might be in calling attention 
 and in silencing objection, it was not by such " coups 
 d'etat " as that on Carmel that the work of regenerat- 
 ing Israel was to be accomplished, but by the quiet 
 influence of love. There had been much about him of 
 the austere and the denunciatory. He had said much 
 to terrify and alarm ; but the greatest glory of God 
 was not secured by these things. The earthquake, 
 the whirlwind, and the fire were but the out-riders of 
 the divine majesty, but that majesty itself is " gentle- 
 ness," for it is by that he makes men "great." The one 
 lesson, therefore, good for all the ages, of this Horeb 
 symbolism is that " the kingdom of God cometh not 
 with observation," and that the salvation of the world 
 is to be wrought out by him of whom it could be said, 
 " He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be 
 heard in the streets. A bruised reed he shall not 
 break, and the smoking flax he shall not quench." 
 Not John the Baptist, with his stern denunciation and 
 his austere asceticism, but Jesus, with his love, and 
 tenderness, and self-sacrifice, is the regenerator of 
 humanity ; and though John must always, in some 
 form or other, go before Jesus, yet to expect that he 
 alone shall succeed in reforming the world is as absurd 
 as it would be to anticipate that the plowshare and 
 the harrow will of themselves cause the ground to 
 produce a harvest without the genial heat' of the sun, 
 and the kindly rain of the clouds. Now there are 
 three respects in which this one lesson may be help- 
 ful to us in these days : 
 
 I. In the first place, it reminds us that in the order 
 
110 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 of God's government the quietest influence is often 
 the most powerful. God's greatest works are carried 
 on in silence. All noiselessly the planets move in 
 their orbits ; " there is no speech, nor language ; their 
 voice is not heard " as they sweep on through their 
 appointed paths in space. No sound attends the crys- 
 tallization of the dewdrops on the myriad blades of 
 grass in the summer evenings ; and while the crops 
 are growing in the fields, so profound sometimes is the 
 stillness that all nature seems asleep. What greater 
 revolution can there be than that which recurs at 
 every morning's dawn when night quits her " ebon 
 throne," and resigns her empire to the king of day ? 
 Yet how quietly it is accomplished! There is first a 
 streak of light along the edge of the eastern horizon, 
 so faint that you wonder whether it has not shot out 
 from that brilliant star ; then a few stray gleams of 
 glory, as if the northern aurora had flitted to another 
 quarter of the heavens ; then a flush of ruddy beauty 
 before which the stars begin to pale, and as we watch 
 how one by one these faithful sentinels put out their 
 lamps, the sun himself appears, and becomes the 
 undisputed monarch of the heavens. But it is all so 
 silent that the sleeper is not awakened on his couch, 
 and the pale, sick one who has been longing for the 
 morning knows not it is there until through the shad- 
 owed casement it looks in upon him with its benignant 
 smile. In like manner the kingdom of God cometh 
 not with observation. There is no crying of lo ! here, 
 or lo ! there ! Its simple j^resence is its own announce- 
 ment and its mightiest power. 
 
 Now this is a truth which, as it seems to me, we 
 are in these days very apt to forget. We have fallen 
 upon a generation of fuss, and bustle, and trumpet- 
 blowing, and advertising. It would almost seem as 
 
THE VISION OF ELIJAH. Ill 
 
 if many of us believed tliat we were to take the world 
 by storm. We get up excitements in mass-meetings, 
 and pass resolutions, and listen to eloquent orators, 
 and make thundering plaudits, as if these alone were 
 to win the day. We think, alas ! too often, like Elijah, 
 that the victory has been gained when we are but 
 entering upon the struggle. We have more faith in 
 the whirlwind and the earthquake than in the still 
 small voice ; and we mistake a momentary out-flash- 
 ing of enthusiasm for the celebration of a final tri- 
 umph. The sensational is everywhere in the ascend- 
 ant. We see it in the extravagance of dress that 
 seeks to call attention to itself ; we see it in the domain 
 of literature, in the highly colored and hotly seasoned 
 romances that circulate by thousands among the peo- 
 ple ; we see it in the department of business, in the 
 feverish speculations carried on by individuals who 
 are ambitious to bottle up the trade of a whole con- 
 tinent for their own particular benefit ; we see it in 
 the wide field of national affairs, where a " vigorous 
 foreign policy " is pursued, and nations are embroiled 
 only that a Beaconsfield may wear a garter, and one 
 nearer home may have his name kept prominent ; we see 
 it in the church, where a high ritual has been adopted, 
 as if that would save men's souls ; and that I may 
 carry through my enumeration with absolute impar- 
 tiality, we see it in the very pulpit, where men too fre- 
 quently discourse on every topic but the gospel, and 
 sometimes discourse on that under ridiculous announce- 
 ments which are meant to draw the multitudes, as if 
 that were equivalent to the regeneration of their 
 hearts. Surely, therefore, there is something in this 
 vision for our sensation-loving life. The Lord is not 
 in these noisy and demonstrative manifestations. 
 These of themselves will not avail, either for abiding 
 
112 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 success or real happiness, or extended usefulness. 
 The earthquake may shake the ground, the whirlwind 
 may rend the trees ; the fire may devour a building, a 
 block, aye, even a city, as once and again we have seen 
 in recent years, and men's hearts remain unchanged. 
 Nothing can reach them but "the still small voice " of 
 gospel grace, for in that especially Jehovah speaks. It 
 were well, therefore, that we had less faith in noise, and 
 more in that which is the most God- like thing on earth, 
 namely, a character molded after the example of 
 Christ, and created and sustained by the agency of the 
 Holy Ghost. It were well that the voices among us 
 were less loud, and the deeds were more pronounced. 
 Life is more potent than words ; and character, though 
 quiet, is more influential in the long run than any im- 
 mediate sensation that flares up and crackles like 
 a blaze of thorns, and, like that blaze, dies down after 
 a brief season. Better a star than a meteor, however 
 brilliant for the moment it may seem ; better a steady 
 beacon, like the light on yonder headland, than a danc- 
 ing marsh-fire. And if Christians generally would 
 seek to act out the principles of the Sermon on the 
 Mount leaving all ad captandum and self-seeking de- 
 vices alone, they would soon fill the land with an in- 
 fluence which would do more for its evangelization 
 than all the other agencies put together would effect. 
 
 II. But, in the second place, the lesson which wo 
 have deduced from our text, taken with its surroundings, 
 reminds us that the force of love is always greater 
 than that of sternness. Every one has heard of the 
 old fable which tells how the sun and the wind strove 
 with each other, which of them should first make the 
 traveler divest himself of his cloak. The more fiercely 
 the wind blew the more firmly the wayfaring man gath- 
 
THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 113 
 
 ered his outer garment about him. But when the sun 
 shone warmly upon him he speedily threw the weighty 
 covering from his shoulders. So antagonism creates 
 antagonism. If you attempt to drag me by force, it is 
 in my nature to resist you, and I will pull against you 
 with all my might ; but if you try to attract me by 
 kindness, it is equally in my nature to yield to its 
 influence, and I will follow you of my own free will. 
 "What the hammer will not weld together without fiery 
 heat and prolonged labor, the magnet will bring to- 
 gether and hold together in a moment. So in dealing 
 with men, the mightiest influence is love. 
 
 But there had been little of that in Elijah's dealings 
 with his fellows. Indeed, his intercourse with them 
 had been but fitful and infrequent. His history is 
 one of sudden appearances and mysterious hidings ; 
 and up to the time of this vision, at least, though he 
 had been thoroughly faithful, he had shown but little 
 tenderness to his countrymen. Evermore he had 
 come with denunciation on his lips, so that even the 
 good Obadiah was terrified by his appearance ; and if 
 that were so with him, we cannot wonder that Ahab 
 and his partisans were roused by him into more 
 furious animosity. There had been enough of the 
 terrible in the past. Now he must go back and try 
 *' the still small voice " ; and especially he must ini- 
 tiate a successor, who should be not the similitude but 
 rather the complement of himself, and should go 
 about in love and fellowship and helpfulness among 
 the people of the land. 
 
 But, striking as is the illustration of the truth 
 that terror of itself cannot move men to repentance 
 which is furnished by the history of Elijah, we see 
 the other side of it in its higliest manifestation in 
 the work of Christ. By love the Lord attracts 
 
114 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 US to liimself at the first, and by love lie keeps us 
 with him to the last. Law and terrors do but 
 harden the heart, but love melts it and makes it 
 impressible. See how this came out in the Saviour's 
 dealing with the woman whom her accusers dragged 
 rudely before him as taken in the very act of sin. 
 Her soul was chafing under their harshness. She 
 was in a mood to be defiant. Angry words had no 
 doubt been the first upon her lips, and she might 
 have spoken bitterly to her tormenters. But when 
 she saw his benignant countenance and heard his gra- 
 cious words, the frown passed from her face, the pa»- 
 sion disajppeared from her eyes, and the determination 
 to vindicate herself went out of her heart. Thus she 
 was not injured by his kindness, for her sin never 
 seemed so hideous to her as it did when he said to 
 her, " Neither do I condemn thee " ; and she never 
 judged herself so severely as in the moment when she 
 received his forgiveness. When sternness has had its 
 Carmel victory, Jezebel is as defiant as ever ; but when 
 love succeeds, the woman of Samaria becomes a 
 preacher of the gospel. Sternness would have said 
 to Nicodemus : " You are a coward ; when you come 
 to me in the open day and say in the hearing of all 
 men what you have spoken to me in secret, then I 
 will instruct you " : and that, most likely, would have 
 driven him away for ever. But love told him of God's 
 gift of his Son to the world, that whosoever believeth 
 in him should not perish but have everlasting life ; 
 and the result was seen that day when, at the foot of 
 the cross, whence ten of the very apostles had fled, 
 Nicodemus was found made great by the Redeemer's 
 gentleness. 
 
 Now, here again we have a word in season to 
 many among ourselves. If the pastor is " under 
 
THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 115 
 
 the juniper tree," and bewailing his want of success 
 — wondering why inquirers rarely come to him, 
 and crying like Isaiah, "Who hath believed our 
 report ? " let him examine and see whether he has 
 not been attempting to move men by sternness rather 
 than by love. Let him ask himself whether he has 
 not been dealing in side subjects away from the great 
 center, and forgetting the attraction that is always in 
 the cross. Let him inquire whether he has given due 
 prominence in his discourses to the love of God, and 
 whether he has not been going about among his 
 people cold and stern and repulsive, rather than 
 tender, affectionate, and winsome in his gentleness. 
 "Who has not heard of the great mistake committed 
 by the first Moravian missionaries to Greenland — how 
 they began their labors by seeking to instruct the 
 people concerning the being of God and the evidences 
 of Christianity, and the future state of reward and 
 punishment, and wondered why they saw no fruit, 
 and how they were at once enlightened and reproved 
 by perceiving the effect produced upon the minds of 
 some of the natives by their hearing — or rather, I 
 should say overhearing, for it had not been intended 
 that they should hear — the reading of the account of 
 the sufferings and death of Christ '? *' What is that 
 you read ? " they said. " Read it to us again." And 
 then there began a great movement among them, 
 which resulted in the conversion of multitudes. Ah ! 
 yes, does not the temptation of the modern pulpit take 
 it just here ? The preacher wishes to be intellectual, 
 original, eloquent, and chooses his themes so that he 
 may be able to make manifest these qualities. But 
 God is not in these, for, though they may awaken 
 admiration, they are, after all, cold, stern, marbly 
 things and do not reach the heart. Nothing will 
 
116 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 touch that but " the still small voice " that tells of 
 Jesus and his love. That is the- only instrument the 
 Spirit will employ in changing a man's nature. Let 
 the pastor, therefore, get back to that, and preach it 
 with a love corresponding to that of Jesus in his own 
 heart, and he will never lack results. Well said the 
 good Angel James — and from his own experience he 
 had a right so to speak, — " Kaise me but a ham in the 
 very shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral, and give me a 
 man who shall preach Christ crucified with something 
 of the energy which the all-inspiring theme is cal- 
 culated to awaken, and you shall see it crowded with 
 warm hearts ; while in the statelier building hard by, 
 if the Gospel be not preached there, the matins and 
 vespers shall be chanted to the statues of the mighty 
 dead." Let the desponding pastor heed these words, 
 and let him try the "still small voice" telling of the 
 love of Christ upon the cross ; and though the Jew 
 may call it an offense and the Greek pronounce it 
 folly, he will find that it is the power of God iinto 
 salvation to every one that believeth. 
 
 I say the same thing to the Sunday-school teacher 
 who is sad at heart because he seems to -see his 
 scholars indifferent, yea, even perhaps antagonistic, to 
 all his appeals. Have you tried them, my brother, 
 with the "still small voice " of gospel love ? Perhaps 
 you have been dealing too exclusively in the whirl- 
 wind, the earthquake, and the fire. Have they ever 
 felt your gentleness ? Do they know you love them ? 
 and have you ever told them of Christ's love to them ? 
 Have you ever laid you hand in pleading affection 
 upon them, and let them see that you are in earnest 
 for their salvation ? We have lesson heljDS nowadays 
 in abundance. Every religious newspaper has some 
 learned man at work to simplify, illustrate, and en- 
 
THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 117 
 
 force the meaning of the passage that is to be the 
 theme for the week, and that is all well so far as it 
 goes. But never forget that the best teaching help is 
 a loving heart ; and if you desire that you must keep 
 yourself in close personal contact with the Lord. If 
 I wish to make steel magnetic I must bring it to a 
 magnet, and, in like manner, if I would win men to 
 Christ by love I must first have the love of Christ 
 in my own heart. He must magnetize me before 
 I can myself become a vehicle of his magnetism. As 
 Sister Dora said, " Be very full of the glad tidings, 
 and you will tell others." Oh, my fellow laborers, let 
 us always remember that all the other matters without 
 that will avail nothing ; but that, even without many 
 of them, will be made powerful by God. Learning is 
 good, illustration is good, accuracy of interpretation is 
 good ; but love is best of all : therefore, with all our 
 getting, let us get love, and let us avoid continually 
 severity and sternness. 
 
 Need I add here that the same principle applies to 
 parents in the training of their children in the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord ? Are you disappointed 
 in the results of your labors with your sons and 
 daughters ? Then let me beg you to examine whether 
 you have not been trusting in the whirlwind, the 
 earthquake, and the fire, and forgetting the " still 
 small voice " ? You say you have tried everything. 
 Let me ask you if you have tried gentleness ; and let 
 me beseech you to make the experiment of that. Do 
 not rudely drive your children from you, but open to 
 them the arms of your affection. Make home attract- 
 ive to them, and then you may discover that there is 
 more power in love to win them to yourself than there 
 is in terror to repel them from the evil against which 
 you have hitherto been so sternly warning them. A 
 
118 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 happy liome is tlie best safeguard against the prodi- 
 gality of cliildren. 
 
 III. But, in the last place, the lesson which we have 
 deduced from our text, taken with its surroundings, 
 reminds us that the apparently insignificant is often- 
 times really the most important. The " still " voice 
 was also " small." It was little in comparison with 
 the whirlwind, the earthquake, and the fire, but it 
 moved Elijah himself more than they all. He was at 
 home with the raging elements. He laid his hand 
 even upon the lightnings and they came at his bid- 
 ding, saying. Here are we ; and so none of these terri- 
 ble things moved him. But the small voice bowed him 
 down, " for it was so when he heard it that he 
 wraj)ped his face in his mantle and went out, and 
 stood in the entering in of the cave." So sometimes, 
 yet, the man who is unmoved by the most awful exj)os- 
 tulations and the most desolating judgments is sub- 
 dued at last by the prattling pathos of a little child. 
 "We must not undervalue agencies because they seem 
 to be insignificant. It was said of the Lord himself, 
 " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " and the 
 first apostles were despised as " unlearned and igno- 
 rant men." Yet though God used only "the weak 
 things of the world," he did confound with them " the 
 things which are mighty." The big trees in California 
 have sprung from seeds each of which is no larger 
 than a grain of wheat ; and the river which at its 
 source is a tiny tinkling rill over which a child may 
 stride, is at its mouth broad enough and deep enough 
 to bear a navy on its bosom. Let us not, therefore, 
 " despise the day of small things," or say of any agency 
 " Is it not a little one ? " A few drops of water rightly 
 used may raise a heavy weight ; and even a little child 
 
THE VISION OP ELIJAH. 119 
 
 may, by the help of God, be the means of lifting up 
 some sinner from his degradation and bringing him at 
 once to his Saviour and himself. One does not need 
 to be some great one to do good service for the Lord. 
 The clarion voice of the great Reformer indeed rung 
 out in " half-battle " words over Europe, but it was 
 first that of the poor miner's son singing for bread 
 upon the open street ; and the pen of a tinker has 
 written a book which has gone into many languages 
 and many lands as the j)ower of God to souls unnum- 
 bered. Thus often the " small voice " of the obscure 
 believer of whom men have scarcely heard has inau- 
 gurated a movement that has blessed a multitude. 
 Let no one say, therefore, that he can do nothing, for 
 still the promise holds, " One man of you shall chase 
 a thousand ; for the Lord your God he it is that fight- 
 eth for you as he hath promised you." And, again, 
 "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one 
 a strong nation. I the Lord will hasten it in its 
 time." This touches us all, for, no matter how circum- 
 scribed our sphere, or how limited our resources, we 
 may have some little thing that we can do which, in 
 its place, will correspond to this " still small voice." 
 The uselessness of many is perfectly accounted for 
 when we say that because they cannot do something 
 great all at once they will do nothing at all. Here, 
 again, the love of sensation makes its appearance ; and 
 it is forgotten that those agencies which are now the 
 greatest, and which have in them most of the elements 
 of permanence, had their beginnings in the smallest 
 things. Each was first a faintly stirring thought in the 
 heart of some humble disciple ; then the thought 
 grew into desire, and the desire stimulated to a begin- 
 ning with such things as he had, and then " the hand- 
 ful of corn upon the top of the mountains " grew up 
 
120 THE VISION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 into a harvest which " shook like the cedars in Leba- 
 non." Wesley never dreamed of anything so great as 
 the Methodism of to-day when he began his work ; and 
 if we will examine it well we shall discover that almost 
 every one of those institutions that are now radiat- 
 ing blessings round them had its commencement in 
 something which, as contrasted with the high-sound- 
 ing pretensions of earthly grandeur, was as insignifi- 
 cant as the still small voice of my text after the whirl- 
 wind and the earthquake. Courage then, my brethren ! 
 Let each go forth and do the little that is at his hand 
 with all his might, and God will make that little great. 
 Say not that you have no influence, for the tiniest 
 child has a power which no human arithmetic can 
 reckon. Do not affirm that you have no resources, for 
 if you can call God your own you have the wealth and 
 power and wisdom of the Infinite behind you. Forth 
 then, and begin your work ! It is work which only 
 you can accomplish. It is work which the world 
 needs. It is work for which the Saviour calls. It is 
 work which shall have results stretching into eternity. 
 Wait not for some great opportunity : the golden year 
 is now ; the accepted time is to-day ; the appointed 
 sphere is where you are. Do not quarrel with your 
 call as Moses tried to do, or begin to make excuses 
 about your weakness and inefficiency. Here is the 
 answer to all these objections : " Certainly I will be 
 with thee." Go then, like Gideon, in this thy might, 
 and the strongholds of Satan will fall before thee in a 
 manner as unaccountable to the men of the world as 
 was the crash of the walls of Jericho at the blast of 
 the rams' horns. May God add his blessing. Amen. 
 
 Februaby 13, 1883. 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SIN. 
 
 Hebrew xL 25. Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people 
 of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. 
 
 In tliis cTiapter, which, is devoted to the heroes of 
 faith, no paragraph is more worthy of study than that 
 which refers to Moses. It sets before us the motive 
 principle of the sublimest life of which ancient history 
 can boast, and if I were minded to enter biographically 
 upon its exposition I should call you to observe par- 
 ticularly the following points, viz. : that the choice of 
 Moses was not blindly made in the impulsive ardor 
 of boyhood, and while yet he knew not what he was 
 required either to suffer or to sacrifice, but maturely, 
 when he was come to years, and was in the full vigor 
 of his powers ; that it involved the forfeiture of the 
 grandest position in the world, and the endurance of 
 privation and hardship ; that it was made from a re- 
 gard to truth and with firm belief in the rightness 
 of God's moral administration and in the certainty of 
 a future recompense ; and that it resulted in the attain- 
 ment of a nobler sort even of earthly grandeur than 
 he could otherwise have reached, with the added ad- 
 vantages of the favor of God and eternal glory. But 
 for the present my purpose is more limited. As by 
 the powerful lens you gather the sunlight into one burn- 
 ing spot which sets anything inflammable on fire, so 
 this morning I wish to focus the lessons of this pas- 
 sage upon the one expression which I have selected as 
 my text, if, by any means, their concentrated influence 
 6 
 
122 THE PLEASUEES OF SIN. 
 
 may, tlirougli the help of the Holy Spirit, kindle in 
 your hearts the fire of piety. My words will, I trust, 
 prove salutary to those of all ages, but I earnestly be- 
 speak the attention of the young. You, also, my be- 
 loved friends, have a choice to make ; nay, whether 
 you are conscious of the fact or not, you are already 
 in the actions of every day making a choice whose 
 issues stretch throughout eternity. It is, therefore, 
 of the deepest importance that you have clearly before 
 you the nature and consequences of those things be- 
 tween which you have to make your election. I will 
 endeavor to make those aj)parent to you this morning, 
 and I beseech you to weigh well, in the balance of a 
 calm and candid judgment, the statements which I 
 shall make. 
 
 Let it be conceded, then, in the outset, that sin has 
 pleasures. This must be true, otherwise men would 
 not commit it. In every instance, at least in the out- 
 set of the sinner's career, he is drawn toward iniquity 
 by the belief that in some way or other it will minister 
 to his enjoyment. Sometimes he may have no higher 
 aim than the gratification of a prurient curiosity. At 
 other times his sin may begin in the impatience of re- 
 straint and the pleasure which is felt in overleap- 
 ing the barriers which authority or afiection may have 
 placed before him. Sighing for self-forge tfulness one 
 may flee to the maddening cup to secure that object ; 
 while another may seek only the wild throb of sensual 
 delight. Thus sin, at first, is indulged in for pleasure, 
 and doubtless there is a kind of enjoyment in its com- 
 mission. I do not deny that, for it would be both 
 irrational and absurd to do so ; neither do I ignore it. 
 I admit it in the frankest and fairest manner ; but 
 my question is, What are the characteristics of such 
 pleasure ? Take it at its best, and suppose you have 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SIN. 123 
 
 the greatest joy that it is possible for sin to furnish, 
 of what sort is it, and what is it worth ? My answer is 
 that its value is what mathematicians would call a neg- 
 ative quality — it has the minus sign before it; that 
 is to say, " it costs more than it comes to " ; in the 
 equation of life it does not add to, but rather takes 
 from, the sum total of your happiness, and leaves you 
 less truly yourself than you v/ere before you enjoyed 
 it. That you may judge for yourselves I will give you 
 the data from which I have worked out this result, 
 and that you may better remember them I will put 
 them in the form of a few simple propositions : 
 
 I. In the first place, then, take note that the pleas- 
 ures of sin are short-lived. In the expressive symbol- 
 ism of Scripture, they are like water in a broken 
 cistern which speedily runs out ; or like the blaze of 
 thorns which crackle and flame up for a little and then 
 die down into a heap of ashes ; and the experience of 
 all who have indulged in them will corroborate this 
 statement. There is in them, at best, only a temporary 
 thrill which vibrates for a moment and needs to be 
 reproduced again and again. They are not joys for- 
 ever. They do not live within a man, sounding a 
 ceaseless undertone of happiness in his " secret soul " 
 wherever he may be. They cannot be said to give 
 pleasure save for the brief season that the excitement 
 lasts. Take intemperance, for example. There must 
 be some kind of exhilaration in the state of intoxica- 
 tion, even though it should be produced by the de- 
 thronement of reason and conscience for the time ; but 
 how long does that ecstasy continue ? Ask those who 
 know best from their own experience, and they will 
 tell you that even when they have seemed to secure it 
 their joy has passed away from their embrace and 
 
124 THE PLEASUKES OF SIN. 
 
 tliey have been left in deeper misery tlian before. Nor 
 is this true of that sin only. It holds alike of all. The 
 pleasure of iniquity in any form is confined to the 
 moment of indulgence in it. It is not a thing which 
 you can catch and keep for any length of time. You 
 have, if I may so express it, to manufacture it anew on 
 every occasion, and each time it will be found to be as 
 volatile as before. You can only recall the enjoyment 
 by repeating the sin ; and with each repetion the same 
 discovery of the fleeting nature of the joy is made. It 
 is not a fountain sending ever forth its sparkling 
 waters ; but it is a leaky pitcher which is empty be- 
 fore we can drink out even that which it at first con- 
 tained. Do not suppose that this is an exaggeration, 
 or that I am straining my very utmost to make out a 
 case, and so representing the matter unfairly. You 
 suspect the preacher, perhaps, of undue prejudice 
 against these enjoyments, and in spite of all his pro- 
 testations to the contrary, you are inclined to take a 
 large discount from his words. Listen, then, to another 
 witness, whose testimony I give in lines which are not 
 more exquisitely beautiful than they are strictly true : 
 
 " Pleasures arc like poppies spread — 
 You seize the flower, its bloom is shed ; 
 Or like tlie snow-fall in the river — 
 A moment white, then melts forever ; 
 Or like the Borealis race 
 That flit ere you can point their place ; 
 Or like the rainbow's lovely form 
 Evanishing amidst the storm," 
 
 Now these are the words of a man who had no 
 great liking for ministers of the gospel, and who, on 
 occasion, could hold them uf) to merciless scorn and 
 lash them with the scorpion-scourge of his stinging 
 satire. You cannot, therefore, suspect him of any 
 
THE PLEASUEES OF SIN. 125 
 
 bias in favor of tlieir way of putting tilings. Tliey 
 are, besides, the expressions of one who spoke from 
 personal experience. He had indulged in the pleas- 
 ures of sin ; he had taken from them all they had to 
 give, and yet this is his testimony regarding them. 
 But why need I call up the shade of that gifted poet 
 here? I make my appeal to yourselves. Have 
 you got that amount of pleasure out of sin which 
 you expected from it when you began to yield to it? 
 You know you have not. Think not to say within 
 yourselves that though your little indulgence in it has 
 brought you only disappointment, a greater would 
 give you satisfaction. Can you change the character 
 of sin by adding to its enormity ? Depend upon it, 
 the greater the sin the greater will be the disappoint- 
 ment. Seek not, therefore, permanent happiness 
 where it can never be found. Over every sinful 
 pleasure you may write the Lord's own words : " Who- 
 soever drinketh of this water will thirst again." It is 
 only when we come to Christ, and find pardon and 
 peace in him, that enduring hapj^iness can be ob- 
 tained. And we receive it from him because he 
 works a change upon our inner nature. Sin sends us 
 out of ourselves for joy. Jesus gives us enjoyment 
 by coming into us and supping with us and we with 
 him. Hence the true Christian carries ever his 
 pleasure within himself. It does not depend on 
 external things ; but, itself an internal thing, it sends 
 itself out throughout all his life. It is not an ex- 
 perience separate from everything else in his con- 
 sciousness so much as an element entering into and 
 pervading all his actions and emotions. As the stop 
 in the organ is not itself a separate note, but gives its 
 own peculiarity to every note which the player sounds 
 for the time, so Christ in the heart is not there dwell- 
 
126 THE PLEASUKES OF SIN. 
 
 ing apart in a secluded shrine, but entering into all 
 the experiences of the soul, elevating and ennobling 
 them all. Weigh well this contrast, and I think you 
 will have no difficulty in deciding which you will 
 choose. Pleasure in sin is external and evanescent. 
 Christian happiness is internal and permanent. The 
 one springs from what the sinner is at the moment 
 doing, and disappears when the deed is done ; the 
 other results from what the believer is, and is endur- 
 ing as his own character; the one is galvanic and 
 spasmodic, lasting only while the sin-battery works, 
 the other is calm and natural ; the one is like the 
 lightning — a brief gleam enduring but for a moment ; 
 the other is like the light, not only beautiful in itself, 
 but bathing everything in its own loveliness. Surely 
 there need be no hesitation here. Surely, with these 
 facts before you, the choice of Moses will be repeated 
 by you and you will forego the pleasures of sin. 
 
 II. In the second place, take note that the pleas- 
 ures of sin leave a sting behind, and will not bear 
 after-reflection. There is guilt in them, and there 
 never can be happiness in contemplating that. Yet 
 when the brief hour of joy is fled the guilt is the 
 entire residuum of the joy. Have you ever entered 
 a banqueting-hall the morning after some high festi- 
 val had been held in it, and while yet everything 
 remained precisely as the guests had left it at the 
 midnight hour ? The candles burned to the sockets, 
 the floor covered with the evidences of the night's 
 hilarity, the dishes piled confusedly upon the tables, 
 and the decorations which looked so gay in the brill- 
 iant lamplight now all withered and disheveled ! 
 You can scarcely believe it is the same place as 
 that which a few hours before resounded with mirth 
 
THE PLEASUEES OF SIN. 127 
 
 and song, or re-echoed witli the applause of some 
 orator's address. It is deserted ; nay, it is repulsive ; 
 and you turn away from it to moralize on the passing 
 glory of all earthly things. But such an external 
 contrast is nothing to that which is furnished by the 
 history of the votary of pleasure when you compare 
 what he is in the moment of indulgence with what 
 he feels in the hour of reflection. Follow him to his 
 chamber. Visit him in the morning, as he is com- 
 pelled to confront himself. See his bloodshot eye, 
 his quivering hand, his starting, timid, nervous move- 
 ment at every sudden sound. Go in, if you can, into 
 his inmost feelings, and what is there left after the 
 momentary happiness of his indulgence ? He will not 
 look into his heart to describe himself to you. He 
 dares not do it. There is no companion he more fears 
 than himself ; there is no sound to him half so pain- 
 ful as silence ; and so he flees back to the society of 
 his companions, and seeks in the noise of revelry re- 
 newed to drown " the still small voice " of conscience. 
 But it will not be always hushed. Sometimes, even 
 in the midst of merriment, its upbraidings will come 
 as the ghost of Banquo intruded at the royal feast ; and 
 often mid the darkness of the night they will drive 
 sleep from his pillow. The great dramatist, in that 
 most weird and yet most instructive tragedy to which 
 I have just alluded, has shown us how sin " doth mur- 
 der sleep," and that the stain upon the conscience 
 will not " out," though washed by all the waters of 
 the ocean or sweetened by the perfumes of Arabia, 
 but we must beware of supposing that his represent- 
 ation is true only of such unscrupulous ambition as 
 leads to murder. What saith the wise King about 
 the ruby cup ? " Look not upon the wine when it is 
 red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth 
 
128 THE PLEASURES OF SIN. 
 
 itself ariglit ; at the last it bitetli like a serpent and 
 stingetli like an adder." At the last ! at the last ! 
 Oh, that men would learn to forecast the future in this 
 way, and to think of what must be " at the last ! " 
 Eemember that the day is coming when you must look 
 back on all you have done and enjoyed. But what a 
 retrospect is that of the man of pleasure ! Is there 
 on this earth a sadder sight than that of him who 
 has lived a life of sinful indulgence looking back upon 
 the guilty past and saying : " It had been good for me 
 that I had never been born " ? His time wasted, his 
 talents abused, his energies prostituted, his conscience 
 crying out with a power that gives him only too sure 
 a foretaste of the pangs of hell— where is there in this 
 wide world a more horrible experience than that? 
 And yet that is what the pleasures of sin come to 
 even on earth — at the last. And what beyond ? Even 
 in that lowest deep there is a lower deep still opening 
 to devour him ; but I will not attempt to portray that. 
 In the powerful picture of Noel Paton, which he has 
 styled the "Dance of Pleasure," you see a motley 
 multitude of young and old, and rich and poor, and 
 men and women, rushing madly after the queen. They 
 care not for eacli other. In the fury of their selfish- 
 ness they strike against each other and trample each 
 other down ; yet still they follow on, and she is decoy- 
 ing them to the brink of an awful abyss, over which 
 each at length must fall. But the painter shows only 
 its dark and rugged edge, leaving suggestion to preach 
 the warning. So I would on^ lead you to the border 
 of the unseen state, and leave conscience to testify to 
 the dreadful perdition which is the end of sin. 
 
 How different from all this is is the experience of 
 the Christiauly good man. His happiness will bear 
 
THE PLEASUEES OP SIN. 129 
 
 reflection. It will stand cross-examination. His yes- 
 terdays look backward with a smile, and do not, Par- 
 thian-like, wound him as they fly. He has had his 
 struggle and conflict. Yet, in the happiness which 
 he has enjoyed, there has been nothing to give 
 him pain. He had pleasure in the experience at 
 the time, and he has even more now as he looks 
 back. I do not know if there be on earth a moro 
 beautiful thing than the old age of a Christian who 
 in youth dedicated himself to God, and has spent 
 his life in keeping that holy resolution. His con- 
 science is peaceful, his heart is happy, his future is 
 glorious. Which way he looks there is beauty. Behind 
 him his whole life seems gilded with the purple splen- 
 dor of the setting sun ; around him his children are 
 clustering in holy afiection ; before him Christ is pre- 
 paring him a welcome in his Father's house ; above 
 him there is a crown, incorruptible, reserved for him 
 to wear. The traveler in Switzerland sees few more 
 lovely sights than that which is associated with the 
 descent of the Great Scheideck through Eosenlaui to 
 Meyringen. The pathway runs now through thickets, 
 and now through green pasture-land, inclosed by for- 
 est and enlivened by chalets and herds of cattle. As 
 you move downward you see little or no splendor, and 
 are hemmed in on every side with perj)endicular walls 
 of rugged rock ; yet, ever as you turn to look behind, 
 you are transported with the scene that meets your 
 view. In the forefront the pine forest, swayed by the 
 breeze, seems bowing its head in lowly reverence to 
 the great Monarch of all ; while in the background rise 
 the snowy peaks of the Wellhorn and the Wetterhorn, 
 tinted with the blush of sunset, and forming a battle- 
 ment of mountain grandeur scarcely surpassed by the 
 range even of Mont Blanc. Such a valley, I think, is 
 G* 
 
130 THE PLEASUEES OP SIN. 
 
 tlie life of tlie Cliristian on the earth. As lie descends 
 the way seems commonj)lace enough. The yodel of 
 the herdsmen and the lowing of the cattle are in his 
 ears, and he sees nothing that is remarkable ; but 
 when he looks behind the retrospect is full of gran- 
 deur, and the grandest thing about it is that its gilded 
 summits point him to the higher glories of the heaven 
 that is awaiting him. Which, then, will you choose ? 
 You cannot altogether escape pain on earth ; but, in 
 the case of sinful pleasures, the joy is for the moment, 
 the pain is permanent ; in the case of holiness, the 
 pain is for a time, while the happiness is everlasting. I 
 speak as unto wise men. Judge, therefore, whether you 
 should not, from this hour, forswear the pleasures of sin. 
 
 III. In the third place, take note that the pleasures 
 of sin are such that the oftener they are enjoyed there 
 is the less enjoyment in them. There is a wonderful 
 harmony between God's moral law and the physical, 
 intellectual, and moral nature of man ; for every viola- 
 tion of its precepts does, in the end, evoke the protest 
 of all our powers. Sinful indulgence either -palls 
 upon the taste, or, by its reaction on the system, de- 
 stroys the very capacity for continuing in it, in which 
 case the craving remains, while the ability to satisfy 
 it is gone. This is a part of my theme which might 
 be illustrated in a very harrowing manner ; I prefer, 
 however, to suggest it thus to you in the simplest way, 
 leaving you to think it out for yourselves. The con- 
 firmed drunkard has not now the pleasure which he 
 Lad at first in the fiowing bowl. The enjoyment has 
 gone, and only the slavery remains. But it is so with 
 every other sin. Each time such guilty pleasure is 
 felt, a portion of the sensitiveness is destroyed, and it 
 takes more to produce the same excitement again, until 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SIN. 131 
 
 at last it is impossible to produce it by any means 
 ■whatever. But with the joys of holiness it is quite 
 different. The oftener we enjoy them they are the 
 higher. The longer and better a man knows Christ 
 the more happiness does he derive from him. This 
 is a joy which never cloys ; this is a pleasure which 
 never palls ; this is a delight which, so far from de- 
 stroying the capacity to receive it, only increases that 
 the more, so that, at the close of his career, the be- 
 liever can say to Jesus what the governor of the feast 
 said at Cana, " Every man at the beginning doth set 
 forth good "wine, and when men have well drunk then 
 that which is worse ; but thou hast kept the good 
 wine until now.' Here again, therefore, I offer you 
 the materials for coming to a wise decision in regard 
 to this momentous matter. I am persuaded that the 
 longer you think out the point which I have now 
 rather hinted to you than amplified before you, the 
 more will you be convinced of its truth. Why, then, 
 will you choose a pleasure which will burn out of you 
 the very power to reproduce itself and reduce you to 
 a helpless slavery ? Turn, I pray you, to the Lord 
 Jesus, and through faith in him and obedience to 
 him you will enter upon the enjoyment of a happiness 
 which- shall grow upon you as the sun waxes to its 
 meridian height, and which has in itself the elements 
 of the blessedness of heaven. 
 
 ly. Finally, I would have you to take note that the 
 pleasures of sin are most expensive. Here I refer 
 not to money, though that is by no means unimpor- 
 tant ; and when men are inclined to say that they can 
 not afford to be Christians, I would like them to sit 
 down and calmly reckon up how much their sins cost 
 them. But I speak now of the expense of the 
 
132 THE PLEASUEES OF SIN. 
 
 man's own nature. Tlie -word of God says, " Bloody 
 men shall not live out half their days " ; and not- 
 withstanding the existence of a few exceptions, I 
 am persuaded that, in regard to vicious men gener- 
 ally, this will be corroborated by observation and ex- 
 perience. The sinner is old before his time. His 
 physical power is gone. The least illness proves 
 serious to him. He can make no such drafts on his 
 strength as he was wont to do, or if he attempt to do 
 so his life is the forfeit. His intellect has lost its 
 freshness. It needs to be whipped up by stimulants ; 
 and when theii* influence is removed it sinks into 
 lethargy and weakness. His will has become power- 
 less. He is swayed one way or another entirely by 
 outward influences. His conscience has become 
 seared. In a word, he is a wreck. Did you ever look 
 upon that wild sea-piece of Stanfield's which he has 
 called " The Abandoned " ? The sky is dark and low- 
 ering, with a forked flash of lightning shooting athwart 
 it ; the ocean is angry, and all over it there lies a 
 dreary loneliness that makes the spectator almost 
 shudder. The one solitary thing in sight is a huge 
 hull, without mast or man on board, lying helpless in 
 the trough of the sea. The men who stood by her as 
 long as it was safe have been picked up by some 
 friendly vessel now entirely unseen, and there that 
 battered, broken thing floats on at the mercy of the 
 winds and waves. That is sad enough ; but what is it 
 after all in comparison with the condition of an aban- 
 doned man, abandoned by friends, abandoned by him- 
 self, abandoned, it may be, even, like Saul, by God, 
 and drifting on the ocean of life all dismantled and 
 rudderless, tossed hither and thither by every wind 
 of appetite or impulse, and soon to disappear beneath 
 the waters ! And what then ? I dare not trust my- 
 
THE PLEASUEES OF SDST. 133 
 
 self to speak of tliat. Muse ou it yourselves for a 
 moment, and then say if you can calculate tlie cost of 
 tlie pleasures of sin ? Far otherwise is the experience 
 of the Christian. His pleasure is not expensive. A 
 little goes a great way with him, and the more of 
 Christ he knows the more does he learn to use his 
 body as a temple of the Holy Ghost, his intellect as 
 an instrument of serving God, and his will in choosing 
 to run in the way of the divine commands. His faith 
 brightens his mental powers, not at first, indeed, but 
 through the stimulating influence of the truths which 
 he believes. His love strengthens his will, and his 
 steadfastness in well-doing softens the sensibility of 
 his conscience, making it as quick to the presence of 
 evil as the apple of the eye is to the least particle of 
 dust. Christian faith, indeed, will not make a genius 
 out of a dullard ; but it will make the man nobler, 
 physically and mentally as well as morally, than with- 
 out it he would have been. So far from wasting his 
 energies it economizes them, and haloes them all 
 with the joy of its own happiness. Perhaps you 
 imagine I have overdrawn the contrast ! Let me, 
 therefore, fortify my assertion by a suggestive con- 
 trast taken from real life ; and that you may have every 
 justice, I summon to testify before you one who had 
 ample riches at his command, who wore the coronet 
 of a peer, and who beside was dowered with heaven's 
 own gift of brilliant genius which secured him world- 
 wide renown. He had everything the world could 
 give, and yet ere he had finished his thirty-seventh 
 year he wrote thus of himself : 
 
 " My days are in the yellow leaf, — 
 
 The flower, the fruit of life are gone : 
 The worm, the canker, and the grief 
 Are mine alone." 
 
134 THE PLEASIJEES OF SIN. 
 
 Now, on tlie otlier side, let me call an English non- 
 conformist minister in the time of his old age. He 
 was gifted with an eloquence which has rarely been 
 equaled and endowed with a loftiness of intellect 
 that enabled him to grapple with the mightiest 
 themes, but all through life he was a martyr to the 
 most distressing physical anguish, so that he had 
 scarcely a moment that was free from excruciating 
 pain. Yet amid all this he contrived to put into his 
 career some of the noblest work which his generation 
 saw, and he had a quiet happiness, and sometimes 
 even a brimming humor, that were quite remarkable. 
 Returning in his later days from spending the evening 
 with some friends, his daughter said to him, " Father, 
 you did not enjoy yourself much to-night, T fear." 
 "Yes," was the reply, "I enjoy everything. I enjoy 
 everything " ; and no man who knew Robert Hall 
 could doubt that he spoke the truth. Here again, 
 then, my dear friends, I place before you the materials 
 for coming to a decision on this great question. If 
 you wish your lives to resemble the course of the sun, 
 rising in beauty, going forth in power, and shining 
 more and more unto the perfect day ; if you would 
 have your death resemble his setting ; if, like him, 
 you would go down in a sea of glory and set only to 
 shine on in the firmament of the world beyond, then 
 cling to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and culti- 
 vate that soberness of mind which he enjoys : but if 
 you desire to waste your strength, to paralyze your 
 intellect, and to destroy your soul eternally, you will 
 give yourself to the constant pursuit of " the pleasures 
 of sin." There was once a king in Jerusalem who 
 sounded every " depth and shoal " of pleasure, and 
 drank of every cup of human joy. If there be any 
 element of permanent satisfaction in life apart from 
 
THE PLEASURES OF SIN. 135 
 
 God he miglit have found it, for with every possible 
 advantage he made a deliberate search after it, and 
 still returned with this melancholy result : " Vanity of 
 vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Listen 
 to him, my young hearer, if you will not hearken unto 
 me ; listen to him, as, worn and v/eary and wounded 
 too, from his lifelong pursuit, he cries back to you, 
 half in mocking irony and half in deep, painful, sol- 
 emn earnestness : " Kejoice, O young man, in thy 
 youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the day of thy 
 youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the 
 sight of thine eyes, but know that for all these things 
 God will bring thee into judgment with him." 
 
 February 38, 1875. 
 
AFFLICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 
 
 Isaiah xxxviii. IG. — Lord, by tlieso things men live. 
 
 The song from wliicli these words are taken was 
 stricken out of tlie lieart of Hezekiali by a remarkable 
 personal experience. Just after tlie destruction of the 
 host of Sennacherib which had been laying siege to 
 Jerusalem he was prostrated by a dangerous malady, 
 the result, most probably, of the fatigue, excitement, 
 and anxiety which came upon him in connection with 
 the defense of his capital from the Assyrian invader. 
 At first it would seem that he had little apprehension 
 as to the issue of his illness, but when the prophet 
 Isaiah told him that his disease was mortal, and 
 bade him set his house in order, his heart sank within 
 him. He had just escaped a great peril ; the Lord 
 had given him a marvelous, yea, miraculous, deliver- 
 ance, and so he might naturally conclude that there 
 was still before him an earthly future in which he 
 might do much for the consolidation of his kingdom, 
 for the revival of religion among his people, and for 
 the honor of Jehovah, But now all these hopes were 
 dashed to the ground ; the cherished purpose of his 
 lieart was apparently frustrated ; his work was to re- 
 main forever unfinished ; and as he thought on these 
 things he " turned his face toward the wall, and 
 prayed unto the Lord and wept sore." He could not 
 understand God's dealings with him. "Why had he 
 been delivered from Sennacherib if he was thus and 
 now to be removed ? To what end had been his in- 
 
AFFLICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 137 
 
 auguration of spiritual reforms among Lis subjects if 
 lie was to be cut down before they could be carried 
 tbrougli ? It was as if the bird sliould be shot in the 
 middle of its song ; or as if the fabric of the weaver 
 should be taken from the loom before the j)attern 
 which he was working had been finished ; and so his 
 plaint shaped itself into an individual solo in that 
 great dirge of Ethan the Ezrahite : " Wherefore hast 
 thou made all men in vain ? " 
 
 But as he lay thus tearfully communing with his 
 own heart and with God, Isaiah returned to his cham- 
 ber with a message of healing assuring him that he 
 should go up to the temple on the third day, and 
 sealing the prediction by the wonderful sign of the 
 going back of the shadow ten degrees on the sun- 
 dial of Ahaz. 
 
 So it all came about through the use of the means 
 which the prophet had prescribed ; and Hezekiah im- 
 proved the first hours of his recovery for the writing 
 of this song, which, after pensively rehearsing his 
 musings while he lay looking death in the face, breaks 
 forth at length into glad thanksgiving for his restora- 
 tion to health, and for the addition of fifteen years to 
 his earthly life. Yet sincere as the song is, he did not 
 conceive that the chanting of that was all the gratitude 
 he owed, for he recognized that through his experi- 
 ence he had received a new ideal of life, and he made 
 it his deliberate resolution to keep that before him in 
 all his after conduct. This is the thought that lies 
 beneath the words of my text. They refer primarily, 
 indeed, to God's promises to Hezekiah while he was in 
 affliction, and their performance to him in his restora- 
 tion to health ; but they indicate, also, that from this 
 time on life had become a nobler, grander, more im- 
 portant thing in his view than it had ever been before ; 
 
138 ATTLICTION AS RELATED TO LITE. 
 
 and tliey carry in tliem the unexpressed purpose that 
 he would thenceforth seek not mere existence, but 
 that service of God in which nothing is lost, but every- 
 thing that seems to us fragmentary and temporary 
 finds its ultimate completion and its sure permanence. 
 Thus the sentiment of Hezekiah is akin to that of the 
 words with which Christ repelled the first temptation 
 in the wilderness, " Man shall not live by bread alone, 
 but by every word of God ; " and he made the discovery 
 of its truth through the discipline of his illness and 
 recovery. 
 
 But he is not by any means singular in this resjDect, 
 for wherever affliction has been truly sanctified to a 
 man he can say precisely what is here expressed ; and 
 that aspect of the subject is important enough to fur- 
 nish the theme for our discourse to-day. The con- 
 ception and quality of life as affected by the discipline 
 of any form of trial — that is the topic for the morning. 
 
 Let us take first the conception of life as a whole, 
 and see how that is modified or altered by experiences 
 like those through which Hezekiah passed. I enter 
 not here into scientific theories of the nature or the 
 origin of life. It is my privilege from this place to 
 view the matter in a moral and spiritual light, and, so 
 regarded, I do not fear contradiction when I affirm 
 that they who have had no such critical experience in 
 any form have never fully awakened to the difference 
 which there is between mere existence and life. In 
 sleep there is as real existence as when we are awake ; 
 but what a paltry thing life would be if it were to be 
 a constant sleep ! Yet there are those among us in 
 whom, though their time may be busily occupied and 
 though their intellects may be keen and vigilant, the 
 spirit slumbers ; and who know as little of life in its 
 
APIXICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 139 
 
 noblest sense as if their years were passed in uncon- 
 sciousness. They are like the land-owner on whose 
 estate there is an undiscovered silver mine, who is no 
 richer for his hidden wealth, and who cannot be said 
 even to possess it. Nothing has come to reveal them 
 to themselves, or to give them any vivid sense of 
 the existence of God and their relationship to him. 
 Nothing has opened their eyes to the possibilities of 
 life that are yet undeveloped in them. One day has 
 been to them like another ; and the unbroken mo- 
 notony of their experience has fostered in them the ex- 
 pectation that things will always continue with them 
 as they have always been. Thus they verify the 
 psalmist's words, " Because they have no changes, 
 therefore they fear not God." But when something 
 like that which came to Hezekiah comes to them, then 
 there is a thorough, if also a rude, awakening, and they 
 discover that they have yet to begin to live. One may 
 easily see this exemplified in the votary of pleasure. 
 He has merely vegetated through existence. The 
 pampering of his tastes, or the gratification of his 
 apjpetites, or the enjoyment of society, constitutes for 
 him the chief good, but when an arrest is laid upon 
 him by disease, and he is prostrated in helplessness 
 and compelled to look God and eternity in the face, 
 he is made to feel that he has nothing to show for his 
 existence, and that he must stand before the awful 
 judgment-seat with not even so much as a handful of 
 leaves instead of that which ought to have been the 
 fruitage of a life. Ah ! with what earnestness from 
 such an one does Hezekiah's prayer ascend : " O Lord, 
 I am oppressed, undertake for me " ; and how he dis- 
 covers at length that in all these things is the life of 
 his spirit ; nay, if he desires recovery, it is, like the 
 Jewish king, that te may be made to live indeed. At 
 
140 AFFLICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 
 
 such a time there comes to him a revelation of the 
 hollowness of worklly pleasure like that which was 
 given to Mrs. Winslow in the ball-room when the 
 words of the catechism were flashed into her soul — 
 "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him for- 
 ever " : and that is for him the birth-hour of a new life. 
 Or take the case of him whose object in existence 
 has been the accumulation of Avealth. He has thought 
 of nothing but how he may increase his hoard. Suc- 
 cess has continually attended his exertions, and per- 
 haps, like the fool in the parable, he was saying to 
 himself, " Thou hast much goods laid up for many 
 years : eat, drink and be merry," when God's hand was 
 laid upon him, and he discovered that he could take 
 nothing of his property with him into the world be- 
 yond. Then he found out that true wealth consists in 
 what a man is and not in what a man has ; then he 
 saw the relation of the life that now is to that which 
 is to come as he never did before ; then he found that 
 his occupation in the past had been as foolish as that 
 of him who neglects the body for the sake of the rai- 
 ment, and he arose with a new ideal for his life — add- 
 ing his attestation to the truth of the words of my 
 text, " By these things men live ; and in all these 
 things is the life of my spirit." In how many instances 
 has a serious illness, or a terrible business humiliation, 
 or a trying domestic bereavement, when the world 
 seemed going from beneath him, and he was left alone 
 " in the blank and solitude of things " to face eter- 
 nity and God, brought a man to revise his theory of 
 life ! He has risen from his couch to seek forgiveness 
 for the past from God in Christ, and to consecrate 
 himself to the service of his generation by the will of 
 God. He has come to regard this earthly life as but 
 the portal to the life immortal. He has rectified the 
 
AFFLICTION AS BELATED TO LIFE. 141 
 
 perspective of his existence, and has been led to value 
 the now for its bearing on the hereafter ; the present 
 for its motherhood of the future ; and if sometimes, 
 as in the case of a Loyola, the issue has not been all 
 unmingled blessing, still it has aroused to thought- 
 fulness ; it has changed existence from spiritual som- 
 nambulism to waking earnestness ; it has turned the 
 attention from external accumulation to internal char- 
 acter ; it has opened the ear to the voice of the Eter- 
 nal, and stirred the heart with ambitions that rise to 
 those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at 
 God's right hand ; and if that be true, we may surely 
 say — By these things men live. 
 
 II. But passing now to the quality of the life, we 
 may see how that, also, is affected by such experiences 
 of affliction. And here so many features of that which 
 we call character are either evoked or developed by 
 trial that all I can do is to make a selection from 
 them, and illustrate what seem to me the more impor- 
 tant. There is, for example, the element of strength, 
 whether in its passive exercise as patient endurance, 
 or in its active manifestation as persevering energy. 
 The poet has caught the truth which now I mean to 
 emphasize when he bids his readers "learn to suffer 
 and be strong." He who has known no affliction is 
 easily worn out. A little thing puts him out. The 
 child, who has had small experience of the world, is 
 discouraged by a tiny difflculty, and depressed by a 
 light affliction. A little trouble seems tremendous to 
 one who has known nothing but prosperity. The old 
 sailor who has been all but shipwrecked is not dis- 
 mayed by a summer squall, for he says, " I have been 
 in worse than this ; " neither does he give up even in 
 extremities, for he remembers that he has been brought 
 
142 AFFLICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 
 
 through before, and he is energetic to the last. Now 
 it is the same with life as a whole. You will find the 
 strongest characters always among those who have been 
 most sorely afflicted. In the home where sudden and 
 alarming illness enters it is usually the healthiest and 
 hardiest who are the most upset ; and not unfrequently 
 they are so distressed as to be practically useless in 
 the emergency. They have lost their balance for the 
 time. They have no readiness in resource ; no quiet- 
 ness of spirit ; no presence of mind ; no control over 
 themselves or others. But if there be one there who has 
 herself passed through the fire ; who has herself been, 
 it may be, for days of suspense on the very border- 
 land between the two worlds ; she is equal to the occa- 
 sion ; she knows where to look for succor ; and placing 
 her hand in God's, she is at once steadied and upheld 
 for duty. With inflexible resolution she commands 
 herself into control ; sees what is to be done, and has 
 it accomplished while others are indulging in the lux- 
 ury of tears. Her face is a benediction to the sufferer, 
 and her silent energy is stronger for work and for 
 helpfulness than the ruddy health of him whose emo- 
 tion has overmastered him, and showed how weak he 
 is despite his physical muscularity. So it is, also, in 
 business. The man who has joassed through one panic 
 keeps a level head in the next. He knows that loss of 
 fortune is not the greatest calamity that can come 
 upon him, and he sees through the storm to the calm 
 that is beyond. He has fathomed the experience, and 
 looked the worst in the face, and that gives him the 
 composure and the collectedness which enable him to 
 grapple successfully with the difiiculties of the hour. 
 But the same thing holds in spiritual matters. Luther 
 was wont to say that his three great teachers were 
 prayer, study, and trial ; and any reader of his life can 
 
AITLICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 143 
 
 perceive tliat if lie liad been required in tlie early part 
 of liis career to face some of the dangers wlticli men- 
 aced liim at a later date he would have faltered in his 
 course. But thrpugh the minor experience he gained 
 strength for the severer ordeal ; and so it came about 
 that what would have appalled him at the outset 
 made almost as little impression on him at the last as 
 "the whistling of the idle wind that he regarded not." 
 If, then, strength of character be a desirable thing we 
 ought to be reconciled to the afflictions by which alone 
 it can be developed. They are to the soul what the 
 tempering is to the iron, giving it the toughness of 
 steel, and the endurance, too ; and if that be so we may 
 surely say regarding them — "By these things we live." 
 Then, again, we can see that exj)eriences like this of 
 Hezekiah have a great influence in producing unself- 
 ishness in a man. I distinguish here, however, be- 
 tween a short, sharp, critical illness which brings a 
 man to the brink of the grave, and out of which he is 
 raised almost as if from the dead, and a long life of 
 feebleness. I admit that in some cases of the latter 
 description there is a tendency to the development of 
 selfishness. Every one in the house so habitually 
 ministers to the comfort of the confirmed invalid that 
 lie is tempted to regard such service as a thing of right, 
 and is prone to consider himself as the great center 
 of the home, who should be thought of before all others. 
 I know, indeed, that this is by no means universal ; 
 for I have seen those who, while chained to their 
 couches for long periods by helplessness, have been 
 lying planning hour by hour for the good of others. 
 But I acknowledge that there is a danger of selfishness 
 incident to such a condition. When, however, a man 
 has been in the very grip of the last enemy, and has 
 recovered ; or has been within a little of losing all he 
 
144 AITLICTION AS RELATED TO LIFE. 
 
 had, and has escaped, you can understand how such 
 an experience sends him out of himself. It intensifies 
 for him the idea of life as a stewardship for God, and 
 he sees the folly of making all the streams of his 
 effort run into himself. He reasons thus : " What if 
 I had died ? these possessions would have been no 
 longer mine. They cannot, therefore, be mine in the 
 highest sense at all, for that which is mine by inalien- 
 able ownership must be mine throughout eternity. 
 But if they are not inalienably mine, then they must 
 be intrusted to me by God, and I must use them for 
 God ;" and forthwith he begins to think of others, and 
 of others as having a God-given claim upon himself. 
 What is true thus of possessions, he extends to other 
 things ; and so it has come that an experience like 
 this of the Jewish king has shaken many a man out of 
 himself and set him to think of living for the good that 
 he can do to others. Howard's life of benevolence was 
 the outcome of a critical illness ; and of multitudes 
 more than of him it can be said that they sloughed off 
 their selfishness in the crucible of trial ; while, again, 
 your habitually healthy and comfortable man who 
 has known no crisis gives little heed to his fellows, 
 and leaves their misery unrelieved. If we knew the 
 former histories of all the men who, like the priest 
 and Levite, pass misery by on the other side, we 
 might discover that they had never known a serious 
 affliction, and had never been brought face to face 
 with God ; while the good Samaritans who bring the 
 needed succor have been, it may be, oftener than once 
 at the very portals of that world into which nothing 
 but character enters, and where a cup of cold water 
 given to a disciple for the sake of Christ shall in 
 nowise lose its reward. The man who has really 
 seen death comes out of that exj)erience, if at least 
 
AFFLICTION AS BELATED TO LIFE. 145 
 
 it lias been sanctified to him, clisenclianted with 
 himself, and feeling that his very life is itself a trust 
 which God has given him for the service of his gener- 
 ation! Thus, afiliction of some sort seems to be 
 requisite for the production in us of thoughtfulness 
 for others ; and recognizing the value of that element 
 in character we may say that men who have not 
 known affliction have not yet truly begun to live. 
 
 But is only a broadening out of this last remark 
 when I go on to affirm that sympathy is born out of 
 such experiences as those of Hezekiah. He who has 
 passed through trial can feel most tenderly for those 
 who are similarly afflicted. This is so true that the 
 inspired writer has said even of Jesus, " In that he 
 himself hath sufifered being tempted, he is able also to 
 succor them that are tempted ; " and, indeed, in one 
 aspect of it, the very necessity for the Incarnation is 
 found in the princij)le which I have just enunciated. 
 To have a sympathizing God we must have a suffering 
 Saviour, and there is no true fellow-feeling with 
 another save in the heart of him who has been af- 
 flicted like him. Nay more, the having suffered like 
 another impels us to go and sympathize with him. 
 Those of us who have lost little children feel a 
 prompting within us to speak a word of comfort to 
 every parent who is passing through a similar expe- 
 rience. Indeed, it was in connection with an affliction 
 of that sort that my attention was first drawn, some 
 twelve years ago, to the text of this discourse. I had 
 just a few weeks before buried a beloved daughter, the 
 light of the household, and the darling of all in it, and 
 had gone to attend a meeting of Synod where an hon- 
 ored minister, who had been through the same trial 
 oftener than once before, came up to me and took me 
 by the hand, and said to me, with a reference to my 
 7 
 
146 AFFLICTION AS EELATED TO LIFE. 
 
 sorrow, " By tliese things men live." That was all, 
 but each successive year since then has given a new 
 verification of his words, for oh ! how often in the 
 interval have I been enabled to comfort others with 
 the comfort with which I have been comforted of 
 God, and the efficacy of the consolation lay largely in 
 the fact that it was offered by one who had proved its 
 value for himself. We cannot do good to others save 
 at a cost to ourselves, and our own afflictions are the 
 price we pay for our ability to sympathize. He who 
 would be a helper must first be a sufferer. He who 
 would be a saviour must somewhere and somehow have 
 been upon a cross ; and we cannot have the highest 
 happiness of life in succoring others without tasting 
 the cup which Jesus drank, and submitting to the bap- 
 tism wherewith he was baptized. Every real Barnabas 
 must pass to his vocation through seasons of personal 
 sorrow, — and so, again, we see that it is true that " by 
 these things men live." The most comforting of 
 David's psalms were pressed out of him by suffering ; 
 and if Paul had not had his thorn in the flesh we had 
 missed much of that tenderness which quivers in so 
 many of his letters. 
 
 But this train of thought leads naturally up to my 
 last remark here, namely, that experiences like Heze- 
 kiah's have much to do with the usefulness of a man's 
 life. Usefulness is not a thing which one can com- 
 mand at will. It is, in most cases, the result of a dis- 
 cipline ; and is possessed by those who in a large de- 
 gree are unconscious that they are exercising it. It 
 depends fully more on what a man is than on what he 
 does, or, if it is due to what he does or says, that 
 again, is owing very much t6 what he is, and what he 
 is now has been determined by the history through 
 which he has been brought. You see that in the case 
 
AITLICTION AS BELATED TO LIFE. 147 
 
 of a physician. His experience goes far more to the 
 making of him than liis college training has done. 
 That, indeed, if it has been worth anything, has mainly 
 taught him how to utilize his exjaerience ; and the 
 difference between one medical man and another de- 
 pends very largely indeed on the history and practice 
 of each. Now it is so, also, in spiritual things. The 
 helpfulness of another to us in the prosecution of the 
 Christian life is determined more by his personal ex- 
 perience than by his intellectual pre-eminence, and thus 
 it happens often that an humble and largely disciplined 
 disciple, or what we call an " exercised" Christian, may 
 be more useful to us than an eloquent preacher. Here, 
 too, as it seems to me, is the secret of the difference 
 between one man and another in the matter of pulpit 
 power. Few things, indeed, are so humiliating to those 
 oj us whom God has called to public positions in his 
 church as to hear anatomical critics ask, " What is the 
 secret of his power ? " One will say that it is in his 
 voice ; another that it is in his manner ; another that 
 it is in his aptitude of illustration ; another that it is in 
 his personal appearance ; and still another that it is in 
 his literary taste and simplicity of style ; while some, 
 perhaps, will resolve it all into that vague thing which 
 they call magnetism, and some into his earnestness. 
 But scarcely one will think of the history that is be- 
 hind the sermon, or of the experience out of which it 
 has been born : but there, in the discipline through 
 ■which God has brought him, and which no other 
 man can acquire by any effort, is the hiding of his 
 peculiar power ; there is the root of his spiritual use- 
 fulness. The discourses which find others are those 
 which have been struck out of him by the crises 
 through which God has brought him ; and that same 
 discipline having sent him into his own soul has given 
 
148 AITLICTION AS RELATED TO LITE. 
 
 liim in the knowledge of liimself a key to tlie hearts 
 of others, so that before they know it he has entered 
 them and taken j)ossession of them for his Lord. 
 When one reads Eobertson of Brighton's life he 
 comprehends the power of his discourses ; and this is 
 a power which no theological seminary can develojD, for 
 it is conferred by God through personal discipline. It 
 is the power of the heart rather than of the head ; the 
 power of character rather than ability ; the power of 
 experience rather than of rhetoric. Ezekiel was made 
 a sign to the people through the loss of his wife ; and 
 the usefulness of many men, both in the pulpit and 
 out of it, ]ias had its roots in similar discipline. Ah ! 
 it is a costly price, and yet " by these things men live." 
 But, not to dwell longer on the effect produced by 
 such experiences on different qualities of character, I 
 must add one word of caution. It is not every afflic- 
 tion that works out such results ; and whether any 
 trial will do so or not depends entirely on the spirit 
 in which it is borne. Only they who, like Hezekiah, 
 turn to God under it receive blessing through it. A 
 man may be sent to Jabbok, and feel himself in utter- 
 most solitude, but unless while he is there he wrestles 
 with the Lord it will not be to him Peniel, and he will 
 go away from it less serious and spiritually impres- 
 sionable than he was before. One cannot be, after 
 such a crisis, precisely as he was before it came upon 
 him. If he turn to God under it, he will be the better 
 of it, for it will give for him a new significance to life, 
 and work out in him some quality of character in 
 which before he was deficient. But if he is not the 
 better for it he will be the worse. If he does not apply 
 to God for deliverance out of it or grace under it he 
 will be hardened by it, and be more indifferent to the 
 great spiritual realities than ever. When, therefore, I 
 
AFFLICTION AS RELATED TO LITE. 149 
 
 say as the outcome of our morning's meditation not 
 only that an experience like this of Hezekiah is a bless- 
 ing, but also that the absence of such an experience 
 in a man's history is the greatest of all misfortunes, 
 my words are to be taken with the qualification that 
 under it he draws near to God. That is the hinge 
 on which it all turns. An afiliction so borne will 
 always bring forth fruit in giving a new quality to our 
 character, and a new power to our life ; but if we refuse 
 to acknowledge God in such a crisis we shall come out 
 of it cold, callous, impassive, and mayhap defiant ; and 
 it will be a curse to us, and not a blessing. 
 
 April 18, 1880. 
 
OPPOETUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 
 
 Jkremiah xviii. 3, 4. 3 Then I went down to the potter's house, 
 and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 
 
 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hands of 
 the potter : so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the 
 potter to make it. 
 
 Jeremiah xix, 1, 2, 10, 11. — 1 Thus saith the Lord, Go and get a 
 potter's earthen bottle, and talce of the ancients of the people, and of 
 the ancients of the priests. 
 
 2 And go forth unto the valley of the son of Ilinnom, which is by 
 the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall 
 tell thee. 
 
 10 Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go 
 with thee. 
 
 11 And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts : Even 
 so will I break this people and this city, as one brcaketh a potter's 
 vessel, that cannot be made whole again : and they shall bury them, 
 in Tophet, till there he no place to bury. 
 
 The chapters from wliicli these two texts are taken 
 slioiild be read and studied together if we wish to get 
 a complete view of the one subject of which they both 
 treat. They should be set also in the framework of 
 the history to which they originally refer, in order 
 that through the interpretation of them which that 
 supj)lies we may discover the principles of permanent 
 importance which underlie them, and of which the 
 case to which the prophet applied them was only a 
 single illustration. Some little attention may be re- 
 quired to secure this intelligent apprehension of these, 
 I fear, too sadly neglected portions of sacred Scri2:)t- 
 ure, but the result will be fraught with instruction 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 151 
 
 and admonition to us all, and will more than repay- 
 any effort that may be needed for its attainment. 
 
 In the former of the chapters Jeremiah tells tis that 
 at the suggestion of the Divine Spirit he went to a 
 potter's house and saw a workman moulding a vessel 
 upon the wheels. Even as he was looking, something 
 went wrong Avith the clay that was under the potter's 
 hand. It was " marred." He discovered something 
 in it which made it unfit for the purpose for which he 
 had originally intended it ; but he did not throw it 
 aside on that account, for it was still soft and plastic 
 to his touch, and so he made it into another sort of 
 vessel — less honorable and less valuable, it may be, 
 but yet useful — into which his practiced eye saw that 
 it might still be turned. Here we have, therefore, a 
 work still in process — still, as I may say, in the clay 
 — and the suggestion is that so long as that impres- 
 sionable condition lasts, if the result first aimed at 
 is not gained, another, though perhaps a lower, may 
 yet be attained. 
 
 In the latter of the chapters the prophet narrates 
 that he was commanded to take a potter's bottle — not 
 now, you observe, in the formative and easily-molded 
 state of clay, but fully baked and hardened — and 
 break ifc in pieces in the sight of certain persons whom 
 he was to lead out to the valley of Hinnom that they 
 might be Avitnesses of his action. We have here, 
 therefore, not a manufacture in process, but the de- 
 struction of a finished article which had proved to be 
 a failure. The • clay had been made into a bottle, and 
 the bottle had been hardened in the fire. Its quality 
 as a vessel was irrevocably fixed ; and as it had turned 
 out to be good for nothing, it was broken in pieces. 
 It was no longer possible to make it into something 
 else, and therefore no further pains were taken with 
 
152 OPPOETUNITIES AND THEIE LIMIT. 
 
 it, but it was shivered into fragments whicli were cast 
 on tlie refuse heap that had accumulated in the un- 
 clean Tophet. 
 
 When we put these two symbolical messages of 
 the prophet together thus, it is impossible to evade 
 the conclusion that there is a most intimate connec- 
 tion between them, and we begin to get a glimmering 
 of the spiritual truth that is beneath them. But when 
 we take the application which Jeremiah makes of 
 each, there is no longer any room for doubt upon the 
 subject. Listen to these words connected with the 
 first : " O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this 
 potter ? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in 
 the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house 
 of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a 
 nation, and concerning a kingdom, to j^luck uj), and 
 to pull down, and to destroy it ; if that nation against 
 whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will 
 repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. 
 And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, 
 and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant 
 it ; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, 
 then I will rejjent of the good wherewith I said I 
 would benefit them." Then take the following in re- 
 lation to the second : " Thus saith the Lord of hosts : 
 Even so will I break this people and this city, as one 
 breaketh a potter's vessel that cannot be made whole 
 again ; and they shall bury them in Toi^het, till there 
 be no place to bury." Now put these together and 
 you get the inference that the clay in the one case 
 and the bottle in the other represent the house of 
 Israel — each, however, in a diflferent stage of develop- 
 ment. The clay denotes the educational period, when 
 the national character was as yet only in process of 
 being formed ; the bottle symbolizes the hardened 
 
OPPOKTTINITIES AND THEIR LIMir. 153 
 
 determination into wliicli that character ultimately 
 settled ; while in the making of the clay into another 
 vessel and in the breaking of the bottle, we have set 
 forth the difference of the divine treatment of the 
 people in these two conditions. But (as I have often 
 reminded you, when expounding other symbolical 
 passages of the word of God), we cannot get a simile 
 that will hold in every particular, and here there is 
 one important distinction between the material em- 
 blems and the moral beings whom they are used to 
 typify which must never be overlooked. Clay is an 
 unconscious piece of matter, and a bottle is a dead, 
 senseless, irresponsible thing. But the Israelites 
 were spiritual and responsible beings, dowered with 
 free agency, and having liberty to choose what they 
 would make of themselves. The marring of the clay 
 in the hands of the potter, therefore, must not be 
 misunderstood. Literally, that is not a thing for 
 which the clay is responsible ; nor would any one 
 blame a bottle for being worthless. But as here 
 employed these things are to be taken as denoting 
 results produced by the perversity of the people rep- 
 resented by the clay and the bottle. The marring 
 of the lump upon the wheel signifies no mere un- 
 avoidable accident in the history of the nation, but 
 rather a deliberate purpose on the part of the people 
 to throw off their allegiance to Jehovah. They could 
 never do that in any degree without correspondingly 
 injuring their ultimate future. But if, through the 
 expostulations of the prophet, they repented, and 
 submitted themselves in willing obedience to the 
 Lord's commands, then they would still remain plas- 
 tic as clay ; and though the higher ideal had been 
 lost by them, God would shape another future, lower 
 
 yet still useful for them, as it pleased him, and some- 
 
 7* 
 
154 OPPORTUNITIES AISOD THEIR LIMIT. 
 
 tiling good would yet be made of them for liis glory 
 and for tlie welfare of men. On the other hand, if in 
 spite of all entreaty they hardened themselves into 
 defiant and stubborn rebellion against Jehovah, they 
 would thereby pass from the soft, yielding, and easily 
 moldable condition of clay upon the wheel into the 
 hard, fixed, and unimprovable state of a fully-baked 
 vessel which did not answer its purpose ; and as noth- 
 ing else could be made of them, they would be cast 
 out as worthless, and consigned to irremediable de- 
 struction. 
 
 Such seems to be the significance of these two sym- 
 bols ; and this view is entirely corroborated by the 
 history to which they were primarily applied by 
 Jeremiah. The Jewish nation was at this time in a 
 most deplorable condition. Originally intended by 
 Jehovah to be a peculiar people, an holy nation, a 
 kingdom of j)i'iests, and the witness of truth to the 
 world at large, it had refused to rise to that high voca- 
 tion, and had chosen to become like the neighboring 
 states, in idolatry, in sensuality, in covetousness, 
 and in unrighteousness. The clay " was marred upon 
 the wheel." It had, therefore, to be subjected to 
 another treatment. Never, indeed, could it fill in the 
 noble outline which had at first been marked for it ; 
 but still there might be yet an outcome of good if the 
 people would but submit themselves to God and re- 
 turn to him. And many of them — indeed most of 
 those who were carried into caj)tivity to Babylon — 
 did thus return to him. They were the " soft ductile 
 clay," and God " made it another vesseL" The na- 
 tion, indeed, never was again as it had been in its 
 palmy days, or as it might have been if its citizens 
 had been true to God all through. Its kingly power 
 never again emerged ; the ark of the covenant was no 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 155 
 
 longer in its temple ; mncli of the old glory was hope- 
 lessly gone. Virtually it had to begin anew and on a 
 lower level. But, though it did not attain the lofty 
 role which had at first been intended for it, there was 
 still a great future in store for it, for the returned ex- 
 iles raised a platform on which at length Messiah was 
 to appear, and the story of the struggles of the people 
 under the Maccabees was to be full of inspiration to 
 multitudes in every after generation. But there were 
 others among the people who would take no advice and 
 heed no entreaty. These were they who sided with 
 the rebels against Babylon, and would not accept God's 
 discipline. They were hardened in their obstinacy 
 and stubborn in their impenitence. They were the 
 misshapen vessel of earthenware, for "they had re- 
 jected God's loving chastisement, had refused his 
 mercy, and persisted in their sins." So upon them 
 came the frightful calamity of the siege of Jerusalem, 
 described in this nineteenth chapter of Jeremiah's 
 prophecies, when God " broke them with a rod of 
 iron and dashed them in pieces like a potter's vessel." 
 Nor were these the only illustrations furnished by 
 the Jewish nation of this law of the divine administra- 
 tion. We see the same thing repeated in connection 
 with the Saviour's personal ministry in Palestine. 
 All through these three years and a half, the clay, 
 though marred, was still upon the wheel, and if there 
 had been any repentance among the people, or any 
 willinghood among them to receive Jesus as the Mes- 
 siah, they might have been formed into yet another 
 vessel, and risen ' once more into prominence among 
 the nations. B^^t they elected to reject Jesus and put 
 him to death upon the cross, and thereby they turned 
 the clay into a worthless piece of pottery too vile for 
 ornament, too ill-made for use, and too hard to be re- 
 
156 OPPOKTUNITIES AND THEIE LIMIT. 
 
 molded, — only fit, therefore, to be cast out and broken 
 into fragments. 
 
 But now, having a firm grasp of the meaning of these 
 two symbolic prophecies in their primary relation to 
 the Jewish nation, let us distill from that the principles 
 of permanent importance which it contains. They are 
 the following : First, that there is a divine ideal pos- 
 sible for every man under the gracious providence of 
 God ; second, that this ideal is attainable by him only 
 through implicit fa*ith in God, and willing obedience 
 to all his commandments ; third, that if this faith 
 and obedience are refused by a man, his history is 
 marred, and it is no longer possible for him to become 
 what otherwise he might have reached ; fourth, that 
 if the man should repent and return unto the Lord, he 
 may still, through the rich forbearance of God, rise to 
 a measure of excellence and usefulness which, though 
 short of that which was originally possible to him and 
 intended for him, will yet secure for him the approval 
 of the Most High ; and, fifth, that if the man harden 
 himself into persistent rejection of God, and show 
 stubborn impenitence, there comes a time when im- 
 provement is impossible, and there is nothing for him 
 but " everlasting destruction from the presence of the 
 Lord, and from the glory of his power." The mere 
 repetition of these propositions is enough to show you 
 that they carry us into th5.t region of mystery which 
 enshrouds the great questions of God's sovereignty 
 and man's free agency. But I do not propose at this 
 time to enter into that domain. These two truths are 
 the ultimate boundaries of human thought on all 
 moral questions. We cannot get rid of either, and 
 though to our finite minds they seem utterly inconsist- 
 ent with each other, yet we must hold them both in ap- 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 157 
 
 parent antagonism, believing that full knowledge, if it 
 could be attained by us, would discover their harmony. 
 No matter where we begin in our cogitations we shall, if 
 only we go far enough, come up against one or the other 
 of them, and then all farther progress is arrested. If 
 we confine our attention to the divine side, we shall 
 find ourselves at length hemmed up by the purpose of 
 God ; if again we restrict our thoughts to the human, 
 we shall reach our ultimatum in the free agency of man. 
 This is the inevitable result of our limitation as creat- 
 ures, for only God can fully comprehend God. But 
 while that is most true, the princi]3les which I have 
 deduced from the two symbolic prophecies of Jeremiah 
 are exceedingly valuable as serving to show us that 
 there is nothing in the human freedom that subverts 
 the divine sovereignty ; and that there is nothing in 
 the manner in which God's sovereignty is maintained 
 that destroys human freedom, or weakens human re- 
 sponsibility. God is superintending and overruling 
 all, as the potter is manipulating the clay. Yet man 
 has the choice whether or not he will submit himself 
 to God, even as the Israelites, who were symbolized by 
 the clay, had the liberty to determine whether or not 
 they would serve Jeliovah ; and it is to me a most inter- 
 esting thought that the question " O house of Israel, 
 cannot I do with you as this potter ? " was put by God 
 not to terrify the people by the assertion of his power 
 to destroy them, but rather to encourage them to re- 
 pentance by assuring them that if they returned to 
 him he could still make something valuable out cf 
 them, even as the workman framed a serviceable vessel, 
 after all, out of the clay which had become marred 
 and unfit for his original purpose. But leaving all 
 abstract discussions, let us attend briefly to each of 
 the propositions which I have enunciated. 
 
158 OPPOBTUNITIES AND THEIB LIMIT. 
 
 I. There is a divine ideal possible for every man. 
 God has not made any man simply for destruction. I 
 know that there are many who so misrepresent him ; 
 but there is no countenance given to any such view in 
 the sacred Scriptures. He has an archetype or j)attern 
 before him, which it is possible for each man to reach. 
 What that is may be, indeed must be, different for 
 each. There was one ideal possible for Egypt, an- 
 other for Assyria, and another for Babylon, with their 
 respective privileges and opportunities, and quite an- 
 other for Israel, with its pre-eminent advantages. 
 These other nations were not required to be every- 
 thing that the Jewish people ought to have become. 
 God is not unrighteous to demand equal attainments 
 from unequal gifts. He gives to one five talents, to 
 another two, and to another one ; but he does not look 
 at last for ten from each of them. And what is true 
 thus of nations is true also of individuals. He has one 
 ideal for those who, like ourselves, are favored to the 
 full with gospel blessings ; and another for such as 
 have not our original advantages. But there is a pos- 
 sible result that shall be worthy of his approval for 
 each ; and that each may reach that, has been his 
 original and primary design in the creation of each. 
 I enter not now into the question why there are these 
 original inequalities in the case of men, for I do not 
 think any one ban solve tliat, and I content myself 
 with simply marking their existence, as connected with 
 the ideal that is possible for each. That ideal is not 
 the same for all, but it is in each appropriate to and 
 in correspondence with the environment in which he 
 is placed. 
 
 II. This ideal is to be attained by a man only 
 through implicit faith in God and willing obedience 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 159 
 
 to liis commands. It was a profound saying of a great 
 philosopher in regard to physical things that " we 
 command nature by obeying her." He meant, for ex- 
 ample, that by complying with the requisite conditions 
 in electricity, we can command that agent to do our work. 
 And similarly we may affirm that we command God 
 by obeying him. I should hardly have dared, I con- 
 fess, to use that expression if I had not found in the 
 writings of the ancient prophet such words as these, 
 "Concerning the work of my hands command ye me." 
 But you are, I hope, in no danger of misunderstanding 
 my meaning. By obeying God we secure his approval 
 and co-operation with us and in us by his Spirit for 
 the attainment of that which he has designed to make 
 us. Here again, however, we are to bear in mind that 
 the commandments of God do not mean the same for 
 all men. Those who as yet have never received the 
 books of revelation have still certain commandments, 
 or what Paul calls a law, written in their hearts ; and 
 if they obey these they will rise to the divine ideal 
 for them. Whether any of them have ever done so I 
 dare not affirm, but that it is possible for them to do 
 so seems to me evident : and if they do, they will be 
 judged according to their light, and approved for what 
 they have accomplished. But we, who have in our 
 hands the living oracles of God, need not spend time 
 in speculation about them. It would be much more 
 profitable for us, and becoming in us, to improve our 
 own opportunities. Now here we are told that we shall 
 reach that which God has designed for us through 
 faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and implicit submis- 
 sion of our intellects, and hearts, and wills, and lives 
 to him. The great question for us, therefore, is 
 whether or not we have thus given ourselves up and 
 over to his service, for only thereby can we rise, each 
 
160 OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 
 
 in liis own place and after his own pattern, to what 
 Paul has called " the measure of the stature of the 
 fullness of Christ." Ah! when we try ourselves by 
 this test, must we not all admit that we have fallen 
 below the divine ideal for us, or, as the great apostle 
 has expressed it, " that we have come short of the 
 glory of God," that is, that we have come short of 
 giving such an illustration of the wisdom and love of 
 God in the fashioning of our characters as otherwise 
 might have been seen in us ? 
 
 III. This brings me to the third proposition, for- 
 merly enunciated, namely, that if such faith and obe- 
 dience are refused by a man, that man's history is 
 marred, and it is no longer possible for him to be- 
 come what otherwise he might have been. That 
 is seen by us every day in common life. The youth 
 who trifles through those years which ought to have 
 been devoted to education, may possibly, as the say- 
 ing is, " take himself uj) " in after days, but he can 
 never attain such a position as might easily have 
 been his if he had been diligent all through the 
 formative period of early life. And the same thing 
 holds morally. Sin mars the divine ideal for a man. 
 It deprives him of the full advantage of the skill and 
 help of God in the develojDmeut of his character. It 
 is no longer possible even for God, in consistency with 
 the moral nature of his government, to make of him 
 all that was originally attainable by him. Look, for 
 example here, to such men as Balaam, and Saul, and 
 Judas, and you will see how true it is that sin mars 
 the realization of a noble and possible future. What 
 a character Balaam might have become, with his pro- 
 phetic insight and his poetic soul, if only he had kept 
 true to his convictions ! but the clay was marred, and 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIE LIMIT. 161 
 
 tlie man who miglit else have been a noble example, 
 now serves only as a beacon of warning. How pos- 
 sible, too, it was for Saul to have been almost a model 
 king ! He had great kindness shown him by Jehovah. 
 Samuel, also, was drawn in quite a wonderful manner 
 to him, and as we read the history of his prowess in 
 the matter of Jabesh-gilead, we feel that he only just 
 missed becoming great, and missed it because he pre- 
 ferred his own way to God's. And Judas, too : what 
 might he not have been as an ajDostle, with all his 
 privileges and opportunities ? But the clay was marred 
 under the divine potter's hands, and because he chose 
 the things of the world in preference to obedience to 
 Christ, he who might have been a son of consolation 
 became the son of perdition. Ah ! how many among 
 us are at this moment, by their characters and jDosi- 
 tions, living illustrations of the truth that if we refuse 
 to obey God's commands and receive Jesus as our only 
 Redeemer, Lawgiver and King, we make the loftiest 
 life impossible for us ! God help us to lay this solemn 
 thought to heart. 
 
 IV. But now, fourthly, if the man should repent and 
 return to the Lord, he may yet, through the rich for- 
 bearance of God, rise to a measure of excellence and 
 usefulness, which, though short of that which was 
 originally possible to him and intended for him, will 
 secure the approval of the Most High. This is the 
 gem thought of these two chapters. If, having dis- 
 covered the cause of our failure in our sins, we turn 
 from these and give ourselves up to God, he will yet 
 make something out of us worthy of himself and full 
 of joy and encouragement to ourselves. Observe 
 again, I beseech you, that question, " O house of 
 Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter ? " and re- 
 
162 OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 
 
 member it was meant to encourage the people to go 
 back to God, with the assurance that it was still pos- 
 sible for him to make something good out of them. 
 But they said (look at the 12th verse of the 18th 
 chapter) : " There is no hope ; but we will walk after 
 our own devices, and we will every one do the imagina- 
 tion of his evil heart." Ah ! that is a true word of 
 Paul, "We are saved by hope." These Jews had no 
 hope, and therefore they went farther and farther 
 down. Jeremiah tried to rekindle hope in them by 
 this illustration of the potter, but it was in vain; 
 they refused to receive his message, and hardened 
 themselves into uttermost obstinacy, — and then came 
 destruction. Now let me hold up, clear and distinct, 
 this hope to sinners before me this morning : There 
 is no need to despair yet. If you are willing to re- 
 turn to God in Christ, he is able to work out in you 
 and bring out through you something of nobleness and 
 holiness. There will always be in you and about 
 you, indeed, the marks of your former lives ; but God 
 has you yet upon the wheel, and he will make you 
 " another vessel as it pleases him." Think here of 
 such a case as that of Manasseh. The son of the good 
 Hezekiah, he might, had he walked steadily in his 
 father's footstejDS, have become one of the noblest of 
 Jewish monarchs. But he gave himself up to idolatry 
 and sank into the most debasing sins. At length 
 the judgment came and he was carried off to Babylon. 
 There, in thought and prayer and penitence, he re- 
 turned to God ; and the Lord, making another vessel 
 of him, restored him to Jerusalem and* his throne. 
 He never became what had been at first possible for 
 him, but he did become another and a better man ; 
 and his name stands out on the historic page as a strik- 
 ing proof that even although one has gone far astray 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 163 
 
 he may yet, tlirougli God's grace and by returning 
 unto bim, become a worthy man and be finally ac- 
 cepted. But why need we go so far back as Manas- 
 seh's days for illustrations of this truth? We may 
 find many in our own generation. Probably, even as 
 I speak, each of you has some such case with which 
 he is acquainted recalled vividly to his remembrance. 
 There may even be some here whose personal ex- 
 perience confirms my words. I think of John Newton 
 in the pulpit, doing a noble work for God and men 
 in spite of his early sins and shameful habits. He 
 was never such a man as he might have been had he 
 been all through his days truly devoted to his God, 
 but he was a good and useful man after all, saved by 
 grace through faith in Christ and repentance unto life. 
 I think of some, not far away from us, who, after years 
 in prison, have found their Avay through Christ back 
 to God, and are now — though the mark of the old life 
 may be seen yet very clearly stamped upon their 
 countenances — living earnestly for the glory of God in 
 the salvation of men. I think of others, long enslaved 
 by intemperance, and even yet feeling degraded at the 
 thought of what but for it they might have been, but 
 now emancipated from the thraldom of habit, by the 
 power of the Holy Ghost, through faith in Jesus, and 
 living mainly " for the good that they can do." And 
 with such cases before me, I proclaim the willingness 
 of God to save all who penitently turn to him, and 
 to make them vessels of mercy which he will " prepare 
 for his glory." Let no one go away saying there is 
 no hope. If there is the least prompting within you 
 to return — though it may be faint as the spark in the 
 smoking flax, or feeble as the strength in the bruised 
 reed — that is an evidence that you are not yet hard- 
 ened into impenetrability ; and if you yield to its im- 
 
164 OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT, 
 
 pulse tliere is One who will receive you and renew 
 you, and make you yet noble and honorable before 
 liim, a trophy of his grace ; aye, it may be — let me 
 carry out the figure of my texts — a cup in which he 
 will hold the living water of his refreshment to the 
 lips of many weary ones among your fellow-men. 
 Return, then, O return to him, and he will " form you 
 all anew." 
 
 V. Our last proposition is that if the man harden 
 himself into persistent rejection of God and show stub- 
 born impenitence, there comes a time when improve- 
 ment is no longer possible, and there is nothing for 
 him but everlasting destruction from the presence of 
 the Lord and the glory of his power. The clay that 
 was plastic was made into another vessel; but the 
 bottle tliat was burned into hardness and was found 
 to be Avorthless was broken into pieces and cast out. 
 So when impenitence is perversely persisted in there 
 comes a point at which the heart is so hardened 
 thereby that repentance is neither thought of, nor 
 jDrompted to, nor desired, and the man is abandoned 
 to perdition. And where, do you ask, is that point ? 
 I answer that I cannot in every case precisely tell. 
 It may be even in the present life, in some instances. 
 It was so, I cannot but think, in the case of Saul, for 
 when, having finally given up God, he went for help to 
 the cave of Endor, and Samuel aj)i)eared to him, as 
 much to the alarm of the woman as to his own, he 
 heard only words of doom. He had gone to the wrong 
 resort. Had he but turned to God, we may be sure 
 that there would have been something in the future 
 for him still. So again in the case of Belshazzar, 
 when Daniel came in haste to decipher the writing on 
 the wall he read out only words of condemnation. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 165 
 
 He spoke notlimg now, as before lie had done to Neb- 
 uchadnezzar, of the duty of breaking off sin by right- 
 eousness, but merely said, " Thou art weighed in the 
 balances and found wanting. God hath numbered thy 
 kingdom and finished it." With these cases in mind, 
 therefore, I must afiirm that this point of transition 
 between the ductility of the clay and the hardness of 
 the burned bottle may be passed by a man even in this 
 life, though, I must also add, that it is not yet passed 
 by any one who has a prompting to repentance within 
 him, and a desire to return to God and become other 
 than he is. But if I may not speak with certainty 
 concerning this life, if indeed I must speak with cau- 
 tion regarding the point on which I have just touched, 
 I have no hesitation regarding the end of this proba- 
 tion for all, for, as I read the Scriptures, the whole 
 trend and tenor of their teaching go to prove that 
 after death there is no possibility of changing char- 
 acter, for then the clay is no longer on the wheel, and 
 the God-given opportunities are ended. Then the 
 vessel is taken to its place of honor in the heavenly 
 palace, or cast out to its place of dishonor and de- 
 struction in the abysmal Tophet. I know that there is 
 a great deal of very loose thinking current in these 
 days about what is called " probation after death." 
 But the Bible has nothing in it which seems to give 
 the least countenance to any such thing. And the 
 course of thought along which we have travelled this 
 morning cuts at the root of the reason plausibly as- 
 signed by many for their advocacy of this opinion. 
 It is said that every man must have a probation some- 
 where, and therefore that those who have had no pro- 
 bation on earth are entitled to it after death. But 
 who are they who have had no probation on earth ? 
 Are they infants ? Then, if they are to be put on trial, 
 
166 OPPOETUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 
 
 and tlierefore in jeopardy, after deatli, millions of be- 
 reaved parents' liearts will leap up in indignant pro- 
 test at such an idea, and eacli will say, " My gathered 
 lambs are folded in the Good Shepherd's arms : I want 
 none of your speculations that shall speak as if they 
 were still in danger." Nay more, if, without personal 
 probation, they suffered death because Adam sinned, 
 I want to know why without a personal probation they 
 may noc enjoy eternal life, since Jesus Christ died for 
 them and rose again? The same principle applies to 
 idiots. We are, therefore, restricted to the heathen. 
 But are we quite sure that they have no j)robation be- 
 fore death? Is the presentation of the gospel neces- 
 sary to a probation ? If that be alleged, then I want 
 to know on what authority the statement is made ? I 
 find nothing of that here in Scripture. On the con- 
 trary I find that, as I have already said, the ideal 
 for each man is different, and that the ultimate char- 
 acter of each will be gauged by his opportunities and 
 what he has made of them, such as they were. " They 
 that have sinned without law " shall not be judged 
 by a law of which they knew nothing : but they shall 
 be judged none the less according to the light which 
 they possessed ; and what is that but saying that this 
 life is for them also a probation ? No man, therefore, 
 has a right to affirm that any human being, come to 
 years of discretion, on the earth, has not had a proba- 
 tion here. All have not equal privileges. That is true 
 even in places where the gosjjel is enjoyed ; and it is 
 more largely true, of course, when we take in the race 
 as a whole. But equal opportunities for all are not 
 essential to a j)robation for each. If they were, then 
 no one of us here could say that we have even now a 
 probation, for there are inequalities in the talents 
 given to each of us, and in the opportunities afforded 
 
OPPORTUNITIES AND THEIR LIMIT. 167 
 
 US for tlieir improvement. Thus we see that the as- 
 sumption that some men have no probation here lies 
 at the root of this modern heresy ; and that, as I have 
 shown you, is an assumption of what is false. There- 
 fore do not let your soul be drugged by this opiate. 
 Do not dream of probation after death. Even if it 
 were true that such a thing were to be given to the 
 heathen, there would still be no hope for you. And 
 so, while you may, before the day of grace ends and 
 the door of opportunity is shut, return to the Lord by 
 faith in Jesus and in obedience unto him. 
 
 I conclude with a word of exhortation especially 
 addressed to the young. I have tried to show you 
 this morning that the marring of sin will prevent you 
 from reaching the highest excellence of character in 
 life, and I have pointed out also that, though you may 
 afterward turn to God, the result, at last, will be 
 short of that which otherwise you might have gained. 
 How important it must be, therefore, to give your- 
 selves to God in Christ, with the first dawnings of your 
 moral intelligence ! Keep away, I beseech you, from 
 all youthful follies and early sins ; for, even if you 
 should repent of them afterward, you will suffer 
 either some positive evil or some negative privation 
 in consequence. Depend upon it, God will make you, 
 in some way, to possess the sins of your youth. Pre- 
 serve, I implore you, the first freshness of your early 
 innocence, and seek to maintain your young sensitive- 
 ness of conscience, for if you once lose these, you will 
 never in the future be what otherwise you might have 
 become. You may have pardon through the blood of 
 Christ, and sanctification by the Spirit of Christ, and 
 usefulness, too, by the grace of Christ, but you will 
 find that something has gone forever from you, and 
 that some other things are forever unattainable by 
 
168 OPPOETUNITIES AND THEIK LIMIT. 
 
 you. When you pluck a flower in tlie summer morn- 
 ing all sparkling with clewdrops, if you shake these off 
 you will never form them again. You may pour water 
 on it a thousand times, but never again can you put 
 back on its opening leaves those " bright orbicular dia- 
 monds " as they sparkled so gloriously in the early 
 sunbeam. So, if you go into youthful sins, you can 
 never regain all that you have lost thereby. Another 
 vessel, by God's grace, may yet be shaped upon the 
 ■wheel, but it will be lowlier and less honorable than 
 that which you have marred. Therefore, give your- 
 selves now to Christ and become early adherents of 
 that religion of which one of the characteristics is that 
 it keeps itself "unspotted from the world." 
 
 December 10, 1883 
 
THE HAEVEST OF RETRIBUTION AND 
 REWARD. 
 
 Gal. vi. 7, 8. Be not deceived. God is not mocked ; for what- 
 soever a man soweth, tliat shall he also reap. For he that soweth to 
 his flesh, etc. 
 
 It is oue of the characteristics of Paul that he en- 
 forces the commonest duties by the highest motives. 
 When he urges the Corinthians to make a contribu- 
 tion for the poor saints at Jerusalem, he drives home 
 his appeal by these words : " For ye know the grace 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet 
 for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his 
 poverty might be rich," When again he vindicates 
 himself from the accusation of fanaticism which his 
 enemies had made against him he says: "Whether 
 we be beside ourselves, it is to God ; or whether we 
 be sober, it is for your cause, for the love of Christ 
 constraineth us ; because we thus judge that if ho 
 died for all, then these all died ; and that he died for 
 all that they which live should not henceforth live 
 unto themselves, but unto him which died for them 
 and rose again." His habit thus was to run up the 
 separate actions of his life to great principles, by 
 which they were dominated, and in accordance with 
 which they were regulated. The poet has reminded 
 us that in the material universe, 
 
 " That very law which molds a tear 
 And bids it trickle from its source, 
 That law preserves the earth a sphere 
 And holds the planets in tlieir course ; " 
 
170 THE HAEVEST OF EETEIBUTION AND EEWAED. 
 
 and mucli in the same way the apostle shows that 
 the great fact of our redemption by Jesus Christ should 
 affect the little things of our benevolence and our 
 manner of speech as really as the great things of our 
 life-aim and our bearing at certain crucial and deci- 
 sive turning points in our history. The background 
 of his life was the cross of Christ, and from that every 
 action, whether to human view important or the re- 
 verse, drew its inspiration and acquired its momentum. 
 But if the Cross was the background of his life, the 
 future state was its environment. That enswathed it, 
 as the sky enswaths the- landscape. This earthly ex- 
 istence was for him " rounded " with eternity, and he 
 had learned to view the conduct of ' now ' in its relation 
 to the great hereafter. So he was continually refer- 
 ring to the future as a warning, or a test, or an en- 
 couragement in the present. The two great facts in 
 the world's history to him were the first and second 
 comings of the Lord Jesus Christ. The two great 
 doctrines on which, to him, all others dejDended, and 
 which, in his view, stood equally related to all our 
 actions, though in different ways, were redemption and 
 retribution. In the midst of his sufferings he found 
 support in looking back to the obligation under which 
 he lay to Christ, and solace in looking forward to the 
 time when he should be clothed upon with his house 
 which is from heaven. Again, when he was dealing 
 with those who had fallen away, the saddest aspect of 
 their guilt was, in his eyes, that they were the enemies 
 of the cross of Christ, and the most awful thing about 
 their destiny was that their end is destruction. Thus 
 these doctrines, as he held them, were not mere dry, 
 dogmati cstatements, but rather omnipresent and all- 
 pervading motives which influenced everything he said, 
 or wrote, or did. 
 
THE HAEVEST OF BETREBUTION AND EEWAED. 171 
 
 Accordingly we are not surprised to find that the 
 words of my text stand in immediate connection 
 with the command that ministers of the gospel 
 should be liberally supported by those whom they 
 instruct. That is a commonplace duty, but it is 
 lifted by Paul into eternal importance, when he links 
 it on, as here, directly and immediately to the doctrine 
 of retribution ; for then we are reminded that in the 
 way in which we deal with it we must sow either to 
 the flesh or to the spirit, and reap either corruption 
 or everlasting life. Now, though my business this 
 morning is mainly with the doctrine itself, I cannot 
 helj) showing you thus, in the very outset, how it is 
 to be applied to all things in that conduct which, ac- 
 cording to a recent writer, is " three-fourths of life." 
 Paul's faith in a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments did not lie dormant in his soul, like a forgotten 
 article of furniture in a dusty attic. It was a living 
 and active principle. And his life, as a whole, was 
 not " a fortuitous concourse " of actions, but the out- 
 come, in individual details, of those two great truths 
 which he held in the grasp of a firm and intelligent 
 belief, namely, that " we are bought with a jjrice " and 
 that " we must all appear before the judgment-seat of 
 Christ that every one may receive the things done in 
 his body, according to that he hath done, whether it 
 be good or bad." Behind him always was "the cross 
 of Christ"; before him always was "the judgment- 
 seat of Christ." He never forgot either ; and every 
 portion of his conduct was affected by them both. It 
 was not, therefore, an exceptional thing with him to 
 enforce such a common and ordinary duty as the sup- 
 port of a minister, by such an overwhelming motive as 
 that which is furnished by the doctrine of retribution. 
 Kather we may say that the importance of the doc- 
 
172 THE hAkyest of retribution and reward. 
 
 trine, in his view, is attested by this incidental appli- 
 cation of it. He is not here systematically and argu- 
 mentatively reasoning it out. It is to him one of the 
 most absolute of certainties, not more nearly bearing 
 on ministerial supjDort than on other duties, but bear- 
 ing on that as really as on others ; and so his refer- 
 ence to it here is a proof of the fact that the present 
 life, and all in it, was for him the germ of eternity, 
 and was invested thereby with an infinite significance. 
 Leaving, then, the duty in connection with which the 
 words of my text were originally written, let us attend 
 to the doctrine which they teach. 
 
 I. And in the first place they declare that the relation 
 between our life here and our condition hereafter is 
 that which exists between seed and the crop that 
 springs from it. What that is it might be very dif- 
 ficult for us scientifically to explain ; yet even the 
 youngest among us knows something of its distinct- 
 ive j)eculiarity. There is in everything that can be 
 rightly called a seed a certain germinant quality, so 
 that when it is put into, or " sown " in, appropriate 
 soil, it begins to sprout, and, under favoring circum- 
 stances, ends in the reproduction of itself, not alone as 
 a unit, but manifold. An acorn and a stone differ 
 from each other in many respects, but the fact that 
 the one when planted in the earth produces an oak- 
 tree and other acorns, and that the other, though sub- 
 jected to the same treatment, undergoes no change, 
 but remains simply and only a stone, marks the one 
 as a seed and the other as not a seed. Moreover, as 
 Paul reminds us in his well-known argument on the 
 resurrection, God "has given to every seed its own 
 body," that is to say, each produces its own fruit. A 
 fir-tree does not spring from a chestnut, neither a 
 
THE HAEYEST OF EETEIBUTION AND REWAED. 173 
 
 beecli-tree from a pine-cone. If you sow corn you do 
 not expect to reap wheat ; and if you plant an orchard 
 with apple-trees you do not look to see plums upon 
 their branches. Or, as the Lord himself has put it, 
 using the analogy, however, for another purpose, " Of 
 thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble-bush 
 gather they grapes." 
 
 There is here a great unchanging and unchange- 
 able law. Each seed produces its own body, be- 
 cause God has so ordained. That which we reap 
 from off the fields of nature is always of the samo 
 kind with that which we have sown. No sane man, 
 even if he should be the most unquestioning be- 
 liever in the transmutation of species, would expect a 
 crop of valuable grain from an inclosure which" he 
 had sown with tares ; and every husbandman when he 
 plants his corn does so in the confidence that, accord- 
 ing to the uniformity of nature's operations, he will 
 have a harvest of the same. He has no manner of 
 doubt about it. There may be sometimes a question 
 in his mind during a long drought as to whether he 
 shall have a larger or smaller crop, possibly even as 
 to whether he shall have a crop at all ; but he knows 
 that if he have any crop, it shall be of the same kind 
 as that which he has planted. On the plane of mate- 
 rial nature, then, every one understands, admits, and 
 acts upon this principle as an absolute law admitting 
 of no exceptions — " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
 shall he also reap." 
 
 Now, with these facts before us, we are in a posi- 
 tion to understand what is meant when it is said 
 that our life here bears to our condition hereafter 
 the same relation which seed does to that which 
 springs from it. For one thing it means that our 
 thoughts, words and actions here have in them a 
 
174 THE HAEVEST OF KETRIBUTION AND REWAED. 
 
 seminal and germinating principle. They are not like 
 a handful of gravel which, scattered over the earth, re- 
 mains gravel and nothing else ; but they are seeds 
 which, wherever dropped, are falling into a soil where- 
 on, at length, there shall appear a harvest that shall 
 be of the same kind as themselves. Have you ever 
 thought of this, my hearers ? There is a principle of 
 life and reproduction in everything that the soul with- 
 in you does, and in the harvest of the future you must 
 reap that which has sprung vip and ripened therefrom. 
 We may not be able quite to realize, at first, all that 
 this implies. But there are experiences in the present 
 life which may assist us to arrive at a more adequate 
 conception of its solemn import. Thoughts tend to 
 reproduce themselves. He who admits a holy sug- 
 gestion into his mind will find that ever more in the 
 pauses of life, and sometimes, too, even in its bustle 
 and business, things allied to that sacred meditation, 
 and indeed developed by it, will steal into the current 
 of his consciousness and fill his soul with their re- 
 freshing influence. Indeed it is just in this way that 
 the devotions of the closet come at length to hallow 
 the entire day ; the seeds sown in that hour so quickly 
 germinate that the life is perfumed by the fragrance 
 of their blossoming. But the same thing is true on 
 the other side. Let a man take in an evil thought, 
 and it will constantly reproduce itself within his mind, 
 and either torment him with its ever-recurring loath- 
 someness, or draw him away with its seductive influ- 
 ence. The sight of an impure painting ; the reading 
 of a bad book ; the hearing of a song in which the 
 witchery of music is wedded to the vice of sensuous- 
 ness, will keep returning to the memory, either as 
 something to be battled with, or as an influence that 
 ■will finally conquer us — and this is all owing to the 
 
THE HAEVEST OF RETRIBUTION AND REWARD. 175 
 
 fact tHat thought is seminal and reproductive. So in 
 regard to words. They are not dead things — like 
 counters in a game, to which some have compared 
 them. In a very holy sense the Lord Jesus has said 
 in his parable, " The seed is the word," but it is no 
 less true that every word is a seed. It rep^'oduces 
 itself either in blessing or in curse. Do you want 
 an illustration? Then, take the case of the profane 
 swearer, and you will see how from the root of his 
 first oath all his black blasphemy has sprung until he 
 is so much a slave to his evil habit as hardly to be 
 conscious of the utterance of those things which send 
 a shudder through the hearts of his hearers. While 
 again, on the other hand, the speech of the good man 
 increases in attractiveness with his constant practice 
 of reverence. 
 
 What, indeed, is the great law of habit, when you 
 come to think it out, but just another form of the 
 l^rinciple of my text, "Whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that shall he also reap " ? And that question may 
 fitly introduce us to the thought that our actions, as 
 well as words, are reproductive. You know how true 
 that is in the case of the victim of strong drink, 
 and the votary of gambling. But these cases are only 
 lai^ge type illustrations of what is seen, if we care to 
 look for it, in other actions. That which we have done 
 recurs to us either to haunt us as remorse, or to bless 
 us in the approval of conscience and of God. We have 
 by our first commission of it so sown it that it shall 
 bear fruit, either to upbraid us for being its creators, 
 or to bless us for having called it into being. No article 
 of our conduct ever stands alone. It may pass from 
 our memory, indeed, for a time, even as the seed in 
 the soil decays and dies ; yet, at length, in the re_ 
 production of it we shall be made to think of it and to 
 
176 THE HAEVEST OF EETEIBUTION AND REWAED. 
 
 connect it with its fruit. What a graphic illustration 
 of this we have in the case of Joseph's brethren ! 
 They sold him into slavery, and when they had palmed 
 their lie upon their father they thought no more upon 
 their guilt. They had rid themselves of an inconve- 
 nient reporter of their evil doings, and so all was well- 
 But when that which they had sowed in the captivity 
 of their brother was reaped by them in the shape of 
 their own imprisonment, then they said one to another, 
 *' We were verily guilty concerning our brother : when 
 we saw the anguish of his soul ; when he besought us 
 and we would not hear ; therefore is this distress come 
 upon us." And can we help seeing how the lie which 
 Jacob told to Isaac bore fruit to Jacob's own misery 
 in the falsehood of his sons to himself ? Thus, either in 
 our own enlarged and habitual commission of it, or in 
 the being compelled to endure it at the hands of others, 
 sin is ever, by its own reproduction, the punishment 
 of sin. And whether we think of it or not, in all our 
 thoughts and words and actions we are sowing seeds 
 of which we shall have to reap the harvest by-and-by. 
 But the same thing is seen, very often, in the rela- 
 tion of one segment of our life upon earth to the re- 
 mainder of that life. It is one of the commonest of com- 
 monplaces that youth is the seed-time of life. If that 
 be improved as it ought to be, the rest of the earthly 
 existence will be noble ; but if that be wasted, the re- 
 mainder will never be what it might have been and 
 ought to have neen. The man may receive regenera- 
 tion, indeed, through repentance unto life, and in 
 some aspects of his later history there may even be 
 good brought out of the former evil ; but never can 
 he be what he might have been if he had not to reap 
 in his age the harvest from the seed he sowed in 
 youth ; and if he do not repent at all, the life as a 
 
THE HARVEST OF RETRIBUTION AND REWARD. 177 
 
 whole is a seed from which the ultimate harvest must 
 be terrible. There is a way of speaking on this sub- 
 ject, indeed, which would lead us to suppose that the 
 "sowing of wild oats," as it is called, is merely a 
 necessary stage in the development of a young man, 
 and that if, after that has been gone through, he can 
 be led to settle down, no great harm will come. But, 
 not to say that there is a tremendous uncertainty in 
 that if, we must bear in mind that from every 
 seed planted there is and must be a growth, and that 
 in some way or other God will make a man possess 
 the sins of his youth. The sowing is to be followed 
 by a reaping, and the crop will be of the same kind 
 as the seed ; so that after all there are few things in 
 life so expensive and so absolutely insane as this 
 same scattering of wild oats, at which so many fool- 
 ishly make mirth as if it were a thing of course. 
 Young man ! remember it : you shall have to reap all 
 that you sow. It may not be this year, or next year, 
 but you slicdl reap — for as the French lady said to the 
 great ecclesiastic, " My Lord Cardinal ! God does not 
 pay at the end of every week, but at the last he pays ! " 
 Now, with these experiences in the present state of 
 existence fresh in our remembrance, we can better 
 apprehend the truth regarding future retribution 
 which is taught by my text. Just as individual 
 thoughts, and words, and actions are seminal ; just as 
 one part of our earthly life is a seed-time for another ; 
 so our life on earth, as a whole, is the germ from 
 which our eternity shall spring. Ketribution is the 
 reaping of the harvest from the seeds which all through 
 our earthly existence we were sowing. The sinner will 
 be given up to his sin — left to it and in it ; the saint 
 will rise to higher holiness, and find happiness and 
 reward in the things which most ho delighted in on 
 8* 
 
178 THE HAEVEST OF EETRIBUTION AOT) REWAED. 
 
 earth. Tliere is notliing arbitrary here. I have no 
 doubt, indeed, that in heaven there will be a special 
 bestowment of reward ; and in hell a positive inflic- 
 tion of judicial punishment ; but still, as one of my 
 revered instructors has remarked on these verses, " It 
 surely deserves notice that in very many passages of 
 Scripture the misery of the irreclaimably impenitent 
 is represented as the native necessary result of their 
 own conduct. The whole economy of God's moral gov- 
 ernment would need to be altered ; the constituent prin- 
 ciples of man's nature would need to be changed, be- 
 fore those who live and die ' carnal ' can be really happy 
 in another world." * That which a man has fostered 
 here in himself will be the source of his blessedness or 
 the fountain of his woe hereafter. In a word, himself 
 will be his reward or retribution, and that self he is 
 making now, by the thoughts and words and actions 
 in which he is indulging. So as he is sowing now he 
 shall reap hereafter ; nay, more explicitly, that which 
 he is sowing now he will reap hereafter. It is as 
 absurd to suppose that if we are wedded to sin here 
 we shall be holy, and therefore happy, in the future 
 life, as it is for a man who has planted thorns to ex- 
 pect from them a return of grapes. And if we delight 
 in the Lord after the inner man, and find our joy in 
 serving Christ on earth, w^e may as rationally look for 
 heaven in the state beyond as the farmer who sows 
 barley may anticipate that he shall reap the same. 
 To expect anything else is to " mock God " by disregard- 
 ing the law which he has written as clearly on our 
 moral constitution as that of fruit bearing after its 
 kind is written on the vegetable kingdom. Here then 
 are the two things that underlie the figure of my text, 
 
 * Jolm BrowD, D.D., in exposition of the Galatians in loco. 
 
THE HAEVEST OF EETBIBUTION AND EEWAED. 179 
 
 — tlie present life is the seed-plot of the future state ; 
 and the harvest which we reap in eternity is the same 
 in character and quality as that which now we sow. 
 
 II. But the second thought suggested by the words 
 before us is that there are only two kinds of seed 
 which we can sow in our earthly existence. The 
 apostle mentions sowing to the flesh, and sowing to 
 the spirit — these are all ; and each of us is doing one 
 or the other. There is no third alternative. It be- 
 hooves us, then, to make very sure what these two are. 
 The " flesh " is Paul's term for unrenewed human 
 nature. And if you look at the section of this epistle 
 to which the text belongs you can be at no loss to 
 discover what he means by the phrase " he that soweth 
 to his flesh." For thus he writes : " The works of the 
 flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornica- 
 tion, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, 
 hatred, variance, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 
 envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such 
 like " ; and lest anyone should imagine that only very 
 heinous sins, which rank in the eyes of men as crimes 
 as well as vices, come under this classification, he has 
 still further indicated the scope of the term when he 
 says, "Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking 
 one another, envying one another." Nay, as seems to 
 me very plain from the verse immediately preceding 
 the text, he includes the stinginess which witholds 
 suitable maintenance from the Christian minister 
 under that " sowing to the flesh " of which the result 
 is corruption. And as he has declared that *' they 
 that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affec- 
 tions and lusts," it is also perfectly clear that all who 
 are not Christ's, and who have not crucified the flesh, 
 are sowing to the flesh. On the other hand, the " spirit " 
 
180 THE HAEVEST OF EETKIBUTION AND EEWAED. 
 
 throughout this passage is most naturally taken to 
 mean not the Holy Spirit, but that which is the 
 proper antithesis to unrenewed human nature, namely, 
 the renewed man. 
 
 Thus, then, we get the result that the unregene- 
 rated man is " sowing to the flesh," and the re- 
 generated man — he who is in Christ and therefore 
 a new creature — is " sowing to the spirit." So it 
 comes to this, that if we would make the best of 
 the present life as the germ of the future state, we 
 must be born again; and the evidence that we are 
 thus regenerated will be furnished by our manifesta- 
 tion of the fruit of the Spirit " which is, " Love, joy, 
 peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
 ness, temperance." Nay, more, as in the natural 
 world that which we take for seed has already grown 
 and is itself a fruit, so these virtues which are them- 
 selves in one sense the fruit of our regeneration are in 
 another the seed of the Spirit from which are yet to 
 spring up the blessedness and reward of heaven. My 
 brethren, these are great principles. They have a 
 tremendous sweep ; and yet they bear down with all 
 their force upon each individual among us. They tell 
 us that unless through faith in Christ and the agency 
 of his Spirit we have been born again we are and 
 must be sowing to the flesh. I dare not make any excep- 
 tions here, and so the question for each of us — a ques- 
 tion whose answer carries the whole color and com- 
 plexion of our eternity in it — is, " Have I been born 
 an'ain ? " Oh ! if it be that a soul here is still unre- 
 newed, may God the Holy Ghost use the truth which 
 I have now brought before you in quickening that 
 soul to life in Christ ! 
 
 III. But, in the third place, the text suggests that 
 
THE HAEVEST OF EETRIBUTION AND EEWARD. 181 
 
 in the case of both sowings the harvest will be an in- 
 crease. Usually the crop is a multiplication of the 
 seed. As the parable has it, in some it is thirty-fold, 
 in some sixty-fold, and in some an hundred-fold. So, 
 too, it is always the case that the quantity reaped is 
 proportioned to the quantity sown. " He that soweth 
 sparingly shall reap also sparingly ; but he that 
 soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." There 
 shall be degrees in retribution and reward. The 
 ragged urchin in our city streets, who has not 
 had the opportunities of a Christian household, will 
 not have to gather such a harvest of suffering from 
 his sowing to the flesh as will he who has sinned 
 against light and privilege of the highest order. 
 The heathen, who have not heard of Christ, will not 
 have the same future as those who, having had the 
 Saviour preached to them, have defiantly rejected 
 him. The Lord said unto Capernaum : "It shall be 
 more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of 
 judgment than for thee." So, in the matter of retri- 
 bution the condition of each will be proportioned to 
 his guilt. But the same principle holds in reward. 
 There shall be degrees of glory as well as of perdition. 
 He who creeps in at last to the kingdom through the 
 fast closing gate, and by a death-bed repentance be- 
 comes regenerated, shall not have a place like that of 
 the man whose entire life has been devoted to the 
 Lord Jesus. He who made the one pound into ten 
 received in the parable authority over ten cities. He 
 who from the one gained as much as made it five was set 
 over five cities. All this goes to show that while it is 
 wholly of grace that reward is granted to any believer, 
 yet the reward itself is graduated for each according 
 to the magnitude of the service. We all admit that 
 in the matter of reward ; but we too often forget that 
 
182 THE HAEVEST OF RETRIBUTION AND REWARD. 
 
 the same principle holds in respect to punishment ; 
 and I cannot but think that if more prominence had 
 been given to that aspect of the subject there would 
 be less difficulty felt m accepting that doctrine which 
 has been such an offense to many modern inquirers. 
 But though there is thus a proportion in quantity 
 between the seed and the crop, the harvest is always an 
 increase on that which was sown. From the seed of 
 the flesh the ripened result is corruption, which is 
 flesh in its most revolting state. From the seed of the 
 spirit the full ear is life everlasting, which is eternal 
 holiness with its concomitant of endless happiness. 
 And what can I say to make these ideas more clear 
 and forcible than this simple presentation of them is? 
 Corruption ! The delirium tremens of the drunkard, 
 and the living death of the sensualist whose sin has 
 found him out here on earth, may help us to under- 
 stand something of what that must mean in eternity, 
 and for the rest I must ask Byron to help me out. For 
 these are his words describing even earthly desolation 
 of heart : 
 
 " It is as if the dead could feel 
 The ley worm around them steal, 
 And shudder, as the reptiles creep 
 To revel o'er their rotting sleep. 
 Without the power to scare away 
 The cold consumers of their clay." 
 
 But enough of that! I turn rather to the other side, 
 and bid you remember that the highest happiness of 
 the Christian's experience on earth will be but like as 
 the faint light of early dawn is to the meridian day, 
 when it is compared with the blessedness of heaven. 
 The harvest is always an increase. "We plant a single 
 grain, we pluck a full ear ; we sow in handfuls, we 
 reap in bosomfuls; we scatter bushels, but we 
 
THE HAEVEST OF RETRIBUTION AND REWARD. 183 
 
 gather in ricli granary stores. The remorse of earth 
 is but the germ of the despair of hell. The holiness 
 of the present is only the bud from which will blossom 
 that vision of God which is the full-flowered beatitude 
 of heaven. 
 
 Now, if all this be true, see how it invests the pres- 
 ent life with infinite importance. It used to be said 
 by the apostles of infidelity, under the name of secu- 
 larism, that belief in a future state unfits men for 
 the performance of the duties of the life that now is 
 by fixing their minds on that which is as yet in the 
 distance. But the course of thought which we have 
 followed this morning utterly falsifies such a state- 
 ment. It were just as rational to allege that the hus- 
 bandman by looking forward to the harvest incapaci- 
 tates himself for the work of the spring-time ; or that 
 the youth by setting his ambition on after success is 
 thereby disqualified for the prosecution of his early 
 education, as it is to affirm that faith in the future life 
 prevents us from performing the work of to-day. The 
 truth rather is that it intensifies the importance of the 
 presentby focusing ujDon it the issues of eternity. It 
 makes us all the more careful to do the work that lies 
 at our hands, not in the fleshly manner of the unre- 
 newed man, but after the spiritual method of the re- 
 generated soul. Every thought we think, every word 
 we speak, every action we perform, every opportunity 
 of service neglected or improved, is a seed sown by us 
 the fruit of which shall multiply either into untold 
 miseries or myriad blessings in the eternity into 
 which we go. That is the teaching of the word of 
 God, and who shall say that such a view of the case 
 does not magnify, rather than diminish, the signifi- 
 cance of the present ? In the stirring history of Eng- 
 lish martyrology we read of an eminent victim that on 
 
184 THE HAKVEST OF EETRIBUTION AND REWAED. 
 
 one occasion lie was taken from his dungeon to a cliam- 
 ber wliich was Imng round with tapestry ; that there he 
 was being gradually drawn into a conversation regard- 
 ing himself and his companions when in a moment of 
 quietness he heard the sound of the nib of a pen mov- 
 ing upon paper, as if some one were writing behind the 
 arras; and that immediately thereupon he became 
 silent, for well he knew that by a thoughtless word 
 he might bring upon both himself and his brethren 
 the severest suffering. But, my hearers, the actions 
 in which now we engage are seeds whose fruit shall 
 be eternal, and when we know and believe that shall 
 we be less careful of them than he was of his speech ? 
 It is told of a famous painter that he was remarkable 
 for the careful manner in which he went about his 
 work, and when one asked him why he took such 
 pains his answer was : " Because I paint for eternity." 
 Beloved, shall this be so in the case of one who is try- 
 ing to secure a lasting earthly fame, and shall we not 
 be considerate in all our ways, knowing that what we 
 are doing now shall have an eternal effect upon our 
 character and condition ? Every day we live we are 
 treasuring up for ourselves wrath against the day of 
 wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment o^ 
 God, or we are laying up for ourselves treasures i.i 
 heaven, " where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." 
 "What need, then, thab we should daily consider what 
 shall be the end of these things, and whether we are 
 sowing to the flesh or to the spirit ? Let the thought- 
 less among us be startled into earnestness by this 
 solemn consideration ; and if there be those here who 
 are seeking prayerfully to sow to the spirit, but in 
 their battle with discouragements are filled with de- 
 spondency lest at length there should be little result, 
 let them take courage ; they shall reap. It may not 
 
THE HAEVEST OF RETRIBUTION AND REWARD. 185 
 
 be immediately, but tliey sliall reap in due season, if 
 tliey faint not. It is to " mock " God to think otherwise, 
 and when I put it so, my Christian brethren, you, 
 I know, will be the last to incur any such guilt as that. 
 Hold on, then, though your sowing should be in sor- 
 row. Here is a song for your inspiration. Sing it, and 
 as you honor God by the faith which it breathes you 
 will acquire new strength for the work which you are 
 carrying through. " They that sow in tears shall reap 
 in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing pre- 
 cious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, 
 bringing his sheaves with him." 
 
 February 37, 1881. 
 
DEBTORS. 
 
 Romans i. 14, I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barba- 
 rians : both to the wise and to the unwise. 
 
 The Greeks styled " barbarians " all those wto did 
 not speak that polished language of which they were so 
 justly proud. In the mouth of a Jew, therefore, the 
 phrase *' Greeks and barbarians " included all Gen- 
 tiles. So, when Paul aflfirms that he is " a debtor both 
 to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and 
 to the unwise," his meaning is that he is under obliga- 
 tion to Gentiles universally without respect to race or 
 culture ; and in the text he gives that as a reason why 
 he was so anxious to visit Rome — because that was the 
 place where he was most likely to meet representatives 
 of all existing nationalities and of all grades of intel- 
 ligence. The language is commercial, and yet the 
 obligation which it acknowledges is not precisely that 
 which a merchant commonly understands by the words. 
 Debt is that which a man owes to another for some- 
 thing which he has bought from him on trust, or re- 
 ceived from him as a loan. But Paul was not in any 
 such way indebted to the Gentiles. He had never 
 bought anything in their markets without paying its 
 price. They had not lent him any sums of money on 
 interest. No human being had any pecuniary claim 
 against him. He was, in that sense, the most inde- 
 pendent of men, for he owed no one a penny. 
 
 Neither did he owe the Gentiles any gratitude for fa- 
 vors which he had received at their hands, for in 
 
DEBTOES. 187 
 
 almost every city in wliicli he labored lie liad encoun- 
 tered persecution, and suffered wrong. It was not 
 therefore, on the ground of anything which he had 
 obtained />"o?/i the Gentiles that Paul acknowledged 
 himself to be their debtor, but solely on the ground 
 of that which he had received from another/or them. 
 At his conversion to Christianity he had been com- 
 missioned to the Gentiles " to open their eyes and to 
 turn them from darkness to light and from the power 
 of Satan unto God, that they might receive forgiveness 
 of sins, and inheritance among them which are sancti- 
 fied " ; and so he regarded himself as " the apostle of 
 the Gentiles." Just as at a far later date John Wesley 
 declared that the world was his parish, so Paul 
 looked upon himself as a bishop whose diocese in- 
 cluded all the Gentile nationalities. " The glorious 
 gospel of the blessed God " had been " committed" to 
 his "trust" for their behoof; he had been "allowed 
 of God to be put in trust with the gospel " for their 
 benefit, and, therefore, that he might be a faithful 
 steward of the mysteries of God, he was exceedingly 
 desirous of preaching the truth as it is in Jesus to 
 men of every nation, and of every degree. He could 
 not honestly hold it back. It had not been given to 
 him for himself alone, and if he had attempted to keep 
 it from his fellow-men he would have been false to 
 the trust which had been committed to his care, and 
 could not have vindicated himself either at the bar of 
 conscience or at the bar of God. 
 
 The case stood thus : On the one hand he had him- 
 self been signally blessed by the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 When he was ignorantly rushing on in a career of an- 
 tagonism to the truth, and had become a persecutor 
 and a murderer, he was apprehended by the mercy of 
 the Most High, and at the very moment when his eyes 
 
188 DEBTOES. 
 
 were opened to tlie discovery of liis guilt he received 
 tlie assurance of liis forgiveness. Henceforth a new 
 life began in him. Everything was changed to him I 
 and in recognition of the love which had been shown 
 to him he j)laced himself soul, body and spirit at the 
 disposal of the Lord. Had it pleased the Saviour so 
 to employ him, he would probably have j)i^eferred to 
 remain at Jerusalem and work in his service there ; 
 but it was not for him to choose, and when he was 
 specially commissioned to go to the Gentiles, he went 
 with his whole soul to do his Master's bidding. Under- 
 neath this obligation, therefore, in the heart of Paul 
 there lay all his gratitude to the Redeemer for his 
 own salvation, and he sought in this practical way, 
 by laboring for the benefit of others, to show the 
 magnitude of his appreciation of all that he owed to 
 Christ. 
 
 Then, on the other side, there were the clamant 
 needs of the Gentile world. The vision of the man of 
 Macedonia crying, "Come over and help us," was, 
 indeed, a special divine indication to him of what the 
 Lord would have him to do ; but it came to him in 
 that form and at that time, because it was already in 
 the line of all his aspirations, and desires, and jDur- 
 poses. He knew the hollowness of the idolatries of 
 the Gentiles ; he had seen the degradation to which 
 their worship led ; and having learned the value of 
 his own soul at the cross of Christ, he was eager to be 
 the means of communicating the same revelation, and 
 conveying the same life to them. This was the spon- 
 taneous prompting of the new nature which he had 
 received from Christ by the regeneration and in-dwell- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit ; but that yearning of his own 
 was intensified, and made no mere spasmodic emotion, 
 but an abiding principle of action, in him by the re- 
 
DEBTOKS. 189 
 
 ception of hm commission as the " apostle of the 
 Gentiles." For that commission made him personally 
 responsible for their becoming acquainted with the 
 gospel of the Lord Jesus, and so, wherever he came 
 into contact with them, he could not rest until he had 
 preached it to them. Whether they should accept it 
 or not rested with themselves. That was a matter of 
 their own choice. But as for the proclamation of it 
 to them, he had no alternative ; for necessity was laid 
 upon him, and he felt that it was at his peril if he 
 should hold his peace. 
 
 How that motive operated in him is seen in a 
 very peculiar manner by his course at Athens. He 
 was in that classic city alone. He had not intended, 
 so far as appears, without the support of com- 
 panions, to do anything publicly there ; but when 
 lie saw the state of things among the people his spirit 
 was so stirred that, in defiance of all the dictates 
 of prudence, and at the risk of scorn and persecution, 
 he could not but speak. And when we get thus up to 
 the fountain-head of motive in his heart, it becomes 
 easy for us to understand how it came that Paul was 
 enabled to do so much both for the church and for the 
 world. He was always on the outlook for opportu- 
 nities of paying this debt both to the Greeks and to the 
 barbarians ; both to the wise and to the unwise. He 
 was not afraid to speak to men like Sergius Paulus, or 
 Festus ; and yet he was not above seeking the salva- 
 tion of a runaway slave like Onesimus. He was 
 equally earnest in the little prayer-meeting of women 
 at Philippi where Lydia was converted, and upon the 
 summit of Areopagus where he was surrounded by the 
 proud philosophers of Athens ; for he was in debt to 
 both alike, and he sought to have himself clear from 
 the blood of both. He could not rest under this obli- 
 
190 DEBTORS. 
 
 gation, but went in obedience to it from city to city 
 until be reached Rome at last ; and even there, when 
 he was an "ambassador in bonds," he found a con- 
 gregation large enough for his ambition in the soldier 
 that was chained to his right arm. He never saw a 
 man without remembering that he had a debt to pay to 
 him, and so, not more for the benefit of the stranger 
 than for the exoneration of his own conscience in the 
 manifestation of fidelity to the trust which he had re- 
 ceived for him, he sought his highest welfare. Un- 
 like the dishonest debtor who flees from land to land 
 that he may escape his creditors, Paul was ever on 
 the move that he might fairly and honestly meet the 
 obligations that rested upon him, and might have new 
 opportunities of coming into contact with those for 
 whom God had appointed him trustee. Brethren, 
 when I put it so, I cease to wonder at the unwearying 
 assiduity of the great aj)ostle, while at the same time 
 I am filled with shame at the poor, paltry littleness of 
 our modern Christianity when compared with his. 
 For, while there was undeniably a specialty in the 
 case of Paul, inasmuch as he was distinctly and di- 
 vinely commissioned to be the apostle of the Gentiles, 
 the obligation to which he here refers is general and 
 rests on every individual believer. In him it came to a 
 distinct and definite head, and took an individual and 
 peculiar direction under the articulate command of 
 the Lord. But his was only a specific instance of a 
 generic principle, and that principle holds to-day for 
 us as really and powerfully as it did for him. 
 
 Now what is that principle ? It is this, that personal 
 possession of any peculiar privilege is of the nature of 
 a trust, and involves the obligation that the privilege 
 shall be used by the individual not for his own pleas- 
 ure or 2>rofit merely, but for the welfare of those who 
 
DEBTORS. 191 
 
 are not similarly blessed. What I have that another 
 has not is to be used by me not for my own aggran- 
 dizement, but for the good of that other as well as for 
 my own. It is not mine in the sense of its being simply 
 for my own enjoyment. I may not say regarding it : 
 " Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine 
 own? " for I do not hold it as of absolute possession. 
 It is committed to me as a trust. I hold it merely as 
 a steward holds that which is another's ; and I am to 
 use it not for myself alone, but also with a view to the 
 benefit of those who have not the same privilege as 
 has been conferred on me. The greatness of excep- 
 tional endowment, of whatever sort it may be, carries 
 with it an obligation to similar exceptional greatness 
 of service. The highest of all, by virtue of his very ele- 
 vation, is to be the servant of all. The power of the 
 strong is, shall I say? divinely mortgaged in the 
 interests of the weak ; the sufferer whom I have the 
 means of relieving has a God-given claim upon me 
 for that relief ; and the ignorant, whom I am able to 
 instruct, is by God entitled to that instruction at my 
 hands. He who has, is in debt to him who has not. 
 This is clearly the true interpretation of such a para- 
 ble as that of the good Samaritan ; and indeed it is 
 the true and proper outcome of the gospel itself. 
 
 I know that it seems to run counter to the common 
 modes of thought of the world ; but it is not the less 
 surely the Christian view of the matter because of 
 that. Selfishness would repudiate all such indebted- 
 ness. The man of power says he has won his position, 
 and that he has a right to use it as he will, no matter 
 what may become of others in the process. The man 
 of wealth thinks that the merit of his acquisition is 
 all his own, and that to talk of his being in debt to 
 others because he is so wealthy is a ridiculous absurd- 
 
192 DEBTORS. 
 
 ity. The man of education is apt to become proud of 
 his learning. Has he not amassed it all by his own 
 efforts ? May he not therefore keep it to himself ? or 
 if he wishes to diffuse it may he not do so on his own 
 terms, and so as to minister to his own profit ? And 
 so with all other possessors — each in his own measure 
 is prompted to say of his property like another Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, " Is not this great Babylon that I have 
 built for the house of my kingdom and for the honor of 
 my majesty ? " and so each has become, by virtue of his 
 possessions, just so much the more an oppressor and 
 an affliction to those who are beneath him. That has 
 been the world's way. 
 
 But Christ has inaugurated a new dispensation 
 and reversed all that by introducing the principle on 
 which I am now insisting, and already we see indica- 
 tions of its operations among us. Take power, for 
 example, and how readily now men understand and 
 assent to the statement that it has its duties— and that 
 is only another word for debts — as well as its preroga- 
 tives? The chief magistrate of this Republic is 
 presumably the most powerful individual in it, yet he 
 may not use his power simply for his own ends. True, 
 he is limited by the Constitution, but still outside of 
 the Constitution altogether, and in the public opinion 
 of the country, there is the feeling that in numberless 
 ways which no written constitution could enumerate 
 he owes it to the community to exert his power for the 
 public welfare, and not either for personal or party 
 purposes. It may be difficult to enforce that obliga- 
 tion in any legal way, but still it is there, assented to 
 by his own heart as well as required by his fellow- 
 citizens. Then as to wealth : the conviction is becom- 
 ing stronger among us that riches bring obligations 
 with them, and that the man who is blessed with them 
 
DEBTORS. 193 
 
 owes certain duties, ttat is to say, is himself a debtor, 
 to the community of which he is a member. No civil 
 statute, indeed, could define precisely what these 
 duties are, and no legal tribunal could enforce them ; 
 but still they are there, and the obligation to perform 
 them is not the less imperative or important because 
 the measure of obedience to them is left in each case 
 to the impulse of the individual heart. The rich man 
 who makes himself a great Dead Sea into which all the 
 streams of his effort run, and from which nothing 
 flows out, is despised ; while every one honors him 
 who uses his money for the good of the people. That 
 shows how thoroughly this principle that possession 
 implies trust has permeated our modern life. The 
 same is true of education, and of all the other things 
 which become the property of a man, whether by in- 
 heritance or through God's blessing on his own exer- 
 tions. True, we are a very long way yet either from 
 a universal or from a full recognition of this principle 
 in general society. But it is making its way ; and 
 what I am anxious that you should observe is, that it 
 has had its origin in the gospel ; and that in the 
 measure in which it advances it will diminish the 
 perils that are, I fear, incident to our modern civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 It has had its origin in the gospel, for, until Christ 
 came, men cared little for anything outside of them- 
 selves. The question of Cain, "Am I. my brother's 
 keeper ? " gives the key to the explanation of all the 
 enormities of the ancient civilizations ; and after a 
 survey of the history of the world before the advent, 
 one might employ the preacher's words : " So I re- 
 turned and considered all the oppressions that are 
 done under the sun ; and behold the tears of such as 
 were oppressed ; and they had no comforter ; and on 
 
194 DEBTORS. 
 
 the side of tlieir oppressors there was power, but they 
 had no comforter." But Christ brought the power of 
 the highest to the help of the lowest ; and he taught 
 liis followers to look " not every man on his own things, 
 but every man also on the things of others." He con- 
 demned the selfish and comjjlacent policy of passing 
 misery, or sorrow, or want, or opj)ression " by on the 
 other side," and commissioned all his followers — as 
 really as he commissioned Paul to be apostle of the 
 Gentiles — to use all the resources at their command 
 for the mitigation of the sufferings and the removal of 
 the ignorance of tlieir fellow-men, so that each of them 
 might say, " I am a debtor both to the wise and to the 
 unwise." 
 
 And this princij)le, thus introduced by the gospel, 
 furnishes that which is needed to meet the j)erils of 
 our modern civilization. The tendency of the times is 
 to increase the separation between different classes in 
 the community. We continually hear it said that the 
 rich are becoming richer, and the poor are growing 
 poorer. The gulf which has long yawned between 
 employers and employed is widening ; and the dis- 
 tance between the avenues and the tenement houses 
 is constantly becoming greater. Now some of that is 
 no doubt inevitable. We can never have a dead level 
 of absolute equality. It is as natural for society to 
 divide itself into classes as it is for the tree to diverge 
 into branches. And though there be no aristocracy 
 so-called among us, the divisions are just as clearly 
 though it may be not so strongly marked in this land 
 as they are in some European countries. The truth 
 is that such divergence is everywhere unavoidable, 
 although, in these days, even the very triumj^hs of 
 modern machinery have helped to make it worse than 
 perhaps otherwise it might have been. And the thing 
 
DEBTOES. 195 
 
 has to be accepted. We cannot get rid of it, and we 
 must not seek by any factitious means, far less by any 
 violent means, to remove it. What we have to do is to 
 bring the gospel principle of my text to bear upon it 
 with more force. For see how it takes the poison out 
 of all this diversity of condition among men. It 
 makes the powerful man the trustee for the weak ; the 
 rich man the guardian of the poor ; the learned man 
 the teacher of the ignorant, and the free man the 
 emancipator of the enslaved. Thus by so much the 
 more powerful one becomes, by so much the better 
 it will be for the weak beneath his protection ; by so 
 much the wealthier the rich man is, by just so much the 
 better will it be for the poor to whom he is a debtor ; 
 and so with all other possessions. When his followers 
 disputed among themselves which should be greatest, 
 the Lord, instead of seeking to uproot ambition, gave 
 a new definition of greatness as service, and bade 
 them be ambitious of that, thereby transmuting that 
 principle which had been the blackest curse of hu- 
 manity into a means of richest blessing. And in pre- 
 cisely the same way here, the gospel, far from blotting 
 out all distinctions in society, as the communist would 
 do, makes the very privileges which mark the dis- 
 tinction between a higher class and a lower the basis 
 of obligation, so that the one is the debtor of the 
 other, and the obligation increases with the increase 
 of the privilege. In this regard it is a solemn thing to 
 be the possessor of a special blessing, for while it is a 
 boon it always brings a responsibility, and makes its 
 receiver a debtor to others who are less fortunate 
 than himself. That is the Christian principle ; and 
 when men generally accept and act upon it, the mil- 
 lennium shall have begun. Meanwhile it is ours, each 
 in his own place, to carry it fully and faithfully 
 
196 DEBTOKS. 
 
 tlirougli, and so to supply what in us lies of tliat 
 ■wholesome and corrective influence that is needed to 
 counteract the selfishness that is seeking to disinte- 
 grate society. 
 
 But if this principle introduced by Christ is thus 
 making its way in the world, we should expect to find 
 its highest manifestation in the Christian church. 
 And here, though it has not yet attained anything 
 like its legitimate development, we are not entirely 
 disajDpointed, for it has put the heroism and self- 
 sacrifice into our religious life. It has originated and 
 sustained the great missionary enterprise ; and though 
 the church as a whole has not yet anything like come 
 up to the level of Paul, not to S23eak of that of his 
 Divine Master, still there have been individuals who 
 are not unworthy to be compared even with the great 
 apostle of the Gentiles. While we here at home are 
 enjoying our privileges with self-complacency and 
 satisfaction, and thinking that we perform our part 
 by giving a small annual donation to the American 
 Board, the men whom that Board has commissioned 
 are laboring with devoted heroism to carry the gospel 
 into benighted lands. Only two days ago I received 
 the account of the pioneer work in 1881 of those noble 
 men who have gone to begin a mission in West 
 Central Africa, and as I read the thrilling narrative 
 of patience and self-sacrifice, of long journeying cheer- 
 fully undertaken and severe sickness meekly borne, I 
 felt ashamed of myself, and recognized that I am not 
 worthy to unloose the latchets of their shoes. The 
 people around them will have it that they have gone 
 to trade. They insist upon it that they must have gone 
 to receive. They cannot understand that they have 
 gone to give. They look upon them with wonder when 
 
DEBTOES. 197 
 
 they learn their purpose ; and tlie day is coming when 
 they shall be sj)oken of as among the Pauls of this 
 nineteenth century. These men have no gain to seek 
 of an earthly sort. They have gone like the apostle 
 to pay a debt — your debt and mine ; and their example 
 ought to quicken and stimulate us to similar self- 
 denial here in our own city. For there is a sphere 
 here also at our very doors for the operation of this 
 principle, that every privilege is of the nature of a 
 trust. 
 
 We all admit that the possession of spiritual bless- 
 ing involves responsibility, but in making the admis- 
 sion we think almost exclusively of responsibility for 
 ourselves. We feel that because we have so much, 
 therefore we ought to he so much. Because we have 
 the Bible and the sanctuary and church ordinances, 
 and the like, therefore we ought to make the best 
 and the most of these for our own individual sancti- 
 fication. Our holiness ought to be the result of our 
 privileges. And so far so well. That is all true, and 
 no one can gainsay it, but it is not all the truth ; for 
 we have these privileges that we may pass them on 
 to others. Eemember, the principle of my text is, 
 that he who has, is debtor to him who has not. If we 
 have the Bible and others are without it, then we 
 owe the Bible to those who have not yet received 
 it. If we have a church edifice, and others have 
 no place wherein they may gather for the worship 
 of God, and no means to rear one, while we have the 
 power to help them, then we owe churches to those 
 destitute ones. If we have a minister whose words 
 on the Lord's day are full of inspiration and strength 
 to us, and others have no stated ordinances, then we 
 owe it to these others that men shall be commissioned 
 to preach unto them the word of life, and to gather 
 
198 DEBTORS. 
 
 them into Christian communities for mutual edifica- 
 tion and for the further extension of the gospel of 
 Christ. Yes, I say we owe it to them, for the plea 
 here is not to our generosity but to oar justice, and 
 unless we honor it, we must stand forth at last before 
 God and the world as defaulters, and that in a depart- 
 ment where the loss from our unfaithfulness is one 
 that cannot be comj)uted in dollars and cents, but 
 must be reckoned in the souls of immortal men. Ah ! 
 if we who profess and call ourselves Christians did 
 but feel the full force of this obligation as Paul felt 
 it, how soon would the world be converted unto 
 Christ? How easy then would become the solution 
 of that problem which presses so heavily upon the 
 heart of every faithful minister in this city, How shall 
 the great j)opulation round about us be thoroughly 
 evangelized ? There are Christians enough in all our 
 churches to do the work if each of them would say 
 with Paul, " I am a debtor " to all around me who 
 know not the gospel of the Lord, and would realize 
 that he has received the glad evangel as a trust for 
 those who have not yet heard its message of mercy. 
 My brethren, when I put the matter thus I am over- 
 whelmed with the sense of the obligation that I am 
 seeking to enforce, and am constrained to cry for 
 myself as my own shortcomings rise up before me : 
 " Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou God 
 of my salvation." We execrate the deed of her who, 
 having received a ring from the imprisoned noble- 
 man under the promise that she would take it and let 
 it plead for him with his queen, held back the token 
 and allowed him to go unforgiven to the block. We 
 loathe the treachery of those who, having in their 
 hands a reprieve for the brave old Covenanter, kept 
 it to themselves and sent him to the scaffold. And 
 
DEBTORS. 199 
 
 we ! God telp us ! we, with the gospel that proclaims 
 mercy to mankind in our hands, let multitudes go 
 down undone to an eternity without telling them the 
 good news or seeking to lift them from their degra- 
 dation ! Yet, let us be thankful, we are doing some- 
 thing — would that it were more — but we are doing 
 something, and to-day you are asked to give your 
 contributions to keep up the work. The Bethany 
 Mission makes its appeal to you once more. It 
 asks you for the means of carrying on its operations 
 for another year. Give it in full, and let the offer- 
 ing of to-day be the prophecy of a yet larger liber- 
 ality when you shall be requested to rear for them a 
 building of their own.* We are debtors to those seven 
 hundred children and to those one hundred and 
 twenty church members, because we are debtors to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. May he help us now in some 
 degree to meet the obligation ! 
 
 February 26, 1882. 
 
 * It is gratifying to be able to state that since this discourse was 
 preached the new Bethany Church, on Tenth Avenue near Thirty- 
 sixth Street, has been built by the Broadway Tabernacle Church, at 
 a cost of $58,000, of which about three-fourths has been already paid. 
 
THE EEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 Deuteronomy sxsiii. IG. The good-will of him that dwelt in the 
 bush. 
 
 In recent days there lias been mucli debate among 
 critics as to the authorship of the book of Deuteron- 
 omy, and many have supposed that its date must be 
 fixed far down in the history of IsraeL The grounds 
 on which such an opinion is advanced seem to me far 
 too slender for the support of so sweeping a conclu- 
 sion. The objections to it are so serious as to be 
 utterly insurmountable save by evidence of the clear- 
 est sort ; and the different views which have been sub- 
 stituted for that commonly believed among us are so 
 inconsistent with each other as to be mutually de- 
 structive. For all these reasons, therefore, I am con- 
 strained, in spite of the learned dissertations of the so- 
 called higher critics, to rest in the conviction that, 
 with the exception of the last chapter, and some few 
 editorial additions here and there which can be easily 
 distinguished even by the English reader, the book, 
 as a whole, is, as it purports to be, the work of Moses 
 himself. 
 
 But, however the case may stand with the work as 
 a unit, the words of my text are decisive as to the 
 authorship of the blessing of which they form a part. 
 Every jurist is familiar with the story of the judge 
 who upset the argument in favor of the antiquity of a 
 document by holding it up between him and the light, 
 and revealing in the water-mark of the paper itself a 
 date far later than that which had been claimed for the 
 
THE REVELATION AT THE BUSH. 201 
 
 writing upon it. Now, such a water-mark is tlie phrase 
 before us ; only in this case it goes to establish the anti- 
 quity rather than the recentness of that of which it 
 forms a part and into which it is inwoven. For the 
 reference in it is to a personal experience. It was, 
 therefore, quite natural that Moses should make it, and 
 just as improbable that it should be made by another. 
 The force of this consideration becomes all the stronger 
 when we reflect that, unusual as the experience al- 
 luded to undeniably was, there is not a single refer- 
 ence to it in the whole compass of Hebrew literature 
 but this. None of the writers at any one of the differ- 
 ent dates which have been fixed upon by the higher 
 critics for the production of this book has said a word 
 that even hints at the vision which was given to Mo- 
 ses at the bush. Neither in the psalms nor in the 
 proj)hets, whether before or after the exile, do we find 
 the slightest mention of it, and so if an unknown 
 author in any one of those eras had been seeking to 
 personate Moses, it is in the highest degree unlikely, 
 judging by contemporary documents, that he would 
 have sought to put these words into his mouth. So 
 far as appears from the other books of the Hebrews, 
 and however unaccountable to us it may seem, the rev- 
 elation made by Jehovah at the bush had been very 
 largely lost sight of by them, or, at all events, it was 
 not a thing usually referred to among them, and there- 
 fore it would have been unnatural for any one writing 
 then, in the name of Moses, to speak in this casual 
 and incidental way about it. But, on the other hand, 
 how perfectly natural such an allusion is in the mouth 
 of Moses himself! For he could never forget that 
 day in Horeb. Beautifully has Matthew Henry said 
 in this connection : " Many a time God had appeared 
 to Moses, but now [that] he is just dying, he seems to 
 
202 THE KEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 have the most pleasing remembrance of that which 
 was the first time, when his acquaintance with the 
 visions of the Almighty first began, and his corre- 
 spondence with heaven was first settled ; that was 
 a 'time of love' never to be forgotten." So it was 
 quite artless and unpremeditated in Moses to speak 
 here of " the good-will of him that dwelt in the bush," 
 and the reference is what may be called a water-mark 
 which proves the authenticity of the tribal blessings 
 of which it forms a part. It is a little thing, such as 
 no pretended Moses could have thought of, but per- 
 fectly natural for Moses himself to say ; and by all the 
 laws of evidence the very littleness of the thing makes 
 it just so much the stronger as a proof. 
 
 But, leaving this matter of criticism, let us go on to 
 inquire what we are to understand by " the good-will 
 of him that dwelt in the bush." You are familiar with 
 the history. After forty years of shepherd-life in 
 Midian, during which, by communion with God amid 
 nature's wildest solitudes, Moses had wrought himself 
 clear of that self-confident rashness Avhicli had marked 
 his earliest attempt at advancing the cause of the 
 Hebrews in Egypt, he was startled Avith the sight, in 
 the desert, of a bush which seemed to be on fire and yet 
 was not consumed. As he turned aside to look upon the 
 strange spectacle, he heard a voice which he instinct- 
 ively recognized as that of God commanding him to put 
 off his shoes from his feet, because the place whereon 
 he stood was holy ground ; and then, after long con- 
 ference, he was constrained to accept a commission to 
 deliver his kinsmen from the cruelty of the oppressor. 
 There was here, therefore, a revelation both in symbol 
 and in word. These two ran parallel to each other, or, 
 rather, they were not so much two as one, and when 
 Moses speaks of " him that dwelt in the bush," he 
 
THE REVELATION AT THj] BUSH. 203 
 
 must be understood as referring to the sum total of 
 that truth regarding God which he received both from 
 what he saw and from what he heard on the memo- 
 rable occasion to which he refers. To get at that, there- 
 fore, we shall have to consider both, that we may read 
 each in the light of the other ; and when we do so, we 
 shall discover not only that they mutually supplement 
 each other, but, also, that they have a wondrously pre- 
 cious significance for us. 
 
 • I. Let us take, first, the revelation through the 
 symbol. Moses saw a bush apparently aflame, and 
 yet unburned. The fire did no injury to the acacia 
 branch, but only made the greenness of the leaves 
 more conspicuous by the contrast. Now what was the 
 meaning of this emblematic representation? It has 
 eommonly been regarded as a figure of the Israelites 
 in Egypt subjected to the fiery ordeal of persecution 
 at the hand of Pharaoh ; and yet only multiplying the 
 more the more they were oppressed. The church of 
 God, so it is said, is here shown to be indestructible ; 
 and this is proved by the martyrology of the ages. In 
 perfect harmony, therefore, with this traditional in- 
 terpretation of the symbol the Church of Scotland 
 has taken for its seal a representation of the burning 
 bush with the motto, " Nee tamen consumebatur " (" yet 
 it was not consumed "). Now that is truth, and very 
 important truth ; it is truth, too, which in any case 
 will come to be included in a full exposition of the 
 meaning of the symbol ; but still, though I put it forth 
 in my discourses on the life of Moses as the chief 
 thing taught by this divine object-lesson,* I have come 
 to the conclusion, on mature reflection, that such an 
 
 * See Moses the Law Gi ver, p. 47. 
 
204 THE EEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 interpretation proceeds upon a wrong principle. It 
 makes the fire represent the furnace of affliction in 
 which the Hebrews were then burning ; but if that be 
 so, where is the emblem of the divine presence which 
 made holy the place in which it was manifested ? If 
 God were there under a visible symbol at all (and we 
 must believe that he was, for does not Moses here 
 sjDeak of him as "dwelling" in the bush?) then he was 
 there invailed in the fire. Under the whole Mosaic 
 economy, God was partially revealed and partially con- 
 cealed in the glory flame-cloud which as vapor by day 
 and flame by night hovered over the encampment of 
 the tribes in the wilderness, and which at length set- 
 tled into the Shekinah that dwelt between the cheru- 
 bim in the holy of holies of the tabernacle. It is, 
 therefore, much more thoroughly in harmony not only 
 with the verbal communications made by Jehovah at 
 the time to Moses, but also with the whole tenor of 
 the Mosaic system, to take the fire here as the form 
 under which Deity for the moment had made Himself 
 visible ratlier than as the emblem of the furnace to 
 which the Hebrews were exposed in their house of 
 bondage. We have here, in a word, the first appear- 
 ance of the Shekinah which ultimately overshadowed 
 the mercy seat ; and in the command, " Draw not nigh 
 hither," we have the forerunner of the vail which 
 shrouded the innermost sanctuary from view, and kept 
 all irreverent intruders from entering the place which 
 was open only to the high priest, and to him only 
 when he went in with the blood of the atonement- 
 The fire, then, is the visible token of the divine pres- 
 ence. 
 
 But what of the bush ? The answer is already fur- 
 nished by our interpretation of the glory flame. It is 
 that in which the presence of God was dwelling, and so 
 
THE KEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 205 
 
 we regard it as the emblem of him in whom the true 
 Shekinah abode ; in whom the "Word became flesh ; 
 in whose humanity alone deity could reside without 
 consuming it as it would certainly have consumed any 
 other humanity, and whose glory as of the Only Be- 
 gotten of the Father men beheld " full of grace, and full 
 of truth." And we may, perhaps, see a corroboration 
 of the truth of this view in the predictions of a later 
 day which spoke after this fashion, " Behold the man 
 whose name is the Branch ! " " Behold I will bring 
 forth my servant the Branch." Even as afterwards in 
 the tabernacle one of the great meanings of its symbol- 
 ism was Incarnation ; so we have the same thing here in 
 the bush ; and thus the theophany then vouchsafed to 
 Moses takes its place in the line of those anticipations, 
 as I may call them, of the advent, of which we have so 
 many in the Old Testament, and especially reminds us 
 of the appearance of the Peniel angel to Jacob, and 
 that of the Captain of the host of the Lord to Joshua. 
 These were all alike the forecast shadows of him in 
 whom God was " manifest in the flesh," and each had 
 its own light to shed on the wondrous Incarnation for 
 which they were all preparatory. This view of the 
 matter is confirmed by the expressions used in the his- 
 tory to which my text refers, for there we read, " the 
 angel of the Lord appeared to him in the flame of 
 fire out of the midst of a bush " ; and " God called 
 unto him out of the midst of the bush," so that no 
 created angel can be meant, but indeed " the Angel of 
 the Covenant," who is the fellow of the Almighty, and 
 who for us men and for our salvation became Incar- 
 nate in the Son of Mary. 
 
 But God in Christ is thereby also in the church, 
 which is the body of Christ, and as such he is the 
 source of its indestructibility. Here, therefore, we 
 
206 THE KEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 get at the tliought wliich has commonly been con- 
 nected with this revelation at the bush ; but it is sub- 
 ordinate to the main teaching, and indeed an inference 
 from it ; and it may be carried still farther, since God 
 in Christ is thereby also in every individual believer, 
 for is not the Christian a temple of the Holy Ghost at 
 once purified and protected by the flame of the in- 
 dwelling Spirit ? Now, if all this be true, the good- 
 will of him that dwelt in the bush is, in New Testa- 
 ment phraseology, " the grace " or favor " of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ," or, which comes to the same thing, of 
 God in Jesus Christ. 
 
 II. But now let us look at the conference of this 
 divine angel with Moges at the bush, and see how 
 this view is confirmed. In reading over these two 
 chapters of Exodus — the third and fourth — we are 
 impressed with the following things concerning the 
 mysterious One who spoke to Moses out of the midst 
 of the bush : 
 
 1. In the first place, he calls himself by the incom- 
 municable name. "When Moses, shrinking from the 
 magnitude of the task laid upon him, wished to know 
 what he should say if the people to whom he went 
 should ask. Who sent you ? what is his name ? this 
 answer was given him : " I AM that I am. Thus shalt 
 thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent 
 me unto you." I am — it is the expression of inde- 
 pendent self-existence — aj)propriate to none but Deity, 
 whose consciousness is an eternal present. The 
 thought is overwhelming ; yet, overwhelming as it is, 
 it is also steadying and comforting in its influence, and 
 I do not wonder that years after Moses had heard these 
 words at the bush, and when he saw his fellow-men 
 falling in death by his side, he found his consolation 
 
THE REVELATION AT THE BUSH. 207 
 
 in the tnith which, it revealed, and said in his psalm : 
 " Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all gen- 
 erations. Before the mountains were brought forth, 
 or even thou hadst formed the earth and the world, 
 even from everlasting to everlasting, thou aet — God." 
 But what I am more concerned to show you now is 
 that in the New Testament we find the same claim 
 advanced by the Lord Jesus Christ ; for when the 
 Jews said to him : " Thou art not yet fifty years old, 
 and hast thou seen Abraham ? " he replied : " Be- 
 fore Abraham was born I am." And indeed, as I have 
 more than once showed you,'^ we have in the fourth 
 gospel a series of similar I ams, whereby Jesus re- 
 vealed himself to those around him as the Jehovah of 
 the Old Testament dwelling in human nature, even as 
 here the glory flame abode in the bush. You remem- 
 ber them well. They are such as these : " I am the 
 bread of life ; " "I am the light of the world ; " I am 
 the Good Shepherd;" "I AM the door;" "I am the 
 resurrection and the Life ; " "I am the way, the truth 
 and the Life ; " "I am the true vine ; " and the time 
 when, through these announcements, a soul perceives 
 the Deity of Jesus is for that soul the supreme mo- 
 ment of its existence when, like Moses here, it re- 
 ceives its commission to its proper life work. So 
 again, in the opening chapter of the Book of Revela- 
 tion, we have the Lord speaking of himself in the 
 like fashion, thus : " I AM Alpha and Omega, the 
 beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, 
 and which is to come," while the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews has crystallized the same 
 truth into this dogmatic statement : " Jesus Christ, 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." So here 
 
 * See "The Limitations of Life and Other Sermons," p. 23. 
 
208 THE REVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 again "ue find that tlie I AM in the bush is the an- 
 ticipation of the Jesus whom we know and worship 
 as our Redeemer, and whose " good-will" is that favor 
 in which is life. 
 
 2. But, in the second place, we find from this con- 
 ference at the bush that the divine angel who spoke 
 with Moses there is the covenant God, for he said : 
 " I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, 
 the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." In his 
 reasoning with the Sadducees of his day, the Saviour 
 drew from these words an argument for the resur- 
 rection of the body ; for as God is not the God of 
 the dead but of the living, it must follow that Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob were still in existence when 
 God so described himself, and as such would yet 
 have their humanity perfected and glorified. The 
 Sadducees grounded their objection to the resurrec- 
 tion of the body on their rejection of the immortality 
 of the soul, and the Lord answers in this way the 
 underlying heresy of his antagonists, leaving it to his 
 own resurrection to prove the falsity of that which 
 they had built thereon. My business now, however, 
 is not with that aspect of the words, but rather with 
 the covenant relation which they express ; and we 
 know that on a memorable occasion Christ startled his 
 hearers with the assertion that many should come 
 from the East and from the West, and should sit down 
 with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of 
 heaven — words which clearly imply that the kingdom 
 which he founded, and of which he is the head, is the 
 carrying out of the covenant made with the old patri- 
 arch, so that he claims to be the God of Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob. To the same effect are Paul's words 
 in the Epistle to the Galatians, when he says : " They 
 which are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham," 
 
THE EEVELATION AT THE BUSH, 209 
 
 implying tliat Abraham's faitli in Jeliovali, as revealed 
 to him, is the same in its nature, its object, and its 
 effects as our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ; that is 
 to say, that he who revealed himself as the God of 
 Abraham is he whom we now know as the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 3. But in the third place we find from this 
 conference at the bush, that the divine angel who 
 spoke to Moses is the omniscient God who knows all 
 his people's troubles and comes to their deliverance. 
 He said : " I have surely seen the afHictions of my peo- 
 ple which are in Egypt and have heard their cry by 
 reason of their taskmasters ; for I know their sorroAvs, 
 and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand 
 of the Egyptians." Pharaoh had long oppressed 
 them, making their lives bitter with hard bondage, 
 and there seemed to be no divine protest against his 
 procedure. It looked almost as if God had forgotten 
 the Hebrews, and for generations they were cruelly 
 maltreated. But he was not unmindful of them, and 
 in the fullness of time he sent Moses to be their eman- 
 cipator. Kow, have we not here in miniature, and on 
 a small 'scale, the very same thing which we see on the 
 wider area of the world, and in the ampler scope of 
 human history as a whole ? For centuries God al- 
 lowed the Pharaohs to grind the Hebrews in slavery. 
 We cannot understand his silence. His forbear- 
 ance with evil and injustice is to us incomprehensi- 
 ble. Yet it is a precisely parallel case to his treat- 
 ment of the human race as a whole, only for " centuries " 
 there we must read millenniums. For long he allowed 
 sin to be apparently triumphant. He did not inter- 
 pose to check it among the nations generally until 
 the advent. As Paul said to the philosophers at 
 Athens, " the times of this ignorance God overlooked," 
 
210 THE EEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 and it was not until tlie fullness of tlie time that lie 
 came to deliver men from its curse. We cannot 
 understand tlie delay ; but it is in the case of the 
 world no more incomprehensible than it was in that 
 of the Hebrews. True, in the latter the years of the 
 delay were not so numerous, and the people affected 
 were not so many, but the principle in both is the 
 same, and if the Hebrews did not reject their deliver- 
 ance because it was so long in coming, why should 
 we refuse salvation because Christ did not come to 
 the world sooner with its blessings ? More especially 
 as, when he did come, he came with a compassion 
 identical with that expressed for the Hebrews at the 
 bush. Listen to these words : " The Son of Man is 
 come to seek and to save that which was lost." " The 
 Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." " I 
 am come that ye may have life and may have it more 
 abundantly." Are they not all in harmony with this ? 
 *' I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of 
 the Egyptians." May we not infer, therefore, that 
 they came from the same heart, and that the Jehovah 
 of the bush is the Jesus of the cross ? 
 
 4. But, in the fourth place, we see from this confer- 
 ence at the bush that the divine angel who spoke to Mo- 
 ses there is the long-suffering God who bears with the 
 waywardness of his people. How tenderly he treated 
 Moses on that occasion ! From the extreme of rash- 
 ness the son of Amram had recoiled to that of timid- 
 ity ; and he who, forty years before, attempted to run 
 without being sent, now seeks to decline his commis- 
 sion altogether. He is profuse in excuses, such as 
 that he was unworthy of the honor which was offered 
 him ; that he was unable to answer the Israelites 
 if they should ask him " Who sent you ? " : that 
 
THE EEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 211 
 
 even if lie went the people would not believe liim ; 
 and that he was not eloquent, but slow of speech 
 and of a slow tongue. These were the pretexts which 
 he put forward in order, if possible, to evade the 
 duty that was laid upon him, but out of them all 
 God nourished him into such strength that he went 
 at length, and became the leader of the Exodus. 
 Now, it is scarcely" possible for any one to read the 
 account of this conference without being reminded 
 of our Lord's training of his chosen apostles ; how 
 he bore with their weaknesses and waywardnesses, 
 teaching them as they were able to receive it, and 
 bringing them up, at last, to such a point that Peter 
 had to say, "We cannot but speak the things which 
 we have seen and heard," and Paul had to declare 
 that necessity was laid upon him, yea, woe was unto 
 him if he preached not the gospel ! In this confer- 
 ence, in the desert of Midian, we have thus, I make 
 bold to say, an anticipation and synopsis, under Old 
 Testament forms, of the whole training of the twelve 
 by Jesus for their work, as it is recorded in the four 
 gospels, and so the inference is inevitable that the Je- 
 hovah of the bush is the Jesus of Nazareth, 
 
 5. To mention only one point more, this divine 
 angel is the God who promises to be with his people 
 in all their history. "When Moses said, " Who am I 
 that I should go to Pharaoh ? " the voice out of the 
 bush answered, " Certainly I will be with thee." So, 
 after Jesus had said to his followers, " Go ye, there- 
 fore, and disciple all nations, baj^tizing them in the 
 name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
 Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatso- 
 ever I have commanded you " ; and when, perhaps, he 
 saw on their countenances an exj)ression of consterna- 
 tion at the magnitude of the charge which he had 
 
212 THE EEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 given them, lie added, " And lo ! I am with you alway, 
 even nnto the end of the woild." A large promise 
 which only Deity would dare to make, and which, in 
 its likeness to the words addressed to Moses—" Cer- 
 tainly I will be with thee " — indicates that it came 
 from the same divine source. Thus, whether we look 
 at the significance of the symbol in itself considered, 
 or at the conference which was carried on in connec- 
 tion with it, we are warranted, I think, if not required, 
 to come to the conclusion that the Jehovah of the 
 bush is the Jesus of the New Testament, of whom 
 it is written that " he shall save his people from 
 their sins." "The good-will of him that dwelt in the 
 bush" is, therefore, equivalent to "the grace of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ " ; and so, every time the apostolic 
 benediction is pronounced, the pastor supplicates for 
 his peojile precisely the same spiritual blessing that 
 Moses here requested for the descendants of Joseph, 
 along with, and supplementary to, the temporal pros- 
 perity on which he dwells so lovingly and long. For 
 worldly wealth is of little value if we have not the di- 
 vine good-will with it. If we are poor that good-will 
 is of itself an ample portion ; and if we are rich, it will 
 make our riches harmless to us, by teaching us to turn 
 them into means of blessing to others ; while, on 
 the other hand, if we despise the favors of our cove- 
 nant God, and seek only the wealth of earth, we shall 
 iiltimately lose both, and find ourselves at last, like 
 the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, hopelessly 
 captive in the grasp of our destroyer. Above every- 
 thing else, therefore, and along with everj^thing else, 
 let us seek this favor by faith in and faithfulness to 
 the Lord Jesus, and we shall discover, as we go on, 
 that he is true to us in every emergency and through 
 every vicissitude. 
 
THE KEVELATION AT THE BUSH. 213 
 
 For I must not neglect to add that in the mouth 
 of Moses the words "The good-will of him that 
 dwelt in tlie bush " had, in this blessing of the 
 tribe of Joseph just before he died, a far richer 
 significance than they could have had on then when, 
 after having seen the great sight and heard the great 
 words, he turned away from the desert of Midian, and 
 took his journey into Egyjjt. He went on there in 
 faith, but now he could look back upon a rich expe- 
 rience. Between the bush and the plains of Moab 
 lay forty years of the fullest realization of all that Je- 
 hovah had promised, and so he commended Joseph's 
 children to one whom he knew to be faithful to his 
 word. Had he not been to Egypt and brought out 
 his people into freedom ? Had he not enjoyed closest 
 fellowship with God as a man talketh with his friend? 
 Had lie not been directed by him in every difficulty 
 and provided for by him in every strait ? Whom he 
 had proved, therefore, they might trust. The Lord 
 who had with him stood the strain of the Exodus, and 
 the test of the wilderness wanderings, would not fail 
 them in their time of need. He had been with him, 
 and he would be with them. And is not this true of our 
 Jesus yet ? Whom has he failed ? When has he broken 
 his word ? Who dares to say that he has gone to him 
 and been cast out ? Is it not the unvarying testimony 
 of his people in all generations that they never found 
 him wanting ? Come, therefore, and prove his good- 
 will now to you. For, while there is so much that is 
 j3arallel to tlie gospel in this conference between Je- 
 hovah and Moses at Midian, there is in one point a 
 marked difference between the two. The Jehovah of 
 the bush said, " Draw not nigh hither," but the Jesus 
 of the cross says, " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But 
 
214 THE REVELATION AT THE BUSH. 
 
 that is just the great distinction between the old dis- 
 pensation and the new, and it was rendered necessary 
 by the circumstances of the times. In those ancient 
 days tlie world was not ready to receive the gospel 
 invitation. There needed yet a long education before 
 men would listen to it either with patience or ajjpre- 
 ciation, and so the truth, while preserved among them 
 in the figurative system of Judaism, needed also to be 
 protected from them by the restrictions which hedged 
 that system round. These restrictions were like the 
 horn framework of the lantern through which the light 
 shone, no doubt, only dimly, but by which, also, it 
 was kept from being extinguished by the rude blasts 
 of idolatry and immorality. Now, however, they have 
 served their purpose and are no longer needed. The 
 vail of the temple has been rent asunder ; the temple 
 itself has disappeared ; and, instead of the " draw not 
 nigh," we may hear the '•' come unto me " ; "for in him 
 we have boldness and access with confidence by the 
 faith of him." " Whosoever will," therefore, let him 
 come and claim this divine good-will. Any one may 
 get it through faith in Jesus, and he who secures it 
 " has chosen the good part which shall not be taken 
 from him." Did not the multitude of the heavenly host 
 sing in the hearing of Bethlehem's shepherds, " Glory 
 to God in the highest ; peace on earth, and good-will 
 to men ? " — to men, not to the sons of Joseph merely, 
 nor to the Hebrew nation alone, but to men. Come, 
 then, O burdened one, whatever thy load may be, 
 whether sin, or sorrow, or perplexity, or want, or 
 whatever else, come and claim thy share in this 
 blessed benison for humanity, and then thou shalt 
 realize how much is meant by "the good-will of him 
 who dwelt in the bush." 
 
 March 5, 1882. 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 Matthew xs. 2G, 27, 28. Whosoever will be great among you, 
 let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you 
 let him be your servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be min- 
 istered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. 
 
 Ambition is natural to man. The desire of great- 
 ness is inherent in every human spirit, and even the 
 schoolboy's heart throbs with responsive enthusiasm 
 when he reads the Homeric hero's injunction to his 
 son, " always to be the best and superior to all others." 
 Depravity, indeed, has turned this principle to evil 
 account, but it was implanted in us for the noblest 
 purposes, and it is, even in our present state, a witness 
 to the immortal progress for which we were originally 
 designed. Next to the having of a wrong ambition, 
 the worst thing that can befall a man is to have no 
 ambition at all, for then the mainspring of his soul is 
 broken, and his energy and elevation are at an end. It 
 will not do, therefore, to indulge in wholesale and indis- 
 criminate denunciation of this desire. It belongs to man 
 as man, and what we have to do with it is not to seek 
 its extirpation, but to give it a spiritual character, and 
 turn it into a direction that will benefit others rather 
 than ourselves. Just thus, indeed, it is that the Lord 
 Jesus deals with it. He does not seek to destroy any- 
 thing that is of the essence of our humanity. His 
 design in his redemptive work is to purify man's na- 
 ture as a whole ; and therefore, far from uprooting am- 
 bition, he transfigures it by making it the spur that 
 
216 TEUE GEEATNESS. 
 
 stirs US on, not to self-aggrandizement, but to lioliness 
 and beneficence. 
 
 To see that this is a true statement of the case 
 you have but to look at the incidents in connection 
 with which the words of my text were originally 
 spoken. The mother of James and John, instigated 
 aj)parently by her sons, requested of the Lord that 
 when he came to his kingdom these two disciples 
 might sit, one on his right hand and the other 
 on his left. To this he replied, not by directly 
 refusing the j)etition, but by showing that from the 
 nature of his kingdom they could pass to its high 
 places of honor only by drinking of the cup which he 
 had himself to drain, and submitting to the baptism 
 with which he was himself to be baptized. But the 
 mere making of such a request on their behalf by 
 their mother wounded the pride of the other ten dis- 
 ciples, and so to make his meaning still more plain, 
 and restore harmony among his followers, he went on 
 to say that in that spiritual system of which he was 
 the head it was not to be as it is among the kingdoms 
 of the earth, in which the measure of a man's dominion 
 over his fellows is the measure of his greatness. His 
 kingdom was not to bo of this world in any respect, 
 but its special and peculiar feature — marking its 
 radical difference from the monarchies of earth — 
 was, that whereas in them greatness was a thing of 
 rule, under him it was to be a matter of service. His 
 words may be thus paraphrased : " There needs be no 
 strife between you on this point ; indeed, if you rightly 
 understood my kingdom there would be none ; for 
 even if I were to exalt James and John to the posts of 
 honor which have been asked for them, they would be 
 so exalted not to exercise dominion over you but to 
 be your servants, for that is the principle of my ad- 
 
TKUE GREATNESS. 217 
 
 ministration. The highest is the highest because he 
 ministers to the lowliest. You have called it my king- 
 dom, and jou have said well, for it is mine ; yet even I 
 am here, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
 and to give my life a ransom for many." 
 
 Now observe what all this amounts to. The Saviour 
 does not say that is a wrong thing to desire to be the 
 chief, or to wish to be great. He does not seek to erad- 
 icate ambition, but rather to show what its true function 
 in regenerated manhood is to be. He takes that passion 
 which, in the breasts of such men as Nebuchadnezzar, 
 Xerxes, Alexander and the Caesars, had covered the 
 earth with misery, and he transmutes it into a princi- 
 ple by the operation of which, in the hearts and lives 
 of his followers, the world would yet be blessed " from 
 the rising of the sun to the going down of the same." 
 He defines what true greatness is, and bids his disci- 
 ples be ambitious after that. He substitutes the 
 greatness of love for the love of greatness ; and to 
 those who are eager for power he preaches the might 
 of service ; while with a sublime egoism, to be ex- 
 plained only by his consciousness of deity, he holds 
 himself up as the brightest exemplification of his 
 words. Let us meditate a little upon these striking 
 sayings, and we may find in them some wholesome 
 hints as to the nature, the model, and the motive of 
 true greatness. 
 
 I. They have something to tell us, in the first 
 place, concerning the nature of true greatness. What 
 is greatness ? Scarcely two persons among us would 
 give the same reply to that question. All would 
 admit that it denotes j)re-eminence, but each would 
 have his own jDreference as to the department in which 
 it was to be manifested. Sbme would associate it with 
 10 
 
218 TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 power, some with courage, some with eloquence, and 
 some, perhaps, with w^ealth ; 3'et each would think of 
 it as conferring an advantage on its possessor, and so 
 putting others at a corresponding disadvantage. Here, 
 however, it is connected with that love which works 
 not for its own, interest but for the benefit of others. 
 Still, that we may not be one-sided in a matter of so 
 much importance, we must remember that as Jesus 
 used the word " service," holiness was combined with 
 the love out of wdiich it sprung. So we come to the 
 result that the really great man is he whom holiness 
 and love combine to inspire for the service of his 
 generation by the will of God. How different such 
 a definition of a great man is from that commonly 
 current among lis must be evident to every one. I 
 willingly admit, indeed, that now men's judgments on 
 this subject have been considerably affected by the 
 principles of the gospel ; but still the j)revalent idea 
 of greatness is very far from being identical with that 
 ■which I have deduced from the Saviour's words before 
 me. We crown the man in whom we behold intel- 
 lectual power that has won the success of position or 
 of wealth, but we too rarely think of goodness as being 
 the highest form of greatness. Now, though Christ 
 does not ignore intellect, or even riches, he yet regards 
 these things, and all things like these, as but instru- 
 ments, and he is, in the gospel sense of the word, the 
 gi'eatest who uses all such gifts or possessions in the 
 service of mankind. " He that will be greatest among 
 you, let him be your servant." 
 
 If, then, this view of the case be correct, one or two 
 inferences of importance follow from it. 
 
 1. For one thing, it is evident that he who wins this 
 greatness does not attain it at the expense of others. 
 Many run after the prizes of the world, and not unfre- 
 
TRUE GEEATNESS. 219 
 
 quently those who bear them away have succeeded in 
 doing so more by scheming to keep others from getting" 
 them, than by fair and honest establishment of their 
 own merits. Men rise very often by pushing others 
 down. Here, however, the j)rize is won by helping 
 others uj). Intrigue, oppression, " coups d'etat^^'' 
 are alike unknown in such a rivalry as is here sug- 
 gested, for he who is exalted on this principle to the 
 place of honor has already won the gratitude of those 
 above whom he is elevated, and is where he is with 
 their highest approval. The pursuit of great things, 
 when these are sought simply for one's self, leads not 
 seldom to the violation of the principles of truth and 
 justice and benevolence, and ends full often in bit- 
 terest disappointment ; but the ambition for the great- 
 ness that consists in service stimulates to deeds of 
 self-sacrifice, and has at last the reward of that charity 
 which is twice blessed, because " blessing him that 
 gives and him that takes." 
 
 2. It follows, further, from what has been said, 
 that we may win this greatness anywhere. The 
 poet musing in the country churchyard speaks of 
 some as slumbering there who, had the way been 
 opened to them, might have become famous in 
 their country's annals ; and it is plain that even 
 in a republic which proclaims that all men are 
 born equal, the paths to worldly honor are greatly 
 circumscribed. Everybody has not the intellect of a 
 Webster or the genius of a Henry as his birth capital, 
 conferred by God. The poet is born, not made ; the 
 same thing is true of the orator ; and unless some 
 war should break out, which God prevent ! there can 
 be no field for military glory. But here — in service — 
 is a department always open ; open also to the poorest 
 and the wealthiest ; to the least intelligent and the 
 
220 TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 most intellectual ; to tlie youngest and the oldest ; 
 open in the family and the church ; in the neighbor- 
 hood and in the world ; yea, whoever a man may be, 
 wherever he may go, and whatever may be his re- 
 sources, he may be always the means of helping others, 
 and by that may win at last the commendation and 
 the crown. To bid you aim after merely worldly 
 positions would be to entail certain disappointment 
 on many of you. The peripatetic orators who visit 
 our public schools and tell the boys before them 
 that there may be future Presidents of the Republic 
 among them, forget that such an honor can fall at 
 most on only eight men in a generation. Very few 
 of those who begin the study of the law, fired with the 
 ambition which the thought that " there is always 
 room at the top " inspires, ever reach the top. Not 
 every one who has sought after wealth — though that 
 is perhaps the easiest thing of all to get — has ob- 
 tained it ; and in the race of life you may see multi- 
 tudes lying on the course exhausted and forlorn, 
 having given up all hope of reaching the goal. Thus, 
 in all these departments, multitudes are sure to be 
 disappointed. But we may all get this gospel great- 
 ness. Opportunities for winning it lie all around ; 
 and so in urging you to seek for it I am starting you 
 out on no uncertain quest, nor sending you to chase a 
 deceitful marsh-fire. You may attain that which I set 
 before you, and you will attain it, if only your thoughts 
 are set on serving others and your hearts are filled 
 with love. 
 
 3. But it follows, thirdly, that this greatness 
 is satisfying to its possessor. Literature is full 
 of the sighings of successful men over the disap- 
 pointment which even success lias brought to them. 
 The enjoyment of life, on the world's plan, is in the 
 
TEUE GREATNESS. 221 
 
 pursuit. When the jDrize is won it ceases to charm. 
 That which, in the distance, seemed goodly fruit, 
 crunches in the mouth like ashes. No abiding 
 happiness can be found either in literary fame or 
 political position, or stores of wealth, in themselves, 
 but there is always satisfaction in serving our genera- 
 tion ; and he who, by the grace of God, seeks to make 
 the world the better for his presence will from that 
 effort have the holiest joy. He may, indeed, be mis- 
 construed by his fellows ; he may be ridiculed as an 
 enthusiast ; he may be reproached for what others 
 call his improvidence ; and while he has been think- 
 ing of serving Christ in his people, some will affirm 
 that he has been only the more cunningly aiming for 
 his own advancement, but he will have within him the 
 testimony of a good conscience, and above him the 
 complacency of an approving God ; and the day will 
 come when his worth shall be recognized and his 
 title to men's gratitude and affection conclusively 
 established. This greatness bears investigation. 
 There is nothing in the means by which it has been 
 acquired to create remorse, while the happiness of 
 him who has won it is redoubled by that of those 
 in whose service it has been gained. What a 
 drawback to the conqueror's joy is the appear- 
 ance of the battle-field after an engagement ? And who. 
 among us has not felt his eyes grow dim as he has 
 read of the great captain saying, as he walked among 
 the dead and dying on the night after his most brill- 
 iant success, " Alas ! alas ! next to a defeat, the sad- 
 dest thing is a victory at such a cost." But there is 
 no such shadowing sorrow attendant on the greatness 
 to which Jesus summons us. Its achievements are in 
 the way of saving men, not of destroying them ; and 
 in the promotion of their highest interests it finds its 
 
222 TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 abiding joy. Here, therefore, is an ambition tbat is 
 free from tlie evils that commonly accompany tlie 
 workings of that natural principle. It rises without 
 thrusting others down ; it finds its field of operation 
 in every department of life ; and it seeks its own en- 
 joyment in promoting the happiness of others. Be it 
 ours, my brethren, to aspire after the greatness which 
 the Lord has here described. Let others have the 
 prizes of the world if they will, choose ye this crown 
 of never-fading glory ! The highest commendation one 
 can earn is this — " He hath done what he could " ; and 
 the noblest life record is that which comes nearest to 
 his of whom it was said that " he went about doing 
 good." That is fame, though no earthly herald may 
 trumpet it abroad, for Christ shall proclaim it on the 
 day of days before the assembled universe. 
 
 IL But the test has something to say to us, in the 
 second place, about the model of greatness : " Even 
 as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
 many." In one point of view the greatness of God is 
 that of service. All things dejoend on him. He holds 
 the planets in their orbits. He rules the changing 
 year. " In him we live and move and have our being." 
 He gives us breath, and food, and raiment. The tiniest 
 insect fluttering in the sunbeam is upheld by him, and 
 a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his care. 
 He is thus, in a very true sense of the word, the ser- 
 vant of the creatures whom he has called into being and 
 sustains. Yea, when we come to think it out, we shall 
 see that the greatest inventions, even of recent days, in 
 the way of applied science are just so many new meth- 
 ods in which we may avail ourselves of God's service, 
 and take advantage of his ministry. I speak it rever- 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 223 
 
 ently, yet it is most true, that every power in nature 
 is in the last resort the power of God, and so in steam, 
 electricity, etc., we are but in different ways taking 
 advantage of God's goodness as a servant. Thus 
 the highest of all is the servant of all. But, striking 
 as the nobleness and the divinityof service appenr when 
 we look thus at the universal ministry of God, we 
 have a more impressive illustration of the same thing 
 in the mission and work of the Lord Jesus. In crea- 
 tion and providence God lays nothing aside. He has 
 made no sacrifice in either of these. He has not — if I 
 may so express it — put himself about to serve his creat- 
 ures. Everything in nature is done with ease. Noth- 
 ing is difl&cult to omnipotence. But in redemption it 
 was different. To deliver man from the guilt and 
 power of sin it was needed that the Son of God should 
 become a man, and, after a life of obedience, should 
 submit to a death of shame ; and tliere was sacrifice : 
 there was a giving up of that which even Godhead 
 felt to be infinitely valuable, and when that was done 
 Jehovah rendered the highest service to humanity, 
 and gave a pattern of the loftiest greatness. 
 
 It deserves to be remarked, however, that though 
 the point of the reference made here by Jesus to his 
 death lies in its power as an example, he uses lan- 
 guage concerning it which clearly implies that it was 
 redemptive and sacrificial. It was the " ransom " or 
 price which had to be paid for the declaration of Je- 
 hovah's righteousness in the forgiveness of believing 
 men ; and the use of this term here as it were incident- 
 ally, when allusion is specially made to quite another 
 side of the subject, is a valuable testimony from his own 
 lips to the substitutionary nature of his death. But, in- 
 deed, the same thing must come out even when we 
 regard the giving up of his life as an example ; for if 
 
224 TEUE GREATNESS. 
 
 there were no righteous necessity for liis dying as a 
 means of saving men, then it becomes a mere display 
 of sentiment, a throwing away of that which, without 
 detriment to any interest, might have been kept ; and 
 that coukl be no proper model of any sort for men. 
 When, however, we reflect that only by his giving him- 
 self up to death in the sinner's room could any one be 
 saved, then we see in his voluntary surrender of himself 
 to the cross the noblest act of service of which the uni- 
 verse has been the scene. Christ came into the world 
 to die, and in his death he served us more effectually 
 than others could have done by their lives. But it 
 must not be forgotten, either, that his death was but 
 the climax and consummation of a life of ministering 
 — the last and greatest act in a series of the sublimest 
 services ever rendered by one person to others. He 
 was continually ministering. He was always at the 
 call of weakness, or of suffering or of want. Every 
 one of his miracles was benevolent. He never thought 
 of his own ease, or allowed regard for himself to stand 
 in the way of the manifestation of his love to others. 
 " Even Christ pleased not himself." He sought no 
 personal aggrandizement. He coveted no gold or 
 silver. He desired no earthly glory. But wherever 
 a sick one needed healing, or a weak one required 
 strength, or a weeping one sought solace, there he 
 was to be found doing appropriate service. When he 
 sat exhausted on the well of Sychar, he denied himself 
 both repose and refreshment that he might guide an 
 erring woman back to the way of holiness. When 
 with his twelve apostles he went for retirement to 
 the eastern shore of Genesaret, he did not allow 
 consideration for himself to keep him from instruct- 
 ing the multitudes that persistently followed him ; 
 and he added to that kindness the working of a mir- 
 
TEUE GREATNESS. 225 
 
 acle for their feeding. Nay, even wlien tlie dark- 
 ness of Calvary was closing over him he forgot his 
 own agony as he heard the prayer of the penitent who 
 hung beside him ; and in these words of answer, " To- 
 day shalt thou be with me in paradise," we have one 
 of the sublimest instances of self-abnegation which 
 even his history contains. This is the model of the 
 highest greatness. Be not appalled, I pray you, by 
 the purity of its perfection, but seek day by day to 
 come nearer to the height of its ever -ascending ideal. 
 Lay aside all inferior standards. Seek to imitate no 
 meaner ensample. We dwarf our efforts by consent- 
 ing to accept less exalted models. Let us, therefore, 
 keep ever " looking unto Jesus," and, like Paul, make 
 this our motto : " This one thing I do : forgetting those 
 things which are behind and reaching forth unto those 
 things which are before, I press toward the mark for 
 the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
 It may entail upon us the drinking of many a bitter 
 cup, and the enduring of many a fiery baptism, but if 
 we press forward in this holy quest, then, at the end, 
 for us, too, as for Paul, there will be " the crown of 
 righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
 shall give us at that day." 
 
 IIL But this text has something to say to us finally 
 about the motive to true greatness. We are to seek it 
 for the sake of him who gave himself for us. I do not 
 find, indeed, any distinct expression of this thought 
 in the verses before us. Jesus does not say in so 
 many words, " Serve one another, because I have 
 served you ; " but still the reference which he makes 
 to his death, as an example, brings before every 
 Christian's mind the magnitude of the obligation under 
 which Christ has laid him. He died for us. But for 
 10* 
 
226 TEUE GREATNESS. 
 
 liis deatL. our deliverance would have been impossible. 
 Through his sacrifice our salvation has been secured. 
 Thus we owe everything to him. Our present privi- 
 leges and our future hopes all center in him. If he is 
 anything to us at all, he is to us " all and in all." And 
 the great question of our hearts, in view of his ser- 
 vices to us, is " What shall I render unto the Lord for 
 all his benefits ? " Now, his answer to that inquiry is 
 virtually this : " By love serve one another. He is 
 the most deeply grateful to me who is the most self- 
 sacrificing minister to the temporal and spiritual ne- 
 cessities of others. Wherever you see another stand- 
 ing in need of your assistance as much as you were 
 needing mine when I came to help you by dying in 
 your stead, help liim, and that will be thanking me, 
 for * inasmuch as ye do it to one of the least of these 
 ye do it unto me.' " We are, thus, to see Christ's 
 image in every sick and sorrowful and suffering one ; 
 and we are to show our gratitude to him for his death 
 in our behalf by laboring to serve them in the most 
 self-denying manner. Thus gratitude is the source 
 of greatness, and so this Christian ambition, alike in 
 its root and in its fruits, is transfigured and becomes 
 a totally difi'erent thing from that which is commonly 
 so called. Behold how it showed itself in Paul, I 
 call him, all in all, the greatest man whom the Chris- 
 tian church has yet produced. For activity, for self- 
 sacrifice, for constant devotion to the good of others, 
 he stands unrivaled among the sons of men, and if 
 you ask him to explain it all, he will reply in these 
 autobiograj)hic words : " I am crucified with Christ, 
 nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, 
 and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the 
 faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave him- 
 self for me ; " or these : " Alway bearing about in the 
 
TRUE GEEATNESS. 227 
 
 body tlie dying of tlie Lord Jesus that the life, also, of 
 Jesus might be made manifest in my body." Now, if 
 we would emulate his greatness, we must follow the 
 same j)lan. We must begin by receiving Jesus Christ 
 into our hearts as our Redeemer, and we must go on 
 by maintaining our love to him and our confidence in 
 him until at length self shall be swallowed up in him, 
 and our one absorbing, overmastering ambition will 
 become that we may reproduce, as far as we may, 
 Christ's own self-sacrifice on our lowlier level and 
 within our more limited area. 
 
 I have seen a picture wdiich, by the genius of the 
 artist, told at least one chapter of the story of a poor 
 man who was confined for years in a cold, dark dungeon. 
 There was but one little opening in the wall,and through 
 that a sunbeam came for but a few minutes every day 
 making a white patch of light on the opposite side of 
 the cell. Often and often the lonely man gazed on that 
 little spot which was thus daily illuminated, and at 
 length a purpose to make something on it grew within 
 his soul. Groping on the ground, which was his only 
 floor, he found a nail and a stone, and with these for 
 chisel and mallet he set to work on that bright little 
 patch for the brief time of every day that it was kissed 
 by the sunlight, until at length he brought out upon it in 
 sculptured relief a rude representation of Cbrist upon 
 the cross ! Let us imitate that prisoner ! Our sphere 
 may be circumscribed ; our life-chamber may be dark ; 
 our surroundings may be dreary ; yet if we be truly 
 set on following Christ, we shall discover some tiny 
 chink through which the sunshine of his guiding prov- 
 idence shall come ; and on the spot where its direct- 
 ing light shall fall, let us, with such means as we find 
 at our hand, hew out, not in cold stone but in living 
 love, the likeness of the sacrifice of Christ. Thus shall 
 
228 TBUE GREATNESS. 
 
 we attain that loftiest greatness whereof Jesus has 
 to-daj been speaking to us ! 
 
 " For lie before wliose scepter 
 
 Tlie nations rise or fall, 
 Who gives no least commandment 
 
 But come to pass it shall. 
 Said that he who would be greatest 
 
 Should be servant unto all. 
 
 And in conflict with the evil 
 Which his bright creation mars, 
 
 Laid he not aside the scepter 
 
 Which can reach to all the stars ? 
 
 Of the service which he rendered 
 See on his hands the scars 1 " 
 
 May 15, 1881. 
 
THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 II. Cor. i. 23. Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of 
 the Spirit iu our hearts. 
 
 It is, I fear, too true of us Christians in these days, 
 that though we are living under the dispensation of 
 the Holy Spirit, we make far too little of his opera- 
 tions, alike in our thoughts, our discourses and our 
 prayers. The place of that divine agent in the econ- 
 omy of salvation is equally important with that of the 
 Father and the Son, and yet in our meditations and 
 experience he has too largely dropped out of our con- 
 sideration. Many treatises have been written on the 
 love of the Father, scarcely one has been devoted to 
 the love of the Spirit. We are never weary of extol- 
 ling the work of the Son, and prayer is made to him 
 continually ; but little is said, comparatively, about 
 the Holy Ghost, and few petitions are presented unto 
 him. 
 
 The hymnology of the church, which is an un- 
 erring witness to the quality of Christian experience 
 through all the centuries, attests that while many of 
 those sacred songs which are most popular show forth 
 the praises of the Father and the Son, there are but 
 few which worthily express our obligations to the 
 Spirit. A learned editor in this city has compiled 
 into a large volume entitled " Christ in Song " a great 
 number of the finest lyrics which tell of Jesus and his 
 work ; but a similar collection by another hand under 
 the name of " The Holy Ghost in Song " reveals that 
 
230 THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 in tliis department our praise has iDeen meager in its 
 volume, and for tlie most j)art only medium in its 
 quality. Of tlie four hundred and twelve hymns con- 
 tained in Lord Selborne's " Book of Praise," only 
 fifteen are arranged under the heading of " God the 
 Holy Ghost," and even of these there are five which 
 have no special reference to the Spirit, and might as 
 ■well have been j)laced under some other division. In 
 our own hymn-book — which in this regard may be 
 taken as a fair sample of our praise-books generally — 
 out of thirteen hundred and fifty-seven hymns only 
 forty-sis are marked in the index as being either 
 addressed to the Holy Spirit, or having any reference 
 to his work. 
 
 This maybe to many a startling statement, but it is 
 the simple truth ; and it seems to me to indicate the 
 quarter in which the source of that which must be 
 deplored by all of us as an evil is to be found. For 
 hymnology grows out of experience. The church 
 sings that alone which its members have realized as 
 having entered into their own lives, and we take into 
 our lives only that which we implicitly believe. Now 
 if we seek to analyze that which is the common faith 
 of Christians in regard to the Holy Spirit we shall 
 find something like this : there is a general belief in 
 his true and proper Deity ; there is a common recog- 
 nition of the necessity of his agency for the renewal 
 of the heart ; and there is, also, though not per- 
 haps so deep and earnest as it ought to be, a realiza- 
 tion of the truth that he alone can give power to the 
 preaching of the gospel. When we are longing for 
 conversions, and seeking for such a revival of religion 
 in the city and the land as shall turn many from 
 darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto 
 God, we pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. 
 
THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 231 
 
 But tliere for the most part we stop. "We do not deny- 
 that it is he alone who can foster and maintain within 
 us the graces of Christian character. We are far 
 from affirming, in so many words, that after we have 
 once been regenerated by the grace of the Holy Ghost 
 we can get on very well without him ; or that for com- 
 fort, for growth, for security, and for perseverance we 
 are independent of him ; but the simple fact is that 
 most of us do not consciously rely on him for these 
 things, do not pray to him for them, and do not give 
 to him the glor j when, in spite of our ignoring of him, 
 we are permitted to experience them. This explains 
 the disproportion in our hymn-books to which I have 
 referred, and points to a serious defect in our prac- 
 tical theology. Take the first ten church members 
 whom you may chance to meet ; ask them why we 
 need the Holy Ghost ; press them to tell you whether 
 they pray for him, and if they do, get them to explain 
 why they have prayed for him ; then I venture to say, 
 that most of them will affirm that they wish to see his 
 power manifested as it was on Pentecost, in the awak- 
 ening and regeneration of men through the preaching 
 of the truth, and that scarcely one among them will 
 allege that he ever thought of asking for him in order 
 that he might himself become purer, more devoted, 
 more Christ-like in his own character and life. Now 
 I have called this a serious defect in our practical 
 theology, and I would have it remedied not by giving 
 less attention to other matters, but by giving more to 
 this. We cannot make too much of the love of the 
 Father, and I would not desire that we should in any 
 degree diminish our appreciation of that. We can- 
 not go wrong in glorying in the Cross of Christ, and 
 anything short of whole-hearted consecration to our 
 divine Redeemer is to be deprecated. Neither would 
 
232 THE SEAL AXD EAENEST OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 I have one pra^^er fewer offered for the outpouring of 
 the Spirit in connection with energizing of men for 
 the preaching of the gospeh But while we do these 
 thinsfs we must not leave the other undone. Let us 
 not honor the Father and the Son less ; but let us honor 
 the Holy Spirit more, yea, let us honor him equally 
 with the Father and the Son. Let us not make less 
 of the necessity of his agency for giving success to the 
 preaching of the gospel; but let us make more than 
 we have been doing heretofore of the need of his 
 operations in us for our daily spiritual growth ; and 
 while we pray as earnestly as ever that he would 
 " baptize the nations" and quicken them into spiritual 
 life let us ask more fervently than ever that he may 
 work in us for the development and ripening of our 
 characters " till we all come in the unity of the faith 
 and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a per- 
 fect man, unto the measure of the stature of the full- 
 ness of Christ." 
 
 "Whatever excuse may be offered for this too com- 
 mon ignoring by us of the work of the Holy Ghost in 
 the sustenance of the individual Christian life, it can- 
 not be said that its necessity is not kept steadily be- 
 fore us in the New Testament. Many of the very 
 names by which he is called set this aspect of his 
 agency very clearly before our eyes. Thus when the 
 Lord Jesus promised to send him as another Com- 
 forter, or Paraclete, he taught us to expect him as one 
 who should be our constant helper, as real, as gra- 
 cious and as powerful as himself. "When he is called 
 the Spirit of Holiness, the suggestion is that through 
 his working in us we are to grow in holiness. "When 
 he is styled the Spirit of Suj^plication, we are re- 
 minded that all true prayer is the result of his opera- 
 tion in us. "When he is spoken of as the Spirit of 
 
THE SEAL AND EAENEST OF THE SPIEIT. 233 
 
 Grace, we are led to understand tliat it is through him 
 Christ's grace is communicated to us and comes to be 
 sufficient for us. And the same truths are suggested 
 to us by the two figures under which his work is 
 brought before our notice in the words which I have 
 taken this morning as my text. Let me endeavor 
 then to unfold to you all that is here implied in order 
 that I may stir you up to ask for the Holy Ghost for 
 yourselves to help you through the daily conflict of 
 your lives, as well as for others that they may be con- 
 verted unto God by the manifestation of his power. 
 
 I. First let us see if we can discover with what fit- 
 ness it can be said that God hath sealed us by his 
 Spirit. In the verse which I have read, indeed, it is 
 not expressly affirmed that the Holy Spirit is the seal 
 which God has affixed to his people in Christ, but a 
 comparison of Paul's words here with those which 
 he used in his Epistle to the Ephesians when he 
 wrote " in whom, also, after that ye believed, ye were 
 sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise," and again, 
 "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are 
 sealed unto the day of redemption," will make it 
 abundantly evident that the same thing was in his 
 mind when he employed the language of the text. In 
 what respects, then, may the Holy Spirit be compared 
 to a seal ? The answer is suggested by the uses to 
 which among men a seal has been put. These are 
 three : 
 
 1. It has been employed first to authenticate a 
 document or confirm it as genuine. Thus Jezebel is 
 said to have written letters in Ahab's name and sealed 
 them with his seal; and in the book of Esther it is 
 recorded of the decree of the king, " in the name of 
 Ahasuerus was it written and sealed with the king's 
 
234 THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIEIT. 
 
 ring." ^ The same usage holds among ourselves, for 
 important deeds are almost always marked with an 
 official seal, and the effect is that all who read them 
 acknowledge them as authentic. So by the Spirit of 
 God the believer has the assurance given to him that 
 he is a genuine disciple of Christ. He has the attest- 
 ation in him that he is born of God, or, as Paul has 
 elsewhere phrased it, " the Sj^irit beareth witness with 
 his spirit that he is a child of God." But how is this 
 assurance given to the Christian ? Not, I answer, by 
 the administration of any ordinance. The sacraments 
 of baptism and the Lord's Supper have often been 
 called by theologians " sealing ordinances," and there 
 is a sense in which the words thus used may be ap- 
 propriate, but they do not mean that the reception of 
 these ordinances is indubitable evidence that he who 
 receives them is a child of God. Many who have 
 been baj^tized have denied the Lord that bought 
 them, and many too who have taken into their hands 
 the symbols of Christ's body and blood have done so 
 only as an emjDty form and without any spiritual 
 benefit. These therefore are not the means by which 
 believers are sealed by the Holy Ghost. But neither 
 does he impart this authenticating assurance by any 
 direct revelation or through any special communica- 
 tion, as by dream or vision. The Spirit works in a 
 man by working through him. His agency is exerted 
 through the operation of the believer's own faculties. 
 The supernatural acts through the natural, by quick- 
 ening it into exercise and stimulating it to excellence. 
 Thus it comes that its working is not a matter of con- 
 sciousness as distinct from the usual operation of the 
 powers of the soul itself. The believer cannot say at 
 
 * 1 Kings xxL 8 ; Esther iii. 12. 
 
THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIEIT. 235 
 
 any moment in his experience tliat lie feels and knows 
 that there is a power different from his own at work 
 within him. He is conscious only of results. He 
 knows that the Holy Ghost has been exerting his 
 agency within him only when he perceives that the 
 fruit of the Sj^irit has begun to make its appearance in 
 him. Here, in the word, is the description of that 
 which the Holy Ghost produces in a man — " the fruit 
 of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
 ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" — and 
 when in his consciousness these qualities make their 
 presence known, he has then the witness of the Spirit 
 in him that he is a genuine believer. In short, when 
 the fruit of the Spirit in the experience of the man cor- 
 responds to the description of it which is given in the 
 word, just as the impression on the wax does to the 
 die that produced it, then he is warranted to infer that 
 he is sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and authen- 
 ticated to himself as a genuine Christian. This 
 description of the matter is thus equally removed, on 
 the one hand, from that fanaticism which would lead 
 you to expect a direct communication, either by secret 
 revelation or by audible voice, from God, and on the 
 other from that rationalistic naturalism which would 
 deny all reality whatever to the operations of the 
 Spirit in the heart ; and I am happy to be able to con- 
 firm my statement by the words of such an eminent 
 man of God as Chalmers, who has said : " I could not, 
 without making my own doctrine outstrip my own ex- 
 perience, vouch for any other intimation of the Spirit 
 of God than that which he gives in making the word of 
 God clear unto you, and the state of your own heart 
 clear unto you. From the one you draw what are its 
 promises, from the other what are your own personal 
 characteristics ; and the application of the first to the 
 
236 THE SEAL AND EAENEST OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 second may conduct you to a most legitimate argu- 
 ment that you personally are one of the saved — and 
 that not a tardy or elaborate argument, either, but 
 with an evidence quick and j^owerful as the light of 
 intuition." * Thus interpreted, the work of the Holy 
 Spirit in sealing believers is intimately associated 
 with their assurance of salvation, and, therefore, we 
 may see how much we lose by so commonly ignoring 
 his agency. 
 
 2d. But a seal was used, in the second place, as a 
 mark by wliicli to distinguish property. When thus 
 employed it was different from all other badges, and 
 was in its nature unique and peculiar. "We have some- 
 thing like it in modern times in the trade-mark which 
 a manufacturer copyrights and makes his own, so that 
 wherever it is imprinted one can tell at a glance the 
 ownership of that on which it appears. Just as to- 
 day throughout the British Empire everything that 
 is marked with the broad arrow is at once recognized 
 as the property of the government ; so in ancient times, 
 the servants, cattle and goods of a rich man were dis- 
 tinguished by his seal. In like manner believers are 
 recognized as the jDroperty of God by the seal of the 
 Spirit ; and as sometimes yet with us a seal has an 
 obverse and reverse side, so in the case of believers 
 the seal of the Sj)irit is at once inner and outer. This 
 is made clear by Paul in these words of his to Timo- 
 thy : " Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth 
 sure, having this seal " — that is, a seal with these in- 
 scriptions on it : " The Lord knoweth them that are 
 his. And, Let eveiy one that nameth the name of 
 Christ depart from iniquity." On the hidden side, 
 visible only to Jehovah, is this inscription : " The 
 
 * Clialmers on Romans viii. 10. In Lectures on Romans. 
 
THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 237 
 
 Lord knowetli tliem tliat are Ms." He knoweth them 
 not only as his own regenerated ones, but also by 
 their aspirations after himself, by their hidden com- 
 munion with himself, and by their joy in himself. 
 These things are secrets between him and them. But 
 on the other side, where all men may read it, there is 
 this inscription — " Let him that nameth the name of 
 Christ depart from iniquity." Thus they are distin- 
 guished among men as God's j^roperty by their depart- 
 ure from iniquity. They are a peculiar people not only 
 in the sense of being God's purchased possessions, 
 but also in that of being different from all others, and 
 that visible difference is in their keeping themselves 
 " unspotted from the world." Hence, just as the authen- 
 tication of the believer to himself is given in his ex- 
 perience, so the difference between him and others 
 which points him out as God's property is marked in 
 his conduct; and by his non-conformity to the world, 
 which is the result of the renewing of his mind, he is 
 sealed, in the eyes of all men, as belonging to the 
 Lord. I do not say that he is entirely free from sin, 
 but I do affirm that his relation to sin is different from 
 that of other men. They serve sin, but he has revolted 
 from sin, and is departing from it. He falls yet some- 
 times, but when he does he is overtaken in a fault. 
 He sins yet, sometimes, but when he does he rises 
 out of it and returns to God. When his foot slides it 
 is not like the stumbling of one who is descending 
 deeper and deeper into iniquity ; but it is the foot-slip 
 of an eager climber who is panting in his ascent of the 
 hill and if he should fall, he is never content to lie 
 still, but he arises forthwith and renews his toil. His 
 face is in the right direction. His cry is ever Up- 
 ward, Godward, Heavenward, and he longs to reach 
 the summit, where he shall be like God — for he shall 
 
238 THE SEAL AND EAENEST OF THE SPmrT. 
 
 seo liim as lie is. Now this outward diaracter is tlie 
 badge of Christian discipleship, the mark that a man 
 belongs to God, and it is produced in him by the 
 agency of the Holy Ghost. Hence we may see how 
 near the honoring of the Spirit lies to one of the great 
 necessities of the times. The cry is, and I fear there 
 is good reason for the exclamation, that the church 
 and the world are becoming indistinguishable ; that 
 Christians are losing their characteristic features ; 
 and that there is little or no difference between them 
 and other men. "What is this but to say that the seal 
 of the Spirit is becoming undecij)herable ; that its 
 sharp relief is worn down ; that its inscription is well- 
 nigh illegible ? And how is it to be renewed, if not 
 by a new honoring of God the Holy Ghost among us as 
 the author and agent of personal sanctification ? Ah! 
 have we not in this worldly conformity among profess- 
 ing Christians the result and Nemesis of our forgetful- 
 ness in our prayers and praises of the Holy Spirit ? 
 
 When the coinage of a country has worn thin and 
 light, so that no one can see the image or read the 
 superscription which once it bore, it is called in, re- 
 minted, and sent forth anew, with a clearly distinct 
 and finely relieved impression from the original die. 
 And so, when our Christian characters are rubbed 
 down by the abrasion of the world to such an extent 
 that the image of the Lord in us has been well nigh 
 effaced, there is all the more need for us to submit 
 ourselves to the reminting of the Holy Spirit, that we 
 may come forth anew and bear unmistakable witness 
 to Christ's royalty over us and property in us. 
 
 3. But in the third place a seal was used as a means 
 of security. Thus it is recorded of the stone laid at 
 the mouth of the den into which Daniel was thrust : 
 " The King sealed it with his own signet and with the 
 
THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 239 
 
 signet of liis lords, tliat the purpose miglit not be 
 changed concerning Daniel," and when Jesus was laid 
 in the grave the Jews made the sepulcher sure, " seal- 
 ing the stone, and setting a watch." In like manner 
 believers are kept secure in the world by the seal of 
 the Spirit. Now let us clearly understand how this 
 is brought about. The reference here is not to God's 
 almighty protection. Neither is it to the ordering of 
 his all-wise ]3rovidence. Both of these, indeed, are 
 engaged by covenant for the defence of the Christian, 
 but here the allusion is to something resulting from the 
 Spirit's agency in the believer's heart, by which he is 
 preserved until the day of redemption. And so we come 
 back again to those qualities in the Christian which 
 are wrought out in him by the Holy Ghost, through 
 faith, and we see in them the means of his security. 
 
 The characteristics and habits which are acquired 
 by the believer, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, 
 are the means of preserving him from falling before 
 the assaults of his spiritual enemies. Recall again 
 that enumeration of Paul : " The fruit of the Spirit is 
 love, joy, jDeace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 faith, meekness, temjjerance : against such there is no 
 law." Or that other : " The fruit of the Spirit is in all 
 goodness and righteousness and truth." Then with 
 these catalogues in your memory compare them with 
 the well-known passage which describes the Christian's 
 armor thus : " Stand, therefore, having your loins girt 
 about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of 
 righteousness ; and your feet shod with the preparation 
 of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of 
 faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the 
 fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of 
 salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the 
 word of God, praying always with all prayer and sup- 
 
240 THE SEAL AND EAENEST OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 plication in tlie Spirit, and watching tliereunto with 
 all perseverance." And what result do we get from 
 the comparison? "We get this — that the Christian's 
 graces are his armor also ; that the very same qualities 
 which are styled the fruit of the Spirit are, in another 
 view of them, the whole armor of God and the means 
 of defence from his soul's adversaries. The virtues to 
 the cultivation of which he is stimulated, and in the 
 development of which he is sustained by the Spirit, 
 are the means by which that Divine Agent secures him 
 from all the assaults of his enemies ; and so we see how 
 it comes that the doctrine of the perseverance of the 
 saints, when rightly understood, never can lead to 
 indolence ; for the Spirit preserves his people from 
 falling away by the fostering within them of those 
 qualities and habits which are absolutely incompat- 
 ible with their declension. He seals them by righte- 
 ousness, not as an objective gift bestowed upon them, 
 but as a character maintained by them, and so that 
 righteousness is a breastplate. He marks them with 
 truth, not as a passive possession, but as an active 
 j)rinciple, and so that truth is for them a girdle. And 
 the same is true of all the other items in the catalogue 
 of the Spirit's fruit. Now with these facts before us 
 we can comprehend how it comes that on the one hand 
 believers are said to be kept by the power of God 
 through faith, and on the other it is alleged that he 
 that is begotten of God keepeth himself. Our security 
 is perfect, and yet it is not without our own exertions — 
 for it is effected by the constant manifestation by us 
 of the qualities which are formed and fostered in us 
 by the operation of the Holy Ghost. If, therefore, 
 there be anything like spiritual indolence among us, 
 or if there be frequent cases of falling away among 
 those who were once apparently running well, we may 
 
THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 241 
 
 be sure that the root of all sucli evils is in the ignoring 
 of the agency of the Spirit, whereby we are sealed 
 unto the day of redemption. 
 
 II. But I must hasten now to consider with all 
 brevity what is implied in the second figure here 
 employed to illustrate the value of the work of the 
 Spirit in our hearts. "And hath given us the earnest 
 of the Spirit." The term is borrowed from a custom 
 which used to be observed in connection with the 
 transfer of property. It was common in a case of 
 purchase that the buyer received a small installment 
 at once as a sample of that which he had bought and as 
 a pledge that in due season full delivery should be 
 made. This installment or first-fruit was called an 
 earnest, and so when the Holy Spirit in our hearts is 
 styled an earnest, we have these two things implied, 
 namely — first, that the fruit of the Spirit which we 
 liore enjoy is the same in kind with the blessedness 
 of heaven, and second, that it is a pledge that heaven 
 in its perfection shall ultimately be ours. 
 
 The Spirit in our hearts is a foretaste of the quality 
 of heaven. The life of heaven will differ not in kind, 
 but only in degree, from that of the believer here. 
 " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." 
 Observe, it is not will have, but hath. All that wliich 
 has come to him through his faith in the Son shall never 
 die. His heaven is begun here, in reconciliation to 
 God, in fellowship with God, in assimilation to God. 
 The quickening which he has here experienced through 
 the agency of the Holy Ghost is the germ of the life of 
 glory. The light which he has here received through 
 the illumination of the Spirit is the beginning of the 
 knowledge of heaven. The happiness wliich he has 
 here enjoyed, through the work of the Holy Ghost in 
 11 
 
242 THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIEIT. 
 
 liim, is tlie commencement of tlie blessedness of 
 heaven. The earnest is the same in kind with the 
 purchase, and the fruit to which we have this morn- 
 ing so often referred is of the same sort as the inherit- 
 ance on high. 
 
 I say not, indeed, that our present experience 
 gives us any adequate idea of the full glory of 
 heaven. Light is the same in the first streak of 
 early dawn as it is in the splendor of high noon — the 
 same in kind, but how different in degree. Life is 
 the same in its radical nature in the infant on its 
 mother's lap and in the philosopher at his post of ob- 
 servation as he scans the heavens — the same in 
 kind, but how different in degree ! So heaven 
 transcends in degree all that we haA'e experienced 
 here on earth. Yet the view which I have now pre- 
 sented, and which I am persuaded is entirely Script- 
 ural, may keep us from falling into foolish and dan- 
 gerous error regarding the future life. Heaven is not 
 a place of material splendor, any more than hell is a 
 lake of material fire. Retribution is the intensifica- 
 tion of that which is known as remorse here ; and 
 glorification is the sublimation, the elevation, and the 
 purification of that which the believer has already 
 experienced of joy, and peace, and holiness on earth. 
 The celestial city, with its walls of jasper, and its 
 gates of pearl, and its streets of gold, is a beautiful 
 figure. It is a material symbol for a spiritual reality 
 which Avill be infinitely greater than anything ma- 
 terial can ever be, and that spiritual reality is com- 
 jDleted humanity, glorified character, and perfected 
 happiness. Heaven is a state more than a place, a 
 character more than a possession, a happiness more 
 than a position ; and we enter into that state, we ac- 
 quire that character, we taste that happiness here and 
 
THE SEAL AND EAENEST OF THE SPIEIT. 243 
 
 now tlirougli faith in Jesus Christ and by the indwell- 
 ing of his Spirit in our hearts. How important, 
 therefore, in this regard, that we should keep clearly 
 before our minds the place and the power of the 
 Holy Ghost in the sanctification of our souls ! 
 
 But our present enjoyment of the fruit of the Spirit 
 is a pledge that the full inheritance of heaven shall 
 yet be ours. " He who hath begun a good work in us 
 will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." "What 
 God commences he carries through ; and having done 
 so much in us he will bring it to completeness. 
 This, you observe, is not quite the same as the se- 
 curity which was suggested to us by tlie seal. That 
 was the pledge that we should be kept for heaven ; 
 this is an assurance that heaven shall be possessed 
 by us ; and both together are brought before us in 
 the words of Peter, when he speaks of " an inherit- 
 ance, incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
 away, reserved in heaven for them who are kept by 
 the power of God through faith." Thus the saints 
 are kept for the inheritance, and the inheritance is 
 reserved for the saints, so that there is a double 
 guarantee ; and by these two immutable things we 
 may have strong consolation as we pursue our life 
 journey here on earth. Nay, more ; both of these 
 guarantees are given by the Holy Ghost in his work 
 within us, and so we see how closely connected with 
 our safety and our joy, our present comfort and our 
 future glory, the agency of the Spirit is. Surely, if 
 we were more thoroughly alive to these considera- 
 tions we would have a higher appreciation of the 
 Third in the Trinity, and be more frequently found 
 hymning his praise and supplicating his blessing. 
 
 But I must conclude. I have, throughout, been 
 speaking this morning to those who have had some 
 
244 THE SEAL AND EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 experience of tlie power of divine grace in tlieir 
 hearts, for, as Paul lias clearlj affirmed, it is only 
 after men have believed that they are sealed by the 
 Holy Spirit of promise. Yet I cannot leave off with- 
 out saying a word or two to those who have not yet 
 " set to their seal that God is true," by believing in 
 Ills Son. To them I come to-day as the spies came to 
 Kadesh-barnea, two of them carrying between them 
 the Eslicol cluster of grapes as a sample of the pro- 
 ducts of the goodly land which they had been to see. 
 I show you in this " fruit of the Spirit " a specimen 
 of the inheritance into which Jesus introduces us. 
 Beware how ye receive our report. Ke member what 
 happened to the tribes when they refused, at the 
 word of Caleb, to go up and possess the land, and 
 " take heed lest ye fall after the same example of un- 
 belief." "Who among you is willing to set out with us 
 to-day for this celestial heritage ? It is true that 
 there is a river to cross before we fully reach it, but 
 in that it only resembles every earthly blessing, for 
 there is a Jordan before every Canaan. It is true that 
 the Anakim are to be subdued, but that is only what 
 we must expect in every enterprise, since nothing 
 worthy of possession ever becomes ours without con- 
 flict. But think of your leader ; for if you believe in 
 Jesus, then he who erewhile appeared to Joshua as 
 *' the Captain of tlie Lord's host " will guide you on ; 
 before him the river will be dried up, and at his ad- 
 vance every adversary will be overthrown. Who, 
 then, is willing to put himself under his leadership ? 
 " Come with us and Ave will do you good, for we are 
 journeying to the place of which God hath said, I 
 will give it you, and the Lord hath spoken good con- 
 cerning Israel." 
 
 January 8, 1883. 
 
DRIFTING. 
 
 Hebrews ii. 1. Lest liaply we drift away from tliem. ("Revised 
 Version.) 
 
 The key-note of this great Epistle istlie word " bet- 
 ter." It was written to tliose who were in danger of 
 apostasy from the gospel by reason of their high ap- 
 preciation of the Jewish law, and its argument is 
 designed to show that inasmuch as Jesus is bet- 
 ter than the angels by whom the law was given ; 
 more glorious than Moses, who was the mediator 
 of the old covenant ; more excellent in his minis- 
 try than Aaron, who was its priest ; officiated in a 
 nobler tabernacle than that which was erected in the 
 wilderness, and offered a better sacrifice than those 
 which smoked on the altar of burnt offerings, there- 
 fore he is the surety of a better covenant, which 
 brought in a better hope, was established upon better 
 promises, and provided some better thing than was 
 known or enjoyed under the ancient dispensation. 
 Such being the case, it would be folly to go back from 
 the gospel to the law, and the despising of the priv- 
 ileges which Christ conferred would entail a much 
 sorer punishment than that which fell on those 
 who perished at the mouth of two or three witnesses 
 for the violation of the Mosaic precepts, and so the 
 solemn close of the whole train of reasoning is this : 
 " See that ye refuse not him that speaketh ; for if 
 they escaped not who refused him when he spake on 
 earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away 
 
246 DREFTING. 
 
 from liim ■wlien lie speaketh from lieaven, whose voice 
 then shook the earth ; but now he hath promised, say- 
 ing : Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but 
 also lieaven. And this word, yet once more, signi- 
 fieth the removing of those things that are shaken, 
 as of things that are made, that those things which 
 cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we, re- 
 ceiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have 
 grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with 
 reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming 
 fire." 
 
 That is the main purport of this magnificent trea- 
 tise, and the text is the inference which the writer 
 draws from the first section of his argument. Begin- 
 ning with the fact that God, who had spoken in many 
 ways and in many portions in the prophets, had now 
 spoken unto men in his Son, he strikes what I have 
 called his key-note at the very first, by describing 
 that Son as " being made so much better than the 
 angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more 
 excellent name than they ; " and after having proved 
 that statement, he sends home at once the inference 
 from it thus : " Therefore we ought to give the more 
 earnest heed to the things which we have heard — that 
 is, heard from the Son — lest we should drift away 
 from them ; for if the word spoken by angels was 
 steadfast, and every trangression and disobedience 
 received a just recompense of reward, how shall we 
 escajDe if we neglect so great salvation which at the 
 first began to be spoken by the Lord ? " 
 
 It will be seen by you that in thus quoting the Avords, 
 I prefer the rendering given by the revisers : " lest we 
 should drift away from them " ; and this I do because 
 it is a more exact translation of the Greek term, and 
 brings into prominence a truth which is almost en- 
 
DRIFTING. 247 
 
 tirely concealed by the common version. To let a 
 thing slip is to allow it to pass out of our grasj), or to 
 lose our hold of it ; and that could not occur in our 
 experience without our attention being drawn to it in 
 some way. But that is not the precise sort of danger 
 against which the writer guards his readers here. 
 He is anxious to warn them of something which 
 might happen to them before they were aware. He is 
 not so much afraid of their positively " rejecting" the 
 great salvation as of their " neglecting " it, in con- 
 sequence of their yielding to other influences, or of 
 their being preoccupied with other matters ; and his 
 words describe not a direct and deliberate antagonism 
 to the truth, but rather a letting of themselves be 
 carried away from it by forces the operation of 
 which is so insidious and stealthy that they would 
 not notice their existence unless they were to give 
 " earnest heed." This message by his Son is God's 
 final word to men ; if it be disregarded, there is 
 nothing more to be hoped for from him, and there is 
 great danger that, even without cherishing any violent 
 hostility to it, you may by certain influences be drifted 
 away from it, and not be conscious of the fact until 
 it has begun, — therefore you must give the more earn- 
 est heed that such a danger may be avoided. 
 
 Drifted — that is the precise word. The boat is un- 
 anchored ; it is at the moment in a quiet bay, but 
 by-and-by the tide ebbs, and bears it on its bosom on 
 to the middle of the current, and there it is carried 
 out and away, and, perhaps, if no one has observed 
 its motions, lost. Or, if I may illustrate by a personal 
 reminiscence, take such a case as this : On my first 
 tour tlirougli Switzerland I visited the quaint old city 
 of Thuu, along with three of my most intimate friends. 
 We stayed at a hotel built on the side of the lake, 
 
24:8 DRIFTING. 
 
 just at the place where the Aar runs rapidly out of it, 
 and we went to amuse ourselves for a season by rowing 
 about in a little boat. After awhile a difference of 
 opinion sprang up among us as to the direction we 
 should take. One said, " Let us go yonder " ; another 
 answered, "No; let us rather make for that other 
 point " ; a third had still another suggestion, and we 
 ceased rowing until we should make up our minds ; 
 but meanwhile the current was settling the question 
 for us, and unless we had sj)eedily bent to the oars 
 with all our might, we should have been hurried 
 along into a dangerous place, out of which we could 
 only have been rescued, if rescued at all, by the as- 
 sistance of others. 
 
 The influences, therefore, against which we are 
 warned by the words of my text are those of currents 
 which are flowing just where we are, and which may 
 operate so insidiously that we may not know of their 
 effect until perhaps it is too late to resist their power. 
 These currents in the case of the Hebrews we have 
 already adverted to, and we can see traces of their 
 force in the successes of the Judaizers, to which Paul 
 alludes in his Epistle to the Galatians ; but I do not 
 dwell now upon them. I am desirous rather to guard 
 you against those which are running to-day ; and, that 
 I may not deal in vague generalities, I will specify 
 three. 
 
 I. Take then, flrst, that which I may call the age- 
 current, or what a recent English essayist, borrowing 
 from the German, has called the " Time-spirit." Every 
 ej)ocli has its own special tendency. Just as there 
 are times when some forms of disease are epidemic, 
 so there are periods when an intelligent observer can 
 discover certain very distinct trends of thought among 
 
DRIFTING. 249 
 
 men. In tlie days immediately preceding tlie French 
 Bevolution, infidelity of the type of Voltaire was in 
 the ascendant, and its tide swept over many lands. In 
 England, in the wake of the deists who wjote in the 
 early part of the eighteenth century, such unbelief was 
 prevalent that Butler, in 1736, used these words : " It 
 is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by 
 many persons that Christianity is not so much as a 
 subject of inquiry ; but that it is now, at length, dis- 
 covered to be fictitious. And, accordingly, they treat 
 it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point 
 among all people of discernment, and notliing remained 
 but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and 
 ridicule " ; and he was himself so much affected by it 
 that all he ventured to say was : " Thus much, at least, 
 will here be found, not taken for granted, but proved, 
 that any reasonable man who will thoroughly consider 
 the matter may be as much assured as he is of his 
 own being that it is not, however, so clear a case that 
 there is nothing in it." The age-current was surely 
 very strong when even a Butler was prevented by it 
 from afiirming more than that ! But in our own times 
 something of the same sort has made itself felt. It is 
 curious, indeed, that as one looks back over the last 
 three centuries, he sees a kind of family likeness be- 
 tween them in this regard. The years between 1660 
 and 1688 marked in England the darkest time of that 
 seventeenth cycle. They were the years of persecu- 
 tion, ribaldry, profanity, immorality and scepticism, 
 consequent upon the restoration of the Stuarts to the 
 throne ; the years when Jeffries disgraced the English 
 bench, and when the martyrs' blood ran red upon the 
 Scottish moors. Then, a hundred years later — the 
 time between 1760 and the close of the eighteenth 
 century — was that in which England and Scotland 
 11* 
 
250 DRIFTING. 
 
 both were blighted by a cold moderatism in the pul- 
 pits of the State churches, which preached a heathen 
 morality instead of the gospel of the grace of God. 
 And now again, at a similar period in the nineteenth, 
 we find ourselves called upon to contend not for the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, or for the reality of mir- 
 acles, or for the divine origin of the Gospel, but for 
 the very existence of God himself. A physical science 
 which has taken up with the doctrine of development, 
 and has insisted that what is at best an ingenious 
 hypothesis shall be accepted as a demonstrated fact, 
 has prepared the way for an agnostic philosophy 
 which refuses to believe that anything can be known 
 save that which can be perceived by the bodily senses, 
 aided by the scalpel and the microscope, and that, in 
 its turn, has given birth to a rank atheism, which has 
 adopted as its creed the terrible negation, No God. 
 You meet with this current in our literature. There 
 are first-class reviews every number of which has one 
 or more articles devoted to some one or other of these 
 subjects. Many of our scientific treatises — not all, I 
 am thankful to say — are infected with the same evil 
 spirit. Some of our daily pajoers give prominence 
 and circulation to the views which it inspires, and the 
 strength of it may be estimated by the fact that it has 
 affected even the ministry of the gospel to some ex- 
 tent, so that we now and then hear of one who has 
 drifted away from everything that the Christian 
 holds dear. 
 
 I do not desire to magnify the evil. My own con- 
 viction is that the pendulum has had its full swing 
 in the materialistic direction, and that a reaction will 
 speedily take ^ilace, if it have not already begun. But 
 I do not believe that any one who has been taking note 
 of passing events will gainsay my statement that a 
 
DRIFTING. 251 
 
 current of tlie sort wliicli I liave described has been 
 flowing for some years and is flowing still. There 
 is a distinct difference between the state of things 
 in this regard to-day and that which existed five 
 and twenty or thirty years ago. And the question 
 I would desire to put to you, and would seek to put 
 to myself, is, How have we been affected by it? 
 It may be very true that we are not disposed to 
 accept either the logic of scientific men or the philos- 
 ophy of those who would debar all faith in the spirit- 
 ual, the unseen, and the supernatural. If we were 
 asked whether we joined them in their contemptuous 
 treatment of the word of God, and their rejection of 
 the Saviour, we should answer with an emphatic "No." 
 But are we quite sure that we have not drifted to some 
 extent with the current? After so much has been said 
 on every hand about the "uniformity of Nature's 
 laws," and "prayer-tests," and "the eternal something 
 not ourselves that makes for righteousness," after 
 even a Huxley has spoken of God as "iV," we might 
 perhaps prudently ask, " Is God the same to us that 
 he was of yore ? Do we solace ourselves as much as 
 ever with the assurance that the very hairs of our 
 head are numbered ? Is prayer to us the comfort and 
 strength it used to be ? Do we prize the Sabbath and 
 the sanctuary as in our earlier life ? Do we long for 
 the communion table as we were wont to do ? Is the 
 Bible still to us the same old book, and do we find the 
 same joy in its i3erusal?" We need not flatter our- 
 selves that the age-current can have no effect upon 
 us. If we do, that is the sure precursor of our being 
 ultimately carried with it. We must either resist it 
 or yield to it. And if we have not been consciously 
 and determinedly resisting it, we have been drifting 
 with it, and the drift will show itself in one or other 
 
252 DEIFTING. 
 
 of the ways wliich I have mentioned. If it be true 
 that the standard of piety and morality is lower among 
 Christians than it was formerly ; if it be the case that 
 the Church is less of an aggressive force in our large 
 centers of population than it was a generation ago ; if 
 the numbers of those enrolling themselves in its ranks 
 are smaller than they have been in other days ; if here, 
 as in England, the census of those who statedly attend 
 the house of God on the first day of the week, is not 
 so great as it was a quarter of a century ago, may it 
 not be owing to the fact that we have not been taking 
 heed to guard against this age-drift which has been 
 flowing beneath us? Brethren, let us get back to 
 Christ, and anchor fast on him. He is the eternal 
 Son of God. His words are truth. His life is our 
 divine ideaL His death is our true and only atone- 
 ment for sin. His precept is our law. His interces- 
 sion is our solace. His heaven is our hope. Let us 
 hold the beginning of our confidence in Mm steadfast 
 unto the end, and that will keep us right. There have 
 been many assaults made upon him, but still, as of 
 yore, it is true that " they are dead who sought the 
 young child's life," and he endures. So it will be 
 again; these vagaries in 23hilosophy will pass away, 
 even as the fleecy clouds remove from the summit of 
 Mont Blanc ; but he abides like the grand old mount- 
 ain in its majestic mantle of stainless and eternal 
 purity. Hear him, therefore, and keep fast hold of 
 his sayings : so shall you partake of his stability. But 
 if you allow yourselves to drift away even in the least 
 degree from him, that may be the beginning of a his- 
 tory which will end in outer darkness. 
 
 II. The second current to which I would refer is 
 that of the place in which we dwell. Every city has 
 
DRIFTING. 253 
 
 its own peculiar influence. In the Place de la Con- 
 corde in Paris, each principal town in France is repre- 
 sented by an emblematic figure ; and as I went through 
 that magnificent square, on the day of the great /efe of 
 the Republic, and saw the statue of Strasbourg draped 
 in mourning, while everything around was dressed in 
 holiday attire, I had a vivid perception of the humili- 
 ation and grief which the possession of that city by 
 the Germans has been to the whole French people. 
 But that is a digression. Each city there had its own 
 ideal representative in the statue of a woman. I can- 
 not tell whether the artist intended to delineate the 
 character of the city by the figure which he called by its 
 name ; but we all know that there is in each city a spirit 
 which, as it were, inspires it ; a current which bears all 
 in it more or less rapidly upon its bosom. Take the cap- 
 ital of New England for example, and you cannot be long 
 in it without knowing that it is especially and distinct- 
 ively intellectual. A man there is graduated according 
 to his education. The scholar bears the palm, and if 
 in addition to his learning he possess some artistic 
 excellence or some literary ability, he is ranked so 
 much the higher. That current has its own dangers ; 
 but that is not the current that is running in New 
 York. It is true indeed that intellect is not despised 
 among us. We have a few names even in this literary 
 Sardis that do honor to the land. Neither do we look 
 with contempt upon scholarship or art. But here 
 commerce is supreme. The "place-current" for us 
 is business. I do not suppose that everybody in 
 the city is fond of money, or desires to possess it, 
 simply and only for its own sake. But everybody 
 loves business. There is an excitement and fascina- 
 tion in that for all, and they cannot tear themselves 
 away from it. They are not all thinking of what they 
 
254 DRIPTING. 
 
 will make, but many of tliem love it as boys love a 
 game ; and if they are in it at all, they must be in it al- 
 together, else they will at length be dishonored and 
 unsuccessful. 
 
 Now this current, also, is not without its dangers 
 to the spiritual life. Business, indeed, is not incom- 
 patible with piety, and it will not of necessity stir 
 a man up to antagonism against the gospel, but it 
 may so pre-occupy his mind and pre-engage his heart 
 that he ceases to think about religious matters at 
 all ; that is, it may drift him away from the things 
 spoken by the Lord. In his earlier days, the young 
 man may have been devout in his closet, and a daily 
 student of the sacred Scriptures. Perhaps, also, he was 
 an earnest teacher in some mission school. You never 
 missed him from the weekly prayer-meeting, and 
 when anything sj^ecial was to be done for the church, 
 he was always on hand to help. But as his business 
 responsibilities increased, lie became less earnest in 
 these respects ; and when he went into commerce for 
 himself, he drifted yet farther away. He had to go so 
 early in the morning that he forgot prayer. He came 
 home so tired in the evening that he had no heart to 
 read either the Bible or any other book, and he sought 
 rest in some place of questionable amusement. The 
 prayer-meeting was neglected. Even the Sabbath was 
 less cared for than before, and he was not averse to 
 sandwiching it in between the Saturday and the Mon- 
 day as a traveling day on some long journey to a 
 Western city ; and then, if we spoke to him on the 
 subject, he would be ready with the retort — " Be 
 not righteous overmuch," and go away with a laugh. 
 Now what is all this but drifting on the place-cur- 
 rent ? and where is it to end ? Ah, if there be any of 
 you who feel that I have been holding up a mirror 
 
DKIFTING. 255 
 
 wherein you liave seen yourselves, let me urge you to 
 take heed. You are giving too much for your business 
 success, and if you do not return to your old anchor- 
 age, you may find yourselves at length among the 
 openly ungodly, who have passed from the neglecting, 
 to the despising and rejecting, of the great salvation. 
 Get back again to Christ. " There is no stability save 
 in him. Listen to his exhortations. Lay fast hold 
 upon his principles. Grasp firmly his loving and 
 fraternal hand. If he be the eternal Son, you cannot 
 drift from him without loss, aye, a twofold loss— the 
 loss of him and the loss of yourselves. So, before you 
 are in the rapids where all struggle would be unavail- 
 ing, before you are carried over the fall to irremediable 
 perdition, let me entreat you to go back to him who 
 alone can make business safe for you, by teaching you 
 to transact it as a part of your worship and service of 
 himself. 
 
 But though we may not have gone to such a length 
 as that which I have described, it would not be safe to 
 infer that the " place-current " has had no effect what- 
 ever upon us. Even a steamship is afifected by the tide. 
 She will make better time coming up the bay with the 
 flow than against the ebb. And it is easier in spirit- 
 ual things, also, to go with the stream, than it is to 
 row against it. Nay, more, the same effort which we 
 put forth to breast it would, in other circumstances, 
 produce more satisfactory results. I do not hesitate 
 to say that it is a less difficult matter to be an earnest 
 Christian in some cities than it is in others ; and in a 
 large metropolitan center like this, the tide is all the 
 time running very strongly against us. We ought, 
 therefore, to allow for that, and be all the more earn- 
 est in the maintenance of our spiritual life. Then, so 
 far from being injured by the current, we shall be 
 
256 DEIPTING. 
 
 benefited and strengthened, and rise to a nobler type 
 of Christian excellence than may be found elsewhere. 
 But to do that we must take heed. We must guard 
 against the slightest backsliding ; and to succeed in 
 that we must constantly test ourselves by the things 
 which we have heard from Jesus. The navigator is 
 saved from danger from unknown currents by his 
 daily observations. The tides of ocean do not affect 
 the heavenly bodies ; and by testing himself by these 
 he knows precisely where he is. So the 23rinciples of 
 the gospel are not sliifted by the tendencies of any 
 place ; and when we measure ourselves by them, we 
 may discover how it is with us. Let us not take it for 
 granted that because we are making some effort in the 
 right direction, therefore we must be going forward. 
 For these efforts may not be enough to resist the 
 force of the current, and we may be drifting backward 
 after all. You remember the case of Sir Edward 
 Parry's crew in the Arctic regions. They set out one 
 day to draw a boat over the ice, expecting thereby to 
 get farther northward and in the open water, but after 
 they had journeyed thus for, if I remember rightly, 
 a day and a half or two days, they took an observa- 
 tion, which revealed to their surprise that they were 
 farther south than they .had been when they set out, 
 because while they had been going toward the pole, 
 the ice on which they were had been carried by the 
 drift of an under-current in the opposite direction. I 
 fear, my brethren, that in this great business mart, 
 where we are so exclusively occupied in buying and 
 selling, and getting gain, many Christians among us 
 are like these northern voyagers : they make exertions, 
 and they seem, too, to be making progress ; but alas ! 
 the drift that carries the whole place has carried them 
 with it, and in reality they are not so far advanced as 
 
DEIFTING. 257 
 
 they were, it may be, years ago. This is a matter 
 which we seldom think about, but it will bear pouder- 
 ing ; and I earnestly beseech you to examine well and 
 see whether you are even holding your own against 
 the stream of opposite tendency that is flowing con- 
 stantly in our city. 
 
 III. But I have time now to do little more than name 
 a third current, to the influence of which we are ex- 
 posed. I would call it the personal drift, the drift in 
 each of us individually. In making astronomical ob- 
 servations, one operator is never precisely the same 
 as another. Some are quick, others are slow ; some 
 are exceedingly precise, and others not so perfectly 
 exact ; and these differences, of course, affect the re- 
 sults at which they arrive. Therefore, to neutralize, 
 as far as possible, any error which may be thereby oc- 
 casioned, tliere is what is known as a " personal equa- 
 tion " for each, and by that his conclusions are recti- 
 fied before they are sent forth for general acceptance. 
 Now, in a similar way, spiritually, each man has his 
 individual tendencies, which easily carry him in one 
 direction or another. This personal drift, as I have 
 named it, is the same thing as the writer of the Epis- 
 tle from which my text is taken calls in another place 
 the " sin that doth most easily beset us," and by 
 yielding to that many are carried at last into perdi- 
 tion. How easy it is to acquire an evil habit ! No- 
 body, of mature years at least, ever sets himself de- 
 liberately to learn such a habit. On the contrary, 
 every one who has ever known or felt anything like 
 Christian motives working within him, would affirm 
 that he neither desires nor designs to let himself be 
 enslaved by any evil. But yet how many such be- 
 come drunkards before they will confess it to them- 
 
258 DRIFTING. 
 
 selves ? How many sucli become gamblers before 
 tliey will admit that they are in danger from the 
 facination of the cruel siren ? How many such are 
 ensnared and held by the cords of their own lusts, 
 humiliated at their helplessness, and yet hardly 
 able to explain to themselves how they came to such 
 degradation ? How many such have become dishon- 
 est, who, as they now look back upon the history of 
 the past, are amazed and bewildered, and feel as if 
 they had been in some terrible nightmare ? All these 
 have yielded to the personal drift, and if, haply, there 
 should be any such within these walls now, let me 
 beseech them to repent and return unto the Lord. 
 There is no hope, and no help, either for time or for 
 eternity, for you save in him. E-ise, then, in the might 
 of the strength which he will give you, and break the 
 bonds of the habit by which you have been enthralled. 
 Rise and he will give you pardon and peace ; yes, and 
 purity, too, at length ; and oh, do not allow yourself 
 to be allured again to the lap of your seducer, for if 
 you do she will deliver you up to the tormentors, who 
 will set you, Samson-like, to grind for their profit, or 
 to make mirth for their sport. 
 
 But prevention is better than cure, and therefore 
 would I urge every one of you to examine well his 
 own heart, that he may discover what his besetment 
 is, and to take special care just there. Wliat a wide 
 difference there is between Lot as he was when he 
 was the companion of Abraham, and when he was 
 hurried by the angel out of the burning Sodom ! 
 These two, who came together out of Uz of the 
 Chaldees, are now far apart ; and how is it explained ? 
 Simply by Lot's personal drift. Abraham was where 
 he had always been, or rather he had gone farther in 
 the direction of excellence which he had been pur- 
 
DKIFTING. 259 
 
 suing, and in wliicli for a time he had Lot, as it were, 
 in tow. But wlien that choice of the well-watered 
 plain was made by the latter, he cut the tow-line and 
 drifted — drifted — into the plain — into Sodom — into fel- 
 lowship with the Sodomites ; and lo ! this is the 
 end — nay, not yet the end, for there is a darker, un- 
 speakable history behind which illustrates more terri- 
 bly the danger I would describe. O friends, let us 
 not be self-confident here, or imagine that there is no 
 fear of us. That imagination is itself the beginning 
 of this personal drift. Distrust yourselves, and trust 
 only, but always, in the Lord. Watch the little 
 things, and let no lust, or appetite, or passion obtain 
 dominion over you. Anchor on to Christ, and that is 
 the sure preventive of all such drifting as I have been 
 seeking to expose. Be not content with coming to 
 him, but follow him ; and Oh ! beware of following him 
 only " afar off," for it was in that way that Peter came 
 so near apostasy. Follow him fully, and he will 
 bring you at last, in spite of all adverse currents and 
 contrary winds, to the haven of everlasting blessed- 
 ness and rest. 
 March 19, 1883 
 
 / ) 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE 
 SCRIPTURES.* 
 
 Matt. iv. 7. "It is written again." 
 
 "When Satan tempted Christ to cast himself from 
 the pinnacle of the temple, and sought to enforce his 
 request by a quotation from Scripture, the Lord did 
 not meet him with a denial of the inspiration or au- 
 thority of the promise which he had repeated ; but he 
 brought in the corrective of another passage from the 
 word of God in the light of which the former was to 
 be interpreted and applied. To the " it is written " 
 of his assailant he answered, "It is written again." 
 He did not rej)udiate the assurance which Satan had 
 so glibly cited, but he intimated that he looked for its 
 verification only in connection with his obedience of 
 the command "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
 God." The injunction, Thou shalt not put to any un- 
 necessary test, by thy false confidence, or bravado, 
 the Lord thy God, is for all times and circumstances ; 
 and only those who are obeying that precept have a 
 right to look for the fulfillment of this promise, " He 
 shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in 
 their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time 
 thou dash thy foot against a stone." What the Sav- 
 iour did here, therefore, was to fill out and complete 
 the interpretation of the passage which Satan had re- 
 
 * This discourse was given to the theological students at Yale, 
 Princeton and Rochester Theological Seminaries. 
 
THE INDUCTIYE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTUKES. 261 
 
 peated, and lie did that by showing from another pas- 
 sage the conditions within which alone the former 
 could be rationally and intelligently accejoted. 
 
 Now the procedure of the Lord in this instance plainly 
 implies that one portion or saying of scripture is to be 
 read in connection with all other portions of it, and is 
 to be understood and interpreted only in that sense 
 which is in harmony with every other utterance of the 
 sacred oracles. " All Scripture is given by inspiration 
 of God," and we accept it all as the only infallible 
 rule of faith and practice in religious things. But 
 then, in so accepting it, we receive its individual state- 
 ments as they are defined and explained by all the 
 rest. No part of it is to be taken isolated and alone, 
 but it is to be viewed as a whole, and the doctrines of 
 our creed as well as the duties of our life are to be 
 discovered by us through an exhaustive examination, 
 not of separate passages, but of the whole teaching 
 and tenor of the entire collection of treatises which 
 we call the Bible. It is not enough that we be able 
 to quote one text in proof of anything which we mean 
 to advance as an article of faith, or enforce as a duty in 
 daily life ; but we must examine how that one passage 
 is related to the place in which it occurs, and to all 
 other portions of the Scriptures which treat of the 
 same subject. That is to say, we must study the Bible 
 inductively, and explore its pages with a purpose and 
 a method similar to those with which the man of 
 science investigates the facts of nature. He gathers 
 his instances, noting everything that is peculiar in the 
 case of each ; then, having obtained some general prin- 
 ciple which is applicable to them all, he arranges and 
 classifies them ; and after that he crystallizes the 
 result into some convenient formula which he calls the 
 law of the i^henomena. In this way, out of the facts 
 
262 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 of vegetable life lie has evolved the science of botany ; 
 out of the phenomena of the heavens he has distilled 
 the science of astronomy ; and out of the strata of the 
 earth he is seeking to complete the science of geology. 
 Now, what Nature is thus to the physical philosopher, 
 Scripture is to the theologian. It furnishes him with 
 a field of observation. Its statements are to him what 
 the phenomena of nature are to the man of science. 
 They are the things which he has to note, classify and 
 formulate. God has not given us a religious system 
 all arranged and maj^ped out into its several depart- 
 ments in the Book of Bevelation, any more than he 
 has given us a scientific division of phenomena in the 
 book of nature ; but there is a divine method alike 
 in both, and it is the duty and the privilege of men to 
 find that out in both by a persevering and exhaustive 
 examination. Thus, whatever it may come to be in 
 man's use of it, a system is, at the beginning, the result 
 of investigation and not a guide to inquiry. As- 
 tronomy, for example, is, as a science, the outcome of 
 years of observation, calculation and demonstration 
 on the part of many men of genius from the days of 
 Copernicus down to our own. Yet when we teach our 
 children the great principles which have been deduced 
 by these philosophers and tell them, in apj)arent con- 
 tradiction to the testimony of their own senses, that 
 the earth moves round the sun and not the sun round 
 the earth, nobody complains of our interfering with 
 the young people's liberty of investigation, or exclaims 
 that we are binding a yoke of system about their necks. 
 But in precisely the same way systematic theology is, 
 in its origin, a result. It is the formal statement of the 
 conclusions arrived at from the diligent investigation 
 of the Scriptures as a whole, by many men of patient, 
 painstaking, plodding perseverance from the days of 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 2G3 
 
 Augustine to those of Hodge ; and there needs be no 
 more outcry against teaching our children the prin- 
 ciples at which such men have arrived than there is 
 against initiating them into geology under Lyell or 
 into astronomy under Newcomb. I have said this as 
 a vindication of the much-decried use of the catechism 
 in the religious instruction of the young, and to show 
 you that in the educational employment which is thus 
 made of system, theology does not differ from any 
 other of the sciences. 
 
 But while all this is true, we ought, as far as 
 possible, in theology to make, or at least to verify, 
 our system for ourselves, and to do that we must 
 study the Bible inductively ; that is to say, we must 
 study it first as a whole ; then we must take one sub- 
 ject, and having gathered together into one view all 
 the passages that Scripture contains anywhere con- 
 cerning it, we must seek some principle of classifi- 
 cation among them ; reduce them all to some general 
 formula which shall embrace everything which each 
 contributes, and find in that the doctrine which the 
 word of God teaches on the matter. And when any 
 one advances some new dogma, then, even as the man 
 of science seeks to repeat the experiment which is 
 alleged to have demonstrated the new principle, we 
 must repeat his investigation, test his reasonings, 
 examine into the fullness or otherwise of his induction, 
 and decide accordingly. It is not enough that he is 
 able to say " it is written " thus and so ; but he must 
 be able to show that his interpretation and application 
 of the words which he cites are in harmony with every 
 other " It is written again " which can be brought be- 
 fore him from the same sacred source. 
 
 Now in prosecuting such a systematic and inductive 
 
264 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 examination of the Scriptures, there are three things 
 in reference to which we must be always on our guard. 
 In the first place, we must see to it that all the pas- 
 sages, brought together for some such purpose as that 
 which I have described, have a real bearing on the 
 subject in hand. We must not mistake resemblance 
 in sound for similarity in sense and allusion. One 
 cannot examine the references in an ordinary study 
 Bible, without noting how many of the parallels cited 
 have little or nothing to do with the meaning and ap- 
 plication of the passage in connection with which they 
 are quoted. When any question arises among geolo- 
 gists, the thing is settled by an appeal to the situation 
 in which the specimen was found. Now in the same 
 way all passages which we bring forth as bearing on a 
 subject must be examined " in silu,'' and only those 
 which are really pertinent ought to be permitted 
 to be heard. As an illustration of my meaning here, 
 let me cite a case which happened in my own ex- 
 perience. The question whether it is right for a 
 sinner to pray — a very foolish question, let me say — 
 being under discussion, one of the disputants quoted 
 from John ix., 31, the words : " We know that God 
 heareth not sinners, but if any man be a worshiper 
 of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth," as if these 
 settled the matter. But a little investigation will show 
 that this passage has nothing whatever to do with 
 prayer. It is the assertion of the man who had been 
 cured of his blindness, and is his own way of alleging 
 that one who could work such a miracle as had been 
 performed upon him, could not be an impostor, and 
 must be more than a mere man. Apart altogether, 
 therefore, from the fact that this poor, unlettered man 
 was not speaking by any divine inspiration, and so 
 cannot be accepted as an infallible authority in the 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OP THE SCEIPTUEES. 265 
 
 case, his words have nothing to do with the warrant 
 or liberty of a sinner to pray, and have no partiuence 
 to any discussion upon that subject. Thus an exam- 
 ination of the circumstances in connection with which 
 a passage occurs is essential to the discovery of its 
 real teaching ; and no saying must be wrested from 
 its connection for the purpose of bolstering up a pre- 
 conceived theory or opinion. 
 
 But, in the second place, we must see to it that we 
 give to each passage its own legitimate weight — no 
 more, no less. Everything that is found recorded in 
 the Bible is not, therefore, to be regarded as of divine 
 and infallible authority. This saying may be startling 
 to some, but a little explanation will make it clear. 
 Thus, the historian, Luke, incorporates in his narra- 
 tive of the Acts of the Apostles the letter of Claudius 
 Lysias, the commandant of the castle of Jerusalem, to 
 Felix, the governor. Now the inspiration of Luke 
 vouches for the accurate reproduction of that letter, 
 but its appearance in his narrative is not an indorse- 
 ment of the falsehood which it contains to the effect 
 that Lysias rescued Paul because he understood that 
 he was a Roman citizen ; for his own record tells us 
 that it was only after the apprehension of Paul, and 
 just when he was in the act of having him bound in 
 order to be scourged, that he found out that the apos- 
 tle was a Roman. So, again, there are many records 
 of conversations between different persons in the Bible ; 
 and, finding these there, we are entitled to conclude 
 that they are correct reports of what each speaker 
 said ; but that does not give infallible authority to the 
 sentiments uttered by each. Thus, take the book of 
 Job, for example, and we have in it an account of a 
 series of discussions between the patriarch and his 
 friends. Now inspiration does not misrepresent the 
 13 
 
266 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCEIPTUBES. 
 
 speakers, and we may conclude tliat each uttered that 
 wliich is attributed to him. But that is a different 
 thing from saying that Elij)haz, Biklad, Zophar, Elihu 
 and Job were all inspired men, and that, if we find in 
 the speeches of any one of them something favoring a 
 particular opinion of our own, we may conclude that 
 we have Scriptural sanction for its maintenance. The 
 Bible contains the assertion, " Skin for skin, yea, all 
 that a man hath will he give for his life," but that is 
 Satan's word and not God's ; and he who should quote 
 that in support of the assertion that a man ought to 
 use all means for saving his life is not giving divine 
 warrant for his doctrine, but rather citing the devil's 
 opinion of human nature — an opinion, moreover, which 
 Satan himself discovered was not universally correct, 
 inasmuch as Job preferred his integrity to his life. 
 Nicodemus was right when he said : " We know that 
 thou art a teacher sent from God, for no man can do 
 these miracles that thou doest except God be with 
 him ; " but we may not cite that opinion as if it settled 
 the question as to the evidential value of miracles by 
 divine inspiration. It was simply the view of a candid, 
 honest man, and if we want divine warrant for its cor- 
 rectness we must go to Christ himself, or to one of the 
 apostles. The saying of Benhadad : "Let not him that 
 putteth on his armor boast like him that putteth it 
 off," was a very wise one; but it was a maxim of 
 wordly prudence, and it is not lifted up into divine 
 morality by being reported in the Book of Kings. 
 These and many similar passages which might be 
 cited, may serve to show that when we find a passage 
 bearing on a j)oint in hand, we must take care to give 
 it no more and no less that its legitimate weight. 
 
 Thirdly, we must see to it that our induction of pas- 
 sages is comj^lete. In the logical argument which is 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTUKES. 267 
 
 known as a dilemma, and wliicli proceeds on the as- 
 sumption that one or other of two things must be 
 true, the conclusion is at once disproved if you can 
 bring forward a third thing which may as easily be true 
 as either of the other two. And, in the same way, the 
 conclusion which one draws from an induction of par- 
 ticulars is fatally vitiated if some other particular of a 
 different sort ought to have been included. Thus, in 
 the case of such a doctrine as the Atonement, if, like 
 Macleod Campbell, one takes his stand merely upon 
 two passages of Scripture, and deals with them as if 
 they were all that had a bearing on the subject, it is 
 enough to upset his conclusion to declare that he has 
 utterly ignored other portions of the word of God 
 having a different aspect and yet clearly referring to 
 the same great theme. One unexplained fact, as Sir 
 Isaac Newton was free to confess, would upset the 
 most plausible and insinuating theory, and in the 
 same way one passage of Scripture fairly bearing on 
 the theme in hand, and yet inconsistent with the doc- 
 trine sought to be formulated, demands a reconsider- 
 ation of the subject and a restatement of the conclusion. 
 
 These principles seem to me to be so clear that no 
 further argument is needed in their support. Now 
 let us look at a few subjects in the consideration of 
 which the importance of their application will be 
 seen. 
 
 Take, then, in the first place, the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, and it will be found that while there are 
 many passages in both the Old Testament and the 
 New which give the strongest emphasis to the unity 
 of God, " it is written again," and frequently, that the 
 Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy 
 Spirit is God ; while in such formulae as that of bap- 
 
268 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 tism and that of the apostolic benediction, each is so 
 named as to indicate that there is in each somethinsf 
 that is unique and distinctive. Fatherhood is not 
 Sonship ; and there is that attributed to the Holy 
 Ghost which is peculiar to him. Now how shall we 
 do in such a case ? If we so keep to the divine unity 
 as to repudiate the deity of the Son and that of the 
 Holy Ghost, we fall into the error of the Socinian 
 and are guilty of an imperfect induction. If, again, 
 we begin to describe the distinction between the three 
 in human phraseology, we are in danger of falling 
 into tri-theism, and so repudiating that unity which 
 is everywhere in Scripture predicated of God. We 
 must therefore find some formula in which the deity 
 of each shall be recognized, while yet the unity of the 
 Godhead shall be maintained. If we attempt to ex- 
 plain the " how," we shall immediately land ourselves 
 in difficuly ; but if we mean to be faithful to Scripture 
 teaching on the subject, we must find some place for 
 an acknowledgment of both facts. Whether the word 
 " j)erson," which has been settled on as that by which 
 to designate the distinction is the best, may fairly 
 enough be questioned ; for if we take that term in its 
 modern sense it is almost suo;o;estive of tri-theism : 
 and if we restrict it to its ancient significance, it may 
 lead us to that Sabellianism which resolved the Trin- 
 ity simply into modes of the divine manifestation ; so, 
 perhaps, it would be better to content ourselves with 
 saying that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and 
 the SjDirit is God ; and that while each of these terms 
 denotes something distinctive and restricted to him 
 who is called by it, yet the deity of each must not be 
 held in any such sense as violates the incontrovertible 
 truth, that " the Lord our God is one Jehovah." If 
 you ask me to explain how this can be, I acknowledge 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCEIPTUEES. 269 
 
 my lielplessness ; but if I am to formulate the result 
 of a full Scriptural induction on this subject, I must 
 do it in some such manner as that which I have just 
 expressed. I dare not reject either side of the ap- 
 parent inconsistency without failing to take note of 
 some of the Bible statements on the subject, and if I 
 do that, I am guilty of setting mj^self above revela- 
 tion, and making my reason and not Scripture the in- 
 fallible standard of my faith. If I do that, I am as 
 unscientific in my treatment of the Bible, as I should 
 be in my treatment of nature if I took note only of 
 such facts as fitted my theory and ignored all others. 
 Take, again, the doctrine of the Person of Christ, 
 and we have in it an illustration precisely similar to 
 that of the Trinity. The Lord Jesus is really a man. 
 That is everywhere apparent in the gospel history. 
 But then his was a unique manhood, giving constant 
 evidence that there was in him something higher and 
 nobler than common humanity. Moreover he is con- 
 stantly spoken of by his followers as one possessed 
 of Deity, or rather, to speak more correctly, as one in 
 whom Deity was united to humanity. Thus John de- 
 scribes him in this wise : " The "Word was made flesh 
 and dwelt among us ; " and in immediate connection 
 with that assertion he affirms : " The Word was God." 
 Again, Paul declares that being originally " in the form 
 of God " he took upon him " the form of a servant," 
 and if any one should shelter himself here under the 
 word " form," as if that meant something different from 
 real godhood, the sufficient answer is found in the fact 
 that the form of a servant describes a very real ser- 
 vice ; so that the apostle in these expressions virtually 
 claims for him that he is God in human nature. Nor 
 are these isolated passages ; multitudes of others 
 might be cited to the same effect, while there are 
 
270 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRITTUEES. 
 
 some that speak of Lis manliood alone, and others 
 •which make reference only to his deity. What, then, 
 does a fair induction from all these require ? It " is 
 written " that he is a man. But " it is written again " 
 that he is God. Shall I then reject either ? No ; for 
 that would be unscientific, and would be a repudia- 
 tion of the Bible as the guide of my faith. I must 
 accept both, however mysterious, and, indeed, incom- 
 prehensible the miracle may be, I must declare that 
 in the one person of Christ deity and manhood are 
 united. If I begin to refine into particulars I shall 
 soon find myself lost in uttermost perplexity, for that 
 is always the result of seeking to be wise above what 
 is written, but if I mean to be wise " up to " what is 
 written, and seek to formulate all that the New 
 Testament teaches on the subject, I must declare in 
 the words of the catechism, that " the eternal Son of 
 God became man, and so was, and continueth to be 
 God and man in two distinct natures and one person 
 for ever." 
 
 Very instructive in this particular is the record of 
 church history. Almost every conceivable opinion on 
 this subject has been broached by some one; and 
 every new view that is started upon it will be found 
 to be virtually the resurrection of some old heresy, 
 and may be shown to be founded on an imperfect in- 
 duction of Scripture teaching regarding it ; while 
 that which has been settled upon as the orthodox 
 faith upon it may be considered as the final result of 
 a reverent attempt continued for many ages, to give 
 expression to the sum of Scriptural teaching in answer 
 to the question : " "Who is this Son of Man ? " There 
 is only one w'ay of holding a spirit-level which will 
 keep the vacuum exactly at the center, and if you 
 swerve from that even in the least degree, the vacuum 
 
THE INDUCTIYE STUDY OF THE SCKIPTUEES. 271 
 
 will ultimately move either to one extremity or the other. 
 So in the orthodox statement of the doctrine of the per- 
 son of Christ you have the only resting-place where 
 you can permanently remain and do justice to all that 
 the Bible says about it ; for if you go on the one side, 
 you will land yourself ultimately in the extreme of 
 that humanitarianism which sees in Christ nothing 
 more than a man ; while if you move to the other, 
 you will find yourself at length in that error of the 
 ancient Docetse, who regarded Christ's human body 
 as a phantom or mere appearance, and so believed 
 only in his deity. The true inductive spirit compels 
 us to accept them both, and to hold that he was and 
 is God manifest in the flesh. 
 
 We may illustrate this principle, also, by a refer- 
 ence to the doctrine of the atonement. "When we ex- 
 amine the New Testament we find that subject spoken 
 of in four difierent, yet not inconsistent, aspects. It is 
 called a sacrifice, as when Christ is said to have "borne 
 our sins," and is designated as " the Lamb of God 
 that taketh away the sins of the world." It is styled 
 a redemption, as when Paul says, " In Christ we have 
 redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness 
 of sins ; " and the Lord himself affirms that " The Son 
 of man is come to give his life a ransom for many." 
 It is characterized as " a declaration of God's right- 
 eousness in the forgiveness of sins, that he might be 
 just and yet the justifier of him that believeth ; " and 
 the same phase of it is presented to us when, the 
 apostle alleges that " it pleased the Father, having 
 made peace by the blood of his cross, by him to 
 reconcile all things unto himself," for the making 
 peace by the blood of the cross is as evidently some- 
 thing prior and in order to the effecting of reconcilia- 
 tion, and must, therefore, be equivalent to the dec- 
 
272 THE INTDUCTIYE STUDY OF THE SCErPTTRES. 
 
 laration of rigliteousness wliereby he is just and jet 
 the justifier of the believer. And, finally, it is all 
 traced up to the love of God, " who gave his only be- 
 gotten Sou that whosoever believeth in him should 
 not perish but have everlasting life." Thus the death 
 of Christ did not purchase God's love for sinners, but 
 manifested that love and opened for it a righteous 
 channel through which it might flow to guilty men. 
 Under one or other of these four heads I believe that 
 all the Bible references to this great theme may be 
 arranged. But the mere fact that it is presented to 
 us in so many different ways is a proof that no one 
 mode of speech can fully describe its character, and 
 the great source of the discussions which have been 
 waged over it is to be found in this, that each dis- 
 putant has adopted one of these modes of viewing it, 
 as if that contained the whole truth about it and in- 
 volved in it the negation of all the rest. But the 
 right induction is that which accepts all the four, and 
 maintains that the doctrine of the atonement fully 
 formulated must be the great whole which accepts 
 them all and holds them all in harmony wdth each 
 other. It regards Christ's death as a manifestation 
 of God's love in the provision of an all-sufficient sacri- 
 fice for human sin, whereby God's rigliteousness is 
 declared in the forgiveness and salvation of believing 
 men, usually called their redemption. We have heard 
 too much of the ' moral ' view, and the ' legal' view, and 
 the ' governmental ' view, and so forth, of the atone- 
 ment. Let us try to get at the Scriptural view, and to 
 find that we must not take one passage and make it in- 
 terpret all the rest, but we must interrogate them all 
 and receive with reverent faith from each its contribu- 
 tion to the great result. 
 
 We may see another field for the application of 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCEIPTUEES. 273 
 
 the same principles in the investigation of tlie 
 difficult questions wliicli cluster about tlie sover- 
 eignty of God and the free agency of man. We 
 have some passages which clearly and unequivocally 
 declare that " of God and through God and to God 
 are all things," and there are others which as cer- 
 tainly teach the unfettered moral freedom of man. 
 There are some which affirm that believers are chosen 
 in Christ before the foundation of the world, and 
 others that j)lace salvation unequivocally at the ac- 
 ceptance of the sinner's will ; there are some which 
 affirm that saints are kept by the power of God 
 through faith unto salvation, and others which de- 
 clare that " he that is begotten of God keepeth him- 
 self." Now, here again the same questions arise : 
 Shall we choose the one and reject the other ; or, shall 
 we accept both, believing both to be in harmony in 
 God, however incomprehensible that harmony may 
 now seem to us ? If we take the first alternative, then 
 we are guilty of rationalism — for we accept of Script- 
 ure just what pleases us, and reject the rest. If we 
 take the second, then, though intellectual wiseacres 
 may sneer at us as fools, we deal at once reverently 
 and inductively with the sacred oracles. The hyper- 
 Calvinist runs away with the divine sovereignty, as if 
 that were all ; and the Arminian walks off with 
 human freedom, as if in that he had found the whole 
 truth. But neither of them accepts the full truth, or 
 has made a complete induction. It is the old story of 
 the knights and the shield over again. Both are cor- 
 rect in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny ; 
 and, curiously enough, in the union of the affirmations 
 of both the full truth is obtained. " It is written," 
 the one may truly say ; but " it is written again," the 
 other may as truly reply ; and if we are to have a 
 13* 
 
274 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 Scriptural tlieory, we must hold, by both, looking to 
 God as if all depended upon him, and at the same 
 time exerting ourselves as if all depended upon us. 
 
 But to mention only one illustration more — let me 
 take the practical subject of prayer, all the more 
 that, just for the neglect of the principles on which I 
 have been insisting, many hold the most erroneous 
 views regarding it. It is written : " Every one that 
 asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to 
 him that knocketh it shall be opened." And again : 
 " Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do, 
 that the Father may be glorified in the Son ; if ye 
 shall ask anything in my name I will do it." Now 
 from these and many similar passages multitudes 
 have inferred that by prayer they will obtain anything 
 which they choose to seek from God, and some of the 
 wildest statements have been made by them in this 
 matter, savoring, as I cannot but think, both of super- 
 stition and delusion. For it is written again : " If ye 
 abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask 
 what ye will, and it sliall be done unto you." And 
 again : " Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall 
 give thee the desires of thine heart." Moreover, it 
 cannot be forgotten that when David fasted and wept 
 and prayed for the life of his child, he did not obtain 
 that which he desired ; and when Paul besought tlie 
 Lord that the thorn in his flesh might depart from 
 him, he did not get the thing which he requested. 
 From all this, therefore, it is evident that the univer- 
 sal promise is to be understood as qualified by some 
 indispensable conditions which connect themselves 
 with the character of the suppliant, with the nature 
 of the thing requested, and Avith the purpose and pre- 
 rogative of God himself. If the petitioner be not 
 abiding in Christ, or if the thing which he seeks be 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCEIPTURES. 275 
 
 sometliiiig that will do him real harm, or if by refusing 
 his prayer God can train him into something better 
 and nobler than he would become if his request were 
 granted, then his desire will not be given to him. It 
 would be easy to dwell on each of these three condi- 
 tions and show you how much is involved in each ; 
 but what I now insist upon is that they are conditions 
 as constant and as invariable, as in the case of my 
 text, the obedience of the command, " Thou slialt not 
 tempt the Lord thy God," is alleged to be the condi- 
 tion of the fulfillment of the promise, " He shall give 
 his angels charge concerning thee." But how seldom 
 all this is taken note of by many modern Christians ? 
 They seem to think that the Lord exists simply and 
 only to answer prayer. They forget that he is the 
 Father of his people, and that as such he is discijolin- 
 ing his children for heaven. They know, indeed, that 
 they train their own children by the manner in which 
 they deal with their requests, but they think God as 
 a Father is to be so indulgent as to grant them every- 
 thing, without regard either to his own honor or to 
 their good ; and so they are troubled about their " un- 
 answered prayers." But in reality there are only two 
 prayers for which we have an unconditional assurance 
 that we shall have a full answer. These are : Father, 
 glorify thy name," and, "The will of the Lord be 
 done " ; and as the true believer who abides in Jesus 
 has these two petitions as the under-tone of every 
 request, he always carries away a blessing. So let 
 us not be ignorant, unreasonable and unscriptural in 
 our expectations when we pray, but accepting the 
 full teaching of the Word of God upon the subject, 
 let us make our plea and leave ourselves with joyful 
 trust in our Father's hand, full sure that even the 
 denial of a request may be itself the means of 
 
276 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 answering some of the deepest yearnings of our 
 hearts. 
 
 Many other illustrations of the application of the 
 inductive principle to the investigation of the sacred 
 Scriptures might be given, but these, must suffice for 
 the present. Let me conclude by little more than 
 mentioning three important inferences which may be 
 drawn from the course of thought which we have 
 prosecuted and the remembrance of which may be 
 of great service to those who are looking forward to 
 the ministry of the Gospel. 
 
 In the first place every heresy has in it a cer- 
 tain modicum of truth. The poet has said that 
 "There is a soul of goodness in things evil, could 
 we observingly distill it out;" and no one can 
 read thoughtfully the history of doctrine in the 
 Christian Church without discovering that even in 
 those systems of error which have from time to 
 time made their appearance there has been a side of 
 truth. Not only so : the error has been formidable not 
 because of the error, but because of the truth that was 
 mixed up with it. One can much more easily deal 
 with that which is wholly wrong than with that which 
 is partly right ; and the great misfortune in controversy 
 has been that the defenders of the faith have not always 
 had the discrimination to distinguish the fraction of 
 truth from the error to which it has given vitality, and 
 both have been assailed together. Thus, whether the 
 issue were victory or defeat, there was sure to be some 
 injury done to truth. Whenever, therefore, some sys- 
 tem of doctrine becomes prevalent, and you see it to 
 be dangerous in its tendency yet attractive in its pres- 
 entation, accustom yourselves to ask first of all con- 
 cerning it what is the portion of truth in it that gives 
 
THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OP THE SCEIPTUBES. 277 
 
 it feasibility, and that will at once indicate liow it is 
 to be met. 
 
 Eor, in the second place, the truth thus mixed up 
 with error is very generally something that has been 
 too largely overlooked. That which has been neglected 
 revenges itself at length by claiming more than its due 
 share of importance. The continual presentation by 
 old divines of the federal theology with its clean-cut 
 legal formulae, provoked the assertion that the whole 
 virtue of the atonement was of a moral sort, and that 
 there was no reference to God's justice or satisfaction 
 of law whatever in it. So, again, the constant promi- 
 nence given to the deity of Christ and the almost uni- 
 versal ignoring of his humanity, swung men off into 
 that early Unitarianism which made such exquisite 
 use of the brotherhood of the Lord Jesus. And the 
 insistence by multitudes on the mechanical verbal- 
 dictation theory of inspiration, struck out of Coleridge 
 those "Letters of an Inquiring Spirit" which have 
 been the germ of almost everything that has been 
 written by the Broad School on the subject since his 
 day. 
 
 Now if these two general principles be true, you 
 will see at once, as a third inference from our subject, 
 how error is to be most effectually met. E-ecognize 
 the portion of truth which it contains. Bring that 
 back to its proper importance. Then supplement it 
 by putting it along with those other sides of the truth 
 which are needed to give it full-balanced completeness. 
 Let it be acknowledged fully and frankly " it is writ- 
 ten," but then let it be added it is written "again." 
 Admit freely the reality of the Redeemer's manhood, 
 but put with that the genuineness of his deity. Con- 
 cede willingly the moral theory of the atonement as 
 far as it goes ; but make it clear that there is more 
 
278 THE INDUCTIVE STUDY OF THE SCKIPTURES. 
 
 than tliat in the Scripture statements on the subject, 
 and show that the moral view can have no place un- 
 less the other be held along with it : grant all that is 
 required concerning the individuality of the inspired 
 writers ; but yet insist upon it that through that indi- 
 viduality God sent his message to mankind. Thus 
 you will kill error without injuring truth. Thus, too, 
 you will keep yourselves from becoming narrow-minded 
 and intolerant, and will cultivate that spirit not more 
 truly philosophic than Christian which is open-eyed 
 toward all truth, and welcomes it even when it comes, 
 apparently, in no good company. 
 January 30, 1881. 
 
AN OPEN DOOE FOR LITTLE 
 STRENGTH. 
 
 Rev. iii. 8. — Behold I have set before thee an open door, and no 
 man can shut it ; for thou hast a little strength and hast kept my 
 word and hast not denied my name. 
 
 "Thou hast a little strength." The words were 
 addressed to the angel of the church at Philadelj)hia 
 by the Lord Jesus after its members had passed, 
 with honor, through some fiery ordeal, which had 
 been designed by their enemies to make them deny 
 his name. They do not mean, as some might be in- 
 clined to suj)pose, that the persecution had been so 
 oppressive as wellnigh to exhaust the church, so that 
 though it had come off with unstained loyalty, it had 
 only a little strength remaining. Rather they de- 
 scribe the condition of the church before the terrible 
 trial came upon it. From the very beginning its ability 
 had been but small. It had never been what outsiders 
 would have called a strong church. In numbers, in 
 wealth, in rank, in influence, in every other constituent 
 which is popularly regarded as contributing to power 
 in the world, it had been always poor. Yet small as 
 its strength was, its members had stood firm in the 
 the face alike of cruel threatenings and alluring 
 promises. And lo ! as the reward of their steadfast- 
 ness, the Lord declares that he has set before them 
 " an open door " which no man could shut. That is 
 to say, through the gateway of their fidelity, feeble as 
 they were, they went under the leadership of Christ 
 
280 AN OPEN DOOR FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 
 
 to a sphere of usefulness, whicli was peculiarly and 
 pre-eminently their own, and which no mortal could 
 prevent them from filling. Thus interpreted, this 
 test has been to me full of comfort and inspiration, 
 and I desire to-day to make you sharers with me in 
 the blessing it has brought to me. 
 
 " Thou hast but little strength." How many in all 
 our congregations may be truly thus addressed ! They 
 are painfully conscious of their feebleness, not only 
 when they contrast themselves with those who are 
 more favorably circumstanced, but also when they 
 look abroad on the work which is yet to be done for 
 Christ in the world. Sometimes the weakness is 
 physical, and the frailness of the body prevents the 
 man from undertaking that which, in vigorous health, 
 he would have entered upon with joy. Sometimes it 
 is intellectual, and as he thinks of the undeniable 
 eminence in science and philosophy of some of those 
 who are arrayed against God's truth, he is almost 
 tempted to wish that he had the ability to cope with 
 them in argument and show the fallaciousness of their 
 reasonings. Sometimes it is social ; he has little 
 wealth, .and no great standing in the world ; it may be 
 that he is even in a subordinate place as the servant 
 of another, and as he desires to do something for 
 Christ, and has, j)erhaps, the claims of different 
 causes urged upon him from the pulpit or elsewhere, 
 he is apt to become despondent when he discovers that 
 he is literally unable, from the necessity of his situa- 
 tion, to do anything for any one of them. I believe that 
 cases of this kind are commoner than multitudes im- 
 agine ; and that there is much secret sorrow in the 
 hearts of many humble followers of Christ, because in 
 one or other of these ways they are being continually 
 made to feel that they have only " a Utile strength." 
 
AN OPEN DOOR FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 281 
 
 Now, I know few passages of Scripture more 
 admirably fitted to give encouragement and direc- 
 tion to those who are distressed in this way than 
 that which is now before us. For one thing it sug- 
 gests to us that the having of but little strength is not 
 a matter of which we need to be ashamed. The Lord 
 here does not blame the Pliiladelj)hians for their 
 feebleness. There is not a single syllable of reproof 
 in this whole letter ; and we must not suppose that 
 weakness is always and of necessity wickedness. If 
 one has brought it upon himself by his own iniquity, 
 then it may be a matter of disgrace ; but if it come in 
 the allotment of God's providence, there is no moral 
 reproach to be associated with it. No doubt the 
 tendency among men is to despise feebleness. The 
 law of " the survival of the fittest," whether there be 
 much or little in it in natural science, is certainly not 
 unknown in human life, for almost invariably by 
 selfishness the weakest is driven to the wall. If a 
 boy has some constitutional defect, whether lameness 
 of foot, or obliquity of vision, or impediment of 
 speech, it will too often be turned into ridicule by his 
 companions ; and in this matter I am afraid that 
 many men may truly be described as children of a 
 larger growth. So, because in common society weak- 
 ness is too often counted a reproach by men, the 
 feeble Christian is apt to think that God will despise 
 him because he has only a little strength. But that is 
 not the case. Look again at this epistle. Christ did not 
 overlook the church of Philadelphia, weak though it 
 was ; and neither does he now forget his feeble children. 
 Is it not written, " A bruised reed shall he not break, 
 and the smoking flax shall he not quench " ? Nay, 
 do we not see in the description of the children's 
 angels as beholding the face of God, that the care of 
 
282 AN OPEN DOOR FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 
 
 tlie least is tlie special cliarge of the highest ? Lack 
 of strength, therefore, so far from making us the ob- 
 jects of the Divine contempt, only gives us a new 
 claim upon his assistance. Whoever may upbraid us 
 ■with our weakness, we may be sure that Jesus never 
 will ; and if he do not condemn us for it, why should 
 we be ashamed of it in the sight of men ? He giveth 
 power to the faint and to them that have no might 
 he increaseth strength. 
 
 But more than this, when we take this letter and read 
 it in connection with the others which have been framed 
 and hung up here for our perusal in the porch of the 
 book of Revelation, there is suggested to us the truth 
 that the having of but a little strength may even come 
 to be, in some resjDects, an advantage. For it is not 
 a little remarkable that the two churches which 
 received unqualified commendation are those of 
 Smyrna and Philadelphia, neither of which was strong 
 in the ordinary sense of the term ; while on the other 
 hand the severest reproof is addressed to the church 
 of Laodicea, which any outsider would have spoken 
 of as at once prosperous and influential. Thus we are 
 reminded that where there is much strength there is 
 also a disposition to trust in that ; while, on the other 
 hand, where there is conscious feebleness there is felt 
 also the necessity of making application for the might 
 of the Most High. That was the secret of Paul's 
 paradox, " "When I am weak, then am I strong ; " and 
 there are many among us who feel that if it had not 
 been for the blessing of God imparted to them 
 through physical affliction, or pecuniary straits, they 
 might, and in all probability would, have grown 
 proud and defiant, and thus might have cut them- 
 selves off from the grace of God. So let the weak 
 be reconciled to his weakness, and accept it as 
 
AN OPEN DOOE FOB LITTLE STRENGTH. 283 
 
 being tlie will of God in Christ Jesus concerning 
 liim. 
 
 But pursuing this line of thought a little farther we 
 may see from my text that the having of only a little 
 strength does not utterly disqualify us from serving 
 the Lord. Feeble as they were, the Philadelphians 
 had kept Christ's word and had not denied his name. 
 They glorified him where they were, and in the man- 
 ner appropriate to their circumstances. They kept 
 their loyalty to him even in their weakness. And it 
 is possible for every one of us to do the same. If 
 God has given us only one talent, he does not hold us 
 responsible for five. If my strength is small he does 
 not require of me that which only a larger measure of 
 power could enable me to perform. Wherever I am, 
 it is enough if there I keep his word ; and however 
 limited be my resources, he asks no more than that I 
 use all these resources in advancing the honor of his 
 name. He is no hard master, reaping where he has 
 not sown, and gathering where he has not strewn. If 
 he has not given me wealth, he asks only that I con- 
 secrate my poverty to him. If he has not bestowed 
 upon me commanding intellectual abilities, he seeks 
 only that I use those which I possess in serving him ; 
 and if " obstacles and trials seem like prison walls to 
 be," he requires only that I do the little that I can, 
 and leave the rest to him. Nay, if there is nothing 
 active that I can undertake, it will be sufficient if I 
 resist all temptations to let go his word and to deny 
 his name. From this none of us can excuse himself, 
 and every one who earnestly sets himself to act after 
 this fashion may rely upon the assurance, " My grace 
 is sufficient for thee ; my strength is made perfect in 
 weakness." 
 
 Still further, if we proceed upon this principle, my 
 
284 AN OPEN DOOR FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 
 
 text affirms that a wider spliere will be ultimately 
 opened up to us. Look at it again : " I have set be- 
 fore thee an open door, for thou hast but little strength 
 and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name." 
 Fidelity is rewarded by greater opportunity. " He that 
 is faithful in that which is least " is promoted to that 
 which is greater, and has given to him a loftier posi- 
 tion and a wider range. The man who is always mur- 
 muring over the limits of his lot will never do 
 anything in the world. He whose pride is wounded 
 because he has received only one talent will be sure 
 to bury that one in the earth. But if he wall only use 
 his little all to purpose, laying it out to usury with 
 faithfulness, earnestness, and prayer, he will find at 
 length his opportunities doubled. Thus it is always 
 that men have risen, alike in the church and in the 
 world, to the thrones of their individual power. From 
 those who have not, even that which they have is sure 
 to be taken away ; but they who have begun by doing 
 their little faithfully have risen through that into 
 something nobler, and through that again to some- 
 thing higher, until at length they have reached a 
 position which at first seemed quite beyond the pos- 
 sibility of their attainment. They have had set before 
 them an open door, which none has been able to shut. 
 Fidelity always rises. It is, in fact, irrepressible ; for 
 when Christ says to it, " Come up higher," no one can 
 hold it down. 
 
 Such, as it seems to me, are the main teachings of 
 this suggestive verse, and if I have been right in thus 
 interpreting it, one or two inferences of a wholesome 
 sort will follow. 
 
 I. In the first place we may learn that usefulness is 
 not the primary object of the Christian's attention. I 
 
AN OPEN DOOR FOE LITTLE STRENGTH. 285 
 
 would not be understood, indeed, as seeking in any 
 way to discourage those whose desire it is to benefit 
 their fellow men by leading them to the Lord Jesus. 
 It is right to aim after the welfare of those who are 
 still ignorant and out of the way. But I am persuaded 
 that many among us fail in securing that because we 
 do not seek it in the right manner. We are apt to 
 make it a primary and immediate end in and of itself, 
 and to forget that the first thing Christ sets us to do 
 is to be faithful where we are, by keeping his word 
 and confessing his name. Usefulness is the result of 
 character, and therefore character ought to have our 
 earliest care. Not what we can do for others, but 
 rather what we are in ourselves, demands our first 
 attention, for to do good to others we must first be 
 good ourselves. Usefulness is to character what 
 fragrance is to the flower. But the gardener does not 
 make the fragrance his first or greatest aim. Nay, 
 rather his grand design is to produce a perfect flower, 
 for he knows if he succeed in that the fragrance will 
 come of itself. In the same way the Christian's first 
 concern should bo with his own character. His prime 
 ambition ought to be, where he is, to keep Christ's 
 word and to confess his name ; and when he has 
 succeeded in that, the door to legitimate and lasting 
 usefulness will open to him of itself, or, rather, 
 Christ will open it for him and no man will be able 
 to shut it. 
 
 The first results of our Christianity are to be looked 
 for not in the effects of our work upon others, but in 
 the development of holiness in ourselves ; and when 
 our characters are thus Christianized we shall find 
 through them a short and easy way to usefulness, for 
 indeed the effluence of them will be the finest means 
 of telling upon others. Hence I cannot but regard it 
 
286 AN OPEN DOOK FOE LITTLE STRENGTH. 
 
 as unfortunate and indeed unnatural when young con- 
 verts wlio have only just found their way to Christ, 
 are encouraged forthwith to begin to labor among 
 others. They may be instrumental in doing some- 
 thing, but in that way they will never attain to any- 
 thing like the highest usefulness. Their first duty is 
 in the sphere in Avhich Christ found them, to keep his 
 word and to confess his name. Their first care ought 
 to be for the manifestation of the Christian character 
 in the lowly and limited place to which they origin- 
 ally belonged, and through their faithfulness in that 
 the Lord will open up for them a door to something 
 higher. To be holy is our primary duty, and through 
 that we pass to usefulness. If, therefore, there be 
 those before me who are eager for the crown that is 
 to be won by turning many to righteousness, let me 
 urge them not to go after that in the wrong way. The 
 shortest path to it is not that which seeks it directly, 
 but that which lies through faithful holiness in the 
 discharge of duty or the endurance of trial where you 
 are. Nor let any one be discouraged if by reason of the 
 pressure of immediate obligations, or the circumscrib- 
 ing influence of weakness or of suffering, he may seem 
 to be shut out from doing anything for others. That 
 which he has to look to for the moment is the cultiva- 
 tion of holiness within the limits of his providential 
 surroundings, and it is only through the keeping of 
 Christ's word by himself there, that he is to expect 
 the opening of a door into wider work among others. 
 Everything in its own order, and here the order is, 
 first, cultivation of personal holiness, and then the 
 attainment of a sphere of usefulness. 
 
 II. But if these things are so, we have as, another 
 inference suggested from this text, an easy explana- 
 
AN OPEN DOOE FOR LITTLE STEENGTH. 287 
 
 tion of tlie great usefulness of many who are in no 
 wise noteworthy for strength. Few things are more 
 commonly spoken of among men than the fact that 
 the most successful soul-winners in the ministry are 
 not always those who are most conspicuous for intel- 
 lectual ability or argumentative power. If you take 
 up the sermons, for example, of John "Wesley or of 
 George "Whitefield, you will find it hard to believe 
 that such effects as we read of in the records of the 
 period were produced by them. In point of mental 
 power and suggestiveness they are not for a moment 
 to be put into comparison with those of many other 
 men who had apparently scarcely any success ; and if 
 we look at the sermons alone, there is no explanation 
 of their results to be found in them. But no printing- 
 press can reproduce the preacher ; and the secret of 
 the power in all such cases was in the men. Their 
 greatness was their goodness. Their holy char- 
 acters, formed and molded by the Spirit of God, ex- 
 haled through their discourses, and these gave them 
 their usefulness. In the same way you will some- 
 times find a church whose members are poor in this 
 world's goods, and not remarkable for that culture 
 which modern circles have so largely deified, yet 
 famous for its good works among the masses, and 
 foremost in the successes which it has achieved in 
 evangelistic work ; and when you look into the matter 
 you find the explanation in the consecrated characters 
 and lives of those who are associated in its felloAV- 
 ship. They have sought their usefulness through 
 their holiness, and not their holiness through their 
 usefulness ; and therefore it is they have had such 
 signal triumphs. On the other hand, when we see 
 churches great in numbers, wealthy in resources, and 
 fully equipped with all the machinery required for 
 
288 AN OPEN DOOR FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 
 
 home missionarj work, yet mourning over their lack 
 of success in its prosecution, my text suggests a pos- 
 sible explanation of the anomaly. Their communion 
 rolls, perhaps, are burdened with those who are not 
 distinguished for holiness, and who have a name that 
 they live while they are dead. Their members, it may 
 be, are lacking in consecration ; they are not thorough- 
 going in the maintenance of the principles of the gos- 
 pel in their daily lives, they are unfaithful to their 
 profession in their conduct, and so Christ has shut 
 the door in the face of their church, and no man can 
 open it. "When we are unsuccessful in work for others, 
 let us see whether it be not because we are some- 
 where unfaithful in our motives. Israel could not 
 take Ai when Achan with his hidden wickedness was 
 in the camp ; and who can tell how sorely our churches 
 are crippled in their work, and how largely their ex- 
 ertions are neutralized by the inconsistencies of those 
 who are nominally connected with them. When doors 
 are closed against us it is time to inquire whether it 
 be not true that we have not been keeping the 
 Lord's word, and have been denying his name. 
 Unfaithfulness shuts us out of opportunity. A man 
 is useless because he has been heedless of the Word ; 
 a church is useless because it has denied Christ's 
 name. The thought is full of solemnity alike for 
 minister and people, and if it should be that we are 
 mourning over our comparative failure in telling on 
 the outlying world, let us search and see lest the 
 cause of our lack of success be not in our denial some- 
 where of the Lord that bought us. Nor let us forget 
 that the noblest contribution we can give to the 
 work of the church is our own personal holiness, for 
 without that no money offering can be fully blessed, 
 and yet, even if we be poor in this world's goods, that 
 
AN OPEN DOOK FOE LITTLE STKENGTH, 289 
 
 is a gift which we may always lay upon Christ's altar 
 if we will. 
 
 III. Finally, if the principles which I have tried to 
 deduce from this text are true, we see at once how such 
 apparently opposite things as Christian contentment 
 and Christian ambition are to be perfectly harmonized. 
 The full discharge of duty on the lower level opens 
 the passage up into the higher. We see that illus- 
 trated in secular departments, if I may call them so, 
 every day. If the school-boy wishes to gain a high 
 and honorable position as a man, he must be content, 
 so long as he is at school, to go through its daily 
 round, and perform in the best possible manner its 
 common duties. The better he is as a scholar, the 
 more surely will the door into eminence open for him 
 as a man. But if he trifle away his time, if he neg- 
 lect his work, if he despise what he calls the " drudge- 
 ry" of education, and so leave school without hav- 
 ing learned those things which he was sent thither to 
 to acquire, then there will be nothing for him in after 
 days but humiliation and failure. Doors enow may 
 open to him, but he will never be ready to enter one 
 of them, and will be to the last, unless he go back and 
 make up for what he has lost, a useless hanger-on to 
 the skirts of society. In the same way if a servant 
 would seek to be a master, the shortest way to that 
 end is for him to accept his present lot and be in it 
 the very best of servants. He who is always schem- 
 ing for a sudden elevation, as if he would vault at one 
 leap into the chair of his ambition, never reaches it 
 in that way ; or if he do, he cannot keep in it. But 
 the wise plan is to be content for the time with the 
 place we have, and show the highest excellence in fill- 
 ing that ; for in the long run the door always opens 
 13 
 
290 AN OPEN DOOR FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 
 
 before character. The " candidating minister " wlio 
 is forever gadding about among vacant churches 
 seeking a suitable sphere, until at length he becomes 
 known as the " solicitor-general," never gets one to 
 his mind. But the man who is conspicuously diligent 
 ■where he is, and is doing there his utmost for the 
 honor of the Lord, will be sought for by others with- 
 out any agency of his own, and will receive the recog- 
 nition of the Master in a nobler opportunity. 
 
 Now it is not otherwise in every other department. 
 The first thing we have to do, if we w^ould pass from a 
 lower to a higher post of usefulness, is to adapt our- 
 selves thoroughly to our present sphere, and set our- 
 selves diligently to perform its duties. If we are con- 
 scious of its limitations then let us not rebel against 
 them, but accej)t them and make the best possible 
 work within them. Then when we have turned our 
 little strength to good account, we shall find the door 
 opened to us by the Master's hand. Contentment 
 with the present thus, paradoxical as it may seem, is 
 the surest means of securing in the future that on 
 which, as Christians, we are taught to set our desires. 
 Fretting over our weakness will not make things bet- 
 ter, but it will prevent us from bringing anything out 
 of the little strength we have. He who is constantly 
 com23laining that he has no more, makes little or no 
 use of that which he has ; whereas the man who is 
 reconciled for the moment to his position and delib- 
 erately seeks to serve God in the best way there, is 
 already in the sure and safe way to promotion. This 
 is a most important consideration, for it brings all the 
 hopes of the future and focuses them on the duties of 
 the present, making the commendation of the Judge at 
 last dejDend upon even so small a thing as the giving 
 of a cup of cold water to a disciple in his name, or 
 
AN OPEN DOOE FOR LITTLE STRENGTH. 291 
 
 tlie visiting for his sake of one of his imprisoned 
 brethren. 
 
 Here, then, is comfort as well as direction for the 
 weak. Present fidelity is the door through which 
 we pass to future eminence. The disciple of the 
 Lord is content with the sphere in which he is 
 placed ; but he seeks to fill that thoroughly, in order 
 that he may rise the sooner to something better. 
 Nor does he seek in vain, for the Lord does not over- 
 look the faithfulness of the feeble, but opens for them 
 a door of opportunity which all the sticklers for 
 ecclesiastical propriety, and all the votaries of intel- 
 lectul culture, and all the influences of fashionable 
 society will not be able to shut. And then when the 
 best use has been made of earth's opportunities, 
 when he has employed to the utmost in the Master's 
 service and the service of his generation that strength 
 which even at its best in this life is but small, the 
 Lord will open for him the door of heaven, saying, 
 " "Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast 
 been faithful over a few things ; I will make thee ruler 
 over many things ; enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord." 
 
 October 31, 1880. 
 
THE SOEEOWFUL "IF." 
 
 John xi. 21 and 33. Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother 
 had not died. 
 
 EvEEY reader of tlie Gospels is perfectly familiar 
 even witli the minutest details of this most interesting 
 chapter. For that reason, therefore, and also because 
 the most important points in it will come incidentally 
 up as we follow the line of thought which I have 
 marked out for this discourse, I shall not attempt to 
 give you any summary of the narrative by way of in- 
 troduction, but proceed at once to indicate and illus- 
 trate the practical and experimental truths which it 
 suggests. 
 
 I. Notice, then, in the first place, that the friends of 
 Jesus are not exempted from affliction in the world. 
 If such immunity might have been expected in any 
 case, it surely would have been in that of the members 
 of the Bethany family who so often received and en- 
 tertained the Lord. The household consisted of three 
 members — a brother and two sisters — to each of 
 whom Christ was bound by ties of human friendship, 
 as well as of spiritual fellowship. He was, in fact, 
 almost like another brother in the family, one to 
 whom they were all most tenderly attached, and who 
 loved them very specially in retiirn. Their house was 
 one of the few places — perhaps the only place — on 
 earth in which he was perfectly at home. Thither he 
 often went after a weary day of labor and debate with 
 
THE SOEEOWFUL " IF." 293 
 
 the Jews in the streets of Jerusalem or in the courts 
 of the temple, and there he always found congenial 
 companionship unshadowed by the presence of ene- 
 mies who were watching to entangle him in his talk. 
 No painful association connects itself with Bethany. 
 We cannot think of Bethlehem without remembering 
 the massacre of the infants ; of Nazareth without re- 
 calling the rejection of the Saviour by the men of the 
 city in which " he had been brought up ; " of Caper- 
 naum, without recollecting the woe which its inhab- 
 itants drew down upon their heads ; of Jerusalem, 
 without having brought to mind the sad scene of the 
 crucifixion ; but Bethany is linked only to memories 
 of blessedness, and the home of Lazarus stands out 
 from among the scenes of the gospel history with a 
 sacredness that is peculiar to itself; for there the 
 Lord Jesus was honored and beloved. Yet, dear a^ 
 Christ was to its inmates, and tenderly as they were 
 regarded by him, they were not on that account 
 exempt from affliction ; for here we have these state- 
 ments in the closest 23roximity. "Now Jesus loved 
 Martha and her sister and Lazarus; " and again : "A 
 certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the 
 town of Mary, and her sister Martha." 
 
 This suggests the question, why affliction is sent upon 
 those who are the friends of God ? It is the old problem 
 which Job and his three visitors debated, and which, 
 taken in connection with the frequent prosperity of 
 the wicked, perplexed the souls of the authors of the 
 37th and 73d psalms ; and though the full materials 
 for its solution are not furnished to us anywhere, we 
 may yet find some light cast upon it by this and other 
 portions of tlie word of God. For we may conclude that 
 such trial is not necessarily the result of any special sin. 
 Even in regard to those who had no such tender rela- 
 
294 THE SORROWFUL " IF." 
 
 tionsliip to himself, the Saviour warned his disciples 
 against drawing the inference that particular suffering 
 is always the consequence of some particular wicked- 
 ness, and in a case like that of Lazarus and his sisters, 
 it is clear that all such reasoning would be unwar- 
 ranted. Nay, more, in affirming, as he did in answer 
 to the application of the sisters, that " This sickness 
 is for the glory of God, that the Son of God might 
 be glorified thereby," he laid down a general principle 
 which may guide us in all similar instances. The 
 great design of God in the affliction of his people is 
 to show the exceeding riches of his grace, and thus to 
 commend himself to them as the strength of their 
 hearts and their portion forever. And if it be asked 
 in what respects his glory is thus advanced through 
 the trial of his own, different answers must be given 
 to the question. It may be so in the development of 
 the character of the afflicted one himself; for there can 
 be no doubt that spiritual growth is often promoted by 
 such discipline. Hezekiah is not the only one who 
 has felt and said that "By these things men live." 
 Luther numbered trials as among his best instruct- 
 ors ; and the Psalmist records the experience of 
 multitudes when he says : " It is good for me that I 
 have been afflicted." Again the afflictions of God's 
 people may redound to his glory in their effect upon 
 others, either as silencing the gainsayer, or as convert- 
 ing the careless, or as educating the weak believer into 
 stronger faith. The calamities of Job came on him to 
 prove the utter falseness of the assertion made by 
 Satan, that the truly godly man is moved only by 
 utilitarian considerations, and serves the Lord simply 
 for what he can make thereby ; and I have no doubt 
 that even in our own days many Christians have been 
 sorely afflicted, just to show to the scoffing creAV by 
 
THE SOREOWTUL "iF." 295 
 
 whom tliey were surrounded how sure and abiding 
 their confidence was, and how lovingly God could 
 sustain them in the deepest distress. Sometimes, 
 again, through the sufferings of a believing friend the 
 indifferent have been awakened and led to the Lord. 
 The affliction of a parent has been, as we express it, 
 " sanctified " to a son or a daughter ; and the illness of 
 a companion, borne with Christian submission, has led 
 many a man to Christ; while, again, a weak believer 
 has often been strengthened by the sight of the calm 
 bearing and simple trustfulness of a dear one on whom 
 God's hand has been laid. Christ said to his followers 
 in this very case : " I am glad, for your sakes, that I 
 was not there, to the intent ye may believe." We have 
 all known such instances, and when we think it through 
 we come to see that vicarious suffering is not confined 
 to Christ. In the highest sacrificial sense of the words, 
 indeed, we must say that no one ever suffered for others 
 as He did ; but in a lower sense it is true that believers 
 often do suffer for others ; and when their benefit is se- 
 cured thereby, the afflicted ones discover that their sick- 
 ness has really been for the glory of God, so that they 
 enter in a very real way into " the fellowship of the Sav- 
 iour's sufferings." I think if this view were more fre- 
 quently taken, affliction would not so often lead the suf- 
 ferer to morbid introspection, as if God was somehow 
 offended with him and it was essential that he should 
 search in himself for some reason for his trial ; while, 
 again, it would sustain him under his visitation with 
 \;he hope that others might be benefited through his 
 tribulation. If Lazarus or his sisters could have 
 foreseen all that was to result from the trial to which 
 they were subjected, they would have been thoroughly 
 upheld thereby ; and their history is written here from 
 first to last, Just to give us a revelation of the possi- 
 
296 THE SORROWFUL "iF." 
 
 bilities that may spring out of our sorrows. These 
 considerations may not, perhaps, quite solve the prob- 
 lem why the friends of Jesus are afflicted, but they 
 do most undoubtedly lessen the mystery, and they 
 may serve to put a staff into our hands when God 
 shall cause us to walk through the valley of shadow. 
 In any case the narrative on which now I am com- 
 menting, ought to keep us from rashly concluding 
 that because we are afflicted we cannot be the objects 
 of the love of God. When the teacher desires to dem- 
 onstrate his own excellence as an instructor he takes 
 his ripest scholar and subjects him to the sorest ex- 
 amination, not because he is suspicious of his attain- 
 ments, but just because he knows that they are so 
 thorough : so sometimes I think the Lord exposes his 
 dearest people to fiery trials, not because he would 
 expose their weakness, but because he knows their 
 strength, and would thereby commend that grace by 
 which they stand to the acceptance of their fellow men. 
 If he had not been so sure of Mary and Martha they 
 might have been sjDared, at this time, the affliction 
 which befell them ; but it came on them that, through 
 them, untold multitudes might be blessed. This may 
 be a view of the matter that is strange to some of you, 
 but I am sure it is a right view, and I have dwelt 
 upon it now because of the consolation which it 
 yields. 
 
 II. But notice now, in the second place, that the 
 friends of Jesus in their affliction turn directly and 
 immediately to him. So soon as Martha and Mary 
 awoke to the seriousness of their brother's illness, 
 they sent unto Christ a messenger to say : " Lord, he 
 whom thou lovest is sick." They believed that he 
 was " the Christ, the Son of God, that should come 
 
THE SOEEOWFUL " IF." 297 
 
 into the ■world," and tliey made instant application 
 unto liim in that capacity. They knew his power ; 
 they cherished fondly the remembrance of their happy 
 fellowship with him, and they trusted implicitly in 
 his grace — so implicitly, indeed, that they made no 
 definite request, but contented themselves with the 
 simple announcement of their brother's distress, be- 
 lieving that no more was needed to bring the Lord 
 Jesus to their side. Yet even in making this intima- 
 tion, their confidence was not in anything about them- 
 selves or Lazarus, but simply in himself. They did 
 not say, " He who loves thee," but rather, " He whom 
 thou lovest." It was an appeal to his own heart, all 
 the more eloquent because it left the manner of the 
 response entirely to himself, and made no suggestion 
 as to how he should relieve them. It was enough for 
 them to make sure that he simply knew their need. 
 Just as the disciples of John the Baptist, when they 
 had lost their master by the cruel deed of Herod, 
 " went and told Jesus," so these sisters in their hour 
 of extremity sent straight to the Lord. Now here is 
 an example for us, for, though Jesus is no longer upon 
 the earth, we may repair to him in all our time of 
 trouble ; nay, just because he is no longer on the earth, 
 we may get to him more easily than these sorrowing 
 sisters did ; for their messenger had to go away 
 across the Jordan to Bethabara before they could 
 reach him, but now we can breathe a prayer into his 
 ear at any time and in any place, with the full assur- 
 ance that he hears our request. 
 
 Nor have we here only an example, for we may 
 make of the conduct of the Bethany sisters a test 
 wherewith to try ourselves. To whom do we go first 
 in the time of our extremity? What is our resource 
 in the day of trouble ? To what refuge do we run when 
 13* 
 
298 THE SOKROWFUL "IF." 
 
 calamity is overtaking us ? Can we say with David, 
 "From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee when 
 my heart is overwhelmed? " or do we betake ourselves 
 to some other helper ? The answer to these questions 
 will determine whether we are the friends of Jesus or 
 not. To take an illustration which I have used else- 
 where : " Traveling once upon a railroad car, I had 
 among my fellow passengers a little laughing child 
 who romped about and was at home with everybody, 
 and while she was frolicking around it might have been 
 difficult to tell to whom she belonged, she seemed so 
 much the jDroperty of every one ; but when the engine 
 gave a loud, long shriek, and we went rattling into a 
 dark tunnel, the little one made one bound and ran to 
 nestle in a lady's lap. I knew then who was her 
 mother ! " * So in the day of prosperity it may be 
 occasionally difficult to say whether a man is a Chris- 
 tian or not ; but when, in time of trouble, he makes 
 straight for Christ, we know then most surely whose 
 he is and whom he serves. Take a note of it, then, 
 and when affliction comes, observe to whom you flee 
 for succor — for that will tell you whether you are or 
 are not a friend of Jesus. 
 
 III. Notice, now, in the third place, that the re- 
 sponse of the Lord comes often in such a way as 
 seems to aggravate the evil. Instead of hastening at 
 once to Bethany, the Saviour sent for answer these 
 words : " This sickness is not unto death, but for the 
 glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified 
 thereby ;" and deliberately remained where he was 
 for two days, so that when the messenger returned, 
 Lazarus was dead. How strange it all seems, and how 
 bewildered the sisters must have been ! First of all, 
 
 * David, King of Israel, p. 145. 
 
THE SORROWFUL "iT." 299 
 
 the Master did not come, and therefore it looked as if 
 lie did not heed their distress. Then their brother 
 died, though they might perhaps have expected that, 
 as in the case of the servant of the centurion, Jesus 
 would have spoken the word where he was, and their 
 brother would have been healed. Then, after Lazarus 
 had died, their courier came back with the assurance 
 from the lips of Jesus, " This sickness is not unto 
 death." What could they make of all this? We 
 now, looking at the history as a whole, can see the 
 meaning of the mystery. But to them, as they were 
 passing through the suspense, the ordeal must have 
 been severe, and the conduct of the Lord incompre- 
 hensible. When, however, we read this history in the 
 light ot other narratives, we see here only a paral- 
 lel case to the treatment of Jacob by the Lord at 
 Peniel, and that of the Syrophenician woman by 
 Jesus on the coasts of Tyre, and that of the disciples 
 while they " toiled in rowing " all through the night 
 upon the tempestuous lake. He delayed only that 
 he might bring a larger blessing when he did come, 
 and might thereby discipline a weak faith into 
 strength, as well as furnish a support to his afflicted 
 people in every after age. And when we get to the per- 
 ception of that truth, we understand the striking lan- 
 guage of the Evangelist as he records the fact (verses 
 5 and 6) : " Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, 
 and Lazarus," " when he had heard, therefore, that he 
 was sick, he abode two days still in the same place 
 where he was." He loved them, therefore he did not 
 come immediately at their call. That looks like a 
 non sequitur, but it is the sober truth. He had in 
 store for them a greater kindness than they could 
 have dreamed of ; and therefore he delayed until he 
 could confer that upon them. It seemed that their 
 
300 THE SOEROWTUL "iF." 
 
 prayer was unanswered ; but the answer was deferred 
 only that it should be surpassingly benignant. The faith 
 of the Roman centurion was rewarded by the cure of 
 his servant ; but the faith of beloved friends like 
 Martha and Mary was to be surprised by the yet 
 grander gift of the restoration of Lazarus from the 
 grave. They did not know it at the time ; if they 
 had known it, what a burden would have been taken 
 from their hearts ; but we know it, and that should 
 keep us from ever being burdened with anxiety about 
 the treatment of our prayers. "When, therefore, the 
 Lord seems to stay away from us though we cry to 
 him ; when that which we request from him appears 
 to be denied to us ; when the gathering storm 
 grows darker, and at length, in spite of our ap- 
 plication unto him, breaks over our heads, let us re- 
 member the peculiar " tlierefore " of this narrative, 
 and " be still." There is nothing for us at such a 
 time but to wait in patient, trustful expectation ; but 
 when we get to the end we shall see that there was 
 love in the discipline, and shall give our glad indorse- 
 ment to the good Toplady's lines : 
 
 " Blest is the man, God, 
 
 That stays himself on tliee ; 
 Who wait for thy salvation, Lord, 
 Shall thy salvation see." 
 
 lY. But advancing another step, observe, in the 
 fourth place, that the friends of Jesus have different 
 individualities, but a common danger in their sorrow. 
 The peculiarities of these two sisters are very marked, 
 and it is a striking proof of the truthfulness of the 
 Evangelists Luke and John, that, though they wrote 
 independently of each other, and describe Martha and 
 Mary in quite different circumstances, we clearly 
 recognize the similarity of the portraits which they 
 
THE SOKEOWFUL "IF." 301 
 
 draw. Luke describes tliem as entertaining Jesus as 
 their guest ; and in liis picture we see in Martha the 
 kind-hearted hostess, stirring about in earnest activity 
 to have on her table everything of the best for her 
 Lord. Indeed such was her eagerness in that regard 
 that she was " cumbered with much serving," and 
 could give attention to little else for the time. She has 
 been harshly blamed by many commentators for that, 
 because they have forgotten that it was Christ whom 
 she was seeking to serve, and that in these attentions 
 she was showing her love to him in her own way. Just 
 as Mary showed hers, in her way, by breaking the 
 alabaster box of precious ointments over his feet, and 
 by sitting reverently to hear his word. She did not 
 understand the Lord so thoroughly as Mary did, but 
 she loved him just as earnestly, and believed in him 
 just as implicitly. Mary's nature was deeper than 
 Martha's, and she would at any time have chosen 
 rather to hear the Lord utter his suggestive sentences 
 on the profoundest themes, than to partake of the 
 richest banquet that could be set before her. So in 
 the account of the feast, in Luke, she shows to most 
 advantage. But such a brooding spirit is always 
 more affected by grief than is an active soul ; and hence, 
 in the narrative of John here, Martha shows to the 
 greater advantage, as being the first to welcome Jesus, 
 and as having composure to converse with him upon 
 their trial. Mary was utterly prostrated. She took 
 no notice of the announcement of the Saviour's 
 arrival ; and so completely overwhelmed was she, 
 that when at length she rose to accompany her sister, 
 those who were beside her said, "She goeth to the 
 grave to weep there ; " while when she came to the 
 Saviour she fell at his feet in a paroxysm of grief, and 
 could only articulate through her sobs a few words of 
 
302 THE SORROWFUL "IF." 
 
 broken agony. Tlius while at the feast the com- 
 posure was Mary's, at the grave the composure was 
 Martha's ; and that just because of the deeper nature 
 of the one and the more active disposition of the 
 other, A superficial reader might be apt to say that 
 the two pictures are utterly inconsistent ; but a pro- 
 founder study will only make it plain that the sorrow 
 of each is stamped with the same individuality that 
 was so conspicuous at the feast. Thus, as Dr. Cand- 
 lish* says, " In di£ferent circumstances, the same nat- 
 ural temper may be either an advantage or a snare. 
 Martha was never so much occupied in the emotion 
 of one scene or subject as not to be on the alert 
 and ready for the call to another. This was a disad- 
 vantage to her when she was so hurried that she 
 could not withdraw herself from household cares to 
 wait upon the Word of Life. It is an advantage 
 to her now, that she can, with com^jarative ease, 
 shake off her depression and hasten of her own 
 accord to meet her Lord. The same profound feeling, 
 again, which made Mary the more attentive listener 
 before, makes her the most helpless sufferer now, 
 and disposes her almost to nurse her grief until Jesus, 
 her best comforter, sends specially and emphatically 
 to rouse her." I am particular to note all this, be- 
 cause from one-sided expositors Martha has received 
 anything but just appreciation, and because the pros- 
 tration of Mary in the time of affliction has been 
 almost entirely overlooked. 
 
 But though thus there was individuality in their 
 sorrow, they had both fallen before the same 
 temptation, for both alike said to Jesus : "Lord, 
 if thou hadst been here my brother had not died." 
 
 * " Scripture Characters," by R. S. Candlish, D.D., p. Z3o. 
 
THE SOEKOWFUL "iF." 303 
 
 This was not a reproach of him, but it was a con- 
 viction deeply entertained by them, and because it 
 was the first utterance of both to Jesus we may 
 infer that it had been often said between them- 
 selves during his mysterious absence. And yet, deep 
 as the conviction in their hearts was, we can see that 
 it was wrong. For as we know the Lord Jesus was 
 there. He could say to his disciples, even at Bethab- 
 ara, " Lazarus is dead." He was at Bethany, there- 
 fore, in his omniscience, and being so, he was there 
 also in his omnipresence and omnipotence. They did 
 not know it, but it was none the less true : he ivas there 
 and yet their brother died. 
 
 Again, they had no warrant for their belief that if 
 he had been visibly with them their brother's life 
 would have been saved. That was merely their own 
 supposition. For anything they knew, he might have 
 permitted Lazarus to languish and die, even if he had 
 been their guest at the time, in order that some larger 
 and more lasting blessing than his recovery would 
 have been might be conferred upon them. So their 
 feeling, however natural, was simply wrong ; and 
 wrong as it was, it added a bitter element to their 
 grief, for it led them to say that their affliction might 
 have been prevented, and so it opened the way to 
 murmuring and made resignation harder. 
 
 But it is much easier to point out the error of the 
 sisters here than it is to keep from falling into it 
 ourselves. For unhappily, in all our trials, we are 
 prone to lose sight of the universality of God's 
 providence, and to torment ourselves with this un- 
 believing "if," Have we lost a dear friend by 
 death ? — then we are apt to exclaim : " If we had 
 only taken it in time ; " " if we liad only been able 
 to get our own physician;" "if we had only called 
 
304 THE SOEROWEUL "iT." 
 
 in tlie help of that eminent medical man ; " or " if 
 we had gone with him in time to some milder cli- 
 mate, then he might not have died," and so forth. 
 Have we become involved in business perplexities ? — 
 then the burden of our complaint is : " If our debtors 
 had not disappointed us, or if we could only have 
 received temporary help from our friends, we might 
 have tided over the embarrassment and need not have 
 suspended." Have we lost some object on which our 
 hearts were set ? — still the refrain is : "i/", if, if, then we 
 might have retained it." But all this is utterly unbe- 
 lieving, for it proceeds on the principle that the 
 providence of God is not concerned in everything, 
 and it gives to secondary causes a supremacy that 
 does not belong to them. The Christian utterance is 
 that of Paul : " We know that all things work together 
 for good to them who love God " : AU things, not 
 simply those which are apparently prosperous, but 
 those also that are seetningly adverse ; all things, not 
 merely those which depend on the operations of ex- 
 ternal nature, but those also which are the results of 
 the actions of voluntary agents. Until we get to this 
 belief we can have no solid comfort in the hour of 
 trial. Look away, therefore, all ye who are afflicted, 
 from mere secondary causes, and have faith in the 
 providence of him without whom a sparrow cannot 
 fall to the ground. When calamity comes upon you, 
 be sure that it is not because this or that accident 
 prevented relief, nor because the Saviour was not with 
 you, but because it was his will, and his will only, to 
 bring about that which shall be better for you and 
 others than your deliverance would have been. Be 
 still and confide in him, and soon your mourning will 
 be ended by the discovery that he hath done all 
 things well. "All these things are against me," said 
 
THE SOEEOWTUL "IT." 305 
 
 the sorrowful Jacob when lie was asked to let Ben- 
 jamin go with his brothers into Egypt, but he lived 
 to see that they were all for him, for God was in them 
 all, and Joseph could say to his brethren : " Ye 
 thought evil against me ; but God meant it unto good, 
 to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people 
 alive." God meant it unto good. Yes, that is a more 
 wholesome way of looking at things than it is to deal 
 in " ifs" and when we get to that conviction it will not 
 be so hard to wait in patience for the issue. 
 
 Y. But now, finally, let me ask you to observe that 
 the friends of Jesus have a blessed end to all their 
 sorrows. You know the sequel of this touching his- 
 tory. At the command of Jesus, Lazarus was recalled 
 to life, and in the joy of receiving him back to their 
 fellowship and affection all the mystery of the dark 
 dispensation was made clear to the gladdened sisters, 
 while by the whole discipline, as well as by the 
 words which the Master himself had spoken to 
 them, their faith was quickened, their characters were 
 strengthened, and they were the better prepared for 
 the deeper, darker, and more tremendous mystery of 
 his own crucifixion and burial. Now, of course, we 
 cannot expect just such an issue to our afflictions 
 as that ; but without any straining of interpretation, 
 I think we may say that in all this we have a prophecy 
 and prelude of the ultimate result of all our earthly 
 trials, when in the higher resurrection life we shall 
 be reunited to the loved ones who before us have 
 fallen asleep in Jesus, and shall look back from the 
 vantage ground of heaven upon all God's providential 
 dealings with us here below. Then broken fellow- 
 ships shall be resumed, and those chapters in our 
 histories which seemed here the most incomprehen- 
 
306 THE SORROWFUL "iF." 
 
 sible shall there be all resolved, so that we shall clearly 
 see how it came about that the very love of Jesus to 
 us held him back from coming immediately to our 
 relief : or rather we shall perceive that even when 
 we thought him absent he was most truly present 
 with us, arranging and overruling everything for our 
 highest good and the glory of his name. He does not 
 come to interpose against the death of our beloved ; 
 neither does he recall our dead to our embrace, but in 
 our case, as in that of the Bethany mourners, we shall 
 discover that there was love in the delay, and we shall 
 be glad that he acted as he did when we behold the 
 grand result. Nor only in the case of such an afflic- 
 tion as bereavement will that be the issue. We shall 
 find that the same thing is true of all our tribula- 
 tions, for " the trial of your faith, being much more 
 precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried 
 with fire, shall be found unto praise and honor and 
 glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." " E.est in the 
 Lord, therefore, and wait patiently for him," for the 
 day is coming when you shall be constrained to say : 
 " Because the Lord was with us our trials came upon 
 us, and he brought us safely through them into his 
 wealthy place." 
 
 And now, dear friends, I have completed the course 
 of thought which I had marked out for this discourse, 
 and I leave it to make its own impression on your 
 hearts. Some of you have lately been called to pass 
 through deep affliction. Each winter, as it goes, takes 
 with it some of those whose forms and faces were 
 familiar in our place of assembly, so that now as I 
 look across my audience, I miss the countenances of 
 many who, years ago, were wont to worship with us 
 here, and during the last few months the homes of not 
 
THE SORROWTTTL "iP." 307 
 
 a few among us have been saddened with a desolation 
 akin to that which fell upon the cottage of Bethany. 
 To them especially I have spoken to-day. Take to 
 yourselves the consolations in which this history is so 
 rich, and be careful lest you fall before the temptation 
 to which the sisters yielded. Be done with all un- 
 believing "ifs;" do not deify secondary causes; but 
 say with Job, " The Lord hath taken away," and 
 then it will be easy to add, " Blessed be the name of 
 the Lord," for he is perfect wisdom and perfect love, 
 and ordereth all things well. And, remembering that 
 those who have lived for Christ depart only to be with 
 him, lift your thoughts to the place into which they 
 have entered — so shall your hearts be comforted, and 
 your memories of the past be transformed into hopes 
 for the future. For you shall see them again in that 
 glorious home into which neither sin, nor sorrow, nor 
 pain, nor death shall enter. Here is a beautiful adapta- 
 tion of my text, that brings out both the danger of 
 murmuring and the joy of faith ; let me commend it to 
 your attention, that you may be at once warned and 
 
 cheered : 
 
 We sadly watch'd the close of all, 
 
 Life balanced on a breath ; 
 We saw upon his features fall 
 
 The awful shade of death. 
 All dark and desolate we were ; 
 
 And murmuring nature cried: 
 " Oh ! surely, Lord ! hadst thou been here 
 
 Our brother had not died. " 
 
 But when its glance the memory cast 
 
 On all that grace had done, 
 And thought of life's long warfare pass'd 
 
 And endless victory won, 
 Then faith prevailing wiped the tear, 
 
 And looking upward, cried : 
 " Oh ! Lord, thou surely hast been here ; 
 
 Our brother has not died." 
 
308 , THE SORROWFUL "IF." 
 
 And you 'wlio heretofore have been largely exempt from 
 sorrow, think not that it will be always so with you. 
 Trials will come. Tribulations will come. Bereave- 
 ments will come on you as on others. Therefore, let 
 the thoughts which I have this morning uttered sink 
 into your hearts, that so you may be kept from mis- 
 judging your Saviour in the hour of your calamity, and 
 may be upborne through all by the consciousness that 
 he is with you, and the assurance that by and by you 
 shall be with him. May God add his blessing. Amen. 
 May 6, 1883. 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 John iv. 32. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye 
 know not of. 
 
 Weary, hungry and athirst, Jesus sat beneatli the 
 glare of an Oriental noon on the ledge of Jacob's well. 
 His disciples had left him all alone for a season while 
 they went into the neighboring city to buy food, and 
 on their return they were surprised to find that he 
 was speaking with a woman who had come to draw 
 water, and who, almost as soon as they appeared, left 
 her pitcher behind her and hastened, like one who was 
 on a special errand, into the town from which they 
 had just come. And she was on a special errand, for 
 after a conversation which had probed her heart to 
 its depths and brought to light the secrets of her life, 
 she had found the Messiah in the mysterious stranger 
 and was off in eager joy to say to all her people, " Come 
 and see a man that told me all things that ever I did : 
 is not this the Christ?" But all that was at the 
 moment unknown to the discijDles, and so when they 
 urged their Master to partake of the food which they 
 had provided and he declined, saying : " I have meat 
 to eat that ye know not of," they were puzzled and 
 asked among themselves : " Hath any man brought 
 him aught to eat ? " Their perplexity was natural in 
 the circumstances, for they imagined that he had re- 
 ferred to ordinary material food, but when he added, 
 " My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and 
 to finish his work/' they began to understand that 
 
310 THE HIDDEN STJPPOET OF LIFE. 
 
 during tlieir absence lie liacl been engaged in liis 
 "Father's business," and tliat lie was describing the 
 inner satisfaction wliicli lie had enjoyed in its dis- 
 charge. But when lie went on to speak of their enter- 
 ing into his labors, they recognized also, that in the 
 unfolding of his own experience he was testifying to 
 a fact which might be verified in theirs. It is in- 
 deed true that no one else can afiirm as unqualifiedly 
 as he did, that the doing of the Father's will and the 
 finishing of the Father's work is his meat ; but still 
 all who have believed in him and have received his 
 spirit, can so far forth at least adopt his words, and 
 therefore I do not misuse them when I regard them 
 as suggesting for our consideration the hidden support 
 of life. 
 
 Before entering on the exposition of that topic 
 however, it may be well to set clearly before you the 
 general principles which underlie the expression 
 which the Lord has here employed. It is an affirma- 
 tive way of enunciating the same truth which, in its 
 negative form, he uttered when, in reply to Satan's 
 suggestion that he should command stones to be made 
 bread for the removal of his hunger, he said : " It 
 is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." 
 Now putting these two sayings together, and having 
 regard both to their undoubted significance and to 
 the circumstances in which they were spoken, we get 
 some valuable results. 
 
 I. For one thing, they teach that, in the case of hu- 
 man creatures at least, life is a higher thing than exist- 
 ence. Man is a complex being, having a soul as well 
 as a body. His soul allies him with God and the un- 
 seen, while his body links him to the animal and the 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPOET OF LITE. 311 
 
 material. The meat by wliicli the soul is supported 
 is spiritual ; that by which the body is maintained is 
 material. The soul, from the very nature of the case, 
 is superior to the body — is indeed the tenant of the 
 body ; and so the body is for the soul and not the 
 soul for the body. The gratification of the body in 
 its material support is simply animal existence ; but 
 life for a man is the culture and development of his 
 soul through the doing of the will of God. True, the 
 body has its wants which must be cared for ; but the 
 supply of these is only means to the attainment of a 
 higher end, that end being the doing of the will of 
 God by the soul. When, however, the means are 
 elevated into the end, and a man seeks the pampering 
 of the body only, he has thereby abdicated his man- 
 hood and sunk into a mere animal. The first question, 
 therefore, which faces the youth when he awakes to 
 moral consciousness and recognizes that he has a soul 
 within him is this : " Am I content merely to exist ? 
 or do I mean to live indeed ? " Or, to put it in other 
 words : " Am I to be my body's ? or is my body to be 
 mine? and mine for God? What shall be my aim 
 henceforth ? Shall I exist simply to eat and drink ; 
 or shall I eat and drink in order to live by glorifying 
 and enjoying God?" That is the great hinge on 
 which the quality of a man's career turns ; and ac- 
 cording as he swings it to this side or to that, he will 
 become a slave of appetite or a servant of God. Ah ! 
 how often is the young man tempted into sensuality 
 by the invitation of his companions : " Come, let us 
 see life ! " But sensuality is not life for a man. Life 
 for a man is something higher, nobler, more glorious 
 by far, even "to do the will of him that sent us, and 
 to finish his work." It is not, as the gourmand fancies, 
 to enjoy the pleasures of the table ; not, as the drunk- 
 
312 THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 art! madly sings, to drown care in the flowing bowl ; 
 not as the sensualist declares, to give loose rein to the 
 lowest passions of our nature. All these are but 
 forms of animal enjoyment, and the man who makes 
 these the ends he seeks is simply existing, and has 
 sunk beneath the dignity of a rational and immortal 
 being. He only can be said to live a man's proper 
 life who, by faith in God and obedience to his word, is 
 striving constantly to serve the Lord. 
 
 11. But thes3 words suggest to us, in the second 
 place, that in the prosecution of life, as thus under- 
 stood, we must lay our account with manifold priva- 
 tions, difficulties and conflicts. For we have not now 
 a perfectly harmonious environment. We do not 
 begin, as Adam did, in a paradise of innocence. But 
 we come into a world where sin is abounding, and we 
 bring with us natures all too prone to listen to the 
 tempter's blandishments ; so that the \eYj first motions 
 of real life within us often take the form of conflict, 
 either with ourselves or with those influences by which 
 we are surrounded. Sometimes we have the longings 
 of the flesh so strong upon us that when we " would 
 do good evil is present with us ; " and the will, to use 
 the words of another, may ba " struck down by the 
 lightning of passion, or may move creaking with the 
 friction of temper, or may sink in the collapse of 
 depression." * And even if all should be at peace 
 Avithin, we may have much to try us from without. 
 The strain of labor may be severe, or tlie course which 
 we feel impelled to take may estrange our friends 
 from us and leave us in utter solitude, or the claims 
 of interest may be so strong for the moment as almost 
 
 * James Martineau, D.D. " Hours of Thought," 1st scries, p. 141. 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPOKT OF LIFE. 313 
 
 to outweigh in our regard those of cTut}^ or at least 
 to make the sacrifice seem something terrible — or the 
 sight of the apparent prosperity of those who are not 
 burdened with conscience may tempt us to exclaim 
 with the Psalmist : " Verily, I have cleansed my heart 
 in vain," so that our feet may almost slip. Ah ! who 
 is there among us that has begun to live indeed, and 
 knows not experiences like these ? But let us not be 
 discouraged. These are the evidences that we do 
 live ; for if we had been content with simple existence 
 we should have had no such conflicts. It is not the 
 having of them that should distress us, but rather the 
 being tvorsted hy them, for the promise is not to him 
 who has had no battle, but "to him that overcometh." 
 
 III. But these words suggest to us, in the third 
 place, that under such experiences the strength of 
 the man comes from hidden support. He has meat to 
 eat of which others know not. He could not sustain 
 himself if he had not. If he deny himself present 
 gratification he feeds upon the future food for which 
 he lias given up the fleeting joy. If he brave the con- 
 demnation of the ungodly, he delights in the conscious- 
 ness that ho has the approval of his God. If he have 
 to go without many of the worldly advantages which 
 others possess, he has the satisfaction of having ac- 
 complished much which they have never attempted. 
 If he be left apparently " in the blank and solitude of 
 things " to endure affliction or suffer persecution, he 
 has a constant solace in the assurance that he is still 
 on the side of God, and that ere long " He will bring 
 forth his righteousness as the light and his judg- 
 ment as the noonday." These are things which the 
 world cannot give him and which the world cannot 
 take away ; and by these things, and such as these, 
 14 
 
314 THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 all those wliose lives have benefited and blessed 
 humanity have been sustained. This hidden meat is 
 the food of heroes, and has always been the nourish- 
 ment of those who have " resisted unto blood strivinsc 
 against sin." 
 
 lY. But these words suggest to us, fourthly, that 
 when a man has no such secret support his life loses 
 all spiritual importance and becomes a mere groveling 
 thing of animal enjoyment. The soul in such circum- 
 stances is starved, and all true nobleness disappears 
 from the character. The wretched one has put out 
 his faith eyes, and his own passions have set him, 
 Samson-like, to grind in ceaseless drudgery for their 
 gratification. It is a terrible thing to think of, and 
 yet, alas ! how many there are in this great city of 
 ours who, beginning on Delilah's lap, have ended in a 
 slavery and degradation more horrible by far than 
 that of the old Hebrew giant ! When the hidden 
 food that God in Christ sujDplies is despised, be sure 
 that the noblest life is thenceforward unattainable ; 
 the man is descending to the animal ; the life is 
 degenerating into mere existence, and the soul is 
 being sacrificed for the body. These principles are 
 of immense importance. They are absolutely funda- 
 mental, and they cannot be neglected without disas- 
 trous consequences resulting from our imprudence. 
 For these reasons I have felt constrained to put them 
 thus in prominent and distinct relief before you, not 
 Avithout the hope that through their instrumentality 
 the Divine Spirit may quicken some among you into 
 life indeed. 
 
 But now, leaving mere generalities, let me endeavor 
 to particularize some of the forms under which the 
 Christian receives this hidden support of life — some 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 315 
 
 of the ways in which he has meat to eat which others 
 know not of. 
 
 And first, I remark that he has often such food in 
 a " good conscience." I enter not now into any meta- 
 physical analysis of the faculty of conscience. Let it 
 suffice to say that it is that within us which gives us 
 the distinction between right and wrong, along with 
 the feeling of obligation to do the one and to refrain 
 from doing the other. It deals in the words " ought " 
 and " ought not." It lays down the law to the soul, 
 and cannot be better described than it has been by 
 Bishop Butler, as " that superior principle in every 
 man which distinguishes between the internal prin- 
 ciples of his heart as well as his external actions, 
 which passes judgment upon himself and them ; pro- 
 nounces determinately some actions to be in them- 
 selves just, right, good ; others to be in themselves 
 evil, wrong, unjust ; which, without being consulted, 
 without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself 
 and approves or condemns him the doer of them 
 accordingly ; and which, if not forcibly stopped, nat- 
 urally and always, of course, goes on to anticipate a 
 higher and more effectual sentence, which shall here- 
 after second and affirm its own." This is the law 
 written in the heart, of which Paul makes mention ; 
 and though depravity has in some degree corrupted 
 it, yet when it is purified and rectified by the opera- 
 tion on it of the Holy Spirit, through the belief of the 
 truth as it is in Jesus, it may be regarded as being, in 
 a very true sense, God's representative in the soul. 
 Its approbation, therefore, being the reflex and echo 
 of the approval of God, is a great source of support 
 to a struggling and tried believer, even as its condem- 
 nation must be always a cause of weakness and of 
 pain. When one is accused he is not so much to be 
 
316 THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 pitied if lie be accused falsely, as lie would be if tlie 
 accusation were true. In tlie one case, lie knows that 
 whatever men may say or do, God will vindicate him 
 in the end. In the other, he is already condemned 
 by himself, and that is only the sure foretaste of 
 his condemnation by God. Thus conscience makes 
 of a man either a hero or a coward — a hero if he has 
 its unqualified indorsement, but a coward if he feels 
 already its sharp upbraidings. See how this was 
 proved by the contrast between Paul and Felix. By 
 all ordinary laws the Apostle ought to have been 
 daunted before the governor. He had little of power 
 or pomj) about him, but Felix had all the style and 
 authority of a Koman magnate ; and besides, Paul 
 was a prisoner at the bar, and Felix the judge upon 
 the bench. Yet what do we see ? — the prisoner giving 
 a charge on righteousness, temperance, and judgment, 
 and the judge trembling as he listens. Why ? Because 
 the one could say : " Herein do I exercise myself to 
 have a conscience void of offense toward God and 
 toward man ; " and because the other was haunted by 
 the remembrance of his unjust decisions, his rob- 
 beries, his cruelties, and his impurities. Thus Paul 
 had meat to eat of which Felix knew nothing, and in 
 the strength of that food he grew into a greatness 
 which we have never seen equaled since his day. 
 In the same way we explain, to a very large extent 
 at least, the robustness of each member of that " noble 
 army of martyrs," to whom the world has owed so much, 
 who " met the tyrant's brandished steel, the lion's 
 gory mane," and gave up the existence of the body 
 that they might maintain the life of the soul in the 
 preservation of their allegiance to their Lord. A 
 good conscience is a continual feast, and they who 
 have that within themselves can do without the ban- 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LITE. 317 
 
 quets of the world. I know, indeed, that in these 
 days it has become fashionable to sneer at all this, 
 and there are many who will say that they " cannot 
 afford to keep a conscience." But be not ye among 
 the number. Cannot afford to keep a conscience ! 
 What is gold compared with the assurance that you 
 have done that which God would have you do? and 
 what will whole mines of .wealth or whole burnt- 
 offerings of human applause avail if, after all, you are 
 despised by yourself, and have that within you which 
 constantly upbraids you with meanness and corrup- 
 tion ? O, it gives a manly erectuess to you when you 
 can hold uj) your head and say with Paul : " "With me 
 it is a small matter to be judged of by you or of man's 
 judgment ; yea, I judge not mine own self ; there is 
 one that judgeth me, even God." A crust with the 
 consciousness of unswerving loyalty to God is better 
 far than affluence with remorse gnawing at the heart ; 
 and he may well defy all human antagonism who is 
 only sure of these three things — a good God, a good 
 conscience, and a good cause — for then he has " meat 
 to eat of which the world knows nothing." 
 
 But a second form in which the Christian often en- 
 joys this hidden support is that of a worthy ambition. 
 If we are intent upon the attainment of some fixed 
 purpose, then our steady contemplation of that will 
 sustain us amid distractions and difficulties and trials 
 which otherwise would have overmastered us. We 
 see that exemplified even on the lower level of ordi- 
 nary temporal pursuits. Every reader of Macaulay's 
 Essays must remember how that fascinating writer 
 describes the boy Warren Hastings lying, when just 
 seven years old, on the banks of the rivulet that flows 
 through his parental domain, and resolving that he 
 would recover the estate which had belonged to his 
 
318 THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 father, and then adds : " This purpose, formed in in- 
 fancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect 
 expanded and as his fortune rose. * '^ ^ When under 
 a tropical sun he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his 
 hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance and legisla- 
 tion, still pointed to Daylesford." Yes, that was the 
 secret meat by which he was sustained. And to take 
 a more recent instance. As I was wandering with a 
 friend, some summers ago, through a Highland glen 
 in the island of Arran, he pointed out a rock to me, 
 and said : " There's where Louis Napoleon used to 
 sit when, during his exile, he was here as tlie guest of 
 the Duke of Hamilton, and the story is told that, one 
 day after he had been resting there in solitude for 
 hours, another of the visitors at the castle came and 
 said to him : ' What are you thinking about so long 
 and all alone ? ' and received for answer : ' I was plan- 
 ning a system of sewerage which I mean to carry out 
 in Paris when I become the ruler of France.' " That 
 was his secret food, by the eating of which he kept up 
 his heart in those days of darkness ; and though I am 
 no great admirer of the man, I see through such an 
 incident some glimmerings of greatness in him. Now 
 a similar effect is produced by a worthy ambition in 
 the heart of the Christian. Let him be but thoroughly 
 resolved to make the world the better for his being in 
 it ; let him set his soul upon the attainment of some 
 good, not for himself, but for his fellow men ; or, let 
 him live for the bringing of multitudes to Christ, and 
 then that purpose will enable him " to bear up and steer 
 right onward," keeping a steady course in spite of the 
 darkest night or wildest weather. It is written of the 
 Lord himself, that "for the joy set before him" — and 
 that was the joy of saving men — " he endured the cross, 
 despising the shame." And we find precisely the same 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPOET OF LITE. 319 
 
 thing in the history before iis, when the joy of saving 
 this Samaritan woman, and the eager expectation of 
 benefiting those who were coming to him at her invita- 
 tion, made him forget for the time his hunger and has 
 weariness. So it will be with us also in the measure 
 in which we follow him. This is the secret of the 
 strength of those who have given their lives to the 
 missionary cause. They have discounted the future 
 for the benefit of the present, and in their anticipation 
 of the results which shall spring from their work in 
 generations to come, they have that which sustains 
 them in their labors now. They see the harvest al- 
 ready in the handful of seed which they are preparing 
 to scatter, and seeing that, they have new strength to 
 sow. At the unveiling of the Livingstone statue, in 
 the city of Edinburgh, the venerable Dr. Moffat, 
 Livingstone's father-in-law, as reported in the news- 
 papers of the day, spoke to this effect : " When Living- 
 stone was led into the unknown regions of Africa, they 
 all knew the dangers to which he was exposed, but 
 nothing could influence him to desist. He had an 
 Africa in view over which they had talked many 
 times together, and in which he could see vessels 
 sailing on the lakes, and spires rising and churches 
 built. He never lost sight of that." And that was a 
 part of his hidden food. If, therefore, you would have 
 something within you that will uphold you amid diffi- 
 culty and discouragement, get a benevolent ambition, 
 resolve to do some Christian service for your genera- 
 tion, set your heart on the righting of some wrong, or 
 the removing of some ignorance, or the undoing of 
 some burden for others, by the propagation of the 
 gospel of Christ, and you will have therein meat to eat 
 of which others know not. 
 
 But akin to that which I have just described is the 
 
320 THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 third form in whicli tlie Christian enjoys this hidden 
 support, that, namely, of a strong faith in the unseen 
 and in the future. This enables him to distinguish 
 between things as they appear to men, and as they 
 really are before the eye of God, and gives him an 
 inward ideal toward which he is always striving, and 
 the attainment of w^hich by him will be heaven itself. 
 Now where can we find a better illustration of this 
 than that furnished by Moses, of whom it is said that 
 " he endured as seeing him who is invisible," and 
 again, that " he chose rather to suffer affliction with 
 the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin 
 for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater 
 riches than all the treasures of Egypt, because he had 
 respect unto the recompense of the reward ? " Through 
 the veil which conceals the spirit realm from mortal 
 sight his faith-eye saw the living throne of the eternal 
 God ; and that for him neutralized all the influences 
 of earth, so that the compass of his conscience trembled 
 sensitively yet steadily to Jehovah. In his light he 
 saw clearly the relative position of earthly and heav- 
 enly things, the infinite difference between the tem- 
 poral and the eternal, and he reckoned that the light 
 afflictions which were but for a moment were not 
 worthy to be compared with that " far more exceeding 
 and eternal weight of glory." Beyond the boundary 
 of earth and time he saw a glory and a greatness 
 which dazzled into dimness the glittering pomp even 
 of an Egyptian royalty, and the contemplation of the 
 one gave him strength to sacrifice the other. Here 
 again we see that the conduct of the believer is only 
 an application to the relation between this life and 
 that which is to come of the principles on which men 
 act in seeking the honors and rewards of earth. The 
 ideal with both dominates over the real ; the only 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 321 
 
 difference is tliat with him the ideal is higher than 
 
 with them. Thej labor for a corruptible crown, " but 
 
 he for an incorruptible." What the student is doing 
 
 for his scholarship, and the merchant for his wealth, 
 
 and the statesman for his office, and the author for his 
 
 fame, he is doing for his recompense of eternal reward. 
 
 Each has his own secret food. Each is giving up a 
 
 present advantage for a future good. Both alike are 
 
 walking and working by faith; but the Christian's 
 
 faith takes in eternity. He hears a voice they cannot 
 
 hear ; he sees a hand they cannot see. So he follows 
 
 after in the sure confidence that in the end there shall 
 
 be for him a crown of righteousness that fadeth not 
 
 away. This assurance is the hidden food by which 
 
 his soul is supported amid all the privations and 
 
 afflictions of his earthly lot. 
 
 But to mention only one other thought. I remark 
 
 that the Christian enjoys this hidden support in the 
 
 form of divine companionship. When Jesus was 
 
 passing into Gethsemane he said to his followers : " Ye 
 
 shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall 
 
 leave me alone ; and yet I am not alone, because the 
 
 Father is with me." And when Paul at his first 
 
 answer was forsaken by all his friends he affirmed 
 
 that " the Lord stood by him and strengthened him." 
 
 So also when he and Silas were in prison at Philippi, 
 
 with their backs smarting from the scourging to which 
 
 they had been subjected, and their feet fast in the stocks, 
 
 "they prayed and sang praises unto God." They 
 
 had meat to eat of which their adversaries knew not, 
 
 and by that they were supj^orted when others would 
 
 have fainted. Nor are these exceptional instances. 
 
 The believer "walks with God ;" and in that fellowship 
 
 has his sure support. He can say, in the words of the 
 
 hymn : 
 
 14* 
 
322 THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 
 
 " I find him lifting up my head. 
 He brings salvation near; 
 His presence makes me free indeed. 
 And he \vill soon ajDpear. " 
 
 God is to liim " a very present help in trouble ; " and by 
 the words of his promises, by the suggestions of his 
 Spirit, haply also by the ministrations of his angelic 
 servants — unrecognized at the moment, yet full of 
 encouragement — he gives cheer to his people in their 
 despondency, and strength to them in their weakness. 
 " The best of all," said the dying Wesley, " is that 
 God is with us." "Come," said Luther in his days of 
 trial, " and let us sing the 46th Psalm — ' God is our 
 refuge and our strength.' " There is no solace or 
 support to be compared with that. To know that we 
 are on God's side and that God is ou our side, that is 
 meat indeed, and there are experiences in which 
 nothing else will avail to hold us up. As one has well 
 said : " On the bed of pain, when thought and will 
 swim feebly away and we are condensed into the 
 poignant moments, when we long for the night, but 
 when it comes the stars glide too slowly and the 
 silence will not let us moan ; and we watch for the 
 morning, but when it dawns the soft light mocks us 
 with its sweetness and the birds with the blitheness 
 of their song : in the vigils of anxiety when some life 
 which is our all trembles in the scale, and we extort 
 a thousand contradictory oracles from the flush ujDon 
 the features or the cloud upon the eye ; under the 
 sting of calumny when things we most abhor are told 
 of us, and averted faces and sarcastic words show that 
 the lie has proved too strong and the love of friends 
 too weak ; in the countless vicissitudes of broken 
 fortunes and shattered health and disappointed hopes ; 
 all must look like ruin if we have no stay beyond the 
 
THE HIDDEN SUPPORT OF LIFE. 323 
 
 impression of the liour." * But if tlieu there break in 
 upon our perplexity a voice saying unto us : " Fear 
 not, for I am with thee ; be not dismayed, for I am thy 
 God ; I will help thee, yea I will strengthen thee, yea 
 I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteous- 
 ness." "Lo I am with you always even unto the end 
 of the world. I will never leave thee, no, no, I will 
 never forsake thee ; " immediately there is a calm. 
 *' In loneliness we have still an ever-living communion. 
 Deserted by the voices of affection, we are with him 
 who attuned their sweetness and will console their 
 loss ; and dying we but pass to the very source and 
 home of life." 
 
 Nor only for such great emergencies is this com- 
 panionship a secret fountain of support. It is as 
 valuable for the common weariness of a common 
 day, and under the dull monotony of that constant 
 routine whose 
 
 " Sameness doubles cares. 
 While one unbroken chain of work 
 The flagging temi)er wears. " 
 
 For if, exhausted by such labors, we can get " the un- 
 expanded thought of the eternal God" to lie closer 
 to our hearts, we shall find that by itself " that 
 thought is bliss," and the assurance " I will not fail 
 thee nor forsake thee " will send us on our way re- 
 joicing so that we shall ply 
 
 " Our daily task with busier feet 
 Because our secret souls a holy strain repeat. " 
 
 Happy, O thrice happy ! they who thus have meat to 
 eat of which the world kno'rs not. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, tell me what the hidden 
 
 * James Martineau, D.D. "Hours of Thought," first series, as 
 before, pp. 151, 152. 
 
324 THE HIDDEN SUPPOKT OF LIFE. 
 
 siippoa*t of your life is, and I will tell you whether 
 you are a Christian indeed. To what or to whom do 
 you resort in times of weakness, depression and spir- 
 itual exhaustion? "When your heart is overwhelmed, 
 to what or to whom do you go for strength ? To the 
 stimulants of the world, whether in the shape of its 
 beverages, or its amusements, or its pleasures, or its 
 business? or to God in Christ? To the rock that 
 is higher than you ? or to some of those that are be- 
 neath you ? to Christ or to the world ? The answer 
 will infallibly reveal whether you are or are not 
 the followers of him who here did say, " I have 
 meat to eat that ye know not of." Shrink not, I 
 beseech you, from applying the test, and if you find 
 that you are none of his, may the truths which have 
 now been set before you lead you to repair at once to 
 him who alone can say with truth to a human soul, 
 " My grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is made 
 perfect in weakness." 
 Feb. 11, 1883. 
 
THE EECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE 
 SANCTUARY. 
 
 Psalm Ixxiii. 16, 17. When I thought to know this, it was too 
 painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God ; then under- 
 E tood I their end. 
 
 Theee has been some little difference of opinion 
 among expositors as to the precise reference of the 
 word here translated " sanctuary." Literally, it 
 means " the holies " of God ; and so it may be taken 
 either as the holy things or the holy places of God. 
 A few would understand it in the first sense as desig- 
 nating " the righteous plans of God's government," or 
 "the secret grounds of his dealings with men;" while 
 others would take it, in the second sense, as denoting 
 *' the eternity where God dwells as in a holy place." 
 But to me it seems self-evident that by " going into 
 the sanctuary of God," in this seventeenth verse, the 
 writer describes the same exercise which in the 
 twenty-eighth verse he has called " a drawing near 
 to God ; " and so, in the mouth of one belonging to 
 the old disjDensation, the primary reference of the 
 term must be to the temple, which was the earthly 
 residence of God and the place where he communed 
 with his jDeople. Thus understood, tbe main drift and 
 teaching of the psalm, as a whole, is that in approach- 
 ing God through the recognized channels of access 
 unto him, and in appropriating him to himself, Asaph 
 found the antidote which neutralized the poison of 
 the insidious temptation by which he had been almost 
 destroyed. 
 
326 THE EECTimNG INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUAEY. 
 
 "What that temptation was lias been most grapliic- 
 ally described by himself. He liad been greatly 
 disturbed by tlie anomalies wliicli were continually 
 occurring in the world around him. He had seen 
 the wicked so often prosperous and the righteous 
 so often in distress that he was almost ready to con- 
 clude that God was unrighteous, and that it made no 
 matter how a man lived ; or rather, perhaps, that it 
 would be better for him to become unscrupulous too. 
 But when he entered into the sanctuary and took in all 
 the revelation made there through sacrifice and sym- 
 bol, he was enabled so Co grasjD anew the truth that 
 God is righteous, and so to appropriate the God of the 
 mercy seat as his own God as to find there the com- 
 pensation for all his privations and the solvent for all 
 his perplexities. For thus he sings : " Nevertheless 
 I am continually with thee. "Whom have I in heaven 
 but thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire 
 besides thee." As if he had said : " Whatever else I 
 may be without, yet I have thee for the strength of 
 my heart and my portion forever ; and having that, I 
 have infinitely more than wicked men possess, even in 
 their highest prosperity, so that I am delivered from 
 all envy of them and lifted out of all distrust of 
 thee." 
 
 Under the New Testament dispensation, the true 
 antitype of the temple is the Lord Jesus Christ, in 
 whom the real Shekinah dwells, for he is God mani- 
 fest in the flesh ; so that the right gospel use of such 
 a text as this would be to show that when by faith 
 we enter into the Lord Jesus Christ, we have the true 
 corrective influence, by which we are enabled to rec- 
 tify the false judgments of the world and to jjreserve 
 our faith in God, amid all the perplexities that sug- 
 gest themselves when we look at the course of things 
 
THE RECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUAEY. 327 
 
 upon the earth. But as, in tlie sanctuary commonly 
 so-called among us, the sincere worshiper seeks thus 
 believingly to enter in to Christ, we may, without 
 any hesitation, apply the words of the psalmist hero 
 to that ; and in a day when so many criticisms are 
 made upon public worship, it may be useful to set 
 distinctly before you what I may call the rectifying 
 influence of the sanctuary on those who regularly and 
 devoutly enter it on the first day of the week. Of 
 course I must take for granted that the worshi]3 of 
 the sanctuary is such as to bring us near to God. I 
 do not enter now on the discussion of those things 
 which are best adapted to secure that end. I must 
 postulate that the hymns of praise which are sung are 
 such as carry up the tribute of our hearts to God; 
 that the prayers which are offered are such as lead us 
 into the very secret place of the Almighty, and that 
 the discourses delivered are such as clearly explain 
 and cogently enforce the word of God — in short, that 
 the services are such as to bring us from first to last 
 face to face with God, as he has revealed himself to 
 us through the written word and through the living 
 Christ. Now, my assertion is that in the sanctuary, 
 thus understood, there is a rectifying influence which 
 corrects the errors into which, from his close and con- 
 stant intercourse with worldly men, the Christian is 
 apt to fall. That this is true will appear if you look 
 at the matter from one or two different points of 
 view : 
 
 I. Take it, first, as it bears upon the standards of 
 judgment commonly in use among men. Nothing is 
 clearer than that the maxims of the Lord Jesus are 
 in almost all respects opposed to those that are most 
 popular in the world. Now, when a man accepts 
 
328 THE EECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 liim as his Redeemer, Lawgiver, and King, lie declares 
 that he is determined to be ruled in all respects by 
 the principles of Christ. No doubt, too, when he 
 makes that declaration he is sincere. But in his 
 daily business he is thrown continually among those 
 who consider that the laws of his Lord are fanatical, 
 or impracticable, or ridiculous, and who tell him that 
 if he is determined to act upon them, he may as 
 well make up his mind to be defeated in the race 
 of competition. More than that, his observation con- 
 vinces him that as things now are their assertion is 
 largely true ; and so, as the days go on, he is in 
 danger of being lowered to their leveL But the Sab- 
 bath comes, and he enters into the sanctuary, where 
 he is confronted with God, and then and thereby all 
 the webs of sophistry that his fellow men have spun 
 are swept away as easily as one brushes from his path 
 the gossamer of the morning. Did you ever see a 
 vessel swung for the purpose of having her compass 
 adjusted ? The process, as carried on in the river 
 Thames in England, is something like this. The ship 
 is mpved in the bight at Greenhithe, and by means 
 of warps attached to certain buoys she is turned 
 with her head toward various points one after 
 another. The bearing of the compass on board, in- 
 fluenced as that is by the atti'action of the iron of 
 which she is composed, or which she carries, is ac- 
 curately noted by some one appointed for the pur- 
 pose, and the true bearing is signaled to him by 
 another observe^ on shore, who has a compass out of 
 reach of all local disturbance. The error in each 
 position is ascertained, and the necessary corrections 
 are made. Now, it is just similar with Christ and 
 the devout worshijDer in the sanctuary. During the 
 week the consciences even of the best among us have 
 
THE RECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUARY. £29 
 
 been more or less affected by tilings immediately 
 around us, so that we are in danger of making serious 
 mistakes in our life voyage. But here Christ comes 
 to us and gives us our " true bearings," as they are 
 in the standard of his word, undisturbed by any 
 earthly or metallic influences, and so the needful rec- 
 tifications may be made by us and we may start out 
 afresh. 
 
 But, to take one or two particular illustrations, let us 
 look at the judgment which Christ gives of wealth, and 
 see how much there is in that to rectify the current 
 opinion. With many — may I not say with most — 
 wealth is the supreme good. They estimate every- 
 thing by the money scale. They subordinate every- 
 thing to the acquisition of a fortune. They live and 
 move and have their being mainly to get riches, and 
 even when that is not the case, yet there is in the air 
 around them such a deference to money, altogether 
 irrespective of the means by which it has been ac- 
 quired, that, almost insensibly to themselves, they 
 become infected with the same spirit. Now see what 
 Christ's standard says on this subject. He does not 
 allege that wealth is a thing to be despised, but he 
 dethrones it from its position of supremacy to one of 
 inferior importance. He shows that it is not the great 
 end to be sought, but at the best only a means which 
 maybe made conducive to the furtherance of that end. 
 He declares most emphatically that " a man's life con- 
 sisteth not in the abundance of the things which he 
 possesseth," but in those inner treasures which the 
 world can neither give nor take away. Hear these 
 words : " The ground of a certain rich man brought 
 forth plentifully, and he thought within himself, say- 
 ing, 'What shall I do because I have no room where to 
 bestow my fruits ? ' and he said, ' This will I do : I 
 
330 THE RECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUAEY. • 
 
 will pull down my barns and build greater, and there 
 will I bestow my fruits and my goods, and I will say 
 to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for 
 many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink and be 
 merry.' " Now mark what was wrong in all that. 
 The evil was not that he had so much, but that he 
 had nothing else. His error was, not that he had well 
 considered what he should do with his goods, but that 
 he had never considered what he should do with him- 
 self. In the filling of his barns he had starved his 
 spiritual nature, and when death deprived him of his 
 earthly fruits he discovered that he had nothing left. 
 Hence God said to him : " Thou fool ! this night thy 
 soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those 
 things be which thou hast provided ? So," adds the 
 Saviour, "is he that layeth up treasure for himself, 
 and is not rich toward God." There it is — to be rich 
 toward God — that is the true aim of life. To have a 
 heart at jDeace with God, a soul renewed by the Spirit 
 of God, a life devoted to the service of God ; that is to 
 be rich indeed. "With that a man will take care how 
 he seeks earthly wealth, and will know how best to 
 spend it for the glory of God and the service of his 
 generation ; without that, no matter how much of this 
 world's goods he may possess, he has missed the great 
 purpose of his being. My hearer, what does your 
 conscience say to that ? Look in and see, and if it has 
 been deflected by the metallic influences round you 
 during the week, be sure that you correct it now, lest, 
 like the fool in the parable, you should make ship- 
 wreck at the last. 
 
 But, as another illustration, look at the Saviour's 
 standard of greatness. Men generally connect that 
 with 23ower. That which raises one above his fellows 
 and gives him some advantage over them for his own 
 
THE EECTIFYINa INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUAEY. 331 
 
 honor or aggrandizement, is, in the estimation of the 
 world, greatness. It is a thing of personal pre- 
 eminence, making others minister to its comfort or 
 state ; and so it comes to be sought by the individual 
 for his own sake, and not for that of others. But 
 when we get near to Christ in the sanctuary, we dis- 
 cover that his estimate is entirely different. You 
 remember what he said to James and John when, 
 through their mother, they presented the request that 
 they might sit, one on his right hand and the other 
 on his left hand, in his glory. He did not affirm that 
 it was wrong to seek after greatness. He knew the 
 nature which God had given to men too well to do 
 anything like that. But, as in the case of wealth, we 
 have just seen that he gave a new definition to riches, 
 and said, "Seek to acquire such treasure as will make 
 you rich toward God," so here he gave a new direction 
 to ambition by making greatness consist in service. 
 "Te know," said he, "that they which are accounted 
 to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over 
 them, and their great ones exercise authority upon 
 them, but so shall it not be among you ; but whoso- 
 ever will be great among you shall be your minister, 
 and whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be 
 servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to 
 be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life 
 a ransom for many." Thus to those who are filled 
 with the love of greatness, the Lord preaches the 
 greatness of love, and to those who are enamored of the 
 service which authority commands he reveals the in- 
 fluence which service ultimately secures ; while, with 
 a sublime egotism only to be explained by his con- 
 sciousness of deity, he holds himself up as the bright- 
 est exemplification of his own j)rinciple. Now, here 
 again, what does our conscience say ? Each of us is 
 
332 THE EECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 striving after some greatness ; so mucli is natural ; but 
 is the greatness after which we are striving of this 
 self-sacrificing sort ? or is it selfish and self-seeking ? 
 Search and see, and if you have lowered your standard 
 before the world's opinion, see that you rectify the 
 mistake here and now. It is one great purpose of the 
 sanctuary service to secure such a result. Here is the 
 standard. The highest of all is the servant of the 
 lowest of all, and the test of greatness in a man, ac- 
 cording to the estimate of Christ, is not, how much 
 does he know ? or how much does he possess ? or what 
 office does he hold ? or what power does he wield ? 
 but what service has he rendered to his generation by 
 the will of God ? Ah, if human competition were to 
 be as eager for the prize in that as it is for pre- 
 eminence in other matters, how much better would it 
 be for the world at large, and for the prize-takers 
 themselves ! 
 
 But, to mention only one thing more under this head : 
 take the matter of success, and see how Christ, in the 
 sanctuary, rectifies the views of men regarding that. 
 When we speak of success we are prone to think of it 
 as a merely outward thing. The successful merchant 
 is one who has built wp a large business and acquired 
 a fortune. The successful author is One who has ob- 
 tained the ear of the public so that his works are cir- 
 culated in thousands, and he becomes honored and 
 wealthy as the result. The successful statesman is 
 one who comes to be the recognized leader of his party 
 and is everywhere acknowledged as its ablest man. 
 And so on in every other department. To such an 
 extent is this true that we have books on " Self Help " 
 and "How to Succeed," and the like, detailing the 
 steps by which some have risen from the very lowest 
 round of the ladder to the very highest. And I do not 
 •wish to depreciate such works; they have a value of 
 
THE EECTIFYING ESTFLUENCE OP THE SANCTUARY. 333 
 
 their own in their own place ; but the success which 
 they depict is not the true success in life, as Christ 
 has defined success. For tried by such a standard 
 his own life must be pronounced a failure, and we all 
 know that it was anything but that. Success, in his 
 view is in character, in the drinking of the cup which 
 he drank of, and in the being baptized with the bap- 
 tism wherewith he was baptized ; and one may attain 
 that while yet, in a worldly j)oint of view, he may be 
 so poor as to have nowhere to lay his head. Show me 
 the man, therefore, who, as he has tried to mount the 
 ladder of which I have been speaking, lias been ever- 
 more beat back and beat down — the man whose life 
 has been apparently one long struggle with difficulties, 
 but who, in spite of all, has become only the sweeter 
 and the purer in the process — who has kept all his 
 tenderness in disposition toward his fellows, because 
 he has retained his faith in God — who has learned in 
 and through and by means of all his struggles to hold 
 more freely by God's hand and cling more closely to 
 Christ's cross, and walk more in accordance with 
 Christ's example — and I tell you that man's life has 
 been a success, even though there has been no external 
 accumulation of property. There is the success of the 
 unsuccessful ; and I would we could have nowadays a 
 little more of that ; for character is nobler than any 
 outward thing — yea, is the only thing that will remain 
 when we shall stand naked and open before the eyes 
 of Him with whom we have to do. Here again, then, 
 let us look in and ask ourselves what that is which we 
 account success ; and if we have been adopting the 
 worldly ideal, let us unlearn our mistake and accept 
 the corrective which the sanctuary su23plies in Christ. 
 It was well said by Dr. Mark Hopkins, at the funeral 
 of one of our noblest philanthropists some weeks ago, 
 that what we most of all need in these days is " the rec- 
 
334 THE RECTIFYING ENTLUENCE OF THE SANCTUAET. 
 
 tification of our standards." Let us tlierefore to-day 
 receive the spirit of Christ into our hearts, that we 
 may judge according to his estimates ; for if the stand- 
 ards be wrong, everything must be wrong, according to 
 that saying of his own, " The light of the body is the 
 eye ; if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body 
 shall be full of light ; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole 
 body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light 
 that is in thee be darkness, how great is that dark- 
 ness ? " Divine Illuminator, open our eyes, that " in 
 thy light we may see light clearly ! " 
 
 II. But proceeding now to another department of 
 the subject, let us look at the rectifying influence of 
 the sanctuary on what I may call the perspective of 
 life. Standing close up to our work, the thing which 
 we are doing at the moment is apt to grow into undue 
 importance in our minds, to the inevitable neglect of 
 other and greater matters. The painter needs to re- 
 tire now and then from his easel in order that he may 
 not exaggerate some objects and diminish others, but 
 may put each in its proper proportion ; and so in the 
 sanctuary, as we draw near to God in Christ we learn 
 to give its relative value to each province of our lives 
 and to keep each in its own j)lace. The Sabbath is a 
 weekly day of review ; and as we meet Christ in the 
 sanctuary, everything in our conduct is contemplated 
 in its relation to him. We thus discover whether or 
 not we have been allowing things material to exclude 
 from our thoughts things spiritual, or have been let- 
 ting the means take the place which belongs only to 
 the end. Perhaps the devotional has unduly prepon- 
 derated over the active ; or, what is much more likely, 
 the pressure of active duties has crushed contempla- 
 tion and devotion into a corner, and while we have been 
 
THE RECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUARY. 335 
 
 busy here and there about concerns which might have 
 been postponed without detriment, the opportunity 
 for fellowship with Christ in the closet has irrevocably 
 gone. The ephemeral pamphlet has, it may be, over- 
 laid for us the enduring word of God, or we have given 
 to society and amusement hours which ought to have 
 been sacred to duty or filled with service. But now 
 as we sit here in the presence of Christ, and feel how 
 little we have to bring to him out of the bygone week, 
 we are ashamed. We see how much we ought to have 
 done and might have done, which yet has been entirely 
 neglected ; and the experience of the past thus becomes 
 a warning for the future, for the failures of last week 
 are set up as the beacons wherewith we mark the chan- 
 nel of the next, and we set out from the church porch 
 anew with the determination to keep closer to our ideal 
 than ever before. Has it not been so with us very fre- 
 quently in the past ? Do we not feel that it is so with us 
 now ? Even with the Sabbath and the sanctuary our 
 lives are poor trailing things enough, but how much 
 more so would they be if we had not weekly the recti- 
 fying influence of which I speak ! We shall fail again, 
 no doubt, this week as we did the last, but we shall 
 not fall quite so low as before, and the next Lord's day 
 will lift us up anew ; and so, week by week, we shall go 
 on rising by slow degrees into the measure of the stat- 
 ure of the perfect man in Christ Jesus. Mark well, 
 therefore, the things on which you cannot look with 
 complacency here in the sanctuary, that you may avoid 
 them in the future ; and if you have been giving un- 
 due predominance to any matter, let the revelation 
 of that fact administer its own corrective to your 
 heart. 
 
 III. But, narrowing in to a conclusion now, let me 
 
336 THE BECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUABY. 
 
 note finally the rectifying influence of the sanctuary on 
 the estimate which we form of the relative importance 
 of things present and things to come. When we draw 
 near to Christ here, we recognize him as the risen and 
 ascended Lord who has brought life and immortality 
 to light, and who has gone into another mansion of 
 the Father's house to prepare a place for his peoj)le. 
 In this way we bring the motives of eternity to bear 
 upon the duties of time, and call in the glories of 
 heaven to sustain and support us under the afflictions 
 of earth. In the toil and trouble of daily life we are 
 too apt to forget the issues which hang upon our ex- 
 istence here. I do not think that we Christians dwell 
 as much on heaven in our meditations as we ought to 
 do. It is not that, like Bunyan's man with the muck- 
 rake, we are so much occupied in gathering together the 
 refuse of earth that we do not see the glorious crown 
 that is above us ; but that we are so engrossed with 
 the j^resent duty, or the present conflict, or the present 
 sufi'ering, that we forget to look before us into the 
 better land. We desire to be true to Christ, and yet 
 so occuj^ied are we with the effort that we neglect to 
 think of the reward that is in store for us, and thus 
 deprive ourselves of much comfort and insjDiration 
 which we might otherwise have enjoyed. But m the 
 sanctuary, when we get near to Christ, we have heaven 
 also brought nigh to us, and as we catch a glimpse of 
 its glories, our afflictions dwindle into insignificance, 
 while we are fired by the joy that is set before us to 
 make more strenuous efforts to overcome the evil that 
 is in us, and to endure the hardships that may come 
 upon us. Thus Paul says, "If so be that we suffer 
 with him that we may be also glorified together, for 
 I reckon that the sufferings of this present time not are 
 worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be re- 
 
THE EECTIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUARY. o37 
 
 vealed in us ;" and again : " Our liglif affliction, whicli 
 is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more ex- 
 ceeding and eternal weiglit of glory ; while we look 
 not at the things which are seen, but at the things 
 which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are 
 temporal, but tlie things which are not seen are eter- 
 nah" It was said by a great British statesman on one 
 occasion that " he brought in the new world to restore 
 the balance of the old," and in the same way in the 
 sanctuary the Lord Jesus reconciles us to the present 
 by the revelation of the future. Arg we weary and 
 heavy laden, suffering under long continued trials, or 
 pressed by grievous burdens, then he bids us look 
 forward and upward to the inheritance " that is incor- 
 ruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away," where 
 "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor 
 crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; " and he 
 assures us that in a little while we shall be there. 
 Are Ave wounded in the constant conflict with self, and 
 with the world ? and do we cry out for relief ? Is the 
 language of our hearts that of the aged believer who 
 exclaimed, "Am I never to be done with this warfare ? 
 Is there to be no victory — no rest ? " Then he lets us 
 see the vision by which he sustained the spirit of the 
 early Christians amid their sorest persecutions, even 
 that of "the white-robed throng before the throne," 
 and as we gaze with rapture on the sight he says : 
 "These are they which came out of great tribula- 
 tion, and have washed their robes and made them 
 white in the blood of the lamb. They shall hunger no 
 more, neither thirst an}^ more ; neither shall the sun 
 light on them, nor au}^ heat. For the lamb which is in 
 the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead 
 them unto living fountains of waters ; and God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes." So he encourages 
 15 
 
338 THE RECTIFYING INELUENCE OF THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 US to be faithful even unto the death, and gives us 
 assurance of ultimate and unending triumph, and we 
 go back again to renew the battle of life with eager- 
 ness and enthusiasm, feeling that " it has been good 
 for us to draw near to God." 
 
 Thus have I sought to set before you as briefly and 
 suggestively as possible -the rectifying influence of the 
 sanctuary when we seek sincerely to approach Jesus 
 in it. And if all that I have said be true, then two 
 things are thereby most easily accounted for. First, 
 we understand at once how it comes that the true 
 Christian " loves the habitation of God's house." It 
 meets his need. It rests him when he is weary ; it 
 comforts him when he is sorrowful ; it cheers him 
 when he is desponding ; it reinvigorates him when he 
 is faint, and in the hour of his gladness it sanctifies and 
 elevates his joy. His week to him is robbed of its 
 brightest portion when he has not been able to begin 
 it in the house of God. Something has been lacking 
 to him all through when he has missed the sanctuary. 
 He has been conscious of less spring and elasticity in 
 his walk because he has been deprived of what one 
 called " the weekly tonic " of the public services on the 
 Lord's day. It is not the ritual, it is not the acces- 
 sories of music and fellowship with earthly friends, 
 that so invigorates him, but it is the drawing near to 
 God, the having of his spirit reminted by the Holy 
 Ghost, and the having of his conscience rectified by 
 him who is its only Lord. This lifts him up and sends 
 him on with new fervor and enthusiasm ; and he 
 leaves the porch of the sanctuary after such a time of 
 reinvigoration, saying, " If this be not heaven it is the 
 way to it. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house ; 
 they will be still praising thee." My brethren, do I 
 exaggerate here ? or is it not rather the case that 
 
THE EECTIFTING INFLUENCE OF THE SANCTUAEY. 339 
 
 you are ready to corroborate and confirm my 
 words ? 
 
 But if this be all true, tlien we come to understand 
 in the second place how it is that so many dislike 
 the sanctuary. Much attention has been recently 
 directed to the subject of church attendance, and 
 only a week or two ago I was asked to write a 
 contribution to a symposium in a popular review 
 on the question why the people do not go to church. 
 I made answer at once that the pressing duties 
 of my daily life would not allow me to give any 
 time to the preparation of such an article ; and when, 
 on reading the paper which I was expected to criti- 
 cise, I found that it was an indictment of ministers for 
 grievous mistakes in their manner of preaching, and 
 was signed by one who called himself vauntingly a 
 "non-church-goer," I was confirmed in the wisdom 
 of my resolution ; for if a man does not go to church, 
 what does he know of that which goes on in church, 
 and of how much worth is his criticism on it ? But, 
 indeed, there is no mystery in the case. The church, 
 in so far as it is the ordinance of Christ, exists for the 
 rectification of the world's standards, and, naturally, 
 the men of the world do not like it. They must come 
 to Christ first, and then there will be no dijfficulty 
 about the sanctuary ; but until they submit themselves 
 to him they cannot but be dissatisfied with it. Suppose 
 a man whose great object in life is to amass a fortune 
 should come into the house of God. He is there con- 
 fronted with the principle laid down by the Saviour, 
 that " a man's life doth not consist in the abundance of 
 the things which he possesseth," and therefore one or 
 other of two things must follow ; either he accepts the 
 maxim of the Lord, and consents to reconstruct his 
 life in accordance with it ; or he rejects it, and goes 
 
340 THE RECTIFYING INFLUENCE OP THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 ^way railing at tlie gospel and its ministers. In Jike 
 manner, if one wlio is bent on acquiring sucli greatness 
 as shall enable him to command the services of others 
 is confronted with the doctrine that to be the greatest 
 of all one must be the servant of all, we cannot won- 
 der that he rebels, and counts the sanctuary a weari- 
 ness. Unless he is prepared to accept Christ as his 
 redeemer and guide, he can do no otherwise. " The 
 natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
 God, neither can he know them, because they are spir- 
 itually discerned." The critic may exclaim against 
 that as he pleases. He may call it fanaticism or mys- 
 ticism, and may characterize it as ridiculous, but it is 
 none the less true, and it contains in itself the explana- 
 tion of the whole matter. Unless, therefore, we con- 
 sent to alter the fundamental principles of the gospel 
 to suit the world's fancy we must be content to hear 
 such fault-finding to the end. But we dare not think 
 of any such treason to the Lord, whose messengers we 
 are ; and so, whether we speak to admiring crowds or 
 not, we must continue to expose the falseness of the 
 world's standard, and to show how that can be cor- 
 rected in Christ alone. Whether men hear, therefore, 
 or whether they will forbear, this is our determina- 
 tion ; and though the self-styled " leaders " of the pres- 
 ent generation may sneer at us for our lack of appre- 
 ciation of their culture, and for our failure to comply 
 with their demands, we know that a day is coming 
 when our vindication shall be complete. 
 April 15, 1883. 
 
THE EESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 
 
 Romans xiv. 7. For none of us livetli to himself. 
 
 These words may be regarded by us in tliree differ- 
 ent lights, each of which will be found to bring out 
 vividly before us some important practical truth ; and 
 as the illustration and enforcement of these will 
 require all the time at my disposal, I shall proceed at 
 once, without any formal introduction, to the work 
 which I have taken in hand. 
 
 I. Let us look at the text then, in the first place, as 
 it is interpreted for us by the section of the Epistle 
 to the Romans in which it is found. That section is 
 devoted to the elucidation of the principles by which 
 the early Christians were to be guided as to their 
 observance or non-observance of particular festival 
 days, and as to their abstinence or non-abstinence 
 from certain kinds of meats and drinks. To under- 
 stand the matter fully we must haA-e a clear percep- 
 tion of the difficulty with which the Apostle was 
 seeking to deal. In those times, living as they were 
 in the midst of paganism, the Gentile Christians were 
 frequently invited to feasts at which meat was served 
 which had been offered to an idol. Some partook of 
 it without any hesitation, believing as Paul himself 
 did, that " an idol was nothing in the world," and that 
 nothing was " unclean of itself." Others having less 
 enlightened and more scrupulous consciences refused 
 to touch it, believing that if they did eat it they 
 
342 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 
 
 ■would be guilty of countenancing idolatry. The 
 Jewish, converts, again, were divided on the question 
 of the observance of their national feasts. Some of 
 them maintained their old habits in the matter of 
 these Mosaic appointments, and others contented 
 themselves with the simple keeping of the Lord's day. 
 All of them relied upon the sacrifice of Christ for 
 justification, and therefore are to be carefully distin- 
 guished from those against whom the Epistle to the 
 Galatians was written, and who insisted on circum- 
 cision as essential to salvation. No vital principle in 
 this instance was at stake. The error of the scrupu- 
 lous was that of asceticism and not that of legalism ; 
 and so the AjDOstle here counsels mutual forbearance. 
 He condemns everything like intolerance and recrimi- 
 nation. Those who had attained to svich breadth of 
 view that they felt no difficulty about eating anything 
 that was set before them, Avere not to arrogate to 
 themselves superiority over those who felt no such 
 liberty ; and on the other hand, those whose con- 
 sciences would not allow them to partake of every sort 
 of food were not to condemn such as had no scruples 
 on the matter. The Jewish believer who kept all the 
 festivals of his nation was not to look upon himself as 
 better than he who observed only the Christian 
 festival of the first day of the week ; and neither were 
 they whose strength of mind had raised them above 
 such things to depise those who still considered that 
 they were important. There was to be an agreement 
 between them to difier in love ; and if in any case the 
 exercise of his undoubted liberty by one should 
 seriously imperil the spiritual welfare of another by 
 leading him to commit sin, then that liberty was to 
 be cheerfully sacrificed in order that a brother should 
 not be destroyed, for " the kingdom of God " was not 
 
THE BESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 343 
 
 a thing of " meats and drinks," but of " righteousness 
 and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Now the ground on which these injunctions were 
 based was, that each believer — if he were a believer 
 at all — was living, not unto himself, but unto Christ. 
 "None of ^<s," says the Apostle, "liveth unto himself." 
 However it may be with others, none of us Christians 
 liveth unto himself. Each of us has accepted Christ 
 as his Redeemer and Lord and is seeking in all things 
 to serve him ; so if one eateth, he eateth unto the 
 Lord ; and if another eateth not, he eateth not unto 
 the Lord. Each of us follows Christ as his Master ; 
 therefore, in all such things we must not judge each 
 other, but rather judge that " no man put a stumbling 
 block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way." 
 One man is not to be condemned by another for that 
 which he does in the exercise of conscientious Chric- 
 tian liberty ; and yet, liberty to be Christian must be 
 conditioned by love, so that we ought to forego even 
 that which we feel free to engage in, if our indulgence 
 in it should be the means of a brother's falling into 
 sin. Thus the principle here enforced is precisely 
 the same as that laid down by the Apostle in his 
 Epistle to the Corinthians wlien he says : " All things 
 are lawful for me ; but all things are not expedient." 
 Because we are seeking to live to Christ, there is, in 
 reference to all matters indifferent, perfect liberty to 
 the individual conscience, and no one has a right to 
 judge or set at naught another for dor^g that of which 
 he is " fully persuaded in his own mind," and which he 
 is seeking to do " as unto the Lord." Each is respon- 
 sible not to his fellows but unto the Lord ; and while 
 we may try to enlighten the consciense of another and 
 bring him to see precisely as we do, we must not subject 
 him to ridicule, or insult, or reproach, or hold him up 
 
344 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LITE. 
 
 in any measure to contempt, for doing ttat whicli lie 
 believes to be right. " To his own master he standeth 
 or falleth." Conscience is the inner sanctuary of the 
 human temple, and into that may enter only the Great 
 High Priest who has made atonement for the world's 
 guilt, and who alone " can purge it from dead works 
 to serve the living God." It behooves us, therefore, to 
 keep every unhallowed intruder out of that sacred 
 domain, to stand up for our liberty in things indiffer- 
 ent, and so long as we maintain loyalty to Christ in 
 his revealed word, to insist that no man shall judge us 
 in respect to those matters of custom or conformity 
 which are not in themselves sinful, and in regard to 
 which we take that course which seems to us to be 
 most honoring to the Lord we love. Only let us see to 
 it that we are taking it for the Lord's sake and not 
 simply and solely for our own gratification. That is 
 the one side of the subject. 
 
 But there is another which is equally important ; 
 for the liberty being maintained, the question of love 
 then comes into operation. If I live to Christ and 
 not to self, then I live also to Christians, for they are 
 one with him. I cannot be true to him if I am incon- 
 siderate of them. Therefore, though I may, nay, must 
 assert my liberty, yet, if my exercise of that liberty 
 should seriously wound my brother's heart, I shall 
 be acting uncharitably if I insist on carrying it out. 
 " I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus," says 
 Paul, " that there is nothing unclean of itself, but if 
 thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest 
 thou not charitably* Destroy not him with thy meat 
 for whom Christ died." Nay, even more strongly, if 
 thy brother is led into sin through the exercise of thy 
 liberty, if he thereby stumbleth, or is made weak, 
 or is offended — not in the sense of being displeased, 
 
THE EESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 345 
 
 but in that of being made to stumble — then the 
 Christian course is for thee to sacrifice thy liberty 
 for love of him, even as Christ pleased not him- 
 self that he might redeem us from all iniquity ; or 
 as Paul has put it in the Epistle to the Corinthians 
 (I quote from the Ee vised Version), " Give no occasion 
 of stumbling, either to Jews, or Greeks, or to the 
 church of God ; even as I also please all men in all 
 things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of 
 the many that they may be saved ; be ye imitators of 
 me, even as I also am of Christ." Here then are the 
 two principles ; first, that things non-essential or in- 
 different are to be determined by each for himself in 
 the exercise of individual liberty and as unto Christ, 
 and that no one is to judge another for his determina- 
 tion, since none of us liveth unto himself, but unto 
 Christ, and each is responsible to him alone; and 
 second, that while the right to this liberty is inalienable 
 and may not be yielded on any ground, the acting on 
 it is conditioned by the effect of our conduct on the 
 brotherhood of believers, so that if it should provoke 
 evil and not good, or give occasion to the falling of 
 others into sin, we should abstain from carrying it 
 into exercise, since "None of us liveth unto him- 
 self," but the actions of each affect the welfare of the 
 brotherhood to which all alike belong. 
 
 Now the application of these principles to modern 
 things is too obvious to need remark. In regard to all 
 matters not in themselves sinful, the conscience of each 
 believer is at liberty to judge what his conduct may be ; 
 and to his own master he standeth or falleth. "All" 
 such " things are lawful." But while it would be quite 
 expedient to do certain things under one set of cir- 
 cumstances, it would be just as inexpedient to counte- 
 nance them in another. What is above all to be 
 15* 
 
846 THE RESPONSIBILITIES OP LIFE. 
 
 regarded is that " the work of God " shall not be 
 " overthrown " either by the uncharitable judgments 
 of the more scrupulous, or the inconsiderate and 
 inexpedient exercise of their liberty by the more 
 enlightened. Not our own pleasure, but rather the 
 glory of Christ, and the edification, and peace, and 
 progress of the brotherhood, is to be made the rule 
 of our lives. There are no specific prohibitions in 
 the New Testament, except of such things as are 
 positive sins ; and in regard to all others these prin- 
 ciples must be our guides. It would be convenient 
 no doubt, if the book or the preacher should decide 
 for us whether we should go to particular places, or 
 take part in particular amusements, or engage in 
 particular practices concerning which we are per- 
 plexed; but all these things are left to each con- 
 science — not to do as it pleases, but to take the 
 course which in the light of loyalty to Christ and 
 love to the brethren, seems to be the best ; and it is in 
 the decision of such questions for ourselves, that we 
 grow into strength and develop into true Christian 
 manliness. Insist upon liberty therefore in all such 
 matters, but let the exercise of that liberty in every case 
 be conditioned by love, for " it is good neither to eat 
 flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do any thing whereby 
 thy brother stumbleth. All things are lawful, but all 
 things are not expedient ; all things are lawful, but 
 all things edify not. Let no man seek his own, but 
 each his neighbor's good," for " none of us liveth 
 unto himself." 
 
 II. But leaving now the consideration of the text as 
 it is interpreted for us by the section of the epistle in 
 which it is found, let us proceed to regard it more gen- 
 erally, in the second place, as an inevitable condition 
 
THE EESPONSreiLITIES OF LIFE. 347 
 
 of human existence. No man's life terminates on him- 
 self alone, but each of us exerts an influence through 
 his character and conduct upon all with whom he comes 
 into contact. We are so constituted, and have been 
 placed in such circumstances, that, whether we are con- 
 scious of it or not, others are affected by our actions 
 and example. Those nearest us are in a greater or a 
 smaller measure molded by what we are, and these 
 again have a like influence on those by whom they are 
 surrounded, so that what emanated originally from us 
 is at once perpetuated in its existence and amplified 
 increasingly in its range. To use the trite illustration, 
 just as the stone cast into the pool makes undulations 
 which continually widen until they reach the edge, so 
 the moral force generated by our character constantly 
 widens through those on whom it operates. It would 
 be easy to illustrate this by typical instances drawn 
 from the pages both of sacred and secular history. 
 Who does not remember how, long after the first king 
 of Israel had gone to his account, the sad results of his 
 idolatry remained active in the land, so that his name 
 never occurs without the appended description, " the 
 son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin ? " The papacy 
 to this day bears the impress of the mind of Hilde- 
 brand, and almost every country on the globe has felt 
 the effect of the life of Ignatius Loyola, whose succes- 
 sors in the so-called Society of Jesus have gone to the 
 ends of the earth. The same is true of the great re- 
 formers of the sixteenth century, as well as of the 
 pioneers of freedom and the founders of our nation. 
 But these are not exceptional cases. True, they are 
 the cases of men who had great abilities and exalted 
 opportunities, and therein they were exceptional. But 
 these abilities and opportunities have only put, as it 
 were, in their case, into larger type, a truth which holds 
 
3"48' THE EESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 
 
 of every man. Influence is as inseparable from character 
 as the fragrance is from the flower or the shadow from 
 the substance. Every one that lives, therefore, lives not 
 merely unto himself, but has a subtle effluence always 
 radiating from him that produces some effect on others. 
 On the rocks beneath us you will find the impress of the 
 tiniest insect as well as that of the largest megathe- 
 rium ; and so in the strata of society each man has his 
 own place to fill, and will leave his own mark behind 
 him for blessing or for the reverse. A little Hebrew 
 maid in the house of Naaman was a most important 
 factor in bringing about the cure of that great captain's 
 leprosy ; and often yet a child's tiny hand may fire the 
 mine that shall shake down even granite rocks. 
 
 But, to come nearer ourselves, think how true it 
 is in our homes that " none of us liveth unto him- 
 self." The influence of parents upon their children 
 is positively incalculable ; for the young are given 
 to imitation, and are all the time taking on a living 
 likeness of their elders. The words they hear and 
 the actions they see day by day have all a power, 
 and though they may pass away from the memories of 
 both, they will live permanently in their results, so that 
 parents will meet their children at the bar of God wear- 
 ing the characters which by their daily lives they did so 
 much to fashion. And the children, too, produce very 
 marked and indelible effects upon their parents, while 
 brothers and sisters twine around each other like run- 
 ners up the wall, so that for every bend in the one 
 there is a corresponding inclination in the other, and 
 there is in each a difference from what might have been 
 if the other had not been there. In like manner it is 
 true of friends that there is ever going on between 
 them an assimilating process, as the result of which 
 they become like each other in tastes, opinions and 
 
THE PiESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 349 
 
 habits, Nathaniel's friendship with Philip was the 
 means of introducing him to Jesus, and Jehoshaphat's 
 comj)anionship with Aliab placed his life in jeopardy 
 that day in the field of Ramoth Gilead. So still the in- 
 timate associates of a man have a molding influence 
 on each other and on him, while he in turn is helping 
 to form them. This influence on others is what I have 
 called an inevitable condition of human existence. 
 We cannot rid ourselves of it. It is the attendant 
 shadow of each life, and takes its shape from the life. 
 What a solemn thing it is, in this view of it, to live ! 
 It is to be continually receiving from others, and as 
 continually giving to others. How careful, therefore, 
 we ought to be lest we should be contaminated by 
 others, or should contribute to the undoing of others ! 
 And if you would secure yourselves against both of 
 these dangers, let me urge you to seek deliberately and 
 prayerfully to live to Christ. Receive him into your 
 hearts, and he will keep all evil out of them. Retain 
 him in your hearts, and he will make them centers out 
 of which nothing but good will issue. Watch the flower 
 and the fragrance will take care of itself. Form your 
 character after the pattern of Christ and your influence 
 will be always Christian. To have the unconscious 
 effluence of the best, you must have the conscious 
 purpose always of the purest. To resist the evil 
 you must retain the good. The moistened hand may 
 hold with impunity the bar of white-hot iron, and he 
 who is bedewed with the influences of the Holy Spirit 
 will take no harm from those of the ungodly men by 
 whom he is surrounded. Nor will he do harm to any 
 by his example, but, contrariwise, that may be like the 
 shadow of Peter, which healed the sick ones over 
 which it passed. Ah ! how momentous the thought 
 that each of us, by our very existence, is either bless- 
 
350 THE EESPONSIBILITIES OF LITE. 
 
 ing or blighting some one else, according as our 
 influence is good or evil ! Wliicli is it ? Make haste 
 and see, for you may start a train which you shall 
 never be able either to overtake or to arrest, and 
 though you may repent and return to God yourself, 
 that other whom you introduced into the broad way 
 may go on his downward course and end in destruc- 
 tion ! Make haste, then, and see whether the effect 
 of your life on others is good or evil ; and if it be evil, 
 seek forgiveness and renewal at the hands of Christ. 
 
 III. But now, finally, let me view this text as it 
 expresses the deliberate purpose of every genuine 
 Christian. The true believer forswears self. Other 
 men, in one form or other, live for self. They seek 
 their own pleasure, or their own interest, or their own 
 honor. They make themselves the centers of all their 
 ambitions, and care neither for other men nor for 
 God when their personal predilections are in the case. 
 But with the Christian it is different. And it is differ- 
 ent not because some authority outside of him has 
 said. Thou shalt not worship self, but because he has 
 of his own motive, and out of love to Christ, renounced 
 self and accepted Christ as the God of his heart and 
 the sovereign of his life. Look here, for illustration, 
 to the case of the Apostle Paul himself. In writing to 
 the Philippians, he said, " To me to live is Christ ; " 
 and in his second letter to the Corinthians he uses 
 these words : " The love of Christ constraineth us, be- 
 cause we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were 
 all dead, and that he died for all that they which live 
 should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto 
 him which died for them and rose again." So also to 
 the Galatians he says : "I live, yet not I but Christ 
 liveth in me," while in the very next verse to that in 
 
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 351 
 
 "which the text for this morning is found, he affirms 
 that, " whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; whether 
 we die, we die unto the Lord ; whether we live, there- 
 fore, or die, we are the Lord's." Now all these ex- 
 pressions imply that Christ had taken in Paul the 
 place which was formerly occupied by self. Where 
 before he wrought for his own interest or glory or 
 position, he now sought Christ's honor and labored 
 for the advancement of his cause ; or, as he puts it in 
 another phrase, " what things before were gain to him, 
 those he counted loss for Christ." He felt himself so 
 identified with Christ that his own interest and the 
 Eedoemer's glory seemed to be one and the same. He 
 had become, as it were, merged in Christ. John the 
 Baptist said, on a memorable occasion, concerning 
 Jesus : " He must increase, but I must decrease." Now 
 that which was true externally of John was true in- 
 ternally and spiritually of Paul — the self in the apostle 
 had decreased, and the Christ in him had increased, 
 until it was all Christ and no self, so that in every- 
 thing he did his dominating motive and main purpose 
 were to honor Christ. In judging of any alternative 
 put before him, the determining element always was, 
 " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " "When fashion 
 was on one side and Christ on the other, he never 
 hesitated, for now the approval of others was nothing 
 to him in comparison with the commendation of 
 Christ ; and no sinful pleasure — even in the days be- 
 fore his conversion — had for him a tithe of the enjoy- 
 ment which he now derived from the consciousness 
 that he was serving Christ and was beloved by Christ. 
 Now it is the same with every real Christian. Fronj 
 the moment of his conversion his whole being runsi 
 Christward. The volume of the river may be small 
 at first, but, small as it is, its direction is decided, and 
 
35^ THE RESPONSIBILITIES OP LIFE. 
 
 it gathers magnitude as it flows, for it drains tlie val- 
 ley of liis life. He keeps himself for Christ, because 
 he owes everything to Christ. He realizes that he has 
 been bought with a price, and therefore he seeks to 
 glorify Christ in his body and his spirit, which are 
 his. Duty and delight now coalesce in his experience. 
 That which he ought to do, and that which he finds 
 happiness in doing, are now to him identical, and his 
 life illustrates the beautiful epigram of Philip Dod- 
 dridge, whose family motto, "Dum vivimus, vivamus," 
 was thus rendered by him into English verse : 
 
 " Live while you live, the epicure would say, 
 And seize the pleasures of the passing day. 
 Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries. 
 And give to God each moment as it flies. 
 Lord, in my view let both united be ; 
 I live in pleasure while I live to thee." 
 
 Now, this determination to live to Christ I have called 
 the deliberate purpose of every genuine Christian, for 
 so soon as a man believes that Jesus Christ loved 
 him — gave himself for him — he is moved by the Holy 
 Ghost to give himself up to Christ, and then discovers 
 
 that 
 
 " A life of self-renouncing love 
 Is a life of liberty." 
 
 But living thus to Christ, the believer lives also for 
 his fellow-men, for the two are inseparable, inasmuch 
 as the great principle at the root of the cross is the 
 sacrifice of self for the benefit of others ; and Jesus 
 himself has indicated that our gratitude to him should 
 take the form of ministering to the necessities of 
 others for his sake. He bids us recognize himself in 
 every ignorant one whom we can instruct, in every 
 naked one whom we can clothe, in every hungry 
 one v/hom we can feed, iu every suffering one whom 
 
THE RESPONSrBILITIES OF LIFE. 353 
 
 •we can relieve, and what we do for them he regards 
 as done for him. Thus, while we live to him, we 
 live also in the very highest sense for others, and find 
 the purest and the sweetest happiness for ourselves, 
 for we are enjoying a pleasure even when we are doing 
 a duty. The " must " of benevolence in us is not that 
 of outward constraint, but of inner impulse. It is the 
 irrepressible " cannot but," and not the shuddering 
 "I dare not but." We find our joy in seeking to 
 make others joyful. The selfish man makes happiness 
 the end he seeks, and so he never gains it, for when 
 pursued in that way it flees from before him as the 
 rainbow recedes from the deluded child who runs 
 to find the pot of gold that is fabled to be at the 
 place on which the ethereal arch doth seem to rest. 
 But when, renouncing self, we seek to make others 
 better, holier, and nobler for Jesus' sake, then true 
 happiness comes unsought, and comes to stay. When 
 in the midnight hour you lie awake and wish for 
 sleep, the more you try expedients to bring it to your 
 pillow, the more it seems to flee from your pursuit. 
 But when you turn your mind away from all such 
 things and think on something quite apart from self, 
 then, with muffled footstep, the angel of the night 
 steals into your chamber and steeps your senses in 
 forgetfulness. And so, the more eager you are for 
 happiness as an object in itself, the more hopeless is 
 your effort to attain it ; but when, renouncing self and 
 seeking to live to Christ, you labor for the benefit of 
 others ; then happiness will come of itself and fill 
 your heart with a foretaste of heaven's own blessed- 
 ness. Thus, by living to Christ, the Christian secures 
 these three things — the glory of Christ, the benefit 
 of his fellow men, and his own highest happiness. 
 And now, my unbelieving friends, what have you to 
 
354 THE EESPONSIBILrriES OF LIFE. 
 
 say to all these things ? Are you still determined to 
 live to yourselves ? What profit have you had therein 
 in the jDast ? You may have added to your wealth, but 
 have you increased your happiness ? You may have 
 multiplied your possessions, but what have you done 
 that has served your generation, or honored your God, 
 or glorified your Saviour ? And what of all that you 
 have lived to accumulate or to enjoy can you take with 
 you into that state where character shall be your only 
 property? Live, I beseech you, for something that 
 you can keep when death shall overtake you. Live to 
 glorify God here, in the obedience of Christ and the 
 love of your fellow-men, and you will find that in that 
 way you will make friends of the mammon of unright- 
 eousness, who, when you fail, shall receive you into 
 the everlasting habitations which Christ has prepared 
 for them that love him. 
 
 And, my fellow Christians, shall not we renew our 
 dedication to the Lord to-day, and seek henceforth 
 more than ever to bless and benefit our fellow men for 
 his sake ? "What joy, what usefulness, what honor, 
 have come to us as we have attempted to act on these 
 principles in the past ? Let us, therefore, carry them 
 out only more thoroughly than ever in the future. Few 
 men in his generation sought to live so much for 
 Christ and for his people as did Thomas Guthrie, the 
 Scottish pulpit orator and philanthrojDist, and the se- 
 cret of all was that he had learned at the foot of the 
 cross to sacrifice self and to love all for whom the Mas- 
 ter died. I have heard him often, and always with 
 delight, but never, I think, with such quivering emo- 
 tion tingling through my frame, as when, at the close of 
 a glowing appeal for his ragged children, he repeated, 
 with the deepest fervor, these lines, which were pecul- 
 iarly appropriate on lips like his : 
 
THE KESPONSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 355 
 
 "I live for those who love me, 
 
 For those who know me true ; 
 For the heaven that smiles above me. 
 
 And awaits my spirit, too ; 
 For the cause that lacks assistance, 
 For the wrongs that need resistance, 
 For the future in tlie distance, 
 
 For the good that I can do. " 
 
 That was his motto, because he had learned the mean- 
 ing of the love of Christ to his own soul. Shall we not 
 adopt it as our own from this time forth ? Let us live 
 for the good that we can do as the disciples of Christ, 
 and then we may very well leave all other things to 
 take care of themselves, or rather, we may be sure 
 that the Master whom we serve will take care of them 
 for us. "Not unto ourselves, but unto Christ, and 
 unto our fellow men for Christ's sake ; " so let us live 
 here, and death when it comes will only promote us to 
 a higher sphere, where we shall live to nobler purpose 
 and to yet grander fruitage. 
 March 18, 1883. 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS 
 NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 Matthew xxiii, 23. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites ! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have 
 omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith: 
 these ouglit ye to liave done, and not to leave the other undone. 
 
 The denunciations of tlie Pharisees, in connection 
 ■with which these words occur, are the sternest utter- 
 ances which came from the lips of Jesus. Indeed, they 
 are in this respect so exceptional that they have oc- 
 casioned much perplexity to many sincere Christians, 
 and have been held up to scorn and execration by 
 many antagonists of the gospel. But a clear concep- 
 tion of the real nature of Phariseeism is all that is 
 needed for their complete vindication, and as that will 
 materially helj) us to a right understanding of the 
 text, especially in its primary application, it may be 
 well to set it distinctly before you in the outset of my 
 discourse. 
 
 The error of the Pharisees was not superficial, but 
 fundamental. Their religion was not simply defective, 
 but positively false. They were not insincerely striv- 
 ing after that which was right ; but they were sincerely 
 striving after that which Avas wrong ; or to take the Sav- 
 iour's own illustration, they were building their house 
 on a foundation of sand and not upon the firm and un- 
 yielding rock. I know, indeed, that to many among 
 us the Pharisees stand as the representatives of those 
 who are deliberately seeking to impose upon others 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHEES NOT LEFT UNDONE. 357 
 
 by professing to liave that which they are conscious 
 that they do not possess. That this was true of some 
 who were called by that name is certain, for the Sav- 
 iour speaks of them as " for a pretense making long 
 prayers ;" but such a view cannot be entertained, for 
 example, of Paul before his conversion. Neither his 
 conduct in reference to the early disciples nor his 
 subsequent allusions to his experience as a Pharisee 
 will allow us to rest in the conviction that he was at 
 that time willfully and deliberately seeking to deceive 
 others. He was just as truly in earnest then as he 
 was in his later life as a Christian Apostle ; but he 
 was in earnest after the wrong thing. And so, judging 
 of the others as a class by him, we may say that they 
 had a radically false idea of what religion was ; and thus 
 their very sincerity in its practice was fraught with the 
 deepest danger to themselves, and the greatest mis- 
 chief to others. Bishop Butler, in a somewhat neg- 
 lected portion of his writings, has put the case in a way 
 which reveals his accustomed insight, when he says : 
 " They were not men without any belief at all in reli- 
 gion, who put on the appearance of it only in order to 
 deceive the world ; on the contrary, they believed their 
 religion and were zealous in it. But their religion 
 which they believed and were zealous in was in its 
 own nature hypocritical, for it was the form, not the 
 reality." * This witness is true. They resolved religion 
 into a bundle of separate acts of ritual and prescrip- 
 tion instead of regarding it as the character of the man 
 himself ; or what in Scripture language is called the 
 relation of the heart to God. They lost sight of that 
 "moral unity " in the individual which makes him " a 
 
 * Butler's Sermon before the House of Lords on the day api^omted 
 to be observed for the martyrdom of Charles I. 
 
358 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 good being as distinguished from a bad being," and 
 wliich in the words of a great thinker * is " that general 
 virtue which covers the motives " and which, " like 
 some essence which we can hardly get at," is not itself 
 so much as it is the goodness of everything else in 
 him ; " not a virtue so much as the substratum of all 
 virtues ; the virtue of virtue ; the goodness of good- 
 ness." Thus their religion Avas a super-position from 
 without ; not a manifestation of that which was within ; 
 a garment by which the body was covered, and not the 
 life of the body itself ; a something separable from 
 themselves, instead of their very innermost self; a 
 fraction cut off from their lives and devoted to a special 
 object ; instead of the very life of their lives, of which 
 everything they did was but a j)art. 
 
 Now to one who came, as the Lord Jesus did, to give 
 prominence to the truth that " the Kingdom of God 
 Cometh not with observation," but is in very deed 
 within men's hearts, the Pharisees stood forth as the 
 representatives of the most pestiferous error. They 
 occupied, so to say, the very center of the position 
 which it was his mission to storm, and very naturally, 
 therefore, against them his heaviest bombardment was 
 directed. So as Mozley says,t the sternness of these 
 denunciations " is part of the judicial language of the 
 first advent," and "laid the foundations of the final 
 judgment." The doctrine of the Pharisees was the 
 fundamental lieresy in human life it ; baptized into the 
 name of religion that which had no right to such an 
 appellation ; it robbed God of the whole, while osten- 
 tatiously seeming to give him much more than he 
 asked ; and therefore it called forth from the Lord 
 
 * See Mozley's University Sermons, p. 39. 
 f Ibid, p. 29. 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 359 
 
 Jesus tlie most scathing and indignant words wliich lie 
 was ever known to utter. 
 
 But tliis is not all. Sucli radically erroneous 
 notions concerning religion lulled the Pharisees into 
 absolute self-security. The very essence of their 
 hypocrisy was that it imposed upon themselves. Be- 
 lieving religion to consist in a certain round of ritual 
 observances and seeking zealously to perform that, 
 they conceived that all was well with them ; thus it 
 came that appeals which reached the hearts of others 
 never affected them. It was awfully true that " the 
 publicans and harlots " went into the kingdom before 
 them. Calls to repentance did not effect them, for 
 why should they repent of their goodness ? It was a 
 false goodness indeed, as we have seen, but then its 
 falseness was the very thing of which they were not 
 conscious, and so extraordinary measures had to be 
 taken in order to rouse them, if possible, to a sense 
 of their danger. Hence in portions of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, their exclusion from the kingdom at the 
 last is represented as coming upon them as an awful 
 and humiliating surprise ; and hence in the chapter 
 before us the most terrible woes are pronounced over 
 them, if haply the reverberations of the thunder 
 might awake them to a true perception of the nature of 
 the case. Thus the indignation in these verses sprang 
 from the root of love, as you may easily see by reading 
 on to the end of the chapter, for after " the whirlwind, 
 the earthquake and the fire," comes this still small voice 
 of plaintive yet baffled tenderness, " O, Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest 
 them which are sent unto you, how often would I 
 have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
 gathered her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
 not ! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." 
 
360 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 But still further, we may account for the severity of 
 these denunciations, from the fact that the Saviour 
 foresaw that Phariseeism would, in after ages, become 
 the greatest hindrance to the progress of his cause in 
 the world. As one has pithily said,'-"' " there are no 
 extinct species in the world of evil ;" and most certainly 
 this is true of the evil of which now we speak. For 
 it is the shadow that invariably attends on spiritual 
 life and follows after it. What was the Genesis of the 
 Phariseeism of the Saviour's day? Something like 
 this. There was a great religious revival among the 
 Jews after their return from the captivity, which con- 
 tinued for a considerable time ; and which, after they 
 had rebuilt the Temple, sent them back to the law 
 with a sincere desire to honor God by keeping its 
 commands. So long as the life remained, the obe- 
 dience was the real outcome of an inward principle ; 
 but when the life died out, then the obedience became 
 only a fossil, and was soon covered over with cor- 
 ruption, until it became what we see it to have been, 
 in the days of the Saviour upon the earth. But the 
 same danger attends on every great spiritual move- 
 ment, and Ave have many illustrations of it in the 
 Christian Church. Thus a real devotion to Christ 
 stimulates to reverent attention to the forms of wor- 
 ship-, and so long as that is simply an expression of 
 loyalty to Him, all is well ; but by and by all thought 
 of him drops out, and then only the ritual remains, 
 becoming the idol of the heart and so the life departs. 
 "Who does not recognize in this the natural history of 
 Eitualism, whether in the Church of Eome or else- 
 where ? So again the founders of the great monastic 
 orders were all sincere and ardent reformers, and in 
 
 * See Mozley's University Sermons, p. 33. 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 361 
 
 them and their immediate followers we see great self- 
 sacrifice and devotion from the holiest motives ; but 
 as years rolled on the life evaporated, and only the 
 Pharisaic fossils of their orders remained. Thus we 
 see how it comes that " the real virtues of one age are 
 the spurious ones of the next," '^ and that what was a 
 voice full of sincerity in one generation is often only 
 an empty echo in that which follows. So Phariseeism 
 has to be guarded against in every age of tlie Church's 
 history, and more especially after times of special 
 activity and life. The constant tendency is to retain the 
 form after the life has departed, and to keep on doing 
 as our fathers did, when we no longer feel as our 
 fathers felt ; and any one who thinks deeply on the 
 subject will be compelled to admit, that in the strength 
 of that tendency, we have one of the greatest sources 
 of the Church's weakness at the present day. Hence 
 the words of the Lord in this chapter were prophetic 
 as well as judicial ; and the very terror of them was 
 intended to direct the attention of his people in every 
 age to a danger that would be always imminent. We 
 for example, have come in for the legacy of the church 
 forms and customs of those who have gone before us, 
 and so we must take heed that we do not continue 
 these for their own sakes, but rather that we have the 
 life of which they were the expression, and that 
 we adapt the expression of that life to the circum- 
 stances and requirements of our own times. 
 
 These considerations will be enough, I hope, to vin- 
 dicate the severity of the Saviour's words in the 
 chapter before us, while, at the same time, they will 
 show the importance of this subject to ourselves, and 
 
 * Mozley, as before. 
 
362 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 prepare us to understand wliat I have called the 
 primary application of the text, to the special consid- 
 eration of which I now proceed. 
 
 It charges that the Pharisees were strictly attentive 
 to the minutest matters of tithe, but omitted the 
 weightier concerns of the law, judgment, mercy, and 
 faith ; and then lays down the general maxim, " these," 
 that is the weightier matters, "ye ought to have 
 done, and not to have left the others undone." Now 
 here two or three very important j^rincijjles are im- 
 plied. 
 
 We learn, for example, that the commands of God 
 are of different degrees of importance. There are 
 matters of more weight than others, among the divine 
 precepts. That God has commanded a thing, always 
 invests it with a certain importance, but all his com- 
 mandments are not of equal gravity. The heart that 
 reverences him, indeed, will seek for his sake to render 
 obedience to them all, but each in its own order. 
 There are higher and lower obligations ; and the 
 higher will be first attended to, nay if need be, will 
 absorb into them the lower. This is a distinction in 
 morals kindred to that between things essential and 
 non-essential in matters of faith, and it will be recog- 
 nized by all. In any case it lies here upon the very 
 surface of the text so plainly that I need not stay 
 either to prove its existence or to point out its im- 
 portance ; the rather as these will both be brought 
 ovit in the second thing which the text teaches, 
 namely : That the weightiest of all God's commands 
 have respect to judgment, mercy, and faith. That is 
 a truth which is emphasized over and over again both 
 by the prophets of the Old Testament, and the Apostles 
 of the New. Thus Samuel said to Saul, " To obey is 
 better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 363 
 
 lambs." Tlie same thouglit quivers through the 
 solemn music of the fiftieth psalm ; while Isaiah rep- 
 resents the Lord as saying to the rulers of his day 
 whose hands were full of blood, "Your new moons 
 and your appointed feasts my soul liateth ; they are a 
 trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them." So also 
 Paul exclaims in the most solemn manner, " Though I 
 bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I 
 give my body to be burned, and have not love, it 
 profiteth me nothing." He does not mean that it is 
 not a duty to feed the poor, or that it is not right to 
 " resist unto blood striving against sin ;" but as both 
 of these things may be done from sinful motives, the 
 one from love of ostentatious display, and the other 
 from a disposition not essentially different from that 
 which animates the combatants in earthly war, neither 
 of them may, in itself considered, be put into compar- 
 ison with that love to God and love to men which is 
 the result of the reception of Christ into the heart ; 
 and which, wherever it exists, will always prompt to 
 the performance of those things which are for the 
 glory of Jehovah and the welfare of mankind. The 
 inner is more important than the outer ; the spirit than 
 the letter ; the principle than the action ; the character 
 than the isolated deed. The heart is the great thing, 
 " for out of it are the issues of life," and therefore it 
 should have the first and the greatest attention. If 
 that be wrong nothing can be right ; but if that be 
 right, everything will partake of its quality. There- 
 fore, in regard to " judgment, mercy, and faith," the 
 Lord says positively, "these ought ye to have done ;" 
 while in matters of tithe and prescription, he contents 
 himself with the negative expression " and not to have 
 left the others undone." Do the great things, and the 
 smaller will follow in their train. Attend to the prin- 
 
364 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHEKS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 ciple, and the exemplifications of it will come of them- 
 selves. Look well to the character, and the conduct 
 will correspond thereto. Keep the heart, and every- 
 thing flowing from it will testify to that vigilance. 
 This is of prime importance, and clearly indicates why 
 so many who are awakened to a sense of the value of 
 religion do yet fall short of its attainment. They try 
 to reform their conduct in certain particulars. They 
 resolve and re-resolve, but only to break their vows ; 
 and all this because they are proceeding on a wrong 
 plan. They are working from a point in the circum- 
 ference instead of from the center. They are trying 
 to reform the heart from the conduct instead of the 
 conduct from the heart ; and so they have to lay afresh 
 the whole foundation ; and they have to do that by 
 building upon Christ, and coming to him for the 
 renewal which only his Spirit can effect. This looks 
 very simple, yet simple as it looks, there are many 
 among us who have never truly apprehended it, and 
 therefore I have tried with all plainness of speech to 
 make it clear. 
 
 But another thing taught us in this verse is, that 
 attention to the matters of less importance will not 
 compensate for the neglect of those which are of 
 essential moment. Punctilious tithe-paying will not 
 condone oppression, or injustice, or the lack of humble 
 faith in God. It was no answer to the charge of 
 " devouring widow's houses" for the Pharisee to say 
 " I fast twice in the week and give tithes of all that I 
 possess." Kitual is not religion ; it is only, even at 
 the best, the outer garment which she wears on cer- 
 tain occasions ; but religion herself is character ; and 
 that is a moral unit, giving its quality both to the 
 worship and to the ordinary conduct of the man. It 
 is no vindication for my not doing a most important 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 865 
 
 duty, to say that I liave done something else that is 
 on a far lower plain. If a man has dishonestly ap- 
 propriated the money which was intrusted to his care, 
 he is not to be excused because he can say, " I was a 
 regular attendant upon church, I was a Sunday-school 
 teacher, or I was a liberal giver to benevolent objects." 
 That does not alter the character of his dishonesty ; 
 it only reveals the radical wrongness of his religion, 
 and shows that he is a modern Pharisee, who regards 
 religion as a thing of rubrics and ritual, and times and 
 seasons, and temporary engagements, instead of a 
 matter of heart and life. Oh ! my hearers, how many 
 such cases there have been in recent years ! and how 
 necessary, therefore, it becomes for us to examine into 
 the foundation on which we are building ; whether the 
 rock, with its moral unity of character solidified by 
 the regeneration that comes from the Holy Spirit 
 through faith in Jesus Christ ; or the sand, with its 
 particles of separate and isolated actions held together 
 by no principle of regard to God, and fused into no 
 firm coherence by love to Christ. 
 
 And to mention only one other point this text sug- 
 gests, that where the heart is right with God through 
 faith in Jesus Christ, both the weightier matters and 
 those of less importance will be properly attended to. 
 Not in so many words, indeed, are we taught this 
 truth here. But we must put this passage alongside 
 of many similar utterances of the Lord Jesus. Take 
 the following as a specimen : " Either make the tree 
 good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt 
 and his fruit corrupt, for the tree is known by his 
 fruit. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart 
 bringeth forth good things ; and an evil man out of 
 the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things." "The 
 light of the body is the eye ; if therefore thine eye be 
 
366 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 single tliy whole body shall be full of light. But if 
 thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of dark- 
 ness ; if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, 
 how great is that darkness !" " Marvel not that I say 
 unto thee, ye must be born again." These and kindred 
 sayings which might be quoted in abundance all go to 
 show that a new nature is the fundamental need of 
 the sinner. With that he must begin ; and for that 
 he must go in humble faith to him of whom it is said, 
 " as many as received him, to them gave he power to 
 become the sons of God, even to them that believe on 
 his name — which were born, not of blood, nor of the 
 will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 
 This is the beginning of the whole matter. True 
 holiness, which is that character that performs every 
 duty in its own place, and gives to each its own im- 
 portance, is not the result of human effort alone, but 
 the work of God's Spirit promised to those and only 
 to those who cordially receive Jesus Christ as their 
 Redeemer and Lord ; and so if we wish to have it we 
 must commence not with working, but with believing ; 
 or, if you choose to express it differently, our first work 
 must be believing in Christ, for " this is the work of 
 God, that ye believe in him whom he hath sent." 
 Begin there, my hearers, and that will save you from 
 the insidious danger of the Phariseeism, which I have 
 been trying this morning to analyze and to expose. 
 
 But while thus in its contexual application the text 
 is full of instruction and warning to those who have 
 been hitherto simply and only Pharisees, it has in it 
 also a principle of great value for the guidance of 
 Christ's own disciples, for it clearly teaches that the 
 performance of one duty must not be pleaded as an 
 excuse for the neglect of another. In all such matters 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 367 
 
 what is put before us is not an alternative, as whether 
 we shall do this or that, but an aggregate, for we are 
 to do this ajid that. Now thus understood, the lesson 
 of the text is susceptible of manifold applications. 
 
 It speaks to the minister in the pulpit, and tells 
 him that in his discourses his question ought never to 
 be, whether shall I preach for the conversion of sin- 
 ners, or for the edification of believers ; but rather 
 how shall I prepare my sermons so as to secure both 
 the ^i-jj-building of God's people, and the i;«-building 
 of those who are yet out of Christ ? He is to do the 
 one but he is not to leave the other undone. Of the 
 two in some circumstances the preaching to sinners 
 may be the more pressingly important ; and in 
 others, the training of those who are already disciples 
 may demand the larger attention; but always he 
 ought to have both in his aim ; for both alike are 
 duties required at his hands. If the Acts of the 
 Apostles be in the New Testament to show him how 
 to "do the work of an Evangelist," the Apostolic 
 Epistles are also there to let him see how to " feed 
 the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made him 
 overseer ;" and if he will study these well and faith- 
 fully he may perhaps find in the example of Paul 
 something that will help him to edify believers even 
 when he is preaching to sinners ; or to probe the con- 
 sciences of sinners even when he is seeking the pro- 
 motion of holiness in those who are already Christ's. 
 But if he neglect either, he is, so far forth, unfaithful, 
 and for the passing over of the one, the doing of the 
 other will be no excuse. Nay the effect in either case 
 will be disastrous. If he continually preach for the 
 awakening of sinners, then in proportion as his hearers 
 are converted, they will pass away from him and seek 
 a teacher who shall lead them forward ; while if he 
 
368 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHEES NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 confine liimself to the training of believers, his 
 church will ere long become depleted by death and 
 removals, and no others will come to take the vacant 
 places. In this way, undue preponderance of either 
 will work injuriously to the permanent usefulness of 
 the church, and he is the wise and well instructed 
 scribe who, while doing the one, will contrive also not 
 to leave the other undone. 
 
 But there is in this principle, thus understood, a 
 lesson also for the church. It exists, as our own man- 
 ual has well put it, "for mutual edification and en- 
 couragement in Christian life ; and for the advance- 
 ment of the Kedeemer's Kingdom." Therefore it 
 must not neglect aggressive work on the outlyiD'" 
 world, for the fostering of the growth and comfoi%of 
 its members ; and neither must it neglect the growth 
 and comfort of its members for the prosecution of 
 evangelistic effort among those who are " ignorant 
 and out of the way." Here again it may be said " this 
 ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other un- 
 done." There have been times when the aggressive 
 has somewhat eclipsed the educational ; and then ex- 
 travagance and emotion have set in like a flood. But 
 again there have been times when the educational has 
 overshadowed the aggressive, and then intellect has run 
 to seed into doctrinal error, and often also into abso- 
 lute unbelief. Thus there are dangers on either hand. 
 The Salvation Army, with its irreverent modes of 
 speech and somewhat shocking methods, will illustrate 
 the peril of becoming simply and only aggressive ; the 
 Unitarian defection, with its ultimate developments 
 into such disintegration as Boston saw in the breaking 
 up of Theodore Parker's company of followers, and 
 we in New York have witnessed in the dissolution 
 of Mr. Frothingham's congregation, will illustrate 
 
THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 369 
 
 the danger of devoting ourselves entirely to self- 
 culture. 
 
 The wise church will steer clear of both extremes 
 by carrying on the work of mutual edification abreast 
 of that of evangelistic aggressiveness. I know not in 
 which direction our danger lies. Perhaps in that of 
 giving undue prej)onderance to the simple maintenance 
 of our own church life, and yet after the announce- 
 ment which I have made this morning in reference to 
 our Bethany enterprise,* I may not indulge in any 
 such suspicions. Let me content myself rather with 
 uttering a warning against the one-sidedness that 
 would give the preference to either, and then, by the 
 guidance of God's Spirit, we may be able to keep each 
 in its normal proportion in our thoughts and prayers 
 and efforts. 
 
 But speaking still of the Church, the same prin- 
 ciple holds in regard to the home and foreign 
 missionary enterprises. Concerning these also we 
 must say, " This ought ye to have done, and not to 
 have left the other undone." Both alike are duties ; 
 and as far as possible, both should be carried on 
 abreast. Sometimes the Home effort may claim 
 the larger share of attention, as I think it does, in a 
 country like our own into which we are receiving 
 foreign population at the rate of hundreds of thou- 
 sands every year. But then, work prosecuted among 
 these is, in a very true sense, foreign work as well as 
 home. Sometimes, again, as in a country like Scot- 
 land, which, if anything, is rather overchurched than 
 underchurched, the' main effort should be put forth in 
 the foreign field. But always there should be an 
 
 * The New Bethany Church on Tenth Avenue was dedicated on the 
 Sunday after this discourse was preached. 
 
370 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 outlook upon both, and work put forth on both. If 
 we content ourselves with home work, we shall be- 
 come selfish, self-conceited, and disagreeable — the 
 Pharisee among the nations saying with contempt, 
 " Thank God we are not as they !" and that will issue 
 in national humiliation. If, again, we restrict our- 
 selves to foreign, we may find our own cities, like the 
 garden of the sluggard, overrun with " thorns " and 
 "nettles," and "the stone wall thereof broken down." 
 They who have true leal-hearted love to Christ will 
 take a warm and living interest in both, as is evident 
 in the fact that we find the same individuals on the 
 platforms of both, and the church that labors earnestly 
 in both will make sure and steady progress, and be 
 marked with holy peace. If you seek to propel a boat 
 with one oar, you will simply turn it round and round ; 
 but if you use both you "go forward;" and so true 
 church prosperity depends on the carrying forward of 
 both home and foreign missions. 
 
 But turning now to the household, we may see how 
 there also the same principle holds good. Public relig- 
 ious services must not be made the substitute for home 
 duties ; and again home duties must not be pleaded as an 
 apology for the neglect of public ordinances. Arrange- 
 ments ought to be made for rightly engaging in both. 
 The instructing of other people's children must not 
 be allowed to keep us from giving needed attention to 
 the godly upbringing of our own. And again the train- 
 ing of our own families should not be made a plea for 
 exemption from all effort for the spiritual welfare of 
 those of others It is sometimes seen that the child- 
 ren of those who have been prominent in Sunday- 
 school work grow up in utter carelessness ; but then 
 occasionally we also see that the sons of those who 
 kept themselves rigidly at home for their training have 
 
^ 
 
 THESE THINGS DONE AND OTHEES NOT LEFT UNDONE. 371 
 
 become absolute reprobates. So that both extremes 
 are bad, simply because they are extremes. Home 
 is the weightier, and of its duties we may say un- 
 hesitatingly, " these ought ye to have done ;" but then 
 other forms of effort claim assistance, and of these we 
 must say, " and not to leave the other undone." A 
 workman meeting a friend on the street in Edinburgh, 
 one Monday morning, said to him, "Why were you 
 not at church last night ? our minister preached an 
 excellent sermon on home religion. Why were you 
 not there to hear it?" "Because," was the answer, 
 " I was at home doing it." That was a good answer, 
 for the service was an extra one, and the man had 
 been at church twice before. So he was right, with 
 the third, to give his home duties the preference. But 
 then, on the other hand, the " at home doing it " is 
 not all, and it should be so provided for as not to take 
 away from proper attendance on regular ordinances, 
 otherwise the result will be that after awhile religion 
 will not be much cared for either in the church or in 
 the home. A tardy student coming late into the class 
 was asked by his professor to account for his want of 
 punctuality, and replied that he had delayed for 
 purposes of private devotion. But his teacher very 
 properly reproved him by saying, "you had no right 
 to be at your prayers, when you ought to have been 
 here ; it is your duty to make such arrangements 
 that the one shall not interfere with the other." So 
 I say in regard to the conflicting claims of the house- 
 hold and the church upon you. Make arrangements 
 for giving due attention to both, and do not sacrifice 
 the one on the shrine of the other. 
 
 Finally, take it in its individual bearing, and you 
 will see at once to how many things this principle 
 may be applied. Does business say one thing, and 
 
372 THESE THESTGS DONE AND OTHERS NOT LEFT UNDONE. 
 
 the closet another? then do not give up the one for the 
 other, but see to it that you secure both. Are you 
 interested in evangelistic operations ? well, that is ex- 
 cellent ; but do not so neglect your business for them 
 that it shall get into confusion and bring you and your 
 Christian profession alike into reproch. Not many 
 years ago, Mr. Spurge on publicly reproved some in 
 his church for so neglecting their business for the 
 work of preaching that they found themselves at 
 length in the bankruptcy court. That was bad. But 
 then it is equally bad for merchants to become so 
 absorbed in business on all days and at all hours, that 
 they have neither time nor strength to give to efforts 
 for the welfare of others, and allow our missionary 
 Sunday-schools and churches to languish for lack of 
 their assistance. It is all a matter of proportion, and 
 it ought to be solemnly pondered by every one of us. 
 Let us, therefore, in the light of the f)rinciple on which 
 I have been insisting, look at our lives and see if there 
 be not many things in them out of proportion; the 
 weightier being sacrificed for those which are less im- 
 portant. When the painter is at work, you will see 
 him stepping back every little while from his canvas 
 that he may be sure his perspective is right. So let 
 us go apart a little by ourselves to-day and test the 
 perspective of our lives. Let us examine whether we 
 are not neglecting some things of great moment for 
 the sake of others of mere transitory interest and may 
 God enable us to act out the principle which we have 
 found this morning in the Saviour's words. Amen. 
 March 4, 18«3. 
 
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