-19-C^ 
 
 tihvavy of t:he t:heolo0ical ^^mimxy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 Krom the library of 
 Prof. Wm. riiller Parton, D.D., LLD 
 Presented by Krs. Parton 
 
 BX 7233 .D78 T5 1864 
 Drummond, James, 1815-1861. 
 
 Thoughts for the Christian 
 
 life 
 
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 Princeton Tlieological Seminary Library 
 
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THOUGHTS 
 
 FOR 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. JAMES DRUMMOND. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. G. HOLLAND. 
 
 NEW YOIIK: 
 
 CHARLES SCPvIBNER, 12J: GRAND STREET. 
 
 1864. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
 
 District of New York. 
 
 JOHN V. TROW, 
 
 PRINTER, STEREOTYPEH, AND JELECTROTYPER, 
 
 oo Greeue street, New York. 
 
TO 
 
 THE EAPwLY FRIENDS OF MANY TEAKS, 
 
 AND TO 
 THOSE MORE RECENTLY WON, WHOSE 
 
 EIR PASTOR 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
COISTTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Constraining Power of a Personal Attachment to 
 
 Christ, . . . . . .9 
 
 II. The Goodness of God, .... 27 
 
 III. Christians — the Heritage of God, . . .38 
 
 IV. God's Ownership in Man, . . ; . 48 
 V. One Way op Salvation, . . . . .59 
 
 VI. Faith Rooted in Darkness, .... 70 
 
 VII. Seeking Eternal Things, . . . .83 
 
 VIII. Value of Thought on Invisible Things, . . 93 
 
 IX. The Restraints of Christianity, . . . 104 
 
 X. Constant and Abounding Work for God, . . 115 
 
 XI. Spiritual Labor — its Incentive and Reward, . .124 
 
 XII. All Things Conducing to the Christian's Good, . 134 
 
 XIII. Human Judgments Correct, as our Wills accord with 
 
 God's, 144 
 
 XIV. The Integrity of the Divine Judge, . . 155 
 XV. The Fixed Heart, . . . . .166 
 
 XVI. The Glory of God the Governing Principle of all 
 
 Life, 177 
 
 XVII. Fear — Controlling and Controlled, , . .187 
 
 XVIII. The Earthly Burden and the Divine Supporter, . 197 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 208 
 218 
 227 
 239 
 , 251 
 
 XIX. The Christian's Priestly Function, 
 XX. The Gift and its Use, 
 XXI. The Law of Spiritual Growth, 
 XXII. The Autuoritativeness of Christ's Teachings, 
 
 XXIII. Light and its Responsibilities, . * . 
 
 XXIV. The Christian's Life Dependent on the Life of 
 
 Christ, . . . . ^. .201 
 
 XXV. God the Spring of all Mercy and Comfort, . . 2V0 
 
 XXVI, The Attractive Power of Christ on the Cross, . 281 
 XXVII. The Defenders of the Christian more than his As- 
 sailants, ...... 291 
 
 XXVIII. God our Helpfr, 308 
 
 XXIX. Mysteries Unveiled in the Future, . . . 319 
 
 XXX. Position and Character coincident in the Divine 
 
 Realm, ...... 329 
 
 XXXI. Many Mansions in the Father's House, . . 339 
 
 XXXII. The Perfect Satisfaction of the Saints in Heaven, 349 
 
 XXXIII. The Eternity op the Affections, . . . 359 
 
INTROD UCTION 
 
 Rev. James Dkfmmond, the author of this volume 
 of sermons, was my pastor during the last three years 
 of his ministry. It is now more than two years since 
 he passed to his reward ; and it is sweet to find that 
 memory, which so often grows faint, or proves false, 
 keeps even wing with him in his upward flight, and pre- 
 sents him to me more as he is, with each day's growing 
 glory, than as he was in the feeble days of his earthly 
 life. It is sweet to find the frail and pain-haunted man, 
 who was my friend, brother, teacher, and inspirer, trans- 
 formed in my imagination into an angel, thrilled by 
 heaven's sublime surprises, and plumed for its painless 
 service. If I saw a defect in him while living, it is now 
 effaced. If he had a quality of mind or a peculiarity 
 of manner Avhich seemed a discord in the heavenly tune 
 his life was singing, I have forgotten it. I can only 
 think of him now as transfigured — as " a perfect man in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 The selection of the sermons contained in this vol- 
 ume is not mine, but that of one whose excellent judg- 
 
Vm ^ INTRODrCTION. 
 
 ment and whose sacred relations to their author give her 
 equal authority and ability to make it. They undoubt- 
 edly present his characteristic style of thought and mode 
 of expression, and combine in the highest attainable 
 degree the peculiar food which it seemed his mission to 
 furnish for the Christian life. They are published not 
 because a few partial friends desire it, but because those 
 whose judgment deserves respect consider them exceed- 
 ingly valuable, and believe that they cannot fail to find 
 a very wide distribution among the thoughtful Christians 
 of America. 
 
 Without speaking of the sermons more definitely 
 than this at present, it is proi)er to satisfy at once the 
 reader's wish to know something about the author. The 
 when and where of his personal history can be very 
 briefly recorded. He was born in Bristol, Me., April 
 15, 1815 ; fitted for college at the old Lincoln Academy 
 of Newcastle, in that State ; entered Bowdoin College 
 in the autumn of 1832 ; graduated in 1836, and became 
 at once principal of the academy in which he pursued 
 his preparatory studies. After remaining in the most 
 satisfactory discharge of the duties of this position for 
 two years, he commenced his theological studies in 
 Union Theological Seminary, New York, where he pur- 
 sued them for two years, closing them with a year's con- 
 nection with the Bangor Seminary, in his native State. 
 On the 12th of October, 1842, he was ordained at Lewis- 
 ton Falls, and installed over the Congregational Church 
 there, having already supplied its pulpit for a year. He 
 remained in this connection until 1858 — a period of six- 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 teen years. On the 16th of June of that year he was 
 installed as pastor of the North Congregational Church 
 in Springfield, Mass., in which office he remained until 
 his death, which took place in Lynn, at the house of his 
 brother-in-law. Rev. J. B. Sew all, on the 29th of No- 
 vember, 1861. His dust reposes in the Springfield 
 Cemetery, beneath a monument Avhose solidity and 
 beauty express at once the value of his character and 
 the strength of the afiection with which he is remem- 
 bered. 
 
 Mr. Drummond was a Christian who believed in 
 Christianity. He was sublimely — sometimes awfully — 
 in earnest. I have never known a man who seemed so 
 thoroughly to realize the responsibilities of the Christian 
 pulpit, and the tremendous import of the truths with 
 which he dealt, as he. Profoundly impressed with the 
 un worthiness of his own character, pitying the sinful 
 world around him with a heart full of tears, haunted by 
 the sad contemplation of the doom of imchristian men, 
 religion was to him a grand, all-subordinating reality. 
 Life itself was, in many of its respects, an awful thing 
 to him ; and the obscure problems of the universe — the 
 destiny of his race — the mysteries of God's moral gov- 
 ernment — the scheme of Christian salvation — these en- 
 thralled him, possessed him, often almost crushed him. 
 Preaching, with him, was something more than a holi- 
 day show of rhetoric — a pleasant utterance of general 
 religious truths. He spoke as one commissioned of 
 Heaven ; and he could not have been more in earnest if 
 he had been favored with a vision of the eternal city, or 
 1 
 
X INTKODrCTION. • 
 
 been permitted to gaze upon the perdition of ungodly 
 men. 
 
 Yet, with all his loyalty to the truth as he found it 
 revealed in the Bible — for this was his sole authority in 
 all matters relating to religion — with all his faithfulness 
 in the preaching of doctrines the most terrible to him- 
 self and the most unpalatable to others, he always pre- 
 sented himself to men as a loving, pitying^brother. The 
 lesson he had learned of his own heart was a lesson of 
 charity toward all men. There was no man so bad that 
 he could not find something amiable in him ; there was 
 no deed so base that he did not see in the doer's circum- 
 stances some explanation of it, or palliation for it. He 
 loved men, women, and children — loved his kind with a 
 positive affection — with a passion as constant and true as 
 he exercised toward the precious ones of his own house- 
 hold. His sympathies were universal. He was at home 
 with the coarse as well as the refined, loved to talk with 
 the humble, always found it impossible to refuse money 
 to those who asked for it, and only felt sad to think that 
 he could do so little, and had so little to give, to make 
 men happier and better. 
 
 And if Mr. Drummond was generous in the bestowal 
 of affection, he was equally desirous of a return in kind. 
 No man ever loved better and more widely than he, 
 and no man ever craved affection more. To be loved 
 warmly, tenderly, strongly by those around him to 
 whom he gave the efforts of his life, wa^ a desire second 
 only in his heart to that of being loved and approved by 
 his Master. Fame he did not seek for ; money he did 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 not care for ; position had no charms for him ; but love 
 — human love — he bathed his soul in it as a bird bathes 
 her dusty and drooping feathers at a fountain. Love 
 soothed him, comforted him, feasted and refreshed him. 
 He was like a child in this. Love healed his wounds, 
 rewarded his pains, and sweetened his life with its most 
 precious delights. 
 
 A mind so much in earnest as his, engaged in such 
 contemplations and such labors, could not exist in a frail 
 body in which the nervous organization predominated, 
 without producing either occasional or general depres- 
 sion. He was born by the sea, and it always seemed as 
 if the sea gave to his life its kejTiote. The boy who 
 stood upon the shore, looking out upon its limitless 
 waters, dreaming of its mysteries, and seeing the dim 
 sails sliding along the edge of the far horizon, and 
 fading from sight, or watching the breakers as they 
 rolled in u2)on the rocky coast, is the man who, through 
 all his life, stood by the shore of a wider sea, dreaming 
 of greater mysteries, covered with questions that came 
 and went with the Avind, or lashed by storms whose 
 thunderous waves shook him where he stood like the 
 convulsions of an earthquake. The burden of thought 
 and feeling was always too heavy ; and, in the contem- 
 plation of himself and of his work, he was almost con- 
 stantly depressed. With a rational conviction that a 
 Christian ought to be the happiest man in the world, 
 and with a Christian faith that he would not have sur- 
 rendered for ten thousand worlds, he very rarely found 
 himself the possessor of genuine Christian joy. He was 
 
Xll INTEODUCTION. 
 
 a sick man during all his professional life, often sleep- 
 less, always thoughtful, bearing about in his body the 
 dying of the Lord Jesus, with all the burdens that his 
 mind associated with the infinite passion, until that body 
 tottered under its load, and fell. 
 
 In intellectual power and quality, Mr. Druramond 
 was not only an uncommon man, but an uncommon style 
 of man. He was an original thinker — a man whose ser- 
 mons never could be predicted from the texts which 
 formed their subjects. I do not mean, of course, that 
 he labored to find strange lines of thought, or sought to 
 present truth in unexpected aspects. The fact was, that 
 he possessed a most distinctly marked individuality, 
 which seemed to hold its independent relations to all 
 truth, so that, when he spoke, everybody expected to 
 hear something fresh — something he had never heard 
 before, and something which no one else could have said 
 or thought of. His familiar expositions of the Scrip- 
 tures at evening meetings, or during the public readings 
 of the Sabbath, were always remarkable for their fresh- 
 ness. So truly was this the case, that it w^as said, after 
 he removed to Springfield, by one of his new flock, that 
 Mr. Drummond had brought a new Bible with him. His 
 reading of the Bible was itself an exposition, so thor- 
 oughly did he seem to imderstand and weigh the truths 
 to which he was giving utterance. Though delighting 
 in metaphysical research and labor, he never forgot his 
 office, but always aimed to deal in a plain and practical 
 way with the plain and practical people who formed the 
 majority of his congregations. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 In character, Mr. Drummond was one of the purest 
 and most thoroughly truthful men I have ever known. 
 He was not only above reproach, but above suspicion. 
 No man with a positive character, like that which he 
 possessed, ever passed through life without enemies ; 
 but slander herself never breathed a whisper against his 
 personal character. It was so high, and so open to the 
 light, that all men saw it, and even his enemies gave it 
 their reverence. He combined the two characteristics 
 of worldly wisdom and childlikeness in a most unusual 
 degree. Reading character with the quickness of intui- 
 tion, managing his relations with the two flocks of 
 which he was the pastor with rare sagacity, finding his 
 way to the hearts of those whom he wished to benefit 
 with a tact that was marvellous, he was as simple in liis 
 tastes and feelings and as truthful as a boy. He seemed 
 to have great faith in men, yet was never unconscious 
 of their imperfections. He loved everything that was 
 noble and gallant and good, admired everything that was 
 strong and daring and beautiful, despised with all the 
 intensity of his intense nature everything that was mean 
 and cowardly, and hated and denounced all that was 
 wrong. Longing for the redemption of the world, and 
 laboring and praying for its elevation, the slowness of 
 the progress of Christianity, and the prevalence of vice, 
 poverty and wretcliedness distressed him, and almost 
 plunged him into despair. 
 
 In the pulpit he was a man of power. He always 
 had something new to say, and a striking and impressive 
 way of saying it ; yet I have sometimes thought that his 
 
XIV INTKODUCTION. 
 
 sermons were hardly more impressive than his pi'ayers. 
 In these exercises he often became so absorbed and en- 
 raptured, that he seemed to lose the consciousness that 
 there was an audience before him, turnhig partly around 
 w^here he stood, and talking like a man inspired. His 
 prayers were indeed a pouring out of his heart before 
 God. 
 
 A pale-faced man, broad and a little stooping in the 
 shoulders — a tall frame, with small muscles filled with 
 nervous energy in every fibre^ — a pair of kind, blue eyes, 
 sometimes looking through glasses constantly worn, and 
 sometimes peering over them — a head covered heavily 
 with light brown hair — action sometimes angular and 
 hard, sometimes the perfection of powder and grace, but 
 always impressive — these words will do, perhaps, what 
 words can do, to present Mr. Drummond, as he stood in 
 his pulpit, to those wdio have never seen him there. His 
 audiences were always still, and always awake. No man 
 could hear him and withhold from him his attention. 
 Usually calm and measured in his utterances, he often 
 left the text of his sermons, and rose into a passion and 
 power of eloquence that shook him as a reed is shaken 
 by a hurricane, thrilling his hearers, and making fearful 
 drafts upon his own vital resources. 
 
 It would naturally be supposed that a preacher pos- 
 sessing Mr. Drummond's reverence for the Bible, and his 
 rare power of exposing and explaining it, w^ould choose 
 his subjects mainly from the sacred text : and this was 
 the case ; though he never forgot, in the selection of 
 topics, the wants of his people, or turned a deaf ear to 
 
INTRODUCTION. ' XV 
 
 the suggestions of current events. It was the criticism 
 of one of his brothers in the ministry, that he " loaded 
 too lightly;" and the criticism was based upon the fact 
 that he rarely undertook to present more than one great, 
 vital truth in a single sermon. He always went to work 
 upon a sermon with a definite aim — with a single object 
 in his mind which he wished *to accomplish ; and it was 
 his theory, that if he could plant one great, pi'actical 
 Christian truth or motive in the hearts and minds of his 
 audiences, by the talk of half an hour, it Avas all he 
 could hope to do. He therefore never selected a subject 
 that did not have a direct and immediate relation to the 
 condition and the wants of his congregation ; and, when 
 he had selected it, he sacrificed everything it was neces- 
 sary to sacrifice, and did everything in his power to do, 
 to make it tell for good upon those for whom he labored. 
 He presented the central, vital thought of each sermon 
 in all possible aspects — sometimes with iteration and I'e- 
 iteration — and then drove it home to the hearts for 
 which it had been prepared, with all the persuasion there 
 is in love and all the power there is in logic. 
 
 His mode of writing and preaching was peculiar. 
 Nearly all his sermons were written at a single sitting. 
 To his nervous and feeble body the confinement of 
 writing was as painful, almost, as crucifixion would have 
 been. His sermons were therefore thought out as he sat 
 reading, as he walked the streets, upon his bed ; and, 
 when he sat down to write, he had only to record with 
 great rapidity the sermon which had already passed 
 through the mental laboratory. He always wrote briefly 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and completely ; yet it is doubtless true, that not a single 
 sermon in this volume was delivered as it is here printed. 
 Preaching always inspired him, and he seemed sometimes 
 almost to revel in the world of fresh thought which his 
 own incisive utterances opened to him. Interjections, 
 enlargements, and additions quite transformed his ser- 
 mons ; and the only question I have had concerning the 
 publication of this collection is, whether, after taking 
 away the person of the preacher, with all his magnetism 
 and all that he uttered mider the direct inspiration of 
 preaching, there would be enough left to represent him 
 worthily, and convey his characteristic j)Ower to the 
 hearts of his readers. The sermons in this volume are 
 therefore brief, and the reader has the explanation of 
 the fact ; and although those who listened to their deliv- 
 ery will miss much of the language they heard, I think 
 they will find the central, vital thoughts intact. There 
 is, doubtless, an advantage in brevity, particularly in a 
 sermon which is to be read ; and it is possible that these 
 discourses will be more acceptable to the general public 
 in the present shape, than if they were loaded with addi- 
 tions inspired by occasions which are past, and circum- 
 stances that are not universal. As the work of a great- 
 hearted, large-minded man, who loved God and his fel- 
 lows, and gave his life a willing offering to both, it is my 
 privilege to present these sermons to the public. They 
 came forth from a life rich in Christian experience, fer- 
 tile in thought, and abounding in charity ; and I am sure 
 that God will breathe something of His life through 
 
 them into the world. 
 
 J. G. H. 
 
THO U G HTS 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 I. 
 
 THE CONSTRAINING POWER OF A PERSONAL 
 ATTACHMENT TO CHRIST, 
 
 For the love of Christ constraineth iis. — 1 Coe. v. 14. 
 
 IT maybe doubted whether Christ's love to Paul and 
 his fellow disciples, or their love to Him, was the 
 constraining impulse of their lives. Probably it 
 makes but little difference. Christ's love to us can 
 never stir us till it awakens our own. Ilis throbbing, 
 burning heart must quicken our cold and dead hearts. 
 His voice of affection must echo through all the 
 chambers of our souls, and stir them to right feeling 
 and action. Christ came to establish a kingdom of 
 love. He founded it upon Ilis own sufferings and 
 death. Having founded it, He went up to heaven, 
 and now sits upon the throne of universal power, 
 superintending its concerns. He never intermits His 
 interest in it ; slowly, steadily, in His own way. He is 
 
12 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 studying Him longest, after loving Him most, the 
 richest in endowment are constrained to exclaim : 
 " Oh, the depth ! " 'No man, no angel was ever yet 
 compelled to say of Him, that " the bed is shorter 
 than that a man can stretch himself on it ; and the 
 covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in 
 it." 
 
 Again, this personal attachment to Christ gives 
 the mightiest impulse, affords the strongest and most 
 constant working force that can operate upon the hu- 
 man soul. The problem which any system that 
 would regenerate and save man must solve is this ; 
 how to stir his dead affections, draw him out of him- 
 self as a centre and an end — how to set him forward 
 toward God and heaven and all good beings, and 
 keep him going in the right paths, in spite of sloth and 
 passion and sin, with all the steadiness and certainty 
 with which the stars move in their orbits ; no waver- 
 ing, no backsliding. Tliis is the problem. This must 
 be done, not by an outward force, but by an inward 
 one, that shall pierce to the very centre of a man's 
 being, and grapple and hold him in the course to- 
 ward God and right, with a calm and yet resistless 
 energy. What shall effect this? What in us — I 
 mean not without, but with the aids of the Divine 
 Spirit working voicelessly in the depths of our nature 
 — what, so far as it comes within the range of our 
 intelligence, shall draw and hold us to right and duty, 
 
, CONSTEAINING POWER OF LOVE TO CHEIST. 13 
 
 bear us on clear into heaven, to mingle in its scenes 
 and employments ? Fear of coming wrath cannot do 
 it. It chills and freezes. It can block up the path 
 to ruin, and make us tremble as we go down its slope ; 
 but it cannot draw to heaven. Shall conscience ? Jt 
 can accuse, drive us up against the sharp edge of the 
 Law, and pierce and wound us ; it can flash its lurid 
 fires in the face of the soul, but it cannot impel us 
 constantly and joyously to self-conquest and holiness. 
 We want something that shall cast out fear — some- 
 thing that shall even silence conscience — something 
 that shall go over it and sink it, as the dark summits 
 f gi-anite rocks are sunk when the tides of the sea 
 ow in and cover them ; for a man never knows that 
 le has a conscience w^hen he is doing right, any more 
 han he knows that he has a heart when he is well, 
 le gets grounded and pierced on the sharp points of 
 lis conscience when the heart's tides are out, and is 
 floated off when they come in. It is not fear — not 
 conscience. What is it ? We believe, a strong per- 
 sonal attachment to Christ. This is the working force 
 that shall bind and hold us. 
 
 Observe the advantages which such a love has to 
 effect this end. It is love to a person^ not a cold, ab- 
 stract princiiDle. The soul of man cannot be brought 
 to love, live for, fight, suffer, die for it alone. 
 Principle, in its baldest shape, has its devotees, its 
 elect heroes, who would clasp it, and bleed and die 
 
14 TIIOUGITTS FOR THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 for it. But they are rare — the topmost men of the 
 race — the men who rise above the common level, like 
 the mountain ranges ; and even these cannot live and 
 work well and joyously in the cold, clear region of 
 m.ere principle. They must leave the summits, wdth 
 their frosty air and their coronal of stars, and come 
 down and work where men live and hearts throb. If 
 we love principles well, we love them best incarnated, 
 looking out of human eyes, and speaking in human 
 tones. There never was that man yet who would 
 not, if he were going to suffer and die for a principle, 
 prefer to die for it as it appealed to him in some noble 
 form of man or some lovely face of woman. We like 
 principle, but we like men and women embodying 
 principle better. We most of us love warm flesh and 
 blood. Armies have gone to the tented field — the 
 enthusiastic movements of the race have started and 
 gone on under the impulse of living men, not of m ere 
 principle. The Bible recognizes this tendency of the 
 race. It is full of persons — its appeal is to persons — 
 its love is love to persons. It is the love, not of right, 
 but of Christ, that shall constrain us. Heaven must 
 send out its representative, must incarnate its concen- 
 trated principle and love in Christ, and up and out to 
 Him go human affections. 
 
 But not only do our affections go out to persons 
 more tlian to abstract principles, but there is some- 
 thing in the very nature of Christ adapted to engage 
 
CONSTRAINING POWER OF LOVE TO CHRIST. 15 
 
 them most promptly and absorbingly. That nature 
 we believe to be peculiar, unique. There is none like 
 Him in creation. He stands out marked, distinct from 
 all others. We can hardly analyze and describe, or 
 pour our ideas of Him into the moulds of human lan- 
 guage. We want some heavenly dialect in which to 
 set him forth. We call Him man and He is ; but 
 when we have defined man, fetched a compass about 
 him, and included in our survey all our ideas of man, 
 we have not defined Christ, have not exhausted at all 
 our ideas of Him. We call Him God. The Bible 
 calls Him so. It ascribes such w^orks to Him that 
 w^e are left without any proof of the Divine exist- 
 ence if He is not God. But when ^Ye w^ish to clasp 
 His two relations together, put a girdle around them 
 both, and present Him to human thought in His com- 
 plex perfection, w^e are constrained to coin a term. 
 We find none ready made to our hand. We call Him 
 the God-man, the Divine-human, the Celestial-terres- 
 trial, the Infinite-finite. We thus bring Him down 
 to earth, and He stands before us in human form. 
 We thus exalt Him to heaven, far above hnman com- 
 prehension. He is the mystic ladder — its base on 
 the earth, its top above the clouds. I^ow this Being 
 that we attempt to set forth w^ith such antagonistic 
 phrases, so far removed from our power of analysis, 
 so alien, if yv")!! please, from our logic, is yet the very 
 Being to affect our hearts. We cannot measure Ilim. 
 
16 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHEISTlAI^r LIFE. 
 
 Here^ He is a man ; tliere^ He is a God, and we can- 
 not make the edges of the yawning chasm that seems 
 forever to separate His two natures to onr reason, ap- 
 proach and coalesce. "We know Him, and yet we do 
 not know Him. Here^ He is a man of sorrows, and 
 acquainted with grief, borne hke a lamb to the 
 slaughter, and yet opening not His mouth — weak like 
 one of us ; there^ He is a God calling worlds into 
 being, ruling all nature, healing the sick, raising the 
 dead, submitting to law, and yet above it. It takes 
 His greatness with His limitations — ^His strength and 
 His weakness — His divinity and His humanity, to 
 affect us most. On His one side He is human — a 
 man and brother — coming all the way down to us, 
 entering into our feelings, our experiences — seeing 
 men and things out of our eyes, that heart of His 
 bending to our griefs, and swelling with our joys. 
 We put our heart to His, and His answers it beat for 
 beat. We would not miss that bending down to us, 
 that standing side by side with us, and that thought 
 that now to-day in heaven, He retains, as written 
 upon an iron leaf, all that He was and felt. 
 
 But then we want more — not in another, but in 
 Him ; if we can have it, we want the Divine also — 
 the human to know, to think with, and feel with ; the 
 Divine, to be utterly incomprehensible, to encompass 
 us, to overarch us, to flow into our weakness, to seize 
 us and bear us aloft as upon eagles' wings ; the hu- 
 
CONSTRAINING POWER OF LOVE TO CHRIST. 17 
 
 man, to grasp — the Divine, to elude ns ; the human, 
 to stand in clear, distinct outline before us — the Di- 
 vine to tower infinitely above, to be lost in that thick 
 darkness that shrouds His throne. We want a being 
 that shall come down to our sympathies, and so stand 
 on the same plane with us ; with the tides of feeling 
 flowing through us both ; and, at the same time, one 
 before whom we shall bow with reverence and awe — 
 the very Being that we have in Christ, one whose 
 thoughts and feelings span that mighty void between 
 God and man. The Bible gives us Christ — the God- 
 with-us — the Man-divine — that Being who towers 
 above our reason, but grasps and holds our hearts. 
 
 Now this person, so unique, so divinely and hu- 
 manly constituted, and so adapted to win our affec- 
 tions by His intrinsic qualities, presents Himself to 
 us as our greatest benefactor. He has illustrated for 
 us the nature of a true life, when we had lost the 
 ideal. He has spoken to us, and revealed to us the 
 Godhead when it had vanished out of the world's 
 mind. He has poured new light and new love over 
 the world. He has met for us the claims of a vio- 
 lated law, and lifted clear off from us the crushing 
 weight of its penalty. He has kindled new hopes in 
 our despondency. He has opened a way to heaven, 
 and gilded the darkest night of human sorrow with 
 radiance. He rose from the grave triumphant for us 
 — has gone to heaven — to prepare mansions for his 
 
18 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 friends. " He ever liveth to make intercession for ns." 
 He subdues our enemies ; and will at length, if we 
 will trust Him, bring us to His blessed presence, and 
 present us faultless before His Father's throne. Have 
 we not here a Being adapted by all that He is, and all 
 that He has done for us, to win our affections, and 
 hold them most tenaciously ? And are we not right 
 in saying that love to Christ — a person — such -a per- 
 son, and that person our highest benefactor — presents 
 the strongest working force that can enter a human 
 soul, to elevate and purify it ? Yerily, if He be not 
 Divine, then has our Maker projected in upon the 
 theatre of human history a being who has proved 
 himself a most formidable rival for the hearts of the 
 race ! All over the world, multitudes of the most 
 devout students of His "Word do love and honor Him, 
 not as the rival of the Father, but as His fellow and 
 equal. 
 
 Thirdly : Strong personal attachment encompass- 
 es all the doings of men that are right, and, taking 
 them into its keeping, elevates and dignifies them. 
 Anything that a man need do or should do at all, he 
 may and should do out of love to Christ. Say of a 
 deed, or a series of deeds, or a whole life, that love to 
 Christ will not permit it, and you put the stamp of 
 reprobation upon it. You exclude it wholly from the 
 circle of life, if love to the Master will not allow one 
 to do it. All that is right, love to Him will prompt 
 
CONSTRAmiNG POWER OF LOVE TO CHRIST. 19 
 
 US to do better : all that is wrong we cannot do at all. 
 And encompassing thus all right action, it gives all 
 of it elevation and true dignity. 
 
 There are departments of work, of life, that of 
 themselves elevate those who engage in them. They 
 enlist and exhaust all and more than all the faculties 
 which the greatest can bring to them. They seem to 
 be above men, and beckon men on and up to them. 
 The best-endowed go up to them, not down to them. 
 There are other departments of work, and these enlist 
 the mass of the race, where mind has little scope, and 
 receives little or no enlargement. After a slight in- 
 itiation into them, most of the faculties are disengaged 
 — are left unenlisted, or at least untaxed. !N^ow, in 
 these departments of life, engaging the rank and file 
 of men, what shall elevate them ? "What shall bring 
 them up into full and free communion with the best 
 of the race, put them into fellowship with the very 
 highest, and thus bind men in one living and holy 
 brotherhood ? What, but an all-encompassing aflfec- 
 tion, pervading the highest, reaching the lowest, and 
 thus lifting them all together, one compact mass ! 
 And if we will look more deeply, we shall find that 
 it is the heart — the kind of heart that men put into 
 their work, that gives them esteem and respect among 
 their fellows. A true and noble affection elevates the 
 humblest toiler. Take away the heart that may be 
 put into it, and most of life degenerates into drudg- 
 
20 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 eiy, and makes us inquire witli the Psalmist, in a 
 sceptical spirit as to the wisdom of our Maker — 
 " Wherefore hast Thou made all men in vain ? " Al- 
 most all life is reduced to a level, barren waste ; nearly 
 all men lose the respect of men — the ideas which we 
 wish to attach to a man — except as noble affections 
 undergird and lift them aloft. Two men may do the 
 same work ; the one may do it to gratify a base and 
 ignoble passion, the other to gratify his best affec- 
 tions ; the one may rise early, work hard, and retire 
 late, and, seizing the fruits of his toil, may hurry to 
 drown his reason and his manhood in the intoxicating 
 bowl ; the other, working by his side, no harder, no 
 longer, at close of day, with the fruits of his toil, may 
 hasten to his home, where the fire of love forever 
 burns on its altar, to meet the happy smiles of wife 
 and kindred. The outward work of both is the same 
 — the prompting passion makes the difference. 'Now 
 there lives not the man, however humble, on the foot- 
 stool, who may not elevate himself in the esteem of 
 the noblest, by the affection that shall prompt his 
 doings. He may engage in the most unintellectual 
 labor — he may dig in the ditch, or delve in the mine, 
 rarely breathing the upper air, or seeing the sun ; and 
 yet if he love the Lord Jesus Christ, apostles and mar- 
 tyrs, the most hoary dwellers in the New Jerusalem, 
 those who have for ages been under the tuition and 
 discipline of heaven, call him brother, and that too 
 
CONSTRAINING POWER OF LOVE TO CHRIST. 21 
 
 without stooping to do it. He stands within the cir- 
 cle of heaven's nobility — has heaven's coronet on his 
 brow by having heaven's spirit in his heart. No toil 
 is so ignoble that Christ will not take him that does 
 it into alliance with Himself. Let a man love Christ, 
 and Christ passes His golden cincture about him, 
 weaves him as a thread into that beautiful web that 
 will gild the walls of heaven. He is in the select 
 band of tlie glorions immortals. He is dignified by 
 what he is, not by what he does. Better be the poor- 
 est slave with love to Christ, than the richest master 
 without it — better dig a ditch out of love to Him, 
 than thunder with the loftiest eloquence, or conquer 
 a kingdom for self. The affection dignifies the man, 
 do what he may. 
 
 Fourthly : Personal love to Christ gives tone, 
 depth, proportion, and impulse to our love of man. 
 This is a philanthropic age, nominally so, and, we be- 
 lieve, really so. Man as such — man apart from his 
 rank, his wealth, his relations, has risen and is still 
 rising. The great plane of humanity is mounting to 
 a higher level ; man's welfare as a creature of God 
 is more sought. Christian ideas of him, rather than 
 mere political ones, are more and more entertained. 
 He is beginning to be regarded as having an individual 
 life and interest, and not as a part of a great machine 
 that we call society. There is a philanthropy apart 
 from the Church, and even apart from the BiblCj com- 
 
2525 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHEISTIAIT LIFE. 
 
 peting with the Church and the believers of the Bible, 
 more loud, vociferous, and in one sense, more active. 
 ]^ow, an unchristian philanthropy never can be a deep, 
 genial, sunny, safe philanthropy. It may roar like 
 the thunder, flash like the lightning, and heave so- 
 ciety like the earthquake. It is wild, tumultuous, 
 restless, like the sea. A true philanthropy is grafted 
 into Christ, is based primarily on love to Him. Its 
 sphere of activity is the earth, out among its dwellers : 
 in the hovels of the poor, in the prison, among the 
 degraded, the enslaved, the oppressed ; wherever a 
 man sighs and groans, there he finds its object, and 
 room for its activities; beginning at home, seeking 
 out the most crushed and oppressed first, and then 
 widening its circle even to the ends of the earth. 
 There may grow up in any community, a philanthropy 
 truculent and fierce, apart from Christ and love for 
 Him ; but the philanthi-opy that is to abide — that is 
 to reach through life — surmount obstacles — be pa- 
 tient, firm, consistent, — working down out of sight of 
 men — sounding no trumpet before it — having no 
 speech and no language, like the stars, and like them 
 gilding some dark spot, — such a philanthropy is born 
 of the Spirit, and is nurtured by the spirit of Christ. 
 Give it other parentage, and it will lack tone, consist- 
 ency, power, will break and part somewhere. 
 
 Fifth : Personal attachment to Christ is the most 
 permanent affection. It not only o'er-masters, but 
 
CONSTRAINING POWER OF LOVE TO CHRIST. 23 
 
 where it exists, it outlives all other affections. These 
 may work with power, prompt to effort and self-de- 
 nial. It is part of the glory of our humanity that they 
 do so. I would not pluck away one pillar from that 
 glorious fahric — a human soul. Even those affections 
 that have their main theatre of action on the earth 
 are beautiful. They work long and well, accomplish 
 great things. The husband and father leaves his 
 home, goes out on stormy seas, doubles distant capes, 
 parts from home long, for the sake of home. The pa- 
 triot leaves his peaceful retreat — the scene where his 
 young feelings grew, and where the sweet amenities of 
 life are enjoyed, and goes to the tented field, and jeop- 
 ards life and limb for his country. These sights are 
 beautiful, and the affections that prompt them may be 
 lasting ; but even these may wither and die. The wife 
 that we lay in tears in the grave, trembling lest the 
 very clods shall fall too heavily upon her coffin, we 
 may forget. Time, in its slow marchings, effaces our 
 tears, and almost our love. The object of our affec- 
 tion dies, and it too often dies with it. But Christ 
 ever livetli. He is in us by His own quickening 
 spirit. He stirs our hopes. He kindles our love, and 
 draws up, in His own silent but efficacious way, our 
 affections unto Himself. With waning powers and 
 passing years, we love Him more as we come nearer 
 and nearer to Him, and when the doors begin to be 
 shut in the streets, and the sound of the grinding is 
 
24: THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 
 
 low, and we rise up at tlie voice of the bird, and all 
 tlie daughters of music are brought low, when fears 
 are in the way, and desire faileth, when the silver cord 
 is loosened, and the bowl is breaking at the fountain, 
 when time fades, and eternity looms np — then our 
 affection for Christ shines out most brightly. It rises 
 higher than all others, is deeper and firmer, and sur- 
 vives them all. 
 
 Thus I believe love to Christ as the manifested 
 Deity, God with us, is the mightiest working force in 
 tlie human soul. It is the great constraining in- 
 fluence. All life must be based on it — all our 
 doings must be strung on it to give them true charac- 
 ter and continuity. Somehow we must get into this 
 love, must be borne oi? by it. We pass into it, and 
 we pass into the great currents, we are among the 
 vital forces, within the sweep of the fundamental laws 
 of creation. What we do effectively and well, what 
 we do that shall coalesce with the doings of Heaven, 
 that shall answer to and be like them, must be done 
 from love to Christ. We must be benefactors — must 
 bless and do good — feed the hungry — clothe the na- - 
 ked — ^knock the fetters from the slave, with love to 
 Him encompassing ns like an atmosphere, and bind- 
 ing us like a golden chain. We can only add to the 
 permanent wealth of creation, we can only build a 
 fabric that shall abide, when we build from love to 
 Christ. So that the man who does not love Christ, is 
 
CONSTRAINING POWER OF LOVE TO CHRIST. 25 
 
 out of the great drift of things, he is out of harmony 
 with all right beings and things, he is among discord- 
 ant and jarring forces, he does not join the great 
 chorus, lie is in chaos. If any man love not the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, he is for discord, not haraiony in God's 
 domain, and as sure as that dominion is to be trium- 
 phant, as sure as its principles are to be the all-prev- 
 alent ones, he is and must be by the very constitu- 
 tion of things. Anathema. 
 
 I have spoken of personal attachment to Christ as 
 the constraining impulse of life — of all life. It should 
 impel us to our daily tasks. It should preside over 
 all our secular pursuits, and give them an up-lift and 
 elevation. It should be carried into the shop, to 
 the farm. It should fire the tongue of the lawyer 
 — should impel the physician in his round of duty — 
 should preside at the fireside, and make home more 
 sweet and simny. Above all it must have its seat of 
 power in the heart of him who, as Christ's ambassador, 
 would fairly represent his Master, and lift perishing 
 men out of their narrowness and sin into a divine life. 
 It must be the inspiration of the pulpit, or it is a dead 
 thing for the great end for whicb it is established. 
 As the love of Christ shall constrain us, we as minis- 
 ters shall be men of ^^ower, acknowledged of God, 
 and in due time also confessed of men. 
 
 My brother ! this love must fill your heart —it 
 must touch your lips as with a live coal from off" 
 2 
 
26 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 God's altar — it must breathe in your sermons, your 
 exhortations, your pastoral calls, and in your daily 
 life. Let it be in you and abound, and it will carve 
 paths for you to the highest, the most permanent 
 success. 
 
 IToTE.— Preached at the ordination of Kev. J. B. Sewall, 
 Lynn, February 28th, 1855. 
 
n. 
 
 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 
 For the Lord is good. — Ps. c. 5. 
 
 THIS declaration is very brief. It is easily under- 
 stood, and will be controverted in set terms per- 
 liaps by few or none. It will secure an easy entrance 
 into, and we fear an easy and rapid transit through, 
 the minds of most. Persons that rarely, if ever, 
 tliink of God, that never bring Him into close contact 
 with their souls ; persons who are without God in the 
 world, will with the most heartless indifference assent 
 to the statement that God is good, and with the bald 
 assent will dismiss the statement as thoughtlessly as 
 they make it. 
 
 The truth is, God is never brought sufficiently near 
 to the hearts of such persons, to stir them into thought 
 about Him. He is a Being afar off, one with whom 
 they have little to do ; so they dismiss any plausible 
 affirmation with respect to Him with a placid indiffer- 
 ence, and their assent has as little virtue in it, as their 
 dissent would have. But let one awake to reflect 
 upon the position of the Governor of the universe; 
 
28 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 "upon His power, absolutely without limit ; upon the fact 
 that our destiny for eternity is in his hands ; that He 
 can raise us by a word to bliss inconceivable, or sink 
 us to woe unutterable ; that all we are or hoj)e to be 
 is wholly dej)endent on Him ; let one think of all this, 
 and he cannot then permit any statement as to what 
 God is to glide with an easy currency through the 
 mind. He will seize and hold it, he will look at it 
 through and through, go round about it to ascertain 
 on what basis it rests, and what are the proofs of it, 
 and when he pronounces it true, he will not dismiss 
 it, but will retain it, lodge it in his heart, and make it 
 the centre of a whole circle of thoughts and emotions, 
 purposes and principles of action. 
 
 As we have said, it is easy with a cool indifference 
 to admit that God is good ; a contrary statement 
 would shock us all perhaps, and yet there are few 
 probably who have not at times in their history been 
 tempted, if not disposed, to doubt it. When brought 
 into great straits, when overwhelmed with disasters or 
 afflictions, when property, or health, or friends, have 
 been taken from us, when all has been dark within 
 and without, it has been no easy thing then to hold 
 on to the admission which we made in our hours of 
 ease. For the heart then to retain its confidence in 
 the goodness of God, to say with the Psalmist, 
 *' Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him " is in- 
 deed a triumph of faith. 
 
 J 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 29 
 
 I am aware that at sueli times it is not enough to 
 have the reason conviiieed and fortified, it is not 
 enough that the higher and nobler princi^^les of our 
 nature speak for God and his goodness. The heart 
 rebels against the reason, or at times raises a mist, 
 which envelops the .reason and obscures its vision. 
 There are times when it takes captive the judgment, 
 and thus the whole soul is swept down the rushing 
 tide to the gulf of a cheerless scepticism ; when it sees 
 no star nor sun for many days, when it sees and can 
 see no good and tender Being upon the throne ruling 
 over all, but stern iron despotism, binding all things 
 in its hard embrace. But while I know all this, yet 
 it is well to have the reason and judgment convinced 
 and fortified, so that though a temporary insurrection 
 of the passions may silence them and hurry them 
 away, they may yet be heeded anon, and bring the 
 soul back to act calmly on its settled convictions ; and 
 it is my present pm-pose to indicate a few of the rea- 
 sons which should settle us in the truth of the state- 
 ment of our text, — reasons upon which we may anchor 
 ourselves, and which will help us to sustain ourselves 
 when we are tempted to entertain doubts about the 
 goodness of God. 
 
 It may seem no conclusive reason, yet I advance it 
 as the first, and I believe the strongest reason for be- 
 lieving that God is good,— that He says so. 
 
 I need not quote passages from His word to show 
 
30 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 this. It is assumed tliroiigh it all, and in it all, and 
 is specifically declared in numerous instances. He 
 says that He is good, infinitely so. 'Now God only 
 knows Himself, no one else can know Him, for " who 
 by searching can find him out unto perfection ? " and 
 knowing Himself He can have no temptation to make 
 false statements about Himself. If He is evil, He is 
 so from choice, for there is no one above him to com- 
 pel or influence Him to be evil. He is so by prefer- 
 ence, and if He prefers to be evil, He must prefer to 
 be known as He is. 
 
 But He says that He is good and we must trust 
 Him. If we will look at the matter more deeply, we 
 shall find that all reasoning starts from a basis of trust 
 in God. We cannot reason at all without data, and 
 where are our data without confidence in God? 
 Where is our confidence in the evidence of our senses 
 unless we first trust the Maker of our senses ? We 
 look at an object, and we call it large, but unless we 
 trust God, how can we tell but that what looks large 
 is really small ? How can we tell but that He formed 
 the senses so as to deceive us ? We look at the heav- 
 ens in a clear night, we say there are stars there, but 
 how do we know but that we are so formed as to see 
 things just where and as they are not ? In the whole 
 conduct of our natural life, in every step that we take 
 on this solid earth, whenever we trust ourselves on 
 the sea, whenever we do one single thing, we have to 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 31 
 
 act on the belief tliat God did not intend to deceive 
 ns, that He is worthy of credit. We do not reflect 
 how mucli and how constantly we are compelled to 
 trust God. 
 
 JSTow if we trust Him in other things, why should 
 we not when He says He is good ? All demonstra- 
 tions of His goodness drawn from His works, must 
 resolve themselves into simple trust in Him. If His 
 works prove Him good, how do we know but that His 
 works are intended to deceive us, if we have no trust 
 in Him ? If what we know or can know of Him, 
 seems to prove Him good, how can we know but that 
 what we do not and cannot know of Him mio;ht 
 prove Him bad ? All manifestations that God has 
 made of Himself, can prove nothing with reference to 
 Himself, unless we believe Him true. Trust in God 
 then is the basis of all reasoning, all speaking, all act- 
 ing, nay of all life itself; and when we have a clear 
 definite declaration from God, we must trust it if we 
 pretend to reason. It is moral insanity not to trust 
 God. When a man ceases to rely upon his senses we 
 call him insane, and when a man ceases to trust the 
 simple word of God, he is morally insane. When 
 God says that He is good, it is the glory of right 
 reason to credit it, and if a man refuses to believe 
 God and demands demonstration, we tell him that 
 without trust in God his demonstrations are of no 
 value. What are the demonstrations of mathemat- 
 
32 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ics even, to a man who will not trust God ? How 
 can he tell that things are as they seem, unless God 
 made him true and to see things as they are? A 
 man that believes that God made him, cannot even 
 be assured tliat two and two make four without trust 
 in God. We are adrift. In the most emphatic sense, 
 we walk in a vain show. All things about and above 
 us are a mere pretence unless w^e trust God, and when 
 one discards the words of God, and demands demon- 
 strations of the goodness of God, independent of His 
 word, he should mark well where his demand will 
 lead him. 
 
 But in confirmation of what He says, I observe in 
 the second place, that God has so made the soul of 
 man that it demands and approves of a good God. 
 God made the soul, He made it as He pleased. He 
 had all possible types before His mind, and He had 
 power to select which He would. He was not con- 
 fined to the one which He chose, but He has made 
 man after the constitution which we now see. J^ow 
 as the human soul is made, it approves of what is 
 good ; even in its fallen state, though it may not 
 choose, yet it does approve the good. 'No one can 
 look upon a bad act, a bad man, and approve either 
 as bad. There is not one that could look up to the 
 throne of the universe and see an infinitely malignant 
 Being there, and say it was fitting that He should be 
 there. All immediately and spontaneously would dis- 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 33 
 
 approve and reprobate the occupancy of the throne 
 by such a Being. But with the ability to make us as 
 He chose, would He wish to create a whole race and 
 order of intelligences to condemn Himself? And yet 
 He has done this if He is not good. Could it be 
 imagined that any being with a power to create other 
 beings as he chose would create them to hate and 
 loathe him ! Would he put within them a conscience 
 all whose impulses and convictions would be against 
 him ? Would he wish wantonly to be abhorred ? 
 Would he wish to build a theatre and then crowd it 
 with immortal beings, just for the sake of having his 
 character and acts condemned ? And yet this is so if 
 God is not good. The very fact then that all orders 
 of intelligences that we know of, have been so made 
 by God as to approve only of those who are good, is 
 itself incontrovertible proof that He is good. 
 
 Thirdly, what we know of His works strengtli- 
 ens the proofs to which we have already referred. The 
 laws and arrangements of God, as seen in His creation 
 in their regular, unimpeded operation, are productive 
 of good. There is misery, there are woe and suflfering 
 in God's world, but then these are obviously not the 
 end designed by the arrangements of God. No law of 
 His is intended to secure suffering. The law of gravi- 
 tation is productive of suffering, but only through 
 its violation. The human frame has its laws ; where 
 they are in full play and harmony, symmetry, health, 
 2* 
 
3tt THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 pleasure are the result. Violate tliem and then only 
 do you suffer. So with all the laws both physical 
 and moral which God has established. They are 
 designed to secure happiness. They secure that de- 
 sign w^hen kept. Now if all the laws and aiTange- 
 ments of God are intended to secure happiness, does 
 not this manifest design indicate goodness on the part 
 of God? 
 
 But you say that notwithstanding the design, there 
 is actual misery in the world. But misery how, I 
 ask, — in keeping or violating the designs and laws of 
 God ? Evidently in violating them. But do you say 
 again that a good and almighty Being was obligated 
 to keep His creatures from violating His law and 
 thwarting His designs, and so making themselves 
 miserable ? But can you prove this ? Can you show 
 that an infinitely good and great Being must keep 
 misery out of His creation ? Misery is no evidence 
 surely of His goodness, but the creation of free intelli- 
 gences with a capacity to break down and thwart 
 wise designs may be an evidence of goodness. A 
 world of free beings, though miserable, is better than a 
 world of slaves, though as happy as slaves could be. 
 The heart of a being is known by his designs. ISTow 
 if the designs of God are for the production of happi- 
 ness, and free moral agents, endowed with powers to 
 run counter to the laws of God, make themselves mis- 
 erable by abusing their powers, then this misery so 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 35 
 
 introduced may afford no proof of lack of goodness in 
 God at all. Yiewed simply in this light, it may be a 
 proof of His goodness, if it is a proof of goodness in 
 any rnler to uphold at any expense his wise laws. 
 
 But I suggest as a fourth, and almost supernume- 
 rary proof that God is good — the great remedial 
 agencies which He has brought into being. I call it 
 a supernumerary proof. I do not think it needful to 
 establish His goodness. If God had evidently estab- 
 lished arrangements for securing the happiness of His 
 creatures, and had left them with powers and motives 
 to conform to those arrangements, then we think the 
 evidently kind designs of God would have vindi- 
 cated the goodness of His heart. But when His good 
 laws were broken, and so misery was introduced, then 
 we see a vast system of remedial agents, wholly use- 
 less while the arrangements of God were complied 
 with, suddenly developing themselves. There lie in 
 ambush in the human frame vast recuperative ener- 
 gies, and when once it is marred or wounded, these 
 spring to their posts, and seek to repair the injury, 
 working by day and by night. When disease invades 
 and prostrates it, all creation offers its pharmacopoeia 
 to heal. From mountain summits, from ocean depths, 
 from the desert's gloom, from the very bowels of the 
 earth, nature brings her healing remedies. And 
 when moral law is broken — when a whole race in 
 thick phalanx rush madly in the road of rebellion, 
 
36 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and so to speedy ruin, then conies in tlie great reme- 
 dial moral remedy which the Gospel reveals. Now 
 we say that all these remedial agencies, and they are 
 innumerable, are an extra proof of the goodness of 
 God. We could not have anticipated them before 
 they came. They are so much superadded to the 
 benevolent marks which were inscribed upon the 
 original frame- woriv of creation. 
 
 I can only add, as a proof that God is good, the 
 simple truth, that just in proportion as His creatures 
 know more of Him, they are more and more con- 
 vinced that He is so. Those who have the largest 
 minds, and apply all their powers most earnestly to 
 the study of God, deem Him good. Angels know 
 Him best, and they think Him good. Good men 
 know Him, and they think Him good. And as they 
 come to know Him more, to commune and sympa- 
 thize with Him more, they come into a higher appre- 
 ciation of His goodness. 
 
 Now, a person is to be judged by those who know 
 most of him. "We regard not the prejudices, the 
 blind guesses and conjectures of ignorance, but the 
 affirmations of knowledge. To be sure, the wisest 
 know but little of God. A child could better under- 
 stand a Napoleon, or a Newton, than a Gabriel could 
 understand Him. He is compelled to gaze and cry, 
 '^ Oh, the depths ! His ways are past finding out." 
 
 But then, what we do know of God is like what 
 
THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 37 
 
 we do not know, — a little knowledge can speak better 
 of Him than entire ignorance, jnst as one who had 
 seen a single particle of sand from our world, could 
 judge of it better than one who had seen none. And 
 little as the best know of God, yet that thej, as thej 
 know Him more, esteem Him more highly, is proof 
 to me that He will bear to be known. 
 
 I have simply indicated a train of thought, which, 
 I trust, you will follow out. If, in your darker hours, 
 when the night wraps your souls, and you see no sun 
 nor stars, these suggestions will afford you relief, my 
 object will be consummated. God is good. Anchor 
 yourself there. Receive this as a great truth. Never 
 give it up. When Satan would assail you, and seek 
 to rend it from you, hold it with an iron grasp. Hold 
 it when the billows go over your soul, and you are 
 sunk in deep waters. Grasp it while you live ; hold 
 it firmly while you die. 
 
 Note. — Preaclied in Lewiston Falls, July, 1851; and in 
 Springfield, June, 1859. 
 
III. 
 
 CHRISTIANS— THE HERITAGE OF GOD. 
 
 The Lord'' s portion is Ms people. — Deut. xxxii. 9. 
 
 THIS is said primarily of tlie Jews. God se- 
 lected them out of all nations, and subjected 
 them to peculiar discipline, and designed them for 
 special ends. But the declaration is equally true — 
 perhaps more true — of His people now — allied to Him 
 by spiritual affinities — all of them sharing His na- 
 ture, and seeking His glory. He has the world be- 
 fore Him out of which to choose, and He selects 
 them. He says, " I will set apart these for myself, on 
 these will I put my seal ; these shall be mine. The 
 Lord's portion is His people." 
 
 He has made the world, and put into it all that 
 we find. He has crowded it with living beings, and 
 furnished it with intelligent, moral creatures. He 
 has a special interest in this world. He does not 
 mean to give it up to His enemies, or to take its 
 chance. He superintends it. He is at work in it, 
 and means to have, speaking after the manner of man, 
 his pay out of it, for all the thought, and work, and 
 
CHRISTIANS THE HERITAGE OF GOD. 39 
 
 suffering He Las bestowed on it. He means out of 
 this immense tumult and struggle of time, out of the 
 changes and revolutions of earth, to extract some re- 
 sult that shall be worthy of it all, — some portion 
 that will satisfy Him, and permit Him to feel, when 
 the drama of Time is closed up, that this globe has 
 not swung in its orbit in vain. He means to secure 
 some precious treasures that will meet the wishes and 
 expectations of all orders of holy beings, and enable 
 them to feel that the creation of this world was not a 
 mistake, and its equipment and supervision a total 
 loss. 
 
 JSTow what is it that God intends to get out of this 
 world — putting all time, and all beings and things 
 into a vast crucible? What is the final result, the 
 residuum that He expects and will have, that will 
 make Him look upon this troubled world, and all its 
 painful history, w^ith delight ? The answer is in our 
 text. It is " His people." They are His portion. 
 They are what He expects to win from the world, and 
 bring off safe from the world's hazards — safe from its 
 final wreck. 
 
 As we look at God so great, so holy, so glorious, 
 and then look down at His people as they have been 
 in all past ages, as they are now after so much influ- 
 ence brought to bear upon them, so much discipline 
 and education bestowed upon them, we think, and 
 sometimes say, that it seems a poor portion for one so 
 
4:0 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 great and good to select and to obtain out of earth. 
 Can it be that these people called Christians, can be 
 all that God is to have ont of this weary battle of life 
 and earth ? Can these men and women so imperfect 
 — so grovelling at times — so prone and so clinging to 
 earth, — can these be a portion that a God would 
 choose, and with which He will be satisfied ? If this 
 is all, it appears to ns in certain moods of mind, that 
 all things have been made in vain. Are these the best 
 products of earth ? If so, the best are poor. 
 
 Besides, in all past ages, they have been few in 
 number, never probably a tithe of earth's popnlation. 
 The vast mass have lived without God in the world — 
 rarely recognizing His existence — almost never his 
 authority. Can these people, so few, and withal so 
 imperfect, be the portion of the Almighty % So it must 
 be, so' our Text affirms. These are the ones for whom 
 the world is made — these the ones for whom it is kept 
 spinning in its orbit. It is the souls that love Him, 
 or will love Him in the earth, for whom He has built 
 and guides the earth. It is not the dead treasures, — 
 it is not the mighty seas or mountains,^— it is not the 
 teeming race of animals, — it is not the souls that will 
 not love Him, not those that are His portion, but His 
 people. 
 
 We have intimated that these Christians as they 
 have been or are, constitute a poor portion for such a 
 Being to accept. If it be so, it might yet be said that 
 
CHRISTIANS THE HERITAGE OF GOD. 41 
 
 thej are the best there is. It cannot be dead matter, 
 or the forms of beauty and grandeur into which this 
 matter is wrought, neither can it be the living souls 
 that know and feel and love themselves and others, 
 but will not love Ilim, — it cannot be these that He 
 will select. So that if there be anything that will 
 please our Maker, anything that He will preserve 
 from the tides of ruin that are sweeping over all things, 
 and engulfing them, it must be His people who love 
 Him at least a little ; who present at least some few 
 of the lineaments of their Father's face. If they are 
 poor, they are yet the best ; if anything is worth pre- 
 serving, these are. If the earth is not made for tears 
 and sickness and death to hold carnival in, to have 
 free and final sway in, if anything is to be brought 
 through the great storms and the surging waves safe 
 to some happy, peaceful shore, to live and honor the 
 Maker of all things, it must be His own people that 
 love Him. 
 
 It is said that they are few. They are so in any 
 one age in the past ; even in the best age and best 
 country they do not perhaps constitute a majority. 
 And yet the Scriptures do not intimate that in the 
 ultimate winding up of things, the aggregate of God's 
 people will be small. The Bible seeks to excite no 
 tears, no lamentations, because so few will join in the 
 chorus of redemption. It gives no intimation that the 
 Father's house will lack occupants, or that any of its 
 
42 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 apartments will stand vacant. The wliole tone of the 
 Bible, when it speaks of the final issue of time — the 
 final results of all this world's history, is one of jubilee 
 and triumph, never of sorrow and despondency. 
 There is no intimation that God will make a sad fail- 
 ure out of this enterprise of earth, or that He will lack 
 hearts and voices redeemed from earth to praise Him. 
 There will be no thinness in the ranks — no poverty 
 of hearts or voices when all His people, the portion of 
 the Lord, shall be gathered in. The Bible never puts 
 a minor strain into the songs that the people of God 
 will sing when they shall finally assemble on Mount 
 Zion in the city of our God, and if the Bible seems 
 content with the numbers of God's people. His portion 
 gathered out of earth, we surely may be. 
 
 I have alluded to imperfections in God's people, 
 their frequently low and narrow views and aims, their 
 contracted affections, and have spoken of these as a 
 ground of dissatisfaction in choosing them as His por- 
 tion. Can it be that the great God will select persons 
 so full of faults and be content with them as His por- 
 tion? 
 
 In reply, it may be said that He is not satisfied 
 with them as they now are. He looks to what they 
 may be, to their inherent capacities, and to what He 
 can make out of them. We even do not regard a J 
 thing for what it is, but for what it may become, for 
 what we can make out of it. The sculptor, with his 
 
CHRISTIANS THE HERITAGE OF GOD. 43 
 
 mind's eye, beholds the finished statue in the rough 
 block of marble, and he rejoices in it before he has 
 struck a blow. The painter looks upon the canvass, 
 and it shines with the consummated picture, ere he 
 has applied his brush. We look upon the infant help- 
 less in its mother's arms, and if we had a prophet's 
 eye, we might already rejoice in him as one who was 
 destined to revolutionize an age or an empire, and 
 bring in a new reign of righteousness and ultimate 
 peace. "We look upon a rocky soil, we see its capaci- 
 ties, and it already waves in fancy with luxuriant 
 crops. But a little more than two centuries since, this 
 vast continent was a wilderness. Its acres lay all un- 
 tilled, its streams ran idly to the sea, its harbors were 
 not pressed by a keel : all was still save as the yell of 
 the savage echoed through the forest, or resounded 
 along the shores. It was a continent yielding nothing, 
 and yet of immense capacities. The powers of ener- 
 getic men have grappled with it, and we see what 
 they have done with it. An inferioi' race might have 
 come in and overrun it, and it would to them have 
 been all undeveloped. We always look at a thing 
 rightly, when we look at it and estimate it, not in view 
 of what it is, but in view of what it has the capacity 
 under proper helps and appliances to become. 
 
 The whole world is doubtless yet in germ. Tliere 
 lie in shaded forests — up rocky slopes — in untrodden 
 valleys, gardens that will shine with unimagined beau- 
 
44 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ties, and that will load the air with the finest odors. 
 All things have capacities of which we know but little. 
 But we are assured by inspiration of a fact which we 
 might suppose to be true without it. It is, that it 
 doth not yet appear what these imperfect people who 
 constitute the portion of God shall be. We cannot 
 judge of their future by their present — of what they 
 may be by what they are. The most unpromising 
 buds bloom into the fairest flowers. The most imper- 
 fect Christians may develop into souls that will shine 
 with eternal glory. The people of God are the most 
 improvable of all creatures. They have that in them 
 which is the germ of all lasting development and prog- 
 ress, — the love of God. The more we look at it the 
 more we shall see that the soul grows by its heart, not 
 by its head ; by its affections, not by its abstract 
 thought ; by what links it in sw^eet joy with God and 
 His creatures, not by what projects it up into alonely, 
 selfish and temporary conspicuity. The soul that 
 rises by the head, is like a body thrown up by vol- 
 canic force that soon spends itself. The soul that 
 rises by its affections, is like a planet kept in its eter- 
 nal course by the law of gravitation. "We must have 
 love to God, we must be God's people to have the laAv 
 of a true and lasting growth, of a beautiful and har- 
 monious development within us. 
 
 Moreover it is not what the people of God now so 
 imperfect, now so apparently unworthy of being select- 
 
CHRISTIANS THE HERITAGE OF GOD. 45 
 
 ed by God as His portion, may become by any law of 
 growth, any inherent capacities that may be in them, 
 but what they may become nuder the regimen, the disci- 
 pline, the education of God. " My Father," says Christ, 
 " is the husbandman^ l^ow we know very well that 
 one husbandman will make a barren soil yield more 
 than another can gain from the most fruitful. Yast 
 capacities may lie wholly unknown or unimproved. 
 Yery much depends on the mind that sees, and on the 
 hand that executes. One man — one people, will take a 
 garden and make a very desert of it, and another will 
 take a desert and make a garden out of it. l^ow all 
 God's people are under His culture. He has taken 
 them in hand, very rough, very unpromising mate- 
 rials, — to see what He can make out of them. It was 
 a very rugged, unpromising world that was given into 
 the hands of man to cultivate, but ere the last trump 
 shall sound, and the world is given over to its final 
 fire, it will be a very finished world that will shine 
 in the sunlight. These Christians may be all in 
 the rough, but they are all uncut diamonds. The 
 Eternal God has taken them in hand, He is at work 
 upon them. He is showing what His almighty grace 
 can and will do for them. We are God's workman- 
 ship, and each disciple will exhibit the skill of the 
 Workman. So that we need have no apprehension 
 that under such a hand as the Almighty's, such culture 
 as His, even these now very imperfect Christians 
 
46 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 will be an unworthy portion for our Heavenly Father 
 to select out of earth. His skill is adequate to make 
 them a portion that shall satisfy Him, for having made 
 the earth and sent it on its errand. It will be found 
 that it required just such a world, with just such a 
 history, with just such opposing influences, to bring 
 out and perfect just such a people and just such a 
 portion. 
 
 " The Lord's portion is His people." If this be 
 so, then, we who hope we belong to, and are a part of 
 that portion, have the most weighty obligations rest- 
 ing upon us. K we are His portion — a part of it, 
 then there is a duty, a high duty of personal conse- 
 cration, of personal culture, that even here and now, 
 our souls may honor our Father. K we are God's 
 portion, we should see to it that the Divine Husband- 
 man receives no reproach when an observer casts his 
 eye upon us. It will bring honor to God if our gar- 
 dens are well cared for — if our souls are all trimmed 
 and well kept, if our hearts are the soil on which grow 
 all the plants, the flowers and fruits of righteousness. 
 No pressure of duty can be so great as this — ^that God 
 has selected us as a part of His portion in this world. 
 
 But there is not only a duty within, in the culture 
 and equipment of our own souls for all beauty and 
 all righteousness, but also, if the Lord's portion is His 
 people, there is a duty of enlarging that portion by 
 increasing the number of His peoj)le. The world is 
 
CHRISTIANS THE HERITAGE OF GOD. 47 
 
 full of trees — full of plants that ought to be growing 
 in the garden of the Lord. We should go out, and 
 bring them in. The world is full of people that ought 
 to come and magnify the inheritance of the Al- 
 mighty in the earth. We should earnestly strive to 
 persuade them to come in, and thus increase the num- 
 ber that will swell the triumphs of grace. What an 
 honor to be a part of the portion of the Almighty — 
 to have the privilege of adding to that portion ! We 
 add to it, and we do a double work ; we magnify the 
 revenues of glory that will come from His portion to 
 God, and we start a bliss that will brighten forever 
 in the hearts of those that are brought in through us, 
 to increase the heritage of God. 
 
 Are we of the number who belong to the people, 
 and so to the portion of Jehovah ? those for whom the 
 world was made, and is kept ? Do we belong to those 
 whom God will bring safely off from all the disasters 
 of time, to live forever in His own peaceful home 
 with Him, or do we belong to those who in " the 
 wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds," will go 
 down amid the general ruin, having no place with 
 His people, who alone are His portion ? 
 
 Note.— Preached at Lewiston Falls, April 25, 1858, and at 
 Springfield, June 20, 1858. 
 
IV. 
 
 GOD'S OWNERSHIP IN MAN. 
 
 And ye are not your own. For ye are hought with a price. — 
 1 CoE. vi. 19, 20. 
 
 MOST men act as tliough they were tlieir own. 
 They conduct their affairs, their whole style 
 of life, as though, they were. God affirms that they 
 are not ; and at this point, issue is joined, and men 
 come into collision with God. It is not so much that 
 men wish to live out of the range of the fundamental 
 laws that God has inwrought into the system of 
 things — it is not that they desire to live outside of the 
 Divine protection and help, when these are convenient 
 refuges in their helplessness ; but here is the stress of 
 their alienation — ^that they do wish to live as their 
 own ; and God, as much out of considerations of 
 mercy as of absolute right, will not allow them so to 
 act. Men say, practically — we are our own. God 
 says — 'No ! ye are mine. 
 
 The absolute proprietorship in man, in every 
 man, God claims. There is, and can be, no exception 
 to this law. 
 
49 
 
 He claims our bodies. Tliese are in the loosest 
 relation to our veritable selvee. These may be 
 dropped, and yet we may remain in full and vigor- 
 ous activity ; and yet these are His. These hands and 
 feet — these eyes and ears, avenues of the soul, through 
 which it receives and gives out so much — these 
 tongues, the glory of our frames — this whole physical 
 structure, is His; — His, for He made it, and adjusted 
 it so nicely, equipping it so admirably for service, 
 fashioning it so delicately and yet so strongly, 
 making it so noble, so alert, such a masterpiece of 
 mechanism, as to excite the wonder of the thought- 
 ful the more they think — this ,body is His. 
 
 These thoughts, that wander through Eternity, 
 that dive into its depths, and soar to its heights, that 
 dart quicker than an arrow's flight, yea, quicker than 
 the electric currents — that are here, that are there, 
 that are everywhere — that no power can imprison or 
 chain — that are flying over ocean and land, while 
 the body is bound in fetters — that are knocking at 
 the portals of the morning, jand crying for light, 
 while tyrants are striving to wrap the soul in dark- 
 ness — that astonish us at their swiftness, and often 
 terrify us by their uncontroUableness ; these thoughts 
 •are His — this thought-power, part of it known, infl- 
 nitely more of it unknown, even to ourselves — this is 
 all His. 
 
 The affections — the power to feel, to love, to hate, 
 .3 
 
50 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 to admire, to loatlie, are His — linked inseverably with 
 thought — thought and feeling — blended threads twist- 
 ed by the hand of the Maker — these are God's. He 
 claims these preeminently ; these first and most, as 
 being most central to us, and most precious to us and 
 to Him. He strikes for these first ; He knocks at their 
 portal longest and loudest, and deems that He has noth- 
 ing without these. He puts His imprint upon these 
 most emphatically, and says of them — these are Mine. 
 
 These wills, in a sense the masters of our souls, 
 lording it over them with imperial sway, seizing the 
 helm, and tossing the vessel whither they will — these 
 are His, not our own at all. They are constituted the 
 legitimate vicegerents of God, the only real, effective 
 ones in the earth, destined to reign, in freedom in- 
 deed, but yet under law^ — free, because under law ; 
 these wills, that so often rebel against him, that as- 
 sume false leadership, that break over all Divine bar- 
 riers, and roam away in very wantonness — are His — 
 held of Him and under him — masters, because He 
 has put them in sovereignty. 
 
 The whole man, from centre to circumference, from 
 height to depth, the man known and the man un- 
 known, the man developed and the man undevel- 
 oped ; all that lies within these souls in germ, waiting 
 other scenes, and other eyes, and other influences, to 
 bring it out — all, all is God's. He stamps it His. 
 He claims, and will claim it His. However deep and 
 
61 
 
 radical its alienations; however distant its wander- 
 ings, it is His. Whatever powers ever get possession 
 of man with or without his consent, thej are despots, 
 usurpers. No time, no eternity, can give them right- 
 ful possession of one faculty, one power of body or of 
 souh All thoughts, all imagination, all feeling, that 
 is now away from God, is filched, stolen, held by fraud 
 and violence. He may give them up, but it will be 
 with a sigh ; as Christ gave up Jerusalem — gazing upon 
 it with painful, tearful utterance, " How often would 
 I — but ye would not ! " From first to last, all through 
 time, all through eternity, this claim of God to us 
 will be valid, capable by possibility of no alienation. 
 The grounds of this claim are threefold. First, 
 Creation. He hath made us, and not we ourselves. 
 Tliis is the original ground of all rightful claim. Say 
 of a thing, " I have made it," and surely I may add, 
 ^' it is mine." Xo claim can be prior to this, none 
 can strike deeper. In the highest sense — in a sense 
 that we cannot assert with respect to anything we 
 make, we may say of God, He hath made vs. It 
 takes a God to make even the poorest of us. He 
 put no journeyman to make any of us. The man 
 most meagre in thought, in imagination, in feel- 
 ing, required the wisdom and power of God to con- 
 struct him. The lowest man is a microcosm — an un- 
 developed angel. Get him once well awake, pro- 
 foundly stirred, on the ascending grade, fairly front- 
 
52 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ing God and His creation ; put the Divine life and 
 inspiration into liim, and lie is capable of drinking 
 deep drauglits of God. We do not know what a man 
 is yet. The glorj of a human soul has not yet 
 dawned upon ns. That delver in the ditch, when he 
 gets fledged, and his wings grown, may fly into the 
 empyrean — yea, from star to star. It doth not yet 
 appear what he may be, and God who made him, doth 
 not mean that it shall yet appear what he may be. 
 This creature so wonderful, God made not for another, 
 but for Himself. Divine ownership is involved in 
 his very creation. 
 
 The second ground of ownership is Sustentation. 
 God sustains us, not in a loose, general way ; not as we 
 sustain heinous who are related to us — not as a mother 
 even sustains her infant, feeding it from the cup of 
 her own life. We only fetch a feeble compass about 
 the idea of Divine sustentation, by any analogies we 
 draw from human relationships, and the supports we 
 may give to those most dependent upon us. God 
 penetrates us by His sustaining power, moment by 
 moment. He undergirds us continually. His life cir- 
 cles throuo-h all our faculties. We live and move in 
 Him. His hand withdrawn, we perish. In Him, we 
 and all things stand, as the branches, the leaves, the 
 flowers, the fruit, stand in the trunk. Some have 
 called the support that God gives to His creatures, a 
 continuous creation. It is not so, and yet probably 
 
god's OWNEESHir IN MAN. 53 
 
 as much power is requisite to sustain, as to create. 
 The being that lives continually in God — that perishes 
 without Him, may well be called God's. 
 
 A third ground of ownership is Redemption. We 
 are His, for as our text says, '' We are bought with a 
 price." It is presented here as the chief ground of 
 ownership, as though creation were little, as though 
 sustentation were little, and redemption were all. Ye 
 are bought with a price, therefore ye are not yet your 
 own. As if the original claim of God had been for- 
 feited, and He had bought it back again ; as though 
 sin had alienated the original possession, and He had 
 recovered it at a vast price. This price you know — 
 it was the Life of His Son. I need not dwell upon 
 it. A word made us ; .a Calvary bought us. Creation 
 w^as painless ; redemption was a torture. The price 
 paid measures God's estimate of us. If we had been 
 worth nothing to God, He would have paid nothing. 
 We do not pay jewels for rubbish. We do not bring 
 out all our gold, in exchange for trifles. IS'eitlier does 
 God. He does not pay a life so dear to Him for 
 souls that are insignificant. It is easy to find men's 
 estimate of men ; human souls are at a discoimt here. 
 God paid Christ for them — the gold of His heart — 
 the crown jewel of His realm — the Kohinoor of 
 heaven. Stand at the Cross, and there God shows 
 you and the angels His estimate of souls. Tliat He 
 might win them back, that He might have them 
 
54: THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 again, He paid that price; it is His most complete 
 claim — His most strenuous plea. " Ye are not your 
 own. Ye are bouglit, not with corruptible things, 
 such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood 
 of Christ." That is the climax of claim — that is the 
 strenuous plea of ownership. Passing by creation, 
 ignoring continued sustentation, He presents the pur- 
 chase, and says, " Ye are Mine, all of you, for I have 
 bought you all." 
 
 The claim and the grounds of it have been con- 
 sidered. 
 
 I would now say that God acts, upon the basis of 
 this claim, as though we were His, I mean as far as 
 His action apart from ours is concerned. He deals 
 with us very much as we deal with our own. He 
 creates us as He pleases, gives us such endowments as 
 He pleases, places us in positions without consulting 
 us. We have nothing to do with our birth, our rela- 
 tionships, our condition in earlier life. Apart from 
 prudence we have little to do with the term of our 
 years. God spins the thread of our life strong or 
 weak, long or short, as it may please Him. The im- 
 pulses of life come mainly from Him. He consults 
 us very little about many things that concern us most 
 vitally. He is the Sovereign arbiter of our destiny to 
 a considerable extent. In a word, He continually 
 acts upon the assumption that we are His. He meets 
 us with that claim in His "Word, He enforces it in the 
 
god's ownership in man. 65 
 
 realm of Nature and of Providence. So far as we can 
 discover His idea by His doings He treats us perpet- 
 ually on tiie basis of that claim. He never intermits 
 it. Whenever He comes in contact with us in the 
 domain of Law He enforces it. I think no one can mis- 
 apprehend the views of God in this matter as they are 
 indicated in all His providential dealings with us. If 
 a man is his own, he has a right to be consulted in a 
 vast realm of interests over w^hich God rules in absolute 
 sovereignty ; — if he belongs to another than God, 
 then that other should be consulted. But God moves 
 straight on, never consulting man, but treating him as 
 though he were His, absolutely and entirely. He is 
 always and everywhere expressing His claim upon 
 men in the written and in the unwritten word. 
 
 But though God thus expresses and thus emphati- 
 cally enforces and acts upon this claim, it is yet 
 practically futile till we come into God's ideas on 
 the matter, and joyfully and blissfully respond to His 
 claim. God may act on one basis-^-we may act on 
 another. God may say we are His and we may say 
 we are our own. He may act upon His assumption 
 — we may act upon our own. He is the greater and 
 may ci-ush us, but our wills within the limit of our 
 own souls are free and may stand out against the 
 divine omnipotence. Will is subject to moral influ- 
 ences, not to physical power. Power can call worlds 
 into being, but it does not subdue wills. It is ours to 
 
56 THOUGHTS FOK THE ClIKISTIAJST LIFE. 
 
 yield to the claim of God and respond yes ! we are 
 God's, body, soul and spirit — all His. 
 
 And a great part of God's discipline with, us in 
 this world is just to secure a joyful and permanent 
 acquiescence on our part in this claim of God. I have 
 said that He cannot compass His claim by mere 
 power. Every creature of God is affected in its own 
 way. God is in His creatures — all of tliem. None 
 of them are out of His control. But He affects each 
 after its own Law. Brute creation is moved in one 
 way, moral intelligences in quite another way. The 
 stars are moved in one way and run their courses by 
 one law. Men are moved in quite another way and 
 by another law. There is no opposition to the Divine 
 claim and will in ]S"ature — only in free responsible 
 wills. God as much claims souls as He does stars ; 
 He owns the one as much as the other ; but He 
 makes good practically His claim to souls in quite a 
 different method from what He does His claim to the 
 stars. He governs matter as matter, but souls as 
 souls. 
 
 If He can make souls willing in the day of His 
 power, it is yet power of a different sort from that 
 which is impressed upon dead matter. When He 
 says, we are not our own but His, and then seeks to 
 bring us to an acknowledgment of His claim. He 
 will do it by processes which do not violate the integ- 
 rity and freedom of souls. In Avays to us unknown 
 
god's owneksiiip jn man. 67 
 
 perhaps, in ways, however, conformable to the nature 
 of the creature He is treating, He operates to hring 
 us to the acknowledgment of His right in and over 
 us. He plants the claim in His word — He reiterates 
 it in His Providence, and then by a more or less 
 severe discipline, strives to make us acquiesce in His 
 right to us. The process may be circuitous, the 
 methods may be stern, the discipline long and terrible, 
 which shall bring us gladly to confess and act upon 
 the confession that we are not our own, but God's, 
 bought with a price so precious. 
 
 The conflict between us and God ceases whenever 
 we are brought to agree with God upon this point of 
 ownership. So long as we say we are our own the 
 conflict must last ; when we yield and say, no, we are 
 not our own but God's, it is over, and over forever. 
 And when we once yield and come into a blessed 
 harmony with God on this subject, we bless the 
 methods, however severe, that brought us there. Bet- 
 ter anything, we feel, than a diflference with God on 
 such a point. 
 
 And yielding on the main point, we yield on every 
 subordinate point. When the central citadel is carried 
 everything is carried. When we say we are not our 
 owu, we say that everything we possess is not our 
 own. The man who yields himself yields everything 
 with himself — his property, his learning, his all. The 
 greater includes the less. The great surrender implies 
 3* 
 
58 • THOUGHTS FOR THE CHKIBTIAN LIFE. 
 
 tlie surrender of all that attaches to us. We give up 
 all when we give up ourselves. God aims at us, not 
 primarily at ours. When He gains us He well knows 
 that He gains ours. 
 
 ]N"either let any suppose that we lose aught that an 
 ingenuous soul would desire to possess, when we say 
 Amen to God's claim of ownership. Man owns us 
 and we are slaves ; we lose our crown, we are fallen, 
 degraded, imbruted. We are only free when we come 
 into the possession of God. Till then w^e are bond- 
 servants — free ever after. We lose ourselves in God. 
 When we allow God to call us His, then He allows 
 us to call Him ours. He gains a creature and we 
 gain a Creator. He gains a lost sinner, and we gain 
 a Eedeeming Saviour and an Eternal Father and 
 Friend. 
 
 Note.— (North Church, April, 1860.) 
 
V. 
 
 ONE WAY OF SALVATION. 
 
 N'eitlier is there salvation in any other, for there is none other 
 name under heaven given among men, wherehy we must le 
 I. — Acts iv. 12. 
 
 THERE is salvation for the lost in Christ. This, 
 though not stated, is plainly implied in this 
 passage. Apart from Christ there is no salvation ; 
 this is palpably, positively affirmed. The resources 
 of the language would fail to supply terms that would 
 or could exhibit more clearly the exclusiveness of the 
 one method of salvation by Christ. Under the broad 
 cope of the heavens no other name is revealed to men 
 whereby they can be saved. They are shut up unto 
 Him. High walls hem them in, and there is but one 
 outlet. The Gospel makes known Christ as the way 
 of salvation. It makes known no other. Tlie man 
 who i)roclaims any other, not only goes out of the 
 record, but contradicts it ; not only speaks without 
 authority, but against all authority. 
 
 It is not my purpose to follow the implication of 
 the Text — that there is salvation for us in Christ, — 
 
60 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 but the spirit and positive declaration of the passage, 
 that there is no salvation in any other. 
 
 You will mark well that I am not about to discuss 
 the question, how much or how little knowledge of 
 Christ, how clear and definite, or how confused and 
 indefinite conceptions of Him one must or may have 
 in order to be saved. That is an open question — 
 probably it is wholly an insoluble one, at least by 
 man. 
 
 But this I say, that whoever out of our lost race is 
 saved and brought home to Heaven, is saved by 
 Christ alone. He may know much or little of Christ, 
 have this or that conception of Him ; but when he is 
 saved, when he does come to Heaven, he will see and 
 confess that it is Christ only who has brought him 
 there. 
 
 Neither am I about to attempt to prove that there 
 is salvation in no other. Our text says so definitely, 
 unmistakably ; and it is not for man to go about to 
 prove what God afifirms, — ^not for man to bolster up 
 with his weak logic the positive testimony of the 
 Eternal Jehovah. This would be to hold a taper-light 
 to the sun. When you get down to a fair and square 
 statement of the Bible, you get down upon the solid- 
 est thing in God's creation. If you cannot build on 
 that, you cannot on anything. I have no business 
 here, — this pulpit, this house, these worshippers, this 
 Sabbath — these solemn assemblies have no significance 
 
ONE WAY OF SALVATION. 61 
 
 if the Bible is not of God, and conveys not His mind 
 to man. If an accountant has to go through the pro- 
 cess of verifying his ready-reckoner every time he 
 wants to cast interest on a note, he might as well cast 
 his ready-reckoner into the streets ; and if every time 
 the Bible makes a statement, we must go beyond it 
 and undertake to shore it up and prove it true by 
 outside considerations; we might as well hurl our 
 Bible into the streets and rely upon our own reason. 
 
 The Bible says that Christ's name is the only name 
 given under heaven among men for their salvation. 
 That is plain, I think, and it will be authoritative and 
 decisive with all those to whom the Bible is so. 
 The fact however being regarded as proved by the 
 immistakable declaration of the Text, there are yet 
 external and corroborative considerations moving in 
 the same line, and confirming the same conclusion, 
 and on these we will briefly dwell. 
 
 And I would observe first, that if the Bible pre- 
 sents Christ as God's method of salvation at all, we 
 should presume that it would be His exclusive method. 
 It would be like God to anticipate this of Him, like 
 His workings in other departments of His empire. 
 We find God to be a God of order everywhere, not 
 doing things in a loose and dishevelled way in any 
 department, not allowing us to presume for a moment 
 that we can deal with Him as we list, that we can 
 carve our own way to a desired object or end, not 
 
62 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 minding His way at all. We find that He holds ns 
 to fixed terms and ways, to orderly courses in every- 
 thing. He w^ill have nothing to do with us in any 
 wild, irregular methods we may choose to adopt. We 
 come against Him, we war with Him when we at- 
 tempt so to act. We must study Him, find out His 
 ways, get into line, and move in straight courses, and 
 then we find that God will meet us, and work with 
 us, and help us on to our end. Given a definite goal 
 and object, there is a Divinely devised way to it, and 
 we must follow it or we shall never reach it. If one 
 would cultivate his mind, win earthly good, reach 
 heights of fortune or fame, there must be a method to 
 his workings. The stars in their courses fight against 
 one when he crosses their path. A man off the track 
 is as helpless and as useless as an engine off the track. 
 The dealings of God in all departments would lead us 
 to the anticipation that if He has devised and revealed 
 one way of salvation, — if He has given one name, that 
 He w^ould give no other. God is not the author of 
 confusion in any sphere, much less in the highest, the 
 spiritual sphere. It would be against all the analogies 
 of nature, against all the operations of Jehovah in 
 other departments to presume for a moment that it 
 made no special difference with Him whether we took 
 His way to secure salvation, or some other way, or no 
 way at all. If He has originated a way and revealed 
 it, all the presumptions are that He will hold us to it, 
 
ONE WAY OF SALVATION. 63 
 
 not allowing us to cross it, and run counter to it in 
 stern opposition, or in wild and loose thoughtlessness 
 and indifFerence. Depend upon it, if Christ is God's 
 way at all, it will be His one way, His only way of 
 saving man. 
 
 Secondly : If Christ is God's way of saving men, we 
 should presume that His regard for His son, and for 
 all that He has done to secure human salvation, would 
 permit Him to allow no competitor with this method 
 of salvation. It is assumed here that Christ is a way 
 of salvation, a way devised in Heaven, in the counsels 
 of eternity, revealed in due time on the earth. If 
 He is a way and the exclusive way, then He will 
 forever maintain His own pre-eminence, rising far 
 aloft, standing in isolated and conspicuous grandeur, 
 without a rival or competitor ; but if He is only one 
 Avay among others, then He has competitors ; He does 
 not occupy a position of conspicuous grandeur. Lift 
 other methods of saving men into sight, allow that 
 though Christ is one way of salvation. He is not the 
 exclusive one, and then by so much as you give prom- 
 inence or even possibility to other methods, you di- 
 minish the value of Christ as a way. If God allows 
 other methods. He is allowing them to come into com- 
 petition with the method by His Son, and by so much 
 He is diminishing the value of His Son's method. He 
 cannot exalt others without diminishing this. If 
 Christ is one way, and there be more or less other 
 
64: THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ways, then it matters not so much whether men be- 
 lieve in Jesus. 
 
 The Everlasting Father either means that His Son 
 shall be the exclusive way of salvation, or not. If He 
 does. He exalts Him ; if not. He disparages Him. If 
 He allows rivals, He exalts those rivals. It is utterly 
 imjDOSsible that Christ shall maintain His position as a 
 Saviour, if the Father allows others to be Saviours 
 also. If men need not go to Heaven by the Cross, 
 but by some other way, then the cross may become 
 an old, worn, imused way ; the grass may grow over it, 
 the winds may sigh a mournful requiem over its de- 
 sertion, no footfall of a traveller may cheer it, heaven 
 may be filled through other avenues, and other songs 
 than those of praise to the Lamb may echo through 
 the arches of the upper Temple. There can be no 
 way of salvation elevated into competition with the 
 way by Christ, without disparaging Christ. Is it pre- 
 sumable that the Father will erect any Saviour, one or 
 
 many, into competition with His Son ? 
 
 Thirdly : On the simple principle of economy, we 
 should anticipate that salvation by Christ — if a way at 
 all — would be the exclusive way. Profusion is in- 
 deed a characteristic of the Divine doings." There is 
 seemingly a superfluity of beauty and grandeur in the 
 works of God. But while this is true, it is no less true 
 that there is a wise economy. God never makes one 
 
 hing do the work of another. In that widest field 
 
ONE WAY OF SALVATION. 65 
 
 of beauty — ^the flowers — He does not make a rose to 
 hide the violet or to fulfil its function. The beauty of 
 the rose is not the beauty of the violet. *In greater 
 things, God does not create one river, one lake, one 
 ocean, one continent, to fulfil the office of another. 
 He does not make one sun to do the work of another. 
 Things do not overlap or run together, or perform each 
 other's tasks, so that anything that God has made is 
 useless, being crowded out and made so by something 
 else. 
 
 Looked at closely, there is economy in all the works 
 of God. "We should expect this when we come to the 
 spiritual realm — profusion, exuberance, no waste, but 
 wise and glorious economy. 
 
 God has given under Heaven one name among 
 men, whereby they may be saved ; it is a good name, 
 it is an all-sufficient name, it is fully adequate to the 
 purposes for which it is given — a name liigh in the 
 Heavens, a name without a rival. And why should 
 we anticipate, now that the Father has provided and 
 named Him as the Saviour, that He would provide 
 and name another to do the same work, fulfil the same 
 function, stand in the same relation ? What economy 
 in providing Him, and then providing another ? Is it 
 like God to do so ? Is our God a God of wild extrava- 
 gance? Can He even make Saviours so many, that 
 they should rival each other ? Would He have sum- 
 moned His Son in,.,wild wastefulness to come to eaiih, 
 
6Q THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 
 
 take on Him our nature, endure reproaclies, suffer 
 and die to provide a way of salvation, when a simple 
 word of His could create other Saviours, that without 
 an J such discipline or any such suffering would do 
 just as well or nearly as well as He? If Christ is not 
 the exclusive Saviour, then other Saviours could be 
 made without the cross, and the cross is all an idle 
 waste. If all that Christ endured from the cradle to the 
 grave, was and is requisite to fit Him for a Saviour, then 
 there is no waste — there is a wise economy ; but if it was 
 not necessary, if there are other Saviours, — made such 
 of the Father without any suffering, or any cross and 
 death, then the provision of such a Saviour, in such a 
 way for man, is an idle extravagance. It was tossing 
 ocean into tempest, to waft a feather ; it was enacting 
 an awful drama with a tragic end, that might have 
 been spared. ^ • 
 
 Fourthly : It is desirable that we should have 
 some one name, some clear and definite way of sal- 
 vation, when men — lost men — ask us how they are 
 to be saved. It is desirable that the Bible should 
 clearly indicate some way, some one way ; and that 
 Christian men and ministers should be able to point 
 it out to others clearly, definitely, so that they shall 
 see it. Indeed, if men are lost, and if the Bible re- 
 veals a way of salvation, its chief value consists in the 
 clearness and definiteness with which it makes known 
 that way, and enables us to make i^ known to others. 
 
ONE WAY OF SALVATION. 67 
 
 I know of nothing that would be so adapted to cast 
 suspicion upon the Bible, as to have it come to us 
 with a revelation of many ways, as though one were 
 as good as another ; or with an indefinite, hazy pres- 
 entation of the one way. That the Bible is clear 
 and pointed ; that it does not go off in loose, dis- 
 jointed statements on the great theme of human sal- 
 vation, but concentrates its light on the one point; 
 that it holds men to one exclusive salvation, making 
 it as clear as though ten thousand suns were shining 
 upon it, is a proof that it comes from God. There is 
 no looseness about the Bible on this point, no diver- 
 sity of statement, no letting men off with the idea 
 that they may do this or that or a thousand things 
 to be saved — one thing being about as important as 
 another, one way about as well as another. It holds 
 up Christ, and Christ alone, as the Saviour. Christ 
 is its Alpha and Omega. It presents no other name. 
 It affirms that there is no other. It does not palter 
 and equivocate, and double and turn on its track. It 
 faces the question : how shall man be saved ? It 
 makes us face it ; it answers it with the clearness and 
 force of a trumpet. 
 
 This, I say, is desirable. Standing on the Bible, 
 speaking from it, we want to be able to give men a 
 definite answer to the one question, "What must I 
 do to be saved 1 " We want to give an answer that 
 will have the precision and clearness, and decisiveness 
 
68 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHKISTIAi? LIFE. 
 
 of an answer to a mathematical problem. The Chris- 
 tian man or minister who is not prepared to answer 
 that question, has no function in this world. We do 
 not want to say, or be compelled to say, that the Bible 
 gives an uncertain resj)onse to this question. "When 
 men are running for their lives, and they ask us the 
 path of safety — for a refuge that shall house them, 
 we do not want to be in the dark, or be compelled to 
 Bpeak vaguely. We want to say, " There is the way 
 —yonder is the refuge." When men are in earnest 
 to secure salvation, they want no loose, dishevelled 
 answers. They know that they are dealing with a 
 God who will hold them to terms, and they want to 
 Icnow what they are. We say, Christ is the Saviour. 
 He, and He only, is the Way. He, the Refuge. 
 
 If the text be true — if our comments on it are 
 true, then I would remark, in conclusion, that his is 
 the most broad, the most charitable spirit, that holds 
 men to the strict, definite method of salvation pre- 
 sented in the Gospel. There is no charity in going 
 outside of the Bible for a reply to that question, 
 " What must I do to be saved ? " There is no true 
 mental breadth in giving another or broader answer 
 to it than the Bible gives. 
 
 We do not regard a physician as very broad 
 and catholic, who says to a patient, " Do this or 
 that, it matters little what." The broad-minded 
 physician is one who knows nature's laws, and holds 
 
ONE WAY OF SALVATION. 69 
 
 his patient rigidly to them, and says, " You will re- 
 cover in this way, and not in that." So with the 
 lawyer, so with all men. Ask any man in his 
 special profession, what you must do in a particular 
 exigency, and you expect some definite reply, and 
 value your teacher as he gives you one. So when 
 you ask that greatest of all questions that ever agi- 
 tates the human soul, " How shall I be saved ? " 
 — when you grow earnest about it, you will feel that 
 he is the truest and most charitable man who has 
 some definite response to give, and not he who sends 
 you over all creation to do some hazy thing, or series 
 of things, as though one were as good as another. 
 
 Yerily, terms have got new definitions. Loose- 
 ness is charity. Definiteness, strictness, is bigotry. 
 But in spite of all our ideas and definitions, God and 
 His kingdom will go on their way. We are lost men 
 outside of that kingdom. There is a way into it — 
 Jesus Christ. There is a name, one name given 
 whereby we can be saved. That name is Jesus. I 
 know of no other. There has come from the sweet 
 heavens over us, no other. It is enough. We need 
 no other. 
 
VI. 
 
 FAITH ROOTED IN DARKNESS. 
 
 And lie went out^ not hioicing whither he went. — Heb. xi. 8, 
 
 ABRAHAM was a true man, and therefore 
 must have loved the place of his birth, the 
 scenes where his young feelings grew, his kindred, 
 and his early associates. He had grown to mature 
 life among these scenes and these friends, and his 
 roots must have struck deep and wide when he re- 
 ceived the summons from God to depart. He was to 
 leave his native country, and go out to a land of 
 which God should tell him in due time. There were 
 promises made of future good, of a seed that should 
 be as the stars of the heavens. In him all the fami- 
 lies of the earth should be blessed. As men regarded 
 him, as they blessed or cursed him, so should they be 
 blessed or cursed. He had these assurances, and, 
 resting on them, at the word of Jehovah he rends 
 old ties, turns his back on old sights, and forsakes 
 those who will not be persuaded to heed the same 
 voice, and follow his fortunes. The commendations 
 bestowed upon Abraham so copiously, are based 
 
FAITH ROOTED IN DARKNESS. 71 
 
 upon this simple, cliildlike obedience to the Divine 
 word, and this unwavering confidence in the Divine 
 promises. He asked no vouchers from God ; no 
 pledges apart from His word, for the fulfilment of 
 His word. He staked his all on the truthfulness 
 of the simple assertion of his Maker. He was will- 
 ing to stand or fall, live or die, on that. If that 
 failed him, then he might perish, but with him would 
 perish the solid earth and the pillared heavens. He 
 grasped the word, he held it, and trusting to it, left 
 his home and went out, not knowing whither he went. 
 This course of procedure on the part of Abraham, 
 seems at times to us a strange one ; an isolated case, 
 standing out there in the dawn of the world's history, 
 drawing to itself a whole cluster of eyes and hearts, 
 winning the world's eulogies for its novelty, and its 
 oriental simplicity and beauty. In its mere circum- 
 stances and appendages, in the simple vesture or set- 
 ting of the act, it is strange, and so wondrously at- 
 tractive. But in its interior meaning, in its exem- 
 pUiry force, it is not at all strange. Abraham, in this 
 initial act of his historic life, in that section of it that 
 stands out in Divine illumination, is mainly interest- 
 ing to us, not as placing himself out of the reach of 
 our sympathy, not as doing some romantic service 
 til at stirs only the romantic elements in our nature, 
 not as passing out of the beat and circuit of our 
 tliought and apprehension, but as coming within the 
 
12 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 range of our sympathy, and as placing before ns an 
 example which we, in our modern time, and in our 
 humble life, may and should imitate. 
 
 Substantially, we are summoned here, where we 
 are, now in the time in which we live, to do the same 
 thing ; and the force of Abraham's life, and especially 
 this initial act of his life upon us, centres just here, 
 that it should prompt us to do the same thing. 
 
 We are to go forth. 
 
 We are to do it under the power of the simple 
 principle, faith. 
 
 Like him we are to go forth, not knowing whither 
 we go. 
 
 1. We are to go forth, not physically, perhaps, as 
 did Abraham ; not out of our city, or town, or lo- 
 cality, into another ; not out of our native land into 
 a foreign land. We may not be summoned to leave 
 these scenes that we have gazed on so long, these 
 friends that have knit themselves so firmly to us, 
 these stars that have shone upon us from our infancy, 
 these waters that have danced their own joyousness 
 into our souls, to look upon other lands and other 
 skies, and dwell among strange people. There may 
 be no summons of this sort from the highest heavens, 
 to go forth from the homes of our fathers ; but there 
 is a summons to go forth into the regions of new 
 thoughts, new purposes, new "feelings and plans, new 
 aspirations, new hopes and desires — ^in a word, into a 
 
FAITH ROOTED IN DARKNESS. 73 
 
 new life, a life that sliall have other springs and 
 other nutriment than we can derive from our old 
 haunts and our old associations. I^ot more surely and 
 tenaciously did Abraham cling to the wonted scenes 
 and friendships of his early home, than do we cling 
 to the scenes, the friendships, the hopes and objects 
 of our present life. We are of the earth, earthy. 
 Our thoughts, feelings, wishes, circle within its do- 
 main. We may be excursive beings; we may love 
 to roam, to look upon new lands, new customs, new 
 arts, but it is within the well-marked enclosure of 
 earth. We love it, we yearn for it, we cling to it. 
 Always our first life is simply the natural life into 
 which our birth introduces us. Among its objects, 
 we move, among its interests we are quickened ; its 
 ambitions stir us, its sympathies affect us, its beauties 
 appeal to our gesthetic natures. Within its sphere we 
 act, all that belongs to it belongs to us. Thought, af- 
 fection, volition, all within us that it in its broad field 
 of interest can excite, is excited. We become as am- 
 ple, as cultured, as tender, as affectionate, as it can 
 make us. But when it has done all for us, when it 
 has touched us at every point at which it can touch 
 us, when it has exhausted upon us its last appeal, we 
 are as yet only stirred upon the surface of our na- 
 ture. There are deeper elements that it cannot touch, 
 there are strings that it cannot make to vibrate. 
 The soul w^as made for earth, but not for earth alone. 
 
74 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 It was made to be educated by it, but not by it alone. 
 It must while yet a denizen of earth, arise and go 
 out of earth, it must break through the simply natu- 
 ral into the spiritual for which it was preeminently 
 made, and where emphatically is the theatre of its 
 activities, and its aspirations and hopes. It must 
 heed the voices that come to it from thence. It must 
 be awake to the objects that lie within the infinite 
 scope of the spiritual realm. It must be stirred by 
 its fears, be incited by its hopes, be moved by its 
 beauties. 
 
 We naturally love to settle down in our own fa- 
 miliar clime, within the settled order of our simply 
 natural emotions and feelings and volitions. We are 
 conservative of the earthly, and have appetencies for 
 it. The spiritual is out of our beat, out of the range 
 of our sympathies ; it is a foreign region to us. We 
 cling to the old and familiar. But the voice comes, 
 " Up ! arise ! get you out from this place ! " We 
 must be born again ; born into the spiritual as we 
 have been born into the natural. We must be roused 
 to see and feel the fact that the spiritual world is a 
 reality ; that it is no mere dim and shadowy and un- 
 certain thing ; that it is substantial ; that it is for us ; 
 that we must enter consciously into it, come into it as 
 really as we come into this world, and that we shall 
 only come into our true home, our true hopes and 
 friendships, when we come into it. We must do this, 
 
FAITH EOOTED IN DARKNESS. 75 
 
 for earth cannot nourish a true life. We starve, we 
 die, our faculties spend themselves clinging to it. 
 "We must arise and go forth. 
 
 2. We must thus go forth under the guidance of 
 the same principle that governed Abraham — faith in 
 God's word. Canaan, or rather that unknown land 
 into which Abraham was summoned to go, was his 
 spiritual world. He had not traversed it, he knew 
 not of its existence by any sight of his own eye, or 
 by any surveys of his countrymen. It was a region 
 whose existence was as unproved by human investiga- 
 tions, as the spiritual realm is by our natm-al eye. 
 There was an unknown land ; God said so, and sum- 
 moned him to go out into it, and he went. It had 
 the effect on him, the spiritual effect that it has on us, 
 when summoning up our affections, we send them to 
 plant themselves in the spiritual world, the world of 
 God, of angels, and of all that are born of God. We 
 know there is a spiritual world, because God has told 
 us there is. We have not discovered it. Xo Colum- 
 bus has sailed athwart the billowy sea that parts us 
 from it, and brought it to light, and come back with 
 strange stories of its tropical grandeurs, and strange 
 specimens of its unknown dwellers. No telescope 
 has been plied in the heavens. No Herschel has 
 stolen out of the firmament the secret of its exist- 
 ence, and brought the evidences of its grandeurs. No. 
 We know it because God has told us so. We have 
 
76 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 suggestions of it indeed in oui' own souls-— in the 
 overplus of power within us, in the surplusage of as- 
 piration that earth cannot absorb, in faculties that lie 
 unused if earth and time be all. But it is nothing 
 more than conjecture with us. It becomes a reality 
 when we stand in God's light — in other words, when 
 we credit His word, Avhen we believe. It is Faith 
 that opens up to us that vast domain, the spiritual 
 realm ; faith that makes it a bright and glorious 
 world ; faith that crowds it with lofty and burnished 
 intelligences ; faith that fills it with objects of grand- 
 eur, that puts the torch to our dead affections, and 
 makes them glow with love toward it ; faith that in- 
 cites our wills that hitherto chose the earthly, to 
 choose and prosecute the spiritual, the heavenly, the 
 divine. It is no new principle that starts us on this 
 divine errand, this journey out of the known and fa- 
 miliar into the unknown and unfamiliar ; out of the 
 old and settled order of wonted earthly feelings, into 
 a new and higher order of celestial feelings ; it is the 
 same old principle that started Abraham out of his 
 old home, and from his old associates in Ur of the 
 Chaldees, to go into that unknown country of which 
 God had told him, and which in good time He would 
 show him. Faith is the substance of things unseen 
 to us, and under its sure, its intelligent guidance, we 
 go forth to the spiritual, to find a home and take ven- 
 tures in it, to gather up treasures there, to make its 
 
FAITH ROOTED IN DAEKNESS. 77 
 
 dweUers our friends, and its objects our objects of su- 
 j^reme regard. 
 
 3. And when we thus go forth in affection to the 
 spiritual, under the direction of a simple faith, we re- 
 semble the Father of all believers in this particular — 
 we know not whither we go. 1 do not mean now, 
 that we have no intelligent conception of the land 
 whither as pilgrims we journey, that eye hath not 
 seen its beauties, nor ear heard its sounds of harmony, 
 nor heart conceived the elements of its bliss. How- 
 ever true it may be that, when we go forth into the 
 domain of the spiritual, we do not know specifically 
 and definitely what we shall come to in it, that is 
 not the truth on which I wish to dwell now. It is 
 this, rather : that when we commit ourselves to the 
 guidance of faith in God, and go forth to meet God 
 in His own home and in our home, we do not know 
 what we shall meet on the road ; we know not what 
 precise paths will be opened up for us to traverse, un- 
 der the direction of our faith. We believe all that 
 God has said about earth and time, about heaven and 
 hell, about eternity and its awful realities. We be- 
 lieve that we may be, and are, the children of God, 
 and through Christ, may come into our heritage; 
 we go forth into earth, into life, under the dominant 
 power of this simple faith ; and when we do so, we 
 do not know what will happen to us, into what new 
 positions, new associations, new responsibilities, new 
 
78 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 trials, new difficulties, new agonies, we may come. 
 In this respect we are like Abraliam ; we go forth, not 
 knowing whither we go. We commit ourselves to 
 the keeping of a new principle, a new and vital force, 
 a new Director, and we know not where, in the inter- 
 val between the hour when we commit ourselves to 
 it, and the hour when it shall land us in Heaven, it 
 will carry us. 
 
 And in this respect it is like every principle, every 
 deep and dominant affection of our souls. When we 
 cherish any masterly love, when we yield to any mas- 
 terly principle, we do not know where it will carry 
 us, and this is the case whether the love, the principle, 
 be good or bad. When a youth yields himself to an 
 associate, he knows not where he will carry him. 
 When an overmastering passion bursts up in his soul, 
 and sweeps away the barriers of conscience and early 
 instruction, he knows not to what it will bring him. 
 When he looks upon the wine when it is red, and lifts 
 it with many a tremor to his lips, he knows not where 
 it will land him. When a young woman yields to an 
 all-controlling vanity, and resolves at every hazard to 
 trick her frail body for show, she knows not whither 
 it will hurry her, through what vortices of passion, 
 what declivities of woe, sloping to perdition. It is 
 all unknown. Under the guidance of an evil passion, 
 a principle, an appetite, the youth goes forth not 
 knowing whither he goes. 
 
FAITH ROOTED IN DARKNESS. Y9 
 
 And, on the other hand, when one commits him- 
 self to the mastery of a pure affection, a divine prin- 
 ciple, he knows not whither it will lead him, through 
 what scenes of joy or suffering, life or death. A man 
 takes the woman of his love to his new home ; he 
 loves her as man should love. Yeiled to him are the 
 dark portals of the coming years. He knows not 
 what tears he will weep, or what smiles will play 
 upon his cheek as the result of his love. A mother 
 bears a child. His very birth brings her tortures that 
 she dreamed not of, and which her mighty affection 
 for husband and child could alone enable her to bear. 
 She has come under the power of a new feeling, and 
 she knows not whither it will herald her. The child 
 has her peace or woe in his keeping. He may climb 
 to holiness, and joy irradiates her soul; he may 
 rush to ruin, and her soul becomes a spring of bit- 
 terness. 
 
 A man loves his country, and that love bears him 
 from wife, and children, and home, to the tented field, 
 to the raging battle ; and, as the result of it, he may 
 sigh years away in agony, or his body may sleep its 
 last sleep amid the heaped trenches of the promis- 
 cuous dead on the field of his glory. It is the very 
 element of power in our affections and our j^rinciples, 
 that when we once give ourselves up to them, they be- 
 come our masters, and carve paths for us that wc 
 dreamed not of. It is so with our simply earthly af- 
 
80 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 fections and principles ; it is empliaticallj so with 
 tliose of a higher order, those that connect ns with 
 God, with His kingdom. His friends, with onr own 
 spiritual heritage. 
 
 Abraham believed, and committing himself to his 
 faith, he went ont, not knowing whither he went. It 
 was one feature of his faith, that he should not know. 
 If he had known he would not have believed. K the 
 spiritual world were mapped out to us like our 
 native village, it could hardly be said that we 
 believe. Faith strikes its roots into darkness. Take 
 up its roots to examine them, and it would be 
 like unearthing the roots of a tree to examine them. 
 It would die. 
 
 We must go forth under the control of faith into 
 darkness, not knowing whither we go. When we 
 have once said that we will believe the word of 
 God, that v/e will commit ourselves to the guidance 
 of faith, we do so if we act intelligently, under the 
 full conviction that we are utterly ignorant what will 
 come of it in the interval between the hour when we 
 believe, and the hour of our salvation. A life of 
 faith is a life all in the dark to us. We are to make 
 no compromises, no covenants with ease. We must 
 seek no assurance of a smooth time, an easy passage, 
 large possessions, troops of friends, firm health, fine 
 houses. Our faith may bring us to these ; it will very 
 likely carry us clear away from them. We are not 
 
FAITH ROOTED IN DARKNESS. 81 
 
 to form any compact with our faith, that we are to 
 have these as the result of our faith. We are to 
 commit ourselves to faith in God, faith in the in- 
 visible, faith in eternal realities, to a whole earthly 
 life of faith, and then follow where our faith leads. 
 It may be, into fair fields and down sunny slopes ; 
 it may be, up rough acclivities, and through dense 
 forests ; the one thing for us is, that we follow 
 whither it guides; that we believe, and then take 
 what conies of our faith. The sublime height of 
 faith is reached when we cherish a calm indiffer- 
 ence, a holy heedlessness where it will carry us 
 in the interim, if it carries us into the pres- 
 ence of God, and the home of the good, at 
 last. 
 
 Abraham went out, not knowing whither he 
 went, not over-anxious what lot should be his, 
 whether he should have a settled habitation, and 
 gather all the sweet accompaniments of a home 
 around him, or whether he should dwell in tents, 
 and pitch or strike them as the Divine word should 
 command. To us has come the word, " This world 
 is not your home. Set not your affections on it. 
 There is a City above, there is a World of light 
 and purity. Go forth, go forth under the simple 
 power and guidance of faith ! You know not to 
 what earthly trials your faith will bring you, 
 
 4* 
 
82 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAJST LIFE. 
 
 what sunderings of friendships, what forsaking of 
 what yon hold dear, what losses and crosses, what 
 smiles, what groans — bnt believe, go forth, com- 
 mit yourself to faith, and receive all that follows 
 from it ! " This summons comes to you as to 
 Abraham. Will you, like him, heed it, and go 
 forth ? 
 
VII. 
 
 SEEKING ETERNAL THINGS. 
 
 If ye then he risen with Christy seeh those things which are abone^ 
 where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. — Colossians iii. 1. 
 
 AS Christ died on the Cross /<?/' sin, so His people 
 die to sin. As He rose triumphant from the 
 dark, cold grave, so they rise to a new spiritual life 
 in Him. , l^ow the Apostle would say, that as 
 Christ after His resurrection went up to mingle 
 again in heavenly things ; so those who have risen 
 from the death, the grave of sin — for sin is nothing 
 but the soul's death and entombment — are to seek 
 those things which are above, where Clirist is, and 
 where too. He occupies the position of honor and 
 power, at the right hand of God. 
 
 If je be risen with Christ. The Apostle makes 
 the seeking of the things above contingent upon this 
 rising with Christ. He expects those only who are 
 dead to sin — who have risen to a new and divine 
 life, to seek the things above. 
 
 Others who are dead in sin cannot be expected 
 to do it. They have the tastes, the desires, the 
 
84: THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 aspirations only which earth and sin give. This 
 world limits their vision. All the ends they aim at 
 are bounded by earth. The sky shuts down close 
 around them. They mind — they seek earthly things. 
 But those who are risen with Christ, who have 
 awakened to a new life, to nobler desires and aptitudes 
 — those are to seek the things above, for Christ their 
 Saviour and Eedeemer, the object of their love and 
 confidence is there, and there too in no ignoble po- 
 sition ; having not where to lay His head on earth. He 
 is at the right hand of God in heaven. 
 
 It -is regarded by Paul as encouragement and mo- 
 tive enough for those who are risen to a new life in 
 and with Christ, to seek the things above, simply be- 
 cause Christ is there. Christ is at the right hand of 
 God, in heaven — this is the encouragement, and the 
 impulse too. He is enough to make the things above 
 attractive to you. He takes away the shadowyness, 
 the dimness from these things, for He is their centre. 
 He gives them substantiality. He gives them " a 
 local habitation and a name." All lost in cloud be- 
 fore, Christ gives outline, reality, to them now. To 
 the soul stirred with the desires of a spiritual life, that 
 owes its origin and support to Christ, there is needed 
 nothing else to throw attractiveness around the things 
 above, than the simple fact that Christ is there among 
 them, and the greatest of all, giving tone and charac- 
 ter to all the rest. The soul that has its life in Christ, 
 
SEEKING ETEKNAL THINGS. 85 
 
 looks to Christ, to tlie place, the scenes where He is, 
 and seeks them from that consideration first and 
 most. It adds the highest attractive power to the 
 things above, that He is a part, and the chief part of 
 them; and as He is the greatest attraction among 
 them, so is the fact that He is at the right hand 
 of God, the greatest encouragement to seek them ; for 
 one located in such a place of power will send forth 
 aids to him who would seek them earnestly. 
 
 '' Seek those things which are above." Those 
 things. The Apostle does not specify them. It 
 would have been difficult for him to do so. They are 
 too great, too grand to allow this, and so he unites 
 them all together, and pours them into that very ex- 
 pansive mould, things. I know not of a more conve- 
 nient term in the language. Scriptural writers often 
 have to use it. When they cannot clasp the objects 
 they wish to present with any other girdle, tliey throw 
 this around them — they call them things. All per- 
 sons, all interests, all objects, looming up, stretching 
 away, lightening, darkening, embraced by the expand- 
 ing soul, and then lost as too vast to be embraced — 
 covering time — reaching out to and over eternity, 
 are presented by an all-encompassing term — thmgs. 
 The things that are above. What the Apostle has not 
 attempted to resolve into its elements, we will not at- 
 tempt. We will leave the single term, witli all its 
 
86 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 convenient indefiniteness and expansiveness, to make 
 its own impression. 
 
 Seek tlie things above. We may seek them before 
 we reach them ; seek them as the pledge that we shall 
 ultimately reach them, for no expectation of attaining 
 them can be valid, which is not fostered by our seek- 
 ing them. Show me the man who is earnestly bent 
 on seeking the things that are above, and he will be 
 the man that I shall regard as alone likely to obtain ; 
 for it is true that he that seeketh and he only, shall 
 find. 
 
 What we seek, determines our predominant tastes 
 and desires. We seek that which we have a mind to, 
 unless, indeed, we have come to the conclusion that 
 we shall seek in vain — that the way to it is quite 
 blocked up — the doors all closed. Let the avenues be 
 all open, the object apparently attainable by the 
 efforts we can put forth, and then, what we seek, will 
 determine our tastes and characters. If we seek the 
 things below on the earth, this will settle it that we 
 are earthly ; if we seek the things above, this will 
 decide that we are heavenly, that we are risen with 
 Christ. The things above are the things amid which 
 Christ is, and the bonds that bind us to Him, will 
 bind us also to those, for they are like Him — are ho- 
 mogeneous with Him — accordant with His tastes and 
 feelings. He, we may be sure, would not desire 
 things that were ignoble and mean, and choose them 
 
SEEKING ETERNAL THINGS. 87 
 
 as His portion. What He chooses, it ,will be very 
 safe for us to choose. The things that He deems ade- 
 quate for BKm, we shall do well to regard as best 
 adapted to us. He is among the things above, and 
 knows them and loves them, and would have us know 
 an41ove them too. 
 
 One of the main wishes of Christ with respect to 
 us, is that we should be weaned from earth and 
 earthly things. He would not have us set our affec- 
 tions on them. We are to stay here but a little while, 
 and He would not have us attemper our affections to 
 the things which are to be so evanescent to us. He 
 would not have us strike our roots into the thinsis 
 from which they are to be speedily plucked. And 
 besides, He would not have us, even if we were to 
 stay long with them, become homogeneous with them. 
 But He would wean our affections from earth in some 
 practicable, what we may call a philosophical way. 
 He knows very well that we are loving beings, that 
 we have our affections out ready to clasp something. 
 He knows that we cannot be happy with vacant 
 hearts — with no predominant object of affection. 
 The whole history of the race teaches it, and our own 
 souls, so often full of unrest, declare it. We must 
 have something to love. These tendrils of the heart 
 must be out, feeling after and grasping something. 
 Out of itself the heart goes, and must go, or else it 
 turns in, like the scorpion environed by fire, and 
 
88 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 stings itself to death. The heart left vacant — swept 
 of all occupants — ^untenanted, is the seat of all woe. 
 It cannot remain so. A total wreck of the soul, or 
 something to seek — to love — to interest and occupy 
 it, is the alternative. A heart unoccupied will be like 
 a house unoccupied ; all foul and dolorous things will 
 fill it. The owl will hoot there. The satyi- will dance 
 there. The birds of night will cry there. It invokes 
 ruin, and will rush to ruin. Better that earth fill the 
 heart, better that it have its tendrils out to entwine 
 what it can see here below, than that it have 
 nothing. 
 
 Earth is a poor thing to give the heart up to, but 
 poor as it is, it had better give itself to earth than to 
 nothing. I would not take hold of the heart-strings 
 that had wound around the lowest and meanest ob- 
 jects here, and untwine them, if I had nothing better 
 to hold ont to them. I would not go to the man who 
 was blowing soap-bubbles like a child for occupation, 
 and seek to stop him, if I should leave him with noth- 
 ing to do. Better let him blow his bubbles. I would 
 not approach a man loving an insect, as some lonely 
 prisoners have done, feeding and nourishing it, and 
 snatch away his insect, if I could not give him some- 
 thing better. I would not say to a man who was 
 coming down from his imperial heights — casting aside 
 his manly crown, and contentedly brooding and gloat- 
 ing over a single dollar, amusing and delighting him- 
 
 1 
 
SEEKING ETEENAL THINGS. 81) 
 
 self with its brightness, and making it even a god, if 
 all that I conld do for him would be to tell him that 
 he was doating upon a shining nothing. !No. If his 
 ignorance was his bliss, I would not make him wise. 
 The miaer grasping his bag of gold is not the most 
 miserable of men, — not half so miserable as he who 
 cannot sink so low as to love it, and yet has nothing 
 else to love. The miser, even in loving something, 
 though it be an ignoble something, indicates that he 
 is nobly born. We would wean no man from earth, 
 and what he might love on the earth, if we were to 
 leave him with a heart wrenched from its former ob- 
 jects, and not drawn to something higher. It is only 
 as we have the things above to hold out to him, that 
 we would seek to draw away the affections that were 
 exhausting their energies upon things below. We 
 would not stand by the man who is sending his roots 
 deeper and deeper into the earth, and with the spirit 
 of a warning Cassandra, tell him that the earth was to 
 be burned up, if we could not point him to a soil in 
 which he might strike his roots and draw succulence, 
 and grow and bloom forever and ever. No. It is 
 only because we have actual, substantial things above 
 — things more congenial with the soid in its normal, 
 healthy state — more permanent — more ennobling — 
 more satisfying — better fitted to give it an eternal 
 uplift and expansion, that we come to any man and 
 say, '^ set not vour affections on things on the earth I " 
 
90 . THOUGHTS FOK THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 We slioiild only torment men before their time if we 
 had no tilings above to show. 
 
 But now, when we stand beside you, and solicit 
 your attention, and with an impassioned earnestness 
 strive to assure you that all which you love that is 
 simply of the earth cannot satisfy, — that poor would 
 be the possessor of a world if he had it alone, we would 
 give force to our appeal, by pointing you to things 
 above, and saying seek those. Something you must, 
 will, and should seek, for you are a desirous, seeking, 
 grasping creature ; but in seeking, seek the lasting^ 
 and the best, seek that which is consonant with your 
 nature, which will fill it, and more than fill it ; some- 
 thing which a few flitting years will not take you from, 
 but rather take you to, and that something is above 
 where Christ your best Friend is in His place of honor. 
 These things above you may not believe in. You 
 may say that they are things of fancy — that they are 
 a cloud-land, dim, uncertain, — that of the earth you 
 are sure, — that its prizes are those of the senses, — that 
 money is a certain good, — that it will bring money's 
 worth, and that is almost everything, — that you will 
 seek, and if possible, make sure of the present and 
 seen good, not risk it for a remote and unseen good ; 
 — in a word, that you prefer to seize what you know, 
 and not go on a restless cmsade after what you do not 
 know. Well, you can do this, if so it pleases you. 
 In the very nature of things, the things above cannot 
 
SEEKING ETEENAi THINGS. 91 
 
 autlienticate themselves to your mind by assuming 
 shape and presenting themselves to your bodily senses. 
 They would no longer be things above if they did that. 
 They would be things of the earth. The things above 
 TTiust be invisible. If you require the demonstrations 
 of sight, you are not the man whom they will consent 
 to gratify. 'Eo man but Thomas would ever dare to 
 make his belief in a risen Saviour dependent upon 
 seeing Him, and thrusting his fingers into the print 
 of the nails. Christ will not submit to dictation in 
 that way. Neither will the things above come down 
 to the things below, that we may believe them, if in- 
 deed the very idea of belief would not be destroyed 
 by such demonstrations. If we seek things above, 
 we must do it with the laws aj^pertaining to those 
 things in full force, and one of these laws is that they 
 shall be invisible, and so objects of faith. If Ave be- 
 lieve not, this alters nothing. There they are. 
 
 And let us not suppose that by choosing to seek 
 what we call a certainty, instead of an uncertainty, 
 the substantial good things of earth, instead of the 
 shadowy good things above, that we shall be as likely 
 to come to them when life is all spent, as if we had 
 sought them with devout earnestness all our days. It 
 would be but a sorry and ineffective motive to present 
 to a soul immersed in earthly things, loving tliera, 
 seeking them, if you wished to wean it from such 
 pursuits, and induce it to seek things above, — that in 
 
y2 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 a few passing years it would make little or no diifer- 
 ence, that in due course tlie revolving earth would 
 bring us all to the things above, when we shall seek 
 them in due time. Would not such an one say, that « 
 he would then try both — if possible make sm-e of 
 both, — that while amid the earthly things he would 
 seek and enjoy them, and when he came to things 
 above, he would seek and enjoy them ? Could men 
 be induced to seek things above in this way ? Are 
 the things above so yielding, so accommodating, as 
 to consent to wait ? Is there to be no assimilation 
 of the soul while on earth for those things if it would 
 enjoy them ? If there is not, I have mistaken the 
 whole economy of God's kingdom. If I understand 
 this economy, the soul that seeks the things above, 
 will alone come into possession of them, will alone 
 become fitted to enjoy them. The soul that refuses 
 to believe in these things, or believing in them, still 
 prefers earthly things to them, will not be as likely 
 to find them. The soul that is risen with Christ will 
 seek those things that are above, for Christ is there 
 to give order, consistence, beauty, and an ever power- 
 ful attraction to them. 
 
VIII. 
 
 VALUE OF THOUGHT ON INVISIBLE THINGS. 
 
 While we look not at the things which a/re seen, lut at the 
 things ichich are unseen: for the things which are seen are 
 temporal, hut the things which are not seen are eternal, — 
 ■ 2 CoE. iv. 18. 
 
 FROM this passage I design to speak of the im- 
 portance of thought directed to invisible and 
 eternal things. There are such things, real, substan- 
 tial, existing as surely as those which we see and 
 handle. Thej are for us — meant to attract us, to 
 arrest, quicken, and hold our minds. We injure and 
 wrong ourselves when we ignore or neglect them. 
 We were not made to bo absorbed in the seen and 
 temporal. We have faculties which we never use 
 when we are so. A portion of our nature lies wholly 
 unexercised when we fail to think of the invisible and 
 eternal. We were made to skirt the boundaries of 
 the vast empire of the unseen, to make excursions 
 into it, to enrich our natures by the spiritual wealth 
 it contains, and which we may draw from it. 
 
 There are indeed mighty attractions toward visi- 
 
94: THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ble and temporal things. These lie before and around 
 us, are clamorous and exacting, and cannot be made 
 readily to leave any part of us disengaged for excur- 
 sions beyond their domain. They have the advantage 
 in many respects over the unseen and eternal, and 
 they claim and get a large portion of the race. But 
 then we were made to be free — to select wisely our 
 objects of thought — to decide what objects single or 
 in clusters should draw and hold us — to choose which 
 should shape our entire being most : — the seen or 
 unseen, the temporal or eternal. We can by effort 
 send our minds out into the invisible ; and we can 
 yield to circumstance and be the slave of the visible. 
 Here are the two realms : the one lying all around 
 us filled with objects subject to our senses ; the other 
 lying beyond the reach of our senses, but real and 
 substantial, subject to our quickened thought, into 
 whose very darkness the soul may flash its far-darting 
 imaginations, to light it up and make it attractive. 
 We were made for both these domains — for a life here 
 in the visible, and a life yonder in the invisible. A 
 rightly trained soul will bestow on each what of 
 thought each here and. now deserves. The danger 
 with us all is, that the visible will gain all, and the 
 invisible little or nothing, and I wish now to speak 
 of the value of contemplation directed to the invisible 
 and eternal. 
 
 There is value in it from the knowledge we can 
 
 
VALUE OF THOUGHT ON INVISIBLE THINGS. 95 
 
 gain from it. The mind loves to know. Knowledge is 
 the food on which it grows, and it is to be gained amid 
 the invisible as well as the visible. There is, I appre- 
 hend, an idea somewhat prevalent, that knowledge, 
 in the true meaning of the term, is to be won only 
 from things visible, — that the moment you leave its 
 domain, and go out and off from the world, and launch 
 into the invisible, you leave the precincts of knowl- 
 edge and enter the sphere of fancy and conjecture : 
 you leave certainties, and are subject to doubts. Now 
 I need not stop to show you how much of all our 
 knowledge of what is and what has been on the earth, 
 lies out of the sphere of what is visible to us person- 
 ally — how narrow and limited would be our knowl- 
 edge if we relied on what was visible and tangible to 
 us. You know that our knowledge properly so called 
 of what is passing on our globe every day, comes to 
 us not through our senses, nor our reason, but our 
 faith, — the same principle on which we receive our 
 knowledge of invisible things. 
 
 And will any one be so foolish as to assert that we 
 may linow upon human testimony, about the persons 
 and objects which lie within the circle of the visible, 
 and yet cannot know upon Divine testimony about 
 the persons and objects that lie beyond in the ckcle 
 of the invisible ! Must oiu* knowledge be limited to 
 what man tells us ? Cannot it extend to what God 
 tells us ? Must the testimony of one bring knowledge, 
 
96 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and the testimony of the other mere conjecture ? Must 
 we stand in the sunlight when we listen to the one 
 voice, and in the shadow when we heed the other? 
 Can the soul stand on the firm pedestal of knowledge 
 in the one case, and must it sink in yielding and 
 slimy ooze in the other ? Is man's word a firm 
 ladder on which to mount to knowledge, and God's 
 word but a cloud-ladder on which to soar to doubt 
 and conjecture ? No. Give us but the sure revela- 
 tion of God — a revelation of the invisible and eternal, 
 and ascending on it the soul may climb as far as it 
 reaches. Contemplation placed under its guiding ray 
 will not enter the sphere of conjecture and doubt : it 
 will not make excursions into the domain of the vast 
 and infinite only to be bewildered and puzzled ; to 
 come back with weary foot — gloomy and despondent 
 — resolved henceforth to cleave fast to what it can see 
 and feel. There is a way of entering the invisible, a 
 way of contemplating it, which wearies and dissat- 
 isfies, and drives back to the solid earth. Enter thej 
 invisible by your own way and not God's, climb upl 
 to the infinite and eternal over the wall, and refusal 
 to enter by the divine door, and you will enter but a. 
 cloud-land. All your thought will avail nought. 
 You will gather no knowledge ; you will come backi 
 with only wild vagaries. You will reap a garner full 
 of all wild conjecture. But with meek and chastened 
 spirit, enter it by the way that God opens — yield toi 
 
VALUE OF THOUGHT ON INVISIBLE THINGS. 97 
 
 His guidance — go as far as He permits— stop when 
 His hand ceases to lead you — be a little child with its 
 tiny liand in its father's hand amid that vast domain, 
 and you will come back with clear knowledge, not 
 with mere conjecture. Through the revelations of 
 God we may know about invisible realities. Our circle 
 of absolute knowledge may be indefinitely widened. 
 Thought du-ected to the invisible and eternal is 
 valuable as it yields us higher motives of action. The 
 visible things about us yield motives for a virtuous 
 life. The man who believes in no God, no immor- 
 tality, may draw from this flitting life and this passing 
 world, considerations that may prompt him somewhat 
 to live and act virtuously ; and yet the motives drawn 
 from this quarter are relatively weak. From the mere 
 fact that you can weigh and gauge them — that you 
 can bring them all within the circuit of your compre- 
 hension — that there is nothing stretching away into 
 the dim and infinite ; — from this fact alone such con- 
 siderations are weak. Even Paul with all his survey 
 of life and of the world, could hardly draw motive 
 enough from them to do and sufi'er as he and his 
 coadjutors did. " If in this life only we have hope 
 we are of all men most miserable." He had to pierce 
 tlie future — pass out into the eternal and invisible, to 
 find motives that should prompt him to live the life 
 he did. The existence of another and invisible world 
 gives significance and value to this. 
 5 
 
98 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 " If dead we cease to be : if total gloom, 
 
 Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare 
 
 As summer gusts of sudden bii-th and doom 
 Whose sound and motion not alone declare 
 
 But are their whole of being. 
 
 Oh man ! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant I 
 
 Be sad ! be glad ! be neither ! seek or shun ! 
 
 Thou hast no reason why ! thou canst have none, 
 
 Thy being's being is contradiction ! " 
 
 Yes, life is insignificant without another to shape 
 and give it consistency. This life rests on another- 
 the visible on the invisible — the temporal on the 
 eternal, or it is nonght. "We mnst live our finite life 
 canopied by the infinite, with it as a living presence, 
 with it opening np to ns its vast recesses, with it 
 yielding to ns its motives, or we shall not be likely 
 to live well and nobly at all. Even the motives to a 
 noble life drawn from the visible and temporal, mnst 
 be alimented and quickened by those drawn from, 
 another sphere, or they will fail to afi'ect us. Take] 
 away the infinite, and you only make a man a little 
 higher kind of brute. We must have an invisible t< 
 make the visible pass well. As some one has said of] 
 God, " if there were none, you must make one," S( 
 I say, if there is no invisible you must make one, anc 
 go into it and draw motives from it, and encompassi 
 yourself with them, and shore yourself up, and presftj 
 yourself on by them, or you will fail to live a true life. 
 
VALUE OF THOUGHT ON INVISIBLE THINGS. 99 
 
 Thought must forge an Eternity to sweep around 
 and enfold tlie temporal, or the temporal is not worth 
 the having. But there being an invisible and eternal, 
 it will weigh with us only as we send our minds into 
 it to draw motives from it. The eternal nnthought 
 of, is to us as though it were not. 
 
 Thought directed to the invisible and eternal is 
 valuable, as giving us comfort and consolation. This 
 is the use the Apostle makes of it in the context: 
 " Om- light affliction worketh for us a far more ex- 
 ceeding and eternal weight of glory." He himself 
 draws consolation, and he would have others do like- 
 wise in present affliction from the invisible and eter- 
 nal. Affliction to the Christian has its home here. 
 It bel(^igs not to his invisible and eternal. He crosses 
 the line that divides the one from the other, to pass 
 out of the sphere of sorrow, and enter that of joy ; 
 and it is because the invisible is all free from afflic- 
 tion, that the contemplation of it gives present conso- 
 lation. It is drawing drafts upon future joys, to 
 enable the soul to endure present sorrow^s. There is 
 a way of contemplating the invisible and eternal that 
 yields only gloom and despondency, but it is not the 
 Christian way. If a man is desirous to look through 
 the Christian telescope into the invisible and eternal 
 only to gain a view which will enable him quietly to 
 live in present license and sin, that telescope will 
 yield liim no such view. If he wishes to take the 
 
100 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Gospel as a simple policy of insurance that lie will 
 finally reach heaven, live as he may ; if he wishes to 
 disconnect the Gospel end from the Gospel ways 
 that lead to it, then his glance at Eternity through 
 the Gospel will give him no such prospect as he de- 
 sires. But if a man will take the Gospel as a whole, 
 take it for what it says of Heaven and the means 
 of reaching it, — take it for the joys it reveals and the 
 open ways that lead to them, not separating what 
 God has joined together — life and death — time and 
 eternity — the visible and the invisible ; if he will take 
 the Christian scheme thus, then through it he will 
 look upon the invisible and eternal as all light and 
 sunny — all one scene of joy and triumph — ^not a tear 
 — a sigh — a groan ; — and all his contemplations of it 
 will be sweet, all adapted to temper present grief, to 
 tinge the darkest cloud that ever settles upon a human 
 soul with a blessed effulgence. 
 
 Thought directed to the unseen and eternal is of 
 value as giving mental elevation, depth, breadth. It 
 makes larger beings of us. Other things being equal, 
 the man who makes frequent excursions into the in- 
 visible and eternal — makes them, I mean, not in aim- 
 less reverie, but under proper guidance, will be the 
 larger man. A man may be on some sides of him 
 great who cleaves fast to what he sees, who never 
 soars beyond it. He may have a great iinderstand- 
 ing — he may have fine logical powers that have been 
 
VALUE OF TTIOUGIIT ON INVISIBLE THINGS. 101 
 
 subjected to rigid and sharp discipline — he may 
 have a stern will and a vast learning ; but he is not, 
 and cannot be the greatest. The greatest souls have 
 faculties that prompt a trial of the eternal. The 
 greatest minds stretch themselves on the frame-work 
 of the invisible. They have wonder, curiosity, im- 
 agination, a love of mystery, of things that do not alli 
 stand out in sharp outline, but loom up large — vast — 
 incomprehensible — dim ; — things that rise higher and 
 sink deeper than their shallow understandings can 
 reach. The man who shrinks from the invisible, 
 who has not a fancy for beings and things that he 
 can only light upon and see into a little way, while 
 in their mighty proportions they stretch away leagues 
 upon leagues beyond the farthest verge which his 
 mind can reach, and where it almost grows dizzy and 
 is ready to topple and fall ; such a man is not the 
 greatest. Indeed he knows little of the greatness of 
 a true soul — has entered little into the feelings which 
 wander out and seek to rove through and over eter- 
 nity. The invisible and eternal are a mighty trellis 
 on which the soul climbs up to true greatness, and it 
 cannot gain elevation and breadth and profoundness, 
 while absorbed in the temporal. The visible and 
 temporal are not great enough when cut off from the 
 invisible and eternal, to stretch a human soul to its 
 fullest extent. Put it on the very highest and greatest 
 of these and it collapses somewhere, — it is shrivelled 
 
102 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 in some of its faculties and powers. It must go out 
 among the unseen and eternal to use and expand all 
 its powers. The great in some departments may be 
 made by the temporal, but not the great all around, 
 not the greatest. The very love for the invisible — 
 the very tendency to steal off into it, is itself a mark 
 of greatness. It is never found in little minds, and 
 minds relatively great may become dwarfed by never 
 requiring or permitting themselves to contemplate 
 what lies beyond time and sense. 
 
 Thought directed to eternal things, gives calmness 
 to the mind. We live among perturbing, agitating 
 scenes. Human passion is stirred and often fierce. 
 We are liable to come nnder its influence and control, 
 to lose our mental balance and government. We are 
 swept away on the current of narrow and petty ques- 
 tions. We lose the ideas of the proper relations of 
 things. We get unballasted. Our judgments become 
 biased and narrow. We put great things for little 
 and little for great. Interests comparatively trivial 
 swell into a mighty importance. Now there is noth- 
 ing like a frequent contemplation of invisible and 
 eternal things to give the mind composure and steadi- 
 ness amid the peiiurbing scenes of life. The con- 
 templation of God has been known to bring calm 
 and sweet repose to bosoms whence sleep had fled 
 for many nights. All great themes of thought are 
 soothing. It is little things oftener than great that 
 
VALUE OF THOUGHT ON INVISIBLE THINGS. 103 
 
 agitate, the little annoyances of life more than even 
 its dread convulsions that perturb. There is some- 
 thing in all majestic things that calms. The great 
 sea — the quiet heavens — a still, far-stretching wilder- 
 ness does it ; — much more will the invisible and eter- 
 nal with their stillness and grandeur do it. The 
 agitated spirit of man has need to soothe itself by 
 excursions out into the invisible and eternal. 
 
 I am not, my friends, supposing that you can, 
 neither am 1 desiring that you should, give yourselves 
 up to these thoughts. Life is real and earnest about 
 you. Labors, cares press hard. The visible encom- 
 passes you — the invisible with its silence is afar off. 
 I know this. I would have you live your life right 
 here in the marts of business — not a man resting — 
 not a labor cast off — not a care neglected. Live here 
 and not in the wilderness, but live with your life ele- 
 vated and spiritualized by many thoughts of the in- 
 visible : live here, but live with life's discords reduced 
 to harmony by the silent but all-subduing harmonies 
 of Eternity ! 
 
IX. 
 
 THE RESTRAINTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 Take my yoke upon you. — Matt. xi. 29. 
 
 THE OX when he passes under the yoke loses his 
 lawless freedtDm, siibmits to labor and restraint ; 
 so the man wherL he passes under the yoke of Christ 
 loses his lawless freedom-, submits to labor and re- 
 straint. 
 
 From this passage I intend to speak of the re- 
 straints of Christianity. 
 
 It has restraints. This is neither to be ignored 
 nor denied, but is to be admitted, yea, brought for- 
 ward and insisted upon. One in coming into the 
 Christian kingdom, under the tuition and rule of 
 Christ its Head, does come under restrictions. There 
 are stern negations put upon many courses which 
 others outside of the kingdom feel it proper to pur- 
 sue. And if we will look at the matter more deeply, 
 we shall not find Christianity an exception to a gen- 
 eral rule extending to all systems and all things. 
 Whenever we wish to do anything effectively for our- 
 selves or for otherSj we must come under restraint. 
 
THE KESTKAINTS OF CimiSTIANITY. 105 
 
 Whenever we wish to accomplish anything beneficent 
 with material agents or living beings, we must put 
 them under a yoke, bind them down, subject them to 
 wholesome discipline. The waters of our rivers run- 
 ning wild will turn iiO wheels, grind no wheat, weave 
 no cloth. The lightning flashing in the sky, darting 
 in its own moody way from cloud to cloud, only blasts 
 and destroys. Both must be harnessed and subjected 
 to rule ere they will work and help man in his life 
 errand. So with all other things, so with men. You 
 can do nothing effectively with them nor for them till 
 you put them under the yoke, subject them to proper 
 checks. You cannot sail a ship over the sea, you 
 cannot manage a factory, or shop, or school, or col- 
 lege, or family, or church, or nation w^ithout it. It is 
 the one thing which you must have when you pro- 
 pose to liave organization, to have men work together 
 for a given end. So that when we say there are re- 
 straints in Christianity, we only say that in tliis re- 
 spect it is h'ke all other systems. There can be no 
 community among men, they cannot live together in 
 the same village, town or nation without it. Aban- 
 don it and you sever the ties that bind men ; each 
 would want a world to himself, and it would soon be 
 a tenantless world, for he would speedily come to an 
 end without it. Man is the predestined heir of re- 
 straint. A wild, lawless freedom is no condition for 
 an intelligent, accountable being. 
 5* • 
 
106 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 The restraints, however, of Ghristianity are not so 
 mucli outward as inward, not so iniicli special and 
 minute as general. They are of the spirit rather tlian 
 of tlie letter. Thej do not line the whole road of life 
 projecting their sharp points at every step, ready to 
 wound and chafe us. We are not compelled to pass 
 on with book in hand, with eyes and mind intent lest 
 peradventure we should fail to know and comply with 
 some minute duty. Christianity does not persecute 
 us with its nice scrupulosities, goad us with little, petty 
 exactions meeting us at any moment, placed all along 
 at short intervals to impress us with their presence 
 and power. "We come under no such petty system 
 when we come under the Christian rule. It w^ould 
 be diflScult to find in it all any minute, specific pro- 
 hibitions that might or might not be heeded, and yet 
 the man remain equally good. It does not exact tithes 
 of mint and cummin. It does not take in charge the 
 mere outward man and make him bow and bend, turn 
 hither and thither, fast, go on pilgrimages. It does 
 not meet him at every turn, compelling him upon pain 
 of forfeiture of its blessings to do this outward and 
 minute thing and not to do that. It rises far above 
 all this. It leaves it for other systems of far inferior 
 design or lower origin to treat men as children. It 
 treats men as men, and in few things is it m.ore re- 
 markable than in its freedom from all those restric- 
 
THE KESTKAINTS OF CHRISTIAJflTY. 107 
 
 tions to which a man may be entirely subject and 
 yet be no better man. 
 
 Even the Jewish system, divine as it was in its 
 origin, in this respect imposed a yoke upon men which 
 Paul himself says they were scarcely able to bear. 
 It was a system for men in comparative childhood. 
 It was an initial and not a final dispensation, the en- 
 trance, the vestibule to another and a better one. 
 It had respect more to the outward, less to the in- 
 ward. It was ritualistic and ceremonial, temporary 
 not final. It met men with minute directions and 
 prohibitions, and required constant watchfulness lest 
 some of them should be unheeded. But the Christian 
 system did away with all this. It took men out from 
 such narrow tutelage, and put them under a broader 
 and more comprehensive one. It advanced them 
 from their minority to their majority. We are no 
 longer subject to ordinances or prohibitions, to taste 
 not this, or handle not that. We, in our onward 
 progress, have left those things far behind. We are 
 under a dispensation of the spirit, not of the letter, 
 and in consequence have escaped the restraints of the 
 mere letter. 
 
 The restraints of Christianity are only so many, and 
 of such a nature, as its very design requires. Know 
 the design of a system and you will know the checks 
 it imposes. Take Jesuitism for instance — that system 
 which is so tenacious of life, stretching down over 
 
108 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 the centuries, bruised, pierced, and yet alive, one of 
 the most potent of all schemes that man has ever 
 devised. Study this • '' society " in its constitution 
 and laws, pierce to its great central idea, compass its 
 "grand object, and then you will be prepared to under- 
 stand the nature of the restraints it imposes, and to 
 see that without these its end could not be reached, 
 it would be a failure, nay, it could not have lived a 
 century. 
 
 So of any other organization. Enter into its idea, 
 its design, and if you are a man of any reach or com- 
 pass of mind you will know the restraints it requires. 
 'No wise man will ever impose these for their own 
 sake, or for the sake of making his power felt. They 
 will be such as the object requires and no more. 
 That object may be to make cloth or cutlery, to sail 
 a ship or to govern an army or a nation. So with 
 Christianity ; its object will determine the nature of 
 its restrictions. This is not primarily to make men 
 conscious of the Divine presence and power, not to 
 impress us with the idea of our subjection to the 
 Almighty, not to encompass us everywhere with ideas 
 of His greatness ; this He designs, but not primarily 
 and most. He wishes to impress us most forcibly 
 with His pity and love, to bring us into fellowship 
 with Him, to make us more trustful and loving, better 
 in heart and so in life. This is His design, and the 
 restraints He imposes are in accordance with it. 
 
THE RESTRAINTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 
 
 I have said that these are inward rather than out- 
 ward, of the soul rather than the body ; not outward, 
 not of the body at all, only as these act upon the soul 
 directly or indirectly. Christianity does its work 
 first and most on the heart, and on the heart it first 
 lays its restraints. It prohibits nothing good, puts no 
 ban upon anything that is kind and tender and beau- 
 tiful, anything adapted to bless man or to glorify 
 God, anything that tends to bring us into harmony 
 with the great sum of things. It gives the freest 
 scope to all such tendencies within men. It only 
 lays its hand upon that within us which isolates and 
 alienates us from our fellows and from God, upon 
 selfishness, upon unhallowed passion in any of its 
 forms. 
 
 It has been asked and will be asked again, what 
 specific things does Christianity prohibit ? What may 
 one do and what may he not do under this system ? 
 What amusements may a Christian engage in, may he 
 go to the ball or the drama, may he play at this or 
 that, may he go here or there ? Will he be within 
 the circle of the Gospel and obeying its principles 
 when he is engaging in this or that business ? What 
 specific restraints on the life in all directions does it 
 impose? We sometimes wish that we could hear 
 what specific outvrard things we may and may not 
 do. But this is to lose sight of the very object of 
 Christianity. This is to turn the hand back on the 
 
110 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 dial-plate of time, to journey back into the childhood 
 of the race and the world. The prime object of 
 Christianity is not to keep ns away from the ball, or 
 the opera, or the billiard-table ; it is not to tell ns how 
 large and how fine houses we may bnild, nor how 
 richly we may furnish them ; not how costly churches 
 we may rear, nor how fine and expensive clothing we 
 may put on, nor how much money we shall spend. 
 Its object is deeper than that. Its design is to bring 
 us into harmony with God, and loving fellowship with 
 our fellow-men, it is to make us think less of our- 
 selves and more of others, to seek their good ; it is in 
 a word to create within us a clean heart and to renew 
 within us a right spirit. It settles the outward ques- 
 tions by a new ordering of the inward. It does not 
 tell a man what he shall not do outwardly, but what 
 he shall not do inwardly. He shall not be set upon 
 his own things. All the settlement we can give of 
 outward things from the Christian system is a read- 
 justment of the heart, a new heart with its new and 
 clear vision to see what is fitting. We never can 
 settle what a Christian can and what he cannot do, 
 where he can and cannot go, how much money he 
 may and may not spend. This is only to enter upon 
 a road that has no end, it is only to indulge in a fret- 
 ting scrupulosity that profits nothing. 
 
 There is no rule that can be rigidly fixed for all. 
 One man in the full adoption of a Christian spirit 
 
THE RESTRAINTS OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill 
 
 and principles can do what another cannot do. Let 
 every man be well persuaded in his own mind, seeing 
 first and most that he has the mind of Christ. Let 
 a man be unselfish, love God, love men, and he will 
 not go far amiss, he will have eyes to see the right 
 thing to be done and the heart to do it. We might 
 say with one of the ancients ; " Let a man love God 
 and do what he has a mind to." 
 
 I am not saying that Christianity has no outward 
 restraints, that there are not specific things which a 
 Christian cannot do, specific places which he cannot 
 visit. There is a whale circle of outward things which 
 a Christian cannot do, but then I say that the spirit 
 which Christianity begets must determine what it is, 
 and the Bible leaves it to determine. The Christian 
 spirit can settle it most wisely and safely, and when 
 the restraints are binding, there is the spirit that 
 makes them easy. 
 
 *' My yoke," says the Saviour, " is easy." It is 
 so to those who have the spirit of Christ and to those 
 alone. To all beside it is the heaviest burden. It is 
 utterly impossible to tell what particular outward 
 thing will be easy to one till you know his prevail- 
 ing temper and spirit. The restraints which are easy 
 to one are oppressive to another. Place a young man 
 of fitful or wayward temper or dissolute habits in a 
 well-ordered family and he will feel restless and un- 
 easy. To the obedient child it is a joy to be there. 
 
112 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Take a man of selfish, sinful heart, and impose upon 
 him the outward limitations of the Christian, con- 
 strain him to pray, to read the Bible, to be found in 
 the place of prayer, in the Sanctuary, to talk, to act 
 as a Christian, and you oppress him. He must have 
 the spirit which eugenders and sustains these outward 
 doings or he is restless. Hence when we take the 
 yoke of Christ we are at the same time to learn of 
 Him, we are to drink in of His spirit, and the new spirit 
 of the Master will make the restraints of the Master 
 easy and His burden light. The inward coming first 
 will assume all the outward restrictions with alacrity. 
 They will be adapted to it. It will not be the world- 
 ling with the Christian's restraints, but the Christian 
 with his own, the Christian spirit responsive to the 
 Bible in all that it negatives and in all that it enjoins. 
 And thus instead of being oppressed by the limitations 
 of the Christian, he will in fact feel that they consti- 
 tute in part his freedom. 
 
 Compel the man with the spirit of Christ to do 
 what the man without that spirit does by the force of 
 the law that is within him, and you put him in bond- 
 age quite as much as you would the depraved man 
 should you constrain him to do what belongs to the 
 Christian. There is a law in each enforcing him to 
 do and not to do what he does. The inward spirit 
 of a Christian develops itself spontaneously, in its own 
 way, as does the spirit of the godless man. Each is 
 
THE RESTRAINTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 113 
 
 known by his fruit, and it constitutes the freedon;i of 
 the Christian to do what he does as much as it con- 
 stitutes the freedom of the worldling to do what he 
 does. The one has the freedom wherewith Christ 
 maketh His disciples free, and the other has the 
 freedom wherewith the world maketh its children free. 
 Each does what the spirit prompts. So that the 
 Christian as he advances in the knowledge of Chris- 
 tianity may be coming more and more under the con- 
 trol of a delicate and susceptible conscience, a con- 
 science acutely sensitive to the right and peremptory 
 in its command to heed it ; and at the same time may 
 be coming more and more into the true freedom of an 
 intelligent being. And it is when conscience dis- 
 criminates perfectly between right and wrong, and 
 when the soul is almost unconsciously obedient to her 
 voice, that we shall become perfectly free, that we 
 shall have the freedom of law and not of mere wilful- 
 ness. Looked at aright it is not till we are spontane- 
 ously subject to all the restraints of Christianity, that 
 we shall enjoy the full liberty of Christianity. 
 
 The one practical lesson that I w^ould have you 
 draw is, — not to look first and most at the restraints 
 of religion. You cannot take up these first without 
 bondage. Strive to get into the spirit of religion. 
 Seek not to clothe yourself with the restraints of a 
 child until you get the spirit of a child. You 
 cannot make a ladder of your self-denials to climb 
 
114: THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 up to Christ. You must come to Him first, you 
 must learn of Him, imbibe His spirit, and as fast 
 as you do this and only so fast can you sincerely and 
 freely assume its restraints. Let tbe mind of Christ 
 be in you first, and the yoke of Christ you will take 
 through love. Take the yoke and strive thus to work 
 yourself into the mind of Christ, and it is like draw- 
 ing water from dry wells. 
 
X. 
 
 CONSTANT AND ABOUNDING WORK FOR GOD. 
 
 Always abounding in the worlc of the Lord. — 1 Coe. xv. 58. 
 
 IT is in view of the fact of the glorious resurrection 
 of the just, their victory over death and the grave, 
 that the apostle exhorts them to be " steadfast, un- 
 niovable, always abounding in the work of the 
 Lord." 
 
 He would transport them to that era in their exist- 
 ence, when Christ shall have eternally delivered them 
 from all the ills of life and sin, and shall have brought 
 them to their high and glorious destiny ; and from 
 thence he would bring a motive that should bear 
 powerfully upon the present. Christ will cause you 
 to triumph over all your enemies, therefore serve 
 Christ constantly and faithfully here ; ^" always 
 abound in the work of the Lord." This is a legiti- 
 mate and forcible argument, and will have weight 
 with all that love and trust Christ. It is an aj)peal 
 to gratitude and indeed to all that is highest and 
 strongest within us. As we anticipate so much from 
 Christ, let us work for him here. " Always abound- 
 ing in the work of the Lord." 
 
116 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 There are three thoughts here upon which we will 
 dwell. Our work must be the work of the Lord. 
 We are to abound in it. We are to be constant in it. 
 
 Oui's must be the work of the Lord — CliHst's 
 workj not our own : work undertaken on His account 
 — because he commands it : work originating in and 
 from Him, and that would have no existence but for 
 Him. He is to be its centre and end — its Alpha and 
 Omega. The work of the Lord — that which we do 
 for and under Him — may not differ specifically in its 
 outward form from other kind of work. He who 
 works for the Lord, and he who woi-ks without any 
 reference to Him, may do the same outward things ; 
 just as a man who works to gratify his noblest hu- 
 man affections may do the same outward things with 
 one who toils to gratify his meanest vices. 
 
 There are some wise, but many foolish things 
 said about work in our day. We often hear about 
 work as though it were a good in and of itself, and 
 as though one deserved commendation simply because 
 he worko^. We mean to commend men and women 
 when we call them great workers. I do not intend 
 to deny that work is a respectable thing in itself, and 
 that he is in a hopeful state who sets himself to do it 
 with a right good will. The idle man is the only ab- 
 solutely hopeless man. Get a man fairly at work 
 with might and main, lustily bent on doing some- 
 thing, and he vindicates, after a sort, his right to be, 
 
CONSTANT AND ABOUNDING WORK FOR GOD. 117 
 
 and at least earns his bed and board in the world 
 where he is. But then after all, we do not and con- 
 not respect a simple drudge, — one who toils with no 
 aim or an ignoble one. We cannot respect a woman 
 who toils by day or night amid exhaustion and sleep- 
 lessness simply to put finery upon herself or her chil- 
 dren, l^either can we esteem the man very highly 
 who struggles hard, whether it be over his books or 
 in the mine, or the store, or shop, simply to elevate 
 himself — to make himself thought of and talked of — 
 the wonder of a day. We must know the motive of a 
 worker before we can give him our highest respect. 
 It must be more or less elevated to command much 
 of our admiration. Just in proportion as it is noble 
 and true does the approval of all right-minded per- 
 sons rest upon him. 
 
 Now the work of the Lord includes all work that 
 is right and fitting in our circumstances and position. 
 There have been those, and there are those still, who 
 separate between work done for Christ and other 
 work which our human affections require. There 
 were those in Christ's day who thought they could 
 alienate the money which a father's or a mother's 
 wants demanded, and appropriate it justly to strictly 
 religious uses. They only had to pronounce over it 
 that magic word " Corban^^ — this is consecrated to 
 the temple service, and behold ! a needy fatlier and 
 mother might go and starve, for all that the son could 
 
118 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, 
 
 be called upon to do for them. Eeligion was set up 
 in hostility to life, one's devotion was a substitute for 
 the natural aflfections. Offerings to the temple ex- 
 empted one from all obligations to kindred and 
 friends. Piety and the indulgence of humane and 
 filial feelings might be in opposition. This has been 
 the idea of some, and may be to a certain extent prev- 
 alent still. But this idea Christ did and does frow^n 
 upon. No son in His day could play off his devotion 
 against his filial obligation, and no one can in our day 
 set up his piety in opposition to his humble, daily 
 duties. 'No mother can neglect her children under 
 the plea that she is serving her God. No wife can 
 justly leave her house untidy and her husband to 
 neglect, under the plea that she is ministering to 
 others without. In no department are we to set our 
 daily duties in hostility to our piety, or our piety in 
 hostility to these. 
 
 The fact is, our religion, when rightly understood, 
 embraces all duty. "We do the work of the Lord, and 
 we do all work in that. The work of the Lord leaves 
 out no task of life, humble or elevated, that is de- 
 volved upon us. It simply brings all duty to Christ, 
 — grafts it into Him, — causes it to depend upon Him, 
 — to derive all its supports from Him. No work that 
 a man is called upon to do at all, need or should lie 
 outside of his religion. There is none that his love 
 for Christ will not prompt, and his work for Christ 
 
 I 
 
CONSTANT AND ABOUNDING WOEK FOR GOD. 119 
 
 will not include. So that when we speak of doing 
 the work of the Lord, we are not to be understood as 
 separating common life and common work from it. 
 Not at all. ISTothing has been more unfortunate in 
 the past history of the Church than this, and nothing 
 could be more unfortunate now. We believe when 
 we are doing the work of the Lord most and best, we 
 are doing common, unnoticed work best. "Working 
 for the Lord would not start us off on remote pil- 
 grimages, or part us from common and lowly pursuits. 
 It would rather elevate these, and make all life and 
 all toil holy. The work of the Lord is very much 
 putting the Lord into our work. It is not a new 
 kind of work perhaps, but a new kind of aim and im- 
 pulse. 
 
 In this work of the Lord we are to abound. The 
 same considerations that should make us engage in 
 it, should make us abound in it. If it is a good thing 
 to work for Him at all, it is a good thing to work for 
 Him efficiently and fully. 
 
 Happiness has been said to be " the employment 
 of our faculties : " if we will make the addition of the 
 Avord rights and say it is the right employment of 
 tliem, we shall not probably come far from a correct 
 definition of it, so far as it is susceptible of definition 
 in mere words at all. The work of the Loj'd is right 
 work — it is work that will enlist all the powers that 
 any man has or can have. There is no sui-plus facuh 
 
120 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ty in any man which he must leave outside, when he 
 comes to engage in the work of the Lord. There is 
 no power which it will not enlist and absorb in some 
 one of its many branches. It is diversified work, not 
 monotonous. It solicits and will employ men of all 
 gifts and all attainments, and will tax and exhaust all 
 and more than all that the mightiest can bring to it. 
 So that if we have a right work that will absorb all 
 the powers of every kind, and abound in such a 
 work, we are adopting the course which an intelli- 
 gent perception of our own happiness will require. 
 Does any one ask sighingly, " Oh ! where shall bliss 
 be found ? " we answer here^ if anywhere — as much 
 of it as our present state will permit, and that too of 
 the same kind that the redeemed in heaven enjoy. 
 It is abounding in the work of the Lord there that 
 makes heaven very much what it is, if indeed we can 
 use the term work at all with reference to those who 
 have passed into that world. 
 
 Abounding in the w^ork of the Lord is just what 
 the character of Christ — our relations to Him and His 
 to us — just what he has done and is doing and will 
 do for us, would prompt us to do. Work for the Lord 
 is the hardest of all work, when it is done without the 
 principles and affections that prompt it. The mere 
 name of Christ will not engage men in abmidant 
 works for Him. There must be a sight of Christ, of 
 what He is and where, of what He has done for us, 
 
CONSTANT AND ABOUNDING WOKK FOR GOD. 121 
 
 and what he is doing, and what he is purposing yet 
 to do, in order to enlist all that we are and can be in 
 work for Him. There must be a realization of His 
 benefits conferred, and to be conferred, before we 
 shall cry, " "What shall we render unto the Lord for 
 them all ? " There will be no abounding in the work 
 of the Lord, till the love of the Lord shines out con- 
 spicuously before us. What Christ is and does must 
 prompt what we should be and do. Abounding love 
 and benefits will beget abounding works. AVe shall 
 do much when we love much, and we shall love much 
 only when we see much of Christ — much of His heart 
 and His work. The appeal throughout the Bible 
 is Christ's love, Christ's doings, Christ's sufierings ; 
 when these come home to us as revealed in the past, 
 when the unfoldings of the future open to us what 
 Christ will do for us, then we have a solid basis on 
 which we shall stand, and abounding impulses to 
 abounding works. "We must love much to do much. 
 Always abounding in the work of the Lord. It 
 is not to be a work which we shall do, or in 
 which we shall abound fitfully and at intervals ; 
 now taking it up and prosecuting it with vigor, 
 and then laying it down as if weary of it. We are 
 always to abound in it. The work is to be prolific 
 and constant. It is to be here — there — everywhere — 
 now and hereafter — continued till life shall- end. It 
 may strike us as incompatible with human weakness 
 6 
 
122 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and slnggislmcss. It may be thought and said even, 
 that abounding woi'k in anything exhausts, and can 
 hardly be kept up, year in and year out. But we are 
 not to forget that this work is not incompatible with 
 due refreshments and even recreations. The Saviour, 
 when He was upon the earth, and He and his disciples 
 were weary with constant toil, took them aside that 
 He and they might rest. Rest, to the end that we 
 may labor the more, is not only permitted, but re- 
 quired. No man is allowed to wear out before his 
 time, any more than he is to rust out, and the wear- 
 ing out and the rusting out are not likely to be in work- 
 ing for the Lord. Refreshment, that we may abound 
 in the work of the Lord, may be as much a duty as 
 acting that we may abound in it. Constancy in work 
 is j)erfectly compatible with intervals of repose. 
 
 '' Always abounding in the work of the Lord." 
 Work for the Lord, enlisting as it will so many and so 
 much of our powers, has a tendency to ]3erpetuate it- 
 self, just as all work has. If there is something con- 
 genial with the human heart in rest — something which 
 tends to perpetuate it, so is there more also congenial 
 with work, and something which tends to perpetuate, 
 it. We work a little heartily in any sphere of right 
 effort, and we wish to work more, to go on, abounding 
 in work. We work a little for Christ, and that little, 
 if we will*feed it, and do not allow ourselves to lose th< 
 impulse it gives us, will press us on to more and more,( 
 
CONSTANT AND ABOUNDING WORK FOR GOD. 123 
 
 SO that we shall come into a strict firlfilment of the 
 requisition of our text, and " always abound in the 
 work of the Lord." 
 
 The strong motive which the apostle urges, is one 
 needed by us all. " Abounding in the work of the 
 Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in 
 vain in the Lord." 
 
 This consideration is ever needed to prompt us to 
 do anything. "We may play for the mere sake of 
 play. The distinction between work and play is this. 
 We work for something beyond — ^for an end. We 
 play for play's sake, without an end. Now no one 
 will ever toil except with the hope of gaining some- 
 thing. We need the promptings of hope — the assur- 
 ance of accomplishment. Now our exliortation is : 
 " Abound always in the work of the Lord — forasmuch 
 as your labor is not in vain in the Lord." 
 
 Not in vain. It will tell. It will not fall to the 
 ground, and come to nought. All work for the Lord 
 is sure work. It is done in love, with His strength, 
 and nothing on the large scale is so sure of success. 
 Other kinds of work may fail, this never. The work 
 of the Lord is right, good ; it engages our best powers, 
 and it will bring its own blessed harvest at the end. 
 
XL 
 
 SPIRITUAL LABOR— ITS INCENTIVE AND REWARD. 
 
 Forasmuch as ye Tcnow that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. 
 1 CoE. XV. 58. 
 
 THIS is a part of tlie concluding verse of that 
 sublime chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Corin- 
 thians, where he declares the doctrine of the Resur- 
 rection, and utters the triumphant challenge, " O 
 Death, where is thy sting ? O Grave, where is thy 
 victory ? " In view of the final victory over death 
 and the grave, he exhorts his brethren to be " stead- 
 fast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of 
 the Lord." 
 
 There must be steadfastness of feeling and purpose. 
 An unstable heart will produce an indifferent life. 
 The work of the world is done by the steadfast men 
 of the world. Given a movable spirit, and you will 
 have a wildly impulsive, never a steadily operative, 
 and ever progressive life. Stand and work, rooted in 
 confidence and feeling. Abound in work. 
 
 But work must have a motive, an incitement ; and 
 
SPIRITUAL LABOR ITS INCENTH^E AND REWARD. 125 
 
 it gains it in the text. '* Forasmuch as ye know that 
 your labor is not in vain in the Lord." Work, even 
 for God, does not lose its character as work — does not 
 pass into play. It is not the scene nor the hour for 
 that ; it will do that all in good time, on a higher 
 stage, in another clime. But here it is worh^ under- 
 taken with a will — prompted indeed by the heart, but 
 prosecuted with more or less of struggle, and there- 
 fore needing a stimulus outside of itself, in a goal 
 with its elevating rewards more or less conspicuous 
 in the distance. Men will be driven out of idleness 
 into work, by the assurance that work will tell, and 
 idleness will not. Men will not work either for 
 another or themselves without due encouragement. 
 Boys will sport all day, and gain nothing but weari- 
 ness of limb, but men will not work unless they see 
 solid attainment to be secured in the end. Even 
 money will not induce men to toil if no real accom- 
 plishment comes of it. A company of the richest 
 men of Springfield cannot go into Ferry street, and 
 hire twenty of the most ignorant Irishmen to go down 
 and bale the Connecticut river dry, or to carry stones 
 from one side of the street to tlie other, and then carry 
 them back again. All men— the most venal men, 
 want to see together with their wages actual progress 
 and attainment. If they carr}?- bricks and mortar up 
 a ladder for a dollar a day, they want to see the 
 building growing higher, or their dollar ceases to have 
 
126 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 attractions for tliem. It will not buy good, nourish- 
 ing bread for tliem. Mere money will keep no man 
 at work, tliough it be paid liberally and punctually. 
 If you think it will, try your hand, if you can afford 
 it, on the first group of hungry workmen you meet on 
 the morrow. Neither is work a thing of simple com- 
 mand. I mean you cannot keep men and get work 
 out of them by authority alone. The sternest over- 
 seer of a slave-gang would find his gang in mutiny 
 if he were to require them to work for work's sake, 
 at something where no results followed. Even they 
 must see or believe in results, or their hearts and limbs 
 will not sustain them. Beasts, not men, work under 
 the lash simply. Men must see what they work on 
 going forward, the building ascending, the web 
 lengthening, the rough material assuming shape, the 
 picture growing in beauty. God in Heaven has not 
 authority enough to hold the angels at work, if He 
 were to command them to keep transplanting the 
 trees that border the River of Life from one side to 
 the other. There would be rebellion there, and no 
 one w^ould blame the rebels. Mere command, having 
 no drift, terminating in nothing, cannot keep men or 
 angels at work. 
 
 We may properly and justly be summoned to 
 work when the results are not apparent or immediate. 
 All life is full of such work. But then wo must be- 
 lieve that our work will ultimately or somewhere 
 
SPIRITUAL LABOR ITS INCENTIVE AND REWARD. 127 
 
 effect something. We cannot be hired — we cannot 
 be commanded to work for nought. I^o man can do 
 it and be a man. Hence when God summons us to 
 work even for Him, He does not put his authority 
 alone right over against our sluggishness, and open its 
 shotted artillery upon us, and bombard our idleness 
 out of us. No. He tells us to go to work under the 
 assm-ance that our labor shall be productive. '^ For- 
 asmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in 
 the Lord." 
 
 Two thoughts will occupy our attention, lying 
 in the text. Firsts the condition of the labor — it 
 must be labor in the Lord. Secondly^ the issue of it 
 — it shall not be in vain. 
 
 Our labor must be done in the Lord. It must not 
 be bald, disconnected, merely individual labor — 
 springing from the will of the laborer, and prosecuted 
 by him apart and alone — with no aim out of himself 
 — with no connections, no inspirations from on high 
 — no dependence on divine help — with no lookings 
 for divine approval. Taken on the low plane of the 
 simply natural life, we see that a man cannot do 
 much of himself, apart from the teachings of the 
 past, — sundered from the associations of the present, 
 and the hopes of the future. Every man works with 
 six thousand crowded years at his back. The lone- 
 liest farmer on the remote hillside or most retired 
 valley, works with tools that the first artisan in iron 
 
128 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 helped to fashion. The ghosts of multitudes of inven- 
 tors encamp around him as he toils, and he feels the 
 inspiration of the wife and helpless babes in the cot- 
 tage whose smoke curls perpetually in his sight. We, 
 all of us, do our work, not apart, but in connections, 
 amid associations seen or unseen, near or remote. 
 We do nothing really alone. Our work would be 
 useless if it were attempted in stern isolation from 
 our fellows. To be effective, it must be done in com- 
 pany. It is really we and all the race combined, not 
 we alone, that can do anything, and that too if our 
 work be merely natural work — if it be planting, or 
 hoeing, or reaping, or weaving, or doing any material 
 tasks ; and if we find that on the lowest plane of life 
 we do not work apart, neither can we claim so to 
 work on the higher plane of thought, of feeling, of 
 spiritual activity. The fact is, no man was made to 
 work alone — apart from his fellows, or what is more — 
 apart from God. As we really and unconsciously " live 
 and move and have our being" in Him, so were we 
 designed to act consciously and joyfully in Him, under 
 His inspiration earnestly sought, looking to Him for 
 guidance, aid and approval. A man had better at- 
 tempt to shut the air from his lungs and still breathe, 
 and do the work of life, than undertake to do the work 
 devolved upon him as a creature of God, sundered 
 from Him, His direction, help and approval. All 
 our work is to be work in the Lord, not out of and 
 
 i 
 
SPIRITUAL LABOR ITS INCENTIVE AND REWARD. 129 
 
 apart from Him. Work out of God, if it were pos- 
 sible, would be vain — attempted to be done out of 
 Him, it is the rankest folly. A soul working out of 
 God is a soul out of its proper connections ; it revolves 
 like a wheel disconnected from its fellows, not accom- 
 plishing the work of a true soul. It is no business 
 of any man to ask, "What can I do alone ? but What 
 can I do with God with me, in me, and over me, and 
 Christ strengthening me ? Not, What goal can I reach 
 by the force of my own will ? but. What goal can 1 
 win with Christ in me, the spring of my life and my 
 hope of glory ? 
 
 It is labor in the Lord that comes out right, as it 
 is such labor that starts right. A good start indicates 
 good progress, and a good end; and it is labor in the 
 Lord, undertaken in simple reliance on Him, that be- 
 gins right. If a man attempts any work consciously, 
 voluntarily, on which he can ask no Divine blessing ; 
 a work terminating in an hour or stretching through 
 a series of years, perhaps through life, on which he 
 can invoke no Divine inspection ; a work which he 
 can more glibly undertake and prosecute in forget- 
 fulness of God than in remembrance of Him, then he 
 must take his chance of an outward, tangible success. 
 He may succeed in doing the thing that he selfishly 
 and out of God undertakes — he may grasp his gold, 
 or his honors, or his pleasures. But his very success 
 is his fLiilure. His labor, seemingly crowned with 
 6* 
 
130 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 laurels, is in vain, because it is not labor that he has 
 done and loved to do in the Lord — enwrapped in a 
 Divine atmosphere, penetrated with a Divine life, and 
 cheered by the Divine smile. It is failure all, vain 
 all, I care not how marked and large the visible re- 
 sults. '' Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is 
 not in vain in the Lord." 
 
 I have said that all labor out of the Lord, in for- 
 getfulness of Him, out of fellowship with Him, on 
 which His blessing is not sought, not done in simple 
 reliance on Him, is vain. I now add that all labor in 
 the Lord is not and cannot be in vain. It must and 
 will accomplish, not possibly our immediate and short- 
 sighted purpose, but something as good, probably 
 vastly better and farther-reaching. The peculiarity 
 of the work that we do in the Lord is, perhaps, that 
 we do not and cannot know what specifically it will 
 accomplish, whereunto it will grow. It is a work of 
 faith as well as of love, it is committed to His hands, 
 given over to His keeping, sown as a seed, in the 
 great seed-field of God. It is cast in as a contribution 
 to His treasury — it is added as a unit to the sum 
 total of agencies by which He is working. It may 
 be a humble work — a kind word spoken for Him — a 
 generous deed done with the eye up to Him, the 
 heart reposing on Him ; and being done in Him and 
 for Him, it is not cast forth at random — a poor or- 
 phan word or deed — an estray roaming up and down 
 
SPIRITUAL LABOR ITS INCE:NTIVE AND KEWAKD. 131 
 
 tlie world for a keeper and a goal. It goes into sure 
 keeping. 
 
 I have remarked that all life is full of work done 
 not for present and immediate results, but for future 
 and possibly remote results. It is not needful that 
 we should have the incitement of speedy returns to 
 keep us at our work. We are men with far-darting 
 thoughts, lofty aspirations, embracing objects, identi- 
 fying ourselves with plans, that reach through genera- 
 tions and centuries. We deem it a part of our no- 
 bility as men, to strike in and embrace and toil for 
 objects that we do not in our brief day expect to see 
 accomplished, or even far advanced. We feel our- 
 selves demeaned and belittled when we follow present 
 and speedily accomplished purposes, and elevated as 
 we follow those that require many hands and hearts 
 and many years to complete. 
 
 It is surprising to see how much of our doing is 
 based ou faith. The farmer casts his best seed into 
 the earth. To the casual observer it would seem lost. 
 But he has faith in the earth and her germinating 
 power, and in the kindly processes of nature ; and so 
 working in trust, he labors not in vain, but reaps after 
 many days. We lay the foundations of Institutions 
 imder which our children are to rise to the heritage 
 of a higher and better life. We plant trees under 
 whose shadow those of other generations, perhaps 
 those of strange blood and speech, shall recline, and 
 
132 TIIOrOHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 from whose boughs they shall pluck the luscious fruit. 
 It is enough that we have hope that we are not labor- 
 ing in vain, but that some sensitive spirits will be the 
 better for our toil. Lift us to a higher plane of feel- 
 ing, associate us with loftier intelligences, bring us 
 into sympathy with God, and we are glad to operate 
 along the line of His Infinite plan, put our tiny drop 
 into the broad and sweeping river of His pui-poses as 
 it flows from His throne, circles through earth and 
 time, and disembogues in the vast ocean of eternity. 
 We work in God and for Him, and share in His 
 glorious and eternal 'designs, and our work is not and 
 cannot be in vain. 
 
 It is hardly extravagant or irreverent to say, that 
 even the Almghty, so rich in resources, can hardly 
 afford to suffer any labor done in and for Him to be 
 done in vain. Loyal souls cannot work for nought. 
 Like sweetest odors, their works must be condensed. 
 Like most precious seed, they must be cared for and 
 watched. Labor in the Lord at times seems to us the 
 most unproductive and discouraging of all work. Its 
 returns are slow, its effects often not seen, like seed 
 sown upon the waters, on whose retiring tides we 
 see it float away without waiting long enough upon 
 the shores to see it yielding a harvest after many 
 days. Faith does the work, and faith must see often 
 the distant harvest. But as God is true, our labor in 
 the Lord shall not be in vain. 
 
8PIEITUAL LABOR — ITS INCENTIVE AND REWARD. 133 
 
 Sometimes we see speedy returns — the labor and 
 its rewards are sundered by the narrowest space of 
 time. Seedtime chases the harvest, and both come 
 ahnost within the compass of a single day. How often 
 is the faithful laborer on the Sabbath, who takes the 
 fresh minds of his class, and plants in them the seed 
 of truth, watering it with his prayers and tears, per- 
 mitted to come bringing souls like precious sheaves 
 into the garner of God ! 
 
 Christian fathers and mothers ! toil and pray on. 
 Your labor in the Lord shall not be in vain. Sabbath 
 school teacher ! weary and discouraged at the long 
 delay, ply vigorously the instrumentalities put into 
 your hand. Your labor shall not be in vain, l^oth- 
 ing is so sure of success in the end as rightly directed 
 labor for the Master, well lubricated by prayer. A 
 worker in the spiritual realm who feels that his work 
 has no root, and will bring no fruit, will soon faint 
 and turn back. " God knoweth our frame." He 
 remembers our tendencies. Tlie inspiration of true, 
 lasting success in our special line of toil must be ours, 
 and w^e shall have it. We may know that our labor 
 shall not be in vain in the Lord. The man of the 
 world runs his risk. The man of God runs no risk. 
 Labor in the Lord is not in the realm of chance, but 
 under the pledge of sure success. 
 
XII. 
 
 ALL THINGS CONDUCING TO THE CHRISTIAN'S GOOD. 
 
 And we Mow that all things worJs together for good to them that 
 love God. — EoMANs viii. 28. 
 
 IT is remarkable to say of a creature so frail, and 
 subject to so many conflicting agencies as a single 
 man, tliat all things combine to work out his real 
 good ; but it is still more remarkable when we extend 
 the statement, and make it embrace a whole class of 
 men existing in different ages and lands — subject to 
 entirely different subordinate influences and circum- 
 stances. And yet the Apostle makes such a state- 
 ment. He says of a whole class, that all things work 
 together for their good. 
 
 This apostolic declaration will afford us a pleasant 
 and profitable theme of meditation, and it will be my 
 purpose to unfold its import, and to gather a few of 
 the rich thoughts which the language presents. 
 
 Let us observe the comprehensiveness of the state- 
 ment. All things shall work together for good. I 
 suppose the affirmation is to be taken in its most 
 literal terms. It is not loose, indefinite ; it is not 
 
 I 
 
ALL THINGS FOE THE CHRISTIAN'S GOOD. "^ 135 
 
 eimplj rhetorical language, which is not designed to 
 be pressed too close, to be cut to the quick. It is a 
 precise, literal statement, where every word has im- 
 port and deepens the meaning. All things outside 
 of the man, that come upon him without any moral 
 agency of his own, be they what they may, all com- 
 bine to secure his good if he love God. His birth, 
 looked at as to its time and place ; his position in life, 
 elevated or depressed ; his opportunities, many or few ; 
 his fortune, great or small, prosperous or adverse ; his 
 health or sickness ; his gains or losses ; his griefs or 
 joys — all work toward one grand result. To-day in 
 health, and with firm sinews and vigorous purpose, 
 he may be prosecuting on the fields of enterprise the 
 duties of a noble and true life ; to-morrow withdrawn 
 from the field of his activities, shut up in his home 
 and his solitary room, away from the haunts of busi- 
 ness, and the labors and doings that win notice and 
 applause, painful days and wakeful nights may be 
 assigned him. J^ow he may be in the full tide of 
 successful worldly experiment — ^house may be added 
 to house and ship to ship ; and anou, when deep sleep 
 has fallen upon man, the sudden conflagration may 
 burst out that shall consume his dwellings : or when 
 all is calm at home, the storm may be raging on the 
 distant sea that shall founder or wreck his ships. 
 Now, he may have his family and friends about him, 
 and he may be glad in their presence and smile ; and 
 
136* THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 anon, he may turn pale as tliey tremble on the brink 
 of eternity, or weep as they enter its dark domain, 
 and he is left to walk on his journey alone. He may 
 be emptied from vessel to vessel. The discipline of 
 Providence may be varied toward him — now he may 
 be taken to the heights and then down to the depths 
 of life, for he, no more than other men, is delivered 
 from the calamities of earth : — he like them is subject 
 to all its mutations and misfortunes. And yet, amid 
 all his changes, whether he walks the lowly or the 
 lofty path — whether he weeps or smiles — is sick or 
 well, — he has one and the same assurance ; he lives 
 with one blessed declaration ever before him, and ever 
 visible if he will but keep an open sense to see it : — 
 that " all things shall work together for his good." 
 
 It must be all things, all events, all changes and 
 all circumstances, for if any one were disengaged and 
 taken out from the mass, that might be the very one 
 that would come in to counteract all the rest, and 
 work effectively against them. If all other events 
 worked toward the good of a Christian pian, while a 
 sudden sickness or a severe loss came in to work 
 against him, then the sickness or the loss might prove 
 more potent than all the rest, and the result might be 
 evil and not good. There can be no perfect assurance 
 of good, unless all events in their combined influence 
 work toward good. The declaration then is to be 
 taken in its most wide and literal terms, that if we 
 
ALL THINGS FOR THE CHRISTIAN'S GOOD. 137 
 
 love our Maker, all the events of our individual life 
 work to the same issue. "Whatever has happened, 
 whatever may happen, all will conspire to secure one 
 result. 
 
 We shall do well to observe the entii^e unity of 
 aim that all things cherish. Thej work together. The 
 Apostle speaks as though they all were conscious, in- 
 telligent creatures, as though 'they were all capable 
 of thought and volition, and could enter into a last- 
 ing and friendly copartnership, could form one plan, 
 cherish one purpose. They work, and they work in 
 company. 
 
 It would be curious, though not with our capaci- 
 ties possible, to compute the diverse and innumer- 
 able influences and agencies that concentrate and 
 work upon any one single man, even the humblest 
 man of the race : the countless events, great or small, 
 that happen to him in his brief history : the changes 
 that are meted out to him. It is not in the power 
 of an angelic mind to comprehend all the agencies 
 that come to affect any one of us all. All past time — 
 all events, recorded or unrecorded, remembered or 
 forgotten, are at work silently upon us. Our j)ersonal 
 life is built up out of all the past. Everything that 
 has occurred in the centuries that have ffone, makes 
 us a little different. Every person that has lived has 
 cast abroad upon the world a tiny influence that 
 reaches all who come after him. As these material 
 
138 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAIT LIFE. 
 
 bodies draw the particles that compose them from 
 earth, air, and sea, as the single drop of blood that 
 circles now in my veins may have laid under contri- 
 bution all the continents and seas of earth ; so these 
 souls, these lives of ours draw succulence from all other 
 souls — all other lives. 
 
 Now it is not that all these subtile or obvious, 
 these great or small agencies — these events of our 
 lives, important or unimportant, work each apart 
 and alone for the good of the lovers of their God. 
 That were a thing most devoutly to be wished and 
 to be grateful for ; if each agency, each event, had a 
 separate and individual good- will toward them, and 
 worked with a single good pui-pose to bless them. 
 But this idea does not meet the fulness of the Apos- 
 tle's language. They all work — not alone — but to- 
 gether. They seem bent — not on doing us, if we love 
 God, what good they can alone. They are anxious to 
 combine their strength, to enter into companionship. 
 They conspire, flow together in a divine unity. They 
 are all harnessed like so many swift coursers of the 
 skies, each with all, and all with each, to draw us on 
 and up to good. This is the idea, outstanding and 
 prominent — ^the flowing together of all things, their 
 uniting like separate drops and rills trickling down 
 the mountain sides of Providence into one stream, on 
 whose current the lover of God is borne toward all 
 good. Mark again the force of the language and the 
 
blessedness of the tliouglit. " All things shall work 
 together^ 
 
 Observe again the goal, the end toward which 
 they work — '' work together for good to them that 
 love God." It is not that all events work toward 
 their present ease, or comfort, or worldly advantage, 
 toward their progress in wealth or honor. It were a 
 poor end to aim at — it were an unworthy purpose for 
 the world's events, so far as they reached and affected 
 an individual, to form themselves into a copartnership 
 to make him a little more easy and comfortable — to 
 give him a little better house, and richer equipage — 
 to make his name sound a little farther, and to hear 
 it uttered by a few more, and a little longer in the 
 world's history : while the man in his substantial 
 character was coming no more into obedience to the 
 great laws of the universe, was gaining nothing in 
 purity — richness — depth — power — his surroundings 
 more agreeable, but he himself no better. Providence 
 is not working, all history is not working, all the events 
 of six thousand years have not transpired, millions 
 upon millions have not lived — smiled — sighed — joyed 
 — suffered, and gone out of the world on chariots of 
 pain — Christ has not lived and died — in a word, aU 
 the influences that have been set a-going, in our world, 
 that are now operating upon each and all, are not 
 operating that any of us may be a little more refined 
 sort of animals, or that we may pass our days a little 
 
140 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 more prosperously. No. God has been and is work- 
 ing in this world to make men and women ; to regen- 
 erate, purify, cement, and build up human character : 
 in other words, God is working in human affairs and 
 events for the good of those that love Him, those that 
 are " called according to Btis purpose." We may be 
 working toward one end, God may be working toward 
 another and far different end. We may be pui-pos- 
 ing to build up a fortune or fame, and may be adapt- 
 ing means wisely to our purpose. God may have 
 called us to His glory and kingdom, and may come 
 right across our path, and dash all our well -laid 
 schemes to pieces like a potter's vessel. He may take 
 down all our airy castles, mock all our hopes, strip us 
 of all our property, check us on this hand and on that. 
 He may make it stormy where we had promised our- 
 selves a calm. He may snatch the last star out of 
 our sky, and wrap us in darkness, and we may say, 
 like one of old, "All these things are against me." 
 And they are against oar low and personal aims. 
 God means to make all things work together for onr 
 real and lasting good, and even we can see that that 
 often turns out for our good which we had regarded 
 as intending us evil. We may faint in our purpose 
 of following real good, but God holds us to it. K 
 we forget it. He has His own ways of reminding us 
 of it ; if we turn aside from it. He has His own ways 
 of drawing us back to it. The resources of God are 
 
 I 
 
 
141 
 
 infinite. All the world is His storehouse — all time 
 and all events His instruments. He works through, 
 all things, and in all His true friends, to secure their 
 real, eternal good. " All things work together for 
 good to them that love God." 
 
 Let us note what it is in a person — a class, that 
 causes all things to conspire in working out his and 
 their good — what is that magic power within, that 
 unites all things without in a holy combination to 
 secure our good. 
 
 It is simple love to God. This is not only a charm 
 to bear us harmless through all the dark events of 
 life ; it were much if it did this. But it does infinitely 
 more than this. It lays them all under contribution 
 to bless us. It draws them all into our service. It 
 puts, as it were, a new aim and purpose into them. 
 It inspires them all with a secret good- will toward us. 
 Though they may approach us fi'owningly, yet thejj 
 come to us as Haman did to Mordecai, to do us kingly 
 honors. It is love going up out of the human soul 
 — piercing the skies — resting in the Maker of all 
 things and the Governor of all events, that puts aU 
 things into an alembic, fuses them, and turns them 
 into gold. It is love that is master of all circumstan- 
 ces and events, of all men and things, of all history 
 and all the present, and unites them in blessed har- 
 mony in the active furtherance of our good, if we be 
 Christians. 
 
142 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 We sometimes tliink that love to God turns all 
 men and all things against ns ; and in a sense it does. 
 It does turn the world against ns. It does sometimes 
 shnt men np in prison and drive them to the martyr's 
 stake. It does bring pain, and groans, and tears. 
 And yet, looked at from the height of heaven, and 
 with eyes anointed with heavenly eye-salve, love 
 to God bows the world in homage to ns, makes its 
 devotees our servants, makes all the enemies of God 
 and His cause workers in conjunction, and when 
 they mean not so, for our spiritual and eternal good. 
 So that after all, love to God is not the timid slave, 
 but the master of the world : it is the golden thread 
 that passes through and around all events, and makes 
 them when otherwise they would not, subserve our 
 wisest wishes and our holiest ends. All things — this 
 we know under the light of Inspiration and the tuition 
 of the Spirit — " All things shall work together for 
 good .to those that love God." 
 
 Our subject teaches us first, where our chief care 
 — our great solicitudes should lie, what direction they 
 should take. We camiot control our birth, rank, 
 many of our outward circumstances. We are set 
 down here in this world amid its often conflicting 
 powers and agencies. It is not in us to marshal, bind, 
 and lead on events or men as we would wish. They 
 are out of our domain, and beyond our control. Our 
 care need not and should not be so much to govern as ; 
 
143 
 
 to get good out of them, and we do this when we love 
 God. Our care then should be to love God, here, in 
 our own souls. We have power, God helping us, over 
 our hearts. Love to God gives us the best possible 
 mastery over the outer world. Let ns love God, and 
 all events that we cannot govern — fulfil one office for 
 us. They do us good. 
 
 And we can see how great and good must be that 
 Being, how constant His presence and His watchful- 
 ness over us, when not the smallest event can oppose 
 His benevolent designs to His friends ! He must 
 watch and control the falliug of the sparrow, for with- 
 out this, even it might destroy us. How blessed to 
 be under the government and supervision of a Being 
 who works in all things — in all time — in all the uni- 
 verse, and makes all things work together for good to 
 those that love Him ! 
 
 The office of faith is to take God at His word ; 
 it is, with love in our hearts, to go out calmly into the 
 future so dark to us, believing that God is oiu' Guar- 
 dian, and that in ways to us unknown, the darkest 
 calamities of life will conspire with its brightest scenes 
 to do us good. 
 
XIII. 
 
 HUMAN JUDGMENTS CORRECT, AS OUR WILLS ACCORD 
 WITH GOD'S. 
 
 And my judgment is just ; because I seek not mine own will^ "but 
 the will of the Father which hath sent me. — John v. 30. 
 
 HEIST had just before affirmed tliat authority 
 to judge the world had been given Him of God, 
 and He here asserts that His judgment would be just, 
 because His will was subordinate to the Father's will. 
 Justice is a prime requisite in a judge. 'No one who 
 has not it deeply imbedded in his soul is fit for that 
 office. All gifts, all learning, cannot be substituted 
 for that. The glory departs from the seat of judg- 
 ment when that departs. Now Christ declares that 
 within the vast area of judgment assigned Him, cov- 
 ering a world and a race. His judgments would all be 
 just, because His own will was subordinate, and His 
 Father's supreme. Were His will out of harmony with 
 God's, did it not play into it sweetly and constantly, 
 He would be unfitted for judgment ; the destiny of the 
 race would be unsafe in His hands. When we leave 
 Christ, and come down to men, it is no less true that 
 
WHEN HUMAN JUDGMENTS ARE CORRECT. 145 
 
 their judgments are just in proportion as tliey seek, 
 not their own will, but that of the Father. 
 
 This then is our theme. Human judgments just, as 
 our wills are in harmony with God's. 
 
 It is obvious to premise that Christ's judgments 
 occupy a different sphere — a vastly broader and loftier 
 one than ours ; — His wide, sweeping over time and 
 space, peremptory, decisive ; ours narrow, fallible, 
 and subject to review ; — His embracing a race with 
 their eternal destiny ; ours concerned with the smaller 
 matters mainly of individual life. But within our 
 legitimate circuits, with reference to the subjects and 
 interests they include, our judgments, like Christ's, 
 are and can be only just, correct, true, as our wills are 
 in a line with God's. Christ has His sphere of judg- 
 ment, we have ours. Our judgments are interlocked 
 at least with our own destiny, often with the destiny 
 of others. Our judgments of men and things, of great 
 and important questions and interests, of practical 
 duties, often decide our course, our position in life, 
 our character, our influence, our immortal condition. 
 Limited as they may relatively be in their scope, they 
 are yet as signilicant as we and our destinies are. 
 How shall they be true ? Answer : As we seek not 
 our own will, but God's. 
 
 We have to form judgments of men. We are set 
 down among them, we are intervolved with them, 
 we have to do with them, we carry on society, busi- 
 1 
 
146 THOUGHTS FOB THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. _ 
 
 ness, governments, with them, we cannot escape them* ] 
 And we have to scratmize them narrowly, for they 
 are a strange mixture of good and bad, small and 
 great, mean and generous. We cannot put them into 
 one category, and cover them with one general title, 
 and treat them in one general way. We have to dis- 
 criminate wisely, nicely, pry into shades of character, 
 go below the surface, penetrate to the subsoil, turn 
 up the interior as best we may to the light, and exam- 
 ine them through and tlirough. Much of the success, " 
 the peace, the comfort of life will be dependent on our 
 judgments of men. Venturing out among men is 
 very much like sailing among waters where rocks are 
 thick, and blind venturing will not do. How shall 
 we judge men truly and well ? ]S"ot with a vulpine 
 cunning — not with a shallow suspicion — ^not with a 
 bitter censoriousness — and not with an easy credulity 
 which takes words for deeds, and surface for charac- 
 ter ; but with a will running in divine grooves, and , 
 with eyes that are burnished with divine eye-salve, 
 His judgments of men are most just who can say with] 
 Christ, " I seek not mine own will, but the will of] 
 the Father which hath sent me." 
 
 We have to form judgments of the relative value] 
 of things, the present and the future, the near anc 
 far-off, the visible and invisible. Every man must 
 and does form practical judgments here. He soon 
 learns that he is not stationary, that he is upon a tide, 
 
WHEN HUMAN JUDGMENTS ARE CORRECT. 147 
 
 sweeping on with all the world to one great termimis 
 where he and all pass out of sight, drop into dark- 
 ness. He has to consult the present and the future, 
 anticipate the future and provide for it. He learns 
 that this life is not the end — that there is a life be- 
 yond demanding his thoughts and his solicitudes, and 
 he must determine whether he will heed the voices, 
 listen to the w^arnings of the future and invisible. 
 He must — he does form some practical judgments on 
 the relative importance of the present and the future, 
 and of the treasures to be laid up in the one or the 
 other or both. He must — he does decide whether he, 
 as an individual man, will act with reference to the 
 great hereafter, to an opening eternity ; or whether 
 he will close up that hereaftei*, that eternity, and act 
 as though earth were all. In every mind there are 
 forming or are formed practical judgments on these 
 things. How shall these judgments be true ? Into 
 what position shall a man come w^here he will be most 
 likely to strike a proper balance between the two in- 
 terests, the two worlds, and appreciate both according 
 to their relative value ? Answer : When like Christ he 
 can say, " I seek not mine own will, but the will of 
 the Father which hath sent me." 
 
 We are summoned to form judgments of God, of 
 Christ, of the Bible and its contents. Every man who 
 has heard of these must do so. " What think ye of 
 tliese ? " is the query, that steals in or thunders, or at 
 
148 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 least knocks more or less loudly at the door of every 
 man's sonl. If we are to stand at God's bar for judg- 
 ment finally, it is no less true that God stands at our 
 bar for judgment now. So with Christ, so with the 
 Bible, so with all spiritual realities. We have our 
 own souls given us, and with them we must form — all 
 due aids being furnished us indeed if sought — our 
 judgments of these glorious personages and interests. 
 I cannot borrow your soul to form my estimate of 
 these, nor you mine. I cannot go up into heaven and 
 get the loan of Gabriel's faculties, his excursive pow- 
 ers, his insight, and with them gain a vision of God, 
 and of Jesus, and divine truth. God comes to me 
 as I am, comes to see what I will think of Him and 
 His. I have but my own tiny mirror in which to 
 collect the beams of His glory. My thought of Him 
 and His may be narrow, circumscribed, shallow at 
 best, but it must be mine and not another's. It is 
 not more true that this eye of mine must be lifted to 
 the heavens, and take in what of their grandeur it 
 can, than it is that this soul of mine must be lifted 
 into God, into His mighty truths, and take in what 
 of these it can. It may see and embrace more or less 
 than another ; but it must see and embrace for itself, 
 not for another. What I think of these may be one 
 thing, what you think may be another ; but our 
 thought must be our own, it must be the action of our 
 own soul, the result of its sight and apprehension. 
 
WHEN HUMAN JUDGMENTS ARE COKRECT. 140 
 
 "Now again the question comes : How shall onr 
 thought of these, our judgments about them be true ? 
 Answer : When we can say with Jesus, " I seek not 
 mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath 
 sent me." 
 
 We have judgments to form of practical duties in 
 life — what we personally shall do, where go and stay, 
 how much give, how order life in its details, so that 
 amid all its breakages and entanglements, it shall yet 
 preserve a imity and beauty. This is not an easy 
 thing. No one that understands men will deem it so. 
 A due measure of the force of a wise man's thought 
 will be spent on these questions ; it will be happy for 
 him if much of the impetus and energy of life are not 
 exhausted in winding his way among these questions 
 of casuistry. Indeed, some men are so absorbed in 
 questions about what they shall do, that they do noth- 
 ing. Life has all the force taken out of it by the en- 
 tertainment of these petty and thorny scrupulosities. 
 Let a man put his life under the supervision of con- 
 science at all, and he needs a clear judgment to make 
 conscience a silent, mighty, unconscious power within 
 him — loved and cherished, and not a master feared 
 and dreaded. Now how shall our judgments on these 
 questions of daily duty be true and reliable ? how 
 shall we move off and on in life under our own de- 
 cisions, without ever reverting to the past, going back 
 to the starting-point, and querying whether we were 
 
150 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 right, agonizingly reliving the past in the attempt to 
 better live the future ? Answer again : By saying 
 with Christ, '' I seek not mine own will, but the will 
 of the Father which sent me." 
 
 On all these points, and on others not specified, 
 where we must and do form practical judgments, we 
 can have the best assurance that they are just when 
 we are seeking in our separate acts, not our own will 
 but the wdll of the Father. 
 
 But that our judgments on all these questions are 
 and must be most true and reliable when we are in the 
 line of the Divine will, will appear from two general 
 considerations : 
 
 First. We are then in the best internal state to 
 form correct judgments. A wide observation of men, 
 a wide survey of history, leads to the conviction that 
 the practical judgments of men are not true always 
 in the direct ratio of their greatness, of their intellec- 
 tual breadth and enlargement ; much less of their , 
 energy of will and action. It ought to be so. The ! 
 rule should be this. Given a man's power of compre- 
 hension, and then you have the measure of the value 
 of his judgments on all affairs appertaining to human 
 life. But it would be a fatal mistake so to conclude. 
 Perhaps if we were called upon to select from the 
 mass of men those that have erred most fatally ii 
 their practical judgments of life, we should select 
 some who have been the richest in endowment an< 
 
WHEN HUMAN JUDGMENTS AEE COIIRECT. 151 
 
 most forcible in action. A man's largeness may be 
 a temptation to shoot off into erratic courses. Napo- 
 leon has been thought by many to be the most gifted 
 in certain directions of all mortals, but no man erred 
 more fatally in his estiiAates of men and things. He 
 swept through Europe in as mad defiance of the laws 
 of man and society as if he had attempted to subvert 
 the laws of matter. He attempted things that a 
 million of men could have told him were utterly im- 
 practicable. I might admire the man who with giant 
 and unequalled muscle should hurl a stone beyond my 
 sight into the sky ; but I should deem him no less a 
 fool for all his might, if he should think that he was 
 mightier than the silent laws. When the Babylonian 
 monarch prostrates a whole empire with all the gifted 
 spirits in it, except three Jewish youth, before the 
 image he has set up, it may indicate his power, but it 
 is no token of his wisdom. I call him a wise man 
 who perceives the paths that God opens to him, and 
 walks in tliem silently and quietly ; not him who 
 breaks against the barriers that God has reared 
 around him, and wins notice by the noise he makes 
 in the concussion. 
 
 Now when a man is in the line of the Divine will, 
 he is in just that state that enables him to see the 
 paths opened for him to walk in — the courses he 
 should take — the localities he should occupy — the 
 things he should do. His passions are subordinated 
 
152 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHKISTLAJN LIFE. 
 
 to law, and send up no impenetrable fogs to obscure 
 liis sight ; liis will is not driving him with impatient 
 haste into wrong theatres of action ; he has no selfish 
 ends to subserve. He is ready, willing, anxious to see 
 what he should do, with his gifts, and in his position. 
 His judgments will be right because his eye will be 
 single. Subjecting his will in all meekness, he will 
 not be projecting his judgments out into theatres and 
 off upon subjects that God has not brought before him 
 for his judgment to act upon at all. With respect to 
 what lies outside his sphere, he will behave himself 
 like " a weaned child," not prying into things too 
 high or too deep, but walking on his own level, bring- 
 ing his powers to bear upon topics that are brought 
 within his beat ; while a child, content to think and 
 judge as a child. 
 
 But, Secondly : E'ot only will one whose will is in 
 the line of the Divine will be in the best internal state 
 to judge truly and correctly, but he will have the best 
 external helps, and will be in the best possible posi- 
 tion to judge so. Even if we would judge of material 
 things rightly, we must occupy the right position as 
 well as have a clear vision. There is one point where 
 a landscape stands out in its loveliest aspect, and all 
 its beauty or grandeur comes gleaming in upon your 
 soul. You gaze upon it elsewhere, and its glory is 
 gone. There is a position in the moral and spiritual 
 realm where the whole moral and spiritual landscape 
 
WHEN HUMAN JIDGMKNTS ARE COKRECT. 153 
 
 shines in upon us, and that position is a sweet har- 
 mony of our wills with that of God. 
 
 Moreover, there are helps enabling our powers to 
 act most successfully in the discovery of truth — in the 
 formation of our practical judgments over the whole 
 area that our duties cover. It is no less a truth of 
 piety than it is a profound apothegm in j^hilosophy, 
 that " in God's light w^e see light ; " just as in the 
 material world we not only need a clear eye and a 
 right position if we would see, but the sun shining in 
 his brightness. '' God is our Sun ; He makes our 
 day." 
 
 Wc see all truth and all duty only as we see them 
 in His light. We get into line with God, and God 
 shines in upon us. AYe see. Our powers work in 
 tlieir proper medium. They are balanced. They are 
 in Jiarmony with each other and with God. We pass 
 in will out of God, and it is like light attempting to 
 bend around an angle, or to penetrate into a cavern 
 to meet our vision. We come in will into harmony 
 with God, and it is like standing out under the broad 
 cope of heaven on some hilltop, with the glories of 
 high noon bathing the encompassing panorama. Our 
 judgments are true because we are furnished with 
 Divine aids for judgment. 
 
 A single practical remark in conclusion. It is 
 this — that our practical judgments that cover the 
 sphere of our daily duties are dependent nut on great 
 
154 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 endowments, or favorable opportiinifies, or high po- 
 sition, but on a simple subjection of our wills to the 
 Father's will. As no two men have the same gifts 
 or positions, so no two men are called upon to have 
 the same precise judgments ; but if I in my sphere 
 fall into harmony with God, in other words, if my 
 will is right, my judgment may be right also. The 
 Everlasting Son of God sitting in assize upon a world 
 could not fulfil His function of judgment except as 
 His will was that of the Father which sent Him. 
 
 I in mine, you in your lowly sphere, where we are 
 called for decisions vastly less important and yet 
 greatly influential upon ourselves and others, may 
 have our decisions true also in the same way. Get 
 into line, and then judge. See in God — not out of 
 Him, and you will see correctly. Life will be order- 
 ly, symmetrical ; the minor judgments as w^ell as the 
 greater will \>q judgments^ not notions — ^judgments on 
 which you may act as the mariner acts upon his ob- 
 servations, sailing over dark seas, trusting lives to 
 them. 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE INTEGRITY OF THE DIVINE JUDGE. 
 
 Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right .?— Genesis xviii. 25. 
 
 THE immediate connection in whicli tliis question 
 is asked by Abraham, I sliall not stop to con- 
 sider. It is a general question. The soul of man is 
 often tempted to ask it with some doubt as to the 
 manner in which it shall be answered. In such a 
 world as this, where there is so nnich wrong and so 
 much suffering — where we so often pass under the 
 cloud, and see no sun and no star for many days — we 
 are sometimes tempted to pass clear up to the throne 
 of God, and lay the question down before the Eternal, 
 and ask if even He will always do right. 
 
 There are two ways in which we may answer or 
 attempt to answer this question. We may go into an 
 extended investigation of the ways and doings of God 
 — beginning in doubt as to the answer we shall gain. 
 We may bring the doings of God down to our own 
 ideas — attempt to weigh them in our own balances, 
 and thus seek to establish our conclusions as to the 
 righteousness of God. AVe may start as true Baco- 
 
156 THOUGHTS for the christian life. 
 
 nian philosophers with no theory upon tlie point what- 
 ever — with a determination to search after facts — after 
 the Divine doings, and frame om' theory to meet our 
 facts — resolved to settle our theories of God as we do 
 our theories of science — resolved to admit nothing till 
 we have examined and weighed our facts. This is 
 one way — the way of demonstration. In this way we 
 hold our judgment in complete abeyance, till we have 
 gone through our investigations ; we withhold our con- 
 fidence till our heads have gone through their logical 
 23rocesses. We are absolutely without a God in 
 w^hom we can trust till we have surveyed the Divine 
 doings widely, and sifted and settled them well. 
 
 But the question may be interposed here : How 
 far shall we investigate the Divine doings before we 
 come to our conclusion — how far shall we go back in 
 the history of the past — how wide incursions shall we 
 make into the empire of God — shall we limit our- 
 selves to the Divine doings here upon the earth, or 
 shall we scale the heavens, and seek to know what 
 He is doing in other departments of His domin- 
 ions ? What facts — how many of the doings of Deity 
 must we know and weigh, before we shall settle it 
 that He will do right ? How long shall we remain 
 without a God before we shall settle it that we have a 
 God ? You perceive at once that this way of deter- 
 mining the righteousness of God, by demonstration — 
 of reaching the heart through the head, is a very long 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE DIVINE JUDGE. 157 
 
 one. Some would require years to reach tlieir con- 
 clusions, and some, we fear, would be without God 
 from necessity all their days ; for the soul that has no 
 confidence that God will do right, is to all intents and 
 pui-poses without God. 
 
 But there is a far better way. It is to start with 
 the confidence that God will do right : it is to bound 
 up and stand on that lofty and solid platform at once : 
 — to begin all our investigations into the ways and 
 works of God — to go out into the dark paths of the 
 universe with this conviction. All sciences have tlieir 
 first principles — their axiomatic truths. Even the 
 mathematics have theirs. The most sceptical investi- 
 gator that will never advance an inch without clear- 
 ing his path before him, must start with some things 
 admitted. And in theology too, there are axiomatic 
 truths that we must stand on and start on, to stand 
 and start at all, and this is one of them : The Judge 
 of all the earth will do right. 
 
 Tliis we may regard as one of the intuitions of the 
 human soul. It has been a question with wise men, 
 whether a belief in the existence of a God is planted 
 in the human soul — down among its very foundations, 
 and wi'onght into its entire structure. It is sufliciont 
 for all practical purposes to say, that the idea of the 
 Divine existence is suggested in germ at least, as soon 
 as our faculties are quickened — as soon as we begin to 
 look out upon nature, to commune with it — to think 
 
168 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and feel. We say, in germ, for the idea of the Divine 
 existence like other ideas, is dim and shadowy at 
 first ; but we believe there is no moment when a 
 healthy, well-adjusted soul is left without this idea. 
 An utter absence of it is a species of insanity. Now 
 we say that as soon as this idea of the Divine exist- 
 ence rises in the soul — its light and glory — its richest, 
 best possession, — so soon does the idea of the Divine 
 righteousness rise with it, and become a part of it. 
 We name it an intuition of the soul — it springs up spon- 
 taneously — prior to all demonstrations, and we may 
 add too, it is the basis of all demonstrations ; so that 
 it requires no lengthened investigations to prove it. 
 The learned man has no particular advantages in this 
 respect over the ignorant. If it depended on demon- 
 strations, the educated would have it, the ignorant 
 would be wholly without it. But it is an intuition 
 — we start with it — we build our beliefs upon that 
 as a foundation. We are all afloat — a fleck of foam 
 gliding on the current, till we have this belief : " The 
 Judge of all the earth will do right." I fix this con- 
 viction, then, among the intuitions of the human soul. 
 But the idea being there in all right minds alike 
 almost, it^ like other ideas, may wdden and deepen 
 with time and thought. Mark the corrdboraticni which 
 the idea gains in the mind of Abraham from the posi- 
 tion of God : The Judge of all the earth. He is a 
 Judge. Place one in the position of a judge, and we 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE DIVINE JUDGE. 159 
 
 anticipate at once the clear shining out in him of the 
 principles of right. These first and most. He is in 
 that position to discriminate between right and wrong 
 — to give righteous judgment. The Bench is the last 
 spot that we expect to be invaded by passion or cor- 
 ruption. When the waves of passion sweep over a 
 community, threatening a universal deluge, then we 
 hope to see the seats of justice rising aloft above the 
 waves, like mountain peaks, shining clear and bright, 
 with a transcendent spirit of right. We look to them 
 as the last resort — if they are submerged, hope dies. 
 
 This expectation that a Judge will do right, is not, 
 in most civilized communities, disappointed. There 
 may be weakness, prejudice, misconception among 
 judges as among other men, but they meet, ordinarily, 
 the demands of their position. The exceptions stand 
 out in lonely and terrible conspicuity in the history 
 of nations. Bacon, as a philosopher, has won the 
 plaudits of the world — but Bacon, as a judge, — as one 
 who tarnished the ermine he wore, is a hissing and a 
 by-word ; — the greatest — wisest — meanest of man- 
 kind. Now God is a Judge, and shall not He do 
 right ? 
 
 He is the Judge too of all the earth. Other judges 
 have a narrow, circumscribed field. They corrupt 
 judgment, and a District, State, Province, suffers tem- 
 porarily, till impeachment or death removes them. 
 But here is a Judge not of a State or nation, but of 
 
160 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 all tlie earth — a Judge not for a day, or year, but for 
 all time ; — the Judge of those who lived beyond the 
 flood — of those now upon the earth, and of all coming 
 millions. Shall not He do right ? 
 
 His position demands of Him at least right. Right 
 — right — this is the first and great demand — this is 
 the granite basis on which all government, human 
 and Divine, must build itself up. Right first and 
 most. Right or else nothing — it before generosity — 
 before mercy — before leniency. We abjure and dis- 
 card a generosity that acts before righteousness. We 
 must have this first. This would be a bleak and 
 unattractive world if there were only granite clifi's 
 raising their dark, weather-beaten heads to the sky. 
 It is no pleasant sight to sail along our coast, and see 
 those frowning battlements that nature has built to 
 set bounds to the sea ; but what would the world be 
 without them ? And so, it would be a bald, unat- 
 tractive character, that should only have one great, 
 all-ruling idea ; — right — right at foundation — right 
 before — right behind — right around and above — 
 nothing but right. You want more, but you want 
 this, or all that is graceful and attractive about a man^ 
 ' — his foliage and flowers, is of nothing worth. You 
 want right in the man — more in the judge — most of 
 all in the Judge of all the earth. 
 
 MarTc again^ the peculiar turpitude of one with 
 God's powers, and in His position, if He should not 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE DIVINE JUDGE. 161 
 
 do right. Man failing to do right, and Deity failing 
 to do right, are two very different beings morally esti- 
 mated. Man fails to do right often out of weakness 
 — under the pressure of severe temptation. He may 
 bend to wrong as the osier bends to the blast, and 
 may recover himself w^hen the blast is past. He may 
 do wrong, not for wrong's sake — not from pure malice, 
 but from impulse, passion ; but if God even in one 
 single instance in the history of His creation does 
 wrong, He must do it out of mere love of it. He 
 never fails to discriminate accurately between right 
 and wrong, and He can be subject to no temptation 
 to do w^rong. He has no new power, no new position 
 to gain by it. He is on the pinnacle now. He can 
 rise no higher — ^be no greater. He is utterly and 
 eternally elevated above the temptation to do wrong ; 
 if He fails to do right in any instance, it must be out 
 of pure malice ; so that he is as much worse 
 than a man who should fail to do right, as His 
 greater knowledge, power, position, and His entire 
 elevation above all possible temptation combined, 
 could make Him. 
 
 Consider, too, the awfulness of the contrary suppo- 
 sition — that He might not do right. Look at His 
 power — infinite : look at His position — the Judge of 
 all the earth — having us and our destiny entirely in 
 His hands, with no possibility of escape : for " whither 
 can we flee from His presence? if we go up into 
 
162 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHEISTTAN LIFE. 
 
 heaven, He is there — if we make our bed in hell, He 
 is there — if we take the wings of the morning and 
 dwell in the uttermost part of the sea," His right hand 
 is over us to grasp and hold us. Consider such a 
 Being — in such a position, and then admit the pos- 
 sibility that He might not do right ; and it would 
 be enough to cover the heavens with sackcloth — 
 quench the light of every star — muffle the world 
 in darkness — send all its dwellers shrinking to their 
 graves. 
 
 If God may not do right — if He may do wrong, 
 He will do it on the grandest scale. He has a uni- 
 verse for His theatre — He has eternity for His scope — 
 He has all beings as His objects. 'No destiny so joyous 
 under such a condition of things, and yet no destiny 
 so utterly hopeless as entire annihilation, for if He is 
 disposed to do wrong at all, on whom shall He in- 
 flict the wrong but upon us, and how shall He permit 
 us to lie down in insensibility, when, if He did so. He 
 would fail utterly of beings to injure? Upon the 
 very presumption for a moment, that He might do 
 wrong with its awful results, the mind swings back 
 with a peremj)tory decisiveness to the conclusion — 
 the Judge of all the earth will do right. 
 
 This being assumed, two or three inferences will 
 follow : And, Mrst : whatever wrong there is in this 
 world God has not done it. There is wrong — great 
 wrong — done to thousands — millions. Nations have 
 
THE INTEGKITY OF THE DIVINE JUDGE. 163 
 
 been crushed under it. Its iron heel has trodden otlt 
 the life of myriads. Wrong is now npon the earth. 
 It worries and devours the innocent. Its voices fill 
 the air. The groans of its victims have entered into 
 the ear of heaven. There lie in ocean's caves — there 
 sleep in silent burial-places its countless victims ; but 
 God has not done it. No one can bear the challenge 
 up to Him, and say He did it. He is cl^ar of all re- 
 sponsible connection with it. He neither has, nor 
 ever had anything to do with it, in the way of origin- 
 ating or sustaining it. Be the soul forever swept 
 clear of all sly, subtle suspicions, which, like birds of 
 evil omen, hover in its outskirts, that God has done 
 directly or indirectly any of the wrong that goes to 
 make up so much of human history. 
 
 Second. If the Judge of all the earth shall do 
 right, then we have only to settle what God does, and 
 we may at once pronounce it right. We need go 
 througli no extended process of investigation, we need 
 not weigh it in our diminutive balances, and see if it 
 will tally with our narrow views of right. JSTo ! once 
 separate what man does from what God does — leave 
 us the doings of God in their simplicity, and then we 
 may put to our seal that they arc all right. We have 
 but to ask what the Divine Being does, and when we 
 liave searched it, we inscribe right upon it in broad 
 and legible characters. We may not be able alwa^'s 
 to see how it squares with the rule of right — neither 
 
164 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 i^ this necessary. We are to know by inquiring what 
 He does, and before it we are to sit down with the 
 simplicity of children. To mount by a bound to the 
 belief that He does and will do right in all time and 
 in all eternity, is one thing ; to bring His doings in 
 their vast sweep, in their infinite combinations 
 down to our ideas of right, may I e quite another 
 thing. 
 
 Third. If the Judge of all the earth shall do 
 right, then it follows, that He is concerned that othoj's 
 shall do right within the limits of His jurisdiction. 
 A judge is the guardian of right within the precincts 
 assigned him by the proper authorities. !No wrong 
 can be inflicted with which he has and can hive no 
 concern. Now God is the Judge, not only of other 
 worlds, but, what now more immediately concerns us — 
 He is the Judge of all the earth. All the earth — in 
 all stages of its history — from its first day to its last, is 
 within His jurisdiction. To right the wrongs of earth 
 is His work, for He is its Judge. No one can escape 
 Him. His authority covers the earth. No one can 
 do wrong afar off upon the silent sea — down in the 
 dark dungeon — out upon the lonely plantation — up 
 in the secret chamber — nor in the solitude of the heart, 
 without being held to answer for it at the Tribunal 
 of this Judge. No wrong will eventually go unpun- 
 ished except through repentance, and a longing hold 
 upon the hope of the Gospel. There is indeed one 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF THE DIVINE JUDGE. 165 
 
 covert from the storm and the tempest, — the over- 
 arching canopy of Christ's atonement. Flee nnder 
 it and you are safe. Stand out in the open plain, and 
 on every wrong-doer shall descend at length the gath- 
 ered wrath — the fearful condemnation of Ilim who is 
 the Judge of all the earth. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE FIXED HEART. 
 
 My heart isjixed^ God^ my heart is Jixed^ I will sing and give 
 upraise, — Psalm Ivii. 7. 
 
 THE heart is the seat of the emotions, feelings, 
 preferences. It rules the entire soul and di- 
 rects the entire life. As the heart is, so is the man. 
 If it is good, he is good, if bad, he is bad. If it is 
 fixed he is fixed ; if wavering, he is wavering. The 
 heart is fixed when in its feelings, its central choices 
 and constant preferences, it is settled, firm ; when it 
 is not drawn to temporary and opposite choices ; when 
 its whole drift and current sweep ever in one direc- 
 tion. 
 
 The heart may be fijsed wrong, and often is. It 
 may choose wrong objects, and run in evil channels, 
 and may know no waverings in its choice of the evil. 
 It may be set toward the bad and away from good — 
 toward self and away from God — toward earth and 
 away from heaven and eternity. It may have passed 
 into the chronic state of earthliness and ungodliness. 
 
 I 
 
MY HEART IS FIXED. 167 
 
 may be fixed with an iron rigidity in evil which noth- 
 ing can remove or even start. There it is, the same 
 firm thing, changing not while years come and go, or 
 if it change it changes only to a sterner fixedness — or 
 a more settled composure in worldliness. Many a 
 man of earth may adopt the language of the Psalmist 
 and say, " My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed, 
 ■ — to earth and sin so fast that nothing can change 
 it ! " All the powers of the world to come, the love 
 of God, the mercy of Jesus, the songs of heaven, the 
 wailings of despair, cannot unsettle it, and turn it away 
 from its objects. It is awful when the heart is thus 
 fixed, — so fixed that nothing that has come or prob- 
 ably will come from God will alter it. 
 
 And there is a fearful tendency in every unre- 
 newed heart to become thus fixed. Things work 
 toward that end. Many influences combine to bring 
 it about. Little by little, every passing day, the 
 heart adjusts itself to the world — nestles down into 
 it as its bed and home. Things that once alarmed 
 and shook it, soon shake it no more. Common or 
 startling providences, sudden sicknesses or deaths, 
 warm appeals, stirring warnings, that once sent it to 
 a sleepless couch, soon jostle it not in its fixed centre. 
 The heart is fixed, but fixed wrong — in a most dread- 
 ful stupidity and earthliness. 
 
 But on the other hand, the heart may be fixed 
 right. It may be settled in its preferences for good, 
 
168 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAJS^ LIFE. 
 
 for God and holiness ; may be bent determinately, 
 once and forever toward these. Amid prevailing 
 surrounding worldliness and sin, even amid the shocks 
 of severe temptations, it may know no wavering. 
 You may come and go, and it remains the same, ex- 
 cept that it is fixed firmer and firmer in its preferences 
 and choice of God and good. It has a settled and in- 
 creasing proclivity toward good and away from sin. 
 And as in the case of the unrenewed heart, so in the 
 case of the renewed heart, there is a tendency toward 
 fijxedness. Things in its case work toward that issue. 
 It is under influences that impel it to a settled state. 
 More and more the heart of the good man works its 
 diverging, discordant tendencies out of itself, and its 
 tendencies to unity into itself. It wavers less and 
 less, and becomes fixed and firm more and more, til] 
 at length the good man can often say with the Psalm- 
 ist, " My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed — ii 
 the love and service of Thee, in sweet confidence 
 Thee, and in all Thy ways ! " It is a great and bless 
 ed thing to have the heart thus fixed in the love am 
 trust of God and of good. 
 
 The heart thus fixed is cahn and peaceful. It hi 
 taken its side for an eternity, and taken the side, tooj 
 which will increasingly satisfy all the best powers oi 
 the soul when they are quickened to their highest ac- 
 tivity. There can be no peace while the spirit is un- 
 settled, while it is driven hither and thither by hostile 
 
MY HEART IS FIXED. 169 
 
 agencies, the sport of conflicting winds — now con- 
 quered by this, and anon by that. Not infrequently 
 you see persons temporarily occupying that point 
 where the tides of influence from the two opposite 
 worlds meet and conflict. They are subject to both, 
 and yield permanently to neither. Sometimes they 
 are drawn by the current heavenward, and are tempt- 
 ed to abandon all, and seek Christ and the salva- 
 tion of their souls ; and then they are sucked under 
 by the current that draws earthward, and are tempted 
 to yield all, and choose their portion here, risking 
 the life to come. Sometimes one is kept in this 
 place where the two seas meet, for days and months, 
 and while there he is wretched. But the heart can- 
 not bear this conflict, this wavering, unsettled state. 
 It demands decision one way or the other. It must 
 take its side — ^must come over upon the side of God 
 or of the world, and it usually does this very soon, 
 when brought to the point where it must choose be- 
 tween the two. It chooses God or the world, and so 
 reaches calmness and peace of some kind by its 
 choice. But real peace cannot be gained by having 
 the heart fixed in opposition to God. " The wicked 
 are like the troubled sea which cannot rest." The 
 heart must be fixed the right way, and on the right 
 side to gain peace that will last. It is when it is fixed 
 in and upon God that it can sing and give praise. It 
 is tuned to real harmony and joy only then. 
 8 
 
170 THOUGHTS FOK THE CUEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 It is not till the heart is fixed that it can grow 
 rapidly and constantly '' Unstable as water, thoii 
 shalt not excel." There is no increasing excellence 
 to th$ man whose heart is unsettled — driven hither 
 and thither, now yielding to this object and anon to 
 that. Excellence, growth in good comes of perma- 
 nence. All things require this if we would have 
 them grow. The trees of the forest — the plants in 
 our gardens can only grow and come to perfection, 
 as we allow them to continue where they are, in 
 friendly and rich soil. We pluck them up, change 
 them from point to point, to dwarf and perhaps kill 
 them. So with the heart ; it must be fixed in its 
 choices — must take its side once for all, if it would 
 grow more and more into the likeness of Christ. It 
 must have time and opportunity to send down its 
 roots into its own soil, and gather succulence from a 
 wide extent of its own peculiar domain. The heart 
 that is unfixed, wavering, not knowing where it shall 
 find itself on the morrow, — the mere target of cir- 
 cumstance and accident, — having no root in itself — 
 no power of selecting and retaining its position, — de- 
 pendent on outward influence — the slave of mere 
 events, cannot advance in excellence. It is the bond- 
 servant of its own or another's whim or pleasure. 
 It has no choice affected by truth and a sense of duty. 
 It has to beg leave to be where it is, of fitful mood 
 or passion, its own or another's. It ever lives upon 
 
MY HEART IS FIXED. 171 
 
 the surface, strikes down no roots, is liable to be 
 overturned by every passing breeze. Such a heart is 
 doomed to impotence and babyhood, — can never 
 grow to man's estate. It is the fixed heart only that 
 can gather strength to itself, and grow up to the 
 stature of a perfect one in Christ. 
 
 The heart that is fixed is alone prepared for the 
 temptations and conflicts of life. Goodness of every 
 degree, great or small, cannot escape opposition in 
 such a world as this. It must be ready to prove its 
 mettle and power. It must beg no simple leave to be, 
 must borrow no indulgence of its enemies. It will 
 not gain it. It must stand, because under God it has 
 strength to stand — must exist, because it has a right 
 to exist. No goodness lives because its opponents 
 permit it to do so. It must have a standing here for 
 other reasons than those derived from their kindness 
 and forbearance. It must prove its right and power 
 to be where it is. But it is only the heart that is 
 fixed on God and goodness, that is rooted and ground- 
 ed in the truth, that is prepared to meet opposition 
 and endure conflict, only such a heart that can stand 
 when its enemies assail. The rock in the midst of 
 the ocean, or the cliff or headland that juts out into 
 it, does not abide in its locality because the waves are 
 lenient to it, and calm their rage when they approach 
 it. It borrows no leave of them to stay where it does. 
 It stands there in lusty defiance of them, because it 
 
1T2 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 has power to laugh at their rage. It is fixed on its 
 deep foundations, and the waves of centuries may beat 
 against it, but they move it not. So the heart of the 
 good man in such a world as ours must rely not at 
 all on the leniency of its foes, upon their indisposition 
 to attack and conquer. That rock might as well ap- 
 peal to the forbearance of the sea ; or the ship that 
 rides its waves might as well send out its moaning 
 prayer to the tempests to spare it. The sea will rend 
 that rock from its base if it can ; — the tempests will 
 send that ship upon the breakers, or down to un- 
 known depths if they can. Between them and the 
 ship it is a simple question, which is the stronger. 
 
 And so it is a question between the regenerate 
 heart and its foes, which is the stronger, all things 
 considered. There can indeed be no question which 
 is the mightier, apart and alone. The poor heart of 
 man could maintain no conflict with its foes, relying 
 on itself. It is only as it is based on God, and relies 
 on Him, that it can stand a moment in opposition to 
 them. To them it will owe nothing. If it ever con- 
 quers them, strikes through them, and reaches its 
 home, it will not be by any weak appeal to their pity. 
 It must defy them, but only in the name of the Lord. 
 Fixed in Him as the rock is fixed on its deep founda- 
 tions — fixed in Him, having its roots struck into God, 
 grasping Him as the oak in the pasture has struck its 
 roots deep, and sent them wide, grasping perhaps 
 
MY HEART IS FIXED. 173 
 
 some giant rock beneath the surface, thus, and thus 
 only can it stand in the day of conflict. The fixed 
 heart only is prepared for the great battle of life. If 
 I can say, '^ My heart is fixed, trusting in God," then 
 am I prepared for conflict. 
 
 The heart that is fixed, will not only be ready for 
 all sorts of opposition, but it will soon be compara- 
 tively relieved from certain kinds of opposition. It 
 will soon clear a large space about it for action — will 
 make room for itself. For example : A young man 
 of promise comes to our village, or goes to a distant 
 city. He is social and genial — ready to enter into 
 friendly relations with his fellows and with all. It is 
 not known as yet what he is and what he will do, 
 and perhaps he scarcely knows himself. He has 
 capacitie's, but it is not known how they will be de- 
 veloped. Such a young man is at first not likely to 
 be left without personal solicitations to evil. He will 
 not be left to discover by his own searching avenues 
 to ruin. Evil will be brought to him. He will have 
 those avenues pointed out to him. He will be im- 
 portuned on this hand and on that. 'Now if his heart 
 wavers, and is known to do so, he will be plied all the 
 more vigorously. The attacks will be frequent and 
 powerful in proportion as he is supposed to vacillate, 
 to have an unsettled mind with respect to such solici- 
 tations. But let it be found as the result of experi- 
 ment that his heart is fixed in the love of sobriety. 
 
174 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 purity, and virtue ; that nothing can start him from 
 his integrity, and soon he will cease to be annoyed. 
 Evil companions will depart from him. They come 
 and find nothing in him, and they will soon cease to 
 solicit him. His heart is fixed. And this is but an 
 illustration of a general principle. A heart that is 
 known to be fixed in good, will cease to be annoyed 
 in certain ways in which others are. Its enemies will 
 give up after a time certain forms of their solicita- 
 tions, because they know that they will be unavailing. 
 They have been so often turned back and foiled, that 
 it would be but folly to repeat the experiment. Such 
 hearts may be taken into the sphere of other experi- 
 ments upon their virtue, but these will be abandoned. 
 " Eesist the Devil, and he will flee from you." Op- 
 pose to him a heart fixed — settled once for all in the 
 love and service of God, and he will turn back dis- 
 comfited. 
 
 A heart fixed^ can only be efiPectively cooperative 
 with God. A fixed heart will of course show itself 
 in a uniform and consistent life, and will thus be found 
 in the line of divine agencies — found among the in- 
 stiTimentalities that God uses to advance His glory 
 and kingdom. A man must be reliably good, reliably 
 a servant of God in evil report and good report — amid 
 depressions and revivals, in order to be used of God 
 to efi*ect most for Him. A man that wavers, that 
 changes his ground often on any subject, either never 
 
MY HEAKT IS FIXED. 175 
 
 gains power at all, or soon loses it. We will not be 
 iDfluenced by a man wbo cannot keep his ground, — 
 who has no grapple to his soul — no anchor that sends 
 its flukes into eternal principles, that will hold him 
 amid outward and even inward perturbations. "We 
 respect and will be influenced only by the firm, the 
 fixed man. 
 
 We say of some men, — we do not know where to 
 find them, and perhaps they do not know where they 
 will find themselves. We say of others, — we do know 
 where to find them. We may take a journey over 
 land or sea, we may be absent months, perhaps years, 
 and we return ; we ask for such a man — is he alive ? 
 is he well ? — we know if he is alive w^here we shall 
 find him. His heart is fixed, and his heail being 
 fixed, his life is fixed. Others may waver, may yield 
 to passing influences — to passion — to interest : but 
 him we expect to see where he was, far more surely 
 than we do the elm under whose shadow we reclined 
 in childhood, or the rock up which the lambs ran in 
 spring time. He is almost as sure to be there as is 
 the star that glistened over the roof-tree, or tlie water 
 that shimmered in the moonbeams. And being there 
 — fixed firm, — he is a light in a dark world : a man 
 to walk by, almost to live by and die by. His heart 
 is fixed. And no man's heart can be fixed in the 
 right place, and on the right beings and things, with- 
 
-176 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 out being a marked man, a powerful man. His sta- 
 bility, if he have nothing else, gives him value. 
 
 A fixed heart will usually be a glad one ; it can 
 " sing and give praise." As the viol must be tuned, 
 all its strings drawn and fixed, ere you can wake it to 
 glad and harmonious music, so the heart must be 
 fixed — its strings fixed, ere it can burst into songs of 
 praise to God and the Lamb. A fixed heart is a 
 tuned heart. It only can be waked to the harmonies 
 of the church on earth or the church in glory. " My 
 heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed." Let us 
 say this, and then can we add, " I will sing and give 
 praise." 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE GLORY OF GOD THE GOVERNING PRINCIPLE OF 
 ALL LIFE. 
 
 Whether therefore ye eat or drinJo, or whatsoever ye do, do all to 
 the glory of God. — 1 Coe. x. 31. 
 
 THE Bible never prescribes what specific things 
 each man shall do in life. It makes no inven- 
 tory of the words he shall utter, or the deeds he shall 
 do. One will look in vain there to learn where he 
 shall locate himself, the profession he shall prosecute, 
 or the daily and hourly duties he shall perform. 
 
 We sometimes long to have the path clearly traced 
 in which we shall walk — for some record in the heavens 
 above, or in the earth beneath, which will easily and 
 without doubt or danger of misapprehension on our 
 part, assure us of the right course in every exigency. 
 But on mature reflection, we can see that while this 
 would be the easiest, it would not be the best thing. 
 If we could resort in every question of difficulty to 
 some book or some oracle, and by a mere glance or 
 query, infallibly solve our difficulty and determinately 
 settle the thing we were to do, it might diminish the 
 8* 
 
178 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 dangers of life, but only by diminishing its dignity 
 and importance. It would settle our doubts only by 
 removing tlie necessity of balancing opposite reasons 
 — sharpening and developing our faculties amid con- 
 flicting influences, and thus elevating our entire na- 
 tures. It would reduce us to perpetual childhood, 
 and we should be only free from danger by the loss 
 of our true manhood. This is developed as much by 
 the effort to decide what we shall do in life, and where 
 we shall do it, as it is in doing it when we have once 
 decided. We need each and all of us the discipline 
 which is gained by determining what we shall do all 
 our days and every day. There is not a person upon 
 the footstool of God who might not have been made 
 a stronger being intellectually and morally, by bring- 
 ing all his powers to the decision of, the question, 
 what he should do in all the hours of this holy day — 
 where he should go — what, in a word, stern and un- 
 compromising duty required him to do. We must, in 
 life's beginning and all through it, be bringing all 
 our powers to determine what we should do, to get 
 our life in each section of it, and through its entire 
 course, into union with God's will with respect to us. 
 A good man, we believe, will not be left to doubt as 
 to his general course of life, or the particular acts 
 which go to make it. In all his questionings he may 
 expect Divine illumination, but then he is not to be 
 saved the trouble of using his faculties in deciding. 
 
god's glory the governing PRINCirLE. 1Y9 
 
 No Divine word will stop all queries, and make us 
 mere executive functionaries, instead of reasoning and 
 deciding moral agents. 
 
 But then, while in the Bible or elsewhere we are 
 not at once and peremptorily to learn what we are to 
 do in each case, yet in that Book we are to learn the 
 great principles on which we are to conduct life. If 
 it does not decide for us what we are to do, it does 
 tell us that in the most trifling as well as the greatest 
 thing, " whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we 
 do, we are to do all to the glory of God." This grand 
 motive is to underlie as a great granite formation 
 our entire life and our entire doings. It is to bear 
 them up and sustain them. We are to do nothing 
 which we cannot do with it as the great controlling 
 consideration. By doing all to the glory of God, it 
 is obviously meant that we are to have reference to 
 Him, to His honor, to His Law, to the making known 
 His entire character in all its perfection to His crea- 
 tures. Neither self, nor our fellow men are to dictate 
 the course which in each instance we are to take. 
 We are not to ask what will be easiest, or most repu- 
 table, or most profitable, but what will please God. 
 Not out of our own hearts, nor out of this fallen world, 
 but out of Heaven, right out of the heart of God, we 
 are to draw our motive of action. Our text then pre- 
 sents the glory of God as the governing principle of 
 our acts — of our entire life. 
 
180 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 In the ^^/. place, it presents a werj aimpU motive 
 for life and action. Tliere is nothing complex about 
 it. We are not distracted by it. It is to the life what 
 the magnetic pole is to the needle, always one, and 
 always the same, and always there. When we em- 
 brace this as the governing principle of our life, we 
 sweep away a whole mass of distracting questions, — 
 we have a fixed meridian — something to cast anchor 
 upon. We are not compelled to look here and there 
 to see whether what we do is likely to please this man 
 or that ; or w^iether our course will be more easy and 
 agreeable ; whether it will give us a run over smooth 
 seas, with pleasant breezes, to an agreeable harbor ; or 
 whether it will put money into our pockets, or take 
 it out : it presents one simple question — What will 
 God's glory require of me here and now ? It is the 
 one question ever recurring — the great central and 
 all-controlling question. It settled, all is settled. 
 (N'ow there is advantage in this simplicity, and there 
 is power in it. 
 
 Secondly , this is a convprehensive motive or prin- 
 ciple. It runs around and embraces our entire life. 
 Nothing that we need do, should lie without the com- 
 pass of such a motive. It includes all that a man 
 may properly and honestly do. In and of itself it 
 does not settle what we are to do. When we act 
 from this motive, we do not by embracing it deter- 
 mine our line of life, whether we are to preach or 
 
god's glory the governing principle. 18 J 
 
 teach, be a merchant, farmer, mechanic, or anything 
 else. Other things are to come in to fix tliis. What 
 we would say is, that this motive is wide enough 
 \^ to comprise all the doings of an honest man and an 
 ^lonest race. They may be all sustained and carried 
 on upon this as a basis. It may govern the whole 
 of each life and the whole of all lives. 
 
 Thirdly^ it is ?^ jo^acticdble motive. This declara- 
 tion may, and perhaps will, meet with a good deal of 
 scepticism in the minds of some. We fear that it is 
 a sentiment avowed by some and felt by more, that 
 men must, in order to live at all in this world, do 
 some — yea, many things, under the control of other 
 motives than the one required in our text — the glory 
 of God. It TS felt to be too lofty, too divine, to direct 
 all the affairs of earth and all men. It may do well, 
 it is thought, for ministers and Sabbath days, but it 
 is doubted whether it can be carried over into week 
 days, and control men in the market, and in all the 
 smaller and larger concerns of secular life. It is 
 thought that it would hinder a man from making as 
 good bargains as it is necessary that he should make 
 to maintain a fair show in the world. It is at least 
 secretly alleged, that one would find it quite uncom- 
 fortable to be ever constrained to stop and inquire — 
 " Am I making this or that trade for the glory of God, 
 or for the benefit of my own purse ? " To be sure, 
 the adoption of such a principle would make this a 
 
182 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 very different world ; it would revolutionize the whole 
 course of procedure on 'Change — in the store — the 
 shop — on the farm — in the dwelling; but we deny- 
 that its adoption is impracticable. We deny that 
 a man is compelled to ignore and abjure this princi- 
 ple on all days except the Sabbath, and in all business 
 except that which is sacred. A man may do anything 
 that is just and right under its control. If a man 
 wishes to do wrong, to live selfishly, and , for this 
 world only, to cast off the remembrance and the 
 authority of God, he must indeed discard this as a 
 motive. But is a wicked life the only practicable 
 life ? In this world of God, under these Laws of God, 
 bound to the Bar of God — in this life so fleeting, 
 passing on to a life so lasting, is it impracticable to 
 live for God, and to be controlled by a regard to His 
 glory ? It is all a mistake — it is all a device of the 
 Evil one, coined in his wicked heart, and circulated 
 by his followers, that it is impracticable, that we 
 should not get on in life, should we live and act for 
 the glory of God. Its simplicity makes it practicable, 
 its comprehensiveness makes it so, and its intrinsic 
 rightfulness makes it so. 
 
 Fourthly^ this motive gives dignity and value, to 
 life, to life whereever it is cast and in whatsoever em- 
 ployment it is spent. I would not deny that there are 
 positions, callings, employments, which are intrinsi- 
 cally more elevated than others, and which it might 
 
god's glory the governing trinciple. 183 
 
 be proper for us to seek more than others, just as be- 
 tween gifts, we have an apostolic direction to covet 
 earnestly those which are best. Yet every honorable 
 calling derives dignity from the man and his motive. 
 In our complex life, in a world of such diversity in 
 pursuit, where the existence and happiness of all are 
 so dependent upon the prosecution of so many call- 
 ings, we must occupy different positions. We cannot 
 all be equally elevated and equally noticed. In such 
 a world, and with such narrow minds as ours, it seems 
 necessary that a part should be placed where they 
 will be little noticed, and little talked of, even though 
 they may be equally or even more useful. In a build- 
 ing, it is the superstructure, not the foundation — in a 
 tree, it is the foliage and the fruit, and not the roots, 
 that attract notice and admiration ; yet the foundation 
 and the roots have their value. So in society, it is 
 not all, but a part, who win the notice and the ap- 
 plause. Things are in such a dishevelled state here, 
 that it is quite impossible for each to gain his own 
 specific portion of attention and reward. 
 
 And indeed, if we will look at the matter more 
 interiorly, we shall find that the great ground plan of 
 this universe is not formed on any such idea. It is 
 not intended to give notoriety and attention to the 
 indi\ddual. Each is made for all. Each has his facul- 
 ties and calling assigned him with reference to all. 
 Each is put here or there, not for his sake mainly, but 
 
184 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 for the sake of all. Society, tlie entire race, was in- 
 tended to act as a unit toward one end. It is an 
 organism. Part is articulated with part. It is a 
 body having one life, and each man is fulfilKng his 
 function and deriving his highest enjoyment, when, 
 as a member, he is fitted into and lovingly works in 
 his place. This all-comprehensive motive — living 
 for the glory of God, will put and keep him in his 
 place. He will not desire or live to be noticed, any 
 more than the diflferent members of the body live to 
 be noticed. He will live for the whole under the 
 pressure of this motive, and in doing so, his life is 
 traly dignified and valuable. 
 
 It is a great mistake into which we fall — so many 
 of us — that of supposing that in order to have dignity 
 and value as a man, we must pursue this calling rather 
 than that ; — that if we do not, we are clean gone for- 
 ever — that we are no more valuable or valued, and 
 that all significance is eliminated from life. Many a 
 youth is crowded full with the thought, that if he can 
 only leave his father's farm and stand behind a city 
 counter, he is made ; that a leap from the farm be- 
 hind the counter, elevates him from henceforth ; that 
 buckram and broadcloth will put the dignity and 
 value into him as well as on him. Poor simpleton 
 that he is, and, for that matter, that we all are, for 
 the young man is only following out the ideas which 
 he has learned from us. Why will we not all learn 
 
185 
 
 that it is standing in our lot and place, and working 
 for the glory of God there, which gives true value and 
 dignity to life ! Yiewed from the heights of yonder 
 heaven, a man has no dignity, and no true value, who 
 does not live for the glory of God. 
 
 I have but time to add, in \h.Q fifth place, that such 
 a motive as this can alone give union and harmony 
 here on earth, as it can alone give union and harmony 
 in heaven. It is not by working after union directly, 
 that it is to be won. Union is secured by one way 
 only. We must come under the power of the same 
 motives and impulses — the same affections and pur- 
 pose. Then shall we flow together spontaneously, 
 because we have complied with the law of moral 
 union. Without obedience to such a law, union is 
 not possible, except by physical force ; and when force 
 is employed to unite, it is not living but dead things 
 that are united. A living union only comes about 
 by a love to, and a choice of the same objects. Let 
 all men live for the glory of God, and all men would 
 constitute one blessed brotherhood. 
 
 And this is the Gospel in contradistinction from 
 the human way of uniting men. This idea of univer 
 sal brotherhood, has haunted men from the beginning 
 Noble minds and some minds not so noble, have dis 
 coursed of it, and devised schemes to bring it about 
 This idea lies at the basis of all the theories of the 
 socialists and commumsts of Franco. Unfortunately, 
 
186 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 tliey discard the only, the Gospel way of accomplish- 
 ing it, — the subjection of all hearts to the Law of 
 Heaven — the glory of God. 
 
 This Law is to be adopted by ns personally. Each 
 of us is to choose the glory of God as the end of his 
 being. For it we are to live and toil — for it we are 
 to suffer and die. We are to strive, we are to pray, 
 we are to seek the aid of God's Spirit till this Law 
 shall be the one we shall all spontaneously obey, till 
 it shall require no effort, till we shall obey it as 
 promptly, as unconsciously as we breathe. 
 
XVII. 
 
 1| FEAR— CONTROLLING AND CONTROLLED. 
 
 The fear of man hringeth a snare : tut whoso putteth his trust in 
 II the Lord shall be safe. — Ppoveebs xxix. 25. 
 
 THE first impression of tliis passage is, that the 
 writer refers to the fear we may entertain of 
 our fellow men — that it is that which bringeth a 
 snare. But this signification will hardly bear exam- 
 ination. The meaning is, that a man's own fear, his 
 o^\^l timidity brings a snare, exposes him to hazard. 
 It is fear, as an internal, subjective quality in our own 
 natures, that draws us into danger. 
 
 Fear is an element in our mental constitution. 
 We should not be well made up, should not be men 
 without it. As a great, silent, unconscious force, oper- 
 ating every moment while we think not of it, it is 
 our shield and defence. Its healthy action is miob- 
 trusive — powerful to guard us — to hold us back from 
 a thousand evils, but like the heart within us, doing 
 its work without drawing our attention to it. But 
 often, fear lodged so deeply down within us, intended 
 to act so silently and yet so forcefully, breaks over its 
 
188 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 boundaries, overflows our entire natures, palsies oi 
 best faculties, shocks them into inaction like an eh 
 trie battery. Before, in a healthy state, it acted, if 
 moved without " speech or language, its voice was 
 not heard." Now, its voice is loud and piercing. 
 Before, it was a defensive, guardian, conservative pow- 
 er within, stimulating us to higher action. ]^ow, it is 
 dreading difficulties, and hurries us into them. Thus 
 a man's own fear, when it once assumes a wrong posi- 
 tion, gains an undue energy in and control over him 
 — ^brings exposure and danger. 
 
 This is the sentiment of the text, and illustrations 
 of its truthfulness lie thickly scattered all around us. 
 "We will consider the fact affirmed, that fear unre- 
 stricted, fully roused and controlling, does really bring 
 danger ; and then briefly refer to the method of prop- 
 erly silencing fear to which our text alludes : " Whoso 
 putteth his trust in the Lord, shall be safe." 
 
 Let us take it on the lower grounds first. A man's 
 fear brings him into danger when it becomes control- 
 ling in the matter of mere physical exposure. Even 
 here, a man who would walk safely, must walk fear- 
 lessly. The sailor who would climb the tapering mast, 
 or run out upon the yard arm, while his ship is heav- 
 ing beneath liim, and threatening to leap like a mad- 
 dened steed from under him, must banish fear if he 
 would go securely. He looks down — he begins to 
 weigh his danger, to estimate his chances, and at once 
 
FEAE — CONTROLLING AND CONTKOLLED. 189 
 
 his hangers increase. The workman that treads the 
 roofs of lofty houses, venturing to the very edge, doing 
 his task so securely there aloft where his stature is 
 almost dwarfed — he alone is safe. The sleepwalker 
 will tread the most dangerous paths — will stand in 
 the most aerial positions in safety, simply because he 
 has no fear. Let him awake — let his fears be roused, 
 and his energies are palsied. He falls like a weak 
 infant. A man without fear can do anything above 
 the earth that he can do on it. It is a man's fear that 
 brings him into hazards. 
 
 Apply the sentiment to common worldly affairs, 
 to the making of money, and while it is true here, 
 that rashness is hazardous, and brings many a man 
 to poverty, it is yet as true that timidity and excessive 
 apprehensiveness keeps still more poor that might be 
 rich. A timid man who never ventures anything; 
 wlio never sends a ship out upon the sea, lest she 
 should be wrecked; who never builds a house, lest 
 it should be burned ; who never puts stock in bank, 
 lest it should fail, never can be rich. He may creep 
 timidly around the outer edges of wealth, he may 
 cast furtive and greedy glances upon it, he may en- 
 large his desire for it — but it will never be his. He 
 lets his would wait like a slave upon his dare no% 
 and so he, like the sluggard, " desireth and hath noth- 
 ing." A wholesome venturesomeness is the first con- 
 dition of all prosperity. A man's fear brings him 
 
190 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAl^ LIFE. 
 
 into poverty as surely as his sloth or his viciousness. 
 Or take one of those timid men who, by some appar- 
 ently kind providence to him, but by some terribly 
 severe and disastrous providence to his neighbor, has 
 inherited wealth, and his timidity makes a strong box 
 into which all his dollars are thrust. Ask him to give, 
 and the fear of poverty, that haunts him like a night- 
 mare, clinches his grasp of his gold. His fear paints 
 the future in sombre hues. With all his wealth he 
 is poor. He is a miser, not perhaps by nature, but 
 he is made so by his excessive apprehensiveness ; and 
 many a man with stores of silver, has madly been his 
 own murderer, for fear that he and his might come 
 to want. 
 
 A man's fear of his fellow men, often brings a snare. 
 We are kept back from doing what our understandings 
 and our consciences demand that we should do : we 
 are hindered from the entertainment and the expres- 
 sion of honest opinions and convictions from our fear 
 of our fellows. There is many a young person, and 
 for that matter, many an old one, who is deterred 
 from avowing his interest in religious concerns by 
 the fear of ridicule. There is many a man who 
 would be a noble and true man — true to his higher 
 and better nature — true to his best aspirations and 
 highest wishes, if it were not for his fears. He dreads 
 the frowns, he dreads the loss of favor or patronage, 
 he dreads the poverty which might come upon him- 
 
FEAR CONTKOLLTNG AND CONTROLLED. 191 
 
 self and family. He dares not be a man, because of 
 his fellow man. In his closet, in his better, more noble 
 moods, he longs to be a man, and show himself a man 
 exercising a higher intelligence, a stern conscientious- 
 ness, a noble Christian freedom ; but he leaves his 
 quiet retreat, he comes out from liis contemplations 
 to meet and mingle with his fellows, and he dare not 
 meet their ridicule or contempt or alienation, and so 
 practically he becomes a merely conventional man, 
 I taking his direction and ultimately his very opinions 
 from others — begging, like a poor spaniel, leave to be, 
 from others as poor and ignoble as himself — dragged 
 down by the leaden chain of dead conformity. It is haz- 
 ardous to be a man, and so he ventures to be a thing. 
 Many a man who stands at the altar, is a mere crea- 
 ture of the pews — above them, and yet cast up only 
 by what of force there maybe in them, made, shaped, 
 moulded, unconsciously it may be, and yet really 
 by others — daring no utterance that comes up from 
 the deep places of a true heart, till he knows how it 
 will take, dreading a frown from a pew, as he would 
 a pestilence — vacating the rights of a man, the right to 
 think and speak for himself, for the paltriest wages. 
 There is no country where public opinion has such 
 sway as in ours. We are glad that it is so. We 
 would not have it otherwise. We are not governed 
 by bayonets, by kings, by tyi-ants. Public opinion 
 sways everything. It makes and unmakes presi- 
 
192 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 dents and cabinets. It sends its mighty tides up 
 into all the sinuosities of public questions and in- 
 terests. And as we said, we are glad that it is so — 
 that it lifts men to power, and then casts them down 
 again. It is our peculiarity and our glory. But on 
 the large or the small scale, we are not to allow it to 
 assume the ascendency over us, and become our tyrant. 
 Our fellow men, singly or in masses, we should honor 
 and love, but we are not to vacate our power to think, 
 conduct, act in their presence. We are not to allow 
 our fears of what they may or may not do to or for 
 us, to sweep us away from our integrity. A man's 
 fear of his fellows may make him a very slave. It 
 often does ; and when it does, when in the narrow 
 sphere of the. church or the village, or in the broader 
 theatre of a state or nation, the voice of the people is 
 to us the voice of God, the crown is plucked from our 
 brow, we have abjured our freedom, and sold our 
 birthright for a mess of pottage. Our fear has caught 
 us in a most fatal snare. When a man takes the fear 
 of his fellow men as his counsellor and guide, he is no 
 longer a free man — with a mind excursive, elevated, 
 true ; he, a plastic, fluent material, casts himself into 
 earthly moulds to be shaped by them. He is of the 
 earth, earthy. 
 
 We have so far spoken of a man's fear as affecting 
 his thoughts, and feelings, and course, with reference 
 to this life more particularly. We have seen that it 
 
FEAR — CONTROLLING AND CONTROLLED. 193 
 
 brings him into dangers. I now go up to the highest 
 of all concerns — to the formation of our religious opin- 
 ions — the adoption of our religious course — indeed, to 
 everything that appertains to our connection with the 
 beings and interests of the great hereafter, the invisible 
 world ; and I say that so far as mere fear, mere shrink- 
 ing, trembling timidity controls us in the formation of 
 our opinions, or in the adoption of our course, we fall 
 into a snare. Our religious opinions and interests are 
 infinitely our highest ones. Tell me what a man's 
 religion or no religion is, and I will tell you what he 
 is. Nowhere is half so much calm, mature thought- 
 fulness demanded as here. Sometimes in awakened 
 minds, minds that have been rent as by galvanic 
 shocks from long-continued stupor, fear gains and 
 occasionally keeps an awful ascendency. Fear sends 
 its own messengers into the vast unknown, to bring 
 back their own tidings, and they bring such tidings 
 as such messengers alone can bring. Sometimes fear 
 with raven wing broods over and strives to encom- 
 pass our entire eternity. It paints it all in the most 
 gloomy colors. Fear shapes our God, our Christ, 
 our heaven, our hell, our Bible, our cTeathbed. It 
 shapes our religious opinions, our entire religious 
 imaginations, feelings, and life. Of course, when it is 
 left to do this, all is awry, misshapen, deformed. A 
 soul left to the dominion of mere fear in religious con- 
 cerns, will be subject to hazards, will fall into snares 
 9 
 
194: THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 
 
 terrible in proportion to tlie vastness of the scenes and 
 themes on which it works. If fear is a bad counsellor 
 and guide anywhere, it is doubly so in religion. 
 Eternity left to be shaped by mere fear, will be 
 crowded with terrors, will have no bright spots in it. 
 The God that shall be enthroned being iirst formed 
 by fear, will be a God that would fill a universe with 
 dread. 
 
 Fear has a sphere, a fitting sphere, in the religious 
 as in common life. In all well-balanced souls, it is a 
 mighty, silent force, but in religion no more than in 
 anything, is it to overstep its limits and gain the as- 
 cendency. Left to control any department of life, 
 fear controls it badly ; — left to control our religion, it 
 moulds and controls it worst of all. 
 
 A religious creed that fear has made up, will be 
 an awful one. A Bible that fear interprets, will be 
 a terrible Bible, filled with thunderings and light- 
 nings, like its own Sinai. A religious man that fear 
 has mostly had the making and the shaping of, will be 
 repellent of all sweetness. Religious missions or enter- 
 prises that fear has started and carried on, will have 
 power, but they will be sharp, angular, thundering on 
 like a steam engine, and with as little of pity in them 
 as it. Fear in a man, fear consulted, predominant, does 
 bring a snare, and plants the world, God, eternity, 
 with snares. It would open maelstroms, and sweep 
 
FEAR CONTROLLING AND CONTROLLED. 195 
 
 in its victims on the Sea of glass. It would cleave 
 yawning chasms and pitfalls right under the great 
 'white Throne. Not fear, but love is the guide of all 
 life, the interpreter of God and His book, of Jesus 
 and His cross, of time and eternity, and fear acts as 
 interpreter only to mar all it touches ; and this brings 
 us to the refuge from fear. 
 
 " A man's fear bringeth a snare ; but whoso trust- 
 eth in the Lord, shall be safe." The timid man is 
 among snares : — how shall he quell his fears, bid them 
 sink down into their true and silent retreat, — how 
 shall it be done ? 
 
 Not by philosophy, not by determining that he 
 will not fear, not by stupidity or recklessness, not by 
 bold and ignorant assertions that there is nothing to 
 fear ; — not so are our fears to be stifled ; — not so are 
 we to escape the dangers into which our fears trusted 
 as counsellors or guides will bring us. 
 
 There is another and a better way. — " Whoso 
 trusteth in the Lord, he shall be safe." In God as 
 our refuge and our eternal home, with trust which puts 
 the soul into His keeping, — trust which encompasses 
 it with His strength, we are safe. Out of God, apart 
 from Him, in hostility to Him, there is abundant oc- 
 casion for fear. 
 
 A Godless man is fearless only through stupidity 
 or recklessness. A man full of trust in God, is fear- 
 
196 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 less in the exercise of liis widest, finest intelligence. 
 When once we have committed onr souls for time and 
 eternity to God tlirongh the Divine Eedeemer, we 
 have nothing more to fear. This world, and all worlds 
 are safe places for us to walk in. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE EAKTHLY BURDEN, AND THE DIVINE SUPPORTER. 
 
 Cast thy 'burden upon the Lorcl^ and He shall sustain thee. — 
 Psalm Iv. 22. 
 
 WE come into tlie region of true manhood, and 
 we come under the pressure of burdens. We 
 can escape them only by eluding our true nature and 
 relations, by casting away the crown af our glory. 
 The text assures us that we individually have a burden 
 or burdens, it tells us what to do with them, and gives 
 an assurance upon compliance with the direction. 
 
 There are individual burdens, " Thy burden." 
 The intimation is that each person has his own bur- 
 dens — those that legitimately belong to him, those 
 that he cannot innocently cast away. These vary 
 with our constitution, our mental scope, our locality 
 and diversified relations. No two have the same. 
 
 Some take burdens that do not belong to them. 
 They go out in earnest search after them, encompassed 
 with eyes to see, with hands to grasp them. They 
 roam over wide spaces to discover, and arc opcn-doored 
 to welcome them. Before they knock, all the soul's 
 
198 THOUaHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 avenues are flung wide open to give them entertain- 
 ment. There is a sui*prising quickness in some per- 
 sons to apprehend and to fence in burdens within their 
 own enclosure. It is as though they dwelt in the 
 centre of a whirlpool, and all came sweeping in di- 
 minishing circles into their souls. Now it is well to 
 discriminate here, to see what belongs to us and what 
 does not, to grapple the one, to hurl clear away the 
 other. We are limited in our capacities, and of course 
 we must be in our burdens. There is no virtue in 
 being busy-bodies in those of other people, in going 
 out after them, and seating them at our board. "We 
 cannot afford to keep a hotel where other people's 
 cares shall find food and lodging. We should be 
 willing and glad to entertain onr own. Thy hurden, 
 — cast it upon the Lord, not others' burdens ; — we 
 should take our own, observing well what they are. 
 
 I am aware, indeed, that the number of persons 
 who assume more than their share, is comparatively 
 small. The multitude act very differently. They 
 refuse to take their share. They are quick to turn 
 them away when they come. They refuse to enter 
 the paths where they he. They elude them, giving 
 them a wide berth. Tliey go tripping and dancing 
 through life, never rising into the region of true man- 
 hood, because they never take up the responsibilities 
 of men. Life to them is a dance through May-fair ; 
 it is a butterfly-flitting from flower to flower ; it is a 
 
THE EARTHLY BUEDEN, AND THE DIVINE SUPPOETEK. 199 
 
 vapid, meaningless thing, to be crowded between an 
 insignificant birth and as insignificant a death with 
 as much thonghtlessness as it can hold. This class 
 that strive wholly to cast off burdens, is a very large 
 one. 
 
 There is still another class that elude their own 
 responsibilities and assunae others', going away from 
 home, and even entering into and dwelling in other 
 people's houses, their own burdens all rolling off from 
 them, hitting them perhaps, but certainly glancing 
 away from them ; and others' cares coming to them 
 in crowded phalanx. A sign might be put upon the 
 souls of many people, " Yacant rooms without price, 
 to be filled with other j^eople's burdens, — the legiti- 
 mate occupants away from home." They have no 
 conscience disengaged for their own responsibilities, 
 because they are so crowded with those of others. 
 They go flying all abroad to find out and embrace 
 their neighbors', and have neither time nor space for 
 their own. 
 
 Now ranged between these two, is the class who 
 honestly and in the fear of God, knowing and feeling 
 that they are men and are willing to stand in the lot 
 of men, see and bow to their own burdens, not taking 
 more nor less than is theirs in the wise ai)pointmeiit 
 of their Maker. 
 
 We have burdens simply as men, under the Divine 
 government, immortal men beginning our eternal ex- 
 
200 THOUGHTS FOR THE CIIRISTIAIT LITE. 
 
 istence, — to shape tlie course and determine the goal. 
 We have personally to accept the responsibilities of 
 our position. We cannot commit them to others, to 
 pope or priest, to parent, pastor, or friend. We throw 
 them off and thej will not stay off. We are men 
 and we must be what we are made. We must take 
 our nature as it is with its tasks and its duties and its 
 infinite issues. Being men, we cannot be beasts. The 
 burden of preparation for a life with God is on each, 
 inwrought into him, not by possibility separable from 
 him. It is the great, the common burden, putting 
 us on a level, — amid our endless diversities of gifts 
 and position, substantially uniting us. No thought- 
 lessness, no self-assumed duties, no entanglements of 
 earth, no flight, no outside affairs, can relieve us from 
 it. Till God unmakes us, this is the great common 
 burden resting on our souls, like the air upon our 
 bodies, — this of preparation for the life that is to be. 
 
 Then apart from these burdens that rest upon us 
 in our individuality, there are those that devolve upon 
 us in our relations to others. We are parents, and 
 we have burdens as such, the burden of young fresh 
 life that has sprung from us — our souls and our bodies, 
 that we are to nourish and shape ; life for whose trick- 
 ling thought and feeling and purpose and taste, we 
 are to dig channels, and send on their way toward 
 the great sea. These burdens are sweetened and made 
 precious by our love, but they are great and they are 
 
THE EARTHLY BURDEN, AND THE DIVINE SUPrOllTEli. 201 
 
 ours. We cannot delegate them to teachers or pastors. 
 Thej are made ours, by our nature and our relations. 
 
 Then there are other burdens as patriots. We are 
 interlinked with our fellow countrymen, our children 
 are to be sent into the future, we have stakes in our 
 country that is, and that is to be, in all that affects its 
 weal or woe, in its unity, its peace, its true glory. 
 What it is affects us, what it is to be affects us. It 
 is safe, — it rises to a higher and nobler position, casts 
 on the canvas of the future a horoscope of an exceed- 
 ing greatness, and we are glad. It is exposed, its 
 glory is eclipsed, it is rent and torn by intestine feuds, 
 and we are sad. When our country is in danger, we 
 cannot dwell in the centre of indifference, cherishing 
 the spirit of heedlessness, careless what happens if we 
 can escape from the wreck. In such times as the 
 present especially, the burden will come home to us, 
 and we should feel that we were less than men if we 
 should desire to elude it. 
 
 We have burdens as Christians. We send our 
 thoughts and sympathies out over our neighborhoods, 
 towns, states, nation, the world. What we see, what 
 we hear affects us. Our very sympathies that make 
 us men, as they fly abroad and brood over our fellows, 
 gather in burdens that come home as they return and 
 rest with us. We can shake them off only as we 
 deaden our hearts, and this wo feel is eluding them 
 at too great an expense. We arc not willing to be 
 
202 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 unfeeling for the sake of being free from burdens, 
 any more than we are willing to be blind for the sake 
 of escaping the unpleasant sights that greet us, or 
 deaf for the sake of avoiding the grating discords 
 that strike the ear. What well-equipped, well-trained 
 spirits gather in and bring home on their excursions 
 into the realm of manhood and the wider realm of 
 God, that they must be content to take. "We must 
 receive and assume our own burdens. 
 
 But having taken them, let us inquire what we 
 are to do with them, all sorts and all degrees of them. 
 The text tells us : " cast thy burden — hurdens — on the 
 Lord." Observe, we are to take them, not flee from 
 them, not say they are not ours and we will not have 
 them. This will not do. Cast them upon the Lord 
 before we assume them, before we feel their weight 
 pressing us down, feeling and saying that they are 
 His and not ours ! Not so at all, but taking them all 
 home, stretching ourselves to embrace them, feeling 
 their weight, and then after they have become ours 
 by actual adoption, casting them on the Lord. It is 
 a very fine elusion of our manhood to see burdens 
 coming like clouds with their dark banners all spread 
 abroad, and then darting out of the way ; saying they 
 belong to some one else, belong to God. This is 
 miserable poltroonery, to cast aside and away a bur- 
 den that seems too heavy for us before we even feel it. 
 It is the burden that we grasp as with hooks of steel, 
 
THE EAKTHLY BURDEN, AND THE DIVINE SUrPORTEK. 203 
 
 the burden that we pile up on our own souls, and 
 whose full pressure we realize bj making it our own, 
 that we are invited to cast on the Lord ; not the one 
 we have shirked and skipped lightly out of the w\av of 
 as it has passed by. " Cast thy burden " — the one that 
 you have made yours actually, cast it upon the Lord. 
 All life affords us analogies operating in this di- 
 rection. We all take burdens that we feel incomj)e- 
 tent to bear, that we are incompetent to bear. The 
 relations of life are established that we through them 
 may gain relief from them. The husband is abroad, 
 engaged in business, gets entangled in its meshes, be- 
 comes harassed, perplexed, knows not whither to turn. 
 He gets little relief abroad. Debts annoy, bankruptcy 
 scowls on him. He goes home weary and worn, sad 
 and disconsolate. He tells his wife, he lays his strong 
 business soul on her weakness, wraps that distem- 
 pered, anxious heart of his in the drapery of her 
 affections, and on her sweet smile his shadows float 
 away. He has cast his burden upon the angel of the 
 house. Perhaps the prattle of a sweet babe is the 
 escape-valve of his solicitudes. Many a child witli 
 its tiny shoulders bears off*, like the victim of the Jew- 
 ish economy into a land not inhabited, the burdens 
 of a w^eary heart. We are always availing ourselves 
 of the tender relations of life to cast oft' our burdens. 
 A care shared by a sympathetic spirit that really feels 
 with and fur us, is half taken away. 
 
204 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 *' I loved the weight I had to bear 
 Because it needed help of love. 
 Nor could I weary, heart or limb, 
 
 When mighty love would cleave in twain 
 
 The lading of a single pain, 
 And part it, giving half to Him." 
 
 God has given us tliese tender relations, these 
 angels of our homes, and circles of friendship, not to 
 shut out Himself, but dimlj to prefigure our higher 
 relationship to Him, and to set forth our higher privi- 
 lege of sharing our burdens with Him. He is ever 
 with us, by our side, our Almighty Friend, our Divine 
 Father, imposing burdens upon us, making us feel 
 their terrible weight in part, that we may gain an 
 impulse to come to Him through our absolute neces- 
 sity. Cast thy burden, whatever it may be, on the 
 Lord ; not the burden that does not belong to you, 
 not the one that you have needlessly assumed, — that 
 you are to cast into the depths of the sea, cast any- 
 where ; but the one that is absolutely yours and you 
 feel that you cannot bear alone, cast it upon the Lord. 
 That is your privilege and that you are invited to do. 
 
 And what is the promise if we thus come and cast 
 our burden on the Lord ? It is this — " He shall sus- 
 tain thee." You will observe the pith of the promise. 
 Cast thy burden on the Lord, — and what then ? He 
 will take the burden, relieve thee wholly of it, bear 
 it all Himself, and send thee away free and light % 
 
THE EARTHLY BUKDEN, AND THE DIVINE SUPPOllTER. 205 
 
 Not SO at all. That would be no real blessing to us. 
 That would not make and keep us men, it would 
 rather make and keep us children. Tlie promise is 
 rather this, '^ Cast thy burden on the Lord and He 
 shall sustain thee." He will not take the burden 
 wholly away from us, but He will sustain us while 
 we bear it. He leaves us witb it and yet He helps 
 us while we carry it. And this, we feel, is what we 
 want, and, on the whole, all that we want. Take the 
 lower relations of life. When we cast our burdens 
 on each other, as we so often do, it is not that we 
 may escape responsibility. The husband that goes 
 home to pour his weary heart into his wife's, — the 
 wife that longs for the return of her husband that she 
 may lighten her burdens by his sympathies ; neither 
 wishes tlie other to take off the pressure of duty, 
 neither expects the other to take his or her obliga- 
 tions and toils. The husband docs not desire the wife 
 to go to his counting-room on the morrow and con- 
 duct his business, or the wife the husband to remain 
 at home and regulate the domestic economy. Each 
 expects to remain in the assigned sphere and do the 
 assigned tasks. It is for help, for sympathy, for the 
 relief that comes from the scattering of the clouds, 
 the oiling of the machinery, the impartation of in- 
 ward sti-ength ; it is for this that the burden of the 
 one is cast upon the other. By this, true manhood 
 and womanhood are preserved and made stronger. 
 
206 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 And so when we go and cast our burdens on the 
 Lord, it is in no vain and weak expectation that God 
 will take off our bui'dens and carry them Himself, or 
 send some angel to carry them for us : He could only 
 do so by divesting us of our true power. Our burden 
 of preparation for Heaven, our burdens as parents, as 
 neighbors, friends, patriots, Christians, we must bear 
 still, and bear on to the end. ISTo being in the uni- 
 verse, not even God Himself will or can bear them 
 for us. There can be no such transfer. 
 
 This is what God will do when we cast our heavy 
 burden upon Him. He will hand it back to us, re- 
 bind it as with rivets upon our souls ; but then He 
 will, when He recommits it to us, give us strength to 
 bear it. It sKall come back to us when we roll it 
 upon God, but it will come with a Divine energy 
 accompanying it, so that while it seemed ready to 
 crush us before, it shall come winged and buoyant 
 to us now ; while insupportable before, it shall seem 
 light now. It was a dead weight when we carried 
 it alone ; it is a living and delightful one when we 
 carry it with God. 
 
 We may not escape burdens, but we need not 
 carry one of them alone. We may have no wife, no 
 husband, no earthly father, friend, to share them, but 
 we have a Divine Father standing by our side, tender, 
 amid all seeming severity, with us when the pressure 
 is heaviest, inviting us always to cast our burdens 
 
THE EARTHLY BURDEN, AND THE DIVINE SUPPORTER. 207 
 
 upon Him. TVe shall not go taskless through life, 
 but we shall go with the feeling that oui\ tasks will 
 not prove too absorbing, our burdens too crushing. 
 God will not take the crown from our brow by as- 
 signing us no burdens. He may keep us to our dignity 
 by putting heavy burdens on us ; but He will sustain 
 us in them all, and help ns to bear them to the end. 
 
XIX. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S PRIESTLY FUNCTION. 
 
 We give thanks to God^ and the Father of our Lord Jesm Christ, 
 praying always for you. — Colossians i. 3. 
 
 THE word and here, had better be rendered even. 
 " God, even tlie Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ." The God of the Apostle and of all Chris- 
 tians, is not some unknown and unknowable Being 
 that comes to us in name, but without qualities — a 
 mind, possibly, but without a heart ; stirring our 
 fears, it may be, but not our hopes. ISTo. The God 
 that we have to do with, is the God and Father of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, and, therefore, the God of 
 all grace, apprehensible in Christ, conversable in Him, 
 passing Himself into the moulds of our thought and 
 feeling through Him, starting out of His darkness, 
 coming into the light in Him, knowable and lovable 
 through Him. 
 
 A God out of Christ, may be the God which 
 nature reveals, but a God in Christ, is what the Gos- 
 pel reveals, — Christ's, the Lnmaculate man's. Father, 
 and through Him our Father. Christ does not make 
 
209 
 
 God, does not change a quality of His mind or heart. 
 He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He 
 did not make Him a kinder, more merciful and placa- 
 ble Being, did not put one generous and tender feel- 
 ing toward our race into Him. He simply revealed 
 Him. Self-revelation is one of the highest wishes, 
 the most earnest solicitudes of Jehovah. 
 
 Neither let any one suppose it an easy thing for 
 an infinite Being to get Himself adequately before 
 His creatures, — roundly and fully pictured to them. 
 Even we do not find it easy to get ourselves fairly 
 before another self to whom we wish to be known, 
 on whose mental retina we wish a fair image of our 
 veritable selves to be painted. We often are mor- 
 tified to find that after living beside one, and perhaps 
 with him for years, he does not understand us, — we 
 have to explain and re-explain, and after all fail to 
 impress our purpose upon him. If it is so with us, 
 it is sm*ely still more so with God. The revelation 
 of Himself is the most difficult of tasks. He could 
 not do it in nature. He could not do it in language. 
 He took a different method. He made Jesus, He 
 poured Himself into Jesus, He set Him up as the 
 image of the invisible, the intangible God ; and now 
 our God is the God in Christ, His God and Father, 
 and our God and Father through Him and because 
 of Him. This was the Apostle's God, and this is 
 om*s. "We do and can know no other. 
 
210 THOrOHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Now to this God so revealed and so related, Paul 
 gave thanks and prayed. No other God comes into 
 the arena of our thought and feeling ; no other elicits 
 our thanks or encourages our prayers. No other God 
 strikes out and maintains a distinctive personality 
 before us, evokes our gratitude for favors bestowed, 
 or draws u]3 our thoughts in prayer to His Throne. 
 No other than the God in Christ announces distinc- 
 tively a personal good will toward us, a personal 
 thought and care for us. The God of nature is too 
 remote, uncertain, hidden, moves on too lofty a plane, 
 is too cold and isolated, is wrapped too much in His 
 works, is too little apparently concerned for us to stir 
 our gratitude, and surely He bends too little to our 
 souls to give us much confidence to pray. 
 
 I say not that we should be left without sufficient 
 denotement of the Divine goodness in nature to elicit 
 our gratitude. I say this : — that our gratitude would 
 be likely to be as cold as the gifts of such a Being are 
 general and impersonal, and our prayers would be a 
 dark ^erhaps^ sent on a hazardous venture, which 
 might gain an auditor and win an answer, but the 
 thanks and the prayers ah'ke would stray up into a 
 vast emj)yrean to strike, we could hardly know where, 
 to bring back, we could scarcely know what. A God 
 out of Christ is rarely saluted with an " I thank Thee ! " 
 and rarely pestered with a petition. It is the God, 
 
THE christian's PRIESTLY FUNCTION. 211 
 
 even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that we 
 thank, it is He to whom we pray. 
 
 But the peculiarity of the thanks wliich the Apos- 
 tle gave, and the prayers which he offered in the text, 
 is this, — that they were for others, for his brethren at 
 Colosse. These two thoughts will claim our attention. 
 
 First^ the thanks he gave to the Father of Jesus 
 for his Christian brethren. He had heard of their 
 faith in Jesus, of their love to all the saints, of their 
 hope laid up in Heaven ; and hearing of their Chris- 
 tian graces, his heart is kindled in gratitude to God. 
 Like favoring breezes, the news passes through the 
 chords of his well-tuned soul, and it swells up with 
 the music of thanks to the ear of God. 
 
 Now it is not only true that all Christian graces, 
 that we may see in our own souls, working there and 
 working outwardly in our lives, stir our own gratitude 
 to God as the Being that begat thqm, — they having no 
 spring in our fallen natures ; but what is more to the 
 point in hand, it is no less true that these graces, when 
 first meeting the eyes of others that live in commu- 
 nion with God, and are on terms of intimacy with Him, 
 stir gratitude in their hearts to God also. Every soul 
 that trusts in Jesus with a childlike trust, every soul 
 that loves the saints with a pure love, every one that is 
 sustained with a divine and immortal hope in the trials 
 of life, every one that goes forth to do Christian deeds, 
 every one that gives to the needy ones of earth, that 
 
212 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 teaches the ignorant, feeds tlie hungry, clothes the 
 naked, that does one work of charity ; every such one 
 not only sends up his own thanks to God that he is 
 permitted and inclined to do it, but he, at the same 
 time, puts every other child of God into a grateful 
 frame, and inclines them all to send up thanks to the 
 Father also. There is the feeling of complacency in 
 the person that we see doing such things, and cherish- 
 ing such feelings ; but there is also the gratitude 
 which we feel to God for it all. There is a double 
 joy, operating manward and Godward, a twofold 
 cord binding us to men and to their Maker. 
 
 The truly disinterested soul is gladly responsible 
 for its own and for all others' gifts. It takes the light 
 and glad burden on itself of thanksgiving for its own 
 and for others' good things, for its own and for others' 
 graces. And this is indeed one of the tests of our 
 participation in the Spirit of Christ, — that we are not 
 only grateful for the blessings conferred upon us, but 
 for those also bestowed on others. 
 
 The heart that has not been touched by the Spirit 
 of God, and regenerated thereby, is capable of grati- 
 tude. We never allege of the natural heart that it 
 cannot see, recognize, and be grateful for Divine bless- 
 ings. Let God keep filling his garner with plenty, 
 let Him compass the worldling with all pleasant sur- 
 roundings, keep him and his in the ruddy glow of life 
 and health, and he even may send forth his thanks to 
 
213 
 
 God who lias used His power to serve him so well. 
 If God will use Himself and His resources to envelop 
 him with good things, he will not refuse to return his 
 poor gratitude. But the selfish man's burdens of re- 
 sponsibility in this regard, stop with himself. He is 
 grateful simply for worldly good in his own circle, 
 and scarcely for that outside that circle. For all 
 spiritual blessings that come to our race through 
 Christ, for all the humble i;rust that sustains the chil- 
 dren of God in the dark passages of life, for all the 
 sweet Christian graces that fill their souls with peace 
 and their lives with goodness, for the hopes that strike 
 into eternity and run parallel with its existence ; he 
 feels no gratitude springing up to God. He assumes 
 no responsibilities which are loved and cherished in 
 this direction. That others trust, hope, and are glad 
 in Jesus, and live as disciples should, makes him not 
 thajikful to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 But every true follower of Jesus is glad to recog- 
 nize all the blessings of others ; those that have their 
 chief results in this life, those that embrace another. 
 He is a high-priest, to go into the Holy of Holies be- 
 fore God, not with the blood of victims to make ex- 
 piation, but with the incense of joy and thanksgiving 
 ascending from many hearts, and from his own most 
 of all for the good conferred on others. Ho oft'ers it 
 there before the Lord. Thus every partaker of the 
 
214 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Spirit of Jesus, feels a personal gratitude for all tlie 
 good which the Master bestows. There is not a drop 
 of rain or dew that falls on the earth, there is not a 
 ray of sunshine or starlight, there is not a bending 
 head of grain waving in the autumn, there is not a 
 scene of grandeur that meets any eye and steals into 
 any soul, there is not a lofty thought that soars above 
 earth and penetrates the sky, there is not a hope that 
 makes earth brighter and life sweeter, there is not a 
 quiet Christian example that is lived in remote ham- 
 lets, there is not a broader and more responsible life 
 that as a pillar bears up the social or political fabric, 
 there is not one gift of God that crops out in any 
 human soul now or along the track of the ages, for 
 which he does not feel grateful to God. This burden 
 of gratitude which he feels for others' good things, for 
 their Christian graces and lives, is not a burden that 
 presses him, but like the weight of the atmosphere, it 
 is one in which he lives and loves to live. 
 
 This priestly function is one that we hardly realize 
 as we ought ; this obligation to feel grateful for all the 
 blessings conferred upon others. There are hundreds 
 in this city that have been the objects of the Divine 
 care and of the Divine bounty the past week. They 
 have been in healtli, and their wives and children 
 have been about them. Death, sickness, want, have 
 not touched them. If the pestilence has walked in 
 darkness, it has not come nigh them. They have 
 
215 
 
 had blessings and abounded. But many amid them 
 all have recognized no God, they have bowed no knee 
 in the family morning or evening, they are in no 
 sanctuary to-day with their praises, they have re- 
 ceived good things as the brutes do. But what then ? 
 Shall God have no thanks for the blessings sent upon 
 them and theirs ? Shall these bounties descend upon 
 those about us, and there be no returns sent up from 
 hearts that have seen and recognized them, and been 
 glad in them ? Shall these persons be spared and 
 blessed, and these homes be filled with health and 
 gladness, and not a soul be wakeful, watchful for 
 them, and send up thanksgivings for them ? No, my 
 Brethren ! We should have our eyes up to mark the 
 opening clouds, out to see the falling blessings, the 
 continued health, peace and life, and if the immediate 
 recipients have no thanks to send up and back to 
 God, we should catch them on our own waiting souls, 
 and send up in their behalf the gratitude which we 
 feel, but they refuse to give. For all the benefits con- 
 ferred on man, God should receive thanks, if not from 
 others that know Him not, then from us who see and 
 mark them. 
 
 There is a sort of priestly function here which 
 every Christian sustains, — a burden of gratitude that 
 others will not pay, but which we should be glad to 
 pay. Watch for the manna that descends around the 
 tents of others, and while they go out to gather it 
 
216 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 without a thoiiglat of God, do you take up the delin- 
 quents' gratitude and bear it to the throne, so that 
 God shall not be without some incense of thanksgiv- 
 ing for all that comes to our race from the full garners 
 of His goodness ! 
 
 But in the second place, and on this thought I can 
 dwell but briefly, — the Apostle not only speaks of 
 thanks given for them, but of prayers offered always 
 in their behalf. We are more prompt far to fill the 
 priestly function of prayers in others' behalf, than we 
 are that of gratitude for benefits bestowed on them. 
 But I wish you to mark the connection here between 
 the thanksgivings Paul sent up to God in behalf of 
 his brethren and the prayers he offered for them. It 
 is when we are grateful for the blessings given, that 
 we are stimulated to ask for more. Just as when 
 we are grateful to God for the good things He confers 
 upon us, we are more likely to obtain others for which 
 we ask, so also when we gratefully recognize mercies 
 bestowed upon others by the good hand of our God, 
 we are more likely to obtain the things we ask in their 
 behalf. The child that remembers what his father 
 has given him, will be more likely to obtain more ; so 
 the one that looks to what God has don^ for others, 
 will be more likely to receive for the asking further 
 benefits in their behalf. Looked at in the mere light 
 of policy, it is well to be grateful both for our own and 
 others' blessings. If it is legitimate to ask for further 
 
THE christian's PRIESTLY FUNCTION. 217 
 
 blessings for others, it is surely legitimate to thank 
 God for what He has given them. If 1 want my 
 brother to have more hope, sweetness, love, generos- 
 ity, it is well to acknowledge all that God has given 
 him now. Prayer always goes np with a power when 
 it goes with a recognition of what has been already 
 done. This puts our souls in a kind, receptive pos- 
 ture, makes them prompt to see and appreciate all 
 there is good in the souls and lives of those for whom 
 we petition. " Lord ! thou hast done such good 
 things for them. We thank Thee. Now do more. 
 Thou hast brought them to such a degree of goodness ; 
 thanks be unto Thy name for it. Bring them to a 
 still higher degree. Thou hast given them some 
 holiness, — perfect it, and crown all Thy other gifts 
 by the gift of eternal life ! " 
 
 Thus thanks and prayers go together. We can 
 put our souls under personal obligations to God for 
 all the good things He bestows on our fellows, and 
 then out of our thanks we can educe an argument for 
 our prayers. Prayer flies on the wing of thanks to 
 God and reaches His ear. We pray powerfully when 
 we are heartily grateful both for ourselves and others. 
 Let us perform for our fellow men the priestly func- 
 tion of giving thanks in their behalf, and we shall 
 perform that other function better of prayers in their 
 behalf. 
 
 10 
 
XX. 
 
 THE GIFT AND ITS USE. 
 
 But every man liath Ms proper gift of God. — 1 Cor. vii. 17. 
 Wherefore I put thee in remenibrance that thou stir up the gift 
 of God that is in thee. — 2 Tim. i. 6. 
 
 IE" the first passage we have a fact affirmed, — every 
 man has his own peculiar gift from God ; and in 
 the second, we have a duty inculcated, — stir up that 
 gift that is in thee. 
 
 There is a gift, my friend, in you. You would not 
 have been here in God's creation without one. The 
 fact that you are here, settles the fact that you are 
 here for a purpose, and that you have endowments of 
 some sort to consummate that purpose. Find them 
 out and use them. 
 
 Let us dwell upon the fact affirmed, and the duty 
 consequent upon it. 
 
 Every man has his proper gift of God, — every 
 man, be he ever so humble, ever so retired and rela- 
 tively insignificant. There is not one bearing the 
 form and lineaments of a man that has not some 
 
THE GIFT AND ITS USE. 219 
 
 special gift imparted to liim by liis Maker, some gift 
 that distinguishes him from all others. Some stuff 
 enters into his composition that enters into that of no 
 other man ; — some gift that makes him significant 
 and important in the world, and in the universe. Out 
 of the infinite resources of God, something was taken 
 to make this man, that was not taken to make that. 
 It marks him off, parts him from his race, makes him 
 a distinct and immensely weighty unit in the great 
 sum-total. 
 
 It is a proper gift, just the gift which it is best 
 that he should have, and best for others that he should 
 have. It may be a gift for speech or silence, for 
 thought or action, for high imaginations, for lofty 
 enterprises, for noble endeavors, or for holy and re- 
 tired duties ; — it may be the gift of stillness, of rest, 
 of patience, to sit in quietness, to watch in the dawn 
 with God's sick and feeble ones ; it may be the gift 
 of cheerfulness, of sunny and innocent mirth, a gift 
 to lubricate the grating machinery of life, to stir glad- 
 ness in hearts when the curtains are drawn and gloom 
 presides ; it may be the gift to tend and care for little 
 ones, to bear their foibles and fretfulnesses, to present 
 a velvety surface to the jagged and crabbed inequal- 
 ities of little or big souls ; it may be the gift of busi- 
 ness ; it may be a gift that runs out into invention, 
 to devise and embody in tangible forms machinery 
 that will the better help on the race in an advancing 
 
220 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAlsr LITE. 
 
 civilization. It may be a conspicuous or unconspicu- 
 ous gift ; it matters not, it is a ]3roper gift, a good 
 gift ; it comes from the mint of God, and with His 
 stamp upon it. It is good for the purposes for which 
 it is given, — on the whole, just the best one that could 
 be given by a wise and munificent Creator. 
 
 God had the residue of the Spirit, — an infinite 
 amount of unused creative power, of material that He 
 might have made up into souls. He might have made 
 you larger and packed more into you, but He did not, 
 because on the whole, He did not think it best for 
 you or others ; for you as a unit, or for you in com- 
 bination with others. The wisdom of God was exerted 
 in each man's construction, and in the original qualities 
 of his mind, he is constituted as God would have him. 
 
 Now this gift, this special gift of God to us, be it 
 what it may, we should seek to find out. "We should 
 use all the aids and appliances possible to discover it. 
 Our life-work will not rise like a star upon us till our 
 sj)ecial gift of God is found. I do not say that it is 
 an easy task to discover what our special gift is ; but 
 the matter is greatly complicated by our perverse 
 ambitions, by our sloth, by our selfishness. If in 
 godly simj)licity, with receptive hearts, standing in 
 God's light, with spirits up to Him, and open to re- 
 ceive His inspirations, we would seek to know our 
 gifts that we might exercise them just where and as 
 God would have us, we should find it less difiicult to 
 
THE GIFT AND ITS USE. 221 
 
 ascertain what our gifts are. "We too often want to 
 do what we were not made to do, — what we have no 
 aptitudes for doing. We range out of our sphere. 
 We are at cross purposes Avitli our own faculties, and 
 the Divine plans with respect to us. We want to do 
 what w^e have no commission to do, what we cannot 
 do, and what our fellows do not want us to do. We 
 are out of line, and do not march to the music of 
 God's harmonious creation. The world is a jumble, 
 and we increase the confusion by getting out of place. 
 We want an easy time, and we find very hard times. 
 We want to move on certain wonted grooves, where 
 we shall be sure of many eyes, and w^e make terrible 
 work of it, because we were not made with wheels to 
 fit the track that we covet. 
 
 Best are all things as the mind of God intended, 
 and the hand of God ordained. There is a man and 
 a gift for every place, and harmony comes when 
 every man and every gift finds its place, and quietly 
 abides there. We shall find our gifts when we are 
 willing so to do, and to fall quietly into our place. 
 God does not mean that any gift that He has put into 
 any man, shall wander ofi" not knowing where to go 
 or where to locate itself. We shall find our special 
 gift when we are willing to see it in God's light, when 
 with the simplicity of a child, we are ready to say, 
 " What am I, and what wilt Thou have me to do ? " 
 God knows our gift and He wishes that we should 
 
222 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 
 
 know it, and He will lead us into the knowledge of it 
 when we are willing to use it, not for present ease or 
 advancement, but for His glory and the good of 
 others. A gift — be it great or be it small, put under 
 the leadership of sloth or unholy ambition is sure to 
 err and come to no good. It can neither know itself 
 what it can do, nor where its proper location is in the 
 great sum of things. Let us yield our gifts up to 
 God, consecrate them, lay them on His altar, and all 
 the light of God will shine upon us to elucidate our 
 gifts, and point us to their appropriate and fitting 
 sphere of action. Every man has his gift, and every 
 man should put it under the leadership of God that 
 he may come to a true knowledge of it. And having 
 it and knowing it as best he may, then comes the 
 duty enjoined in the second passage in our text. 
 
 Stii' it up. Stir it up to work where God wants 
 it, and to do the service He requires of it. 
 
 Every gift needs to be stirred up to do its best. 
 A forcible and sanctified will needs to go to its seat 
 in the soul and grasp it and bind it down, harness it 
 in and impel it forward, make it walk, run, fly, as the 
 case may be, in its appointed circle. A gift out of 
 harness, left to itself, is vain and useless, like water 
 running to waste. It enlightens no one, helps no one, 
 opens heaven upon no one, shuts the pit upon no one, 
 m ikes no man live a more blessed life, die a happier 
 death, and spend a haj^pier eternity. The world is 
 
THE GIFT AND ITS USE. 223 
 
 full of gifts. Millions of souls are enriched of God 
 with the most precious gifts that would make earth 
 a happier place, heaven a fuller place ; — gifts that 
 would exhibit God and Christ in more glorious aspects 
 if they were only stirred up. But alas ! they lie in 
 the souls of men, all unused, or so used as to help on 
 the sad discords of the world ; — gifts lying like dead 
 giants in their graves, or alive, but running athwart 
 the best interests of society, and harmful to their pos- 
 sessors. "We should consecrate our gifts and then stir 
 them, put them on their true course, whip them up, 
 put spur to them, and make them do their best. The 
 world does not lack gifts, it has enough of them. 
 They want to be stirred up. 
 
 The complete equipment of society and the Church 
 demands that we all stir up the gift that is in us. 
 Society as a whole, tlie Church as a whole, a society 
 within a society, is an organism. It is made up of 
 many members. There are gifts in society, in the 
 Church, to do the work of both. God did not make 
 any man to be complete in himself, but in his fellows. 
 All for each and each for all. 'No man is his own. 
 No man's gift is his own to be used for his own weal 
 or pleasure. No man is to use his gifts to gain per- 
 sonal advantage, or conspicuity, or fame ; but being 
 part of a great organism, he is to use his gifts for it. 
 There is no lack of gifts, and there is no superfluity. 
 All are needed for all, and society at large, the 
 
224 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Churcli, is only equipped for action, for doing the 
 great work assigned it, when it can command for its 
 use all the gifts of its members ; when it can bring 
 them all into service and use them for its own blessed 
 objects. And when a man withholds his gifts, keep- 
 ing them out of the common stock, setting up business 
 on his own account, or when he refuses to stir up his 
 gifts, allowing them to lie dormant in his soul, he is 
 doing a wrong to the society or the Church of which 
 he is a member. He is leaving it measurably, shorn 
 of its power, and incapable of doing its work. The 
 true state of feeling is the one prevalent in the 
 Church at the time of and subsequent to the mighty 
 outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, 
 when no man deemed aught that he possessed his own, 
 but all Christ's and all his brethren's — all for use. 
 
 A gift, great or small, used not at all does the 
 world no good ; used for mere personal ends it helps 
 on the jar of the world ; but held sacred for the ser- 
 vice of God and the Church, stirred up perpetually 
 for high ends, '' hasting not, yet resting not," it 
 equips the Church for doing its work of showing forth 
 the Divine glory in the salvation of souls. 
 
 We get the most of personal advantage out of our 
 gifts when we stir them and lead them out under the 
 dictatorship of disinterested affection. We get the 
 most out of them for ourselves, for our own happi- 
 ness, for our own true elevation, our own lasting 
 
THE GIFT AND ITS USE. 225 
 
 repute when we so use them. Happiness is only 
 faculty all used and rightly used. Misery is faculty 
 unused or misused. A soul with all its powers on the 
 alert, moving on some lofty course of duty, under 
 the guidance of God, is doing the very best thing for 
 itself that it can do, doing all that any soul can or 
 ought to do. The soul is often smothered by its own 
 sour unconsumed smoke. A man is like a horse, — put 
 him to his mettle on a free course, get out of him or let 
 him get out of himself for high ends all that is in him, 
 and he likes it. He may come to his goal reeking 
 and dusty, but he comes to it happy. ]^[o man can 
 do the best thing for himself till he stirs up all that 
 there is in him, puts it all under the guidance of God 
 in one blessed act of self-consecration, and then does 
 with his might what there is in him. 
 
 Gifts will grow if they are used, but they will only 
 grow harmoniously and well, yielding blessed fruits 
 of joy and peace to their possessor, as they are put 
 under Divine law, are stirred up by Divine impulses, 
 and led forth on some sublime errand of duty or of 
 suffering for God or our race. 
 
 " Stir up the gift that is in ihee.^'^ The address is 
 not to the mass of disciples, but to each ; for each has 
 his proper gift of God, — a gift of which each is the 
 steward, and for which he will be held to a strict and 
 personal accountability. God prizes each gift of us 
 all, for His own wisdom devised, and His hand created 
 10* 
 
226 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 it. He holds each gift bound to His throne, and He 
 does not and will not let it go. "Wander as far and 
 wide as it will, He will summon it from its wanderings 
 back to His throne to give an account of its stewardship. 
 
 Brethren ! we have deposited with us our several 
 gifts of God, prized of Him and not to be despised by 
 us. "We are not to spend our days in idly bemoaning 
 that they are no greater or more attractive. They 
 are ours, just what we find ourselves with, just what 
 we have to w^ork with, our capital to put to use as 
 best w^e may for our Maker and for the world. "We 
 are not to bury them in a napkin against the coming 
 of our Lord. The non-use of our gifts is the abuse 
 of our gifts. Slothful ness meets condemnation as 
 wxll as selfish action. "We are members of society, 
 of the Church ; and society and the Church, w^ith all 
 the voices of their deep needs, summon us to use our 
 gifts, to stir them up. Thousands in the Church are 
 weary and sad, gloomy and despondent, because they 
 are not stirring up their gifts, or else are using them 
 for selfish ends. The Church generally, the Church 
 specifically, is languishing because she cannot com- 
 mand for lier high uses the gifts of her members. 
 
 You who have just joined the Church, I summon 
 you to consecrate and then stij- up the gift that is in 
 you ! Be it small — it matters not. God wants it. 
 Stir it up, and make heaven a little fuller, and your- 
 self more blessed through its use. 
 
XXI. 
 
 THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 
 
 As new T)orn labes^ desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may 
 
 groiD thereby. — 1 Peter, ii. 2. 
 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of owr Lord and Saviour 
 
 Jesus Christ.— 2 Peter, iii. 18. 
 
 TO grow in grace, and to grow in tlie knowledge 
 of Christ mean nearly the same thing. "We 
 grow in grace when we advance in piety, in true re- 
 ligion. Ko word, no idea ought to be more familiar 
 to us than that of growth in spirituality, in likeness 
 to Christ. Past attainments cannot serve us. We 
 rest on them, and we wither and become weak and 
 emasculated. We can only be strong and joyous as 
 we go on growing more and more day by day. 
 
 It is alike om- privilege and duty to grow all 
 through life. Though our outward man may perish, 
 though our intellects become torpid and stiff, yet our 
 hearts may become more and more mellow, devout, 
 loving and sweet. 
 
 I propose now to speak of the conditions of spirit- 
 
i 
 
 228 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 iial growth, assuming that growth is practicable. 1 
 shall confine myself to general conditions. What are 
 the conditions of growth in the Divine life ? 
 
 First and most important of all, lying at the basis 
 of all, we must be m the Divine life if we would grow 
 in it. God's seed must be in ns. We must have 
 passed through that great change of which the Saviour 
 spoke when He said, " Ye must be born again." We 
 must have entered into the kingdom of God by simple 
 faith in Jesus. " Tliat which is born of the flesh is 
 flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 
 The flesh cannot expand into the spirit, nor the fleshly 
 man into the spiritual, by the merely natural process 
 of expansion. There must be something superinduced 
 upon the fleshly man to make him pass into the sj)iritual. 
 He must become the partaker of a new, even a Divine 
 life. Be this now and always understood and be- 
 lieved. We must pass out of nature into grace, come 
 under Christ and into Christ, become a partaker of the ' 
 Divine influences that emanate from Him for the 
 quickening and expansion of depraved humanity, ere 
 we can grow or begin to grow at all. 
 
 Having become partakers of the grace of God 
 which is in Christ, and possessors of the Divine life in 
 germ, we have come under the very first condition of 
 growth. The Divine life being engendered in the soul 
 by the Holy Spirit, it like all life has within itself the 
 law of development, of expansion. There is nothing 
 
THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROAVTII. 229 
 
 wliich has life at all which has not wraj)ped up in it 
 such a law. It is one of the things that everywhere 
 distinguish life from death. Death has no power of 
 growth. It tends to dissolution always and every- 
 where. Put it where you will, subject it to any in- 
 fluences, that is its one all-conquering tendency — dis^ 
 solution, decay. But life always tends to growth. 
 You place a living body, a living seed, anything 
 living, under the proper influences, and it will develop 
 and grow till another and higher law prevents it. 
 
 This law of growth with which all life is invested, 
 is the only efficient cause of growth. Take away it, 
 and you miglit place it in any situation, subject it to 
 any influences, and there would be no growth. The 
 life of God in the soul of man has this universal char- 
 acteristic of life, — a tendency to expand. It enters 
 the soul with it, is a part of it. All the will in the 
 world would not create it. Things do not grow be- 
 cause we will them to grow. Who by willing can 
 add one cubit to his stature or one faculty to his soul, 
 or a law of quicker growth than that which is im- 
 planted within him ? I am not now speaking of the 
 way in which the Divine life is begotten within us ; 
 whether with or without our will. I am only speak- 
 ing of the law of growth which comes in with the 
 Divine life, let that life enter as it may. Tlie Divine 
 life has just as much a tendency to grow as the natu- 
 ral life. A child of God as naturally develops into a 
 
230 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 man of God as a child's body develops into a man's 
 body. A Christian does not have to go down into 
 the dark recesses of his own soul and beget and nour- 
 ish the law of growth. It is there when he becomes 
 a Christian. His business is far removed from the 
 creation of such a law. He has no more to beget the 
 law of growth in himself, than he has to beget such a 
 law in the corn he plants, or the child of which he is 
 the father. All the Christian has to do is to comply 
 with the conditions of growth, the law of it being 
 already in him. The Christian grows not by his will, 
 but spontaneously, as the corn or the grass grows in 
 the field. Pie might as well create life under the ribs 
 of death as bid anything within him grow. That is 
 God's province, not man's. 
 
 It is not sufficiently dwelt upon that at the very 
 birth of the soul into the kingdom of God, there be- 
 gins to work this law of expansion, and that if we do 
 not grow in the Divine life it is because we impede 
 the action of this law, just as some nations and tribes 
 by constraint and clamps hinder the growth of certain 
 members of the body. We check, restrain the law, 
 and so contract great guilt. There is life within us 
 with all the laws of life, and we stop its advancement. 
 Under the appropriate situations and influences which 
 lie within our sphere of choice, we should on becom- 
 ing babes in Christ grow up into men in Christ, as 
 surely as the seed develops first the blade, then the 
 
THE LAW OF SriRITUAL GKOWTH. 231 
 
 ear, and then the full corn in the ear. We have not 
 to work away down among the laws of life of which 
 we know and can know little, — but up in the light 
 where we may know all, — just as the farmer has not 
 to go beneath the surface to beget and watch the 
 laws of growth in his seed, but only to work on the 
 surface where he may know all that he can or need 
 do. It takes a Liebig to study the laws of vegetable 
 life, but any peasant can produce corn enough to feed 
 liimself and family. So it might require more than 
 an angel's knowledge to study the laws of spiritual 
 life and growth, but the tiniest and weakest child of 
 God may grow up into the likeness of Jesus. 
 
 This then is the first, the great condition of growth 
 in the Divine life, — that we have this life, that we be 
 born of the Spirit, that we be Christians. Without 
 this there is and can be no growth as Christians. 
 
 Having thus spoken of the law of expansion which 
 exists in all Christians from the time that they be- 
 come Christians, a law which begins to operate with 
 the first dawnings of Divine life, and will continue to 
 operate so long as it is permitted to do so, I would 
 now add that the second condition of spiritual growth 
 is the removal of obstructions to the natural and spon- 
 taneous action of that law of growth of which we liave 
 spoken. I have said that from the beginning there is 
 a tendency to expansion in the Divine life. That 
 tendencv comes from God without our will. It is ours 
 
232 THOUGHTS rorw the christian life. 
 
 to see to it that we do not check it by interposing 
 obstacles, or allowing obstacles to be interposed. 
 
 Christ in the parable of the Sower speaks of some 
 in whom the seed did not bear fruit. " The cares of 
 this world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke the 
 word and it becometh nnfruitful." The Savionr here 
 recognizes the law of growth, and that that law wonld 
 have acted if it had been allowed, but it was hindered. 
 The cares of this w^orld and the deceitfulness of riches 
 were the hindrance. They prevented the spiritual 
 life from doing what it had a tendency to do — develop 
 itself more and more till the individual should arrive 
 at the stature of a perfect man in Christ. Tlie body 
 may be put into an iron mould, and thus be hindered 
 from growing by the force of outward pressure. The 
 seed that we plant in the earth we may cover with 
 stones or permit thorns and w^eeds to grow up and 
 choke it. In agriculture a great part of our business 
 is just to permit the law of growth to have free play, 
 to war continually with all obstacles, not doing so 
 much directly to make the plants grow as to eradicate 
 all that would hinder their growth, leaving them to 
 come to perfection in their own time and way. So in 
 spiritual husbandry, — we have not so much to do in 
 cultivating our piety directly as in removing the hin- 
 drances to its expansion. It will grow under the ap- 
 propriate conditions, if we do not permit the vital 
 forces, all the energies of the soul to be drawn off to 
 
THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 233 
 
 nourish other and hostile growths. If the soul's 
 powers are absorbed in other things, of course piety 
 has no room to grow. The law of its expansion is 
 overborne, and for the time being crashed. It is as 
 impossible for it to expand, notwithstanding its ten- 
 dency to do so, as it is for the wheat to grow in the 
 field which is overgrown with thorns. Piety mnst 
 have room in the soul, it must have faculties, powers 
 vacated, left free by all other tenants, mto which it 
 may strike its roots and whence it may draw succu- 
 lence. A soul into which a thousand worldly cares 
 and interests come thronging in thick phalanx, has no 
 room for piety to enter, or if it does enter, it must be 
 content to occupy a corner, and draw a little support 
 thence, while the main faculties are given to other 
 things. Piety has no chance in such a soul. It would 
 be a miracle if it should grow. Religion proposes to 
 purify and elevate the soul, of course it must have a 
 soul to purify and elevate. The soul must give itself 
 up and over to religion, for it to try its i:)Owers upon, 
 to do with and for it what it can do. Having free 
 course in the soul, piety, with the other conditions of 
 growth met, will obey its own law and develop more 
 and more. 
 
 A third condition of growth in the Divine as in 
 all life is nourishment. The law of expansion may bo 
 in it, obstructions may be removed, but without spir- 
 itual food it cannot grow. All life expands and 
 
234 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 comes to perfection with due nutriment seasonably 
 administered. You may starve the Divine life as 
 well as choke it. A soul conversant with a few 
 stereotyped thoughts which run forever in the old 
 grooves, can never furnish a home for an expanding 
 spiritual life. In such a soul it like everything else 
 in it, must be shrivelled and dwarfed, resembling the 
 herbage of a desert where life struggles with death in 
 pei-petual battle. Eeligion will shape itself to the 
 soul, will exj)and and will be shrivelled with it, 
 moulding it, and also moulded by it. A cramped, 
 pinched-in soul will always exhibit piety in its most 
 mean and unattractive aspects. In such a soul it may 
 ran into fanaticism, into a blind and chafing scrupu- 
 losity, and will not, cannot shine out in its own native 
 loveliness and beauty, born of heaven and free of the 
 universe. 
 
 If you would have an attractive, commanding, o'er- 
 mastering piety, you must have ordinarily an attrac-- 
 tive, commanding and o'ermastering soul for it to 
 enter and to occupy. The man in a sense makes the 
 Christian. A small man makes a small Christian, a 
 mean man a mean Christian. Piety when it comes 
 into a soul has to take what it finds. If there is little 
 stuff to work with, it makes what it can out of it. 
 Men of the world complain that the Church exhibits, 
 so few bright and shining Christians. One reason is 
 that the world furnishes such poor materials to make | 
 
THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 235 
 
 them out of. If tlie world will furnisli better ma- 
 terials, the Church will furnisli better Christians. 
 Give us great, generous, noble men, and we will show 
 great, generous, noble Christians. 
 
 And then, too, when the soul, such as it is, has 
 come under the power of the Gospel and is regen- 
 erated, nothing wants nourishment more than it. 
 Piety being light struggles for light, — creeps toward 
 the narrowest loop-hole by which it can enter. And 
 there is nourishment for the souls that have been 
 born into the Divine kingdom. There is bread in our 
 Father's house for His own children enough and to 
 spare. There is a Book full of the very seeds of 
 truth. There is an Ichaboe whence we may draw 
 nutriment for all the plants of righteousness in the 
 soul. We are not straitened and pressed in on all 
 sides by God, but in our own selves. No one can 
 say that his spiritual nature is starved in God. He 
 has provided the amplest stores for the healthy de- 
 velopment of the children He brings into His king- 
 dom here, and will exalt to His own glory hereafter. 
 And if our piety is to grow, we must resort to and 
 feed on these stores, all of them. It takes a whole 
 Bible, nay, I should not be extravagant in assertiug 
 that it takes a whole universe to feed and nourish a 
 whole Christian, for to be a whole Christian is noth- 
 ing more than to be a whole man, a man developed up- 
 ward, downward and around, heavenward and earth- 
 
236 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ward, God ward and manward, a man linked to God 
 and his fellows according to their worth and rela- 
 tions. And it takes all truth to develop a whole 
 man, all trnth that is lodged m the Bible, and all 
 truth that is lodo-ed in that other book of God — His 
 works. The Christian that would grow into the 
 highest possible spiritual life must feed all his soul 
 with the appropriate nutriment, which God has made 
 to nourish it. He must feed wonder, love, hope, joj. 
 He must ply his whole nature with the entire circuit 
 of truth. He must stretch his cords on this hand and 
 on that. He must elicit his powers by all truth and 
 all beauty. And one great reason why the spiritual 
 life witliin us does not obey its own law and expand 
 into a freer and more noble and symmetrical growth, 
 is that we do not nourish it with all the food that God 
 has laid up in store for it. 
 
 K fourth condition of spiritual growth is one also 
 common to all life, namely, exercise. It is a rule of 
 all God's intelligent, and I might also add, unintelli- 
 gent creation, that *' to it that • hath shall be given, 
 and from it that hath not shall be taken away even 
 that which it hath." Stagnancy is, or soon tends to, : 
 death. Movement is the condition of breathing and 
 expanding life everywhere. Shut the infant up, fetter 
 his limbs, exclude the fresh light and air, and you 
 doom him to infancy. Leave the intellect unexercised 
 for a few months or years, and it stiffens into rigidity, 
 
THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 237 
 
 and becomes almost incapable of expansion. So it is 
 with piety. If we would have it grow it must be 
 called into action and be kept in action ; not action in 
 one line of things, lest what was intended to grow sym- 
 metrically should bulge out into deformity, but ac- 
 tion in all lines of duty, action moving through the 
 whole circuit. 
 
 The piety that would grow must keep itself in full 
 and vigorous play. It must be out on the fields of 
 earth gathering in the harvests of God into His 
 garner. It must not be always working indeed in the 
 street, in the sabbath-school, in the prayer-meeting, in 
 the dwellings of want and woe and affliction, else 
 would it have no time to feed itself by prayer, and 
 reading, and meditation ; but working and feeding 
 alternately and together, it will grow stronger and 
 stronger, till mature and full-grown, it shall pass into 
 the light and life of heaven. 
 
 These, I think, are the four main conditions of 
 Christian growth. The life of God in the soul, with 
 its law of expansion wrapped up in it ; the removal 
 of all obstructions to its growth, giving it free, vacated 
 powers and faculties of intellect and heart, to seize 
 and hold as much as possible an unincumbered mind ; 
 then copious and liberal nourishment drawn both 
 from the works and word of God, putting the whole 
 Bible and the whole creation into the mind to stretch 
 it, to elevate and widen it ; and then, lastly, giving 
 
238 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 it wide scope for action in just such a world as tliis, 
 where there is so much to move its pity, stir its ener- 
 gies, harden it aright, and soften it aright. 
 
 Let us comply with these practicable conditions, 
 not watching our piety to see it grow, not always sum- 
 moning it to the stand and severely questioning it ; 
 but treating it reasonably and confidingly as we treat 
 life elsewhere, and it will advance more and more. 
 Spiritual childhood will pass on into spiritual man- 
 hood. There is a Divinely appointed way of progress, 
 and conditions of growth. Divine life has its methods, 
 as well as other life, and this removes it out of the 
 sphere of miracles, into the sphere of regular events. 
 God will not interpose and annul these methods. We 
 shall no more grow when the soul is crowded with 
 cares, than the wheat when it is choked with briers. 
 We shall no more grow without nutriment than it, 
 or without exercise than the intellect expands with- 
 out it. Let the life of God be ours, feed it, exercise it, 
 and it will grow so long as the ordinances of God are 
 as they are. 
 
XXII. 
 
 THE AUTHORITATIYENESS OF CHRIST'S TEACHINGS. 
 
 And it came to pass \6hen Jesus had ended these sayings^ the 
 people were astonished at His doctrine. For he taught them 
 as one having authority and not as the scriJ)es. — Matt. vii. 
 
 28, 29. 
 
 IT was at the conclusion of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, that the people felt and probably ex- 
 pressed their astonishment at Christ's doctrine. Here 
 was a new man on the earth, clear as the light of the 
 sun, fresh as the morning dews, knowing man, know- 
 ing God and His truth, discarding musty traditions, 
 idle babblements, smiting home to the very core of 
 the matter, and revealing at a stroke, what it really 
 concerned men to know — the real blessedness of life, 
 what we must be and do to be true men, and to win 
 true men's goal and reward. With the vision of a 
 seer He saw, with the fearlessness of a prophet He 
 told, where the true blessedness of man lay : not in 
 walking the circles of ceremonious religionists, but in 
 being meek, pure, lowly, peaceful, generous, forgiv- 
 
240 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ing ; in meeting a rebellious world in stern antago- 
 nism, and dying for principle ; in being rigbt-hearted, 
 liberal-banded, devout, true, good. Tbe people wbo 
 gatbered to bear Him, beard sometbing tbey bad not 
 been accustomed to bear. Tbey did not well under- 
 stand Him, He was so out of tbe usual track of teacb- 
 ers. " Tbey were astonisbed at His doctrine." 
 
 It indicates a sad lapse from all rigbt instructions 
 tbat sucb apborisms as fill a large part of tbis sermon, 
 sbould bave awakened astonisbment, but so it was. 
 Tbey bad been accustomed to listen to tbe Scribes, 
 tbe learned men, tbe religious teacbers of tbe nation, 
 and tbeir teacbing was little more tban dry bits of 
 Rabbinical lore, stale, flat, and unprofitable, stirring, 
 feeding neitber mind nor beart. Cbrist's teacbings, 
 they could see, were entirely difi'erent in matter and 
 manner, substance and form. He taugbt different 
 lessons, and He taugbt tbem as one baving authority. 
 
 We are not to allow any wrong associations to 
 cluster around tbis word authority^ as tbougb in 
 speaking with authority, Christ spoke in a stern, im- 
 perious, harsh manner. We sometimes, perhaps gener- 
 ally, have sucb associations with the term, and with the 
 persons to whom it is applicable. When one speaks 
 with authority, he too often repels us. N^ow there 
 was nothing stern or repellent to tbe simple-hearted 
 in Christ, and when tbe people saw and said that He 
 taught with authority, it means simply tbat He spoke 
 
THE AUTHORITATIVENESS OF CHRISt's TEACHINGS. 241 
 
 as one who had a right to speak, one who was com- 
 missioned to sj)eak, one who spoke out of the intui- 
 tions of His own soul, from the siglit of his own eyes, 
 the hearing of His own ears, first-hand not second- 
 hand, certainties not guesses, observations not re- 
 ports, out of the depths not from the surface of His 
 nature. 
 
 There was something, doubtless, in his whole being 
 that indicated unmistakably that He was not dealing 
 in notions, speculations, but in substantial verities that 
 struck home to what was deepest, best in man — the 
 conscience, the loftier sentiments, the heart. 
 
 As there is an unmistakable difference between 
 what is significant and what is insignificant, what 
 comes from speculation and what from intuition, what 
 is guess and what is certainty, so there is an unmis- 
 takable difference in the manner in which the two 
 are uttered, if we only have discrimination to see. A 
 true soul, like a false soul, has its own manner. The 
 tongues that God loads with revelations and then in- 
 spires to utter them, stir the air differently from 
 tongues that Satan freights and sets in motion. The 
 authority with which a good man speaks, is as difter- 
 ent from the authority with which a bad man speaks, 
 as the tone of an angel is different from the tone of a 
 blusterer. As Christ had better and greater things 
 to say than the Scribes, so He said them differently. 
 Divine matter found a Divine style of utterance. 
 11 
 
242 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 And so the very style of Christ impressed the unso- 
 phisticated multitude. Thej could not analyze His 
 power, but they felt it. They could not tell why He 
 affected them. The Apostle gives unity to then- loose 
 thought, and words to their secret feeling, when he 
 says, " He spake with authority," and so gives the 
 clue to their astonishment. They felt it — he names 
 it. He spoke with authority as a Heaven-appointed, 
 and not a self- commissioned. Teacher. 
 
 And this is what the world needed then, and wdiat 
 it needs still, and what it ever will need while it shall 
 stand — some one to speak to it with authority, as 
 from God, as from eternity, to speak not guesses but 
 facts. 
 
 This is in some respects a knowing world, a keen, 
 intelligent race of which we constitute a part. I 
 would not disparage, but suitably magnify human 
 power and intelligence. It searches many things ; it 
 finds out much in the heavens above, in the earth 
 beneath, in the waters under the earth. God has 
 given us far-darting thoughts, excursive powers that 
 cannot be and should not be limited. He has put us 
 here to act indeed, but to act intelligently, — our 
 thought pioneering the way for our hand, our thought 
 running before, ploughing up the immense field of pos- 
 sibility. God elicits thought — stirs up His creatures 
 like a bird her birdling, to take narrower or broader 
 swoops into the airy domain of thought. He pricks 
 
THE AUTHORITATIVENESS OF CHRISt's TEACHINGS. 243 
 
 US into thought by the sharp goads of stern necessity. 
 He does not mean to spare us in this matter. We 
 must think, or we forfeit our birthright. We must 
 think, or we can neither win nor hold the mastership 
 of creation. We fail or cease to think, and the beasts 
 that we were appointed to rule, mount higher than 
 we. It is think or die, and God does not mean to 
 tell us much that we can find out for ourselves. He 
 beckons us on and up to higher and still higher prob- 
 lems. He sets easy ones for children, harder ones 
 for men. He geometrizes, and writes His figures in 
 stars and star-dust scattered over immensity. Fu-st, 
 the problems of every-day life. We must think — 
 think to get bread and butter and home and shelter ; 
 think to find out means of locomotion ; think to lift 
 ourselves and others out of barbarism ; think to live 
 a decent, comely life, to make earth a safe and com- 
 modious tenement to live in till the grave opens for 
 us, and our souls go out into still larger homes. 
 
 And then we must think higher than earth to get 
 over it. It is found that we cannot cut pathways 
 safely over the deep, except as we study the stars, 
 and so we have to scale the skies, and watch the celes- 
 tial light-houses— God feeding their fiames, — if Ave 
 would carry merchandise over the deep. There is 
 no safe traffic without astronomy; and so by our lower 
 needs, God inspirits us on to higher studies. And in 
 these lower and these higher departments, God tells 
 
244 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 US nothing. He pays due respect to the powers He 
 has given us. He lifts us over no rough places that 
 we can surmount ourselves. He bridges no chasms 
 that we can span. He levels no mountains that we 
 can scale. He sees that we can do many things, more 
 than we even imagine. He plants a beckoning uni- 
 verse before us, and tells us to enter and traverse it. 
 He know^s that wherever we can find a star on which 
 to plant our foot, we will make a ladder, and with suns 
 and systems as its rounds, we will scale creation, 
 going up and out to its limits. 
 
 But while God honors our powers by enticing us 
 out into His material creation to search and fathom 
 it, He honors us still more by beckoning us out into 
 the spiritual realm, where to the eye of the body all 
 is dark, and where the soul only can see and hear with 
 its anointed eye and its listening ear. But we cannot 
 go off into that realm without helps. We want some 
 spots at least of light — some stars by which to direct 
 our way — some helps to sustain our tottering steps — 
 some slight teachings to encourage us to go out and 
 traverse it. And so He has given us helps. He has 
 commissioned One who knows all, to come and teach 
 us not all that He knows, but the alp>habet of eternity, 
 the first truths of the spiritual realm, and that' Teacher 
 has come and He has spoken to us, some things, not 
 many, not all that we might covet, but enough ; and 
 He has spoken with autliority, and this is what we 
 
THE AUTHOKITATIVENESS OF CHRISt's TEACHINGS. 2-i5 
 
 want. We conld guess, but guesses are nothing. 
 Souls once lioused in clay, might speak, but their 
 utterances might not be reliable. We want one who 
 has looked over the illimitable range of truth, and 
 knows what to select for utterance. We want one 
 who has searched the depths of our natures and knows 
 when we need light and help. We want one who 
 knows God and can picture Him, — set Him at least 
 in miniature before us, set Him correctly, with no 
 deficiencies and no surplusages, before the world's eye. 
 And we have such an one in Christ. He knows 
 whereof He affirms, and He speaks like one who 
 knows. 
 
 This is what the world covets — authoritative utter- 
 ances, decisive revelations on these great themes ; 
 voices from one that knows, and that should make us 
 know, so far as He shall deem it wise to communicate. 
 When the Bible says, then, that Christ spoke with 
 authority, it says what we should expect with refer- 
 ence to a Divine Teacher. He must leave us with 
 the clear conviction that He looked right into the 
 spiritual world, into God, into man, and spoke what 
 He saw and knew. Anytliii^ short of authoritative 
 utterances, would have come short of the world's 
 needs and demands. 
 
 Authoritative speech from Christ is the only 
 efi*ective speech, really, lastingly so. Men love to 
 have men speak to them in an authoritative way. 
 
246 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 always proyicled that tlie authority be well based, 
 tender and loving. We like to get at souls that know, 
 and wish as little as possible to do with such as guess 
 and conjecture ; we like men of science, knowledge, 
 not men of mere notions. Men, indeed, run after 
 quacks, pretenders, but it is generally through mis- 
 take and misapprehension. Quackery is often, per- 
 haps generally, pretentious, making a great din, and 
 attracting much notice. It can speak with a noisy, 
 shallow authority, but quackery is known of her chil- 
 dren. God does not mean that simple, true souls 
 should take noise for sense, pretence for worth, false 
 authority for true. Wisdom is justified by being first 
 recognized and known of her children. True men 
 love true utterances spoken by such as know them 
 true. 
 
 The testimony of adepts is more or less decisive in 
 and out of courts of law. When we find a man skilled 
 in his own department, we heed him. We are always 
 seeing with others' eyes, entering into all kinds of 
 business on the seeings of men who we think can dis- 
 cern farther than we can. 'No one can see far all 
 around. We are all very much like the African 
 buffalo, which can see dead ahead a considerable dis- 
 tance, but not ten yards on either hand. Men see in 
 the direction they take, in the direction in which their 
 powers run naturally, and we listen to men testifying 
 to what they have seen and known. You know one 
 
THE AUTHOEITATIVENESS OF CHRISt's TEACHINGS. 247 
 
 thing, perhaps more, — but jour testimony is available 
 in your own line. Mechanics see in their line, phy- 
 sicians in theirs, lawyers in theirs, and their word is 
 more or less authoritative, as they are more or less 
 highly endowed and skilful. Yet none are infallible. 
 None speak with absolute truth. But Christ, in His 
 department, in those things on which He speaks at 
 all, speaks infallibly, authoritatively, and His word 
 is effective only as He so speaks. 
 
 Doubt Christ on the themes on which He speaks, 
 and your soul is crippled. As His speech is infallible, 
 so your faith must be unfaltering. A wavering recep- 
 tion of a true word is as disastrous as a sure reception 
 of a dubious word. What men want, is certainty, 
 and this they cannot have within the realm of spir- 
 itual and Divine things, except from an infallible and 
 authoritative Teacher. Man can satisfy man within 
 his own realm, but not outside of it. All religions 
 springing from human thought, human reason merely, 
 fail to hold men. They are not binding. They have 
 no authority. The voices that are to draw men to the 
 spiritual world, must come from that world. The 
 influences that are to lift above earth, must come from 
 above earth. The teachings that are to grapple men 
 and lift them, must come from a more than human 
 source. Men are affected, drawn and kept out of and 
 above themselves, by a power emanating from Heaven 
 itself. 
 
248 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 After all, men do love to be dealt with in religious 
 matters autlioritativelj. Truth must be mandatory. 
 It must come home with a stern, imperative, This is 
 truc^ arid you must heed it Take this and heed it, 
 and obey it, and you will be saved ; reject it, and you 
 will be damned. If Christ^s word has had any power 
 on the world, it has been as an authoritative word, a 
 strictly infallible revelation of truth and duty within 
 the sphere it pretends to cover. If it is to have 
 power in time to come, it must be in the same way. 
 The authoritative word is the potent word in this 
 world. 
 
 This authoritative speech of Christ will never be- 
 come obsolete, and never can be superseded. I know 
 not what new light is to come to us from God. This I 
 am not competent to decide. But of this I am as- 
 sured, that no new light will supersede or obscure the 
 light that has come to us from Christ, and for this 
 reason mainly, that His speech was authoritative on 
 the themes, and within the sphere of its inculcations, 
 and so it was final. He spoke to us of God and our 
 relations to Him, and God and our relations can never 
 change. He spoke to us of eternity, and eternity 
 never waxes old. He spoke to us of man, and man 
 in his great original traits, is the same as when Christ 
 spoke to him. The truth on all these themes is not 
 affected by the lapse of years. Centuries wear the 
 mountains, and they come to nought, but they alter 
 
not the eternal truths of God and man. The Sermon 
 on the Mount is as fresh and beautiful to-day as when 
 the lips of Jesus first parted to utter it in the ears of 
 the multitude. So long as man is what he is, — so 
 long the words of Jesus will be to him what they 
 have ever been — the brightest jewels of our lost 
 humanity. Jesus may become the obsolete Teacher 
 of the world when a new God ascends the throne, 
 when a new Law issues from Him, and a new Saviour 
 tabernacles in clay. Till then, Jesus will be the fresh, 
 unctuous Teacher of the race, speaking to every suc- 
 ceeding generation of men in the same tones of author- 
 ity that he uttered to that gathered throng of Jews on 
 the mountain slope of Palestine. 
 
 "We, indeed, can never speak on religious themes 
 with the same decisiveness and authority as Jesus 
 did, except as we simply repeat His words. And yet 
 even we may speak with a degree of authority on tlie 
 high themes of the soul and its salvation — of God, 
 and of Christ His Son — of all spiritual and eternal 
 things. As we take the things — the words of Christ, 
 or rather as the Holy Spirit takes them and shows 
 them unto us — as they j)ass through us working their 
 Divine work in all our faculties — as they are woven 
 into us — as we come to realize them in our own ex- 
 perience, and to live them and show tliem forth in 
 our daily lives ; — we too shall begin to speak of them 
 
 11* 
 
/ 
 
 250 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 with authority. The thing we live is the thing of 
 power. We speak truths that we have not lived, and 
 there is a hollow ring to our speech. "We speak the 
 truth that we have wrought out in our own souls, and 
 we speak " as one having authority." 
 
XXIII. 
 
 LIGHT AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES. 
 
 For ye were sometime darkness^ hut now are ye light in the Lord ; 
 icallc as children of the Light. — Ephesians v. 8. 
 
 THIS is said to a whole chiircli, one of tlie purest 
 and best that crowned the labors of Paul. They 
 were darkness — they are light, not in themselves — 
 that is impossible, but in Christ, and they are ex- 
 horted to walk as children of the light. These are 
 the thoughts lying on the surface of the text. 
 
 These Christians were once dwrkness. The word 
 is expressive and emphatic — not dark, but darkness, 
 the abstract darkness, is used to set forth their former 
 state. This is said in part with reference to their 
 former position as Gentiles — outside the pale of Jewry, 
 unvisited by any of those fainter illuminations that 
 rested upon that favored land. With respect to any 
 tnie knowledge of God and of that spiritual world of 
 wdiich He is the centre and glory, they were all dark- 
 ness. Tliey groped as men would do on the earth if 
 sun, moon and stars were stricken from the sky. The 
 material world would be a reality, if it swung a cold 
 
252 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and silent, dead thing in darkness ; but no living crea- 
 ture, upon the presumption that life could be sustained 
 in it, could find his way over it. He would move in 
 terrible mazes — wander as in endlessly winding laby- 
 rinths to no end, no goal. The spiritual world might 
 be a reality — its monarch might sit on its central 
 throne — his servitors of other orders might move in 
 their lofty spheres, run their sublime errands, come 
 to their goal ; but if no light from it shone upon our 
 world, we should pass our days in darkness. In all 
 intellectual apprehensions of it, in all the impulses 
 that came from it, in all the breadth and force it could 
 give us, it would be as though it were not. E"ow this 
 was the fact with regard to the Gentiles. Darkness 
 brooded over the vast realm of the spiritual. They 
 were shut in to the material. If thought ever wan- 
 dered into the domain of the spiritual, it went with- 
 out a guide ; if a question was ever dropped into it, 
 it was like a pebble dropped into ocean's depths. 
 
 It is not relevant to the subject to j)ause and ask 
 how this darkness came upon them — whether it was 
 a Divine judgment visiting them for personal viola- 
 tions of duty, or a disciplinary regime needful for the 
 education and ultimate elevation of the race. With 
 the fact, not the reasons of the fact we have now to 
 do. They were darkness. 
 
 The statement is not true to the same extent with 
 reference to such as are here under the light of the Gos- 
 
LIGHT AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES. 253 
 
 pel. However they may treat it, the Gospel does give 
 all some illumination. It does cast some radiance over 
 God and the world over which He presides. Men 
 may shut their eyes, but it is hardly so dark under 
 the glare of the sun, as in the darkness of midnight. 
 Some rays ever will steal in through the closed lids. 
 Men here and now can hardly be as benighted as in 
 heathen lands in regard to spiritual verities. And 
 yet how often is it the testimony of those w^ho have 
 come to see themselves and Christ, and eternal reali- 
 ties — those who have sat under the sound of the Gos- 
 pel from their childliood : — " w^e were in darkness, we 
 groped even at noonday, we did not see, we did not 
 hear, the spiritual realm was all shut out from us and 
 we from it. We heard with the hearing of the out- 
 ward ear, but we did not understand." It is among 
 the simplest and most obtrusive facts of life, that here 
 where we are, now in the day in which we live, the 
 vast mass of men have no quick perceptions of spirit- 
 ual truths, no vivid realizations of them. They move 
 all encompassed by them, and yet they penetrate not 
 to the seat of their life to quicken and draw it into 
 their own higher sphere. The inner ear is dull — their 
 eye have they closed — they are in the broad blaze 
 of the Gospel, and yet in darkness. Again, I say, I 
 have at present to do with facts, not with the reasons 
 of the facts. Men all about us are in darkness, pecu- 
 liarly so with reference to their own highest interests ; 
 
254 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 if thej were not, they would not, could not act and live 
 as they do wholly for the seen and temporal, not at 
 all for the invisible and eternal. That which affects, 
 moulds men, they see and are alive to — to that which 
 does not, they are dead. 
 
 But the Apostle speaks of a change, a transition 
 from darkness to light. Ye were darkness — ye are 
 light. Keference is here made not to the agencies, 
 whether Divine or human, or both, by which this tran- 
 sition was secured, but simply to the transition itself. 
 Ye were darkness with respect to all the higher truths 
 of the Divine realm — ye are light ! 
 
 In the natural world, we are accustomed to these 
 transitions from darkness to light. We stand on some 
 hill-top in the gloom of night when clouds cover the 
 heavens — the garish day gone, and none of the glories 
 of night visible. We are wrapped in gloom, and our 
 spirits take their hue perhaps from> the brooding dark- 
 ness. The within and the without correspond. We 
 stand there again when the sun has Avheeled up the 
 eastern sky and flooded all the extending panorama 
 with his light, and how great the change ! But this 
 is slight, compared with the change that comes over 
 the soul when it passes from a state where this world 
 was all illumined and the other all dark, to one where 
 the other is all irradiated and casts a fresher, brighter 
 glory upon this. There are such changes, sometimes 
 sudden, oftener gradual, like the rising light that 
 
LIGHT AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES. 255 
 
 shinetli more and more unto the perfect day. And 
 this, I say, is among the common experiences of life. 
 Tliere is nothing removed from the simple sphere of 
 the senses, and the sights to be seen there, on which 
 a wider range of testimony could be elicited than this 
 — that persons who were once dark on this whole 
 matter of the spiritual life, are now light. They 
 could tell little how the change was brought about, 
 but they could assert, " whereas we were blind, we 
 now see." 
 
 Neither is it out of the range of the common analo- 
 gies of life. We are constantly om'selves passing from 
 darkness into light — coming to see beauties, important 
 realities that before were nothing to us. Our souls are 
 like apartments in an inn. A guest conies and retu'es 
 to this room, another comes in and goes to that, an- 
 other retires to a third. Guest after guest arrives and 
 is shown to his quarters, and at length all have come 
 and all retired. Before the morning dawns, the ser- 
 vants tread the corridors knocking here, knocking 
 there. Sleeper after sleeper rouses from his slumbers 
 and hurries on his way, and to his tasks ; but it is long 
 ere all are roused. Most of our souls are filled with 
 powers that aralike guests asleep : God's servants come 
 and knock and rouse power after power, but it is long 
 ere all are awake — perhaps none are all awake. The 
 trump of God Himself alone will stir all the faculties 
 that sleep within us. Not till then will any of us 
 
256 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 come into all the illuminations, cover all the area of 
 thought and action for which we are capacitated. It 
 is true, however, that we are ever coming, on specific 
 subjects, with respect to important departments of 
 life, out of darkness into light. "We were darkness — 
 we are light. We did not know about that subject — 
 we do now. We were not alive to that interest — we 
 are now. We did not know that person — we do know 
 him now. That rich soul living close beside us or 
 coming in upon our beat from far, was all a hidden 
 mine to us but recently, now it is revealed to us and 
 we are digging in that mine. We are perpetually 
 making transitions from darkness into light ; — how 
 should it be thought strange then that, with respect 
 to the most important interests of all, we should be 
 making transitions from darkness into light ? Ye did 
 not see — ye now do see ; ye were darkness — ye are 
 light. 
 
 But you will mark that the Apostle says, '' Ye 
 are light in the Lord." This is a most important 
 statement or qualification. If there was a transition 
 from darkness to light, it was not by any light intro- 
 duced into and inhering in themselves, but by a light 
 wholly, outside of themselves, in which jthey stood and 
 saw ; and that Light was the Lord or Christ. 
 
 The difi'erence between a land in spiritual dark- 
 ness, and one in spiritual light, is the difference be- 
 tween a land without Christ and a land with Christ ; 
 
LIGHT AND ITS EESPONSIBILITIES. 257 
 
 and the difference between a soul in darkness and 
 one in liglit, is the difference between a soul that sees 
 with its own light, and one that sees in Christ's light. 
 Most of what we know about God, Christ communi- 
 cates. He came to reveal the Father. Most that we 
 know about the spiritual realm, He has told us. Most 
 that we know about ourselves and our future destiny, 
 comes from Him. He is the Light to the world, and 
 they that are in Him and walk in Him and they only, 
 are in the light. 
 
 Light in the Lord. In the natural world, God 
 makes certain bodies fountains of light ; we pass be- 
 yond their range, and we pass out of light, we exclude 
 ourselves voluntarily, or are excluded from their radi- 
 ance, and we are in darkness. "We allow the preroga- 
 tive of God here — to illumine the material worlds from 
 such centres of light as He has made for that pur- 
 230se. We do not claim that God should illumine us 
 from anything, or from nothing. We are glad to go 
 where the light shines, and to see within the range 
 of the bodies that are the depositories of light. 
 
 So in the spiritual world, Christ at least to us is 
 the Illuminator. God has made Him the Deposit- 
 ary of light for us. If we see, we see in Him, if we 
 are dark, it is because we are out of the range of His 
 light. The Spirit, in all its workings within us, does 
 not import light into us and put it on deposit — not 
 so at alL It is not the work of the Spirit of God to 
 
THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 create light, or to be the orb from which it shall 
 emanate ujdou our souls. He neither makes light, 
 nor imparts it directly. He, in this matter, is mainly 
 a guide. He takes us by the hand and brings us out 
 of darkness into light — the light that already shines. 
 He does not make Christ, but reveals Him to us — 
 enables us to see Him as He is — '' the Light that 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world." He 
 anoints our eyes, not to see something that did not 
 before exist, — not to cast more intense glories about 
 Christ — not to add one iota to His brightness, but 
 just to see Him as He is — the Light of our world and 
 our race. "We are led into Christ, and when we see 
 Him, we have passed out of darkness. We are light 
 in the Lord. 
 
 But there is an exhortation growing out of these 
 truths. 
 
 Ye were darkness — ye are light. The light shines 
 wholly from Christ the Lord. Now walk as children 
 of the light ! On the theatre of the natural world, we 
 see what vast opportunities and vast responsibilities 
 are involved in the possession of sunlight. We see 
 that we can and are expected to do in the day, what 
 we could not do in the night. It is in the light, not 
 in the darkness that we do all the work of life. A 
 world in darkness would be rolling like a cold, dead, 
 rough thing : a race in darkness could never serve 
 itself or others. So in the spiritual world, we can 
 
LIGHT AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES. 259 
 
 and will do nothing in the darkness, but all in the 
 light. We are in the light now. Tlie Dayspring 
 from on high hath visited ns. Our eye has been 
 opened to see, our heart illumined by the visitation 
 of Jesus the Light of our world : we should walk as 
 children of the light. 
 
 It might be claimed that we do so on the ground 
 of gratitude. Of all the gifts of God, this is the 
 greatest — light shed on Himself — the clouds removed 
 from those interests that most concern us — themes 
 standing clear that were once obscure — the way of 
 pardon and peace all opened ; what vast blessings 
 these ! What shall we render to the Lord for them 
 all ? This first and most, just to walk as children 
 of the light, not as though we had it not. The illu- 
 minated have a walk unlike the benighted, — let them 
 observe it, and thus give the sweetest return that lies 
 within the compass of their ability. We are in the 
 light — we should walk as children of the light, lest 
 we lose the light we have. Tlie light itself, indeed, 
 will never grow less. Christ is, like Him whom He 
 came to unfold, the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever. He will ever shine with not a ray obscured. 
 But it is one thing to have the light in the world, and 
 quite another thing to see it. The best way to see 
 the light more and more, is to walk in it. Walk in 
 it — walk toward it, stationary in body, yet progi*es- 
 sive in soul, moving on swifter and still swifter 
 
260 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 wing toward Christ the great Light : He will fill more 
 and more the soul's vision with His beanty. 
 
 Ye have it ; — walk in the Light as cMldren of it, 
 as though yon were to the manor born, as though 
 you were not once aliens, clear outside of it, but as 
 though you were the born children of the Light. 
 That is the beauty of it, that we come into the posses- 
 sion of Light, and may walk in it as children walk in 
 the light of a home. The very light of God will grow 
 dim to us, if having it, we fail to walk in it. 
 
 By the fact then that we have the Light, by the 
 fact that we are the children of the Light, by the 
 glorious fact that we who were sometime darkness are 
 now in the light, by the fact that the light is given 
 us not to gratify our curiosity but to live in, by the 
 other fact that it will grow dim if we fail to walk in 
 it, and will brighten more and more unto the per- 
 fect day if we do walk in it ; by all these considera- 
 tions, let us, my Christian Brethren, placed where we 
 are — ^let us walk in the Light. The Father of Lights 
 from His Throne bids us so to walk. It will be a walk 
 of peace and an end of glory. 
 
 " Walk in the light ! so shalt thou know 
 
 That fellowship of love 
 His Spirit only can bestow, 
 
 Who reigns in light above. 
 Walk in the light ! and thine shall be 
 
 A path, though thorny, bright ; 
 For God, by grace, shall dwell in thee, 
 
 And God Himself is Light ! " 
 
XXIV. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN'S LIFE DEPENDENT ON THE LIFE OF 
 CHRIST. 
 
 Because I live, ye shall Ike also. — John xiv. 19. 
 
 THEKE are what we may call great central lives, 
 lives on whicli other lives more or less numerous 
 depend. It might almost be said of whole nations in 
 critical periods of their history, that their very exis- 
 tence depends on a single man. If he lives, they live, 
 if he dies, they die. Institutions that have blessed 
 and adv^anced the race, have been originated, and for 
 a long time sustained by the efforts of single men, and 
 even after these men have been long dead, their bene- 
 factions have been their support. 
 
 There is a projectile force to character, to moral 
 influence, that impels it on to act powerfully on suc- 
 ceeding generations and among distant people. Both 
 the good and evil that men do live after them. We 
 all of us live in our characters and our influence. 
 Being dead we yet speak. Christ was about to leave 
 His disciples. He promised, however, that lie would 
 not leave them comfortless, but would come unto 
 
262 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 them : ^' Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ 
 was indeed about to die, but the grave was not to 
 hold Him. He would live — live a life above all harm 
 or accident, far removed from all the power of His 
 foes ; a life eternal, glorious, in Heaven ; and living 
 Himself, His disciples should live also, live not a mere 
 natural life of the flesh, for that was not necessarily 
 to be continued, because Christ lived, but live a Di- 
 vine, spiritual life. The Saviour thus bases their life 
 upon His own : He would live, and so they would 
 live; His life none could touch to harm, and so their 
 life none could touch to harm. There is needed but 
 the life of Christ to keep their life agoing. Theirs 
 would stop when and only when His did. 
 
 Christ enters not here into any nice discussions ; 
 He makes no revelation as to the manner in which 
 their life was dependent on His own. This is a sphere 
 in which had He attempted to introduce them, they 
 probably wonld have been lost. It would certainly 
 have availed little for their comfort in the dark night 
 that lowered upon them. What they wanted, and 
 what we want, is not nice discussion as to the specific 
 methods in which our real, our spiritual life flows 
 from and is dependent upon Christ, but the broad, 
 outstanding fact shining out clear, distinct as the sun, 
 and that fact Christ presents for their comfort, and 
 not for theirs only, but for the comfort of all His peo- 
 ple in all time, and as for that matter, for all eternity. 
 
THE christian's LIFE. 263 
 
 Traced to its ultimate analysis, we are compelled 
 to tlic conclusion that all life is dependent moment 
 by moment upon its Author. It is not given in large 
 deposits, so that when the creature has once secured 
 them, he can live apart from the Creator. It were 
 equally unphilosophical and unscriptural to assert or 
 believe this. The creature is never for a moment of 
 his existence independent of his Maker. He lives 
 entirely in Him, and sundered for a moment from 
 Him, he falls and perishes. God lives, and because 
 of this, the creature lives also. 
 
 This is so with respect to all life. It is certainly 
 not less so in regard to the highest form and style of 
 life — the Spiritual and Divine. 
 
 Christ affirms that this life is in Him. I will not 
 stop to indicate the bearing of this declaration of 
 Christ upon His proper Divinity. I shall not at- 
 tempt to show how living and mighty a proof the 
 existence of spiritual life is of the Divinity of Him 
 who sustains it. I simply take the words of Christ, 
 that in Him, both as to its origin and its continuance, 
 this Life is. There is the fact — Christ lives ; and 
 there is the other fact — that His disciples shall live 
 also. The one is intervolved with the other. 
 
 All life in such a world as ours, has its innumerable 
 hazards. 
 
 " The moment we begin to live, 
 We all begin to die." 
 
264: THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Death has been as potent as life all through the 
 history of our globe. Mighty as has been the wave 
 of life that has rolled, and still rolls over it, so mighty 
 has been and is the following wave of death. If life 
 has been vigorous and stirring, leaving its mementos 
 thickly scattered in the earth, so also has death been 
 as vigorous, following swiftly in the triack of life, 
 moving with it and undoing its work, so that nothing 
 is so notable in our dwelling place as the perpetual, 
 endless battle between life and death. 
 
 With respect to all lower and inferior forms and 
 types of life, we can say that they have no assurance 
 of continuance. God lives, but it does not follow that 
 they live also. But with respect to the highest style 
 of life, the Spiritual, it has an assurance of continu- 
 ance on the basis of the simple fact of Christ's life. 
 He lives, and it shall live also. Like other forms of 
 life, and more than these, it has its hazards, its foes. 
 It fights its battles, and but for the life of Christ, like 
 these it would yield and perish. With respect to it 
 only has Christ said, " I live, and it shall live also." 
 
 It is upon no weak and uncertain basis that our 
 spiritual life rests. If it did, we might well fear for 
 it, and fear for it the more, the more highly we re- 
 garded it. Raise one's estimate in the highest pos- 
 sible degree of this Spiritual life, and then make it 
 dependent solely or mainly upon beings or things 
 that partake of the uncertainties and mutability of 
 
265 
 
 earth, and you excite the darkest apprehensions. In 
 proportion to the value you put upon anything what- 
 ever, do you wish some permanent basis on which to 
 rest your hope of its continuance. Deposit a compara- 
 tively worthless treasure in unsafe hands, and your 
 sleep will not be broken ; but place your all in the 
 same hands, and you will have little repose till it is res- 
 cued from them. Now with respect to our Spiritual 
 life, Christ is its fountain, its depositary. It is hid with 
 Him in God, to use another declaration of the Scrip- 
 ture. It is as safe as He is. If He is above all acci- 
 dent, it is. If no enemy can approach to injure Him, 
 none can approach to injure it. If He is housed in 
 Heaven above all the mutations of eartli, so is it. 
 He lives, and if we are His, we shall live also, live 
 as safely, live as surely as He does, live while every- 
 thing else that is not in Him, and to which He has 
 not pledged perpetuity, goes down. 
 
 But it may be asked here, have we nothing to do 
 with keeping this spiritual life agoing when once it 
 is ours ? Because Christ is its fountain, have we no 
 care of it ; because He is its guardian, are we not to 
 watch ? Here comes up the old and ever-recurriiig 
 question between our agency and the Divine agency 
 in human life and conduct, about what we liave to 
 do, and what God has to do in human afi'airs, — a 
 question in which I have less and less interest, be- 
 cause it is utterly insoluble. No human, probably 
 12 
 
THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRTSTIAN LIFE. 
 
 no angelic mind can fix the precise time when the 
 one begins and the other ends. The fact is, neither 
 has any definite limits. The human and the Di\dne 
 are all interblended in all that man does ; God is in 
 it all, and man is in it all. God is in us from begin- 
 ning to end, working in us to will and to do. Christ 
 is the fountain and support of our spiritual life, and 
 this makes it safe ; we have some agency in its con- 
 tinuance, and this makes us Tightly solicitous and 
 painstaking. If it were a life out of some Divine and 
 Omnipotent being, it would be one that we should 
 dread to accept if it were proffered to us, and if 
 it were a life for which we had no care at all, 
 we should become heedless and - indifferent. We 
 have just that nice balance of dependence on Christ 
 on the one side, and just t3iat felt necessity of 
 personal effort and watchfulness on the other, as 
 will keep us from painful solicitude, and from de- 
 structive sloth. 
 
 Christ lives, and we live ; but all life is active, it 
 moves in specific directions, it has an end and an 
 aim that is lofty in proportion to the value and dig- 
 nity of the life. A life resembling death, is no life, 
 so that to preserve a spiritual life, though it be in 
 Christ as to its fountain, that shall not beget action, 
 the highest and noblest action in us, is to preserve 
 a life that is not life at all. There need be no em- 
 barrassment in adjusting precisely what we have J 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 267 
 
 to do and what Christ has to do in keeping our 
 Divine life quick and active, simply because we 
 are wise only as we attempt no nice adjustment of 
 the matter at all. 
 
 As we have said, man cannot adjust it all now, 
 and perhaps never. Paul says, " I live," and he 
 stated a truth, and yet not the whole truth, for he 
 adds, " yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." He at- 
 tempts no delicate tracery of the boundary between 
 his own independent life, and the life of Christ in 
 him. Both facts he assumes and believes. After his 
 conversion, we doubt whether Paul spent much time 
 in the effort to decide how much of that changed life 
 which he lived was his own, and how much was 
 Christ's. It was all his own in one aspect of it, and 
 all Christ's in another aspect of it. In its outward, 
 visible, presentable form, it was all Paul's ; — in its 
 inward fountain and perpetual inspiration, it was 
 Christ's. It was a Divine life working through the 
 powers and the life of the great Apostle. So with 
 all of us that have this life ; — it is ours, and yet it is 
 Christ's, He in us, and we in Him ; and neither here 
 nor hereafter will there be any need of attempts to 
 discriminate between our own and the workings of 
 Christ in us. In that great day, when the just are 
 gathered on the right hand, Christ will attribute all 
 their doings to themselves, not so much solicitous 
 to refer them to His own impelling and sustaining 
 
268 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 
 
 power. " Inasmuch as ye did unto the least of these 
 my brethren." And then on the other hand, there 
 will be on their part, an utter abnegation and aban- 
 donment of all self-originating goodness and good 
 doing, and an undivided and most hearty ascription 
 of praise to Him who hath wrought all their works 
 in them. In their estimation of it, their life will be 
 a life all of Christ and all to Him, and through eter- 
 nity, all for Him and His glory. " Because I live, 
 ye shall live also." 
 
 What a preciousness it gives to the life of Christ, 
 that the life of all true disciples hangs suspended 
 upon it ! The multitude of men that have no Divine 
 life and no wish to attain it, may be indifferent to 
 Christ. If we could suppose a man indifferent to 
 what the sun in the heavens imparts, he would have 
 no care whether the sun should rise another day, or 
 go out to-night in darkness ; and so, if there be any 
 heedless of a Divine, holy life that is derived from 
 Christ and depends upon Him, they will be heedless 
 of Him. They will not care to hear of Him ; they 
 have no living, blessed connection with Him. But let 
 one be earnestly desirous to live such a life — a life 
 like that of Christ, a life culminating in the blessed- 
 ness of Heaven, and then Christ will be all and in all 
 to him. If we ever live a true, powerful,, pure life, 
 it will be in Christ. There is no holy life apart from 
 Him. He is its fountain. We cannot have or keep 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 269 
 
 it ourselves. If we are in Christ now, then when He. 
 who is here and now our Life, shall appear, we shall 
 also appear with Him in glory. The life that we live 
 in Him now, is the pledge that we shall live with him 
 forever. 
 
XXV. 
 
 GOD THE SPRING OF ALL MERCY AND COMFORT. 
 
 Blessed he God., even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ., the 
 Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, — 2 Coe. i. 3. 
 
 TOU may know where a man's heart is by mark- 
 ing the thoughts that spring to his lips in his 
 freest and most spontaneous hours. Some men's 
 natures are full of music, and they are warbling it in 
 their souls, and, if their lips serve them, with these too 
 all the day, while their dreams are in Jhe world of 
 song. Whatever is the sphere in which we circle 
 interiorly, that is the one in which our tongues move 
 also. 
 
 Now there is no mistaking what is the inner spirit 
 of Paul, by watching the ready gushings of his soul, 
 watching the words, the sentiments that first spring 
 to his tongue when it is set free. " Blessed le God.^^ 
 His heart is full of God. God is written on it. Said 
 a French officer under the tortures of the surgeon's 
 knife, " Plunge a little deeper and you will reach the 
 Emperor," that is, if I interpret it aright, " Go down 
 
GOD THE SPRING OF ALL MERCY AND COMFORT. 271 
 
 a little farther to the very seat of life, and there im- 
 printed indelibly, ready for your revelations, you will 
 find the image of the Emperor whom I love and serve 
 and follow even unto the death." So with Paul : on 
 his heart was the image of his King, the King of 
 kings ; penetrating all his powers was the spirit of 
 that King, his heart glowed with love, his life was 
 filled with service, and when he spoke, his lips were 
 filled with blessing. " Blessed be God ! " Ask a 
 man of simple, unsophisticated temper, a man that 
 can interpret a simple heart when he sees it, and he 
 will, he must say that such language as this is not 
 the language of one who was bent on acting a part 
 and making a show. 
 
 There are some things that cannot be counterfeited 
 among hearts that, in their own experience, know what 
 the true is and how it utters itself. Hypocrites de- 
 ceive hypocrites by just passing a little out. of their 
 beat, and taking them on another tack, but down- 
 right, true men that have ever lived in the atmosphere 
 of tnith, all whose looks are moulded by an inner 
 spirit of truth, all whose words have dropped since 
 speech began out of a true soul, such know the sound 
 of true speech when they hear it. Xow these would 
 know that such language as this of Paul had the true 
 ring in it. " Blessed be God." That, in such a connec- 
 tion as this, comes fi-om a heart that sends it spon- 
 taneously forth. Out of the abundance of the heart, 
 
272 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 the moutli has spoken. Blessed he God. God is in 
 the heart, and the heart is filled with yearnings that 
 He may be blessed. 
 
 In one sense, we can add nothing to God when we 
 bless, as in an important sense, we can subtract noth- 
 ing from Him when we curse ; and yet I am not sure,^ 
 but that in our common thought of Him, and even 
 in our loftiest conception of Him we retake Him too 
 impassive. God certainly cannot and ought not to 
 be conceived of as indifierent to our feelings and 
 speeches about Him. We are not to lift Him so 
 out of the range of our sympathies, that we shall 
 feel that He does not care whether our hearts and 
 lips are filled with cursings or blessings. We are 
 not to carry Him to such a height, that a curse 
 shot against His throne will be received just as a 
 blessing springing from lips that convey the senti- 
 ments oi a full heart. The greatest man, the greatest 
 monarch with kingdoms at his beck and myriad troops 
 ready to start at the blast of his bugles, if he were 
 walking the streets of his metropolis in disguise, would 
 not be independent of the free, natural expression of 
 the humblest dweller in that metropolis. We may 
 take the man of vastest mental resources and physical 
 power, and if in the darkness of midnight he should 
 overhear the prayers of a simple cottager sent heaven- 
 ward for him, he could not be indifferent to it. If 
 he had a heart, such a prayer springing from such a 
 
lowly spot would afiect him more than the loftiest 
 eulogies of smooth-tongued courtiers. And we do 
 not exalt God when we so lift Him out of the range 
 of our sympathy, as to make EQm indifferent to 
 what His creatures think or say about Him. He is 
 not indifferent to it. He is not out of the reach of 
 our hearts. Blessing and cursing do not affect Him 
 alike. A Paul gushing out as he does in our text, 
 does not affect God as another man whose lips are 
 filled with curses. I am aware that neither affects 
 His interior character, or His power, or His position, 
 but if Jesus Christ fairly represents the Father to us, 
 then the Father is filled with sorrow or joy at the 
 sentiments we cherish toward Him. " Blessed be 
 God ! " does come up to touch certain chords in the 
 Infinite mind which a " Cursed be God ! " cannot 
 touch. My heart rejects all ideas of the sort, that 
 God is so independent of His enemies that He would 
 be as glad with a world in arms against Him, as He 
 would be with a world blessing Him. "VVe not only 
 affect our own position and our own character when 
 we bless God, but we also do add something to His 
 
 joy- 
 
 I am aware that many things may be said to the 
 contrary about the independence of God and His ex- 
 altation above all human feelings or speeches about 
 Him. The intellect may form its theories of God and 
 so lift Him out of our range of thought, that He shall 
 12* 
 
274 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 sit upon His throne in tlie heavens as regardless of 
 our feelings as one of those material orbs that sends 
 down its rays upon us and never yearns for a " thank 
 thee ! " But the intellect was never made to interpret 
 God, to find Ilim out even in such perfection as we 
 may. All estimates, all scientific adjustments of His 
 attributes formed by the intellect alone are imperfect, 
 yea more, are false. The heart is the true interpreter 
 of God. Not he that knoweth, but he that loveth, 
 knoweth God. " He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth 
 in God and God in him." And love is not an impas- 
 sive thing ; it is delicate, susceptible, pliant in its 
 very nature. Love moves to love, to listen to its call, 
 turns to heed its praises, and to smile at the voice of 
 its blessing. It is not weakness but strength to be 
 so afiected. All those views of God that make Him 
 cold to our feelings, indifi:erent to our blessings, are 
 not elevated, but low views of Him. 
 
 But w^e do well to mark the relation in which 
 Paul viewed God while his heart was so filled with 
 blessing. " Blessed be God, even the Father of our 
 Lord Jesns Christ." I do not know that there are 
 not hearts that are filled with blessing to God as they 
 view Him and get the estimate and measure of Him 
 simply from His works, apart from all revelations of 
 Him in His Son. I do not know but it may be so, 
 and yet the records of the world scarcely have left 
 the memory of such an one. I think the literatures 
 
GOD THE SPRING OF ALL MEKOY AND COMFORT. 275 
 
 of all nations might be challenged to present a spirit 
 like Paul's, or lips filled Avith blessing like his. Where 
 in the annals of Christian nations can we find one 
 spirit flowing out with such expression as this : 
 " Blessed be God, the Maker of worlds, and the Euler 
 of their movements ! " The truth is, God is too re- 
 mote from human sympathy, too isolated as He comes 
 simply in His works to us to elicit such gushes of love. 
 He afiects other departments of our nature elsewhere, 
 but not onr hearts. The wand that touches them is 
 wielded "by the God manifest in the flesh. "Blessed 
 be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 We are all ftimiliar with the fact that some aspects 
 of a large, rich character come home to us tlirough 
 one department of his doings and some through an- 
 other. We all know that even a man cannot get him- 
 self fairly developed in one service, or act, or speech, 
 or battle, or book, or picture. After we have seen a 
 great man in public, we wish to see him also in pri- 
 vate. The greatest single act of a man only presents 
 him to us at an angle. The battle of Waterloo, and 
 even all his campaigns in Spain do not present to pos- 
 terity the whole character of Wellington. The great 
 speeches of Demosthenes do not let us into the in- 
 terior character of the man. The paintings of the 
 greatest master do not permit us to see all there is 
 in the soul of the artist. Sometimes the man is in 
 his works, sometimes not. Sometimes we get little, 
 
276 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 sometimes much of him from what he does. Some- 
 times he gives a section of himself up and down in 
 an act, speech, work ; sometimes only a stratum. 
 Sometimes the intellect, sometimes the heart comes 
 out in a given work. Sometimes what is in the back- 
 ground is in keeping with what is in the foreground ; 
 sometimes it is in dissonance with it. At any rate, 
 it is very seldom that we get a man fairly before us 
 by any one act or work. And when we come to God, 
 it is surely no disparagement to Him to assert that 
 He does not, cannot get Himself fully before His 
 creatures in one work, or in a series of works, in one 
 material world, or in a whole galaxy of worlds. 
 
 If Thomas Chalmers on his back on the parlor 
 floor playing with his children, lets us into his heart 
 more than all the majesty of his eloquence, if Daniel 
 Webster under a tree on his farm in Marshfield, 
 planted in memory of his son dying in Mexico — 
 brushing away a tear as he points it out to the visitor, 
 lets us into his domestic feelings more than all the 
 march of his mightiest speech, if a man in his family 
 circle permits us to see more of him at a single peep 
 than in all his outside doings, surely we are not to 
 say that it is a disparagement of God if we assert 
 that we get into His heart more by one moment spent 
 in the presence of His Son, seeing God in the mirror 
 burnished for such a purpose, than we can in all the 
 studies of geology or astronomy. The domesticity 
 
GOD THE SPRING OF ALL MEECY AND COMFORT. 277 
 
 of God — the Fatherliood of God is brought to view 
 in Jesus as it is not and was not designed to be in all 
 the works of His hands. Prove to me that nature is 
 in the purpose of God a full revelation of God, and I 
 will get from the study of nature such a view of Him 
 as I can. But if nature is supplemented by another, 
 and in some aspects of it a higher revelation, then 
 reserving the lower for what it was designed to con- 
 vey, I will study the higher for what it was designed 
 to convey. We disparage no work of man when we 
 take it for what it was made to impart, and we dis- 
 parage not nature built by God when we study it for 
 its conveyances, and then pass on to grace to study 
 it for its conveyances. If two mirrors are set up be- 
 fore me to reflect God, the one to reflect some aspects 
 of Him, and the other to reflect others, I will look 
 into both. I will study God anywhere, everyw^iere, 
 in His works, in His word, in His Son, and derive 
 from each what I may. If the heart gushes with a 
 more free and full " Blessed be God," as I see and 
 call Him the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, than 
 when I see and call Him the Maker and Sustainer of 
 the heavens and the earth, then I am only doing my- 
 self and Him justice ^vhen I go for such a purpose 
 to Him in that relation and put my soul into com- 
 munion with Him there. If my Father speaks in 
 varied voices, I'll hear Him in them all. I will not 
 set one word of His aside while I give myself wholly 
 
278 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 to another. I will heed them all. The blended utter- 
 ances make up the harmony of His teaching. I will 
 remember the works of the Lord, for " they are great, 
 sought out of all them that take pleasure therein ; " 
 I will remember the word of the Lord, for it also is 
 great. If my Father speaks in the majesty of the 
 thimder, I will be out and hear Him there ; if He 
 speaks in the pity of the cross, I will be sure to hear 
 Him there, remembering that I need in my sin the 
 voice of pity more than that of grandeur. For in 
 continuance the Apostle says, '^ Blessed be God, even 
 the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
 mercies, and the God of all comfort." It is as the 
 Father of Christ that He indicates Himself to us as 
 the Father of mercies and the God o/^all comfort. 
 
 The Father of mercies. There is something strik- 
 ing and at the same time most touching and subduing 
 in the ]3hraseology. Father of mercies. Father of 
 mercies, by being the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Father of mercies — the begetter of them — the foun- 
 tain from which they all spring, Christ the channel 
 in which they all run, flowing here, flowing there, 
 irrigating a parched world like the streams of the 
 East watering its arid plains. Father of mercies ; no 
 mercy in the earth of which He is not the Father. 
 Find a mercy the world over — it may seem an estray, 
 but it is not, it has a legitimate birth, it springs 
 from one head, it has one Father. Father of mer- 
 
GOD THP] SPRING OF ALL MEECY AND COMFORT. 279 
 
 cies ; — discern a mercy springing subordinately from 
 a human fountain, a merciful look, word, deed, series 
 of deeds ; give thanks to the man, but forget not God 
 also, for it was begotten of Him. All human mercies 
 if they be not counterfeit, will love to trace them- 
 selves up to Him who is the Father of them all. 
 
 It is to be emphasized that it is as the Father of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ that'He is presented to us as 
 the Father of mercies and also as the God of all com- 
 fort. I have said that Christ domesticates God with 
 us, places us in His world as in a home — a home full 
 of sin, but then how fuller of mercies than of sin ; — a 
 home full of sorrow, but then how fuller of comfort 
 than of sorrow. We often see the sweetest traits in 
 human souls brought out amid our sorrows, just as 
 tlie brightest rainbows stand arched against the 
 darkest clouds. We would not for much lose the 
 revelations of our dearest friends that our griefs bring 
 out. A man never knows his wife till she has lifted 
 him with gentle hand out of his woes, till she has 
 tended hiui through a severe sickness, and given that 
 delicate touch to the pillow which her love knows 
 how to give. And now it comes to pass that as we 
 do not know our friends here till we have been in 
 sorrow, so we do not and cannot know God till we 
 have come where we can prove Him as the God of all 
 comfort — all kinds, all degrees of comfort. 
 
 Do not let us lose the meaning of the phrase, God 
 
280 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 of all comfort. Do not let ns eviscerate it and reduce 
 it to a mere figure of speech, taking the juice out of it. 
 This passage means all that it says and more than we 
 can get out of it. " The God of all comfort." In all 
 His greatness, and it is the finest part of His great- 
 ness, he stoops, nay, he soars to comfort. The God 
 of all comfort. I see a dewdrop cheering a thirsty 
 flower, I know whence it sprang. I see a rill of com- 
 fort flowing into a sad soul, I know its spring — it came 
 from God, and there is more in Him than has ever 
 come from Him. God of grandeur, beauty, knowl- 
 edge, power, wisdom, but also God of all comfort. 
 
 Blessed revelation ! and all through Christ. Let 
 us take God in Christ home to our hearts. 
 
XXVI. 
 
 THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF CHRIST ON THE CROSS. 
 
 And, J, if lie lifted up from the eartli^ will draw all men unto 
 me. — ^JoHN xii. 32. 
 
 ALLUSIOK is made to a striking event in the 
 history of the Jews. They were in the wilder- 
 ness. They had sinned. The wrath of God was out 
 against them. Serpents were sent to bite and poison. 
 The voices of wailing, and the cry of the dying were 
 heard in the camp. Terror and despair were in the 
 hearts and depicted on the countenances of all. It 
 was over the slain that Moses sang the solemn dirge : 
 
 " Thou carriest them away as with a flood ; they 
 are as a sleep ; in the morning they are like grass 
 which groweth up. 
 
 " In the morning it flourish eth and groweth up ; 
 in the evening it is cut down and withereth. 
 
 " For we are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy 
 wrath are we troubled." 
 
 It was when death was on every hand, and the 
 living were anticipating bodingly its speedy visitation, 
 
THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 that Moses was directed to raise in tlie midst of the 
 camp the brazen serpent. There it stood aloft in the 
 sight of all. The rays of the morning sun caught it 
 and elicited in the ear of the multitude sweeter music 
 than that which came from the statue of Memnon. 
 It was the cynosure of all eyes. It was a promise of 
 hope and life. The wounded looked, and by looking 
 lived. 
 
 But it was the Israelites alone that could gaze 
 upon that strange device. Tliousands far distant over 
 the world could not look and see it. It had " a local 
 habitation." It was visible only within a limited cir- 
 cle. Distance hid it, and beyond the sweep of the 
 natural eye it had no magic power. 
 
 But there is another disease — sin. It has invaded 
 the world. It is the bite and the poison of the old 
 serpent. It rages fearfully, and its results are awfully 
 disastrous. " It carries men away as with a flood." 
 For its cure. One — the man Christ Jesus, has been 
 lifted up on the cross, and as the eye of the dying 
 Israelite, amid the gathering of death's shadows, 
 strained to catch the sight of the brazen serpent, so 
 the eye of the dying sinner looks to Jesus. But it is 
 not the prerogative of the Israelite alone to look. 
 The Saviour lifted up was no monopoly of the Jews. 
 They could not build palisadoes around the cross to 
 exclude all others. There was no inner court for them, 
 and an outer court for the Gentiles. His declaration 
 
THE ATTRACTIVE POAVER OF CHRIST. 283 
 
 is, " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw, not the Jews 
 onlj, but all men." 
 
 If I he lifted. It was mentioned as a contingency 
 then. It is a reality now. 
 
 Christ has been lifted up, and for eighteen cen- 
 turies He has been drawing all men, men of all ranks 
 and all lands unto Himself. It is not merely Christ, 
 you will observe, that is to draw men ; — not Christ 
 with His heart of love and look of pity ; — not Christ 
 in all the excellence of His character, not the wonder 
 of His miracles, and the completeness of His daily 
 works. It is Christ lifted up — Christ agonizing — 
 bleeding, dying on Calvary. It was Christ on the 
 cross that stayed nature in her course, that caused 
 her to clothe herself in darkness, that made the rocks 
 rend and the earthquake. Christ controlled, natm-e 
 always as her Lord, but it was not till He hung upon 
 the cross that nature came to weep in sympathy with 
 Him, and send forth her cry of agony in response to 
 His own. As it was Christ lifted up that caused such 
 manifestations then in nature, so it is Christ lifted up 
 that has exerted such wondrous influence since. " I 
 will draw all men unto me." 
 
 There is in Christ on the cross the attractive power 
 of strangeness — what we may call novelty. Tliere 
 is power to attract in what is new, out of the com- 
 mon course of events. A new thought has power 
 when it first steals out of darkness, and stands visibly 
 
284 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAJST LIFE. 
 
 before the mind. There is power in a new presenta- 
 tion of truth, in its gushings np from its hidden foun- 
 tain — power in a new face, a new voice and manner. 
 The Athenians spent their time in hearing and seeing 
 something new. And the world has ever run after 
 novelties. !N"ow in Christ lifted up, there is strange- 
 ness. Men had been crucified before, and have been 
 since. The strangeness is not in the crucifixion, but 
 in the person crucified. It was strange to see such 
 an one in such a place. Who was the meek sufferer 
 there ? It was the Son of God. It was the Prince 
 of Life. It was the Eternal "Word that had been with 
 God and was God. It was One ^' by whom all things 
 had been made ; " One who " thought it no robbery 
 to be equal with God ; " who yet emptied Himself, 
 " took on Himself the form of a servant," and hum- 
 bled Himself, becoming " obedient unto death, even 
 the death of the cross." It was a man only whom 
 the Jew saw there. It is the Son of God as the 
 Scriptures reveal Him. It was the outcasts of the 
 race whom men had been accustomed to crucify. All 
 their associations as connected with the cross were of 
 the vile. And lo ! here is one who stoops from the 
 height of heaven, one who is called the fellow of the 
 Father, lifted up on the cross. It would have been 
 strange for a worthy man to be there, and yet the 
 Son of God is there ! Surely here is,- a strange thing, 
 a thing to happen once for an eternity, a thing apart 
 
THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF CHRIST. 285 
 
 and alone, remote from all events that could be linked 
 with it, isolated from all associates, the one thing that 
 draws heaven and earth to itself, standing out in the 
 history of the universe in wondrous grandeur. There 
 is in it all the attraction of a strange thing. We can- 
 not become accustomed to it. When we pause, when 
 the full, overj)owering grandeur of the event comes 
 upon us — Heaven's King crucified — we half scep- 
 tically inqufre, can it have been ? The language in 
 which the event is set forth may seem old, but the 
 thing itself must ever seem new and strange, and its 
 strangeness will not depart as we contemplate it from 
 the summits of a future glory. 
 
 There is in Christ on the cross the attractive power 
 of self-denial and self-sacrifice . These are always in- 
 teresting. We are attracted by them even if they 
 do not win us to their imitation. It is these that con- 
 stitute the most precious legacies of the past ; — these 
 that form the most marked pages of its history. We 
 cannot read of self-sacrifice and self-denial without 
 admiration. The men that have practised them, are 
 the men whose memories the world will not let die. 
 Others may have been greater than these ; they may 
 have filled a nation's eye, and bowed millions in hom- 
 age, but if they have lived for self, worked for self, 
 suff'ered for self, regardless of others, then others, how- 
 ever much they may have been astonished at their 
 deeds, will not permanently respect them. It is those 
 
286 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LITE. 
 
 who have denied self, that have won the lasting re- 
 spect of men ; that have redeemed history ; that have 
 made the past attractive to the good ; that have ele- 
 vated and ennobled the race. In times of difficulty 
 and danger when the hearts of men fail them for fear, 
 it is these that draw the hearts of men to themselves. 
 The safe and wholesome instincts of the people draw 
 them. Select the man who has sacrificed most for 
 his country's welfare, who in her greatest exigency 
 has given np kindred, home, ease, wealth, life, all, to 
 save her from dishonor or enslavement ; — select one 
 who has given his life for those he loves, and to him 
 the thoughts of many hearts go in admiration and 
 sweet affection. Select one — and many even in our 
 own day might be found — who has left his native 
 land, and on some mission of love has expatriated 
 himself, and consecrated himself to a life of toil and 
 sacrifice among brutal men to draw them to Christ, 
 and you have the man who has power over his fellows. 
 Thus there is an attractive power in self-sacrifice 
 and self-denial wherever they are seen. And if they 
 prove alluring when seen in their lower forms, shall 
 they fail to be so when witnessed in their highest 
 manifestations? Shall other men win us to their 
 study ? Shall we dwell admiringly around the scene 
 where a Spartan band fell at Thermopylae, and shall 
 we not linger wonderingly around the cross ? Who 
 has sacrificed so much as Jesus ? Who was raised so 
 
THE ATTRACTIVE POWEK OF CIIEIST. 287 
 
 high, and who descended so low ? Who has put such 
 a veil over his glory, who has laid aside such a power, 
 who has left such a seat and such a crown ? Who 
 but He could have denied Himself and sacrificed 
 so much ? And it is not till the abnegation of self 
 shall have ceased to draw men to contemplate it, that 
 Jesus lifted up shall cease to draw men unto Himself. 
 
 There is in Jesus on the cross the attractive power 
 of comjyassion and mercy. Self-denial and self-sacri- 
 fice may come from the judgment and the conscience. 
 Men whose hearts are stiffened by a stern will like 
 the cordage of ships at the approaching tempest, to 
 endure litVs storms and conflicts, may exercise them ; 
 and yet these men all unused to the melting mood, 
 men living as it were far above the mass of us, glitter- 
 ing brightly but coldly on the highest peaks of our 
 humanity, may not win our sympathies, however much 
 they may our respect and reverence. 
 
 Self-denial and self-sacrifice are attractive always, 
 even when a rigid sense of duty has begotten them, 
 when unaccompanied by the graces of compassion and 
 sweet pity, and all kind and gentle thoughts and 
 emotions : but let them come to us not simply envi- 
 roned and borne on by a strong will and an unwaver- 
 ing conscience, but by a heart soft and gentle as the 
 heart of woman — a man's self-sacrifice and self-denial 
 set in a woman's gentleness and mercy — and then 
 they win all our nature. They make breach upon 
 
288 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 breach in the barriers of coldness and worldliness 
 that surround us, and like billows they go over us. 
 
 l^ow when we look at Jesus on the cross, we see 
 none of the strong bracing of the heart and will which 
 prompted the indomitable Koman to thrust his hand 
 into burning flames to convince the tyrant of the im- 
 potency of his tortures upon such an one ; — nor of the 
 other Roman, Brutus, when, quenching all the father 
 in his heart, he sat, the judge alone, and condemned 
 to death the sons that broke his country's law ; — none 
 of these, and that there were none of th§se, consti- 
 tutes much of the attractiveness of the Saviour there. 
 There was the stern voice of duty indeed summoning 
 Him to Calvary ; there was a girding up of the man 
 to meet the agonies ; but oh ! the heart of compassion 
 in all its melting tenderness was there too. He might 
 have been scarcely above man had the sterner ele- 
 ments of His nature alone been active : but when I 
 see the heart of Jesus kept soft and tender there, 
 seeking sympathy there, lifting itself mournfully and 
 wailingly to a Father whose face w^as hid from Him, 
 a heart full of filial tenderness, and that, forgetting 
 self, was solicitous to provide for a loving and stricken 
 mother ; a heart that could pray Heaven for forgiveness 
 for His executioners ; — when I see this, I cry with Rous- 
 seau, " If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus died 
 like a God." The gentleness and compassion of Jesus 
 draw if possible even more than His self-sacrifice. 
 
THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF CHRIST. 289 
 
 In Jesiis on the cross there is the attractive power 
 of Jiojpe : — hope of pardon, hope of help, hope of vic- 
 tory, hope of heaven, all the hope that man needs. 
 Other men may regard Jesus crucified as they will, 
 they may look at the cross as the crowning glory of 
 a wondrous life, look on it as a blessed martyrdom, 
 and look upon Jesus there as teaching us how to die, 
 as He had before taught us how to live. We accept 
 all this, but this view alone fills not out the compre- 
 hensiveness of our faith. Our faith expects to take 
 in a higher view than them all. Jesus lifted up, lays 
 the basis of our hope which sin had depressed seem- 
 ingly forever. When we begin to hope for all that 
 we need as sinners, we come to Jesus on the cross. 
 
 In obedience to the cruel taunt, '•' If thou be the 
 Christ, come down from the cross," — let us see Him 
 come, and the darkness that draped the heavens at 
 that hour, would have been typical of that still deeper 
 darkness that would have settled on our prospects 
 forever. They may cry, " Come down," but methinks 
 the myriads of redeemed souls that would have been 
 lost had He done so, rose before Him and cried, No. 
 A universe paused, silence reigned in heaven, no 
 music was in the spheres, every harp was stilled, 
 every voice hushed ; but amid all the sympathy that 
 was felt by all the holy, not one would have bidden 
 Him descend. Then, at that hour was the judgment, 
 or as it might be rendered, the crisis of this world. 
 13 
 
290 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Despair and hope were in the balance. The scales 
 trembled for a moment. Jesus cried, " It is finished," 
 and henceforth hope was victor. 
 
 Jesus lifted up is the hope of a dying world. Ko 
 hope is garnered elsewhere. If our faces are not to- 
 day toward the blackness of darkness, — if a fearful 
 and eternal journey into it is not appointed to us all, 
 it is because Jesus was lifted up. Let others be timid 
 if they will, let them nicely select and weigh their 
 words, lest they should magnify the glories of Christ 
 crucified too much. We shall most surely accord with 
 the Scriptures when we give the largest scope to our 
 thoughts, and the amplest fullness to our words in 
 setting forth these glories. 
 
 Jesus in the manger, in the temple, by the grave 
 of Lazarus, in all His beautiful teachings and His 
 mighty works allures us : — but when we feel the 
 power of our sins, when we look bodingly to death 
 and its darkness, and to judgment and its terrors, it 
 is Jesus on the cross that attracts us. It is the cross 
 that concentrates within itself all the elements of 
 power that can draw a ruined race. 
 
XXVIL 
 
 THE DEFENDERS OF THE CHRISTIAN MORE THAN HIS 
 ASSAILANTS. 
 
 Fear not., for they that he with us are more than they that he 
 
 THE presence and power of a good man for na- 
 tional defence, is strongly illustrated in the 
 case of Elislia. Iidieriting the spirit of his stern old 
 Master, like him he was a bulwark of his native land. 
 When the king of Syria warred on a certain occasion, 
 as he was wont, with Israel, and took deep and subtle 
 counsels to come upon her unawares, and surprise and 
 overthrow her armies, he found himself foiled in his 
 attempts by the evident communication of his designs 
 to his opponents, and their consequent preparation to 
 meet him. Suspecting treachery in his own cabinet, 
 he challenges the ti-aitor to reveal himself, as though 
 his mere challenge would draw the secret from his 
 bosom. One of his councillors who knew more of 
 Israel and her notable men than the rest, interposes 
 his explanation of the methods by which the enemy 
 became possessed of their cabinet secrets. There was 
 
292 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 a man in Israel of keen vision and sharp hearing. 
 He had an odd and mysterious way of seeing and 
 knowing all that was whispered even in the king's 
 bed-chamber. Some bird, some com'ser of the air 
 bore it to him, and thus what was done in the most 
 secret places in the metropolis of Syria was revealed 
 at once and afar off in Israel. This dangerous man 
 must be found and silenced. His retreat is discov- 
 ered. Despotism always has its own coarse instru- 
 ments, craft or force, to accomplish its designs. 
 Chariots and horsemen — a host — are sent to Dothan. 
 Tliey choose the night, as if that keen eye that stole 
 the secrets of the council-chamber could not also see 
 the movements of armies amid the densest shades. 
 They reach and encompass the city. The youthful 
 servant of the Prophet rises early in the morning and 
 goes forth ; seeing the dread arraj, he hurries back 
 trembling to his master to announce to him its pres- 
 ence. The intelligence ruffles not the heart, — stirs 
 not a muscle of that calm and serene man. He is 
 in communication with the fountain of all true repose. 
 Til ere were many to attack, but more for defence. 
 He wishes to convey somewhat of his own compo- 
 sure to his servant. He tells him to " Fear not, for 
 they that be with us are more than they that be with 
 them." 
 
 But not to leave it all to his simple word, he prays 
 that his eyes may be opened that he may see ; and 
 
STRENGTH OF THE CHRISTIAN'S DEFENDERS. 293 
 
 behold ! the mountain was full of horses and chariots 
 of fire round about Elisha. Horses and chariots en- 
 compassed the city to attack — horses and chariots 
 more numeroi^s filled the upper air to defend. The 
 opening of the young man's eyes did not bring them 
 there — did not create them. They were there before 
 — invisible. I^ow they are visible. The methods, 
 the machinery, so to speak, by which these unseen 
 defenders manifested themselves to him had possibly 
 peculiar adaptations to his case, for allaying his fears, 
 but the defenders were really there. He was not 
 deceived. These were not figments of his own fancy. 
 The real, spiritual guardians w^cre there encompassing 
 the Prophet, equipped, ready to ward off danger. If 
 it were a vision, it was a vision representing a reality. 
 The record has no meaning, the vision was a mere 
 deception, unless it was true that their protectors were 
 actually more than their assailants. 
 
 This historical event has interest for us as a simple 
 bald fiict. It is delightful to know that one man in 
 trying times had such a company to be with and 
 guard him ; but this, like most events of the Scrip- 
 tures, has its chief interest for us in the fact that it is 
 illustrative of a general principle. As an isolated 
 case, we might read it, but regarded as a precedent, 
 as something which is true of others, of us, as well 
 as of the old Prophet, it will be read with new and 
 increasing delight. 
 
294 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. ^ 
 
 We too are weak, we are subject to attack, we are 
 in peril. Are these defenders for us, do they encom- 
 pass us in thick phalanx, or are we to make our way 
 in life, througli its perils and difficulties, apart and 
 alone ? Are tliey that are with us, more than they 
 that are with our foes ? As a record of the olden 
 time, as a part of the inspired word, this passage of 
 Scripture has its chief significance for us, that we, 
 under the appropriate conditions, — with enemies to 
 meet, with passions to subdne, with souls stained by 
 sin to purify, with heaven and immortal glory to win, 
 — can adopt the same language, and say, '' They that 
 are with us are more than they that are with them.'^ 
 
 Who may truthfully and properly assert this? 
 Those who now have in a degree the spirit of Elisha 
 — those who have passed over from a position of hos- 
 tility or indifference to God, to one of friendship with 
 Him, who are now by simple faith in Jesus adopted 
 into His family. If we now are on the right side in 
 the great moral conflict which is going on here, — ^if 
 our thoughts, our feelings, our sympathies run in right 
 channels ; and if our efforts follow our feelings, and 
 we are striving in our positions, conspicuous, or ob- 
 scure, with our faculties and means of influence, great 
 or small ; if in the shop, on the farm, in the counting- 
 room, in the pulpit, in domestic retirement, we are 
 striving to bring the world into allegiance to God 
 and His Son ; then may we take up the language of 
 
the Prophet and say, " They that be with us are more 
 than they that be with them." We may break over 
 all wide and narrow limits of sect, and standing on the 
 broad platform of a common Christianity, we may in- 
 close in our cincture of a glorious fellowship all that 
 love Christ ; and they and we together, in view of 
 common foes and conflicts and interests, may say in 
 company, " They that be with us are more than they 
 that be with them." 
 
 "Who are the more that are with us ? God is with 
 us. Christ is with us. The Holy Spirit is with us. 
 It would be enough if these alone were with us to 
 encompass our path, to serve as our Sun and our 
 Shield. We can go nowhere where they will not 
 encircle us, where the palisadoes of their strength 
 will not rise about us. But these, all-sufiicient as 
 they are, constitute after all a unit — a sublime, 
 awful, blessed one^ but one still. These alone do 
 not constitute the move that are with us. With them 
 is the more in point of all-pervading and all-protect- 
 ing powder : but the language seems to imply that 
 more in number are wdth us. And to have these, 
 we must descend to subordinate beings, the allegiant, 
 loving subjects of God. 
 
 These all are with us, and they are vastly more 
 numerous than the disloyal. They are all with us 
 and for tis — angel and archangel — cherubim and 
 seraphim — the allegiant in heaven and the allegiant 
 
296 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 on earth. It gives us a striking view of the almost 
 crowded fullness of the spiritual worlds when we re- 
 member that it conld spare such a host for the pro- 
 tection of Elisha alone. All that loyal host is with 
 us when we are with them : with us, not to do our 
 work, not to iight our battles, not to step in and 
 smooth over all the rough places of our pilgrimage, 
 not to render the attainment of heaven so easy as to 
 make us feel that we have but to glide into it. N'o, 
 they are not with us to lighten all our burdens, but 
 with us to do for us what we need, with us to make 
 us drastic and noble men, fit associates for themselves 
 in future exploits and in their eternal career. When 
 one goes out of his own cribbed and cabined person- 
 ality, his little, lowly self, and identifies himself with 
 the great interests of the universe, the great brother- 
 hood of the good ; in breaking away from his selfish 
 love he gains the love of all. The universe flows into 
 him when Adjoins it. The universal brotherhood come 
 to him when he goes out to them. He gives his poor 
 heart, and he gets in exchange their richly endowed 
 hearts. He gives little and gains much. He casts 
 in a single seed, and he reaps a rich harvest. He 
 becomes united to the great family of God in Heaven 
 and on the earth, — a family where each, even the 
 weakest, is dear to all ; — a family none too large for 
 the holy sympathies to circle round and flow through. 
 All are with each, and that too, in the measure that 
 
297 
 
 eacli is with all. The language of that family is, 
 ^' All mine is thine, and all thine is mine." Let God 
 be our Father, and He and all His children, wherever 
 they are, are with us. " More are they that be with 
 us than they that be with them." 
 
 The reasons why so many are with us if we are 
 loyal here upon the earth in our insignificance and 
 sinfulness, are doubtless many. In a well-ordered 
 family or kingdom, all must be with each. Its large- 
 ness does not check the flow of kindly feeling and 
 interest, but gives them freer scope by giving them 
 more objects to embrace. But there are sjoecial rea- 
 sons why so many of the allegiant subjects of God 
 should be with us here upon the earth. 
 
 Piety here is in its infancy. AYe would enter upon 
 no field of conjecture here. We would not assert that 
 this is the theatre where spirits are bora and nurtured 
 to fill up the ranks of the heavenly host, rent and de- 
 cimated by the first great rebellion. We need no 
 such conjecture. But that tliis is a great nursery of 
 piety, none can doubt. Souls are here born again^ 
 born into the kingdom of God, out of the kingdom 
 of Satan ; — enter into an experience of good, often 
 an experience of evil. They are born into the Di- 
 vine kingdom, often, amid throes and agonies. Piety 
 here is born like children on the ocean, amid storms 
 and tempests. It heaves its first breath amid the 
 sighing of the billows. It needs like all infancy 
 13* 
 
298 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 peculiar guardianship and nurture. It needs to be 
 watched and cared for, lest its feeble life should 
 flicker and go out. And it is. The elder and 
 stronger spirits of the universe come to rock the 
 cradle of our infancy — to support us while we are 
 weak, and nurture us into a stronger life. 
 
 In a loving and true family, the birth of a child 
 is a signal for general joy. It finds warm and loving 
 hearts to welcome it when it first lands upon this 
 bleak, cold world. It draws out new afl[ections, gives 
 a consciousness to many of new spiritual wealth. The 
 little one almost stops the currents of business, lifts 
 the domestic thoughts out of old ruts, draws as to a 
 common centre all the kindly regards of the house- 
 hold ; it is the one object of thought and interest, till 
 it gets a little used to its new home and life. And 
 in the higher family of God, when one is born into 
 it, especially out of earth and out of sin, shall there 
 not be a similar rush of thought and sympathy, a 
 similar preparation of feeling for its reception in its 
 new home ? Shall it not summon those who have 
 learned to walk in the ways of the Lord, to teach it 
 to tread the same path ? The law of analogy pre- 
 pares us for the reception and belief of those passages 
 of Scripture which speak of the interest of other and 
 older citizens of the commonwealth of Israel in the 
 entrance of a new and infant member Vv'ithin its do- 
 main. If his change of moral position brings enemies, 
 
STRENGTH OF THE CHRISTIAN'S DEFENDERS. 299 
 
 SO does it friends, and the veriest infant in the family 
 of God may say, " More are they that be with me 
 than they that l)e with them." 
 
 Bnt not only is piety in its infancy here, it is 
 peculiarly subject to attack, and peculiarly needs 
 defence. All life in this world has to keep up a 
 wavering and often doubtful battle with, death, and 
 all but spiritual life is at length worsted in the con- 
 flict. This would yield also, but for the perpetual 
 strengthening and protection which it receives from 
 the stronger spiritual life of the more mature and 
 experienced. Every Christian is a citizen of the king- 
 dom of God. The person of a citizen is ever sacred. 
 He lives and moves every hour encompassed by all 
 the majesty and power of the state. His country's 
 laws guard him — its armies keep sentry over him. 
 Let the humblest citizen of a government be attacked, 
 and at once he becomes the centre of its thoughts. 
 Tliere flow to him hearts that never before knew him. 
 All the state's power, its fleets, its armies are enlisted 
 to defend him, for he becomes the representative of 
 its dignity. So is it in the Divine government. It 
 defends its citizens at any cost. The w^eakcst may 
 command all its powers of defence : he becomes the 
 representative of its dignity. 
 
 And where the subjects of the Divine government 
 are most exposed and most need defence, tliere will be 
 detached its most nmnerous and its strongest defend- 
 
300 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ers. Earth is such a place. The friends of God are 
 here most exposed, and where most are wanted, there 
 most come. It is becanse so many are against us here 
 if we be good, that so many come to be with ns in 
 actual jpresence^ as well as sympathy. God acts on 
 the principle of economy, and gives earth so many 
 defenders becanse it is snch an exposed ontpost in 
 His dominions. " More are they that be with ns 
 than they that be with them." 
 
 I have already said that the spiritual guardians 
 were round about Elisha and his servant, before the 
 eyes of the latter were opened to see them. He sim- 
 ply became cognizant of them through the quickening 
 of his vision. The fact that they were there, was his 
 safety J — the sight of them was his comfort^ and dissi- 
 pated his fears. And so the fact that so many are 
 with and for us, if we are on the side of Christ, is our 
 safety. They are about us, though we realize it not. 
 When told so, we sometimes wdsh that we could have 
 our eyes anointed, that w^e could see them, that they 
 might stand out in visible and tangible array before 
 us as they did before him. "We long for sight here 
 often as elsewhere. But to sigh for a sight of all our 
 spiritual guardians, is to forget the very object of the 
 Gospel. It comes to r^-create and strengthen our faith 
 in things and persons unseen and eternal ; it comes to 
 re-bridge the great gulf which we have fixed between 
 the seen and temporal, and the unseen and eternal, 
 
STRENGTH OF THE CHRISTIAN'S DEFENDERS. 301 
 
 and to draw us in thought and affection over tlie 
 bridged chasm. It comes to make real and substan- 
 tial to us the invisible ; but to make the invisible 
 visible, would be to subvert the very design of the 
 Gospel. It seeks to make us walk bj faith, not by 
 sight, — to live for, fight for, work and suffer and die 
 for invisible interests and beings ; and to reveal them 
 (if that were possible) would be to subvert its objects. 
 Our invisible helpers must remain invisible. They 
 are here. They are real. We need but a spiritual 
 vision, an all-conquering faith to see them, to realize 
 their presence, to banish our fears, to make us ever 
 calm and serene. The telescope plants no new stars 
 in the upper firmament. It only rolls away the dark- 
 ness and makes them stand confessed. So faith cre- 
 ates nothing, brings from the sweet heavens no new 
 guardians ; but it does reveal those that are here, it 
 does banish our fears by showing us through what 
 environing hosts of friends we may walk in our spirit- 
 ual novitiate, and reach their and our home. Faith 
 says in all the way, " Fear not, for they that be with 
 us are more than they that be with them." 
 
 The good, whether they be feebly good or strongly 
 good, whether their hearts be fixed with an iron 
 rigidity in goodness, or whether they tremble toward 
 it like the jostled needle seeking its centre of rest, — 
 are yet with the more numerous party. And in 
 seeking to advance our holy religion, to bring men 
 
302 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 alienated or indifferent more heartily to embrace it, 
 we want the influence of this simple fact. 
 
 Every great and far-reaching interest must have 
 its lower as well as its higher order of motives and 
 impulses. Man is a many-sided being. He has his 
 higher and lower principles of action, his higher and 
 lower affections and tendencies. And a cause wliich 
 should have only one or two great towering incite- 
 ments rising like lofty mountains above the level 
 of common life, and should be ever ringing its mo- 
 notonous changes on these, would fail to reach the 
 7nass of men. Some lofty natures might feel and 
 yield to their power ; many might feel them in their 
 better moods ; but they would not reach all men in 
 all moods. Now our religion is a great, a universal 
 interest. It is for men — all men — in all positions — in 
 all stages of intellectual enlargement and social refine- 
 ment. It proposes to subdue men to itself, to raise 
 them to the loftiest heights of spiritual power. To 
 reach men and raise men, it must come down to them. 
 It must stoop to conquer. If it would find them and 
 save them, it must seek them on the low levels which 
 they occupy. And this religion is so rich in resour- 
 ces, so crowded with motives, meets men at so many 
 points, knocks and is willing to enter at so many 
 doors, that it rarely finds one sunk so low that it can- 
 not discern something within the broad circuit of its 
 appeals that will reach and engage him. And it is 
 
STRENGTH OF THE CHRISTIANAS DEFENDERS. 303 
 
 proper to appeal to all the innocent tendencies of 
 man's nature, — to slip in at a lower portal if you find 
 the higher closed. 
 
 Now there is with all men a desire to be with the 
 more numerous party. We are gregarious, and we 
 like to join the biggest flock. Let it be justly antici- 
 pated, that in a given political canvass, a certain 
 party is to win the day, and that simple anticipation 
 will alone affect enough and swing them over to se- 
 cure its triumph. JSTone like to be alone, and few 
 like to be in a small and waning minority. There is 
 no sin in wishing to be with the multitude, if it be 
 not to do evil with them. It is natural to love to go 
 with the majority. Let a stranger be selecting his 
 place of worship, and if conscience do not dictate 
 otherwise, he will join the largest congregation, and 
 that not wholly from interested motives. He is yield- 
 ing to a dictate of his nature. . ]!!^ow in joining the 
 Lord's side, in deserting the party of sin and Satan, 
 and coming over upon the side of God and Hjs dear 
 Son, we are deserting a small and waning minority, 
 and are uniting ourselves with the large and ever- 
 swelling majority. " More are they that be with us 
 than they that be with them." In leaving sin and 
 entering the service of Christ, we are not condemn- 
 ing ourselves to isolation and loneliness. We are not 
 allying ourselves with a few sad and lonely beings 
 who will afford us no genial and sunny companion- 
 
304 THOUGHTS FOR THE CIIRTSTIAI^ LIFE. 
 
 ship ; we are not leaving scenes where ranks are 
 thick, the voices many, and entering scenes where 
 all is desert and solitary, where the owl whoops, and 
 the satyr dances, and the bittern stalks. No! we 
 are coming over where the ranks are more ser- 
 ried, where the voices are more glad and numerous. 
 The good are in the majority. Their party is in 
 the ascendant. They have the gladness, the com- 
 panionship, the joy, the ecstasy on their side. ' They 
 may say, " come with us and we will not only do 
 you good, but we will give you the best society, 
 and the most of it." 
 
 And if we are Christ's and for Him, then the 
 " more " are with us just w^here we want them most ; 
 — not here possibly, where we are strangers and pil- 
 grims, not in this w^orld, which is but a caravansary, 
 a tent which we pitch in our night of time, and strike 
 in the morning ; — but in our home, across the river, 
 amid the unseen and eternal : — there the majority 
 are on the side of the Lord, and effectively with 
 all that are with the Master. " Fear not then, for 
 more are they that be with us than they that be with 
 them." 
 
 If fear is to have any influence in religious con- 
 cerns, (and who will deny that it has ?) — if our fears 
 are to be appealed to and stirred, then so much as it 
 should affect our position, it should legitimately in- 
 duce us to take sides with Christ. Sometimes, when 
 
STRENGTH OF THE CHRISTIAN'S DEFENDERS. 305 
 
 the stern dictates of conscience summon iis to leave 
 the service of sin, we tremble to abandon the asso- 
 ciates of our youth or manhood : our fears, our false 
 shame keep us in the old haunts, the old habits, and 
 with the old associates. But if fear is to affect and 
 decide our moral position, it should impel us to take 
 the right side. In a universe governed bj a benevo- 
 lent and omnipotent Being, fear, if it acts under a 
 wide view of things, will act to make us take His 
 side, join with His friends, for He is the strongest, — 
 they the most numerous. 
 
 This day, all over the world, every soul, however 
 weak, however unknown and despised, however it 
 may struggle with sin, may yet with an eye of faith 
 pierce the enveloping gloom, pass out of the imme- 
 diate loneliness and say, " More are they that be with 
 me than they that be with them." The wicked may 
 be in lofty and rich dwellings, may be surrounded by 
 the multitude, the objects of admiration, pointed at 
 in the streets, waited on at home, the observed of 
 all observers ; and yet that pious soul, all shut out 
 from the halls of the great may say, "the more 
 and the })eUer are with me." True piety can never 
 be alone. 
 
 I have said that every pious soul, however humble, 
 is with the majority, and the majority with it. We 
 need the influence of this truth in all the walks and 
 scenes of our religious life. Debarred as we may be 
 
306 THOrGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAI^ LIFE. 
 
 from religious society — cut off as we must be on the 
 higher planes of the religious life from much sym- 
 pathy, we have need to take the consolations of our 
 theme, and press them close to our hearts. Lofty as 
 may be our spiritual aspirations, scale as towering 
 heights as we may in the Divine life, far out of reach 
 of the many who yet are upon the earth, we may still 
 feel that we are not alone ; the 7nore even on these 
 heights are still with us. 
 
 But preeminently, we need the consolations of our 
 theme when we make it our life-task to persuade others 
 to join " the sacramental host of God's elect." You, 
 my Brother, will need them. You will go out from 
 these scenes of blessed spiritual companionship. You 
 know not where your lot in future life may be cast, 
 know not how isolated from the great centres of the 
 cross, of religion upon the earth, you may be — how 
 few will gather around you to stimulate you and hold 
 up your hands and encourage your heart. It would 
 be strange if you did not sometimes feel that you 
 were left to bear up the ark of God alone ; as if you 
 were bereft of all associates and helpers. But, Brother, 
 in the darkest and most solitary hours, up among the 
 mountains, in the valleys, wherever you are, remem- 
 ber that if you are with God^ and making aggressions 
 into the enemy's territory, seeking to enlist new sol- 
 diers for the Great Captain, you are not alone. Be 
 
STEENGTII OF THE CHRISTIANAS DEFENDERS. 307 
 
 you -where you may, cut off as mucli as possible from 
 the society of the good of earth ; — yet even then, they 
 that sympathize with you, sending loving and help- 
 ing thoughts after you, are more than they that be 
 against you. 
 
XXVIII. 
 
 GOD OUR HELPER. 
 
 / will lift up mine eyes unto the Jiills^ from whence cometh my 
 help. My help cometh from the Lord^ which made heaven and 
 earth, — Psalm cxxi. 1, 2. 
 
 I SHALL use this passage as the basis of some re- 
 marks upon the hel]3 we may obtain of God in 
 working out our destiny. 
 
 God has made us. He has placed us here in just 
 such a world as we find. He has surrounded us with 
 just such influences as encom23ass us. He has told 
 us what to do — has marked out a path to walk in — 
 an end to reach — a destiny to accomplish. The work 
 assigned us is not easy ; it is difficult, — but not too 
 difficult. In it all, God has promised us help, and 
 this is what we need. He does not propose to do all 
 for us, — to take us up, and carry us on to our goal 
 and our destiny, in a mere state of mental and bodily 
 passivity. That were unworthy of us and of Him ; 
 that were to subvert the very purpose of our creation. 
 No intelligent, free agent can be thus dealt with. God 
 has given us thought, volition, general capacities, to 
 
GOD OUR HELPER. 309 
 
 be used in working out our destiny, and if the work 
 of life ever seems too arduous, if the way marked out 
 either in its parts or as a whole seems too difficult. 
 He stands pledged to afford us hel]3. He neither de- 
 signs that we should reach the true end of our exist- 
 ence in a state of passivity, as mere motionless crea- 
 tures, nor on the other hand does He design that we 
 should reach it apart from and independent of Him. 
 We must work, but work in God, encompassed by 
 Him, leaning on Him, looking up to Him, feeling in 
 the depths of our soul that without Him we can do 
 nothing, and that with Him we can do all things. 
 We must keep up all through life the proper balance 
 between our freedom and dependence. We must 
 feel that our freedom is a sound — a name, — that it 
 can be freedom only as it acts in God, is borne on 
 and up by His omnipresence and omnipotence. We 
 must stir up the energies that God has made to act 
 efficiently only in Himself, we must work and struggle, 
 but with the feeling that all will be to no purpose 
 unless God help us. Help — that is what we need, 
 and what God will give. 
 
 This help will be such and just such as we need 
 here and noio^ with our weakness and in our condi- 
 tions, with our duties and our conflicts. We are not 
 angels, we have not their powers, we arc not in tlieir 
 spheres, we have not their duties or work. We are 
 men. We have men's powers and duties and conflicts 
 
310 THOUGHTS FOB THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and works. We are not in heaven, bnt on the earth, 
 in the flesh, snbject to its infirmities and dangers. 
 God knoweth our frame, our position, just what and 
 where we are, and what we liave to do, and He pro- 
 poses to help us, just as we are and where we are, 
 with our work and our conflicts. This aid comes clear 
 down to ns and to our condition, flows into our weak- 
 nesses, adapts itself to our nature and circnmstances. 
 We may be very weak — our sins may have sunk us 
 very low ; but we cannot have sunk so low that we 
 cannot cast our eye up to the hills whence cometh 
 our help. It is help for poor creatures like us, who 
 are blind and weak, whose vision has been obscured, 
 and whose powers have been enfeebled by sin, that 
 we need, and it is such help that God will give. 
 When it is proposed to grant help, in order to be 
 effectual it must be help reaching clear down to the 
 state and condition of those to whom it is proffered. 
 It would be a mockery to proffer the help that angels 
 need to us. They need help, for they work out their 
 destiny in reliance upon Divine aid, but they do not 
 need the same that we do. 
 
 The helj) that God proffers is siifficient help. " My 
 help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and 
 earth." He made the earth with all that it contains. 
 The globe with its occupants swings in its orbit sus- 
 tained by Him. He made the heavens — those galaxies 
 of stars and suns, visible and invisible. Thus the 
 
COD OUR HELPER. 311 
 
 Psalmist would base an argument for tlie sufficiency 
 of Divine help upon what God has done. '' He has 
 made and upholds such mighty orbs, and surely / 
 may rely upon Him. He made them, and He can 
 help m^." He seems to love to magnify the works 
 of God, because by any addition which he makes to 
 their greatness, he increases his ideas of the greatness 
 of the Being to whom he looks up for help. He does 
 not as some do, look out upon the earth, measure the 
 mountains in his scales, and scan the ocean's depths ; 
 and then leaving earth, and soaring into the heavens, 
 trace the paths of the stars as they sweep in their 
 circuits, ply the telescope, and out of the depths of 
 space evoke new luminaries that had otherwise re- 
 fused to come, and wandering far and wide in a 
 boundless universe at length reach the awful con- 
 clusion, that he is too small a creature to be noticed 
 by the Being who made all this. His science (ill- 
 starred) does not wander so far and wide to bring 
 him back the message of despair. He does not wish 
 to spy out a grand universe, to be left a waif and an 
 estray in it. He does not desire to magnify God's 
 works only to be cast off as too insignificant to be 
 thought of by God. He would rather that God should 
 not have made quite so many worlds, if his cares be- 
 came so numerous that no thoughts or affections were 
 disengaged for him. Tlie greatness of God's works 
 does not destroy in his estimation the fatherliood of 
 
312 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 God. Oh, no ! It was left for modern wise men to 
 lose a sense of God's care and aid amid tlie greatness 
 of His works, — to infer from the fact that God made 
 the earth and the heavens, that He conld not and 
 would not stoop to aid them. The Psalmist, and all 
 •who have his spirit, draw a different inference ; — He 
 made the heavens and the earth, and He can and will 
 help me, — this is the blessed conclusion. 
 
 The moment I make the greatness of God's works 
 a reason to my own sonl for my being overlooked and 
 unhelped amid the mighty sum of things, that mo- 
 ment this greatness only becomes a burden, yea, a 
 horror to me. I dread it. It is like piling mountains 
 on me to crush me. I will never stand and look up, 
 if the sight leaves me without one to care for and 
 help me. But when I discard such a godless science, 
 and seek out God's works, and dwell upon their great- 
 ness only to enhance the greatness of my Father and 
 QTiy Helper, then the universe becomes to me, not an 
 awful desolation, but a temple echoing the j)raises of 
 a loving God and Father. The Psalmist dwelt upon 
 God's greatness only to look more confidingly to Him 
 for help. My Helper made the heavens, therefore 
 His help will be all-sufficient. Science thus prose- 
 cuted, brings joy to the soul, not a feeling of loneli- 
 ness and orphanage. 
 
 The help that God gives is opportune, timely. 
 " God shall help us and that right early." Help be- 
 
GOD OUR PIELPEE. 313 
 
 hind the time, when the battle is over and either lost 
 or won, when the pressure is gone or has crushed us, 
 is hardly help at all. It may be only an aggravation 
 to proffer it then. We want help at the exigency 
 when we peradventure fail without it. Help from 
 man does not often come at the right time. There is 
 a great deal of help for poor crushed souls even here 
 in this world, — the difficulty is that it does not come 
 soon enough. But Divine help is opportune help, it 
 comes not before nor after, but just when it is needed. 
 You will of course understand that Divine help 
 does not come in the way, nor do the things that 
 human help does. There is a child in yonder dwell- 
 ing — the only child of its parents. It is bright and 
 beautiful, the crowning gift of God to them, the orna- 
 ment of their wealth, the gladness of their home. It 
 was precious at the first, and every hour it has wound 
 its silent way into deeper depths of the soul. It falls 
 sick on a day, and its voice is stilled, and its smile 
 gone. Anxious fears begin to be awakened there. 
 Friends — physicians are called. Skill plies its reme- 
 dies, but without avail. Strength decays, disease 
 does its work, the little pulse ceases to beat, the child 
 is borne to its silent home. Human helpers would 
 have saved that child to its parents. But God, who 
 made the heavens, looked down ; He heard the child's 
 moan, the mother's sighs and prayers. He saw and 
 heard all and sympathized in all. He is also a Helper. 
 u 
 
314 THOUGHTS FOE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Why did he not help as good men would have helped ? 
 Because His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His 
 ways our ways, and therefore His help is not our help. 
 Were it not for scenes such as these, the very con- 
 sciousness of our need of Divine help would fade out 
 of the minds of men. It is amid such darkness and 
 desolation that our need of help from God is felt most 
 keenly, and our cry for it goes up most strongly. 
 God keeps Himself in the souls of the race very much 
 throuo-h the sorrows of the race. Our sorrows are 
 inlets through which Divine help is sought and comes. 
 In the best way and time it comes. God does help 
 those who desire it " right early," after His thought 
 — not after theirs. 
 
 God's help is constant, not fitful, evanescent, here 
 now and anon gone. Men are impulsive, changeable, 
 and are therefore unreliable. They often purpose 
 better than they do. They cannot depend on them- 
 selves. Their intentions may be good, but their per- 
 formances turn out small. This is so with the best 
 men. They mean to help, but they are not masters 
 either of their moods or their means. But God is 
 unchangeable. He knows, and we may know what 
 He will be. He will be as He is. He is unchange- 
 able, because He is unimprovable, and the help He 
 gives to-day He can give to-morrow if our condition 
 requires the same. He is not constrained to consider 
 His means of helping. That is an element which 
 
GOD OUE HELPER. 315 
 
 may always be left out. He only considers our need, 
 and His help comes as constantly as the light of the 
 sun by day. He is never removed from us nor we 
 from Him. We cannot pass out of God, — beyond 
 the sphere of His omniscience and omnipotence, and 
 therefore can never pass the limits where His help 
 may not swifter than thought reach us. When 
 stricken with pain, when overwhelmed with grief, 
 when our life is going out in agony, when we have 
 passed clear beyond the region where human help 
 avails ; God may be helping us. Help from God is 
 not intermittent — it comes not in jets — it is not de- 
 pendent on outward circumstances, nor upon personal 
 health — it is not a varying quantity, but an unvary- 
 ing one. We may go forth to duty, to toil and strug- 
 gle, we may go up into our chambers and lie down 
 upon our sick and dying beds, we may go out upon 
 the untried scenes of eternity, relying upon it as surely 
 as we may rely on the smi or the tides. That help, 
 when we have sought it in the proper way, and with 
 the proper spirit, will no more be wanting to us than 
 the earth will fail us to tread upon — nay, it will be 
 operative w^hen all material things shall have passed 
 away. 
 
 This help of God when it comes, does not weaken 
 our projper self-reliance^ nor our general powers of 
 thought and will. It rather increases the force of 
 all our faculties. It strengthens us. It docs not 
 
316 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 dwarf — it brings out into the highest possible activity 
 om* whole natures. lie is a wise, a very wise man 
 who knows when and how to give help so that it shall 
 not weaken the proper self-reliance and force of char- 
 acter of the recipient. Human help, rightly adminis- 
 tered, may make us stronger, may encom*age, stimu- 
 late, press on to duty or suffering. This is the proper 
 office of help, to make us more noble and forcible 
 creatures, but this is not alw^ays, perhaps not generally 
 the actual result. A large part of the help which 
 men give, encourages slothfulness, leads to inaction, 
 to a spirit of unmanly dependence, develops weak- 
 ness, not force and energy of character. Much help 
 is misdirected and misapplied — leads to evil, not to 
 good. But God's help is so directed and applied, 
 comes at such a time and in such a way, that we 
 are made more manly and noble by it, stronger and 
 more alert and enterprising. It comes not to lift us 
 as a dead weight even up to heaven ; it enters as a 
 silent current of magnetism to stimulate us, as a celes- 
 tial breath to stir us to will and to do. It comes not 
 so much to do for us, as to excite and aid us to do. 
 While it is in us in greatest force, we are not attracted 
 to it to observe it ; it bears us on under the fullest 
 activity of our powers to God and heaven. It never 
 weakens, but always strengthens us. It develops in 
 us all that is noble and strong, and even daring. 
 
 Having this effect, it may be received without any 
 
GOD OUR HELPER. 317 
 
 loss of dignity or any right feelings of independence. 
 Men often like to be above tbe need of human help, 
 and they desire it in part, perhaps, because they are 
 compelled to feel less manly, less free and noble when 
 they receive it, or the burden of obligation is oppres- 
 sive : but help even from men — men too, not related 
 to us by blood, may come in such a way as to leave 
 all our best feelings unembarrassed and free, and our 
 manliness untarnished. It may so come and be so 
 received as to make us feel more truly dignified and 
 noble, by the new consciousness of human worth it 
 brings with it, and the new gratitude it excites in our 
 own souls. It is only the proud churl that will reject 
 human help when it is needed and is proffered in the 
 right spirit. 
 
 But help from God is our birthright, so to sj^eak. 
 We receive it with less loss of dignity and independ- 
 ence, if possible, than the child does who receives 
 nourishment and care from its mother. We receive 
 it with as little loss of true independence as the 
 mariner receives the wind that fills his lifted sails, 
 or the light of the stars and sun that guide him on 
 his way. We live, move, and have our being in God, 
 and to be independent of His help may be the wish 
 of a demon, but never the proper aspiration of a man. 
 
 There is then help for us in God — help for us all — 
 help for us who arc so weak and so sinful and cor- 
 rupt, — ^just such help in God through the great Medi- 
 
318 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 ator Jesus as we need. There is not a poor burdened 
 soul on tlie earth that may not have it through that 
 new and living way which has been opened up in the 
 Gospel. 
 
 But how can we obtain it even through Christ ? 
 In the same way that the Psalmist did. " I will lift 
 up mine eyes unto tlie hills, from whence cometh my 
 help." Up yonder, on those heavenly hills, there, in 
 God who made heaven and earth, is our help, — there 
 and not elsewhere, — not here on the earth, — in man 
 great or small, — not in riches or position ; — no, but 
 in God is our help. We must seek it there. Our 
 eye, our heart must be sent up on a heavenly errand 
 for it. Let us know^ where to look for it, let us seek 
 it in prayer ; — it will come. 
 
 " Thou art my help and my deliverer ; make no 
 tarrying, O my God." 
 
XXIX. 
 
 MYSTERIES UNVEILED IN THE FUTURE. 
 
 Jems ansicered and said unto him, What I do thou Tcnowest not 
 now, hut thou shalt know hereafter, — John xiii. 7. 
 
 CHRIST had just performed a menial service to 
 His Aj)ostles. He had washed their feet, and 
 wiped them with the towel wherewith He had girded 
 Himself. Coming to Peter, he is ready to question 
 the propriety of such an act done by sucli a man. 
 Peter regards it as incongruous with His character 
 and position. Jesus waiving all direct reply to his 
 objections, refers him to the future. He might not 
 know the significance of this act nov/, but when he 
 should com6 more into the meaning of Christ's mis- 
 sion — into the genius and spirit of His kingdom — 
 when he should come to see that it was not one of 
 pride and self-exaltation, but one of service and self- 
 sacrifice ; — then he would understand this act of his 
 Master. It semed a degrading, almost meaningless 
 act now — then it would be crowded with import. 
 Now, it seemed the act of a menial — then, when the 
 
320 THOUGHTS FOR THE CIIKISTIAJST LIFE. 
 
 gloiy of that kingdom dawned upon him — when all 
 human ideas of greatness were reversed, and when 
 those that sank low^est, rose highest, it would seem the 
 act that befitted such a man. It would be seen to be 
 the purest religion, teaching bj the noblest example. 
 
 The future is painted to us as the theatre whose 
 light shall shine upon the now dark doings of Christ. 
 And here we have a great truth, an all-comprehensive 
 principle presented for our solace and comfort. We 
 know not the ways, the doings of God now ; we shall 
 know them hereafter. He will explain Himself in 
 the time, or in the eternity to come. 
 
 There is in all of us who have ever been stirred 
 with thought at all — whose minds have ever been 
 started into action, a desire, an almost delirious desire 
 to Tcnow. We feel stunted, cramped all around. The 
 forest closes in — the darkness shuts down close to us. 
 We want to escape — to get beyond, out into a broader 
 space, where we can see farther and more. We beat 
 with restless wing against the bars of our cage. We 
 meet all about with mysteries which we cannot solve. 
 The world where we dwell is full of them. This life 
 which we can span so easily, presents them every- 
 where. We are full of questions which none can an- 
 swer. And when we rise above earth and time, and 
 pass into another sphere, and look out upon a broader 
 stage, mysteries — greater, darker — crowd upon us still 
 more thickly. Even that blessed book which lifts us 
 
MYSTERIES UNVEILED IN THE FUTUKE. 321 
 
 above time, and whereon as upon a Jacob's ladder we 
 can mount up and look into the windows of eternity, 
 — that book which reveals to us our immortality, and 
 the way to make it blessed, even it, by the elevation 
 to which it exalts us, by the wide reach of thought 
 which it opens, only makes broader the field of mys- 
 tery. Just as the telescope, by bringing unnumbered 
 w^orlds that the naked eye never saw within the com- 
 pass of our vision, suggests to our excited thought 
 more than it reveals, the Bible suggests more ques- 
 tions than it answers. It is the great stirrer uj) of 
 the world's mind. It falls into it like an impending 
 cliff into a motionless sea. It makes us heirs of eter- 
 nity, instead of time and earth. It raises us above 
 the finite into the infinite. It introduces us consciously 
 within the circle of God's thoughts and regards. We 
 are embraced within the compass of His purposes and 
 plans. We are not waifs and estrays here. We have 
 not been waked up into a brief being to perish. We 
 are not to be stranded on the shores of time — we are 
 to sail the ocean of eternity. God feels for us. Jesus 
 died and reigns for us. We are to be taken up, and 
 embraced among the things of eternity. We are to 
 act there. When time shall have died, and suns and 
 stars shall have been unsphered, we are to live. This 
 elevation which the Bible gives us, takes us up into the 
 sphere of the eternal and divine. It fairly dwarfs the 
 mysteries of earth, and makes those of eternity and God 
 14* 
 
322 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 loom up before us. We come now to graj^ple, to strive 
 to encomj)ass the things of God. We sway away at 
 the great pillars of God's decrees. We put our puny 
 arms around them, and strive to span them. We stand 
 before the unrolling scroll of God's providences, and 
 seek to decipher their meanin'g, and understand their 
 tendencies. We strive to know God by what He 
 does. We question the import of events as they pass 
 before us. We struggle to know why God does as 
 He does here and now. Tliis wild tm^moil of earth — 
 this conflict of good and evil, and this bearing dowii 
 often of good by the evil — these sufferings which cover 
 the earth as with a pall — these early and sudden 
 deaths — this long delay to answer prayer — this slow 
 advance of the kingdom of God, if it advance at all — 
 these crushing woes that come upon portions of our 
 race — this apparent indifference of God to them all ; 
 — we stand up before these dark mysteries of God and 
 question them ; but they are dumb, " They answer not 
 again." " God's ways are in the sea, and His paths 
 in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known." 
 Our hearts almost break for the longing they some- 
 times feel to solve these mysteries, but God gives no 
 solution of them. 
 
 Some of these doings of God we cannot know now 
 from absolute incapacity. We have not the powers 
 to understand them. By no language, no signs, could 
 God communicate the knowledge of them. It would 
 
MYSTERIES UNVEILED IN THE FUTURE. 323 
 
 be like the child attempting to understand the differ- 
 ential calculus. "While we are children, we must think 
 and understand as children. It indicates our great- 
 ness that we can be awed by them — be curious and 
 ask questions about them. The beasts find no mys- 
 teries, ask no questions. Mere stupidity asks none. 
 It takes mind, wakeful mind to ask questions intelli- 
 gently — to prize mysteries and stand thoughtfully in 
 front of them, looking up toward their summits. But 
 if this indicates our greatness, the fact that we can 
 answer so few of these questions indicates our little- 
 ness. We are great and little at the same time. 
 
 But then, while there are many things about the 
 doings of God which we have not capacities to ap- 
 preciate even if He should reveal them, it is also not 
 to be denied that there are other things which we 
 could understand if they were revealed. The knowl- 
 edge of them is withheld not arbitrarily — not because 
 of our incapacity to know, but for reasons aside from 
 these ; perhaps to make us less fluent with our where- 
 fores, to rebuke a vain curiosity or impertinence, per- 
 haps to try our trust, and see if we will believe where 
 we cannot know. It is evidently not the main thing 
 w^ith God to make us knowing beings in our present 
 state. He has ends beyond and above that — ends 
 possibly which would be defeated if we were allowed 
 to know more. Tlie gratification of our cognitive 
 faculties might thwart His benevolent designs and 
 
324 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 obstruct the progress of our hearts. "We know more 
 than we practise. Our intellects are better than our 
 hearts. Our curiosity is greater than our faith. Our 
 hearts must be brought up even with our heads — our 
 faith with our knowledge. We may not know all 
 that we could here, that we may trust, and our sim- 
 ple child-like trust may open up into a wider and 
 clearer knowledge, while he that demands to know, 
 and refuses' to trust, may be doomed to perpetual 
 ignorance. 
 
 But whatever may be the cause why we know not 
 now ; whether it be from incapacity, or for purposes 
 of discipline, one thing is certain — " what we know 
 not now, we shall know hereafter." There is a sphere 
 where mysteries will be cleared up, questions answered. 
 We shall know hereafter if we trust here. We are 
 not doomed to perpetual ignorance. The desire to 
 know the doings of God will not be ever balked. 
 Light will dawn. Our horizon Avill widen. 
 
 Some of the dark things of God may be clear 
 this side the dark screen. Even now, perhaps, some 
 things that were once dark, are clear, and others are 
 clearing up to us. Peter this side the grave passed 
 into the meanings of Christ's menial service. He 
 could not understand it while he and his fellow Apos- 
 tles were contending who should be greatest in the 
 kingdom of heaven ; but when he and they came to 
 know the true order of nobility therein — that he was 
 
MYSTEEIES UNVEILED IN THE FUTURE. 325 
 
 greatest who served most, — tlien he understood it. 
 So we, as we grow in the knowledge of God, come 
 more and more into the knowledge of His doings. 
 "We get round upon the illuminated side of them. "We 
 gaze at them from that side, even as an eagle in its 
 aerial soarings looks down upon the silver lining of 
 a cloud that seems all dark to us. There is a pro- 
 gressive relief to our minds. If the advance of thought 
 brings new mysteries to view where we must trust 
 alone, it certainly does relieve many of the old ones. 
 We penetrate them. We solve them. They vanish 
 forever. Many a child of God has bowed before the 
 ways of God as dark, which in his advancing piety 
 became all light to him. "What he knew not, he 
 knows. 
 
 Still other things await the light of eternity, of 
 heaven. Its light even of itself will clear them. Light 
 makes manifest. We shall stand on those heights and 
 look back, and at once a thousand things now dark 
 will be luminous. Reasons of the divine doings will 
 stand out clearly. All the ways which God has led 
 us will lie like a thread of silver light down the moun- 
 tain sides up which the Divine hand has led us. We 
 shall see that this dark calamity — that loss of fortune 
 —these days of sickness and withdrawal from the busy 
 activities of life, and confinement in our narrow cham- 
 bers — the sudden and untimely death of that wife or 
 husband, child, parent, friend— what that terrible 
 
326 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 temptation and conflict continuing througli months 
 or years, — what all the dealings of God here below 
 had to do with bringing ns to our present position. 
 We shall see that not one day of darkness, not the 
 life of one friend, not one trial could have been spared 
 us. We shall see that all that has happened to us, 
 has been designed to stimulate or to encourage us ; 
 to wean us from earth and to draw us to heaven. The 
 light of heaven itself will probably show us that God 
 hath led us by a right, and by the best possible way 
 to a city of habitation. 
 
 The doings of God and their reasons may be the 
 subject of revelation from Him directly, or through 
 His agents. Angels may be commissioned to tell us, 
 or the elder dwellers from our own world who have 
 long bowed before the throne, and taking their golden 
 urns to the fountain, have thence drawn light. Those 
 who once knew our trials and our doubts, may take 
 us and teach us the ways of God more perfectly. We 
 shall all of us be little children when we arrive there 
 — almost as ignorant as is the babe when it lands 
 upon our earth, and these older dwellers may be om* 
 teachers. 
 
 Still other things will await the expansion of our 
 minds in the progress of eternity. Tlie mysteries of 
 God will riot be all cleared up on our first landing 
 in Heaven : not those which are now the objects of 
 thought to us. Some will be, but not all. It Avill 
 
MYSTERIES UNVEILED IN THE FUTURE. 327 
 
 be true there as it is here, that wliat we know not, 
 we shall know hereafter. Even angels, we are told, 
 desire to look into and investigate the mysteries of 
 redemption. There are things about it which they 
 cannot teach us, for they do not know them. Our 
 way there, as it should be here, will be on high. Mys- 
 teries will be darkening and clearing away — rising 
 and setting in slow and steady procession forever. 
 Earth is not the only world of mystery, and we are 
 not the only order of beings w^ho must bow before it. 
 Wherever God is, there is and will be mystery. When 
 we have traversed the longest arch of knowledge, we 
 shall be constrained to say, " Lo, these are a part of 
 Thy ways ! " We shall be finding out, and still search- 
 ing to find out forever : and yet it is true that these 
 doings of God which lower so darkly in our path — 
 which break upon us as the waves of a head-beat sea 
 break upon the staggering ship, and almost stun us, — 
 these will be cleared up. 
 
 1 am inclined to the opinion that the dark doings 
 in God's Providence will all be solved before or at the 
 Judgment of the great day. Up to that time neither 
 the progress of the human soul, nor the light of 
 heaven, nor the instruction of angels or of men made 
 perfect, will make all the dark things light. That 
 day will. It will be the day of the revelation of the 
 righteous judgments of God. It will be the termina- 
 tion of the mystery of God's dealings with men. That 
 day will put an end to mere trust with reference to 
 
328 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 these things simply, though not with respect to other 
 things. Then our knowledge will begin. We may 
 not know all up to that time ; then God will stand 
 revealed and acquitted at the bar of every intelligent 
 soul in the universe. 
 
 We see in the light of our subject that the Gospel 
 alone promises and makes sure knowledge to men. 
 It has been charged with suppressing the spirit of in- 
 quiry, blinding the soul, demanding an easy and un- 
 solicitous faith. It does, indeed, demand faith, but 
 only in the sphere where faith legitimately operates. 
 If there is an intense desire to know more than it re- 
 veals, it is because it has revealed so much ; it has 
 created the mysteries which it promises to solve. If 
 it does not gratify curiosity, it does not suppress or 
 crush it. It tells the human soul to gather up its 
 hard questions, to put them on file, and pledges the 
 answer to the trasting spirit. It points to the illimit- 
 able future, and says, "It is all my own; on that 
 theatre I will meet you and solve all." 
 
 We see the wisdom of quietly waiting. The 
 clouds will roll up and oflf from the dark doings of 
 God. We stand and look up to them in dread amaze- 
 ment. We shudder as the wheels of Providence 
 sweep by, and we see not the eyes that guide them. 
 But they are there. Time is the night — Eternity is 
 the day of God. Let us trust Ilim where we cannot 
 know. We shall know if we will wait. We shall 
 know when it will be best to know. 
 
XXX. 
 
 POSITION AND CHARACTER COINCIDENT IN THE DIVINE 
 REALM. 
 
 But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of 
 silver^ hut also of wood and of earth ; and some to honor ^ and 
 some to dishonor. Xf a man therefore purge himself from 
 these, he shall he a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for 
 the Master^s use, and prepared unto every good worTc. — 2 Tim. 
 ii. 20, 21. 
 
 A SIMPLE fact, well known in our household 
 experiences, is here referred to. In all our 
 dwellings there are vessels, if not of gold and sil- 
 ver, yet of comparative preciousness ; and others, if 
 not of wood and earth, yet of comparative worthless- 
 ness — some occupying positions of relative honor, and 
 some of dishonor ; some that are kept for great occa- 
 sions, others for common use. The intimation also is, 
 that in our Heavenly Father's house it is the same. 
 In it, as in our common dwellings, there are vessels 
 of gold and silver, and those of wood and earth ; some 
 for positions of honor, and some for dishonor. The 
 law of fitness prevails in His house vastly more than 
 in common dwellings. Precious vessels are used for 
 
330 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHKISTIAiT LIFE. 
 
 high purposes, and earthy ones for ignoble ones. 
 Nothing is out of place. 
 
 Dropping the figure, the right men are put in the 
 right places. 
 
 The diversity of position in God's realm, the law 
 fixed and irreversible of elevated position, and the uses 
 future and eternal of souls corresponding to qualifica- 
 tion, — these are the topics suggested by the text. 
 
 And Jirst — the diversity of position in God's realm 
 — ^vessels of honor and dishonor. 'No house is 
 equipped without both. God's universe has both. 
 The order of the universe is monarchical, or if demo- 
 cratic, yet only so as each member springs or sinks 
 spontaneously to his own position. God's creation is 
 not, and never will be, smoothed into a monotonous 
 evenness. J^ot a Western prairie, stretching out 
 miles on a dead level, but a New England prospect 
 from some lofty hill-top, is its analogue. There are 
 heights and depths — mountain ranges and valleys — 
 towering peaks, and corresponding depressions in the 
 scenery of God's spiritual landscape — souls soaring as 
 on eagle's wings, and souls sinking as with a leaden 
 gravity. It is not for me, or for any of us so much to 
 defend this order, as it certainly is not our province to 
 murmur at it, but simply to accept it. God did not 
 make his realm after our thought, but after His own, 
 and we are not to go about to conjecture what might 
 have been, but to see what is. And this is the con- 
 
POSITION AND CHARACTER COINCIDENT IN HEAVEN. 331 
 
 stitution of creation, — diversity of position exhibited 
 here in this world ; exhibited possibly, yea, probably, 
 still more in the other sphere into which this opens. 
 It is sufficient simply to state this diversity so patent 
 to all — lying upon the very surface of life — indicated 
 so clearly in this and in all parts of the Scripture. 
 
 In the second place, the Law, fixed and irreversible 
 of elevation, is indicated in our text. If a man purge 
 himself from these^ that is, from false doctrines, affec- 
 tions, practices, from all that is debasing, impure, un- 
 holy, he shall be a vessel unto honor. The law of 
 elevation as here expressed, lies wholly in moral 
 qualities — things that lie within the compass of our 
 will. There is doubtless a law of position, of eleva- 
 tion, lying outside of our mere will, inhering in pure- 
 ly natural qualities, in things conferred on us at our 
 birth, in the simple sovereignty of the Almighty. 
 Some men have their position assigned them m theii- 
 mere gifts. Great minds have great positions opened 
 to them, great tasks imposed upon them. Little 
 minds cannot do the work, perform the function, or 
 spring to the places of large ones. One kind of gifts 
 cannot fill the posts of another kind. Natural gifts 
 point to their own places in this and in all Avorlds. 
 Moral qualities do not make up always for natural 
 deficiencies. A good heart will not make a profound 
 mathematician, nor a great discoverer, nor a great 
 poet, or statesman, or orator, or writer. God doubt- 
 
THOUGHTS FOE THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 less has positions in the next world, as He has in this, 
 which none but the higher order of gifts can filL 
 And yet onr text is in correspondence with the whole 
 range of Scriptural teaching, — that true honor is de- 
 pendent on moral qualities in the Divine kingdom. 
 
 " If a man purge himself, he shall be a vessel unto 
 honor." If any man purge himself, no matter who 
 he is, no matter where he is born, in what age, in 
 what country or rank in life, no matter with what 
 natural endowments, great or small, with what op- 
 portunities, few or many ; if he purge himself, he 
 shall be a vessel of honor, shall be put to some high 
 and honorable use in the Father's house. So that 
 the range of honor is limited in the Divine kingdom 
 to the sphere of moral qualities. The pure ones shall 
 be the gold and silver vessels there — all else are wood 
 or earth. This is the irreversible Law of elevation — 
 this will fix a man's position. 
 
 In the kingdoms of this world men are born to 
 honorable places, or they rise to them by mere gifts, 
 or they creep to them in their own slime, or they 
 worm their way to them by having no opinions or 
 judiciously concealing them, by sycophancy, by 
 adroitness, by tergiversations, by the arts of political 
 legerdemain, by anything but honest opinions, and a 
 free expression of them. But in the Divine kingdom, 
 those only win its honors, its lol'ty positions, who are 
 worthy of them. The pure man shall be a vessel of 
 
POSITION AND CHARACTER COINCIDENT IN HEAVEN. 333 
 
 lionor. So that we see how it is that men must often 
 abjure the high positions of this world to win the 
 high stations of the next — be inconspicuous here that 
 they may be conspicuous there — sink low here, that 
 they may rise to a lofty height there. Whenever a 
 denial or concealment of the loftier qualities is de- 
 manded for the furtherance of the man here, then he 
 must decline promotion here that he may win it there. 
 Not that a man is to put the honors of this world into 
 the one scale, and those of the next into the other, 
 and choose skilfully between them ; not that he is to 
 make it a mere question of j)i'ofit and loss, looked at 
 through the whole term of his being, and deferring 
 present honors so small, select those so great ; to bar- 
 ter one set of honors for another,^this is not holiness 
 at all, it may be the broadest selfishness. This, the 
 man bent on purifying himself will not do. The 
 purity is what he aims at. The purity is its own all- 
 sufficient reward. Eut seeking that for its own sake 
 — having won it by the grace of God, he, as the result 
 of it, will be a vessel of honor in the house of our God. 
 This puts the honors of eternity clear out of the 
 reach of accident or chance, or mere blind sover- 
 eignty, which, with many, is the synonym of un- 
 reason, and brings them within the sphere of order, 
 of cause and effect, where reason holds sway, where 
 we may choose one object and know what will come 
 of our choice. God wants pure men in His kingdom, 
 
334 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and, if I may go fiirtlier, I would say, He wants men 
 who have not been made pure simply by some Al- 
 mighty stroke — like a sun-stroke — coming down upon 
 them out of the heavens — made pure, if that were pos- 
 sible, without any agency of their own ; but He wants 
 those who have purified themselves, not without but 
 with the Divine help, men who have climbed up out 
 of great depths into sublime heights, men who have 
 been shipwrecked and then swam for their lives, 
 and reached the shore, and clung to the crags with 
 their very teeth, and have held on while the great 
 waves have beaten in upon them, and through tena- 
 cious climbing and death-like struggle, have finally 
 clambered up and got safely out of the floods. He 
 wants these men for vessels of honor in his kingdom, 
 and He tells us so, and incites us to do our best, to 
 clear the chambers of imagery, to work away Hercules- 
 like in the Augean stable of our natures, and purify 
 ourselves, that so we may be vessels of honor. It is 
 not if a man is purged by some foreign force, but if 
 he purify himself, that he shall be a vessel of honor — 
 a vessel plunged in the great fountain, and brought 
 up brimming and dripping from its dei^ths—ftdl of 
 honor. There will be some purged large vessels and 
 some small ones, some Pauls and some of vastly in- 
 ferior grades, but all vessels of honor, and all full. 
 Striking a line through the intelligent creation, and 
 putting its population on the one or the other side of 
 
POSITION AND CHAKACTEK COINCIDENT IN HEAVEN. 335 
 
 it, those who liave purged themselves through Divine 
 grace will be on the side of honor, not one of them on 
 the side of dishonor ; all in the resurrection trump 
 will wake to honor, not one of them to shame and 
 everlasting contempt. 
 
 But there is a third element in our text, and that 
 is, the uses, future and eternal, which these purified 
 souls, these vessels of honor, of gold and silver, will 
 subserve. " If a man purge himself, he shall be a 
 vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the master's 
 use, and j)repared unto every good work." A ra- 
 tional man neither makes nor purchases any vessels 
 without a purpose. He does not go into the market 
 and buy here and there at random, giving up all to 
 caprice. lie knows what he wants. He has his 
 house furnished in his soul before he has it furnished 
 in reality. If he has built it wisely, orderly, and 
 well, he knows what will fill out his idea, and make 
 his house seem the thing that he planned. He buys 
 nothing for mere show, all for use, and perhaps the 
 costliest things that he buys are for the use of beauty. 
 So with our Divine Father, He has built His house, 
 and He is furnishing it with the costliest furnitm-e, 
 the most polished, honorable vessels, living, sanctified 
 souls. " He that purgeth himself, shall be a vessel 
 of honor, meet for the master's use." 
 
 God means the souls that He is purifying, and 
 that are purifying themselves for use, not simply for 
 
336 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 show, not to demonstrate in the eyes of an always 
 allegiant creation what His grace can do ; not for 
 dumb, silent, though glorious display mainly, but for 
 use. I do not say use in the sense in which the term 
 passes in the market as the equivalent of utility, but 
 use in the highest, broadest sense of the word. They 
 are to be useful within that meaning of the term 
 which makes all right, all beautiful things useful, 
 which makes a flower useful, though no eye but God's 
 should see it — which makes every product of the 
 painter's brush, or the sculptor's chisel useful, though 
 it be shut up in some private dwelling. In the deep- 
 est sense, the men that stay on the earth, piu^ified in 
 part, and those that pass up to Heaven, purified 
 wholly, " are irneet for the master's use, and prepared 
 unto every good work." 
 
 It opens up a glorious prospect beyond ; it gives 
 the loftiest inspiration to struggle after purity, that 
 while we are attaining it, and when we have attained 
 it, we shall be meet for the Master's use, and be made 
 to subserve that use. If there be anything discourag- 
 ing to all true natures, it is the idea of uselessness, of 
 being hung up, a mere weed, on the shores of time or 
 eternity ; condemned to be nothing and do nothing. 
 You may place a true soul in any position, put a true 
 man into any palace, with any suinptuousness of fur- 
 niture or equipage, with any surroundings of wealth 
 or society, and if you condemn him to be useless, you 
 
POSITION AND CHAKACTER COINCIDENT IN HEAVEN. 337 
 
 condemn him to a gilded woe. We want to subserve 
 some nse, fulfil some function. An eternal useless- 
 ness would be an eternal hell. A heaven of simple 
 enjoyment without use, could be no heaven. The 
 vessel of honor is to be a vessel of use. The sancti- 
 fied soul is to be a useful soul, not merely here, but 
 through its whole history. The master has use for 
 all souls, niches for them to occupy, errands for them 
 to run, missions for them to fulfil, and the sanctified 
 soul is meet for use, and prepared for every good 
 work. 
 
 In the common vocations of life, it requires the 
 apprenticeship and discipline of years to fit one for a 
 single trade or business of life. Skill in special func- 
 tions is the result of patience and long pains-taking, 
 and to do one work well tasks all the powers, and 
 takes all the time of any man. Preparation for all 
 good work is no possibility of man on earth. But in 
 this higher realm of spiritual work and use, there 
 seems to be a single antecedent qualification, and that 
 Impurity. The man that purgeth himself is meet for 
 the Master's use, and prepared for every good work. 
 Purity, if it be self-won, seems to be like a universal 
 genius in the arts. A pure man is prepared for every 
 good work. It comes handy to him. He has a knack 
 for it. He is fitted for all missions, for all work. 
 
 I have spoken of the vessels of honor ; who they 
 are, and their lofty vocation in the eternal future, 
 15 
 
338 THOUGHTS FOB THE CHEISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 and of the law of their fitness. Alas ! there is 
 another side. There are vessels of dishonor, vessels 
 that wiU be plunged in the fountain of dishonor, drip- 
 ping and brimming. What are these ? How do they 
 become so ? The law is sure, irreversible on this side 
 as on the other. Which shall we be ? 
 
XXXI. 
 
 MANY MANSIONS IN THE FATHER'S HOUSE. 
 In my Father^ 8 house are many mansions. — John xiv. 2. 
 
 THIS forms a part of the last discourse of Jesus 
 to His disciples before His crucifixion. He had 
 before told them of His speedy departure from earth, 
 and He wished to console them under this announce- 
 ment. He was to leave them and pass out of their 
 sight, but He was not to go beyond the region of 
 sympathy and fellowship with them. Though absent 
 from earth, and no longer visible to their natural eye, 
 He was yet in their common Father's home. This 
 was a weighty consideration, and eminently adapted 
 to console them, as it is us, under their bereavement. 
 " I shall be no longer with you, but I shall be in our 
 Father's house, not in the same mansion, but in one 
 of the many that compose it." The thought is cheer- 
 ing when we consider the position of Christ with 
 respect to us, and it is also cheering when we consider 
 the position of our pious friends who have gone from 
 
340 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 among us. Christ and they alike are in our Father's 
 house. 
 
 Two thoughts are prominent in our text. First^ 
 All parts of the universe are our Father's house ; and 
 Second, In that Father's house are many mansions. 
 
 And, first, The entire universe is our Father's 
 house. He inhabits it, is in one part of it as much as 
 in another, though He may not manifest Himself as 
 conspicuously in one part as in another ; yet He is in 
 it all as a dweller. "We can go nowhere in it, he 
 nowhere in it without Him, and if we are allegiant to 
 Him, without His paternal recognition and regards. 
 We can have Him everywhere in it as a protector, a 
 friend tender and sympathetic. We can call upon 
 Him, and He will answer us and draw nigli to us. 
 He fills immensity, He dwells in it, and may render 
 all sections of it social and homelike. In no part of 
 this vast universe, wandering up and dow^n its vast 
 corridors, journeying out into its far-retr(3ating ex- 
 tremities, need we, shall we be alone ; need we feel 
 solitary and forsaken. Wherever we go, on some 
 high errand of duty, on some lofty excursion of inves- 
 tigation or benevolence, we shall be in our Father's 
 house ; its imperial avails wdll encompass us, its roof 
 will shelter us. God our Father w^ill be there, 
 making what would be otherwise solitary, social. 
 
 Second, In this one house of our Father are many 
 mansions or apartments ; how^ many we know not. 
 
MANY MANSIONS IN THE FATHEK's HOUSE. 341 
 
 Christ tells us so, and modern science confirms the 
 fact on a grand scale. The telescope reveals a firma- 
 ment crowded with worlds, all of which are under 
 one all-comprehensive law, all fulfilling their courses, 
 obedient to central authority — all within our Father's 
 domain — all mansions in His house. If occupied by 
 living beings, they are subject to Him, they owe alle- 
 giance to Him, they claim and gain protection of 
 Him. If occupied by intelligent beings, however 
 they may difi'er from us in physical or mental struc- 
 ture, they are yet our brethren, as being children of 
 a common Father. It needs but an acknowledgment 
 of allegiance to Him on the part of any section of in- 
 telligent creatures, to bring them within the range of 
 our sympathies and affections. If they and we love 
 Him, we love each other. Common regard for Him, 
 common obedience to Him, bring us into companion- 
 ship with each other. They and we are in the one 
 house of our Father, though we occupy remote and 
 different apartments. Our remoteness does not make 
 us strangers, nearly as much as our common love to 
 Him, the Head and Master of the house, makes us 
 companions. We may send our winged thought out 
 as far as it can fly, we may penetrate to worlds which 
 no glass reveals, we may conceive of stars so remote 
 that no arithmetic can compute the distance ; but if 
 we find minds and hearts there made by the Great 
 mind and heart of God, they are occupants of our 
 
34:2 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Father's house, the same house that we occupy, and 
 so are our kindred, and our friends, and brothers. "We 
 could meet them to-day, here in our restricted and 
 secluded abode ; we could meet them in their per- 
 haps broader and grander mansion, or we could meet 
 them on the broad highways of creation ; and what 
 there would be in common to us would infinitely out- 
 weigh what there would be special and peculiar to us. 
 There would be grounds of comity and amity and 
 fraternity, broader than those of isolation and strange- 
 ness. 
 
 They and we dwell in one house of our Father. 
 They and we acknowledge one God who is our 
 Father, and so what would unite us is vastly more 
 than what would divide us. "We should not fear to 
 meet them. They might be great and we small, they 
 filled with the garnered knowledge of centuries and 
 vast journeyings, and we narrow and restricted in 
 knowledge ; they might be overflowing with a ser- 
 aph's love, and burn and glow with admiration of our 
 Father's character, and we might, as we so often do, 
 cleave to the dust ; still, if we acknowledged one God 
 and Father, we should meet on the basis of a blessed 
 brotherhood ; should be occupants of one house, whose 
 apartments stretched through infinity. "We should 
 say, as we each considered our home, " it is the one 
 house of our Father, and its roof canopies us and our 
 difi'ering apartments." 
 
MAirS" MANSIONS IN THE FATIIEr's HOUSE. 34:3 
 
 The idea of our text has food for the intellect. It 
 sends the scientific investigator out into tlie depths of 
 space in the full assurance that he will find no orphan- 
 world, cast ofi" from the cares and laws of our Maker. 
 He will feel that whatever new star comes within the 
 circuit of his observation, it will come, not as an 
 estray with no cords binding it to its fellows ; but it 
 will come with the confession of a blessed unity, with 
 submission to common laws, a new mansion giving 
 new enlargement to our already expanded views of 
 the greatness of our Father's house. And as it gives 
 new food to the intellect, so does our text give new 
 food and new enlargement to our hearts. " In our 
 Father's house are many mansions." Science tells us 
 that ours is comparatively but a little world, although 
 it is so large. We know, too, that it is in an import- 
 ant sense secluded. AYe hear no voices, we see no 
 signals from other worlds. We know not their con- 
 stitution, nor whether they are occupied. AVe know 
 not whether they are finished or are now in the pro- 
 cess of construction. We know not the character of 
 their occupants if any they have. We know very 
 little about them ; but under the statement of our text 
 we know this : that we have a friendly interest in all 
 those worlds, as being in the one house of our Father ; 
 that their occupants, if they do or shall exist, are 
 our brethren ; that we have but to know of their ex- 
 istence, and we are prepared to love them as being 
 
344: THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 our brethren. So that our text gives a new interest- 
 to the investigations of science, confirming what 
 science teaches us, that all worlds are linked together ; 
 and also gives new scope to our hearts, immeasurably 
 enlarging the sphere of their sympathies and affec- 
 tions. 
 
 This declaration of our Saviour gives us repose and 
 solace, in our contemplations of the vastness of God's 
 universe. 1 think all minds at times, under the reve- 
 lations of the telescope, get bewildered and lost in the 
 sense of the vastness of the universe. We roam 
 through it, and its grandeur oppresses us. We seem 
 too little for it. It overmasters us. We cannot bear 
 the vast stretches over which it carries us, and we 
 shrink back, and nestle down in our little world, like 
 a bird after its flights in its quiet nest; sometimes 
 preferring littleness to greatness, a world where we 
 can feel the warm breath of sympathy, to a world 
 that oppresses us by its vastness and strangeness and 
 solitude. E'ow I shall not forget this element in our 
 nature that clings to the local and the known ; but, 
 then, while we love the local and the naiTOW, it is not 
 enough for us. We want a narrow home to settle 
 down in, but then we want a universe to send our 
 thought through, to stretch our minds and hearts 
 upon. Only let us feel that we are not aliens in it 
 and strangers, that we are not stretching beyond our 
 measure when we arc roaming in it, that we are not 
 
going out of our Father's house, or out of the reach 
 of our friends and kindred, and then the universe will 
 not oppress us. The Saviour did not feel that He was 
 going into a strange place when He left the world 
 that gave Him birth ; and we shall not, whether in 
 imagination we depart from earth, or whether, in- 
 deed, our souls take their flight above. 
 
 The text also gives us a lofty idea of the nmnifi- 
 cence of our Father. He has fitted up such a liouse, 
 w^th such apartments varied and beautiful, not for 
 Himself but for His children. He dwells in it all, 
 and in each of its many mansions. He has not left 
 one of them without reminders of Himself. He has 
 crowded each with mementoes of His thoughtful kind- 
 ness. If one were to live for many thousand years in 
 the single narrow room into which he is born, and 
 where he is disciplined for eternity, the grandest mind 
 of the race would not exhaust tlie themes for study 
 and admiration. Tlie secrets of a single world, its 
 inhabitants will never open. And if one, and that a 
 narrow world, absolutely astounds us at the indica- 
 tions of our Father's resources, His boundless munifi- 
 cence, — what must all the apartments of this vast 
 house open to the gazing and wondering spirits that 
 occupy them ! If one world causes us to stop and 
 wonder, if it absolutely confounds us with what it ex- 
 hibits of our Father's wisdom and generosity, what 
 
 15* 
 
346 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 shall we say to all that He has spread in such profu- 
 sion over all llis dwellings ! 
 
 I have said that we are in a state of seclusion in 
 our world. We are shut up in it. We have no in- 
 struments of locomotion beyond its limits. We have 
 no wings that can fan the upper ether. We can see 
 in the depths of space the other apartments of our 
 Father's house, but we cannot cross the threshold of 
 our own while in life, and go out to make minute 
 discoveries in the abodes that our brethren occupy. 
 This is doubtless well. Our seclusion has wise ends 
 of discipline for the present. We can best subserve 
 present purposes by limitation. But seclusion will 
 not always be the law. Ultimately, doubtless, all 
 the apartments of our Father's house will be open to 
 us. We shall have the liberty of the whole house, 
 and of all its rooms. We shall not always be prison- 
 ers, knocking against the walls of our prison-house, 
 if we indeed can call our house a prison, even by the 
 widest stretch of rhetorical language. We shall jour- 
 ney whithersoever subdued, obedient, and loving 
 spirits shall prompt us to go. We shall feel no sense 
 of restriction or confinement. If it will add to our 
 bliss to fathom the secrets, and know our brethren in 
 other worlds — in remote mansions of our Father's 
 house, we shall feel no constraint on our sanctified 
 propensities. There as here, will be those who will 
 love to roam, as there will be those who will love to stay. 
 
MANY MANSIONS IN THE FATHKr's HOUSE. 347 
 
 The text affords ns strong consolation in the death 
 of our pious friends. They are not unhoused when 
 they pass out of the world. They have not gone to 
 some home of which they and we can know nothing. 
 They are there as they were here, in our Father's 
 house. They in one, we in another apartment. "We 
 in one adapted to wise, moral ends, and liaving bless- 
 ed disciplinary purposes, but they doubtless in a more 
 glorious apartment — one that shall more perfectly 
 exhibit the goodness and munificence of the one 
 Father — one that shall be better fitted for their ad- 
 vanced and purified spirits, and their more blessed 
 society and engagements. They are not strangers 
 where they are. They have friends to greet them 
 there, more and warmer than they had to greet them 
 here when they first landed upon our earth. Tliey 
 are not lost in the immensity of God's works. Tliey 
 have a home. They have the home feeling. Their 
 bodies we deposited m tears in the grave, as a seed 
 that shall ultimately germinate and grow into the 
 plant of an immortal life. But their spirits have 
 gone up into some one of those many apartments that 
 make up the one house of our Father. Tlieir earthly 
 house is dissolved, but they have still " a building of 
 God, eternal in the heavens." 
 
 Tlie text comes with an immensely practical ques- 
 tion to each one of us. Is the builder and Master of 
 this vast house in which there are so many mansions 
 
348 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 our Father ? Have we the filial spirit toward Him? 
 Have we returned from our wanderings, and through 
 faith in His Son, been adopted into His family, and 
 constituted His heirs ? This one house, with its 
 many mansions — with its glorious apparatus — with 
 its rich furniture, with all there is in it to make wise 
 and blessed, is not for His enemies, not for aliens, it 
 is for His children. If we, without presumption, in 
 the meekest penitence and trust, can call God our 
 Father — then may we call His house ours, its apart- 
 ments ours, as we shall want them for our enlarge- 
 ment, our comfort, our joy. 
 
xxxn. 
 
 THE PERFECT SATISFACTION OF THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN. 
 
 / shall de satisfied when I awalce with thy likeness. — Psalm 
 xvii. 15. 
 
 THE more immediate idea in this passage seems 
 to be, that whenever the Psalmist awoke from 
 sleep, he felt satisfied or joyful in the favor of God. 
 Worldly men awake to prosecute earthly objects, and 
 to find joy and satisfaction in them. He awoke to 
 find satisfaction in God. 
 
 But though this is the more immediate reference, 
 yet the mind by a natural law of association, goes for- 
 ward to that awaking from the long sleep of death, 
 when those who have sought and obtained the favor 
 of God here, will have joy and satisfaction in that 
 favor forever. We will then, my hearers, use this pas- 
 sage in way of general accommodation to that perfect 
 satisfaction which we shall feel on our final and eternal 
 awaking in the likeness or favor of God. 
 
 Here we are satisfied measurably, for here we 
 have bright hopes and beatific visions, and even pres- 
 ent enjoyments if we are disciples of Jesus, but there 
 
350 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 is much to affect our peace and joy. We are saved 
 bj hope. The future is our golden era. In the pres- 
 ent there is much to mar our joy, — sin, temptation, 
 suffering, bitter partings, sometimes dark forebodings. 
 We He down to sleep, burdened often, oppressed ; we 
 awake to renew the great battle of life. It is not till 
 we sleep our last sleep, and awake with the eternal 
 sunshine of God's favor, that we shall experience per- 
 fect satisfaction. When we thus awake in the likeness 
 of God, we shall be satisfied. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with ourselves. Here, with 
 any intelligent, well-conceived views of what we are 
 and how we appear in the eyes of all pure and holy 
 intelligences, we cannot be. You occasionally indeed 
 see one so puffed up with vanity and pride, so igno- 
 rant of himself, his character and standing, that you 
 justly but reproachfully say, there is one who is well 
 satisfied with himself, and is well content to be what 
 he is. But his baser qualities not his virtues beget, 
 this feeling, his ignorance not his knowledge, fosters 
 it. All men who have light enough to see what they 
 are as compared with any elevated standard of judg- 
 ment, are dissatisfied with themselves. They are 
 justly so. It is no mock modesty that prompts them 
 to say and to feel so. But when they awake in God's 
 likeness, they will have this dissatisfied feeling no 
 longer. They will have no occasion, for what caused 
 dissatisfaction with themselves was sin. Take away 
 
PERFECT SATISFACTION OF SAINTS IN IlEAVEN. 351 
 
 this cause, and the feeling departs with it. Enstamp 
 upon their souls the very image of Christ, and this 
 alone will bring perfect satisfaction. They will de- 
 mand no lofty position in heaven, no exaltation, no 
 peculiar honors, nothing that shall mark and distin- 
 guish them from others to make them satisfied with 
 themselves. Such feelings and desires will have no 
 place there: it will be enough to awake in the perfect 
 likeness of God, to bring the most perfect satisfaction. 
 Their imaginations will satisfy them, — their thoughts, 
 their desires, their motives, their wills, their words, 
 their acts wall satisfy them. All tliat they are within, 
 all that they do without, will satisfy them. There will 
 be none of that unrest, that disafi'ection with ourselves 
 which w^e now feel. Alas, how often are we com- 
 pelled to experience this ! How often when the day 
 is over, with its wild, tumultuous voices, and the still, 
 calm night comes when w^e retire from the world to 
 commune with our own hearts ; how often as we cast 
 the eye back on the past, do w^e find cause for bitter, 
 stinging reflections ! Tlie acts that may have seemed 
 externally correct, have perhaps been wrong or im- 
 perfect in motive. Sin has mixed with all that we 
 have said or done ; if our general aim has been right, 
 how far short have we come of making our life cor- 
 respondent with it. flow does conscience, if it be 
 rectified and sensitive, reprove us for the tilings for 
 which the world has commended us ! Kothing that 
 
352 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 we do satisfies us, and it is only as we resort anew to 
 the blood of sprinkling to have our stains washed away 
 and conscience stilled, that we can retire cahnly to rest. 
 I^ow when we awake in God's likeness, we shall have 
 no occasion for any of these feelings. We shall perform 
 no errand of love dissatisfied, feeling that we should 
 have done better. We shall pause at the close of no 
 era in eternity, and glancing back find food for re- 
 morse. Conscience as a reprover will be- heard no 
 more, its voice will never utter a rebuke. Blessed state 
 when we shall be satisfied justly with ourselves. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with our place and our posi- 
 tion there. We believe we shall occupy a specific 
 locality, that there will be one spot which the re- 
 deemed will call home. It will be a local home. We 
 shall not be limited or confined to it any more than 
 we are here. Our mortal home may be a small spot, 
 and yet we have the range of the world ; and so heaven 
 may as a locality be relatively to the universe a limited 
 sphere, and yet it may be our home. The universe 
 we may range there, as we do the earth here, yet as 
 we are so framed here as to love one spot which we 
 may call home, so there amid all our wide journey- 
 ings in the vast empire of God, discerning and appre- 
 ciating its wonders, we may be so constituted as to 
 desire a specific spot which we may call home. 
 
 We believe there is but one Being who is not 
 local ; but one Being wlio inhabits the whole of eter- 
 
PERFECT SATISFACTION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN. 353 
 
 nity and all the universe. All finite creatures are 
 local, and, I believe, demand a centre. The redeemed 
 want a centre — a home just as we do. They want a 
 trjsting place to which thej can return from their 
 journeyings — a place to which they can look from far 
 with the mind's eye, and which shall exert the same 
 influence upon them there that home does here. We 
 should find little pleasure in being turned out into 
 this great creation of God to travel as we might list. 
 "We might journey forever on our path and never 
 meet an old acquaintance. We want to feel that 
 we shall all gravitate to one spot, and we doubtless 
 shall. The Bible is full of representations of a local 
 heaven, and is thus in ' correspondence with the de- 
 mands of our nature. And when we reach and awake 
 in it, we shall be satisfied to dwell there and make it 
 our home, and be content with our position. Be it 
 what it may, we shall be satisfied with it, and in this 
 shall be unlike ourselves here, wliere we often are 
 in a position that displeases us, perhaps properly, and 
 perhaps improperly. Certain it is that our satisfac- 
 tion in this respect there will not arise from any dis- 
 tinction we may reach. 
 
 There is a vast deal of meaning in that passage 
 of Scripture that afiirms that God shall be "All 
 and in all." Here man is much — great men are 
 much, and are much talked of, but tlierc man will 
 sink, and God will be all. And wherever we may 
 
354 THOrGHTS FOR THE CHRIBTIAI^ LIFE. 
 
 "be, whatever post we may occupy, we shall be sat- 
 isfied with it. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with our companions, and 
 for the same reasons that we shall be satisfied with 
 ourselves, — because they will be in God's likeness. 
 We often become dissatisfied with companions here. 
 Indeed, there is but one relation in which constant 
 intercourse is not likely to breed disaffection. Con- 
 stantly with those to whom we are not bound by the 
 strongest of all ties, we discern so many points of 
 divergence, so many faults, that we are likely to find 
 the proverb true that " Familiarity begets contempt." 
 
 Most people are not good enough to live with 
 themselves always, and indeed, if it were not for the 
 privilege of parting with ourselves every night in our 
 slumbers, and meeting again to say good morning on 
 the morrow, I think we should be absolutely worn out 
 with our own presence. Now if with all our self-love 
 we do become weary of ourselves, it is hardly to be 
 accounted strange if we should become weary of each 
 other. ISTarrowness, faults, outjutting diversities beget 
 dissatisfaction, but when we awake in God's likeness 
 and mingle together in heaven, we shall not need 
 walls to part us as we do here. We shall be good 
 enough to live in one home, and that forever. The 
 theatre of heaven will be as broad as the universe. 
 There will be a great telegraphic centre from which 
 shall start, and to which shall return all those mes- 
 
PEKFEGT SATISFACTION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN. 355 
 
 sages which will give zest to the converse of heaven. 
 Old themes will be ever receiving new interest from 
 the addition of new, and the old will be ever estab- 
 lishing new and beautiful connections with the new, 
 so that there will be fresh food for meditation and 
 communication. There will be ever presenting them- 
 selves new aspects of the character and works of God. 
 Every moment will exhibit new features of excellence 
 and glory. Thus the dwellers in heaven, so good, so 
 earnest to know more of God, so unselfish, so mature, 
 so knowing, will be ever satisfied with each other. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with our employments. Ee- 
 garded specifically, we do not know what they will 
 be. "We shall doubtless be employed, constantly, 
 usefully, to the full capacity of our powers. Christ 
 tells us as the master did his steward, ^' Occupy till 
 I come ; " and when He shall have come. His com- 
 mand will still be " Occupy." Talent will be differ- 
 ently employed, but probably still more usefully than 
 it is here. We can be useful here in certain ways 
 perhaps in which we shall not be there, but usefully 
 occupied we doubtless shall be. If we could eliminate 
 from our ideas of labor all that fatigues and exhausts, 
 it might be safe to say that there will be labor there. 
 There will be intense though not constant applica- 
 tion to the great themes of eternity, and the problems 
 of God's government. 
 
 With all our employments we shall be satisfied. 
 
366 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Here it is not and cannot be so. We maj indeed be 
 satisfied with tliem in the sense of submitting to them 
 — being resigned to them — taking them for what they 
 were designed, as trials of onr patience, as disciplines 
 of onr powers ; but not satisfied with them in the 
 sense of delighting in them for their own sake. Few 
 would be content to spend an eternity in plying the 
 sledge to a drill on yonder ledge, or in doing the work 
 which a steam-engine and trip-hammer could do more 
 effectively than a man with a soul in him. We can 
 be content to do these things temporarily, and for 
 ulterior ends, but not eternally and for their own 
 sake. There are a great many things that have to be 
 done in this world that nought but stern hunger or 
 still sterner duty would induce a being with a heart 
 and brains in him to do. We do them from a sense 
 of duty, not because we deem it a privilege. But 
 when we awake in God's likeness, all our employ- 
 ments will be sought and engaged in for their own 
 sake. They will be more and better to us than the 
 play of the child, for they will be the play of full- 
 grown men, and will give us the most delightful satis- 
 faction. We shall seek and engage in them with 
 alacrity and untiringly. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with all the arrangements 
 and decisions of God. We should be so here, and we 
 are so in so far as faith prevails. But there we shall 
 be satisfied more intelligently, if I may so speak. The 
 
PERFECT SATISFACTION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN. 357 
 
 Apostle in reference to this point says, that '' We shall 
 know even as we are known." The mystery of the 
 Divine government, so far as it is concerned with this 
 world at least, is to be measurably cleared np. Now 
 we believe all is right — then we shall know that all is 
 right. Now we are satisfied without knowing — in 
 the dark. Then w^e shall be satisfied in knowing, 
 or in the light. Here we stand under the cloud and 
 say, " He doeth all things well." There we shall 
 stand amid the full splendors of the sun and say, 
 " All is well." 
 
 We do not mean to say that God will ever bring 
 all His plans and decisions within the limits of our 
 knowledge. Far from it. There will always be scope 
 for faith. And yet with reference to a vast mmiber 
 of the appointments and doings of God, we shall be 
 enabled to say that we are satisfied, not because we 
 believe, but because we know. We shall emerge from 
 the darkness into the light. With all the decrees of 
 God we shall be satisfied. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with our prospects. Here 
 our outlook is often dark. Eternity looks gloomy — 
 we shrink back from its bosom. It seems to us a dark 
 profound into which no light shines. It, and what is 
 in it, we dread, and look away from it back into what 
 seems comparatively a warm, sunny world. We are 
 aware that this avails not, that we are borne on to it 
 just as fast when we shrink as when we hasten — still 
 
358 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 we shrink. Sometimes we get the better of our dread. 
 Sometimes only this little spot looks dark, and the 
 light shines yonder. We fear the present more than 
 the future, time more than eternity ; but it is not 
 always, perhaps not generally so. We fear what is 
 before us, and it is right that we should do so, for the 
 terrible and final judgment is before us. That day 
 is to come in which our destinies for immortality will 
 be decided. And he that has no fear of the judgment, 
 is either better or worse than most men, than most 
 disciples. But then all solicitudes as to our locality 
 and destiny will have ended. We shall be satisfied 
 with the present, but still more so with our future. 
 There will be the prospect stretching away infinitely, 
 growing brighter and brighter till the burnished eye 
 can look no farther. 
 
 When we awake in GodJs likeness, — friends ! what 
 are your prospects of awaking in the likeness of God ? 
 We shall all sleep in death, and we shall all awake 
 and come forth. To some it will be an awaking to 
 shame and everlasting contempt ; no satisfaction, but 
 an unrest, deepening, growing forever. Others will 
 awake to glory, in the likeness of God, and they will 
 be satisfied forever. . 
 
XXXIII. 
 
 THE ETERNITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 Tour heart sJiall livefore'cer. — Psalm xxii. 26. 
 
 IF unaided reason were called to answer the chal- 
 lenge, " O Death, where is thy sting? " — it would 
 only have to point ns to the myriad deathbeds of earth 
 and say, It is there / or if called to answer that added 
 challenge, " O Grave, where is thy victory ? " — it 
 would only have to take us to the vast, teeming 
 sepulchres of the dead, and say. It is there. Deatli 
 has been ever planting its stings, and the grave has 
 been ever proclaiming its victories. 
 
 Wherever culture has made sensitive the delicate 
 susceptibilities of our nature, there loving hands have 
 closed the dying eyes of the loving. As we come up 
 nearer to the true ideal of humanity, as we give 
 greater depth and scope to our noblest powers, as we 
 imbed ourselves sweetly and tenderly down among 
 living and tnie souls, and become interlinked here 
 and there with the best of our race, directing all our 
 
360 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 culture in life to finer issues, we become more suscep- 
 tible to the sorrows of separation, and more stricken 
 as we part with those we love. 
 
 Death makes sad havoc in these homes of ours — 
 these sanctuaries to which we flee for refuge in the 
 stern battles of life. In the places where God and 
 nature commission us to garner our dearest treasures, 
 there we are most deeply wounded. And to these 
 agonizing sunderings of strong bonds, we would sum- 
 mon no stoical indifference. We would remember 
 that the grief we suffer is the measure of our love, 
 and we would commit no suicide upon our true life 
 for the exemption it would give us from pain. In 
 living souls there must be agony when the cords are 
 severed that bind souls together. It is the dead only 
 whom we can wound without pain. Better far train 
 our natures to their highest capacities, — open our 
 souls to all the griefs that come to us in hours of sep- 
 aration — bow in tears over the coffins and the graves 
 of our precious dead, — perceive truly all the wreck 
 that death hath wrought ; and then as we look upon 
 the still, calm face of the sleeper, comfort and elevate 
 ourselves with the thought, '' Yom- heart shall live 
 forever." 
 
 It is fitting to think and to speak of the immortal 
 life, the eternity of the affections. I need not say that 
 all things in the kingdoms of nature and of grace are 
 for those and those only who receive them. The warm 
 
THE ETERNITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 361 
 
 sunshine, all the beautiful sights of heaven and earth, 
 all the sweet sounds that fill the air, are for those who 
 have senses to perceive and minds to appreciate them. 
 And in the higher domain of grace, all the precious 
 promises are made to those who seek and prize them. 
 It is said of the good, of those whose spirits have been 
 quickened and permeated by the Divine Spirit, that 
 their hearts shall live forever in the true and lasting 
 home of all noble and allcgiant souls. 
 
 The heart is the treasure-house of the soul, where 
 are gathered its most precious jewels. Pluck out the 
 heart from the man, and you rend away that which 
 gives him his highest value in the eyes of all intelli- 
 gent creatures. Scan the history of the race — unroll 
 the records of the generations that have been, and 
 that which gives to them their highest interest, is the 
 hearts that have lived, joying and weeping, hoping 
 and fearing, loving and hating. Suppose generations 
 to have existed without hearts, and we would almost 
 as soon delve in the tombs that contain their ashes, 
 as in the scrolls that bring them to our memories. 
 
 As with the men, so with the literature of the 
 past, — it is awakening, refreshing, appealing, only as 
 it is of and from the heart. The heart of man in its 
 essential traits is ever the same in all times and in all 
 countries ; and the books only that portray the heart 
 in its varied and complex workings, can be of peren- 
 nial interest. 
 
 16 
 
362 THOUGHTS FOK THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 And as with the books, so with the work of men. 
 The heart that has been put into it, alone redeems it 
 from drudgery, elevating and dignifying it. l^othing 
 that has been done by the myriads who have died and 
 left no sign, has been wholly ignoble, that has been 
 done from the heart and to gratify its purer affections. 
 
 The humble many who have worked in the un- 
 noticed tasks of life, and whom history no more names 
 than it does the insects that built the coral reefs of the 
 Pacific Seas, have yet shown the higher types of life 
 as they have wrought, not in the spirit of slaves or 
 of petty rivalry or for pelf, but to furnish the scanty 
 meals of those they loved. And to-day, all over the 
 world, the work that goes on in the w^orkshop, on the 
 farm, on the sea, in far-olf retreats, on the mountain 
 slopes and in the valleys, is ennobled and joined with 
 the w^ork of the immortals as it is wi'ought with the 
 heart. Lubricate toil with the affections, and it can- 
 not be mean. The toiler who leaves his humble hut 
 in the morning, to labor in the summer sun till the, 
 evening shadows call him home, and all from the 
 promptings of his tenderest feelings, is one of God's 
 noblemen. 
 
 And in the sweeping wars that have rolled over 
 the centuries like a blast from the desert, in the bat- 
 tles under whose dun mantle thousands have fallen 
 stark and stiff, or bit the dust in agony, the one single 
 element of enduring interest that has mingled in them 
 
THE ETEENITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 863 
 
 and redeemed them as a whole from the charge of 
 inhuman butchery, has been the heart in them bent 
 on protecting kindred and country from rapine and 
 slaughter. Look out upon the dwellings that dot the 
 landscape, go through the crowded streets of the city, 
 and it is pre-eminently the heart that is in all these 
 homes that makes them sweet and attractive. 
 
 The joys of the world and its sorrows, — the smiles 
 at meeting, the tears at parting, the gladness at births, 
 the agonies at deaths, — all are of the heart. From 
 the heart go out the threads by which, in the silent 
 loom of time, the race is woven into one continuous 
 fabric. The heart links worlds together, heaven and 
 earth, with stronger bonds than the mighty power of 
 gravitation. Wherever hearts throb, thither hearts 
 turn. Speak of homes over the sea where grief 
 broods, want cowers, ignorance sits in shadows, guilt 
 trembles, sin festers, and fear points to an awful here- 
 after, and thither, as though called by the voice of 
 God, truthful, loving, compassionate hearts are drawn. 
 It is the heart of God that turns Him with tenderest 
 pity, with Almighty help to our lost world. He gives 
 His heart to the world, and He asks but the world's 
 poor heart in return. 
 
 The heart of the world beats heavily at the portal 
 of a thousand new-made graves to-day, and in a tliou- 
 sand stricken households. And over the dying beds 
 of those we love, over the forms that lie clad for their 
 
364 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 last retreats, over the graves that we plant with flowers 
 and other and more enduring memorials of our affec- 
 tion, there is no question that we ask with half the 
 earnestness — none that we send out into the world 
 whither the loved have gone, with half the interest 
 as this, — " Do they love there yet ? " And there is 
 no response so consoling as this, " Their heart shall 
 live forever." Once let the heart be quickened with 
 a true life, come into connections with the Fountain 
 of Life, feel its dry channels moistened and filled from 
 the upper and abiding sj)rings, and then though the 
 body die, though all that we saw and touched shall 
 fade away, yet the heart — invisible like all spiritual 
 essences, viewless as God Himself, — the heart mani- 
 festing itself in the eye, trembling in the voice, prompt- 
 ing to all cheerful aids, and yet never seen by the 
 bodily eye, — it shall live forever. 
 
 When we say that the heart thus living in the 
 true Fountain of Life, Jesus Christ, whose exhaust- 
 less resources can never fail, shall live forever, we do 
 not of course mean that it shall go out into the invisi- 
 ble world unattended, unencompassed, unwinged with 
 thought, imagination, fancy, — unguided, nnimpelled 
 by will, widowed and solitary. Rather shall it go 
 with these as its blessed retainers and pursuivants, 
 with these as the trailing garments of its glory, with 
 these as servants to attend it and do its behests. The 
 heart as the central power of the soul — as giving 
 
THE ETERNITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 365 
 
 it its true character, assigning it its true honor, shall 
 peculiarly and emphatically live. 
 
 Yes, the affections shall live forever, ^one of 
 them shall be lost in their transit to the other and 
 better world, — none of them shall be left behind, none 
 buried in the dark sea of oblivion, but all shall be 
 carried safely through. I know it is a conception of 
 some, even highly spiritual persons, that we are to 
 drop in the passage to heaven our natural affections, 
 — that in tlie home of pure souls, in the society of the 
 congenial and sanctified brotherhood of Jesus, where 
 all will be linked in sweet affinities with all, there 
 will be no scope for the simply natural affections, — 
 that these are for a time, — the calyx of the flower 
 that may fall away wlien it has bloomed out in im- 
 mortal fragrance and beauty in heaven. These, it 
 may be said, give grace and attractiveness to earth, 
 give quiet nooks and shelter, within which spirits may 
 be protected while they are in training for heaven, 
 but will be absorbed in a higher beauty there. I will 
 not say that there will be no penetrating with Diviner 
 affections, no tempering, no modification of these 
 lower ones. There doubtless will be. On that Mount 
 of Glor}" they will be transfigm-ed. But then the 
 soul will not be dwarfed to reach its perfections. It 
 need not suffer any elimination of the elements that 
 gave it its highest attractiveness here in order that it 
 may enter a higher society there. The personal aftec- 
 
366 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHKISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 tions need not yield to the universal. If our noblest 
 idea of heaven is that of a blessed family with the 
 great Jehovah as the Father, shall we, must we, when 
 there, eradicate the very affections that gave us our 
 sweetest conceptions here of heaven ? Must earth 
 be all forgotten, that heaven may be sweet ? Must 
 the play of earthly feelings and attachments all be 
 swept away, that the ecstasy of present joys may be 
 perfect ? Must there be no tenderer, special love for 
 the mother and the father into whose eyes we looked 
 in infancy, and whose first training glance was heaven- 
 ward, and whose first word perhaj^s was of that other 
 Father who folds all in His heart and covers all with 
 His shield ? Shall brothers and sisters with whom we 
 talked in childhood, and of whom we learned in part 
 what love meant, — shall these be to us as those who 
 come up to the one home from foreign shores — dear, 
 indeed, and yet strangers ? It may not, cannot be. I 
 would believe anything rather than that. 
 
 The heart — the whole heart shall live forever ; — 
 not a thi-ead in its braided glory, not a tint in its 
 blessed radiance will be gone. Special remembrances, 
 special affections, soft clingings to those who gave us 
 being and shared with us the same hearts and homes, 
 will not be at all incompatible with the attachments 
 that we shall give and love to give to those who have 
 come up from all lands and all times — the elder and 
 the later dwellers of earth, who have washed their 
 
THE ETERNITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 367 
 
 robes and made tliem white in the blood of the Lamb. 
 It would be nnfilial even in heaven not to love with 
 a special love those who gave ns birth. The soul 
 drops none of its primal elements in that better clime. 
 We shall love there those whom we love here. The 
 heart, — yea, all of it^ shall live forever. 
 
 I have said that the affections — those that are 
 special, those that are general and universal, those 
 that fasten upon God, and those that cling to kindred 
 and friends, shall all live ; — I also say that they will 
 live, as we now can but poorly appreciate or conceive. 
 
 All life is but weak and feeble here. It is so soon 
 met and overtaken by death — it is so perpetually 
 under its shadow and so darkened thereby, that we 
 gain but faint notions of it at best. It grows only as 
 it can grow here in continual conflict with death, and 
 is soon o'ermastered by it and falls crushed beneath 
 its tread. 
 
 And the heart's truest life, the life it has from 
 God and in common with Him, scarcely gets started in 
 the wintry atmosphere of this. world. It merely gives 
 us hints in the larger and better spirits of earth, of 
 what it is and may become. God puts great hearts 
 before us now and then simply as prophecies of the 
 heart's possibilities. In the hereafter, the affections 
 will give an idea of life such as we can now only 
 dimly conceive of. They will have nothing to hinder 
 their development in that realm of life, but everything 
 
368 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 to advance it. Here, their life is like the animal and 
 vegetable growth of the Polar regions, dwarfed and 
 restrained by wintry winds and biting frosts. They 
 meet with checks and hindrances to their develop- 
 ment manward and Godward, — in absorption in the 
 world's business — in the multiplicity of its cares — 
 in the weariness of the body, rendering torpid the sus- 
 ceptibilities of the soul — in the isolations, the coldness, 
 the discords of life — in the rareness of noble examples 
 showing what hearts may be — in the dimness, the con- 
 tradictions, the divisions, the sectarianisms of earth — 
 in the faint apprehensions of God, of Christ, of eter- 
 nity ; — in all these we find sad clogs to the growth of 
 the heart's higher life. 
 
 But in heaven, all these will be gone. There will 
 be found all that can give elevation, expansion, depth, 
 power to the affections, clearness of insight into spir- 
 itual realities, the overshadowing presence and inflow- 
 ing glories of God, the purest society of congenial 
 spirits, all whose ways and all whose attractions will 
 be on high, noble examples of the affections in lovely 
 embodiment, sweet amenities, open souls all about us 
 with prompt hospitalities and fellowship ; — everythmg 
 to inspire us to flow out in confidence and love, — no 
 repressions or repulsions, all inviting to perpetual out- 
 gushings of heart, — God the Father over us and all 
 good souls about us. These will be the incitements, 
 the nourishment of our affections ; and in this Divine 
 
THE ETERNITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 369 
 
 atmosphere, with this warm sunshine resting on them, 
 playing around them and penetrating to their very 
 roots and spring, they, like tropical plants, will have a 
 growth, exhibit a luxuriance, effloresce in a beauty 
 now inconceivable to us. The heart that has ever 
 been really quickened to a Divine life, that has ever 
 been put beside the beating heart of God and felt its 
 Divine pulsations however faintly, such a heart shall 
 live forever. 
 
 I have said that it is the heart that gives to life its 
 true value. A world, a nation, a city, a community, 
 a home without hearts is dead — with them it is alive. 
 And what we have to contend with, in visitations of 
 death in our homes, is a yielding to appearances 
 rather than to facts. Death as it seems^ is a teiTible 
 thing. The body that gave to us the manifestations 
 of the soul — its visible signals, is still and motionless. 
 The old methods of telegraphing thought and affec- 
 tion are lost. The heart is still, the hands folded, the 
 eyes closed, the cheek pallid ; — there is no sign, no 
 motion. Sense tells us the soul is gone — the man is 
 dead — the affections have ceased to be. But no ! 
 Faith looks through appearances to realities, to the 
 soul itself, rather than to its accustomed manifestations. 
 It says, the heart lives on and on ; — the thoughts, tlio 
 affections are not dead, but live and shall live forever. 
 We see not the old signals — we shall sec them no 
 more; but the great fiict survives— our veritable 
 16** 
 
370 THOUGHTS FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 friend still lives. We can bear that what gave the 
 soul a temporary home and avenues of communica- 
 tion should fade and crumble to dust, if the soul itself 
 with all its wealth of love survives for us, — if in leav- 
 ing the body in the earth, we may feel that what 
 bound us to our friend yet lives and blooms in im- 
 mortal beauty and towers in ever-growing strength. 
 
 We see then that death looked at aright, through 
 the fitting medium, does not make such sad havoc in 
 our affections as we are at times wont to suppose. 
 The heart has a perennial claim in all its true posses- 
 sions. If it is the essential person that we loved, and 
 not the mere transient shelter and medium of com- 
 munication, — if our love penetrated the shell and 
 reached the substance, — if it enwrapped the soul, 
 not the body, — then we may love what we ever 
 loved, love it with a purer, calmer love, may give 
 compass and force to our love by sending our thoughts 
 out to picture other scenes, to visit other homes. True 
 hearts then grieve only over separations, not over 
 losses ; — over the brief cessation of the mere signals 
 of affection, not over the cessation of affection itself. 
 
 Death extinguishes nothing — it only transfers. 
 Souls that love truly and worthily here, live and love 
 in the same mansion ; when separated by death, they 
 only live and love in different mansions till the lapse 
 of time brings them, if faithful, to live and love in the 
 same mansion again. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 371 
 
 The heart of the pious dead lives forever. Oh ! 
 that we might be as faithful to our noblest affections 
 and our better life as we are sure they are ! Time 
 will heal the wounds of separation, but God forbid 
 that it should bring us forgetfulness of the precious 
 dead, or of the wealth we have garnered in them ! 
 
 " Beyond the parting and the meeting, 
 
 I shall be soon. 
 Beyond the farewell and the greeting, 
 Beyond the pulse's fever-beating, 
 
 I shall be soon. 
 Love, rest, and home ! 
 
 Sweet hope ! 
 Lord, tarry not, but come ! " 
 
 " Short death and darkness ! Endless life and light ! 
 Short dimming ; endless shining in yon sphere, 
 Where all is incorruptible and pure ; 
 The joy without the pain, the smile without the tear." 
 
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