13A .rJOD XO/O Farrar, Frederic William, 1831-1903. The fall of man Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/fallofmanotherseOOfarr THE FALL OF MAN AND OTHER SERMONS. THE FALL OF MAN PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, AND ON VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS. FREDERIC W.'FARRAR, M.A., F.R.S., WESTMINSTER PUBLISHED BV REQUEST. FOURTH EDITION. |?oiibott : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1S78. {Ali A'll-Zas Reserved.] LOTOON : SONS, AND TATt.OB, PP.IXiri BREAD STREFT HILL. TO THE REV. CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, D.D., MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, AND LATE HEAD MASTER OP HARROW SCHOOL, I DEDICATE THESE SERMONS, WITH DEEP GRATITUDE FOR MANY KINDNESSES, AND WITH SINCERE AFFECTION AND RESPECT. PREFACE. It is with great diffidence that I allow these Sermons to see the light. It had long been mj' intention not to publish any volume of Sermons, and I have often stated that intention to friends who spoke to me on the subject. VTheu, however, the Yice-Chancellor did me the honour to request that I would publish the three Sermons preached before the University cf Cambridge, it became necessary to add others to them, and I have done so, not because I thought that the Sermons were worthy of presen-ation, — ^for no one can be more painfully aware of their imperfections than I am m\-self, — ^but because some, who had a right to judge for themselves, wished to know the topics on which I ordinarily preached, and the manner in which I handled them. I have therefore puLhshed them exactly as they were delivered, and not given them the advantage of that complete revision, and even reconstruction, by \\hich many of them would have been improved. I PREFACE. have not even thought it desirable to remove an occa- sional recurrence of the same form of expression in Sermons preached at different places, and before widely different audiences. It is hardly necessary to observe that they are not in any way intended for a complete systematic exposition of theological truths. I have acknowledged all that I have consciously derived from other writers ; but doubtless there are many thoughts and some expressions for which I am either indebted unconsciously, or to which I have alluded in a manner that did not admit of formal recognition. I need only add, in justice to that distinguished Churchman who has allowed me to offer him this Volume as a proof of my personal friendship and gratitude, that he has neither heard nor read the majority of these Sermons, and that very probably they may contain passages with the spirit of which he would be unable to sympathize. CONTENTS. I. THE FALL OF MAN. (Preached berore the University of Cambridge, March i, 1868.) PAGi! GiA'FSiS III. 13. — " And the Lord God said unto the woman, - What is thiG that thou hast done? " . . . n I THE LAW OF DE.VTH ; AND THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE. (Preached before the University of Cambridge, March 8, 1868.) Genesis ii. 17.— "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die " 32 III. THE PATH OF CHRIST. (Preached before the University of Cambridse, M.irch 15. i863,l ^:ATTHEW VIII. 22.— "Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead " .44 IV. RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. (Preached before Harrow School, June 28, 1863.) Romans viii. 21. — "The creature itself also shall be de- livered from the bondage of corruption " ... 63 b X CONTENTS. V. ASCENSION WITH CHRIST. (Preached before Harrow School, on Ascension Day, 1865.) Acts i. 9. — " And a cloud received Him out of their sight " . 76 VI. THE IMMORTALITY AND THE MEANNESS OF MAN. (Preached at Nottingham, during the Meeting of the British Association, August, 1866.) Psalm viii. 4. — "What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou visitest him ? " . . .87 VII. RIGHTEOUSNESS THE STRENGTH OF NATIONS. (Preached before ihe National Rifle Association, in the Volunteer Camp at Wimbledon, July 15, 1S66.) I Corinthians xvi. 13.—" Quit you like men, be strong" . 103 VIII. THE HISTORY AND HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. (Preached before Harrow School, on Founder's Day, October 6, 1859.) ISAIAH Liv. 11-13. — "Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord ; and great shall be the peace of thy children " 119 IX. CHURCH SERVICES. (Preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster, at the Choral Festival, 1867.) Psalm cxxii. i. (Prayer-Book Version).— " I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord " 137 CONTENTS. xi X. GOD'S BANQUET AND THE WORLD'S. (Preached before Harrow School, January 15, 1863.) PAGli Luke xv. i6.— " And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat : and no man gave unto him" 155 XI. THE ANIMAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. (Preached before Harrow School on the First Sunday of the Summer Term, 1864.) Genesis xxv. 27. — "And the boys grew, and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field ; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents " 171 XII. ANGELS ON THE PATH OF LIFE. (Preached on the .Anniversary at Marlborough College [St. Michael and All Angels], September 29, 1864.) Genesis XXXII. 26.—" And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me " 1S5 XIII. THEIR WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM. (Preached at All Saints', Huntingdon, December 28, i8<52.) Revelation xiv. 13.— "And their works do follow them" . 200 XIV. THE WAR IN WHICH THERE IS NO DISCHARGE. (Preached before the iSth Middlesex Volunteers, in Harrow Church, May 7, 1863.) ECCLESIASTES VIII. 8. — "And there is no discharge in that war" 214 XV. THE LOCUST-EATEN PAST. (Preached at All Saints', Huntingdon, January 6, 1866.) Joel 11. 25. — "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten " 228 xli CONTENTS. XVI. SEEING THE FACE OF GOD. (Preached before Harrow School, September 30, 1866.) PACE Revelation xxii. 4.—" And they shall see his face ; and his name shall be in their foreheads " 243 XVI r. THE TEMPLE OF GOD. f Preached before King's College School, at the Reopening of King's College Chapel, June 23, 1864.) I Corinthians in. 16, — " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ?" . 258 XVI II. THE BLESSED TRINITY. (Preached before Harrow School, on Trinity Sunday, May 26, 1861.) Revelation iv. 8.—" Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty " 270 XIX. DELIVERANCE THROUGH CHRIST. (Preached before Harrow School, 1S64.) I Samuel xii. 20. — " Fear not : ye have done all this wicked- ness : yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serv'e the Lord with all your heart " 284 XX. HOPE IN CHRIST. (Preached after the First Communion of the Bo)-s confirmed at Harrow on March 19, j868.) Isaiah lx. i.— " Arise ! shine ! for thy light is come, and the glory of tlie Lord is risen upon thee " . . . . 298 RIIICETOH THE FALL OF MAN. (Preached before the University of Cambridge, March i, iS68.) Gl'.N. iii. 10 — "And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done ? " The season at which we are assembled, my brethren, scarcely leaves us any latitude as to the choice of our meditations. The Church which for half of her year turns our thoughts to the great doctrines of her faith, and for the other half to their direct bearing upon the practice of our lives, has especially set apart this solemn season to lessons of temptation, of punishment, of warning, of repentance. Her Lenten fast is ushered in with the dread voices of commination and the wail of penitential Psalms ; in to-day's Gospel she brings before us the temptation in the wilderness of our Lord and Master; and throughout the earlier Sundays of this period, and that which immediately precedes it, alike in Epistles, Gos;)els, and Lessons, she points our awe-struck contemplations to some of the darkest possibilities which can befall an apostate soul. There are many who would willingly keep these stern lessons out of sight ; the 2 THE FALL OF MAX. appalling simplicity of such Scripture narratives at once horrifies and angers them. They would not indeed go so far as to bid the prophets "prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits;" but, as though by way of compromise, they eagerly bid us wrap our moral teaching in those vague conventional euphemisms from which their conscience can escape. They are indignant that even Scripture should draw the curtain from the dark chambers in which the unregenerate heart abounds, and should turn full into them that blinding, painful, intolerable glare. And, were it in our hands, we should probably listen to such appeals, and if we could not obliterate altogether, should at least bury in eternal oblivion some of the saddest records preserved in the sacred page. Our Church has acted otherwise. She has judged that the mysteries of human iniquity are too awful, too wide- spread, too ruinous to be ignored. Knowing that the day cometh when every heart shall lie bare before that Eye to whose gaze the very heavens are not clean, she has striven to purify the darkness by rending the films of self-deceit, and by making the soul start under the healing agony of shame. Looking round her on a world that lieth in wickedness, — conscious of the con- tinuous tragedies which have been enacted on the narrow stage of sacred history, and of that history, in one sense no less sacred, which we call profane, — not ignorant of the deceitfulness which underlies the smooth conven- tionalities of nominally Christian lives, — she has bidden him who "thinketh he standeth, to take heed lest he THE FALL OF MAM. fall ; " and she has taught us to judge ourselves not by the superficial standards of ordinary society, but by the things written in that book of record which lies ever open before the throne of God. If you would know whether she has done aright, examine your own hearts ; and for the answer trust, not to the delicate suscei)ti- billties of intellectual refinement, but to the voice of an awakened, ay, even of a terrified conscience, when, with threatening aspect and out-stretched arm, it points at us with the steady and dreadful accusation, "Thou art the man 1 " And because I assume that all among us, even those who have striven best and longest, and not in vain, to win the answer of a good conscience towards God and towards man, would yet see enough in their own lives to beat upon their breasts with the cry of the publican. "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner;" therefore I follow the guidance of our Church in speaking to you to-day of sin and tem.ptation. Such thoughts may be little pleasing, but I cannot believe them superfluous. With Scripture, with history, with experience, with the records of countless biographies before me, I cannot doubt that sin has been, and is, the over-shadowing influence — the transient, if not the long-continued gloom — of most men's lives; and that while there are many among my hearers who are resting (it may be after long and weary battle) in the peace and light of God, others again are in the twilight, others in the evening, and some, alas ! it may be, in the black and dark night. Rather do I fear, and I may well fear, lest my words be I — 2 4 THE FALL OF MAN. altogether too weak to reach your hearts. And therefore I pray you, my brethren, rivet not up those hearts in that triple panoply of resistance through which no arrow of conviction can wing its way, but rather, seeing that we stand all of us before God this day, believe that for each one of you there may be some message of prophecy, even though it be spoken by feeble and unworthy lips. For us all alike now is the accepted time ; for one here on this moment may hang eternity, and that one may be you; for he who stands here is, for this hour, God's appointed messenger, and He may send His seraphim unseen with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch into inspiration the stammering lips of whom He will. And be not surprised, my brethren, if in speaking to you of the growth of sin I purposely draw my text from its oldest record, though round these first pages of Scripture have raged most loudly the angry voices of controversy. It is one of our trials that the Bible, with its tender and hallowed bearing upon all that is sweet and noble in our lives — Avith its words so stately and full of wonder, and full of music, like the voice of an arch- angel — should have been made in these days the wran- gling-ground for sectarian differences; but if with our whole hearts we are striving to live according to its spirit, we need fear but little that we shall trip in a right pro- nunciation of the shibboleths of its letter. Surely it is deplorable that, because of mere questions which after all are but questions of doubtful authorship, of historical accuracy, of verbal criticism, having for the most part little or no bearing on the spiritual or moral life, party THE FALL OF MAN. should be denouncing party, and Christian excommuni- cating Christian, and so many hands tearing in anger the seamless robe of Christ. It is, alas, the due punishment for our lack of charity, our Pharisaism, our unwisdom, that while we have been so eager about such controversies, the love of many should have waxed cold. Yet they who thus cease altogether to reverence God's written word, lose one of the most elevating, one of the most comforting influences of human life. Oh, if such an irreparable loss, my younger brethren, have happened to any one of you, let me entreat you no longer to mistake the shadow for the substance; not to confuse mere questions of exegetical or scientific learning with the deep, awful, imperishable lessons which the Bible, and the Bible only, can bring home to your souls. In what- ever way those questions may be decided, the infinite inner sacredness of God's word remains inviolate for ever. There may be shifting clouds about it, but through them break gleams of the eternal radiance; there may be mingled voices, but clear and loud among them all are heard the utterances of eternal wisdom. Other books may make you learned or eloquent or subtle ; this book alone can make you wise unto salvation. Other books may fascinate the intellect ; by this alone can you cleanse the heart. In other literatures may trickle here and there some shallow runnel from the "unemptiable fountain of wisdom," — and even these, alas ! turbid too often with human passions, fretted with human obstacles, and choked at last in morass or sand, — but in this book, majestic and fathomless, flows the river of the water of 6 THE FALL OF MAN. life itself, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. Your time here is largely spent in searching out the gold which, mingled with much alloy, may be found scattered in the treasuries of Pagan wisdom ; but here alone — in more infinite abundance, of more incom- parable worth — are the pearls of great price, the wisdom more precious than rubies, the " Light from beyond the sun." And be sure that the hour will come not rarely to you in the destinies of life — the hour of sickness, of bereavement; of bitter disappointment, of deathful agony — when all other knowledge and all other insight shall be as useless dross; but every text stored up in the memory, each pure lesson, each bright example from the sacred i)age, shall be to your stricken and fainting souls " better than gold, yea, than much fine gold ; sweeter al.iO than honey and the honeycomb." How deep, for instance, are the lessons involved ir the story of the Fall, and how little are they affected i any of the innumerable criticisms to which it has give rise. Men have long been questioning whether it be a divine philosopheme or a literal fact; whether man arose in one or, like the fauna and the flora which surround him, in many centres ; whether the material elements of which our bodies are composed sprang at a single crea- tive fiat into full-grown and perfect manhood, or in virtue of one omnific law had been swept by the magic eddy of nature's unseen agencies through generations of lower organisms ; whether Adam and Eve, and the happy garden, and the tempting serpent, and the waving sword of the Cherubim, and the trees of knowledge and of life, THE FALL OF MA.V. 7 be transparent allegory' or historic narrative. Enter, my brethren, if you will into such inquiries, secure and un- dismayed, if you but carry in your hands the golden clues of humility and prayer; nothing doubting that by such a spirit you shall know of the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Only remember that such inquiries do not touch for a moment the deep importance of the sacred narrative, or its direct per- sonal bearing on our religious life. The lessons to be here learnt are moral, not ethnological ; spiritual, not scientific. For even if the facts be not literal, they remain divinely and unalterably true. To prove that they are so needs neither learning nor research : it needs but the solemn light of each man's personal experience ; it needs but that spirit of man which is "the candle of the Lord." The story reveals to us how sin came into the world, and death by sin, and we find each one of us, that it is even thus, and thus only, and thus always, that sin enters into each individual heart. The history is no dead letter, but a living symbol, a sacred symbol which neither scepticism can disparage, nor experience can modify, nor philosophy enlarge : it contains the very essence and principle of the whole matter, and he who ' This opinion ha» been held without blame by "divines of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy and most averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in general. And indeed no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt, that if in any other work of Eastern origin he met with trees of life and knowledge, or talking snakes, ...he would want no other proofs that it was an allegory that he was read- ing, and intended to be understood as such." — Coleridge, Aids to K^jltrdon, p. 204 ; lip. Ilors'.ey, Strm. X\ I. 8 THE FALL OF MAN. would have a thorough insight into the origin of sin may- learn more, though he be a child, from these few and simple verses, lighted up by such a commentary as his own experience may furnish, than from all else that the united wisdom of mankind has ever discovered on tne subject with which they deal. For what, in briefest outline, are the points which give to the narrative its main significance? We see our parents placed at first in the happiness of a sinless Eden in which the whisper of temptation is as yet unknown ; but very soon sin, taking occasion by the single com- mandment to which they were subjected, deceived them, and by it slew them. First came the faint suggestion, as of some outer voice, "Yea, hath God said?" — the suggestion of a restless uneasy doubt, and with it the undefined impulse to rebel, to shake off authority, to exert the power of self-will. At first indeed this formless temptation is met by the barrier of a direct command, and in the spirit of a holy dread, " God hath said ye shall not eat of it ;" but then in the exaggerated addition " neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die," we see perhaps a very subtle indication that there was from the first a lurking desire, an undeveloped tendency to disobey. And in any case the next step is fraught with danger ; for the woman, in all her softness, in all her weakness, shutting her eyes to the awful issues involved in the workings of her self-will, dallies with the tempter, lingers with guilty irresolution on the scene of the temptation. She dwells jealously on the one thing prohibited, rather than joyously on the many things permitted, until almost THE FALL OF MAN. 9 unconsciously to herself the tempting voice has passed from the timid suggestion of a doubt, to the impudent promise of a gain, to the bold assertion of a lie. "Ye shall not surely die," " your eyes shall be opened," " )'e shall be as gods." And then ambition, curiosity, concu- piscence are all awake. The good that she knows begins to pall upon her, the evil that she knows not to shine in alluring colours. Ever, as she gazes passionately upon it, the tree seems good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, a tree to be desired to make one wise. More and more she turns herself from the voice and thought of God to the fragrancy and imagined sweetness of that forbidden fruit. And from such a beginning there can be but one result. They who would pluck flowers from the very edge of the precipice must be prepared to fall. Them who long to sin God suffers to sin. The lingering thought passes into the vivid imagination, the vivid imagination into the burning wish, the burning wish into the half-formed purpose, the half-formed purpose into the hasty act.i Swiftly, as in a moment, the crisis is upon her, sharp and sudden, as such crises always are, the crucial instant of temptation when life and death hang in trembling equipoise in the balance of our destiny. Oh, each soul has need of all its resolution then, and of all the Holy Spirit's aid, but too often we meet that moment, as Eve met it, shaken, weakened, half-despair- ing by long familiarity with sin. In an evil hour she 1 " Primo occurrit menti simplex cogilatio ; dcinde fortis imafji- natio : postea delectatio et motus pravus et assensio." — Thomas a Kern pis. 10 THE FALL OF MAN. Stretches her rash hand, and a deed is done irrevocable for omnipotence, irrevocable till time shall be no more. And then the floodgates are open ; the tiny ripple of an illicit thought, ever swelling, deepening, broadening, has burst into an irresistible river, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. The guilty wish of one woman has swollen into the irremediable corruption of a world. One after another, like crash on crash of thunder, the sentences of judgment roll over their heads, till the windows of heaven are opened, and the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the world must be rebap- tized in the overwhelming waves. In one Sunday Lesson we read the story of the Fall, in the next the stor)' of the Deluge ; " 'Twas but a liltle drop of sin We saw this morning enter in. And lo ! at eventide a world is drowned ! " Is there nothing here for our instruction? Has there been nothing like this in your own past lives ? Is not the same process repeated at each fresh development of the mystery of iniquity ? Look back through the mists of memory, and remembering the sins of your past years, tell me if you might not have been forewarned then — if you may not be forewarned even now — by the method and progress of Eve's temptation ? You too have had your Eden of happy ignorance, and of an innocence yet unassailed. You too, in a sunlit childhood, have " heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice Of God, and angels to your sight appeared Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise ; " but almost with the dawn of an intellectual life began THE FALL OF MA.V. the struggle of good with evil, and in that strife the innocence of childhood, which is as the dew of God, was brushed away from the soul. Self-will sprang up. You found the physical nature strong, the moral weak. The voice of doubt whispered, " Yea, hath God said ? " the voice of impatient rebellion and conscious passion shouted, " Ye shall be as gods." But so dear to God is the human soul that it cannot at first go astray without a shudder and a pang. He has mercifully planted a thick hedge around our first transgressions, and relying it may be upon that, confident it may be in some instinctive sense of horror and of peril, in some frightened momen- tary cry for deliverance, in some remembered threatening of God's word, in some sweet and holy lesson learnt at a mother's knee, above all in some divine yearning intuition of a Saviour's love, you did not at once forsake the cove- nant of your God, but as though thoughts at least were harmless, you indulged your thoughts in a dangerous familiarity with wrong. But he whose thoughts are filled with earthly imaginations has no room left for thoughts of God. His fall is certain. Sin becomes to him mor-e fair, more full of alluring sorcery. He who, not led as the Saviour was by the Spirit of God, but turned aside by the guilty glamour of a self-deceiving heart, leaves the ways of pleasantness and the paths of peace, to wander in the desert of spiritual danger, must be prepared in that desert to be with the wild beasts, to meet temptation at every turn, to be tortured more and more with a " burning Tantalian thirst," to be dazzled more and more to his own destruction by the delusive shine of the 12 THE FALL OF MAN. desert phantom,^ which, as it ever flies before him, will but vanish at last before his disenchanted eye amid the waste and glare of the scorching sands. Seldom in any case, and never save by the special grace of God, do guilty thoughts end in guilty thoughts. They are but the serpent's egg, from which breaks forth the cockatrice. On us, as on Eve, at some unguarded moment, the temptation springs " terrible and with a tiger's leaps," and then we fall; we fall, and we pity ourselves because we fall in a moment ; but that fall is the fall, not of the moment, but of all the previous life ; it was but " the sign-manual of deed " which sooner or later the powers of evil demand from him who in heart has been long their own. And, when this sacrament of evil is over, then follows the common history. The sin which was at first cowardly, becomes next shameless, and lastly secure. The " only this once " ends in " there is no harm in it." " Abeunt siudia in mores." The scarlet blossom ripens into the poisonous and ashy fruit. Delusion ends in denial ; denial in insensibility ; insensibility unawakened deepens into everlasting death. Oh, if there be one here whose feet have gone astray into evil paths, let him be warned in time. That road hath but one ending ; the hurrying feet of many a generation have trodden it ; yet ^ It might be a matter of wonder if so common and striking an Arabian phenomenon as the mirage were not alluded to in the metaphors of Scripture. There can, however, be little doubt that this is tlie real meaning: of the word ^Tr , Is. XXXV. 7 (A. V. ' the parched ground ;' LXX. r\ arpSpor), a'ld xlix. lo (A.V. 'the heat,' LXX. d Kavaay). THE FALL OF MAy. 13 there is not one of them but would confess with hollow voice, as from the grave and gate of death, that it is the entrance into " those regions, whither, whosoever passeth finally, shall lie down and groan with an eternal sorrow." I. The general lessons which result, at once, my brethren, from such a retrospect are clear and full of solemn warning. And the first is the necessity — alas ! the often forgotten, the often wholly-despised necessity — for constant watchfulness. From the very constitution of our nature, from the inherited tendencies of many sinful generations, from the occasion which sin takes by the law for our perdition, from the intensity and multi- formity of the temptations which may beset us, the very best of us is in constant danger ; but none more so than you who are yet in youth. None — not even the oldest warrior — can ever in tliis world lay aside one piece of his panoply ; for our warfare is a warfare in which there is no discharge. But, if even the strongest Christian — if even he whose courage has been tested in many a mighty struggle, and whose hope has been confirmed by many a mighty victory over the powers of evil — if even //f feels that his hand may never leave the cross-hilt of his sword, nor his weary arm drop the shield which has been given him — can you, in the very beginning of the battle, you whose enemies are stronger, more passionate, more inflamed with the fury of conquest — can you, while the fiery darts of the wicked one are falling thick around you, strip off your armour, and with unlit lamp and ungirded loin give yourselves up to sloth or sleep ? THE FALL OF MAN. Yes; it may seem so to you for a time. If you be at ease in your youth, if you be living in pride, fulness of bread and abundance of idleness, the foes of your spiritual being may have abandoned the semblance of battle, only because they are secure in the confidence of victory. But oh, if you would escape them, watch. Remember that terrible metaphor which the Lord ad- dressed to Cain when first the fierce, sullen, brooding spirit of revenge seized possession of his heart : " If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door." At the door oi your hearts, no less than at that of the first murderer, sin is crouching like some wild beast of prey; but " subject unto tliee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." Thou art the master of that n-oXv^aiaXor ii'n^iov 1, that blind wild beast of all that is evil within thee, and thou canst place thy foot upon his neck. But if not, if thou feedest him to thine own ruin, then sud- denly will he spring upon thee with flame in his eye. and wrath and thunder in his roar, and then God helj) thee ! Thou maycst be saved indeed from his devouring fury, but it shall be in the wild awful image of the |.easant prophet, "as the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of an ear I" 2. Then as a second warning, I would bid you be- ware of underrating the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Ixho not the scornful and faithless question, " Yea, hath God said ? " There are not wanting in society alamiing 1 Plato, /vV- ix. 12. Amos iii. 12. THE FALL OF MAM symptoms that grave sins are lightly thought of, are tolerated, are condoned ; and that which is abomination to the Lord, that which is the inward curse and devasta- tion of men's lives, that which crucified to the bitter cross the Son of God himself, is forsooth and, I fear, increasingly a subject for slighting allusions or idle jests. Unhallowed actions are the natural sequence of spurious notions ; and men shrink not from sin and worldliness, when its sinfulness is questioned, and its penalties are disallowed. Daily is this Gospel of Iniquity more insolently preached, and its proselytes are more shamelessly as- sured. Nay, if we do not take a firm stand, not only will this tide of corruption flood the back-streams of our meaner literature, but men will not be ashamed to advocate the cause of lawlessness, will not blush while they " foam out their own shame," and strive " to paint the gates of hell with Paradise ; " nay, even will have no sense of guilt or of degradation while they drag the sacred name and the laurel garland of the Poet into unutterable mire. But be sure that that nation is on the high road to ruin where men are what St. Paul calls aTrriXyrjKOTtr- I.e. where they have once felt but feel no longer ^ ; where the fumes of the poison which they have tasted fill them with headiness and pride, and before God, and men, and the glittering faces of the angel-witnesses, they are leprous, and seek no solitude, they are naked, and not ' Epli. iv. 19. (aTnjXyijKtVas, dv-\ rot iravtroaiyovs aXy^iy. — Sc/wl. ad Thuc. 11. 42.) t6 THE FALL OF MAN. ashamed. Tell me not that to speak thus shows a want of savoir faire — tell me not that such a view of sin is unphilosophical, or that it is not in accordance with the view taken by sensible men of the world, or that men of genius have spoken otherwise. I speak not as a man of the world, — not as would-be philosophers have spoken, or as men of genius have sung ere the day came which made them repent in dust and ashes ; but I speak as that God hath spoken whose minister I am, I speak as His Prophets and Apostles and Mart}TS have spoken ; nay, I speak even as has been spoken by not a few of the best and wisest of the very heathen, whose words might well call up a blush, were blushes possible, upon many a professing Christian's cheek. And I say, Woe to the man, be he headstrong youth or would-be philo- sopher, be he an applauded genius or a successful man of the world — woe unto the man who dares to exalt his petty impotence against the divine majesty of the Moral Law. Be not deceived ; to violate it is a peril, to deny it is a blasphemy, which brings its own crushing Nemesis behind. The fires of Sinai still bum over the history of men and nations, and its dread thunders still roll across die centuries. " Opinions alter," it has been said, " manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written upon the tablets of eternity. For every false word, or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust and vanity, the price has to be paid at last.... Justice and Truth alone endure and live ; Injustice and Falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes to them in the end." THE FALL OF MAiV. 3. Then once more I would say to you, If you would learn righdy die history of the Fall, beware of the theory that sin indeed may be sinful, but that no strict notice will be taken, no stern account exacted for the sins of your youth; beware of the wicked and perilous theory that you can sow (as they call it) your " wild oats " now. What ! do you think \.\\at-inclination to break God's laws will be accepted as a valid excuse for doing so ? that there is no harm in bidding your Maker await your pleasure ; in refusing to God the present which you have, and offering to Him only the future which you have not? no harm in squandering as the portion of your youth those fine gifts and inestimable opportunities which were meant to furnish the capital of your man- hood ? What ! has God granted a plenary indulgence to the days of your youth ? has He told you that you may pour its brightest years as a libation to the powers of evil, and fling its brightest jewels to be trampled underfoot of swine ? Never surely did the world in its worst folly invent a theory so false, so dangerous, so utterly fatuous as this. Every fact of history, every lesson of experience, every law of nature, every doctrine of Scripture, brands it as a lie. It is to poison the fountain, and to hope that the river will be pure. It is to make the Holy of Holies a place of riot and infamy, and yet to assume that the desecrated chamber will breathe none less sweetly with hallowed incense, nor reflect less brightly the Shechinah of God. It is to break down the hedge of God's vineyard, and to suffer the wild boars to rend and trample it, yet to expect the F.s. 2 iS THE FALL OF MAN. purple clusters of the vintage unimpaired. It cannot be, my brethren ; he that sows the wild oats must reap them too. Yes, men have been delivered from the snare of Satan who have thus been led captive by him at his will. They have lived to know that " strong pas- sions mean weak reason," and that they have weakened still more their reason, and full-fed their passions into fiercer strength. They have been plucked as brands from the burning ; saved indeed, but saved out of agony, saved so as by fire, saved with the scathing, ineffaceable mark of many a wound upon their souls. Ask them, and they will tell you that they have " possessed the sins of their youth " — possessed them in weary lives, in wasted intellects, in weakened powers — possessed them in the sadness of remorseful memory, in the bluntness of moral sensibility, in the stings of physical decay. And they will tell you further, that to have stood thus on the very- threshold of manhood with the bitter consciousness of a blighted past, — to have, as it were, stumbled over that threshold under the burden of a debt which may be owing for a little while, while strength lasts, but which shall be paid hereafter to the uttermost farthing — to have felt that their only return to " the unific rectitude of a manly life" lay through erasing the names they had entered in such dark characters upon the roll of death, was about the saddest, about the bitterest thought that a man could face. They indeed have been saved ; but how many have not been saved ? " You see," said the old philosopher, " the votive garments of those who have been rescued from shipwreck; where are the '9 memorials of those more countless ones who have perished under the stormy waves?" O then, in conclusion, my brethren, reverence your- selves in reverencing the high and merciful commands of God. Even if Christianity were not, if man had nothing to guide him but the dim gleam of tradition, or the smouldering torch of an unilluminated reason, — even then there should be in him " such an honest haughtiness of nature," so ingenuous and noble a sense of shame, as should make him scorn to sell his high birthright of honourable instincts for the mess of miserable pottage which sin alone can offer ; as should enable him, as in- deed has often been the case, to sit " Silf-govermd, in the fiery prime Of youth, obedient at the feet of law." But you, my brethren, are not heathen, but Christians. You are the brethren of Christ, the sons of God ; the dignity of His image and likeness is upon you ; the sign of His cross upon your brows. Your bodies are His holy temple, your hearts the altar on which He has kindled the fire of His love. You hear His word, you receive His sacraments. You are called by His high calling to be holy and pure. The glory of youradoption^ the inestimable price paid for your redemption, the en- nobling mystery of sanctification, have made you more sacred than a dedicated thing. There is nothing high, there is nothing noble, there is nothing godlike to which you are not clearly summoned, for which you are not 20 THE FALL OF MAN. naturally fit. And shall you descend voluntarily into the defilement and pollution of sin? Nay, reverence' your- selves, for you are greater than you know. Oh, surely when you think of the high and holy men, the household and city of God on earth ; or when, yet passing upwards, you mingle in thought with the spirits and souls of the righteous, in those " Solemn choirs and sweet societies That sing, and singing in their glory move ; — " or when, soaring yet higher on the wings of solemn and consecrated thought, you fix your contem-plations on the Father who created you, on the Spirit who sheds His I'ght abroad in your hearts, on the great High Priest who stands to intercede for you by the throne of the Majesty on high ; — surely in the light of such thoughts, the philosophy which jests at sin, and the worldly wisdom which bids you descend from the sunlight of holy com- munion to fill your belly with the husks that the swine do eat, — surely, I say, in the light of such contemplations, the rank theories of the worldling and the sensualist become hideous and revolting then. So may they ever seem, not for the condemnation of others, but for the en- noblement of ourselves. So may they ever seem to us, till our lives are worthy of the holy name whereby we are called. Wholly worthy in this life they cannot be ; but 1 JIany readers will recognise in these words an echo of the noble language on this subject which is to be found in more than one mighty page of Milton's prose works. THE FALL OF MAS. 21 by God's grace they shall be hereafter, when in that city into which can enter no e\-il, no abominable thing. He who hath loved us, and purchased us to Himself with His own blood, clothe our sinful souls in the white robe of His own righteousness, and confess our names before His Father, and before the angels. II. THE LAW OF DEATH; AND THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE. (Preached before the University of Cambridge, March 8, 1868.) Genesis iL 17.— "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." It was the first voice of warning uttered by God to man, the earliest prohibition rendered awful by the denun- ciation of the earliest and extremest penalty. Yet almost as soon as the voice which uttered it had died away into silence the command was broken and the penalty en- forced. It is the same solemn and humiliating lesson which reappears in the history of Moses. The tablets of stone, inscribed by God's own finger, were shattered even before their laws were promulgated; and while around the riven hills yet wreathed the enfolding fire, and thick darkness which hid the Presence, the people " sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." It is ever so, alas ! in the history of man. All the imagin- ations of the thoughts of his heart are only evil con- tinually, and by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. THE LA IV OF DBA TH. 23 And the one main cause of this fatal history is Dis- belief. God strives to sway our hearts by the two most powerful of motives — Love and Fear. But as sin and self-will allure us, we first doubt, then disbelieve, then deliberately and determinately forget, until that forget- fulness has become a penal blindness. If it be well to startle that forgetfulness— if the thoughts, once realized, of death, judgment, and eternity, be always potent to arrest the most headlong course, let us humbly pause to- day for a few moments on our path of life, and consider whether we are walking in wickedness, and, if so, to what goal that path is leading us. Last Sunday, in the record of Adam's fall, we strove to learn from the growth of sin some lessons for our instruction ! to-day with the same guidance let us strive to learn something from its consequences. Here too, if I mistake not, we shall find an infinite truthfulness in that simple story of the forbidden fruit ; a story the form of which the critic and the man of science may explain as they will, but which to our faith as Christians has a divine immutable lesson, of ■which we can neither improve the significance nor ex- haust the depth. But to learn that lesson we must learn humility. It is a gloomy lesson, it is a monotonous lesson, it is a displeasing lesson, it is a lesson absolutely revolting to our intellectual and spiritual pride. My brethren, were I seeking to please, or to flatter, were I mindful of you or of man's judgment^ assuredly I should ^ I Cor. iv. 3. 'E/toi Se eij e'Aax'fTrfv ianv "va dpaKpiB^ v' v/jwy 24 THE LA W OF DBA Til; not choose it ; but I ask only is it needful, and is it true ? and I see, in answer, that it h needful, because the present disbelief of it is pregnant with disaster ; and it is true, for not only from the first page of the Bible to tlie last, but also from the highest realm of Nature to the lowest, in the necessities of physical life, in the developments of history, in the workings of the soul, we see that sin and punishment are rivetted together * by an indissoluble link. The fact that they are so is as much God's revelation as the record that they have been, and the prophecy that they shall be so ; and the fact is too often wilfully ignored, because the warning is con- ventionally avoided. But unless the voice of God be too plain for us, and the certainties of moral government too distasteful for our notice, it seems to me that the warning is as little superfluous as the fact. Both are needed : the rolling thunder often startles the careless wayfarer, over whose head the forked lightning has flasht unseen. Let us then with meek heart and due reverence on this 2nd Sunday of Lent take up the story from the point at which we left it. The forbidden fruit is eaten, the knowledge of evil is obtained. Flushed and vain- glorious as the imagination of the poet has pictured her (for, utterly wonderful as it may seem, an insolent self- complacence is often the first result of sin). Eve may have fancied for a moment that the tempter's lie was ^ Plato, Phced. IX. "HtrTrep Ik yuas Kopv(pTjs crvyrj^^eyw Sv ovre. Isocr. Or. ad Demonic, p. 20. Eufius ai Autoi toi^ rfiovaii Trapoire- AND THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE. 25 txue ; and feeling this intoxication of self-will, this blithe disobedience, this disordered fancy, this vehement revolt, and knowing not that ihey were Death, she did eat, and— passing with fatal celerity from the tempted into the tempter — " gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." And barely was that brief and feverish fruition past, when, lo, " the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." That verse is like the first stroke of the knell which tolls the message of a departed soul, and while it still shivers upon the starded air, chilling the hearts of all that hear it, it is followed, verse after verse, with ever-increasing intensity, like stroke on stroke, pealing ever with a dull and terrible monotony that the wages of sin is death. For next they hear " the voice of the Lord God walking' in the garden," and hide among the trees ; so came fear after shame, and then follow self-excuse and mean re- crimination, as their hearts are searched ; and then the curse falls, — for the man labour and sorrow and sweat of brow, and the thorns and thistles of the soil ; and for the woman, subjection and anguish in travail; and for both, the loss of their happy Eden, and of the fruit of fhe tree of life ; and for both, the sentence of physical decay. And this was death — the spiritual death, which, if unarrested, ends in eternal death — the glory of the soul quenched by the knowledge of evil, the light of it burning dimmer and yet more dim amid the vapours of the charnel-house, as it descends deeper and deeper into > i.e. " the sounding of God." Cf. i Kings xiv. 6. Kalisi;h, ad loc. 26 THE LA W OF DEA TH ; the living tomb of years where there is neither God nor hope. Now into their future history, Scripture, which was written, not for our idle curiosity but for our eternal profit, enters not^, and but twice again in all the Bible ^ does the name of Eve occur. Whether, as has happened to other sinners, they sank deeper and deeper into sin, or whether they embraced the hope of mercy which was ofiered to them in the earliest prophecy, and were healed by faith in that seed of the woman which should break the serpent's head, we cannot tell. But here it leaves them, Scripture adds one scene from their after life, as though expressly to clear up the poor hallucination that by " death " God had intended only, or even mainly, the death of the body. Yet as one single item in the sum-total of their loss, we are told under what circum- stances they first encountered in their own race that terrible phenomenon. Over them indeed " Triumphant Death his dart Shook, — but delayed to strike ; " yet they must have long conjectured something of what this phantom was. Ages before the first man, the primeval monsters had torn each other in their slime. ^ It is instructive to compare Scripture in this respect with Rabbi- nical and Mohametan legends, which abound in strange details about Adam and Eve. Any one curious in such matters may find them to his heart's conteat in Hottinger, I/isi. Oheni., p. 187. D'Herbelot, Biil. Orient., s.w. Buddxus, /%;7. /Te^r., pp.383— 388. Heidegger, J/isi. Patr., p. 148, &c. &c. * Viz. 2 Cor. xi. 3 ; I Tim. ii. 13. AND THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE. 27 For long aeons the world had been a theatre "of conflict and carnage, of wounds and mutilation ; " and naturalists tell us that "no armoury can compete for variety, for beauty, for polish, for sharpness, for strength, for barbed effectiveness with the lethal weapons of the fossil world^" Doubtless therefore they were familiar — familiar with an intensity of dread — with the phenomena of decay. They had seen it in plants and animals ; they had watched it in the fading beauty of the flower and the blasted foliage of the tree ; they had seen how loathly at the touch of dissolution became the dazzling hide of the wild beast, or the glowing plumage of the bird, but never yet had they seen that spectacle which some of us have seen, that spectacle which of all others can palsy the stoutest heart with the sense of unutterable helplessness — the spectacle of those whom we loved most dearly, who were most necessary to the peace and happiness of our mortal life, passing irrevocably from us into an unknown void — that awful spectacle of the fair human face growing white and cold in the deformities of death, and the soft and loving eye fading gradually in its sight- less stare. And how did they see it now? Like a mighty conflagration their sin had rolled on, and now the voice of a brother's blood was crying from the ground. Was that lifeless clay the son whom they had loved? Yes, and they were standing amazed, helpless, terror- stricken, beside the distenanted abode of a human soul. The wail of heart-rending anguish, the burst of a father's grief, the hot streaming of a mother's tears upon the ^ Professor Owen. Lecture on "The Power of God." 2S THE LA W OF DEA TH ; brow, were as little to it as to the cold sod on which it lay ; of its beauty and tenderness nothing left, save what must be buried out of sight in " the intolerable indignity" of dust to dust. Nor was this all. For this natural death — ghastly, terrifying, humiliating as it was — was but a fearful analogy of that other and worse death. For whither had the murderer fled ? A fugitive and a vaga- bond, with God's mark stamped in the shrinking linea- ments of guilt and fear upon his brow, Cain had departed from the presence of the Lord. Such then is the dread picture wherewith opens the revelation of God to man. The first pair driven from Eden, the first-born child an alienated outcast, the second a murdered victim, the gentle worshipper dead, the murderer dead with a death yet more awful — oh, terrible fruit, is this what comes of thee ? Yes ! in the day that thou eatest there- of, dying thou shalt die ^. It was fulfilled i/icn; it has been fulfilled ceaselessly thereafter. We live, my brethren, in a world, in a universe of death. Nature herself, as though stricken with a curse, seems to groan and travail with the anguish of her child. She too has her blight and desolation, her plague and famine, her phenomena of wTath and terror, her hues of earthquake and ecUpse ; she too has her terrified stillness before the hurricane, and lights up her volcanic hills with awful testimonies of her central flames^. And over her surface, thicker than the autumnal leaves, lie the mortal relics of our race. Where are the great nations who built the Pyramids of Egypt, and the » roori niD. » cf. 2 Pet iii. 7. AND THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE. temples of Babylon? "Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, the kings of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Iva?" Their very memorial is perished with them. " The soil we tread on," it has been said, "is a great city of the dead, with ever-ex- tending pavements of gravestones, and ever-lengthening streets of tombs and sepulchres, the burial-place of all that ever lived in the past, dead individuals, dead species, dead genera, dead creations, a universe of death." And we, no less than they, are but grass for the mower's scythe. We too have advanced far on our way towards that great silence into which we have seen so many pass. The phenomenon is common to us, but no familiarity can rob it of its dreadfulness ; for the dead who are the more in number have kept their awful secret unre- vealed ; and the child who died yesterday knows more than can be guessed at by the looo miUions of living men. Yet this death is but the least, and the least dreaded part of that other, that second, that spiritual death which God meant in that earliest warning, " In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die." I. In considering the nature of this spiritual death, I would call your attention to three things. And first let us learn its certainty; let us learn to be early undeceived by the tempter's falsehood, 'Ye shall not surely die.' Oh how often has that first lie beguiled the sons of Adam ! how often to this day does the sinner whisper it to his own erring heart ! Yet never once — never once in any single human experience — has it proved true. If a man 3° THE LA W OF DEA Til ; will serve his sin, let him at least reckon upon this, that in one way or other it will be ill with him ; his sin will find him out ; his path will be hard ; there will be to him no peace. It is marvellous in how many ways the retri- bution works, sometimes by divers diseases and sundry kinds of death ; sometimes by utter unspeakable weari- ness of life ; sometimes by a bitter series of unbroken disappointments ; sometimes by the interferences of human law and the humiliation of open shame ; some- times by terrible surprises of strong temptation which shock the soul into despair. And sometimes on the other hand by none of these things, so that on the contrary the sinners have been wealthy and prosperous and to all appearance pre-eminently blessed, and yet at the very summit of their hopes have been tortured by the sense of an aimless existence, and the thirst and hunger of an unsatisfied soul. And such a man is never safe ; his fate may come upon him very suddenly, ere the game of his guilt is well played out, as when the ashes of Achan mingled with those of the stolen garment which he had never worn, or as when on the morning after his crime Ahab was met by the prophet at the vineyard gate ; as when Uzzah fell dead beside the violated ark, or the brow of Gehazi burned with leprosy, or Judas flung down the unspent price of blood in horror upon the temple-floor : or again, it may not come upon him till after long, long years, as when Esau's sellmg of his birthright ended forty years after in that fruitless repent- ance, and that exceeding great and bitter cry. The night of concealment may be long, but Dawn comes like AS^D THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE. 31 the Erinnys ^ to reveal and avenge its crimes. Even the ancients saw it ; in their proverbs, the Furies walk with leaden feet, but strike with iron hands ; the mills of the gods grind late, but they grind to powder.^ In the stories of Glaucus the son of Epicydes,* and of the cranes of Ibycus,* and the gold of Toulouse,^ and of him who trampled on the nest of young swallows because he heard them calling him "parricide,"' we have but illustra- tions of the same teaching as that which warned us that there is "nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known." Such truths even the heathen teach us. Think not then, my brethren, think not that throughout a godless life you can eat and drink and sin, and yet escape. If our first parents did not, neither will you. God has no favourites. He is no respecter of persons ; the youngest, strongest, gladdest among you, the most promising and the most popular, if he have forgotten God, if he be giving himself up to the world the flesh or the devil, will find no exemption from the inexorable consequence. Oh the quiver of God is full of arrows, sharp and manifold ; and for you, if you be living in sin, no less certainly than if you saw it with your eyes, the arrow is drawn to the very head upon the bow of God, — nay, even now it may be singing through ' Erinnys is Saranyfl tlie Dawn. Max Muller, Lectures, Second Series, p. 517. Comp. Mylholog. p. 40. ^ *Oi^e Qiiav a.\iov(Ti fivXai d\(ovtTi 5e X^Trd. Cf. vffTepoTroifos 'Epiviis. JEsch. Ag. 58. vaTepoirovs Nt'/xeiriy. Aiit/t. P. 12. 229. 2 Herod, vi. 85. ■* Antip. Sidon. Epigr. Ixxviii. ^ Cic. de N. D. III. 30. Just. 32. 3. « Plut. De Sera Num. Vind., 0pp. Vlll. 190. 32 THE LA IV OF DEA TH ; the parted air, — whose wound shall eat into your soul like fire. 2. For, secondly, not only is this punishment inevitable, but it is natural ; not miraculous but ordinary, not sudden but gradual, not accidental but necessary, not exceptional but invariable. However striking may be those strange instances of sudden and unexpected retri- bution which men regard as due to immediate interven- tions, it is a yet more solemn warning to know that this retribution is the impersonal evolution of an established law. The criminal may escape external consequences ; he cannot escape natural results. You sin, and no miracle is WTought; the darkness is not peopled with avenging faces, nor do the walls around you begin to burn with messages of flame, yet then nevertheless, as an inevitable sequence, the law begins to work, and " God's light shines on patiently and impartially, justifying or condemning simply by shewing all things in the slow history of their ripening." " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Some of the ancients doubted, because the thunderbolts seemed to strike im- partially the innocent and the guilty ; ^ but God does not avenge Himself by thunderbolts, He but leaves the sinner to the necessary outcome of his sin ; aye, even the repentant sinner. For long after a man has done with his sin, his sin has by no means done with him ; his deeds live apart from him, and claim their fellowship = Ar. Nub. 399 : 'AA\es ToxK veKpovs dd^ai to'us kauTuv v^koovs. Clem. Ale.K. Stiom. 111. c. 4. § 25. THE PA Til OF CHRIST. 45 and more blind, and naked, and dead were those upper classes of society, who fancied themselves so increased with goods, so needful of nothing, and over the stagnancy of whose surface-respectabilities was stretched the glit- tering film of hypocrisy and pride. There were easy full-fed Sadducees, who believed in neither angel nor spirit ; temporising Herodians, careful only for quiet and success ; orthodox scribes, indignantly eager about the letter of the law, profoundly ignorant of its spirit ; Priests and Levites, self-complacent and dignified, who with supercilious indifference could leave the wounded in their lonely agony ; treacherous and selfish Pharisees, arraying all their splendid authority on the side of a corrupt tradition, and ready to put in force every engine of popular ignorance and established power to crush the truth and those who loved it. From forth this congre- gation of the dead our Lord summoned His disciple, and the voice of His summ^s is sounding still. Our age, like that of our Saviour, is formally and professedly religious, yet no less now than then he who would follow Christ must come forth, and leave the dead to bury their dead. Christianity was a religion eminently heroical and high ; yet how little of high or heroical do we see in surrounding society ; how little, alas, in our own hearts. " Come from the four winds, oh breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live." For the high moral grace we see the cautious and calculating worldliness ; for the manly Christian poverty an emulous madness of desire for wealth ; for the strong Christian self-denial a spreading cancer of effeminate luxury; for 46 THE PATH OF CHRIST. the sweet Christian nobleness, and the life hid with Christ in God, a meanness and feebleness of purpose which recall the very letter of the serpent-sentence, " Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." Alas, we see around us a hollow Christianity, more of the lips than of the life ; a Christianity whose intense inspiring power over the hearts of society has well-nigh dwindled into a con- vention and a name. And unless a revival of true faith call forth a nobler energy, a more transforming purpose, and intenser work among the multitudes of believers, a voice must sound forth once more which shall shake the nations, a voice of summons to the gathering battle, a voice which shall cry, not in gentle whispers, but like the trump of the archangel and the voice of God, " Let the dead bury their dead, follow thou me." I. And whither then must we follow Christ? In spirit, if not in letter, we must follow Him along the road He trod on earth, and that was a road of self-abnegation, of poverty, of homelessness, of the base man's hatred and the proud man's scorn. Let us not disguise it ; it is no primrose path of dalliance, but a hard road, hard and yet happy, and all the highest and the noblest of earth have trodden it ; all who have regarded the things eternal not as things future, but merely as the unseen realities about them now. Yet oh how busy, how wide- spread, how multitudinous are the claims, the interests, the arguments of this world of death ; how feverish the eagerness with which they are pursued ; how intense and THE PATH OF CHRIST. 47 incessant the cares with which they are accompanied. Now the command is clear and plain. We cannot serve God and mammon ; if we follow Christ in anything but in name, we must sit loose to the world and the world's interests; we must be content, if need be, with the beatitudes of poverty and persecution. For easy wealtli and epicurean self-indulgence, though we see in them but little to reprobate, Christ had nothing but that thunder- clap of judgment, and the silence which followed it, " Thou fool, this night ; " nothing but the lurid picture of one carried from purple and fine linen lo burning thirst and tormenting flame. And why is this ? Is it because the infinite King of heaven grudges one poor enjoyment to atoms such as we ? No, but because the prosperity of fools destroys them ; because these coarse luxuries of the body, these evil joys of the mind', have no happi- ness in them, and yet, such as they are, make the heart soft and surfeited and vulnerable, unworthy to enjoy His holiness, unfit to do His work. If Christ's warnings needed confirmation, the experience of myriads has confirmed them ; every page of history and experience is full of the wail of sickened worldlings and disappointed kings. " All is vanity and vexation of spirit," said the wearied Solomon. " Out of fifty years of a reign, peaceful, victorious, and pre-eminently splendid, I can count but fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness," wrote Abderrahman the Magnificent. " I have seen the silly round of business and of pleasure, and have done ^ Virgil places the "mala mentis gaudia," with Fear, and Disease, and Hunger, at tho entrance of l.iilarus. ylLn. vi. 27S. 48 THE PA TH OF CHRIST. with it all," said the eloquent and stately Bolingbroke ; "I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, and know their futility, and do not regret their loss." " There is nothing in the world worth living for," sighed the greatest man of modern days, as he rode through London streets. And of all earthly gauds it is pre- eminently true ; God never constituted the lowest human soul so low as chat it should find sufficiency in them. But of the Christian life it is not true. There are things infinitely worth living for. Integritj', and truth, and high aims, and largeness of heart, and love to our fellow-men, and a sense that God is with us — these things do sweeten even the bitter cup of life. " Happiness," it has been said, ' may fly away, pleasure pall or cease to be obtainable, friends prove treacherous, and fame turn to infamy, but the power to serve God never fails, and the love to Him is never rejected." If then we would follow Christ, we must shake off the baser objects of earthly desire as nothing better than the dust which gathers upon the cere-clothes of mortality. So Christ taught us, and so He lived. Has it ever occurred to you, my bretlireri, that all which we know of nearly all except three years of His mortal life, from earliest bo)'hood to full manhood, from the glimpse which we catch of the child in the temple to Him who was baptized of John in Jordan, is contained in one single word, a word which no pious fraud has excluded from the Gospel of St. Mark, though it ha> attempted to do so, a word which lights up, as with or e THE PATH OF CHRIST. 49 broad flash, the unrecorded obscurity, — o tiktuv i, " the carpenter." "Is not this the carpenter?" Yes, the home of a Gahlean peasant, mean and poor, containing probably but a single room, and no furniture except a mat, and some clay vessels, and a painted wooden chest ; — yes, the shop and the employ of a carpenter in the most despised village, of the despised province of a despised and conquered land, this was the trade, this the home, while He had a home, of our Lord and Master, the Son of Man, and for thirty long years of obscure toil it sufficed Him. What a lesson of divine humility ! We are heady, high-minded, anxious ; we lade ourselves v ith gilded dross ; we daub ourselves with thick clay ; we live and move and have our being in the very atmosphere of the infinitely little. Not so He whom we are bidden to follow ; for Him the shop of the carpenter sufficed. No fierce ambition agitated His calm soul ; no savage indignation lacerated His trustful heart ; as now in His glory, so then in His humiliation. His soul was where He has bidden us ascend with Him ir heavenly places. And when in the hungry wilderness the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were lying at His feet, poor though He was and homeless. He spurned them from Him without a thought, as wholly beneath Him and unworthy of His regard. Well might He do so : for ' Mark vi. 3, Ovx ovtos cVtic o Tfuray ; Tlie attempts both textual and exegetical to get rid of this memorable testimony, show- how deeply it is required. " Wor/cing in a humbh trade, to seme his