^ PRINCETON, N. J. H!, Division Section ^^'V- Number S E II M N S. S E R M N S PniNriPAT.LY ON THE RESPONSIBILITIES THE MINISTERIAL OFFICE, THE REV. e/mONRO, M.A., INCUMliENT OF HARROW WEALD, MIDDLESEX. OXFORD AND LONDON, JOHN IIENKY PARKER. MDCCCL. oxroun : 'KIMTED liY I. SIli>lMlTON. CON T \L N T S. SERMON I. tPage 1.1 iKCOND MOTIVE IN THE MINISTRY St. Matt. vi. 33. ■ Seek ye first the kingdom of God." SERMON II. (P;igo20.) THE MINI.STK11 IN THE WOULD. 07" 1 CoH. vii. 31. 'Use this workl as not ahusinsc it.'' SERMON III. (Page 51.) THE INWARD PREPARATION OE THE MINISTER OF GOD. EZEKIEL AND SAMUEL. Malachi iii. .3. " He shall purify the sons of Levi." SERMON IV. iPagc 77.1 THE MINISTER IN A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. 1 Kings xviii. 30. And he repaired the altar that was broken down. SERMON V. (Page 05.) THE SELF-DEVOTION OF THE MINISTRY. ARCHIPPUS. Col. iv. 17. ■ Take heed to the ministry which thovi hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it." SERMON VI. (Page 117.1 PURITY OF LIFE. St. Matt. v. 8. ]ilesscd are the pure in heart : for they shall sec God. SERMON VII. (Pago ISo.i INFLUENCE OF OPINION ON THE MlNlsThll. TUli I'KOrilKTS OF A1IA13. St. John xii. 43. " 'J'lioy loved the praise of meu more than the praise of God. SERMON I. SECOND MOTIVE IN THE MINISTIIV. BALAAM. St. Matt. vi. 33. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God." There are two persons in Holy Scripture, one in either Testament, whose character and history speak with thrilUng power to every minister of God ; Balaam and Judas. They turn our eyes inwardly, and make us search and see whether our intentions are single and our hearts free. Both of them w^ere called to the highest position in their own dispensation ; the Prophet and the Apostle. Both of them had not only the outward vocation, but appeared to the eyes of the world as possessed of an inward character which coiTCsponded with their calling ; both for a while thought well of themselves, and imagined " they w'ould die the death of the righteous ;" both gi-adually sank beneath one besetting sin, which slowly and surely preyed on the vitals of their spiritual Hfe. In each case that sin was nearly imperceptible in its advance, unfelt by its victim, and in both that sin was covetousness. It was the admission of a second motive into the 2 SECOND MOTIVE [Sr.R\f. pursuit of the spiritual vocation, and each after passing through stage after stage of self-deception came to a fearful and hopeless end; the solitaiy rock of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and the tented field of encamped Israel, saw the end of men who, devoted to the service of the living God, had only served themselves. No cases can apply so thrillingly, so comprehen- sively, so inevitably, as these two. ThrilUngly, because where is there one of us, holy brethren, who have not admitted some second motive into our ministerial life ; and how know we but that it may be yet working slowly, and silently, and self- deceivingly, upon us ! Comprehensively, because inasmuch as these two represent the highest ima- ginable spiritual vocations, the Prophet and the Priest : none can escape ; they embrace all ; if they fell, any of us may. Inevitably, because as with an eye ever turned on our heart. Holy Scripture goes through us with a power which from its close de- lineation of human character, pierces even to **the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow." Among the many and difficult duties of the Min- istry, singleness of purpose is one of the hardest, one of the rarest. The world in a hundred forms comes in and mars simphcity of mind, and the soul, once given to God, soon drifts away on to the wide and restless surface of the world ; God " is not in all our thoughts." The absence of single-mindedness, the substitution of avarice for it, the slow and unperceived advance I.] IN THE MINISTRY. 3 of this state of inind, its blindinir self-deception, its contein})t of good, its fair appearance, its certain though delayed and fearful end, arc the features in Balaam's and Judas's case which make them high- ly important, well to he weighed by us all. Holy brethren, who of us arc Uving to God ! who of us arc keeping the heart given a thousand times, at every prayer and Communion, to God ; given sjie- cially to Him at four successive times, at Baptism, Contirmation, tirst Communion, and Ordination ! Let us weigh these things, for the time is short, and " He cometh to purify the sons of Levi." Of this particular and subtle form of sin, to which the Ministry is so Uable, absence of single- mindcdness, there are three or four parts to be considered. The sin itself, its slow and gradual possession of the soul ; its self-deception, and its feai-ful end. L The peculiar and significant force of these cases to us, is the danger and tendency of second motives creeping into our holiest acts and callings ; of all second motives in the Ministry none seem more fi-equent and more signally pointed out in Holy Scripture than covetousness ; nor indeed do we feel surprised ; a glance at the living world but convinces us by daily experience of the fact. For thirty pieces of silver Judas sold the Lord of Life ; for the w^orld's great honours Balaam strove against and withstood God and a powerful con- science, and dared to cast a stumbling-block in the way of that people he had just pronounced 13 2 4 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. "blessed." The love " of the present world" had lured Demas fi'om the path on which he had fairly and safely set out ; he had made his choice, he had had his call, he had felt his vocation, and been united with the great Apostle in his ministry and his friendship : but the world was too much for him ; he loved it, his heart lingered after it, and he fell ; "he loved this present evil world." In each age, and in either Testament, the most signal fall of the Ministry has been from covet- ousness and the influence of the world ; and if we pass on to the early ages of the Church, and far beyond that to later days, we shall find the same mark, the same features, the same fall ; holy men have fallen lured by wealth and the spirit of luxury. High orthodoxy has become diluted with the waters of heresy; imperial courts and the palaces of nobles have lowered the tone of the most ele- vated, and marred the spirit of the most apparently pure. The history of successfiil heresy, of deep and dark corruption of life and doctrine, of the too- well deserved scoflT and sneer of the wicked, have been from age to age connected as a result with the worldliness and avarice of the Ministry ; simply this shews, that however highly exalted and raised, we can be, and we have been reprobate. The spirit of the world, the spirit of covetous- ness, and care for worldly distinction, the aim at high place, the giving up principle and sacrificing consistency on the shrine of advancement ; the yielding to the solicitations of high rank and power- I.] IN THK MINISTRY. * 5 fill intellect, " the reward of distinction at the hands of the elders," have shaken the constancy and withered the vigour of the strongest; and those who have stood firm for a while have too often yielded at last to the repeated bribe of the world, "the precious men, and more honourable." High place has ruined energ}^ and promotion has diluted oi-thodoxy ; it has been too truly said, to our shame, when a man has gained the highest point he may become consistent, because there is nothing farther he can aspire to. The words about Balaam and those like him are left; as an awftil and thrilling record of what God's ministers may be guilty of; and the slight mention here and there, poi-tentous though brief, of others who fi-om time to time fell fi'om their high place, reminds us of what we are capable of, and what is our tendency. These cases recorded so emphatically and so often in Holy Scripture seem to mark them as the rock on which the minister of God is too likely to split ; and as I said, our own observation of life, and many a melancholy page in the history of the Church, would lead us to see how truly this is the form of false motive we have to dread. The land-marks of Holy Scripture are not to be passed by ; they tell too truly the shoals and rocks we must avoid ; but alas ! this is but one form of second motive. The darkest and most latent infirmity is vanity, and love of admiration, ardent desire of praise ; the seeking respectabiUty under the guise of holy orders, and 6 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. the reducing the highest of all vocations to the level of being a step to domestic hfe or social dignity ; the craving after intellectual renown, the desire to gratify poetic and sesthetic tendencies, are all forms of second motives which more or less will assail the Minister of God, and establish self as the object of worship and pursuit, not God. Single-mindedness is rare ; w^e all have in us the seeds of some one or more of these evil tendencies; "blessed" indeed "are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!" Blessed ; though how few, how rare ! There are instances recorded of most of these forms of second motives in the ministers of God through Holy Scripture. The impiety of Hophni and Phinehas, the disappointed vanity of Jonah, the tendency to acerbity in Elijah, the seeking of ease in the prophet of Bethel, and many more cases, all shew us the pitfalls and precipices which lie on either side of our path ; while the intense severity "recorded of the prophet of the desert, the deep self- abnegation required of Ezekiel, become signs and lights to guide our way. I have stated a fact, the tendency of God's ministers to second motives, and she\\ai that fact borne out by Holy Scripture. The reasons seem clear. The minister of God, however highly exalted, is still human ; and being human, impure and sinful in all his tendencies : holy orders have not eradi- cated evil passions, nor the indwelling of the Spirit whoUv cast out the residence of the evil one. The I.] IN THE MINISTRY. ' gi'ave demeanour, the high inoraHty, the strict con- versation expected of the clergyman, often is hut a cloak which hides a gnawing passion, which preys all the more keenly on the heart, because it is restrained from outward expression. To these passions and desires peculiar facilities arc oftered by the life and employment of the ministry, while their actual strength is increasing from being forcibly kept in by the mere restraint of public opinion. Tendencies to impure motives are fearfully acce- lerated and called out by the deep attachment, the warm sympathy, the repeated expressions of grati- tude, the confidential and secret interviews, which of necessity spring from the fulfilment of the ministiy. There is scarcely any human relationship, except one, which will bear intense intercourses \N'ith safety from impure sensation. The opportunities afforded by our calling to these desires quickly and silently urge on the tendency,, till it has become a more than mere desire, and at last w'C allow it to be the second motive of the spiritual existence, pursued for its own sake under the name of the fulfilment of the highest of all vocations. In the same way, vanity and love of praise are manifestly fostered by the holy calling: the many opportunities of displaying powers, the unguarded words of flattery, the manifest success of work : all strengthen and confirm the tendency to vanity till we pursue it for its own sake, instead of, as we did at first, viewing it with alarm as a parallel motive of life. 8 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. Equally does our holy vocation become a tempta- tion to justify taste and love of the beautiful. Inas- much as the church is the temple which enshrines all that is highest and fairest of God's creation, its arrangements are beautiful, and its ceremonial aesthetic. The purest tastes, and the highest intel- lectual refinements, will find few opportunities of gratification so easily and so fully offered as within the Church's external system. The second motive of a refined taste, is one of the most perilous and striking tendencies of the ministry in this day. Again, there are not a few facilities offered to do- mestic ease and respectability of life in the position of the clergy. Respected by society, admitted into the circles of the refined, the polished, and the worldly ; domestic ease and position in society soon descend fi'om the quality of an accident to that of an essence, and become the leading motive in desiring or pursuing the ministry. So I have shewn not only the fact of our ten- dency to second motives, but their cause. I might say more. But my object more immediately is now, with God's help, to shew the history of se- cond motive in the heart, its beginning, its gradual development, and its power of self-deceit : and, holy brethren, how deeply important it is that we should have a keen eye on our intentions, even to "the dividing asunder of the joints and mar- row;" for He is at hand "who will purify the sons of Levi." I.] IN THE MINISTRY. 9 II. Let US watch tlie growth of second motives in the case of Bahiam as a type of our own. His hegan in an evil tendency of disposition ; evil is manifold, and every disposition has its own : his was literally covetous ; ours may be impure, vain, proud, indolent, self-indulgent. You best know your own evil tendency. You know what you have ever felt your stumbling-block at Holy Com- munion, your alarm in critical illness, your teiTor when in self-conviction you suddenly " came to yourself," your tirst im})ression of ch'cad and awe at any supposed approach of the last account. The leading temptation, that which is the germ of se- cond motives throughout, that which is the cause why we do acts which look religious, and from which the religious life is counterfeited, that which with- out our knowing becomes the most active energy of our life; the "God we ignorantly worship," the idolatry of our heart, by which w^e really exclude graces, "the covetousness of Balaam" — is the be- setting temptation of the soul ; and before we can truly trace out the history in our own heart of the growth of second motives, we must discover that besetting sin : it is already, perhaps, awfully known to most of us, but for some, unless God help them in the discovering it, it must be a work of minute examination, and tracing back from the fruit to the original seed, a retrospect to the oiigin of w^hat with too many of us has become a life of confirmed second motive, and absence of single- mindedness. 10 SECOND MOTIVE [Sekm. I will offer some tests of our besetting sins which will probably be the aim of second motive. The sin which assails us on first waking ; the sin which our thoughts wander on at prayer and Com- munion ; the sin which we most severely blame and criticise in others, and see most quickly in them ; the sin we most dread to hear that others have fallen into ; the sin which we attach to unforgiven sins mentioned in Holy Scripture ; the sin we have had most anxiety about at gi'eat points in our life, when we compare the present with the past ; that sin whose temptation appears strong and rising, when we had hoped its energy had passed and its root nearly torn up from our heart ; the sin which we feel at solemn times of reflection will very likely be our final ruin : these will very likely be our besetting faults. With that sin, that besetting fault, that ten- dency, we all received Holy Orders. It was in us as • vigorous as in any ; Holy Orders did not quench its fire, nor did the reception of a new grace eradicate the inbred evil. We entered the holy state, we crossed the threshold just what we were, the same evil at work as in the men who daily throng the resorts of the world ; and the moment we crossed that line eveiy power of evil was at work to draw out those latent desires, and to make our holy life and occupation an opportunity of indulging them. But we set our eyes on God ; we felt we were set apart and devoted to His service ; a pecuHar people, with a peculiar grace, full of hope, self-devotion, I.] IN THE MINISTIIY. H solemn self-sacrifice ; we almost forgot the exist- ence of the evil, and half thought the newly-^ven gi*ace had eradicated the old evil. That was our first step in our new vocation : one of good, of pure and first intention. My object now is to trace the history of one whose first intentions have faded into second, and who, beginning liolily, has descended without knowing it into the state of second motive. Seemingly unchanging as a vessel drifting softly from shore at twilight, is the falling from first mo- tive into second, from belief to sin, from God to self; we do not feel it or know it; we halt and we are gone, and our "place knows us no more." Such was Balaam. His besetting sin was covetousness ; his vocation was holy, his desire was God's will, at least so he said, and so he thought. Satan noticed him, saw the germ of evil, the needle which pointed towards God in his soul, and he applied the magnet to attract it away, and yet under the seeming guise of religion. The bait was fair ; the princes of Moab were the tempters, a king the party to be pleased, and gold and silver the reward. It at- tracted the evil desire, the besetting sin, and Ba- laam hesitated ; he still felt God was his portion, he imagined his motive was single, his intention sincere; he asked of God, and God said, "Thou shalt not go," and Balaam at once obeyed, and went not. His first step from purity had been taken ; he had not decided by conscience, but hoped 12 SECOND MOTIVE [Sekm. to find an excuse for doing what he felt was wrong. He thought he loved God, and Satan's object was to make him think so. He w^as beginning to re- cede from the high ground of first motive, and to overcome conscience, and so make his vocation an opportunity of indulging his sin. The delay had but increased the awfulness of his position, for it had hushed and satisfied conscience, and veiled himself fi'om his own eye. So it is with many of us ; we have entered on our calling w^ith an heart full of sincerity ; Satan assails us, w^ell knowing that if he will succeed, he must do it through the guise of our calling, or he will fail. Objects exciting impure motives, gratification of w^orldly pleasures and interests, offer themselves at once, and we hesitate. There is the mistake. We should not think. There are manifold opportunities offered on every hand to every sin : impure desire in close and confidential intercourse ; love of the world in the place ceded us in society ; vanity in the pre-eminence over others in some public capacity. Satan will apply his attack through the means of our holy calling. It is our duty to be frequently in our place in society, we err to leave it ; we should employ our talents, we may not hide them in a napkin. So he tells us ; his bait is through our vocation, his lure is in the shape of seem- ing duty; we are satisfied, we feel safe; it is well concealed: "I know that he whom Thou blessest is blessed, and he whom Thou cursest is cursed." The acknowledgment of the sacred promise is com- I.] IN THE MINISTRY. 13 plete, the disguise is perfect ; it throws us off our guard. The fruit of (hsobedience is "the knowledge of good and evil." Second motive in rehgion impHes the preserva- tion of outward rehgious character, the perform- ance of rehgious acts, the profession and guise of rehgion in this hfe ; while really the heart is turn- ing all these things, unknown to ourselves, from God towards some other object of our desire, and we are acting from second motives without know- ing it. Such was Balaam's case, such often is ours. 2. We now come to the next step of the history of second motive. Again the tempting bribe came before him, and airain Balaam lon2:ed for it, in- dulged the desire, though God had clearly spoken, and told him its nature : he was no longer then as he w^as ; he again went to God, and God said "Go :" and he was satisfied. He had asked God, he had preserved the show^ of religion, he w^as still fulfilhng his outward vocation, he recognised God by his act, and he was about to do a thing within the province of his calling. His moral eye w^as fast blinding, a film was growing over it, and he imagined because he maintained his vocation, he was acting from high motives ; he did not see the vessel was gliding away from shore, he did not see the gradual darkening of the sky by the shadow^s of evening, the slow and certain progress of sin in his heart. So at the same point of his moral being,. " God manifest in the flesh" said to the apostate Apostle, "What thou docst, do quickly." 14 SECOND MOTIVE [Serni. The first step was the resisting the voice of con- science, the first guide, and striving to find an ex- cuse by which he miglit shun its teaching and seek another director; but this change was sought for out of the lawful channel, and it failed. The mere effort tended to injure, and the second step was that of again seeking the new guide, while the eyes were opened to its untruths, still sought for under the guise of rehgion. The effort at departure from the true path succeeded, and the conscience was satisfied. 3. But the moral process had many steps yet, the work was not complete. He set out on his journey satisfied and at rest ; his ass was stayed in his progress by the angel of the Lord ; he even fancied he was still following the right path, for he had compelled his conscience to mislead him. The angel was resisted because at first unseen ; and the moment's time for reflection was lost. The heavenly being appeared in visible outline, and the tongue of an ass " reproached the madness of the prophet :" a double miracle for a moment made him pause and tremble, but did not serve to stay him : he fell on his face and acknowledged the heavenly vision ; he was still under the firm persuasion he was doing right and obeying a heavenly calling, he was still deeply self-deceived. The angel had ar- rested him, but did not stop him forcibly, nay, he gave him advice for his onward journey. The clouds were gathering fast around the sinking sun of his earthly course, and the voice of warning be- I.] IN THE MINISTllV. 15 came fainter and fainter ; and as he ceased to obey, gradually and imperceptibly took the form of en- couragement and persuasion. The angel vanished and Balaam went on ; still not without a protest from conscience: he said, " I will get me back," I will retrace these three steps ; the step of reasoning with conscience, perverting conscience, and resist- ing trial and external reproof. He, however, pro- ceeded to his fourth step. 4. He reached his destination ; he met the king of Moab ; he stood, the prophet of the Lord, on the edge of the hill ; he was surrounded by the wicked and the heathen, and proud and conscious of the dignity and greatness of his position ; with his self- respect, a love for truth and courage came into his mind, and under this he again entered his protest against sin. " And Balaam said unto Balak, Lo, I am come unto thee : have I now any power at all to say any thing ? the word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I speak." Numb. xxii. 38. The position gave nerve to his words, and his words gave fresh force to his position, and the words and his position together deluded him into the idea that he was acting for God, from high motive, and with the pure desire to please Him. This is the next and natural step in the process of self-decep- tion as to motives of action. He spoke boldly and clearly his determination to stand by God and right ; the words confirm to his own mind the feeling that he was religious and high-minded. This step in the progress was not so much one 16 SECOND MOTIVE [Sriim. of advance in evil, for he stood at the apex of his criminal condition of mind, it was the cuhiiinating point, and the fifth step was one of entire and supreme bhndness as to self and true religion. 5. But the progress of second motive is sure and gradual, and his next position was still more con- firming and condemning. He still clung to the idea that he was religious, that he feared God, that he was acting from first motive; he said "I will go, peradventure the Lord will come to me, and what- ever He sheweth me I will tell thee." He went and God met him ; he now went out of his way to meet and consult God ; he put himself to trouble for his imagined religion. A second and a third time he pursued the same process ; consulted God, made a protest for truth ; went through the show of con- sulting God, and deceived himself into the idea that all was right, and he had done his work, accom- plished his end. Striving to gain his aim through the medium of religion, he expressed his firm and warm attachment to God and his people, and his earnest hope, that he "might die the death of the righteous, and his last end be like his." Now my object in Balaam's case has been to shew the course of second motive in the hearts of God's ministers, and its singularly blinding effects. Let us apply this to the possible case of our daily life ; let us suppose for a moment some ten- dency in one of us which leads us away from God, and yet to the gaining of which outward religion is a liclp and assistance. Among some of the sins most I.] IN THE MINISTRY. 17 incident to the ministers of God, arc imparity, covct- ousness, vanity, and the like. I will take an instance of the latter. A man with a tendency to vanity receives holy orders ; his nature leads him to love admiration, influence, and applause, to be pleased with flattery, and satisfied with apparent success. I have given six stages through which Balaam passed ; the reasoning with conscience, perverting conscience, resisting trial, and religious experience, the making religious protest, and apparent religious effort ; through these stages he reached his end unconsciously, ignorantly, and self-deceived. Through some such stages as these each man will pass in his pursuit of second motive. A vain man argues thus : I have entered on a ministry which places me in positions of prominence and importance ; each act is marked and stands out in an isolated and defined position ; I hold the reins of strong influence over individual minds and hearts ; many acts I need not do, I yet have the power to do, which will promote, increase, and strengthen all this : I shall not be deserting my duty by not doing them, I shall be gratifying self by performing them ; I have large and full opportunity, shall I follow the tempta- tion or renounce it ? The just voice of conscience cries. Do cveiy thing to crush self; here the single- minded man wuU reject any thing which will cast a shadow^ on God, and will dash "self" to the earth. He who is beginning his career of second motive in the ministry, and reasons with his conscience, weighs c 18 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. the acts, finds no actual and forbidden evil in them, and falls into the snare under some plausible reason- ing ; the arguments suggested are countless, possi- ble benefits to others, the charge of separation from others, or the sins of self- righteousness ; the affec- tation of asceticism ; the hiding a talent : these and other motives are at once pleaded before the tri- bunal of conscience to persuade and settle us in the course of second motive ; we weigh them, we ex- amine them, we are satisfied with them, we do not see they are the first step on the road to ruin, the first departure from God and simplicity : we fancy we have good reason for following self in the place of God. The single-minded man would have made no question, no examination, no hesitation ; he would have acted on the first impression, and been saved a hundred sorrows. The moment we begin to reason with conscience we immediately take the first step from simplicity and truth. Having done this, the next step will be, as with Balaam, that of perverting conscience. Having begun to seek an excuse for gratifying self through the instrumentality of holy orders and an exalted position, we go on to substitute the view we have gained by our reasoning for that originally given by the authoritative voice within us, or, in other words, our conscience itself misleads us, and tells us right for wrong and bitter for sweet. We fly to conscience as our guide, and it tells us we may do the thing we desire, and so we feel that to be an imperative duty which at first required reasoning I.] IN THE MIXISTRY. 19 to allow US to contemplate. We make the difficul- ties it should have been our whole aim to avoid, and the reasoned conscience becomes a perverted and false one. The pursuit of an object which we began to seek from love to God, we continue to pursue for the sake of a false and wrong influence, until we have so placed ourselves with regard to it that we can scarcely withdraw^ without damag- ing either it or ourselves. The next step of the progress will be the shun- ning the force and effect of trials and visitations. God never leaves His servant till every means has been tried, and He will visit him and check him with trials to warn him of his course : he has reasoned with conscience till he has been led to neglect its voice, and " no other sign wall be given." But severe trials come, illness protracted and irk- some, severe domestic afflictions, loss of influence, personal failures, loss of property. The true cause of the trial is not seen at once ; w^e are as Ba- laam hedged in and stopped by an unseen angel, but by degrees the angel comes out, and we see the hand of God in the affliction, and discover the cause for Avhich He sent it. But there is one awful feature in the case of the pursuer of second motive ; God cares for him and warns him, but while he does so He seems to withdraw grace, and the very hand which is stretched out to re- ceive His mercy becomes paralysed and powerless to grasp the profi'ered mercy. The trial received and understood often has no effect, and we pursue c2 20 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. our journey ; the vanity it was meant to prostrate by withdrawing us from scenes of display, the lust it was meant to cool by leading us away from its object, the worldliness it was meant to remove by withdrawing us from the world's influence and touch, all too often increase because we will not listen to the voice of warning. Having passed through all these stages we have reached a point in his moral history ; his pursuit of second motive is nearly complete ; he is in full pursuit of his object, and he has resigned himself to it ; his next point is to make sacrifice for good, as he thinks, while it is but a sacrifice for lust ; he returns into the world to enquire of God ; he goes out of the way to pursue his object. When a man has reached this sinful point under the guise of religion, self-deceived and deceiving others, he makes sacrifice to conscience, and takes for granted he is right ; the truth is, self-sacrifice is no certain sign of truth of aim. These are certain fearful effects of the pursuit of second motive. We are under a firm conviction all the time that we are working and acting fi"om the first motive ; we do not know we are guided by love of self, we think it is God before us ; every act looks like a religious act, is dressed in the garb of duty. Every object we follow appears to our eyes decorated in a heavenly attire, every self-sacrifice seems for God, every earnest effort appears to us to be for the highest reason, whereas truly we are all the while seeking self, pursuing a favourite lust round every I.] IN THE MINISTRY. 21 corner, following up an accustomed habit of evil, gi-atifying our feelings of envy or malice against those we hate, and going on the high road to de- sti-uction, instead of the way which leads to eternal life ; while the land which is before us is but mist, and what we think is the ray of heaven is only the glare of hell. Our holy vocation, our high and spiritual office, panders to our vilest sins and lusts, while we think we are well preparing for our last account. As we go on the impression increases, and though to the eyes of all around w^e are mani- festly self-seeking, we alone do not see it, we alone are persuaded we are seeking God; the dress of holy things has been so thrown by our hands over the objects of our lust, that though they are coi-pses and skeletons, we think we see beauty through the form of holy things, and fi'cquently are persuaded to do the very thing which a short time before we should have shuddered at. Another feature of second motive is the power of doing marked religious acts with gi'eater point than those who act from the first motive, and while we do it think it is from religious fei^our or de- votion to God ; whereas the desire of self-gi'atifica- tion gives the act energy, and enables us to go through high self-denial of it without shrinking. We are capable of any amount of self-sacrifice to achieve the attainment of selfish desires, and some- times we are astonished at the amount of energy which we think we are thus giving to God and religion. 22 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. Again, there is no limit to be placed to this power of self-deception ; we may go on under the impres- sion that we are acting for God, while in truth we are simply seeking religious vocations as an oppor- tunity of serving self, until we commit ourselves to acts in direct defiance of God ; which acts the whole world see through and condemn, and all the while we are saying, we are serving God. "Let me die the death of the righteous." Balaam advised Balak to cast a stumbling-block in the way of Israel ; he induced him to offer the opportunity of a vile and dark impurity ; he strove to separate God from His people in the most subtle of all ways ; he tried to alienate the ancient heritage of Jehovah, from the living God, by deadly crime : he succeeded in the plot, and yet all the while made himself believe he was acting rightly, and in that condition of mind he died, being slain in battle ; — awful, past description awful ! Another awful circumstance is this, that there is a line beyond which the having acted from second motives becomes hopeless, and our case impossible for repentance, when the heart has become hard and the conscience seared, and we call right wrong, and wrong right ; when the moral sense is destroyed, a day when God has been too long trifled with, and religion been too long made to pander to our lust, a day when God ceases to be gi^acious, and we cease to feel : and when we cross that line, beyond which the sun of hope never shines, we know not; the line is as invisible as the step of a locust on the I.] liN THE MINISTRY. 23 wilderness of sand. We are thoughtless and full of a second object, are scheming and planning, even are happy and easy ; we reach the line ; we pass it ; — the next moment we are as we were before, easy, confident, at rest, but that moment has lost all ; heaven, hope, peace, pardon, hfe, all lost ; and to the eye of angels we are a dark object in God's creation, without a ray of light or hope ; and yet we know it not. Another peculiarity and feature of the life of second motive, is, that while he who leads it is often ignorant of his doing so, others who watch him see clearly that his life is not for God. His second motive is transparent, and yet has not been seen through by himself. Such are some of the consequences and features of this condition of mind. Public opinion, the fashion of the day, the custom of society, all may tend to give or confirm the idea that it is pos- sessed by the good. The weight of numerical ex- ample is gi'eat, and when thousands are leading a certain life, and that a life coincident with the de- sires we are cherishing, we are glad to plead the example and precedent of the multitude whom we in heart condemn. But all the while we are drifting away from shore, and unperccivcd our vessel is ghding out to sea, and the waters are so still and so motionless that we do not perceive its motion ; we look presently, and find we have floated far from the rock to which we had anchored, and beneath whose shadow we had 24 SECOND MOTIVE [Serm. moored our vessel. We move in the world with Holy Orders upon us ; we have a certain self- respect and awe about self, which the gi'catness of our vocation invests us with : we dwell among men who pass us with a certain respect for our posi- tion, and who do a homage to our holy office ; the recollection of a once ardent feeling of awe at our responsibility still clings to us, and with all that we are satisfied, forgetting, or not knowing, that we are decayed within, that the heart is eaten out, that we are walking in a show, " a vain shadow," that our external appearance is a mere mockery, that we are serving not God, but the idol of self, and that those very circumstances which the world honours, or w^e have respected in ourselves, have become changed in their relation, and that they have become indi- cations of a more than usual self-seeking rather than an especial devotion to holiness. To test and secure our simplicity of intention •and purity of motive in some degree, let us try ourselves by some such rules as these. Let us ask ourselves, I . The acts of my ministerial life, which I am most struck with in myself, and others most ad- mire around me, energy, activity, self-denial, feel- ing, power to influence ; should I, if persuaded it was my duty, be willing to yield them? should I not have followed that path if no holy hands had been laid on me, and no holy commission been placed on me? Is it my disposition so entirely, that any other life would be irksome, and whether I.] IN THE iMliNISTKY. 25 my lot had been to pursue my calling amid the paths of political or legal eminence, or any other kind of ambition, should I have been different to what I am now ? Is it for Christ I am what I am ? 2. If it were God's will to place me aside, to take me away fi-om that very sphere I am pursuing, by illness, or suspension of bodily strength or mental energy, should I eciually delight to feel I was in His hand, and fulfilling my caUing, by bearing patiently the afflictions of privation as I now^ do, in pursuing a life of activity, peculiarity, influence, or creativeness ? Should I, in the retirement of some unknown spot, or on the bed of prolonged sickness, or in seclusion for life, as much delight to feel I was glorifying Christ as I do in my pre- sent career ? Is Christ indeed my aim ? to be hid in Him my great and leading desire ? 3. That point in myself of which I have most reason to be suspicious ; that tendency which I have reason to think has most led me from first motives ; does it increase ? Do I throw myself with gi'eater and increasing energy into it, and with that increasing energy, is there a manifest and visible decrease of spiritual emotion and as- piration ? 4. There are times when by a manifest call of duty I am compelled to be with those I do not feel sympathy with, and have to perform works and acts w^hich run in a channel distinct and separate from my usual routine of life and occupation ; do I bear these deviations with greater wiUingness and pa- 26 SECOND MOTIVE [Sekm. tience ? do I fret at their return ? have I less and less relish for them ? or do I accept them as blessed opportunities of crushing self, and realizing self- denial and self-sacrifice ? 5. When thrown out of my usual course, is my temper irritated, and my natural flow of spirits low ? Do I shew by my life and manner that I manifestly am upset by the deviation ? If so, it is a sign that self not God, our work not our duty, is the leading and guiding motive of our life and ministry. 6. I will put a few tests in a briefer form. Do the praise and blame of man affect us so as to have the influence of much rousing or damping our energy ? are we influenced by the feeHngs of that party for whom we are acting ? do we act with the same energy and earnestness when quite alone as when in the sight of those persons whose opin- ions most influence us ? Let us use some of these tests to discover the purity of our intention ; for, holy brethren, time is short, eternity presses on, and the awful result of an as yet unknown judgment is close at hand. To that end take some such rules as these. 1 . To presei^ve a single mind, use most frequent and searching self-examination. Let its questions be simple, few, and short ; but chiefly on those points which you have long discovered to be your w^eak ones ; a few days of neglect of this practice w^ill make so tangled a web, that the years of com- ing time will never unravel. 2. Of course, use prayer largely and frequently; I.] IN THE MINISTRY. 27 earnest prayer for purity of intention. Make it a direct subject of petition and intercession ; we scarcely enough value prayers for particular ob- jects. The full earnestness of the heait given to one object in prayer must have its effect. 3. Seek, ajid be glad of opportunities of doing works which are not according to natural disposi- tion ; we should be glad of manifest duties which are not entirely coincident with our pleasure. Many such will occur during a short interval, if the mind be bent on their discovery, and even in the course of a day we shall find opportunities enough. Let us seek them, and when they arise not shun them, and we shall find that much more than we imagine, we shall be able to strengthen purity of intention. 4. Each day let us make it a work of special self- examination, to see how often we have yielded to second motive, and let us make it a matter of daily warfare and struoirle, and let our conflict be bounded by the horizon of each day, lest the eftbrt become too tedious, nay hopeless, by the length of the j^eriod over which we strive. 5. Let us frequently raise before our mind in pic- ture and imagination, the highest motive of action ; let us dwell upon it at stated times in the day, elevating before us as visibly and really as possible the holy objects for which we feel our work should be done. In sum, let us aim at singleness of mind ; with- out that our ministry will be void and vain, our work worse than useless, inflicting a curse not a 28 SECOND MOTIVE IN THE MINISTRY. [Serm. I. blessing on ourselves ; without that we may indeed be the instrument of saving souls, but our own may be cast out of the everlasting kingdom ; the gates may be opened to admit those we have taught to strive, and yet be closed on us for ever. It is likely we shall be severely tried ; none more so : earth and hell are leagued against us, and the powers of an unseen spiritual world are banded against us for our ruin. No weapon they can use will be untried, and no weapon is so keen, so subtle, so able, as that of second motive. Remem- ber many of those signs which appear at first sight indications of pardon for sins, are no trustworthy signs at all ; eminent success ; the largest self- sacrifice ; energy and devotion ; the most vivid ac- tivity in the pursuit of our calling; present self- satisfaction, and self-approbation ; the good opinion of the world and the religious ; all are possible to CO- exist with a heart which has for ever di'ifted from God, as its object, and has forfeited for ever pardon, peace, and heaven. SERMON II. THE MINISTER IN THE WORLD. DANIEL. 1 Cor. vii. 31. " Use this world as not abusing it." There are many solemn, soul-stirring words in Holy Scriptm-e about one source of evil which seems rife wath peril to the soul ; and yet there are many definitions of those words, and few ex- actly agree with each other. That which Holy Scripture has called and con- demned as " the W'Orld," is a thing concerning w^iich most persons have a view of their own, but find it hard even for themselves to embody that view into a definition ; all feel that it comprehends something full of peril and evil, but each man alters his standing with regard to it according to his own mode of life, educational prejudice, or the school to which he belongs. With respect to it the Word of God si)eaks thus solemnly. " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him : for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the 30 THE MINISTER [Serm. lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." Again, St. Paul says, " Be not conformed to this world." Then again there is an emphatic and significant force in that temptation of Satan's of our Blessed Lord. He speaks of " the glory of the world," wdiich he offers to yield to our Saviour on the condition he de- manded, as if there was a peculiar power in that glory which was at that moment hostile to the people and kingdom of our Lord. These views shew that in that thing, " the w^orld," whatever it may mean, there is some inherent evil, some dark tendencies which assail the soul, some peculiar attraction in it to draw out the evil of our own nature. The definition of this idea has been as various as the character, lives, and schools of men could make it. To some the w^ord "world" has been synony- mous with all intercourse whatever with the human race beyond the immediate limits of their own family, including in this exclusion even the inter- course with man for performance of necessary business and the transactions of daily life. Accord- ing to such interpreters the use and enjoyments of nature and of art, the admiration of the beau- tiful, alike in sculpture, painting, or music, the study of the laws by which heavenly or earthly bodies are moved and regulated, historic precedent, and the acts of men of a past age, have been alike placed beneath a ban, and been excluded from the lawful enjoyments of a Christian man. II.] IN THE WORLD. 31 To others "the world" has a more confined limitation ; they are themselves trenching in their daily life on the ground prescribed above, and to make their own position safe and secm-e they must draw a wider limit for their own standing-ground : and consequently they push oft' further the line which bounds the world from themselves. To them the excitement of actual guilt, the gambling-house, the display of the theatre, the tavern where vice is unblushing, and the peace and prudence of family and social life bartered for the false satisfaction of the passing hour, are sufficient terms by which to designate the world, and to explain the nature of that whose glory is the enemy of God. Others will extend the limit wider still ; a more extravagant vice, a more w^reckless sin, a more open profligacy, suggests the idea of the world they had renounced : while the fascination of a life which knits the soul to earth and not to God, which unfits for prayer or devotion, holy Commu- nion or self-examination, are alike received within the boundary line of their permitted infirmities. It is not my object here to follow up by minute detail the various opinions on this term ; I simply wish to deduce one common notion concerning it drawn from the common ground which each phase of opinion will occupy. The various opinions are liable to countless objections and difficulties, while each contain their own element of truth and good. The one will err on the side of excess by making the limitation line 32 THE MINISTER [Serm. of the world sufficiently elastic to embrace all the individual desires of the definer ; while others erring on the side of over-definition, fall into the error of a narrow view and a narrow mind, and by over- strictness are compelled daily to give the lie to their professed aim, by forming a world within the little prescribed sphere, or by being obliged to invent excuses for continual and unavoidable deviations to the right hand and the left. Narrowness of mind, irregularity of application, blind partiality to self, are among the many difficulties into which men are constantly driven in their views on this subject. Nevertheless, however difficult and almost impos- sible of actual and satisfactory definition it may be, any thing which is so denounced in Holy Scrip- ture must demand of us a full and anxious enquiry and investigation. This then w^e at least can surely gain from the conflicting views on the subject. There is a visible Church which comprehends within its limits many who will not belong to the invisible ; and however obedient to the general external rules of that body as interpreted by the mass of men about us, there are multitudes who are living lives, and conforming to practices, which the good sense of men generally cannot but feel to be alien to the spirit of God and His Church, which nevertheless cannot be excluded by the definite limits of any prescribed rule. There are scenes of daily vocation and amuse- ment, full of the dazzle of grandeur and magni- ficence, and the peril of the influence of position ir.] IN THE WORLD. .'!.3 and wealth, which are all inckided hy all ^ood men in the prcscrihed limits of the world and its vota- ries. More or less extensively, as men are more or less willing to narrow or expand their desires, still the widest view of " the world" will include the ideas here suggested. The splendour of wealth, the husy mart and scene of commerce, the exciting game where much is staked, the race course, the thoughtless scenes of midnight gaiety, at once sug- gest to many minds of the more religious the idea of " the world ;" and in proportion as the soul be- comes devoted to God and the abnegation of self, in that proportion we shall find that scenes such as these will come in its estimation within the limita- tions of this word as used in Holy Scripture. Now whatever difficulty may exist with regard to the position of men generally in these scenes I have thus described, for the clergy, on whom holy hands have been laid, there is a special difficulty; they feel that more than for others caution is peculiarly necessary for them, and that they at least cannot enter such scenes without a peril a hundred times increased above that of common men. With this view it is very remarkable to no- tice, that some of God's most eminent saints in the Old Testament were not only living in scenes which were emphatically worldly, but were placed there by the immediate dispensation of God ; that their lot of life was cast in those very circles which were rife with danger and peril to the sonl, and which, to the minds of any class of religious pcr- D 34 THE MINISTER [Serm. sons, would come within the definition of " the world." Nothing can be more various than the Uves of God's people in the Old Testament amongst the manifold cases of those who lived in the haunts of men, and others whose whole lot was cast in the more quiet scenes of life. God ordered it in each case, and it may in no small degree aid us in study- ing the question of a clergyman's position in what is called the world, to consider the cases of those people of God, whose life was spent within its sphere. God formed His saints very often in the most unlikely scenes, and brought out marvellous self- devotion from places and spheres where self-devo- tion seemed unknown. Like the disciples in the boat at Gennesaret, so God has often "constrained" His people to enter the world, and to sail over its stormy surface amid its most tempestuous waves, when they would fain have sought a calm retreat. Some He kept from it, and fostered their aims at saintliness in the quiet of domestic life, or solitary seclusion. Joseph, Daniel, and David, were formed in that very sphere, and their brilliance came out in the very scenes which would have dimmed ours. Moses was drawn out of the world to be formed for his work and character, and Jacob and St. John the Baptist were led to the high position of the saints of God in the stillness of the domestic life, and the cave of the desert. Now what God did for them His greatest saints. II. J IN TIIK WORLD. -io may be, to a certain degree, a type of what He may do for us ; and w hat they were permitted and led to do, at least, may be the life which we are permitted and led to pass. The same mould which formed them may form us, and the same scenes which they passed through unhurt, may also be passed by us without damage. But this at least is clear ; if we take their lives as indicating a permission to us to lead a certain life, we must be guarded by the same protections, hedged around by the same defences, and live by the same rule ; if the " w'orld" is to be a safe passage for us to heaven, it must partake of the same nature that their W'Oild did to them, and Joseph's Ufe at the court of Egypt, or Daniel's at Babylon, must be a type to us of our life in the world of this day. And we must remember we are not here con- sidering the lives of ordinary servants of God ; we are not holding up to ourselves the lives of men, who in a common way served Jehovah : we speak of men who w^ere eminently saints, who w^ere ele- vated above the ordinary standard of holiness, and who are recorded among God's greatest servants. Daniel forms one of the catalogue of the three who were mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel, as specially under God's favour, and Joseph is alike the type of Christ, and the guardian of the chosen people. A few passages may serve to shew^ their position in the world, and those few will be enough to con- vince us that they were called to live in what we D 2 36 THE MINISTER [Serm. should emphatically designate by the title I have mentioned. a. Having said of Daniel that "■ He lived before the king" of a court at that day singular and mark- ed for splendour, luxury, and wealth ; it is said that " the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole pro^^nce of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon," and "Daniel sat in the gate of the king." In this court he con- tinued to dwell, and here and there his name ap- pears, but always in connection with a sumptuous court, a splendid palace, a worldly scenery, until at length we read the scene which closed his connec- tion with the Babylonic dynasty, at Belshazzar's feast : " Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem ; and the king, and his princes, and his wives, and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and of stone." Such is the account of the court where Daniel dwelt, marked alike by its splendour, its worldly fascina- tions, its profligacy, and its profanity ; and yet here Daniel dwelt, in this he moved, and at the beck of the king he came and went into his presence. The handwriting on the wall alarmed Belshazzar and his company, and the queen suggested the summons of Daniel. "Then was Daniel brought II.] IN THE WORLD. 37 in before the king. And the king spake and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel ?" And Daniel, interpreting the vision, was " clothed with scarlet, and they put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be third ruler in the kingdom." Here it is plain Daniel received the honours thrust on him by the court ; it is equally clear that for profligacy, blasphemy, and splendour, the court was exceeded by none, and yet Daniel thought it right to abide and sojourn in it. And long afterwards, when the court and power had passed into other hands, *' Daniel still prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian." b. In the same way Joseph was called to scenes of hazard and peril, and was surrounded, equally with Daniel, by the fascinations and dangers of the world. For of him, too, it is said, that he was over Pharaoh's house, and according to his word was all the people ruled, only on the throne was Pharaoh greater than he. "And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck ; and he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had ; and they cried before him. Bow the knee : and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt." I adduce these passages to shew that every term which would bring before our mind the idea of 38 THE MINISTER [Serm. splendour, power, influence, and rank, is used to shew Joseph's position, to w^hich he consented, and into which God led him at the court of Egypt. The same line of thought is suggested in the case of David and many other of God's people, whose saintly characters were formed in the very scenes which are elsewhere declared hostile to God. Now what have we before us here ; we have some of the most eminent saints of God not only living in the world, but living in the most dan- gerous scenes of it, and not only that, but their very characters formed in it and by it, and coming out of it polished and shining jewels, fit for the most prominent places in God's Church ; while, on the other hand, we find men who with most strik- ing caution shunned it, and avoided even the taint of its touch. To the Baptist and to Mary Magdalene, it seemed rife with peril, and the holy characters of the Blessed Virgin and St. John the Apostle were formed in the calm seclusion of meditation and re- tirement. In a day like this, when no lines arc veiy clearly drawn between men, and still less be- tween the world and the Church ; when there are so many amongst us whose opinions are doubtful, and their practices more than doubtful ; when reli- gion has become fashionable ; when the vocation of many of the clergy seems to be within the reach of that very breath which they feel sure is tainted with poison to the soul, and when many more are perhaps led on by self-deceit to imagine it their sphere and vocation ; it is of the utmost importance to see what II.] IN THE WORLD. 39 that spirit was witli which God's saints of old entered the world, and what was the preparation He made them go through to he proof against the danger. Without that same preparation, and that same spirit, we shall find our peril great, if we venture ourselves wdthin its reach. On a little consideration we shall perhaps find that so severe was their preparation, so deep their sclf-ahncgation, so entire their loss of self in the will of God, that the process alone of pre- paring would take off every single charm the world possessed, and would make a life of seclusion, nay, even the desei-t, preferable to the court of princes. How many w^ould perhaps shrink back from what they now^ covet and invent excuses to enjoy, if they passed through that ordeal first, which in His Eye is necessaiy to make such a life consistent with love ' to Him. Holy brethren, the very breath of the w'orld is laden with poison to us ; w^e can scarcely breathe it without peril ; w^e dare not cross its threshold with- out a vigilance so keen, a preparation so severe, or dread so vivid, as to make any one who is fully alive to this necessity, shrink back with alarm. If we are entering it divested of this, we are cherish- ing a spirit w^e shall have reason to tremble for ere long. But let us see that preparation which God es- teemed necessary for Daniel and Joseph in scenes of like peril. And, first, I would suggest that the great object of God's dealing with each soul, is that soul's indi- -10 THE MINISTER [Serm. vidual purification and salvation^ and that liis very position of general influence is ordered for his own well-being. However much the public calling oi each man may seem to be that which most strikes our eye, or most affects men generally or ourselves individually, — the real object of each is in God's intention the preparation and refinement of his own particular soul. Consequently, every sphere must be considered as having that aim, and each man is placed in his sphere as being most suited to his personal need. Each of us has a nature, a dispo- sition, a tendency, to be formed into a certain cha- racter fitted to occupy our place in eternity : vari- ous processes are needed to prepare that character, and each one is refined by a different process. The desert forms one ; the domestic circle another ; the world another ; and the austerity of a more rigorous ' life a fourth. Retirement is as much necessary for one as publicity is for another ; certain scenes and occasions call into play certain virtues, and tend to depress or excite alarm about certain evil tenden- cies ; and we may feel sure that unless we have forcibly and willfully drawn ourselves aw^ay from God's providential guiding and leading hand, we are placed in that sphere most suited to prepare us for eternity. The world was Daniel's and Joseph's sphere ; it prepared them for heaven, but only by their resisting it in a certain way and with a certain preparation of mind and life ; then only it lost its venom. And what was that? what is that safe- guard necessary for our walk through scenes of II.] IN TIIK WORLD. ■!! \Yorldliness without serious if not I'atal detriiuciit to the soul ? 1 . Let us dwell a few moments on Daniel's case ; his step of preparation is a significant one. He was already a captive, and the world he moved in was the world and court of the conqueror of his tribe and nation ; one continued mortilication of worldliness must have marked his career. The same was true of Joseph ; he too was a captive in the land of his greatness. Here is one striking safeguard to their position, and one which was ordered no doubt to save them from the necessary consequence of living in the world ; it was a con- tinual check, a constant reminding them of their condition ; it was the world of the conqueror, and cast a shadow on all their care for it. And in almost every case where a saint of God was cast into the world and formed within its sphere, we shall re- mark the same providential pro\asion. Mordecai and Esther were placed in the same kind of life. The practical point here seems rather such as this ; if we find by providential arrangement that our call to the world is one which places us in positions of continual thwarting and disappointment, we must rejoice and not complain ; it is our safeguard, and one of the safeguards which alone permit us to be in the world. There are many such thwartings ; we need not look far for them. Some frailty in ourselves, some infirmity in others, some lack of power, some "thorn in the flesh," some continual remembrance that we have sui)eriors in holiness, in 42 THE MINISTER [Serm. . talent, in power, in influence, all this will con- tinually make the world to us a captivity. If then we are led to find the world our sphere of action, and in it there arise many drawbacks, let us accept them thankfully as the permission to abide where we are with safety, not strive against them, or place them forcibly aside, or murmur at them because they hinder the full enjoyment which the flesh would have in the world ; they may be the rivalry of others, superiority in mind, acuteness, power of display, or influence possessed by those with whom we are doomed to move, the continually being reminded of the fact of our own infirmity or lack of excellence. Our work is to view the world as to us a mighty city which throngs with the enemies of God — our Babylon — where they praise the gods of gold and silver, and desecrate the holy things of the sanctuary — our captivity. Let us no more take root in it than would a stranger in a strange land, and be as jealous of any tendril of our affections clinging round its stays and objects, as a captive would be jealous of letting his love wind around the cell of his banishment. 2. And now mark, secondly, the preparation Daniel made for his entrance into these scenes. His preparation was by severe self-discipline and bodily austerity, by living "on pulse and water," by the taking no pleasant bread, and days and nights of fasting and deep humiliation. The notes of his sojourn are such as these: "Let them give us pulse to cat and water to drink." "I set my 11.] IN THE WORLD. 43 face unto the Lord God, with fasting and sack- cloth and ashes." " I was mourning tlirce full weeks, I ate no pleasant hread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three wjiole weeks were fulfilled." Such are the modes of life which the prophet used amid the palaces and splendours of Babylon. With him the scarlet robe and the chain of gold had little power hung on a body thus prepared, the gorgeous dress of the palace covered the shrine of the saint, and its folds were powerless to excite vanity or pride. The royal raiment, the glitter of pearls, the feast to a thousand of the lords, the wine drank before the thousand, had little effect on the man around whose ears lingered the words of the holy vision which he had gazed on through his three weeks' fast, or to excite the desire of him wdiose passions were lulled and whose worldly love w^as paled by the diet of pulse and water, and the sackcloth and ashes. The scarlet robe was lined with the sackcloth it covered, and the chain of gold rested on the neck which had lain prostrate before the Holy One on the banks of Chebar. With this preparation we must enter the world, without it the world is full of peril. Preparation for scenes of danger is one of the marks of the saint. The expectation of being called to such scenes should be at once allied with a stern dress- ing of the soul. It is a defensive armour, without which we shall be wounded to death. True we may not know it, even thoui;]i we enter the conflict 44 THE MINISTER [Serm. without it ; we may not perceive our peril, but it is so nevertheless ; and we shall be wounded to death with the poisoned arrow of the world without knowing it ; the poison may be slow, but it is sure ; and one essential preparation is the discipline of the appetite, the body, the flesh. The greater number of the wounds of the world are inflicted through the aid of these ; the luxury of indolence, the soft refinement of manner, the minute attention to the taste, the vanity of personal appearance, the emu- lation at a more perfect achievement of outward symmetry, all are the results of a bodily estate too well attended to ; rude food and hard sleep will tend to low^er these : the body hi the heat of its animal life, the physical state, our most elevated feelings, and power of association, taste, sentiment, and romance, receive all their glow from our physi- cal being: in that is "the glory of them," that is their dress which decks them as guests of the world rather than as instruments of heaven, that is the molten lead which creeps and welters into their crevices, and spoils all ; a hard diet, a hard sleep, a hard rein on tongue, and eye, and ear, will alter all, because they wdll lower the source from which they spring. Nor is it only a matter of prepara- tion : it must be continued ; we must never drop it : the same spirit pervades the life of Daniel ; it is mentioned in the first chapter, and in the last. Alike under Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Da- rius the Mede, are kindred notices to the pulse and water, and the fast of three days. Any entrance II.] IN TIIK WORLD. 45 into the world must be prefiiccd by it, it must per- vade om' whole spirit in it ; it is only from the cell, the Church, the hidden chamber, that we can safely enter the scenes of that world which " knows not God." 3. The third point we are struck with in Daniel is the life of prayer : we so little realize the real power and need of prayer : its actual efficacy, the tone and habit it induces, its certain answer, its constant witness, make it most powerful and need- ful for intercourse with the world : we need large prayer, w^e need a preparation of prayer, we need the continued voice of prayer before and after every entrance into the world, we need it to preserve in the world itself the spirit of constant prayer ; a praying mind is the only safe one with which we can dwell there. When indirectly assaulted with temptation, and who of us can hope to avoid it when by our fall hundreds, nay thousands may fall too ! when the temptation returns day after day, and with renewed vigour every morning, who can say how powerful one whole day devoted to prayer and fasting might be to overcome and dim its power ? We make so few vigorous efforts, so few ventures, so few bold darings, for Christ's sake ; our prayers are so formal, so stated, so meagre, and we wonder w^e do not pre- vail. Why should we prevail ? men did not so pre- vail of old. The power and spirit of evil is powerful and energetic. How can we hope to overcome it without the most strenuous efforts. The minister 46 THE MINISTER [Serm. of God, educated so far above others by his holy calHng and awful responsibilities, and assailed so far more vigorously than others from the importance of his position, nmst throw an equal amount of un- wonted energy into his life of prayer. His daily prayer should be more than usually intense, his vivid temptations should be met by the three days' fasting and praying ; so, and only so, he can safely dwell in the world. Without this the world to him will be Babylon ; with this it will be the scenes of the Church's sojourn, though in captivity. 4. But more, Daniel's life was a continued pro- test, bold and open, against the customs and spirit of the world in which he dwelt. He ahke con- demned the sins of Nebuchadnezzar, the decree of Darius, and the blasphemies of Belshazzar. There was no soft compliance, no winning worldlings to the truth by half compliance with their ways, no manifest preference for the soft refinements of the court of Babylon to the sorrows of the dungeon and river-side wanderings of the captive Church ; with the latter was his heart, with the former but his bodily presence : he dwelt amid the scenes of the latter ; he was ever found by the side of the river where the harp of Judah hung. The banks of Chebar and the inner chamber toward Jerusalem were his accustomed resorts ; he was ever " sent for" to the court ; he was ever " Daniel of the cap- tivity of Judah, brought out of Jewry." Such was his title, such the rank he bore ; his heart was not of the world, though he lived in it ; his life was a II.] IN THE WORLD. 47 long protest against it ; would that we were ever manifestly " children of the captivity !" Do we not too often when in the world wear the semblance of the children of the world, of those who aim at cast- ing off as far as lawful the dress of the captivity, their prison garb ? instead of loving to be reckoned of the captivity, we come as closely as w^e may to the spirit and tone of our conquerors. Poor and miserable spirit ! We yield too much to the tone of the world ; our language w^ears no dungeon tone ; we affect the world in dress, attitude, manner, fashion, custom ; we seldom protest. Too little is it our joy to sit by the rivers of Babylon, and weep " when we remember thee, O Sion, and hang our harps upon the willows that are there ;" we look like the world ; we do not like being "pilgrims and strangers;" we do not like to be reckoned captives ; yet he who is of the captivity must dwell by the river. All this is hard, but it must be ; we must hang our harps up ; we cannot sing the world's song, or join in the world's ways ; Babylon is not Judea, Chebar is not Jordan ; the w^orld is not heaven, nor the scenes of earth the Church of the first-born ; we must shew that con- tinually ; we must even meet it with the same com- plaint, how^ can I sing the " Lord's song in a strange land?" We must shew ourselves strangers. The clergyman's family is too often a humiliating pic- ture of the w^orld's domestic Hfe reduced ; the same outline, the same figure, a copy of the world, an imitation as far as is lawlul, a copy of Babylon. In 48 THE MINISTER [Serm. tlie ai)plause given to what seems heroic, hold, and manly, when really stained with actual sin against God ; in the feeble condemnation of evil ; in per- mission of heresy ; in the defence of the very offence in the powerful and wealthy which we should con- demn in the poor ; in the manifest satisfaction felt in being recognised as the friends and companions of the gay, the noble, and accomplished; in the esteem for talent above holiness, and position above severity of life, we are yielding to the ways of the world, but little sojourning as pilgrims and strangers amid its scenes. Is it our work to con- form the education and accomplishments of our children to the modes adapted to a world who know not God ? Is it our work to allow our servants to adopt the phrases all but sinful of those of the world, without reproof, nay, with permission? The life of the clergyman should be a standing protest against the life around him. He is in it, but he does not string his harp to its tunes ; he is amid its haunts, but he does not conform to its customs ; his window is open three times a-day towards Jeru- salem, and he defies alike the ordinances, the cus- toms, and the opinions of the world which "lieth in wickedness ;" in it, he must cast in his lot with the lowly and despised, value holiness above talent, and consistency above position. Of course society will not like this, of course this Hne will be un- pojmlar, but it will succeed ; nay more, it is our duty, and that is enough. How is the world to act witli a higlier stand, if those whose commission is II.] IN THE WORLD. 49 from heaven live scarcely one step removed from the mode in which the world acts ; if there is no elevation of standard, no bold ventures, no con- tempt for human opinion ! With these cautions the world may be a fit scene for the minister of God, without them it is fraught with imminent peril. Babylon can never be a home for the Israel of God, it can but be a scene of their captivity, it can but be a sojourn of "three score years and ten," it can but be a scene in which he travels "as a stranger and a pilgrim," that is all. The minister of God must be its standard, its living exception, its protest. It should be a pain to him to find it needful to pass through it. Jerusalem is his home, and if his heart be right the world never can be. SERMON HI. THE INWARD PREPARATION OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. EZKKIEL AND SAMUEL. Malachi iii. 3. " He shall purify the sous of Levi." There are many passages in Holy Scripture, and many illustrating lives and examples, which shew us that God Himself prepares each person for his appointed work : that a mysterious discipline is ever going on, the building of a temple without noise of the hammer, a silent and refining process. And this inward preparation which He can-ies on bears to our own outward work on ourselves the same relation as Divine gi'ace does to holy human effort. Still it does not always meet our eye ; it is secret, mysterious, and still ; its effects are often unknown till death, and sometimes so obscure in the relation of cause and effect that the keenest eye can scarcely discern it. But nevertheless so it is ; by night as by day, while we sleep and wake^ while we are careful and while we are reckless, the holy process goes on, and we are gi*adually and irresistibly preparing for the work He would have us do, and the place He would have us fill. e2 52 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm. This is emphatically true of the imvard prepara- tion for tlie ministry. God prepares His ministers in His own way, and great, awful, and wonderful, when sometimes we discover it, is His mode of doing it. A mist will occasionally roll away, and we be- hold that where there was an empty place before, a fair and beautiful temple has risen. We little know^ when we receive holy orders what a work of inward discipline we fi'om that moment enter on. Precept and example, men of the past and men of the present, alike shew us the fact. 1 . We are told by St. Paul in the opening of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, that God achieves certain works in us of affliction or trouble, with the express view of preparing us for a more efficient ministry. See chap. i. ver. 2 — 7. " Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort ; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort, wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer : or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers Ill-] or THE MINISTER OF GOD. 53 of the sufferings, so shall ye he also of the con- solation." He proceeds to say that we have the sentence of death within us that we might learn the shallow- ness of human strength and power, and the depth and width of Divine grace, ver. 8 — 10. '' For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, inso- much that we despaired even of life : but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiscth the dead : who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver : in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us." Thus he who comes forward to the work of the ministry, at once enters on a course of severe pre- paration, that he may know by full personal expe- rience the truth of that teaching which he must manifest to a ruined and sinful world : he cannot teach doctrines of spiritual comfort without having reaHzed it, and to do so he must have smarted under God's afflicting hand ; he cannot efficiently enforce the need and measure of Divine grace without having been led to lean on it as the anchor and rudder of his soul. The minister must be the type of his own teaching, he must live the life he en- forces and urges ; he must be the mirror which reflects the image he is ever raising before his people. Thus again, further on in the Epistle, where the Apostle has recounted the sorrows and 54 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm. trials of the ministry, its troubles, its perplexities, its persecutions, he sums it all up with saying that "all was for their sakes." But I might multiply passages without end which express this view ; the whole of the second Epistle to the Corinthians is peculiarly full of it. 2. Significant in the highest degree has been the mark of this in the lives of His ministering servants : they have shewed how God has been with them preparing them for their great vocation. Parallel with the stream of their life has been the work which He has silently carried on in their hearts and lives ; His guiding hand is seen in their deep sorrows, their permitted temptations, their domestic bereavements, their trying circumstances ; the talc of slander and the scoff of the world : we can scarcely take a view of their ministry without seeing how truly He was with them, though often unseen and unknown to themselves. a. Among the earliest of those especially set apart for the ministry was Samuel, and in no case is this Divine preparation more striking. He was early taught that the minister of God must be severed from earthly ties and human affections at His call. Though the child of many prayers, and the only son of his mother, he was soon severed from her affec- tion, and led to spend his early years away from the comfort of home in the silent and severe soli- tude of God's temple. The same ordering of Pro- vidence led him to a life of retirement in after days, and he was only permitted to appear at in- III.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 55 tcrvals from tlic sternness of his solitude. His sons ended ill, and in old age as in childhood be- reavement and a threatened domestic loss, left the stern prophet of Israel, the anointer of Saul and David, to be wept for by the elders of his people. Domestic trial, and the continual check of the law- ful affections of life, seemed the preparation which God gave Samuel ; it was His ordering, and His priest bent beneath His Hand : heaven was his home, and God his Father ; that was enough. ^. Elijah strikes us equally in a later day. We mark the same work of preparation, and that pre- paration one of thwarting and disappointment to earthly and human hopes. He, too, was led by God's voice to the desert and the cave : of him no domestic fact is recorded, and no human affection mentioned ; he was compelled to see his expecta- tions prevented, and whatever remains of human ambition there might be in him, disappointed ; when he complained, he was rebuked. He Avould see results, and have his ministry honoured by man, and its truths tested. But it was not to be, and he who was to ascend to heaven undying must learn by God's teaching to let all human motives sink in the work of his ministry. God took his life in His own hand, and guided him Himself We all know the striking though brief notice of the death of Ezekiel's wife ; she was taken away simply that the prophet's conduct might be a type to the people. No sorrow was to be considered by him tantamount to fulfilling in each part his minis- 56 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm. try ; he might not grieve because it would hinder the lesson he was to inculcate. Jonah's case comes before us in the same way : here, too, the prophet would at first mingle second and human motives with his ministry. He made his preaching an opportunity of personal impor- tance, and would test the one by the result of the other; there was a sUght tendency to making a holy calling submit to self, and God taught him his lesson, that His minister must simply live for Him. y. And more remarkably still is it shewn in the prophet of the desert. God undertook his education from his childhood up ; severe trials, severance from all human ties, lone life, and separation from re- latives or companionships, marked emphatically his onward career. The rock, the rough food, the wil- derness, were the lot of him whose childhood God took into His own hands. And so it was till death, and that death itself bore the same features. The same singular care is observable in the lives of all His ministers in the New Testament : sever- ance from earth, forsaking deep domestic affections; outward persecutions, amid fears, and checks given at every turn ; keen temptations permitted, strange and mysterious changes in their lot, unaccountable guidings ; all shew that with St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul, as with others, an unseen hand was guiding them, an unfelt arm surrounding them, and a voice which they felt but did not hear, led them and directed them in their journey heavenward. Sui-li from the Old Testament and the New are III.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 57 the instances by precept and example of the Divine preparation for the ministry. Let us now apply it to ourselves. 3. We shall observ^e two or three things from the above cases. The preparation of His ministers chiefly consisted of external trials and discipline ; it was through these they were prepared for their work. But there are other modes of inward dis- cipline not so manifest and apparent, still equally a part of His work on the heart, one which is not so likely to appear in the record of men's lives ; I mean, permitted inward temptations. Again, it is striking that it was especially in do- mestic ties and affections the checks were given in the cases I have referred to above. And in their aim at earthly distinction and success, these two trials peculiarly seem to form part of God's pre- paration of His ministry. The existence of temptation teaches us, as St. Paul says, the weakness of nature, and the strength of grace ; trials teach the nature of sorrow and the nature of consolation ; all together teach us to se- parate ourselves from earth, and to live for heaven. Remember our commission is of a magnitude and depth so vast that the Judgment alone will re- veal it to our eyes : we have committed to us the charge of souls for whom Christ died : souls sur- rounded and harassed by continual temptations, and besieged, if our eyes could be opened to see it, by a host of foes, subtle, powerful, and vigilant. It matters not that the many shrink from facing the re- 58 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Scrm. sponsibility, and none can attempt to meet it fully ; it matters not that numbers fly before even a single blow be struck in the conflict. The responsibility is still our own, and the commission equally perilous and tremendous. We have the care of souls, and He who has committed them to us, and who so loved them as to give His life for them, has called us to the high and holy partnership with Himself, and taken care that we shall have the full oppor- tunities of preparation, even though He will not use them, or let them have full influence over us. Those souls will suffer keen temptations, and we are permitted to understand them ; many often wander in the labyrinth of despair and darkness, and we are allowed to tread the intricacies of spiritual sorrow that we may give them the clue for escape. . How are we to guide and counsel souls if we have not ourselves sympathized with their dis- tress ! It is trite to say, that he who has passed through the same distress for one hour, under which we are labouring, is of more value to us as an ad- viser than he who has studied that trouble theo- retically for years ; and with reverence I speak it, that Nature was borne by Him, who is the Bishop of our souls, that He might " know our frame, and remember we were but dust ;" for this was the stu- pendous scene of mount Calvary, for this the agony of Oethsemane, and the Temptation of the desert. " Verily, He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham." And was " in all points Ill] or THE MINISTER OF GOD. 59 tempted like as wc are ;" so that " we have not an High-priest who cannot be touched by the feeling of our infirmities." To reach this end He bore sorrows as far more keen than ours as His holy nature w^as more intensely holy. Surely with this type, this head, this exemplar of our ministry, shall w^e shrink from sorrow, and the bitter purification of the sons " of Levi ?" The keenness of our temptation enables us to understand the anguish of their sorrow when they pour out their tale,- a tale W'hich to one who knew nothing of temptation, would wear the aspect of unreality and hypocrisy. The continual and w^eari- some nature of temptation, known so w^ell to us in the often repeated sigh at our daily examination and hourly prayer, prevents our checking, or being surprised at, the continual repetition of the tale of sorrow^ and temptation ; w^e understand it, and can bear with it. But more than this we need it for ourselves : we are to make " our offering in righteousness," we are to approach " the altar with innocency," and " with clean hands to offer to the Lord." He will have puce and entire devotion in His minister ; He is " a jealous God" to all, but how much more to His minister whom He has placed apart for His own service, and especially considered as belonging to Himself. Planted in a soil which is alien to God, His minister tends to cling to the world and this life. Trials, losses, and afflictions, by degrees sever him from earth, and teach him by the bitter- 60 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm. ness of experience that in God alone is stability and peace. He is fitted for devotion in the sanc- tuary by having the objects of time taken from him ; he is led to be unwearying and self-devoted in the performance of his work, by gradually losing the objects which would naturally have called him from it. The ties which would have been excuses cease to be so, by God Himself removing them, and the cares which would have distracted devo- tion lose force, by having the object which excited them removed. He will leave • no excuse to His minister to be devoted to anything save Himself, and the care of the souls for which He gave His life. And perilous, passing words, is the posi- tion of those who being thus under His guidance, strive to deviate from the appointed path, or to place aside the hand which would lead them to highest thrones of heaven. But not only do trials do this work : temptation too severs us from the world ; it makes life less dear and God more pre- cious to the soul. Those men whose love and en- joyment of life are so intense that no external loss or trial are able to quench its power ; to them keen and continually permitted tempt^ition will do the work that trial does for others, and make life less dear, less interesting, less absorbing. Those temptations " try him as silver is tried," and while he is subject to them, he is unconsciously the object of attention to countless eyes in the unseen world, who gaze with intent longing to see the end of the conflict. in.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 61 But I will considci' more particularly the case of the minister whom God sees fit to prepare by trial instead of temptation, by outward affliction rather than by the permission of inward assault. These trials take many forms, and doubtless each one exactly suited to the disposition and circum- stances of him they are intended to make ready for his vocation. Sometimes they are domestic and sometimes personal ; at other times they will affect a man's social position, and at another, take the line of the injury unjustly of his fair name. We have seen the minister of God stripped of one member after another of his family ; left early to lament the memory of the partaker of his first joys and sorrows, or to pass on his way to the sphere of his self-devotion the earthly resting-place of the children he had striven to train up for the Lord. Affliction not unfrequently takes this form ; so much so, that on observation it will often be found that the greater number of diseases of the most sweeping and striking kinds occur in the houses of those who are consecrated to God's service in the sanctuary, and especially is this the case with those w4io, by their influence, example, or position, are to have an effect on the generation they move in, and the day they are called to minister in. It is not unfrequent that trial takes a more per- sonal form, and weakness of health, intellectual in- capacity, and infirmities of other kinds, hinder that amount of usefulness which men see others capable of, and yearn after for themselves. With such, life 62 THE INWARD PREPARATION [SnuM. is often a continued disappointment, and tliey arc driven back as often as they advance, to feel tliat while others arc possessed of powers they often neither know how, nor care to use themselves, they, with the will to employ them, have them not. Deep poverty ; the difilculty of gaining bare sub- sistence ; the anguish of seeing families grow up, for whom there is no prospect on the stage of life, except they sink to another grade of society from that on which their father moved ; is another form of sorrow with which God often sees fit to purify His ministry on earth. Another class of trial which the ministers of God are often called to suffer under is, the false estimate formed of them by the world around, or the society in which they move. Intending well, they often have to smart for years under imputations as false as they are malicious, and to have their motives mistaken when they were most clear and honour- able to the eye of any impartial observer. We shall specially find that the minister of God will suffer from these trials and privations when he is about to receive any new position of im- portance and influence : the way to which is paved for him by sorrow, and the loss of the world's ease and comfort. As a matter of experience and ob- sei-vation this will be strikingly the case, and we shall see that oftcred position and office will quickly follow on some withering blow which has made life cheerless, has taken away the enjoyment of any III.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 63 such elevation, and has rather made responsibihty irksome than honour and fame agreeable. The effect and object of these trials and tempta- tions are threefold. They enable the mini.ster of God to understand and sympathize with the spiri- tual condition of those he has to guide, they purify worldly affection from his own heart, and enable him to be an example to the people of God of patience and devotion under God's hand. And when we come to consider these reasons, they ap- pear so palpable and manifest, that we only wonder that our trials are so small as they are, and that our preparation is not more severe than it is. The efficacy we have found in grace enables us to lead others to the same fountain of life, and to point to a certain source of victory, when human effort and human reasoning have failed. That grace would be but a theory, an idea to us, if we had not been driven to shelter ourselves beneath it, as a shadow of a "great rock in a weary land." When our people are bowed down in sorrow and earthly affliction, we, who have been puritied in the furnace of sorrow, can understand their silent and solitary tear, can weep with them when they weep, and, above all, can lead them to the same consola- tion of which we have deeply drunk. Tiie doubts we have suffered from teach us how to value theirs, and enable us to make them feel that they have not been tempted by any temptation they are not able to bear, nor one which has not " been com- mon to man." The rule we have found useful and 64 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Snuu. efficacious to ourselves is found equally so for them ; and our advice and preaching receive all their point and force, by having been ourselves the monuments of the mercy we proclaim. Bitter and deep experience has taught the puri- fied minister the meaning and truth of the com- plaint of the " continued effort all in vain ;" of the constantly broken resolution, of the cold shadow crossing the sunshine of devotional warmth. The anxious question, can this temptation and that be consistent with a state of grace ? Can doubts so often returning co-exist with saving and living faith ? Without experience all these would be expres- sions without meaning ; portraits rather than living beings ; cold and barren ideas, having no answer in the reality of practical life. It is our sorrows, our temptations, our purification, which give them point and reality, and enable us to understand at once the tale they find it hard to express, impossible to explain. This is the great and palpable reason for our severe ordeal of preparation. We may, then, take this for granted, that the minister of God will receive his perfection from God, and that he will himself be the obstacle to its full work if there be one at all. He is to occupy a higher place here and hereafter; he is cut off from the world around ; he is one of a separate body, and for that he requires a distinct preparation, of a severer kind than others ; never mind if he shrinks from it, or if he says I never III.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 65 intended to enter on such a life ; lie has cast in his lot with God's ministry, and he must bear the con- sequences either for happiness or woe. It is to him a refining process, like purifying silver ; every word used about it in Holy Scripture is strong and search- ing, and expresses no slight, no common preparation. There are cases of God's ministers who seem to have no external trial, earth smiles upon them ; the sun of life seems always in its morning, no clouds obscure it ; they succeed in their work, they have few domestic afflictions, they succeed in what they put their hands to, they have the good will and good word of even the world around, they gain places of influence and position, from which they can command a more extended usefulness ; they seem happy and cheerful themselves ; there has been no point in life of keen sorrow or depression, to which they must look back and feel " from that sorrow dates my life of fitness ;" and yet they have nothing about their lives to make us doubt their truth and sincerity ; they seem in earnest, and have their hearts honestly and truly fixed on God ; there is nothing that makes us waver about them, they seem consistent, holy, and devoted; and we ask where is their preparation ? and this ques- tion is forced on us with ten-fold the force when we look round and see some picture of striking and mysterious contrast. "While in another parish we see the minister of God as pre-eminent in chastisement, sorrow, and bereavement, as he is in calling, like a land-mark F 66 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm. to a storm, it seems as if, in the emphatic words of Jonah, "all the billows and waves had gone over him." Child after child gathered to the grave, and numbered among the early dead, his schemes for good hindered and suspended, his active usefulness stopped without apparent cause, his sacred life blighted and withered, his best intentions miscon- strued, and a false interpretation placed on all his conduct ; moved from place to place, he is allowed no home feeling in the world, no residence where he may allow his affections to come out or his associations to cling ; and yet all the while around him men of inferior power and lower claims are successful, prosperous, and happy. These contrasts are common, and they are as mysterious and remarkable as common. There seem one or two explanations ; it pleases God to prepare •and test some of His ministers by temptations as He does others by adversity, and often under the apparent success and tranquiUity of life aches a heart assailed by conflicting and warring passions, as rent and distracted as any can be by external sorrow and trouble. Though on such a one the sun seems ever to shine with morning cloudlessness, it shines on the surface of a soul, whose centre is care- worn, round which the winds and blasts of temp- tation howl with maddening fury ; he passes on through the success of outward schemes from one step to another, envied, gazed at with wonder, while he is scarcely conscious of the world's surprise and utterly unconscious of satisfaction ; nay, wilhng to III.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 67 part with all his outward prospect and condition to gain one season of peace from temptation or one sure hope of heaven. Few read their hearts, per- haps but one has ever heard its secret woe, perhaps none, " the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy." Burning lust, vanit)^ boundless ambition, fear of man paralyzing every act of duty, weigh on the spirit, and test and purify the heart as fully as external sorrow and trial. These different modes of treatment depend per- haps on men's different dispositions and circum- stances : severe temptations may be necessary to form one character which is to be prepared for heaven ; for another, external trial is necessary to make up for the utter absence of inward temp- tation. But there are further differences beyond these of God's treatment of His ministers: some are pre- pared through intellectual and some through sen- sual temptation. To a certain class of mind, severe intellectual trials are as powerful and critical as sensual ones are to another. Under some of these heads w^e shall find we may be able to read nearly every case of the minister of God. There arc of course exceptions, cases where the minister of God has resisted the touch of the puri- fying Hand, and either by murmuring at trial or yielding to temptations, has forfeited the blessed effects of the one or the other : any one may do this if he will, and, if he often continue resistance, f2 68 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm. and temptations still remain, it is a sign of God's never-failing mercy and long-suffering, not of his being in a sound and healthy state. It is an awful thing to draw away from God's preparing hand, — to be found fighting against Him. The experience of men's lives has shewn this, the lives of God's people of every day since the beginning, the daily conflicts of His ministers ; the higher their position and calling, the more elevated their post, the more singular their example, the severer and keener is the temptation they are assailed with : the knowledge of many a confessor would, if known, bear striking witness to this truth. It is true many in high places experience no such sorrow, and are conscious of no such conflict ; but it is that they have shrunk from the strife or failed in the ordeal, and their calm condition is but the precursor to the senselessness of moral death. All this would tell us, if we knew every thing, that His minister, though apparently moving in perfect tranquillity, and under an unbroken sun- shine, is assailed by desires to sin so intense as to need hourly prayer to resist them, and continual devotion to strengthen the soul. Sometimes they will take the form of impure sensations so distress- ing as to make his path seem hedged in, with no escape from the labyrinth into which Satan ti'ies to lead him ; desires so urgent that each relation of his ministerial life seems only to evoke some new form of this terrible spectre ; every portion of his vocation seems to call it out more painfully, and Ill] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 69 the necessary personal intercourse he is called to in guiding or warning members of his flock, only brings him into continual and painful collision with the temptation he dreads. It is by that very temp- tation he is preparing for his w^ork here, and his place hereafter ; it is no sign of his being deserted by God or of his being in a state of reprobation. It is rather a sign that God is close at hand, and allowing him to be purified in the furnace of temp- tation, that he may the better aid and sympathize with those who are tempted, and the better test his love and devotion to God. Vanity attacks him, and so mixes with his very nature, that though he prays and toils earnestly against his terrible com- panion, still if he can mark but one act of pure in- tention in the day, it becomes a green and fertile spot on the desert, which is rare and refreshing to his eye. The very acts he tries to do for God become stained with the desires of popularity or advance in life, which mingle with his heart and motive, like polluting waters flowing into the tide of an onward river. He strives to separate the act from the false motive, but he finds it at last so impossible that he yields it in despair, and is tempted to doubt if such a thing as purity of motive exist at all : he finds it as hard to decide this as to separate odours from the air they infect ; since every action of his life becomes the channel, the atmosphere, through whose infected medium his soul receives a poisonous disease. Every step he is called to make to the greater exercise of his calling becomes a new 70 THE INWARD PREPARATION [Serm, sta2:e in the career of ambition ; or Satan is allowed to attack him by way of doubts cast upon his soul. Familiar with holy things, Satan persuades him he but acts them, and that the truth he has to impress on another fails in sincerity through the very process he adopts to enforce it. Himself the consecrator, he is tempted to question the power of consecration ; himself the solver of doubts, he is tempted to imagine himself a special pleader. Standing on the proximate step of the ladder by which his people ascend to God, he imagines there is a mist between him and the holy One, and that the truths he reveals to others are but illusory visions or imaginary ideas. Brought into close connection with holy things, he feels himself as it were behind the scene, and is tempted at every turn to doubt the validity of his convictions and the truth of his teaching. These temptations may take another form ; the love of the world may haunt him at every step ; the enjoyments of social life, the soft kindnesses and reciprocations of society, the attention and homage which as a member of society the minister will often receive, the influence and weight which his words will gain, the power he has to win atten- tion, and the barrier which the reception of holy orders at once overleaps for many, raising them from unimportance and insignificance into a position of weight and influence ; all are to certain classes of minds tcmjjtations of a severe description, and tend to peril highly, if they do not ruin, the «oul they 111.] OP THE MINISTER OF GOD. 71 attack. The difficulty very often of defining the boundary line between right and wrong, between duty and pleasure in these matters, is so great, as to make life all but burdensome to the sensi- tive conscience ; and this temptation may espe- cially exist unknown to the very society among which he moves ; so that men may think him living out of the world, singularly devoted to his work, and holding in its due estimation its frivolous plea- sures, while, really ashamed of himself, he yearns after the most trifling occasions of its enjoyments, and feels unconcerned for the highest calls of his ministry, dull in the most pointed and soul-affect^ ing scenes, while he morbidly regrets some oppor- tunity of w^orldly distinction he has thought it his duty to forego, or some source of enjoyment he has hesitated to accept. Such is the value of sympathy in temptation. Our conversation is essentially to be in heaven ; we are to speak of it, to explain it as a land which we well know ; we must understand the nature of its pathways, and the difiiculties of those who may yet reach the heavenly gate. We must be full of it ourselves, and take of our own fulness to impart to others ; and while we love the world, are rooted to it, are bound to it, and make its fashions the measure of our hfe, we shall be unfit to be the special and commissioned representatives of that kingdom upon earth. Trial uproots that affection, and compels us to fix our life in heaven ; our heart is forced to be there, that 7i» THE INWARD PREPARATION j[Serm. wc may be able to induce others to fix their treasure in heaven too ; our wills are rebellious ; the grace of ordination, and the imposition of holy hands, have not eradicated that nature. But there is a third object of these temptations and trials ; His ministers are hke a city set on a hill, a hght shining in a dark world. They are the living types of the truths of religion ; they are the scenes in which the power of those truths is illus- trated. Men need living types and exemplifications of the truths they believe and hold, and the minis- ter of God exactly occupies this position. Example does more than precept, and a living type than the most strenuous and earnest statements. Facts are needed to make principles tangible ; and the sight of patience, reliance on grace, and resistance of evil, do more than any thing else to induce men to apply them. I say it with reverence, it was for this our Blessed Lord took on Him our nature that He might manifest in Himself the sufferings and obe- dience of the human estate. His ministers in this respect are as He is, the illustration of sacred truths, the exemplification of exalted principles. One object of the Incarnation was to exemplify as well as to teach the truths of rehgion. " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," that He might shew by obedience, dependence, and pa- tience, the will of God, as well as teach it with His word. In this high and holy work wc are joined to Him ; His ministers arc fellow-workers with Him, and if we shrink from bearing the sorrows and dc- III.] OF THE MINISTER OF GOD. 73 iiial of that example, we are unworthy to be His companion in our holy labour. He bore the loss of all things to accomplish His ministry ; the privation of heaven, the sojourn on earth, that we might bear without shrinking a de- nial and sorrow which after all is but our due and inheritance, and to which is annexed a reward transcendent above all conceivable merit. What we teach w^e must manifest ; the sermon must be the text to the life ; we must "shew forth by the life as well as the doctrine ;" we are placed in the sphere of our labour as a centre of attraction, and the object to which the eyes of men around us are to turn to see the meaning and interpretation of the doctrines w^e inculcate. Grace must be shew^n to be all-sufficient by the conquest of our own tem- pers and passions ; the Blessed Spirit must be shewn to be a comforter by the calmness and tranquillity of our lives under chastisement and soitow. Our work is but pai-tly done in public ministration ; it is at home, and in the heart and life the minister of God does his great work, and has his great influ- ence. The public ministration without the exam- ple of the life is as a text in an unknown tongue, without interpretation or translation. Such are the three objects of sorrow to the minister of God ; self-discipline, sympathy, and ex- ample. And to effect these ends sorrow and tempta- tion are specially needful, specially fit. They arc the hammers and chisels by which the stone which is placed before us unhewn is to be prepared for 74 THE INWARD PREP.^ RATION [Serm. its place in the Temple of the Lord : that work is our own while God gives us the opportunities and the instruments. It is true some men have the opportunities but do not use them ; some have neglected the surface of the rough wall, the anvil, and the hammer ; but what of that ; there they lie, witnesses at the last account. If they neglect opportunities it is their matter, and theirs will be the penalty. What were the reprobation of Judas and the rejection of Demas but this ? It is true that many of His ministers often appear to bask in the sunshine of prosperity and worldly success, but who can say how in such cases, it has been a resistance of some intense conviction, or casting aside unused some bitter sorrow. It may cross our mind often, may I receive these chastisements as from God, as really the sign of being a special object of His love '? Is it not sin, the indulgence of my own inclinations and infirmi- ties, w^hich has brought down judicially these re- sults upon me ? Are they not in the common course of providence the effects of necessity of my own yieldings, my own self indulgence '? In many cases this may be true, nay more ! in all cases it must be partially so. But this does not prevent the work from being His, and immediately pointing to the object which He has for His minister on earth. Our sin and our punishments may be over- ruled for good, and the course of His providence is still achieved, though our eyes rest immediately on but the secondary causes. III.] OF THE .MixNISTER OF GOD. 75 This view of our position is at least full of com- fort and encouragement. Our temptations are per- mitted, and are rather signs of our being specially objects of His regard, than aught else. Emphati- cally it is true of us, "whom He loveth He chas- teneth." The stone which is to occupy the highest place in His Temple, is that which needs the greatest preparations and the keenest cutting. Of course that comfort depends simply on the amount of our resistance of evil, and our patient bearing of sorrow. When once temptation becomes a part of self, and the door of the soul is opened to admit it, then our peace must pass awaj'^, and our position becomes as deeply fraught with peril as it was before highly elevated and blessed. And it is in no small degree awful to feel that we may pass that barrier- line without knowing it; that while yesterday we were the objects of the chastisements of a merciful Father, to-morrow we may be past hope, repro- bate, and ruined ; and yet we may be the same in feeling as we were before, and neither to our own inmost gaze, nor to the observation of our nearest friend, may we be in the least degree changed after we have passed that line which really has made all the difference to us of life or death eternal. We should gain an awe and reverence for sorrow ; we should gain a sacred dread of temptation ; there is more in them than we think. They are mes- sengers laden with a mission of high import to our soul : we little know their weight and value, and the work for the long future they may be laden 76 THE liN WARD PREPARATION, &c. [Serm. III. witfi. We are as a painter's canvass and a sculp- tor's marble ; the one reaches perfection by addition, the other by privation; our temptations become the means of the perfections of holiness, our trials the instmments of striking away the last roughness of the world and of the flesh. SERMON TV. THE MINISTER IN A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. ELIJAH. 1 Kings xviii. 30. "And he repaired the altar that was broken down." The act described here is remarkable and signi- ficant. Israel had departed from the true service of God ; all but seven thousand had bowed the knee to Baal. Idolatry, as ever, was now their crying sin, the sin which led them away from God, sullied the purity of their hearts, coriTipted their knowledge, and impaired their powers of under- standing His ways. Still the Church of God ex- isted among them. He continued to speak to them by prophets and by visions, by signs and by tokens ; but their heart was not with Him, their heart was after their gods, the objects of their lust ; the pro- phets spoke in vain, and God shewed tokens which had lost tlieir force. By degrees the light was being quenched, and the voices of warning or teaching sinking to a whisper. The monarch was, by his office, closely joined with the Church of the Jews, and the corru])tion of the one was connected witli the profligacy of the other. Still, God was " long- 78 THE MINISTER IN [Serm. euffering and full of compassion," He would again strive with His people, and Elijah the Tishbite arose to rebuke the king and to rouse the people. The place of meeting was fixed, and on Mount Carmel the matter was to be decided whether they would follow God or Baal. The fiilse prophets raised their altars and invoked their gods in vain. To one prophet of the Lord it was left to call back Israel to the knowledge of God, to restore the purity of His worship, to revive the well-nigh forgotten sacrifice, to kindle the spark which still glimmered, however low, of the manifestation of God's Presence, and to replace His law in the hearts of His people. There was still a small number to whom he could appeal, a few who had lived among and used the ordinances of God, who shewed forth their power, and were witnesses of their existence ; of their existence as a Church pre- serving the worship of Jehovah ; of their power, by being kept amid the surrounding apostacy. Under such circumstances at the top of the mountain, the prophet of the wilderness, the type of the great messenger, raising no new altar, nor calling them to leave their present seemingly false position, built up " the altar of the Lord which was broken down." The sacrifice was offered and was accepted, God answered the effort at reviving His well-nigh forgotten worship by a token, and Israel cried out, " the Lord He is God." The prophets of Baal were slain, Ahab was humbled, and the wor- ship of the Lord restored. IV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. 79 But there arc facts connected with it which are striking. It was in Samaria not in Jerusalem that Ehjah Hved and rebuilt the ruined altar : it was in the Church as she was in Samaria, unaccustomed to the temple worship or the highest ministrations of the priesthood, that the solitary prophet lived and stayed, that the '* seven thousand" were pre- served from idolatry, and that the people were brought back by a divine token to serve God w ith increase of devotion and faith. The sins of the royal houses had long lowered in the horizon, and the people had been accustomed to see the ordi- nances of God long despised. The consequence w^as natural, the true w^orshippers had diminished gradually in number, and only seven thousand were left, and they apparently obscure, and occupying no position of influence. They might have said, " Why w^onder, any how we are but a portion of His Church, without the high privilege of temple sacrifice, of a living priesthood, of a holy cere- monial, of a visible glory, without the power of the temple standing among us, the gracious and life- giving associations of the city of David and the house consecrated by Solomon. Wc have not the Ark or the testimony, the Urim or the glory ; Jeru- salem has these, and by them Judah lives and fears God. We are but Samaria, our people sink away in sin, they forget God, there is scarce aught to remind them, He lives not here. A sinful court and king follow idols, and the pcoj)le follow them. The act of a wicked king, impatient of waiting the 80 THE MINISTER IN [Serm. Lord's time, divided us from the temple ; Jeroboam revolted against Rehoboam, and we were finally severed from the holy Presence. The wicked king set up his altars at Dan and Bethel." True, all of it; still there were " the seven thousand." They were holy, marked, sealed, known of God. Elijah repaired the ruined altar where it stood at the hour of even- ing sacrifice ; he revived the strength there was, he kindled from the spark the flame, and God answered it. They had been severed by the movement of Jeroboam ; he was sinful, yet God had ordered it. He overruled it, in the deep things of His kingdom on earth. It had been fore-ordained and foretold. What seemed the work of Jeroboam was the work of God, and may-be, for the sins of Israel, the low state of her privileges in the Church were judicial. At least Elijah was content to be patient, and do his best at the shattered altar, and his work was blest ; and when shortly after, his spirit broke with seeing the still returning, still living spirit of idol- atry, and he complained, the awful voice met him in the caverns of Horeb, rebuked him for impa- tience, and bid him be working at repairing the ruined state of God's worship in the kingdom where he was. " What doest thou here, Elijah ?" But the point I would dwell on is the repairing of the altar, the restoring to its own and old work the ruined pile of Mount Carmel, the revival of a holy work which had fallen into disuse, but the memorial of which had, by God's mercy, not passed away. There were the ruins, there lay the stones, IV.] A DAY OF SPlTxITUAL DKPRKSSION. 81 and by them Elijah recalled the people to the true worship of God, and revived the teaching of the Church in a day of pervading idolatry. Who can say how far the idolatry of our people has been the means of the Church's decay, the having objects of pursuit apart from God. We live amid a kindred tendency; " covetousness which is idolatry" is per- haps the crying sin of our own people, and may have been the cause of our altar being so broken down, our outward fabric so injured ; objects of pursuit alien from God which are pursued at the exjiense of devotional hours and attendance at holy worship, must tend to draw the heart from Him and the system which leads to Him. Cause be- comes effect, and effect cause, and the ruined altar caused by idolatry remains unrepaired and becomes a cause of increased idolatry. It was Elijah's work, through that altar, restored to its true and ancient work, to recal the people to God ; and it may be ours, through the revival of holy customs and prac- tices with the materials which are left us, though they lie in ruins around us, to stem the tide of idolatry and infidelity, to bring back our people to God, and from the neglected altar of the Church to shew by visible tokens that God is still among us. Nor to do it repiningly. Our work may be hard, our task look impossible, and we may he ready to say, "Let me die, I cannot do the work, I am no better than my fathers." " The remaining privileges and aids are so few, actual opposition so great." Still may this not be impatience. May we not, re- G 82 THE MINISTER IN [Seum. tiring from our work and leaving the stones of the altar (which was given us to keep) in scattered heaps, hear the voice, "What doest thou here? yet are there seven thousand." Nay more, we are to learn our life's work from Elijah ; w^hile we are hid work and he unwearied, w^e are penitents still ; ours is not the time and place for triumph or ease. The prophet of Samaria must dwell in the wilderness ; he w^ent thither in the intervals of his lahour ; he must prepare for his toil in caverns and solitude ; but he must not linger there ; he is to be penitent, though for the people active ; he is to be solitary, yet amid multitudes ; a dweller amid rocks and caves, amid roughness and denial, yet at the same time a re- pairer of the ruined altar amid the thunders of Mount Carmel. We, my brethren, have a double work to do, energetic work, and patient penitence. But beware of the former without the latter. As we said, cause becomes effect, and effect cause. Idolatry caused the ruin, and the despised altar perpetuated idolatry. The smallness of religious privilege and advantage offered in Samaria, may have increased idolatry, and given it a more rapid and easy rise and advance ; and the fact of that scantiness of privilege may have seemed a reason for counting the w^ork of revival hopeless. But it was not so ; Elijah's work of re- vival w^as in Samaria, and on Carmel. He was to improve the state of things, to perfect the means in which he and they were placed. Where they were was providential, how they improved it was their JV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. 83 own. However small the state of privilege, God was with them and worked amongst them. Holy brethren, it is clear that idolatry is stealing the hearts of those committed to our charge ; they neither serve nor know God. Shall I say any thing at variance with the experience of those who have spiritual charges, when I say that the English peo- ple generally are peculiarly ignorant of objective religion, less conscious of the facts of the creed they profess, less removed from a state of mere natural religion, than many from whom we expect far less ; that many a Mahometan or a heathen are more con- scious of the nature, attributes, acts, and require- ments of the being they serve, than our own people are of the ever-blessed and glorious Trinity ; while the heathen has that clear consciousness and reali- zation of his relation to the object of his worship, which will bear him up through the severest self- denial, and lead hiin on to the most entire self- devotion, to our people the method of the holy In- carnation, the Atonement, or the great intercession, are unmeaning words, or sounds without attraction : that, in fact, of late the state of our people has been a discredit to us ? Living in a branch of Christ's holy Catholic Church, boasting great things, and having great blessings, they are far outrun by the worshippers of false and imaginary deities in their progi'ess from a state of mere natural religion. Our own experience must tell us this : our people, if we converse with them, are frequently ignorant of the simplest facts of Christianity, and it has become a G 2 84 THE MINISTER IN [SeiiM. matter of proverbial merriment with many in the higher ranks of society, that they could be defeated by a Sunday school child in the knowledge of Christian truth. Such is our knowledge, and the growth of inlidelity and sin tells us that the result is as we should expect. We are far from God, so were the idolaters of Israel. Their excuse was the smallness of Church privilege ; still, however small, it had formed the characters of seven thousand, and w^as enough, W'hen w^orked upon penitently and patiently, to bring the rest back to God. We have an altar, through and by which our people may be led to God : the Church and her system. God has given us a nature, an inward nature, with certain yearnings, certain leadings, cer- tain tendencies and desires, which are continually seeking for themselves a home, and (till they find that formal system which we may call their end and home) they are ungratified and incomplete. They are ever seeking that end and object, and without it, return like a flood upon themselves, overwhelming the other parts of the moral charac- ter. Inward powers of reverence or shame, a yearn- ing for sympathy, love of the beautiful in form and matter, powers of association, desires after regu- larity, system, and order, burning zeal ; lawful de- sires after some end or object, which misguided becomes ambition ; deep powers of poetry, and ca- pacity of influencing others ; all these and many more are inward powers, graces, tendencies, which require some forms to draw them out, to give them IV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. 85 a home and a vent. An objective system must be found for them or they will find one for them- selves. God made that internal nature ; He planted those inward longings, and he has supplied the ex- ternal system which is their body and home ; and there is but one that He has given, and that one embraces and finds a place for all — the Church. Her system is an external form, receiving every power, giving them an outline infinitely pliable and capable ; here in her external form depressed, there extended, as the inward feelings require the one or the other ; a perfect temple, wdth every form, line, and variation in harmony, forming one whole ; giving space, as it were, (in the formal of her lofty towers,) for an energy which requires expansion ; or receiving along the beautiful lines of her aisles and roof the feelings which love to find their way in holier or more chastened discipline. She is the formal, the system which can alone give a home to the inward nature. She is divinely appointed ; she comes from the same Hand that the subjects she is to receive come from, so she is w^ell suited, care- fully adapted ; and so fitted is she to the w^ork, that the one is unable to exist really or with any approach to perfection, without the other. Without the Church's system, our objective nature will run to waste. There will be an exuberance here, which from want of due check and discipline will run to seed, while elsew^here from want of culture and cherishing it will not bear the fruit of which it is capable. On the otiicr hand, the Church system 86 THE MINISTER IN [Skrm. itself, witliout the impulses, feelings, yearnings of the nature she is formed to encrust and envelope, Avill hecomc hollow, visionary, and shadowy; a body without a soul, a formal without a spiritual. We have seen partial exempliiications of these abuses in the history of many religious movements ; where on the one side, the inclination of the moral energy has been to throw ofl* the restraints of the Church's formal, it has ended in a weak exube- rance, the result of which has been schisms and positive sin, leading men from God rather than to Him, and wholly diverting the tide of feeling from its true and imagined object. While, on the other hand, there have been days wherein the Church's system has been worked, but unhappily, in frag- mentary portions, so that from lack of love and zeal, the natures it was formed for have not been induced to swell it ; and it has ended in present- ing, for the time, the appearance of a repulsive form. When once the system of the Church has been removed, the moral energy has thrown out a form for itself; it cannot exist without one ; if its true shell is not apphed it will encrust itself. Hence the efforts at system in all forms and de- velopment of schism ; they all become systematic. Nay! they all assume a sacramental character some- where, and we shall find ever that in that proportion in which they are real, or have any true efficiency, they have borrowed a portion of the Church's sys- tem, or have created a bad substitute for it. Every IV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. 87 sect of dissent exists, in its outward form, under the guise of some fragment of the system of the Church, and its chief reaUty will be found to be there. Sects have been thus originated by the re- ligious tendencies of men, compelled to create their own home, from the absence of a practical energy in working the Church's system in the days in which they grew up. Hence the fact of the strength and apparent reality of dissent, as well as that of the lower school within the Church, till lately. The Catholic system was not worked, and men have struck out their own ; but it had no positive and real life ; it existed in the negation of the true one ; hence then again the gradual sinking into unreality and obscurity of the lower schools within the Church, and of schismatic bodies. In this day when the Church is again rousing herself to apply her formal to the wants of her children, dissent becomes poli- tical, and evangelicalism a shadow. The Church has this double nature, this sacra- mental character throughout. Her substitutes have fallen into unconscious imitation ; by them preach- ing has been made a sacrament, the experience meet- ing has been the sacramental substitute for confes- sion ; modes of expression and forms of words used by the initiated have been assayed in the sacra- mental nature of absolution ; each deep thing of the Church has been badly copied. Her two sacra- ments, her external system, absolution, confession, orders, her form of building, her dress, her sym- bolism and lioly ty[)es ; her vessels and ceremonial, 88 THH MINISTER IN [Serm. Iier exact order and rigid exactness in minute de- tails ; her arrangement of the holy temple itself, whose symbol and ornament, storied windows, and rounded shafts, the hoary hue of ages on her walls and towers, all these bring out and shew her deeply sacramental nature, her outward forms encrusting and educing an inward being. By these she schools, disciplines, guides, makes use of our deep energies and tendencies ; she applies them to their true ob- ject, she refines, she purifies, she strengthens our capacity for reverence in her ceremonial, our shame and yearning for sympathy in confession, our social desires in her perfect fulness of orders and works, our yearnings for greater devotion in her power of seclusion from worldly ties, our powers of associa- tion in her oft-returning prayers, and her round of sacred seasons. Her power to apply machinery is equal to the gradual development of her nature and wants, and though here and there she may be depressed in her working, the power is in her and is efficient. It is this altar which has, of late, been broken down, and if her ministers would recal her children wandering in socialism, infidelity, schism, and igno- rance, it must be by rebuilding this altar, and bring- ing fully to bear the Church's vast system on the hearts of the people ; so and so only will the work of renovation be accomplished. The application of her system only will arrest the tide of moral deso- lation which is now sweeping all before it; she must sap s()(i;ilisin l>v oflcring intellectual ami IV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION. 89 social sympathy to the vast masses which have grown up ai'ound us in the last fifty years, intelli- gent, thinking, and only infidel, because the divine system did not at once meet and sym])athize with their wants. She must exhaust the spirit of Wes- leyanism by offering sympathy to the moral yearn- ings of her people. We must all do this work in our parishes daily and hourty, with self-devotion and penitence, and the great weapon seems to be personal intercourse with our people. Men are on all sides yearning for that, and it is the substitution for that which has given such strength to her opponents. We must receive our people to that clear and systematic personal intercourse which is recognised in the exhortation in our Communion Service and that of the Visitation of the Sick. It is true the hints are faint, but it is our probation to w^ork on without plain and open guidings. There is a resen^e, over- ruled by God, in all our guidings, which seems to point us to penitence for the sins and neglect of the past which have caused it, and to more severe efforts at personal holiness and exercise of judgment and discretion. Enough for us, it is the order of our Church, however faintly her voice may sound ; enough for us, it has been the practice of the Church in every age, in her purest and earliest day, in her more Catholic commimions. This practice ever had its witness in each age of the Church among us ; and he who was the light of each dark period, the w^arning voice of each age of laxity, worldlincss, and 90 THE MINISTER IN [Sekm. scepticism, has ever been at the same time the spiritual guide and the casuist of his generation. We may account for the absence in our Prayer- Book of a more direct and explicit statement with regard to its use, from the fact of there being no need to order what had been an immemorial cus- tom, what seemed inseparably connected with the spiritual pastorship and guiding voice of the Church. We do not w^ant new directions for what is in full existence and working, and as the practice of spiri- tual guidance has never been without its witness in each period in England since the Reformation, it would seem an over-niceness and needless scrupu- losity to require more explicit direction for its use. The neglect and inactivity of a day of covetousness, the forgctfulness of the higher and holier ends of our life, the shackles of a blind prejudice, and a fear of probable abuses amounting to infatuation, have hindered and stopped its use. But in the ca- tholic world, in the history of the Church, its ab- sence is an exception, an omission. God ordered the scanty guidings of our formularies as our pro- bation and our discipline, and to lead us to a more penitential mind. At least we must use the custom. Men need to have their difficulties grappled with, their tempta- tions known. There is an actual power in the mere fact of opening the mind, of telling the sin, which frets and w^eighs upon the soul. Guilt retained and unnientioned cats away the spiritual life, finds for it.^elf a thousand shifts and subterfuges to evade the IV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEl'llESSION. 91 conviction of sin. The conscience which is stained by it eludes the grasp, by its taking up new forms, all of which would be avoided by its being uttered. Many are in ignorance of what is sin and what not ; they commit it without knowing it to be so, and though they are guilty of but a sin of ignorance, still it works with deadly effect upon them, corrupt- ing, blinding, hardening, and because unconfessed, so unknown, and because unknown, working on the judgment. I would especially instance the sin of impurity, so frequently committed in perfect igno- rance of its nature, and yet so peculiarly deadening and hardening in its effects. So despair, and in consequence recklessness, and unwillingness to exert any energy to resist temptation, is the result of the conviction that a particular temptation is peculiar to the individual, unknown to others, too dark to hope for relief; the knowledge which might be given, of its being common to men, would clear and chase away that cloud. The mere fact of question- ing any one on his moral condition, gives him a clear and definite idea of wdiat that moral condition is, of which till then he had a most indefinite and fleeting notion. The questions of the spiritual ad- viser compel search into self, the result of which is the answer which pressing with a keen edge on the soul, in the act of statement gives a consciousness of the existence of sin. One crying evil of our people is their gross ignorance. To instruct adults will generally be impossible ; but spiritual inter- course will answer this end. It becomes an oppor- 92 THE MINISTER IN [Skrm. tunity of no small power and force in impressing the facts of religion on the mind, by questioning, and making reference to the various articles of the Creed. To attempt the working of this will require much time and labour, much close attention, much exer- cise of judgment, nmch study of human nature, and, above all, a high standard of holiness in self. But, my brethren, it is our work to repair the broken altar. With care and assiduity it would be possible in a parish of one hundred communicants, to see each for one quarter of an hour between each commu- nion, if monthly administered, and this could be done by seeing but three or four daily; it will be very singular how much punctuality, system, and self-devotion in this work may achieve, and give point to the act which will make up for the absence of more lengthened intercourse. Oft communion, daily prayer, as aids to the spiritual life, will follow necessarily on this. The work is great. Awful and tremendous is the account those have to give w^ho have in this day received the holy calling. We have taken on ourselves we know not what. But whether we would have done it now or not, is not the ques- tion ; we did it, though unwittingly. We have the awful hand upon us : a power is in us we dare not shrink from, and we cannot shake off. It has been our choice. You have received the holy caUing, and from that time your every action, thought and word, will be tried and judged with reference to IV.] A DAY OF SPIRITUAL DEPIIESSION. 03 that ; those orders will give the whole tone and complexion to your judgment for eternity. Patient labour, deep penitence, retreat from the circles of the world, is our way of meeting the tre- mendous day ; to work continually in our sphere, to apply, as lar as we can and may, the Church's system, to await God's time for a clearer and more tangible guidance, a more entire unity. But above all, by personal holiness our w^ork must be done, our work must be more at home than abroad, more in our churches than in the cottage or the school. Our life, our race admits of no ease, no tranquillity, no relaxation. It is not merely the ruined altar in public that we must repair, the wilderness must be resorted to. Let us be real ; consider the account we have to give ; consider the depth of the scrutiny which will search the hearts of those to wdiom the Church and her people have been committed in that day. Picture to yourselves how severe the require- ments will be of us for the souls He so loved as to die to save. Imagine the position of any one of us who have lived in security ; have indulged in plea- sure; have thought of self; have acted from self- interest ; have thought of preferment ; have shrunk from personal denial ; have indulged in impurity in our calling ; and thus have lost one soul ; conceive this, and this will soon be to us a living reality. Let us face the truth calmly and truly. Arc we leading this life ? are we in any way resisting His teach in ir or His chastisement ? Let us not be satis- tied with words ; imagine the amount of sin which 94 THE MINISTER &c. [Serm. IV. has accumulated on the souls among us, who have merely adopted catholic views as an intellectual ex- ercise, or as being attractive to the imagination, or as being opposed to a state of things w^e had been educated in, and holding them theoretically or spe- culatively. JMcanwdiile, let us be patient ; there may be a sin in resisting God's providence, when He has placed us in a certain sphere. The sphere is a penitential one, when it accords with our desires after repent- ance. When it involves a denial of high and tan- gible privileges, may we not be resisting His wnll in forcibly placing ourselves out of the providential line, and by seeking another place, and leave the more penitent and humble for the more plain and easy line. We have our sanction ; w^e have our post ; souls are hanging on us ; time is short ; our •Lord is at hand ; penitence is our aim ; let us w^ork on devotedly and calmly. We have enough to do in the work of revival, and the forming in the wilderness the character with which we are to appear in the w^orld, and in the building up in ourselves the pattern of the altar \\c are to raise for our people. SERMON V. THE SELF-DEVOTION OF THE :\IINr^TRY. ARCIIIPPUS. Col. iv. 17. "Take heed to the ministiy wliich thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it." There is an exceeding weight of responsibility, a deep awfulness, about the possession of holy orders, which, perhaps, very few calculated upon when they received them, which many shrink from reahzing, but which will be fully discovered at that moment, which is fast approaching, when it will be beyond our povv^er to rescue another soul, or to pray for another penitent. Men shrink from this responsibility in many ways : some by ignoring it altogether, and dream- ing through life, with the continual effort to forget the gift, which, nevertheless, burns within them for vent and application ; others, by striking out paths consonant with their natural dispositions, making it their aim to leaven the mass of society, rather than to toil with individual consciences, or, in the pur- suit of the refinements of literature and science, 9C THE SELF-DEVOTION [Seum. striving to satisfy themselves that their high and holy vocation is fulfilled. True — severe personal disciphne, the daily and hourly watch over words and actions, the anguish of self-conquest, the living in a sphere above the world's praise or blame, un- wearying readiness to rescue souls, the effort to gain " a right judgment in all things," are, indeed, works painful to the flesh, irksome, passing expression, to the nature of us all. But the question is, holy brethren, and it is a question solemn beyond imagi- nation to us who have received that gift, which of these two modes of fulfiUing our ministry will best satisfy us when we stand before the "great white throne," — the having diluted responsibilities by the effort to reduce our gill to the level of natural taste and personal ease ; or, the having viewed its pos- session as a reason for the keenest severity of life ? Shall we then be satisfied with aught short of the most entire personal self-devotion ? or will He, who is coming " as a refiner's fire to purify the sons of Levi," take aught at our hands short of the highest self-sacrifice of which we are capable ? Holy orders are, as they ever have been, an awful possession. Every preconceived idea of our own would lead us to expect this ; every word of Holy Scripture confirms that preconception. You may })lead, under the vain hope of shunning responsi- bility, that in your case they were received against your will, or before you had had opportunity to count their cost or weigh their consequences. You may be inq)ellcd to exclaim, " Would that I were v.] or THE MIXISTI{Y. 97 again free ! Would that I were as I was !" — That you can never be. You are separated to the minis- try, a devoted and '' peculiar people." And in that awful capacity you must pass the scrutiny of the judgment; you must listen to your final sentence; you must be tested by a standard in comparison of which the judgment of those w^ho have never re- ceived your high commission will be infinitely light. At that bar you must stand, surrounded by souls for whom you are responsible, with the words of your solemn vow still echoing in your ear, maybe a few days, anyhow a few years hence. Perhaps I speak plain truths, and tell an oft-told tale ; but we all need it. We are, probably, none of us sufficiently alive to what will be expected of us ; and already " the night is far spent, the day is at hand," and our probation will be over. In our case, most emphatically, " our life passeth away like a shadow." For us, holy brethren, those words have a significant intention ; " the end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore sober, and w^atcli unto prayer." " Neglect not the gift that is in thee ; take heed to thyself and to the doctrine." And may God grant that these words, however plain, may, though even in the least degree, arouse him who speaks them and those whom he addresses, to weigh the cost of their position ! I spoke of the testimony of our moral sense as fully coinciding with that of Holy Scri[)ture in rais- ing its importance to an awful magnitude. Our work, at present, is with the latter of these, though 08 THK SELF-DKVOTION [Seum. ill passing, I might ask you to imagine what the inhabitant of an unfallen world, who might visit our sphere, would expect to find the life and con- versation of the ambassadors of the Most High God to a ruined and guilty world '? The incalculable loss of original innocence ; the tremendous consequence of the fall ; the love of God ; His willingness to save to the utmost His lost and undeserving chil- dren : Himself manifest in the flesh ; His marvel- lous Incarnation ; His sojourn of suffering on earth, His painful crucifixion ; His continued and unwea- rying calls to His people to return ; the bliss of the redeemed ; the despair of the lost ; the wreck of sin ; all would be considerations which would lead such a visitant to expect to find a life of, how ex- alted a self-sacrifice ! in those whom He had com- missioned to go forth as partners with Himself in the work of reconciliation. But, as I said, our immediate object is, first, to trace from the letter of Scripture the responsibility of our ministry. God's will, with regard to man, may be certainly gathered, amongst other notices, from what He has ever said or done with regard to persons in similar positions. And, beyond all controversy, co-exten- sive with the sojourn of His Church on earth, has been a ministry bearing the impress of His seal, on wliicli has been written, in vivid and indelible cha- racters, deep self-devotion, entire self-sacrifice, the counting all human ties and sympathies as nothing, the painful effort to gain a right judgment in all v.] OF Tin: MINISTRY. 99 things, and the bearing out in tlie life and act the doctrines taught by the mouth. Samuel, devoted to his future vocation from his earhest childhood — separated from his home and the soft influences of a mother's love — educated amid the deep silence of the temple of the Lord — in manhood ever sent on missions of peril and hazard — while young accustomed to the awful visi- tations of the Most High in the midnight stillness of his chamber — himself counting his life valueless — scarce mentioned in connection with domestic ties, though we know he had them — stern and severe, with an eye singly fixed on Heaven, and the will of God, — gives us a solemn subject for reflection as to wdiat God must esteem that ministry to be which required such a childhood, so stern a preparation. We have not had that training ; but, nevertheless, He may expect us to study in Samuel's case the in- dications of His w ill, and may intend that we should make up for the absence of that education by a more elevated devotion in after-life. Surely, at least, w^ith such an example before us, we dare not exhaust our sacred powers amid a more self-indul- gent world than has ever paralyzed the energies of the Church since the day of Pentecost. Or contemplate the life of the I^'ophet Elijah as the type of the minister of God. His abnegation of all bodily comfort — his little anxiety for the coming day, dependent on the food of the hour — his bold cUid reckless rebuke of those who, shining in the glory of earthly splendour and power, yet H 2 100 THE SKLF-UEVOTION [Serm. iiiiii-ht have coveted his favour — the rebuke with which his sHghtest expression of restlessness under a Hfe so difficult was met, — paints to us in vivid portraiture a life in the minister of God, so far re- moved from personal ease, and elevated above any- excused infirmity, as to make us tremble. Is this, indeed, the type of our ministry ? And yet I know not why not. Are not our days evil too ? Do not the men of our time need a severe example, an exalted standard ? Is not ours all but a special call — a ministry cast in a peculiar hour? When visible unity is rent asunder — when " the altar of the Lord is broken down" — when there are scarce " seven thousand" in our Israel who do not "bow the knee" to some form of idol-worship or self-seek- ing ? The crimes of our day may not be so mani- fest, our idolatry not so definite ; still the men of our generation as much need the voice from the wilderness, and the living form of self-denial in the city. Ezekiel's life reads to us a lesson of no ordinary import. The very ties of his life were created for the express purpose of being rent asunder, in order that he might shew to the people of God by his sufferings the meaning of his warnings ; his afflic- tions became the interpreters of his words, his per- sonal bereavements the parallel comment on his discourses. " In the morning his wife died." And he was forbid to weep. No rending of the heart's affections — no human suffering, however keen — no tearing up by the roots of family ties, however close. v.] OF THE MINISTRY. 101 were for one moment to enervate the vigour and force of his living example. The expression of sorrow would have melted away the severe outline of that perfect form of resignation which he was to exhibit. No ! by life and by death the minister of God is commissioned to be a type to His people of self-devotion and single-mindedness. Surely, holy brethren, the prophet of the captivity speaks, in words of no light import to us, of the necessity of our living for our people, and shewing, by patient sufferings and denials, the truth, the reality, the application, of what we daily read and hourly teach ! And so it was with all the prophets, — whether shewn by the sorrows and banishments of Jeremiah, the fastings and conflicts of Daniel, or the severe chastisements of Jonah for flinching from the work of his vocation ; it is but one lesson that is taught along the history of that Church, which is a type and shadow of the Christian. And remember, if, in any respect, the requirements of that dispensa- tion differ from those of our own, it is that they are the shadows of a form, copies of an original, out- lines of an inward being ; ours is the higher, the more exalted condition. Or, if you will — pass on the New Testament. He who stood midway between the two dispensa- tions offers us no lighter rule for the life of God's minister. His severe childhood, his stern prepara- tion, his wild fare, his utter seclusion, his solitary death, — all thrill through us, and we pass on, say- 102 THE SELF-DEVOTION [Sf.rm. ing, his uas a special call — his case was no type of ours. But where will you rest your feet? The Apostles forsook all. Christ was their life, the pillowless desert their resting-place. His lot of reproach was theirs too. The awful end of Judas ; his judicial condition, the consequence of vast opportunities outweighed by the indulgence of sinful desire ; his bitter, un- repenting remorse; his death; his going "to his own place;" — all, though so shortly told, announce to us, with a voice at which we shudder, the seve- rity of God towards him who, with holy orders resting on his head, shall dare to indulge in worldly thoughts or covetous desires. But to pass onwards still. St. Paul does not lower in his Epistles the standard we have hitherto discovered. " In all things approving yourselves the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflic- tions, in necessities, in distresses ; in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings: by purcness, by knowledge, by long- suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left ; by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report ; as deceivers, and yet true ; as unknown, and yet well known ; as dying, and behold we live ; as chastened, and not killed ; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." Here is no lower standard v.] OF THE MINISTRY. 103 raised. The Epistles do not elevate less liiglily the standard of tlie Ministry. Pass on to the carher days of the Church's his- tory. The same high requirements, the same severe devotion, is found as the stream of time runs on ; the waters do not become sweeter, nor more in accordance with our natural taste : they arc still the same. In the cavern, at the stake, beneath the axe or the instrument of torture; through cruel aspersion, and dark, false witness ; amid severance from human ties and bodily ease ; the minister of Christ learnt that his ministry is a type of theirs, and that those who are called to holy orders are called to suffering too. And surely even the most casual reader of the fathers of the Church, from St, Clement to St. Bernard, must be struck with the awfully literal interpretations which they applied to every word of our Blessed Lord's teaching, which had any reference to self-abnegation and a spirit of mourning. The sandy desert, the hermit's cell, the cloister, became by degrees the outward limits to that life which was struck out by those who took holy words as they found them. We, now-a-days, are in the habit of denouncing that as fanciful in which they saw the most intense reality. The two modes of interpretation are antagonistic to each other. The question is^ which has on its face the probability of truth, — the consentient witness of the first eleven hundred years, or the mode adopted bv an age whose every cflbrt is to soften down high requirements and to lie rid ol" rcsliainf ? 104 THE SELF-DEVOTION [Serm. Holy brethren, such is not our ministry, — such is not our life. Secularized, contaminated with the world's spirit, ^Ye have sweetened the bitter waters with streams not drawn from the well of life. In point of unity, severed and divided ; yielding to sectarianism and religious party ; lulled by the soft blandishments of society in all phases of rehgious opinion ; seeking the praise and favour of the rich and noble, whether catholic-minded or the contrary, as the case may be : we are, too many of us, di- luted, enervated, compromised, by the w^orld we too much live in, and the fashion of the day we too much yield to. Oh let us stop one moment and consider, He is at hand, and He w^ill "purify the sons of Levi." He will deal with us as w ith none others ; He will expect of us what He will expect of no one else. You may say, Why so high a requirement ? Why so severe a scrutiny for us above others ? Think — perhaps the place hereafter of His minister may be far above that of those who have no such outward calling ; and shall the exalted thrones of eternity be w^on by scarce forty years, at longest, of a grudged and resisted denial ? But it might be well to consider some of our immediate duties, and what may be some of our faults. Among the failures to which the minister of God may be tempted, I would suggest, first, dis- tinct worldliness of mind. Seeking the society of the great, being flattered by the attentions of the noble, and courting the favour of the rich, are v.] or THE MINISTRY. 105 as distinctly the tendency, and more than ten- dency, of many of those whose expressed creed in- volves the highest standard of self-abnegation, as it was of men of a baser standard and a lower pro- fession. The love of the good word of the great is not kept out by the shield of a catholic tone of mind — the world catches its victims under all guises and forms ; and the court of the religious noble is as much the snare of the world as the gayer scenes of more open vice. Take care of the world, in whatever school or shade of religious opinion. And remember, the world is not only confined to the great. The approving eye of our brethren, the love of singularity, the adoption of opinions for the sake of notoriety, or of giving vent to a peculiar bent and talent, as much are parts of the fascina- tion of the world as the favouring eye of aristocracy and royalty. Oh, guard yourselves, holy brethren, against this snare. What will He say when He comes, if He shall find us neglecting the souls of I^erishing millions, who know nothing of his Name and of His atonement, while we are spending hour after hour amid the flatteries of the great, or in eliciting admiration for i)eculiarities, eccentricities, and originality of conception ? Another tendency of the clergy is to a hollow eestheticism. Beautiful and too long forgotten has been the Church's ceremonial ; pregnant with deep and hallowed meanings, and conveying life through the ministration of outward forms, no doubt are all her external rites, — the symbolism of her architec- 106 THE SELF-DEVOTION [Si:um. ture, the purity of her vestments, and the severity of her music ; still they are but a chrysalis, in which the immortal soul is preparing to spread its wings into eternal day. We must not spend our time there. We have a higher work, a holier vocation far — to rescue souls for wiiom Jesus was incarnate ; to guide to Him men who scarcely know that He died and lives again ; to comfort the penitent ; to heal the broken-hearted ; to sympathize with the unhappy ; in one word, to bring souls to Christ is our great work, — all else is, in comparison, nothing. Our most perfect churches, our most symbolized architecture, our most elaborate choirs, our purest and most heavenly music, without an intense effort to save souls, are but as a sepulchre which was framed to hold Christ; but "Behold, He is not here: why seek ye the living among the dead?" While those churches are filled with really earnest souls, while that music becomes the wing which bears up the cry of the penitent or the peaceful hymn of the redeemed, while those symbols speak of faith and holiness to a thirsting spirit, they are the sepulchres in which Christ retires from the world with His elect — tombs enshrining God : but the moment they contain no burning heart within them, no enquiring penitents, no earnest souls, then, at the door of your church, at the threshold of your choir, the angel of God will meet you with stern rebuke — " Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here." No! go first and seek souls, tlicMi raise your church and perfect your cere- v.] OF THE MINISTRY. lOT monial ; but, till then, they are empty sepulchres without Christ, because without the souls of His poor. Reverse the order, and begin with the hearts of your people ; then let your church be beautiful, because so many grateful hearts are burning for an adequate place wherein to return God thanks for His redeeming love ; then let your music be beautiful, because so many voices are waiting for a chant in which they may blend to ascend to the throne of the Lamb. Let the services of your holy hours, the ministrations of your holy seasons, be struck out by the inward need of longing souls, which impels them and requires them ; then they will become bodies to quickened spirits, tombs of blessed ones waiting in this lower earth for their happy home, sepulchres of Christ, wherein His re- deemed abide with Him in still retirement ; but without this, ceremonial is the worst of mockery, acstheticism the most empty of unrealities. Holy brethren, bring souls to Christ by solemn warning, by inducing them to unburden to you their secret anguish, by spiritual guidance, by earnest entreaty, by untiring watchfulness, by consistent example ; then you will "fulfil the work of your ministry." I do not say this to depreciate sestheticism in itself, still less in forgetfulncss for one moment of the awful presence which ever abides within holy walls, but surely is there not in this day a tendency to neglect the work of the soul, while we are engrossed in arranging its external furniture ? We would not build houses for corpses, nor lay out gardens for 108 THE SELF-DEVOTION [Seum. withered leaves. You know it is a fact that, in this land, souls in thousands are perishing for lack of knowledge ; that in the crowded alleys and the dark garrets of our mighty cities, in the densely-crowded rooms of our gigantic factories, in many a retired village and secluded shore, there are people who bear the name of Christ, who lie in a darkness more dense than that of the heathen who know not God. Another fault amongst us seems to be, a ten- dency to seek bodily and personal ease, aided by the view that society is to be leavened, rather than that the individual is to be guided. Some think that the minister of God is in his truest position when he simply influences by his example, to the exclusion of the stern, untiring work of individual and personal ministration ; that we are to be sought for before we seek, and to be invited before we in- vite : all these opinions, I say, tend to favour that love of ease and dread of exertion so many are yielding to. The fear of having daily service, lest w^e be tied, — the alarm at beginning close, syste- matic work, lest we become too closely rivetted to the sphere of our vocation, are retarding in many cases the energy and devotion of the ministry. We may not argue thus ; our whole life is Christ's : " we are not our own, we are bought with a price." By us, life is to be unvalued, death unheeded, ease and health of no consideration, so as only we can glorify Him, and bring to His judgment-seat souls conmiittcd to our keeping. Another fiiult amongst us is want of unity. AVe v.] OF THE MINISTRY. 109 split into parties, wc have a tendency to pavtizan- ship, while we profess to denounce sectavianisin. We are too much sometimes inclined to support a faction whose distinctive existence depends on some doubtful formula of truth, and to sacrifice reality and sincerity. We do not enough value and co- operate with earnestness. We shrink more from fellowship with one who differs in an outward, and perhaps uncertain mode of statement, than we do from sympathy with those who, while they accord with us in such expression, are deficient in love. The cant of religious phraseology, the exclusiveness of arbitrary boundary-lines, limitations that lack authority, are as much the habit of one party in the Church as they are of the other. Men of catholic mind, alike with those who have not been educated to appreciate catholicity, tend towards this in- firmity ! Surely to the peacemaker has been as- signed a high position amongst the eight beati- tudes. Our spirit should be rather that of love than intolerance. Our eyes should be keener to detect the love of God in the heart, than a flaw in the out- ward expression. If we love Christ above all things, and desire to be "hid in Him," we should oftener find common ground with each other than we do. Love of self generates love of party ; for the opi- nions and the success of our party reflect, as from a mirror, ourselves. We are bound in this day to remember, that there are causes for the non-appre- ciation of catholic doctrine and ecclesiastical disci- pline which should make us tolerant. The sup- no THE SELF-DEVOTION [Sr.iiM. pression of the Church's authoritative voice in the younger days of those whose hairs are now grey in the love and service of God, may enough account for the error of their ohjective creed, — they would have valued, if they had had, our opportunities. We cannot, we dare not, judge them hy the same rigid standard with which they would have been judged, in a day when the slightest deviation from obedience to the Church's spirit was more palpably a sin. To the true servant of Christ there must be a greater attraction in one who "hungers and thirsts after righteousness," although somewhat mistaken through ignorance, than there is in one who, while true to an external system, is deficient in love. Of course there are occasions where the extension of such tolerance would be a sin ; but the check that we require seems to be in the other direction. Another fault amongst us is, an over-distance in manner and feeling observed towards our flock. Our object should be to offer sympathy, to excite confidence, to induce free communication, to banish restraint. Acquaintance with the hearts of our people and close union with their affections, though even if it be so at the expense of some of the ex- ternal dignity of our order, is our aim ; love is better than deference, confidence a higher attain- ment than expressed respect : though, rely on it, none of these results will be lost, but rather en- hanced, by the adoption of a less restrained in- tercourse. v.] OF TIIH MlN'iSTRY. Ill Again, we are not systematic. Every snbject- matter in life is made the object of systematic arrangement and scientific rule, while the highest of all subject-matters, the soul and conscience of man, which are committed to our ministration, are left to a management which would be despised by the meanest sciolist in the world's phenomena. And yet what requires so laborious an investiga- tion, so delicate a touch, so anxious a vigilance, as the formation of the saint ? It is an awful thought, holy brethren, that in the parishes committed to our trust are many baptized saints whom He has committed to our care, and ours alone, to prepare for their place around His throne. The private and public life of the parish priest, the regulation of his family, the economy of his arrangements, the moderation of his living, the systematic nature of his ministrations, will form a considerable part of " the fulfilment of his minis- try," w^hile the absence of these will impair its efiect and much injure its powers. On the former of these heads, the clergyman's private life, we might dwell at leng-th. But in brief, inasmuch as it is one of the points in which there is too much tendency amongst us to deviate from the high line of self-devotion, I will say a word. It must strike any unprejudiced mind, that there is a wide and appalling difference between the arrangements of time adopted by the clergy and that fallen into by every profession and trade of English society. In the latter, we find men of talent, earnestness, per- 112 THE SELF-DEVOTION [Serm. severance, and influence, so ardently employed in the pursuit of professional distinction or the acqui- sition of wealth, that health is sacrificed without compunction, society given up, the rules of domes- tic life without hesitation suspended, the arrange- ments of the household, the habits of life formed by each of its members, wholly framed so as best to attain the object in view. Who blames the phy- sician who attends the summons of his patient throughout the usually festive hours of the even- ing, or those devoted to repose at night ? Who expects to find the barrister in the full pursuit of his professional career at the usual gatherings of evening social life? His absence is expected, his devotion admired, his energy held up as an ex- ample. What in the history of society is more punctilious and exact than the rule of military dis- cipline ? Where is the soldier who does not forego every call of the world for the far higher ones of his professional life ? To a late hour, in city and in village, the lights burn which betoken the per- severing labour of the workman, who, to amass a little heap of gold, is calmly and patiently sai)})ing the foundations of life and health. But, alas ! turn away from these to that (so-called) profession whose object is the salvation of immortal souls, the glo- rifying a redeeming God — whose ranks are called out to fight with legions of ever-active spirits — and what do we find their position in society ? Ex- pected, as a matter of course, because they are tied by no positive obligation, to form one of every v.] OF THE MINISTRY. 113 party gathered for an evening's amusement — blamed, as fastidious and enthusiastic, if they plead their ministerial calls as excuses for their absence — looked upon as the only class of men in society who are able to pay and return the common visits of daily courtesy — society seems to think that the clergyman's day of duty ends with the close of afternoon, and that his highest vocation is to be the example of respectability and domestic comfort to his neighbourhood. Holy brethren, what a fear- ful contrast is here ! On the one side, where the object, at the highest, is the praise of man, ambi- tion, wealth — men are devoting every thing. On the other, where the objects are the salvation of souls for whom Christ left heaven, eternal happi- ness, and the rescuing immortal beings from never- ending agony, we are sacrificing next to nothing, when we compare the average of ministerial devo- tion with that of the professional world. The im- pression society has received of the easiness of our life has been given by ourselves. It tests us by a standard we have raised. Have zve no work in the evening ? Are there not cases of spiritual want, as pressing on our attention as those of temporal malady are on the physician ? Shall he hear mid- night strike in the pursuit of his vocation, and we consider ours fulfilled at six o'clock ? Can we afford to be often dining out ? Are there no masses of so- ciety in our parishes, who can only be reached after the hours of return from labour, and who, if we do not meet them then, are never giappled with at all ? I 114 THE SELF-DEVOTION [Serm. Among the tens of thousands that thread the evening streets of London, Manchester, or Bir- mingham, are there no souls who are perishing for lack of knowledge, and whose eternal destiny is mysteriously bound up with him to whose spiritual charge they are given? Can we be "fulfilling our ministry," while the lights gleam till midnight from the theatre, the gin-palace, and the gambling-house, and our churches alone are dark, and ourselves threading the mazes of easy society ? Can this be right? " Shall we stand when He appeareth?" I simply and earnestly ask you, will He bear to find, that "the children of this world" have been, in- deed, " wiser than the children of light?" — that we have allowed every earthly object to be pursued with an energy greater than what we are using for ours ? Remember that He expects tenfold more of •us than of any of His creatures. To us has been given His high commission, and He is One who will reckon with us "to the utmost farthing." I see no available excuse; you may plead the fashion of society, the opinion of the world ; but you have formed the one and yielded to the other. No. Our work is not finished when the common routine of visiting schools, attending vestries, sitting at com- mittees, and fulfilling an afternoon service, are over. The guiding and pleading with souls are works which never cease till time shall be no more. We are to be untiring as He was untiring — crucified as He was crucified — patient as He was patient — earnest as He was earnest. We must reduce our v.] OF THE ^rINISTRy. 11,5 life to system, within the Hmits of which the hours and calls of the world cannot he included. We are, proverbially, the least systematic of active men, and yet our immense responsibility requires us to be most so. You may say to all this, how high and severe are the calls of our life — how^ beyond human strength — how appalling to contemplate ! All most true : but, in the words of St. Paul, when speaking of that same ministry, "Who is sufficient for these things?" wnth all our responsibility, we have the special grace of God, the special presence o^ Christ ; and while the need of our devotion is so imperative, remember it is, at the longest, for not more than some forty years longer for the youngest of us — not a quarter of that for many of us — and then our de- nials and painful sacrifice will pass aw^ay into a state of eternal rest ; and while our requirements arc so much greater than those of others, our reward in heaven will be so much higher. "When the chief Shepherd shall appear, we shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away:" that is enough for us. Blessed shall have been this day, and this occasion, if it shall have kindled in the hearts of any one of us the determination "to fulfil our ministry" with a greater devotion. May the drops, by God's blessed help, gathered up for our nourish- ment here, to strengthen our personal energies, return as a refreshing dew on the soil from which we drew them ! SERMON VI. PURITY OF LIFE. St. Matt, v. 8. " Blessed arc tlic pure in licart : for they shall sec God." The return of St. Bartholomew's day suggests its own holy lessons, and many of them are peculiarly and significantly suited to the young. The anni- versary of holy days and seasons is full of power to the soul of him who is waiting for the kingdom of God, and the same lesson repeated yearly will not be found fruitless to the spirit which pants for heaven. For such, "the saying the same things is not grievous." We live surrounded by the same temptations, the same world, the same infirmities, one year with another. The temper of each man's soul is much the same at one period as at another, it diflfcrs but in the increased or lessened intensity of temptation and desire ; the same disposition evolves for itself similar difficulties, similar exter- nal circumstances, similar remedies ; and the re- turn of holy days, with their warning voice, finds us much where it left us, travelling much the same path : though, God grant, somewhat further in ad- 118 ' PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. vance towards the heavenly goal. Such days are the milc-stoncs of our sph'itual journey, and they mark our onward progress with fast decreasing num- bers ; each year we are solemnly reminded that our periods are rapidly decreasing before as they swell behind. Wc shall soon be at the last ; and ere long the mile-stone of our journey will tell us of but one period more between ourselves and the end. They are the timepieces of life ; and each hour strikes somewhat nearer midnight, telling us in thrilling tones that we are approaching the last stroke : " the night Cometh when no man can work." I know that on the ear of thousands these holy seasons die away without a passing effect : I know that to many the solemn clock of life strikes on the heedless ear of moral death. Let it not be so with us ; we know we have a work to do ; may we not rest till it is completed ! St. Bartholomew's day speaks each year a lesson to the young. The guilelessness of the Israelite indeed ; his simplicity of mind, his earnest and trusting love, his freedom from second motives, his singular singleness of purpose, suggests to us those lessons of purity and innocence so especially be- longing to the young. Of the holy Apostle himself we are told but little; his character is suggestive, rather than his hfe insti-uctive ; yet the few words said are full of force. He is otherwise called Nathanael, and was sitting under the fig-tree wlien St. Philip called him : no doubt a disciple of St. John the Baptist, and one VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 119 who studied the prophecies concerning Cln-ist, he was simply waiting for the Messiah. "Philip findeth Nathanacl, and saith unto him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Narareth? Philip saith unto him. Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Be- hold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile ! Nathanael saith unto Him, Whence knowest Thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto Him, Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God : Thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fi2:-tree, believest thou ? thou shalt see greater things than these. And He saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Such is all W3 hear of him whose lesson we would learn particularly to-day, and who from the commenda- tion of our Blessed Lord has become the example of guilclcssness to His Church. Each holy day has its own lesson, and each saint whom the Church commemorates speaks to some class of character among us. The Church's year is a great picture gallery, along which is liung up in perfect order, the saintly portraiture ; each may 120 PURITY or LIFE. [SekM. find his model there. There is no lack of those whose natural lineaments are ours. The Church's holy seasons are mirrors which reflect over and over again the history of human character. St. Peter speaks to the w^arm-hearted and impetuous, and ofi:ers a word of consolation to the penitent ; St. John speaks to the reserved and sterner cha- racter ; the man of business and worldly occupa- tion finds his lesson in St. Matthew at the receipt of custom ; the young and bold in the early suffer- ing of the first martyr ; and the man of learning, and gifted with intellectual powers, in the detail and acts of the life of St. Paul. Each circumstance and intention of life, each shade of character, has its own difficulties, its own temptations, its own doubts, and its own remedies ; and Holy Scripture is the record of God's will concerning the direction of man in the way to heaven. In this light, if this were all, saints' days are full of power, and their lessons rife with importance. With this view let us dwell on the guileless cha- racter of St. Bartholomew. The idea suggested by guilelessness is that of singleness of mind, oneness of end and purpose ; having one object in view, the service of God without distraction ; the having no other aim, no other point in existence, the "being knit to God." Such seems to be purity of mind when applied to religion, and such the character suggested by St. Bartholomew. Now to define more exactly the meaning of this temper we may npj)roach it by its contraries, and they seem chiefly VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 121 to be these two, sensuality and love of men's opi- nion ; these are specially the enemies of purity of intention, and more than any other divide the affec- tions and aim of the heart ; there is something in them pecuharly hostile to the love of God. The "sight of God" is the reward of the pure; the praise of men is mentioned as a direct hindrance to the praise of God. " Fornicators and unclean per- sons," are mentioned always first among those who cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, and "the friend of the world" is emphatically styled " the enemy of God." Hence, then, the pecuhar lessons of St. Bartholomew's day for the young ; to them the temptation to impurity and vanity is the tissue- thread of life ; to them purity and guilelessness of heart, as embodying the contradictory of these two, are specially difficult of attainment ; to many among them, to aim at a life of purity is the most arduous of accomplishments. 1. Now before I enter on the minuter examina- tion of the duty so specially suggested to you to- day, I would first remind you of its high commen- dation and reward. " Behold an Israelite indeed," said our Blessed Lord, " in whom is no guile ;" high and glorious witness : who of you would not count as of priceless value in the dreadful day such testimony borne by Him to your life and boyhood ! Its exceeding value is shewn by our Saviour, in the reward annexed to it among the beatitudes. There " the seeing God" is its result. The sight of God is of all things the most glorious, tlie most 122 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. transccnclant that man can desire ; it is that which kings and prophets desired and had not ; it is that which was the great point in the hfe of Abraham, the vision of God, and the conversation with Him : the sight of God cheered Jacob in his solitary exile ; it was this that entranced Ezekiel and became the one feature of his life, his writings, his after charac- ter; it was his tmiiing-point of life. The vision of God on the river Chebar was that which absorbed Daniel, and became the image of life to the man who was " greatly beloved ;" to see God was the enjoyment of Adam in his innocency, and the aim of the human race when fallen. St. Paul's point of life was the vision of the third heaven, and St. Philip yearned with intense desire to see the Father; "shew us the Father and it sufRceth us !" In our early childhood the most glorious thoughts •which rehgion gave the mind was the hope of the sight of God, and the loss of the simplicity of child- hood is, among other reasons, chiefly a sorrow be- cause with it we have lost those vivid visions we seemed to have of God and heaven. And even now there are seasons of unaccountable peace, of confidence, and indifference about life ; of holy joy in moments when the soul does seem to realize a present God in a manner which only can be fully expressed by the significant words, "seeing God." Sometimes in sore trial and bereavement, when the world is valueless ; sometimes in hours of solitude and meditation ; sometimes in the passing scenes of daily life there are foretastes of that fclicitv which VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 123 is promised to the i)ure in heart ; the sight of the Eternal. Such is the high reward of purity ; and if such be the blessing which He Himself has em- phatically annexed to it, how earnestly we should strive after it ! 2. The lesson is one as I have said peculiarly for the young ; for it is at your age that the tempta- tions to the sin of impurity are greatest, the strug- gle against it most painful, and the victory when gained most glorious. It seems plain from Holy Scripture that one mystery connected with our moral and spiritual state, is that there are certain periods, certain acts, and opportunities, which become the turning points of our probation, the crisis of our moral state, the hinge on wdiich life and death hang. If these golden moments are lost, they cannot be recovered ; in God's great mercy there may be more than one, nay, there may be many appointed to each one of us in our onward career. But no words can describe, no thought calculate, the value of each of them for ever. It is nothing that they are but a moment and their consequence eternal ; it is nothing that in actual importance they are but a feather's weight compared with their result. The disproportion between the cause and the event may be vast, as between a drop of dew and the waters that girdle the earth ; still so it is : the act of an hour may be the hinge of eternity ; the resistance for a moment may be the gate to heaven, the yielding of ten minutes may be the seal of everlasting despair. 124 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. AVhy it is, is not for us to know ; it is hidden in His inscrutable ways, whose acts transcend our ken as the thought of the human brow surpasses the understanding of the fly which moves across it. Enough — it is His will who with equal mystery loved us while yet sinners, and offered up His life on the cross. The fact of eternity in any way rest- ing on time, and heaven on our probation, is equally marvellous and amazing. The crisis of life may hang on one act, it may on more ; there are certain periods when it specially occurs, and the age of fifteen, usually that of first Communion and Confir- mation, is perhaps of all others the most important. The reasons are manifold, but I would first illustrate the fact from Holy Scripture. You will find there that in the case of nearly each one of God's most eminent saints, the turning-point of life was some • event which took place either about the age I men- tion, or, circumstances being considered, analogous to it ; up to that point their life was unmarked and without distinct feature, at that age some event occurred which became the test, on which the whole of their after character seemed to hinge, and from it to receive its tone and colour. I will illustrate this in Isaac : as a boy his charac- ter is unmarked, and if any notice is made of him, it rather tends to create an impression of faults than aught else ; his dispute with Ishmael and kindred infirmities bring to the mind the idea of human weakness more than that of saintlincss of character, liut (iod was intending him for the noble army of VI.] PURITY OF LIFK. 125 His saints, and the crisis of his life was to be in his youth. That crisis was the projected sacrifice ; he was led by his father to be offered as a sacrifice to the Lord ; he bore it patiently, obediently, un- complainingly ; he became in act as in manner the type of Him who afterwards bore the w^ood to His sacrifice. That trial, that patient bearing, that act of his life, became his turning-point, his crisis ; from that moment Isaac became a marked and a saintly character. The trial came in youth ; for then the mind is formed; the disposition receives its tendency and confirmation, the will receives its bent. It was the critical period of life, and that sacrifice the critical act. From that moment his life became a settled one ; that his faith survived the test con- vinced him of his position with regard to God ; his act reacted on himself; his obedience was rewarded with the power to obey, and discipline aided the life of discipline. He had made his choice, he had taken his position, and the passions, the feelings, the opening knowledge and powders of youth, w^ere at once coiled round the iron bar of a sanctified will for ever turned to God. But his moment of decision was in that age which, in comparison of his case with yours, bears relation to your present life, the passage from childhood into youth, from early into later boyhood. 3. The same was emphatically true of Joseph, the youngest and favourite child of Jacob ; he became the object of envy, and when yet a youth was taken from his father's home, to be an exile in a foreign 126 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. land. But how wonderfully God was preparing a saint for gloiy; when the young Jewish boy, a bound captive on the camel of the merchants, gazed for the last time on his home among the hills of Judeea, he little knew that what seemed but the dark cloud which had floated across the sunshine of his youth, was in reality the veil behind which his character was beginning to be formed, confirmed, and strengthened. He was to prepare to be the saint of God in an eminent degree, and that preparation must be made by the trials of boyhood. In Egypt he was exposed to the keenest and most perilous of youthful temp- tations, and he resisted ; that temptation was to im- purity, it met him at that age when the character was receiving its mould, and as he met and treated those trials and temptations, would be the form his soul would receive for ever ; it was his crisis of life, and on his conduct, in and through it, hung the long future, the pilgi'image of earth, and the triumph of eternity. A few months, a few days, aye ! the temp- tation of an hour, may have decided everlastingly the position of Joseph in God's great kingdom. A hand held the balance in which he was placed, which he did not see ; the slightest inclination on either side was to affect his soul throughout countless ages ; and the son of Jacob, by the decision of half an hour, determined whether he should be unknown in God's kingdom, or whether he should be the type of Christ, the saint of God, and a pillar and ex- ample of the Church of the elder world. Who can VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 127 say how some severe temptation may have equally momentously decided the destiny of some of those before me ! Who can tell how God may have or- dered that the passing through a scene, short com- pared with eternity, as a drop to the ocean, may have decided, or may yet decide, your position in the judgment of the gi'eat day ! David is another instance of the same kind ; de- signed and chosen to be the saint of God " before the foundation of the world," he was early to begin his severe probation : and the first thing we read of him is, that he was called forth to a position of peril and trial at that very period of life I have been speaking of. He went down from the wilderness and the village of Bethlehem to see his brother in the battle, and his act became the crisis of his life. He met the giant of Gath, and trusting to the ever- lasting Arm, he slew him. It was an act of faith and dependence, an act of heroism and courage above manhood ; it needed a reliance on grace in no small measure : and that act was the hinge of his life; from that time forward he became a marked and disciplined saint, beset with difficulties which it had prepared him for, and surrounded with temptations. But he had no hesitation as to his course ; that action had determined it for ever ; and to his own eye as well as that of the world, his posi- tion had become defined and clear. " By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter ; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people 128 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season ; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt : for he had re- spect unto the recompence of the reward." In the same way, many of the most eminent saints have heen specially tried at the same period of life, and Holy Scripture has recorded their acts as if to remind us of the importance attached to the temptations of youth. Samuel and St. John the Baptist are spoken of with reference to some decision then made, some severity then endured. The lesson to you is clear: unobserved by the world, the acts and temptations of your path may be invested with an importance which angels wit- ness, and which the judgment will alone wholly un- ravel. Rife with an unseen value, full of holy con- sequence which is commensurate with eternity, the ■severe temptation of a few days may be, and very hkely is, the hinge of your life. I do not say that if you do not succeed in subduing it now you will hfive no future opportunities ; thank God, of His infinite mercy. He grants many ; but the present may be your last, and at least, if not so, the fact of yielding now will make more difficult, more painful, less sure of success, your future conflicts. Your present age too is full of opportunities ; it is tlic age when temptations of the most withering kind are fresh, and tempt you in a way in which they never will again ; an age when, by the open- ing out of your character and sympathies, you are peculiarly liable to feel desires and aim at objects, VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 129 which are alien from the love of God ; when the new world into which expanding character brings you, is full of perils and difficulties of every de- scription. And more than this ; you have peculiar oppor- tunities of good, and of resistance of evil : yours is first Communion; yours is Confirmation. While on the one hand you have peculiar temptations in the opening out of the heart ; the burst of passion- ate feelings hitherto unknown and untried ; the first knowledge of life, with its interests and distrac- tions ; to you is offered a grace in first Communion, well-nigh equal to a second Baptism, and a power in Confirmation which arms you as a soldier for the conflict with sin and Satan ; with you God is spe- cially present, and His Hand near to help. It is to you a crisis and a turning-point of life, both for the probation you are called to, and the aids which are oflfered you. I mentioned the sins of impurity and vanity as those specially belonging to your present age, and about which St. Bartholomew's day suggests many holy lessons. I will dwell especially on the former of those two sins. 1. I need hardly linger to remind you how com- mon and terrible a temptation this is, and how severely it presses on the soul at the time of life which you have reached. When I speak of a sinful sensation which perhaps haunts you by night and day; strikes across your paths at Holy Communion and hours of devotion ; casts a shadow as of a K 130 PURITY OF LIFE. [Sekm. hideous being on your soul at those moments when you were delighting in the pure, clear sunshine of religious intention ; fascinates your will with ob- jects so enervating as to dim for the instant the glories of the city whose streets "are pearl and gold," and which has power to pale the terrors of the fire of hell ; so alluring as to wile us away from the very voice of the Good Shepherd when we are most willing to follow Him ; a temptation which is importunate to be attended to, so as to leave us scarcely time to recover its repeated shocks; wither- ing as the blast of a poisonous wind ; heading us at cveiy corner, and meeting us at the end of each path down which we have tried to escape, like a spectre dogging the heels of a murderer : when I suggest all this I shall best delineate the features of a state of mind common to many who are striving to overcome the temptation to impurity. It is a temptation so terrible, that there are many who find it weighing like a burning iron on their soul, and are unable to obtain a moment's allevia- tion : and yet two may move together through life, companions and friends, each weighed down by the same load, and that to the hour of death, without daring to reveal the awful secret to one another. It is a temptation which is the cause of many a knit brow and deeply-heaved sigh ; many a sudden cliange in the eye and conversation ; still the load lies there beyond the ken of the dearest companions, while its victim is feeling that one word of sympa- thy, one half hour's confession, would be like the VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 131 wind of winter let in to a furnace, or snow water on the parched Hps of a fever. We reahze the deepest indignation against ourselves, but the next moment we are wiUing to forego the dignity of man, and yield to the awful solicitation. We trample it under foot at night, disgusted and weary of its vile importunity, and in the morning we find it at our waking pillow, active, fresh, and energetic. 2. Its exceeding sinfulness is manifest alike from Scripture and from experience. The sins of impure sensations are marked first amid the catalogues of crime referred to in the Bible, and have a promi- nence given them, which at once shews them to be of tremendous moment in the sight of God. The passages fi'om Holy Scripture are plain : "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these ; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasci- viousness, idolatiy, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies." " But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints ; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient : but rather giving of thanks. Let no man deceive you with vain words : for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience." " Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth ; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affec- tion, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry : for which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience." " For k2 132 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." In all these passages a terrible and significant precedence is given to sins of impurity, as if they were the keystones of the structure of sin, the threshold at which all vice enters, and the certain signs of the dominion of Satan. Very remarkable, too, are the examples given in Holy Scripture of the effect of sins of this nature. The first terrible vengeance after the flood fell on a city polluted by crimes of this kind. Blindness and death were the portion assigned by God. The sons of Eli, the types of unholy youth, were re- markable for the worst form of this sin ; sudden and unprepared death was their penalty. The tales of Shechem and Hamor, Absalom, Judah, and Onan, are scattered here and there throughout Holy Scrip- ture, to mark God's continued vengeance against this kind of sin in any of its forms. David's life was weakened, and his vigour enervated to his dying hour, by one sinful act of impurity. Solomon sank within its toils, and the wise words of the wisest of men are full of caution against the snare of the "woman who flattercth with her tongue." Holy Scripture, by precept and example alike, warns us of the existence and effects of this temptation ; nor is it hard to sec its moral consequences. The great enemy of God is the world, and the creature viewed in relation to the world. This sin binds us to the creature, and consequently draws us from VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 133 God. It attaches us to life, and exactly in the pro- portion in which it does this, it gradually severs us from God, until at length the detachment hecomes final. 3. Its effect on the whole moral constitution is withering ; it sweeps like that wind of the desert, of which we read, across the soul, and though it was as the garden of Eden before it, behind is left a desolate wilderness ; it scorches the spiritual life of the soul, and dries up the opening buds of holi- ness and earnestness. Another of its effects is the destruction of self-respect, and the deepest and most dejected shame ; a consequence attached to it by the law of nature. Under it the character at once sinks ; the motive for high and elevated action is lost ; the moral ear, which had listened to the call of good, becomes deaf, and the moral being willing to take up a station beneath his vocation ; he feels degraded, and with that feeling loses the desire to rise. He is insensible to his calling, or to any thing which would remind him of it. Self- respect is the handmaid to the desire to excel ; and exertion depends on having a regard for our own position and estimation ; this once lost, there is nothing to hinder the depression of the moral agent to a level with the beasts that perish. Another mark of this temptation, when yielded to, is its fascinating influence. It wiles us on, delighted with its pursuit, and our cries of con- science arc lulled by a sweeter tlian syren's voice. It weaves a chain of silk around us, which gradually 134 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. becomes strong as brass, and yet so soft are its coils tliat till we are bound hand and foot we have not discovered we are slaves. It is as a fair and beau- tiful form which allures us with smiles and tender- ness, and not till we are bound to it face to face, have we discovered that w^e are virtually chained to the hideous and rotten features of a corpse. Every act and every indulged feeling of this temptation only increases the difficulty, and makes return more and more impossible; we entered by a winding path, and each step we advance the winding path becomes behind us an inextricable labyrinth. But its self-deceit is among its most fearful qua- lities and properties. We may even imagine we are serving God, while in fact we are drifting further and further from Him. Its power to evoke high and refined feelings ; its tendency to create self- devotion to the object of lust ; the general glow of poetry and affection which it sheds over the mind ; the way in which it is associated with the pleasures of music, and poetry, and song, and even finds a sympathy in the beauties of external nature ; its capability of heroic self-devotion, and self-sacrifice, towards its miserable object ; all are reasons for its being at once the most deceptive and delusive of the sins to which we are prone. But I will not say more on this head. I have but hinted here at some of its tendencies ; so tre- mendous arc they that their description would be nearly endless : enough in summing up these hints, to say, that the sin is deadly, and we want no other VI.] PURITY OF LU'E. 135 word to express all that is ruinous in time, and fatal in eternity. 4. With regard to the mode of its attack. There are certain periods when perhaps you will be spe- cially assailed with it : your waking hour in the morning, j^our solitary hours of study, and wander- ings in prayer and divine service. You will often, then, be induced to think that you are indulging an intercourse and friendship for the best and highest reasons, and not have discovered till far gone that sensual motive has lurked in your heart. The sinful desire will continually take you unawares, and when most off your guard. The communion of friends, the hours of kindly intercourse, the intimacy of social life, are no preservatives or warrant for its non-intrusion, no reasons for your being off your guard, or laying aside your vigilance. With these remarks on the time and manner of its approach, I will proceed to rules for its management. 1. The first rule I would suggest to you is a manifest and well-nigh a trite one ; but in a matter like this its force and truth are transcendent; — prayer for grace must be your continual work and safeguard. It is true in all cases, that grace alone can make us conquerors ; but we know the truth so well that we scarcely attach reality to its intention ; it has become to us a phrase, a rhythm : it loses its force and point because it is familiar to us : but try and make it real ; in fact, the least experience in attempting to overcome this temptation will prove its vast power. You may try rcsolulion.s, feelings, 136 PURITY OF LIFE. [Sekm. determinations, and convictions founded on reason ; you may lean on rules of conduct and bodily mor- tification to the last degree ; all will fail without the grace of God ; that is all-powerful, all-mighty ; it is the only power which can outweigh our own vile tendencies and desires, the only antidote to the poison of sin. You can do nothing without grace, you can do anything with it ; with it you may cast out legion, without it you cannot move one fleeting shadow whicli passes over your soul. Then the first rule is prayer, and that " instant." I should strongly advise stated prayer, morning, noon, and evening, and that with some distinct reference to the sin you are tempted to. The morning has its peculiar temptation, which needs its own grace, and the afternoon comes with its difficulties when the effect of the morning's strength is worn out ; we need a renovated grace " for the pestilence that walketh in darkness," as well as for " the sickness which destroyeth at noon day." The evening, too, has its own temptations ; we may not expect to lean on the grace received at one time to carry us through another period. It is no slight on that blespcd gift to say it needs renewing, any more than it was to the manna to gather it daily, or to ask for " daily bread" in the holy prayer. 2. The second rule I would lay down is this ; by all means, and on all occasions, avoid dwelling on the object of impure sensation ; we are told by holy men of old, that on this point alone we may be cowards ; we must fly from it. The mere dwelling VI.] PUllITY OF LIFE. 137 on its forbidden pollutions, even to combat them, forms evil habits, and withers holiness. Like the fabled head of mythology, its gaze is enough to petrify. If we fix our mind's eye on it with the best intention, it becomes like the eye of the rattle- snake on the bird, which gazing at first with in- tended attack, ends with the fixed glare producing inaction, and finally death. We are often led to bring the object of sinful desires before us, and that with the best intentions, when we pray against it, when we would examine ourselves on it, when we are regretting the past, when we unfold our grief to another, when we compare ourselves with ourselves. But on all these occasions as far as possible shun the image ; do not let the coloured lights fall into a shape or outline, nor suffer, if you can help it, your vision to centre them in a focus ; if they are dimmed, leave them so, and do not restore the view ; repress even the slightest image, lest it should strengthen and invigorate evil desire ; you are too weak to bear it. If you have to pray against it, to examine yourself on it, let the ob- ject be an imperfect memory, a recollection of something past, rather than of the object itself; mean it without expressing it, intend without de- fining it. Let no excuse avail to dwell on it. 3. The third rule I would suggest is, with refer- ence to the mention of your mind's grief to one ca])able of advising you. It must be done with caution, the mere mention is fraught with danger. There are few you would go to who wouhl not un- 138 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. derstand your meaning, and spare your utterance ; but by all means open your grief; it is a law of nature, a law of Scripture, a law of the Church, and the law of our own experience. Holy Scrip- ture bids us " confess our sins one to another ;" and the Church tells us to come "to the minister and open our grief." It is the impulse of our own na- ture ; the temptation pent up burns like a coal chafing itself by its own inherent heat. The men- tion of our grief is like opening the door of our heai-t, through which a refreshing breeze flows in, chills the heat, and restores life to our dry spirit. By opening our mind we find others have borne and conquered the same temptations ; that we are not the only ones ; that we have not a temptation we ' ' are not able to bear ;" that we are passing through an ordeal appointed by God : we learn that our condition is not so bad as perhaps we thought it ; we discover that acts and sensations which we had thought were deadly, and the memory of which was depressing our whole moral being and destroy- ing our self-respect, our trust, our elevation of na- ture, leading us to despair, were really less culpable than we thought them ; what we take for substan- tial forms were but shadows which passed over our soul, obscuring the sunlight of heaven for the season, but leaving no impression. Satan is wonderfully disarmed by our opening our grief. He loves to get us into a dark corner, and then to terrify us by our very loneliness, and his awful companionship. lie (heads the introduction of a third party, and he VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 139 knows the spiritual adviser comes to let in rays of light on the darkness of despair. Do not fail to open your grief. 4. A fourth rule I would give is, when you arc alone, and sinful thoughts arise, do not stop to reason with, or contemplate them ; as I said before, flight is justifiable. In this sin cowardice is true courage, and flight perfect heroism. At the first approach, forget it if you can ; if you cannot, if it importunes you, if it presses on your notice, fly to l)rayer, or say holy words, the Creed, or passages of Holy Scripture ; or take a book up and read ; engage and amuse the mind and the imagination, pre-occupy it ; or, if need be, go out and enter into conversation with another ; that wdll be a lawfal mode of resistance. Do any thing but meet a form wdiose presence awakes your regret. The fact is, that we cannot be too sudden and precipitate in our flight. 5. Again, avoid idleness ; Satan will have no vacuum, and if we do not fill it he will ; our unem- ployed minds and hours will soon be filled by him ; if we leave our mind open and blank, he will people the empty space with figures of his own. Employ your time and your energies ; nothing so soon occu- pies an unemployed imagination, or an idle hour, as impurity, it pours like a torrent into an empty channel. G. Especially attend to the government of your thoughts ; they are the soul's horses, which bear it away as a chariot to the gates of hell, or the 140 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. threshold of heaven. If we are not in the habit of placing a rein on them, they will soon be beyond our powder. Learn to command them, learn to govern them, or they will be your ruin. When alone, or when aw^ake at night, or when at work, get into the habit of fixing them for a period, how- ever short, on some definite subject, some holy or inspiring contemplation ; the coming judgment, your hour of death, hell or heaven ; do not let them wander from these points till the period you had determined to dwell on them has elapsed ; let that be for two minutes, or for five, but be deter- mined ; having won your object, let them have their range, and again bring them back to a definite point ; do not let the period which you devote be too long, or you may fail. A small intention without failures will be better far than great efforts imperfectly exe- cuted ; do not let your thoughts hover on fanciful subjects ; check their exuberance, and be severe on them ; by this means you will bring them under control, and cut off one great occasion of impurity and kindred sins. 7. In cases of strong temptations of this kind bodily mortification is a remedy ; it tends to con- vince us of our sin ; it reduces the physical causes of the temptation ; it weakens the powers which are otherwise active in promoting it; it brings about a holy and a humbled spirit, which conduces to the mind we desire ; it tends to decrease our love for the creature by reducing the creature's power to love. You will find it of great effect ; you will not Vr.] PURITY OF LIFE. " 141 regi'ettlie experiment; the knowledge of its efficacy hangs on the word of Scripture, the advice of anti- quity, the experience of tens of thousands. But it must be used with caution ; when the heart does not go with it, it will bo but the new wine in the old bottle ; it will do more harm than good. The observance of seasons already appointed, will in ordinaiy cases avail ; such as the weekly day of sorrow, and the appointed seasons of Lent, and other times of humiliation. Under strong tempta- tions we might safely add special acts of abstinence for ourselves ; although perhaps in such cases it may be better that these also should be under advice. 8. Avoid the first beginnings and approaches of sin. This sin is peculiarly encroaching ; it wins its way unseen and unheard like a stream along grass ; it moves wdth scarce a murmur ; and is hidden in its soft progress, until we find at length it has be- come an onward and a mighty river. We must avoid the slightest connection on any excuse with that object which we have once made up our minds is suggestive of evil desires ; we may not linger near it ; we may not fondly gaze after it. Satan will often propose this to us ; he will say that * to break off all connection with some person, will do more harm to them than good to us ; that we have no right to sacrifice the feelings of others to our own benefit ; that we may continue to influence for good, though we check evil in ourselves.' But the influence of those who have once created in us sin- ful desires, seldom is altogether counteracted in the 142 PURITY OF LIFE, [Serm. highest saint, and the most disciplined character. We must shim the least connection with sinful ob- jects ; the touch, the look, the half-hour's conversa- tion, may excite evil in us, may undo the work of years, and turn signal victories into a signal defeat. We cannot be too careful ; a hundred excuses will nse up and appear reasons for not adopting this line ; our sinful heart will plead at the bar of con- science, and its pleadings will receive too ready an attention ; it will plead that such estrangement im- plies moral weakness, is a sign of cowardice, will excite an impression of unkindness, unnecessary coldness on our part ; will not advance religion, will raise fi.irther opposition to spirituality of life than already exists ; that the w^orld will not under- stand us ; that we ourselves shall learn cowardice by being cowards, and shall form the habit of shrink- ing, by shrinking ourselves; that w^e ought boldly to face the foe, and that the highest character is formed amid the keenest temptations : all very true up to a certain point, had we strength enough to bear it ; but most of us have not, few of us would do as much good as we should receive harm ; wc must carefully shun the approach of sensual ob- jects ; we must love to feel w^e can exercise reserve towards them ; we must suspect every plea put for- ward in their favour. 9. Again, never lightly pass over a sin of this kind which you may have fallen into. Mortify yourself for every committed act ; and do not be satisfied without leaving a mark and trace of chas- VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 143 tisemcnt behind. There are many ways of doing this ; you can find other remedies besides absti- nence from food to chasten yourself for committed acts of sin. 10. Be cautious, and on your guard against any innocent amusements, which nevertheless tend to excite sinful feeling however little intended. Music and poetry will do this, and need their check and guidance into right and proper channels. 1 1 . But I would also say a word by way of en- couragement. There is danger in sins of this nature of our conscience becoming morbid, and a certain degree of despair arising, which will paralyze and cripple our spiritual energies ; never despair. If you have been so sorely tempted that you feel you have over and over again been on the veiy confines of this sin ; if you feel its breath is left on you, and you have been led in thought to indulge it, while the bent of your general will was against it, and each act was followed by repentance ; be satisfied, do not despair : God will judge the general bent of your will. Remember, while you are anxious and earnest to be free, and are using every means in your power, you are safe. If you have slightly fallen, begin again ; never be weary in making new beginnings ; with many the whole Christian life is one series of new beginnings in holiness ; never de- spair, for at best we are poor, and weak, and mise- rable, and God knows it. " He knoweth our frame. He remembercth we are but dust." You will often have need of this rule ; you will frequently be dis- 144 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. tressed with inward anguish ; you will in the most successful struggle feel polluted, and the hour even of victory wdll at its end appear a polluted hour ; but it will be counted as an hour of strife and con- quest ; though the field be bloody, it will be the field of success. Remember temptation is not sin unless yielded to ; it no more affects the soul than the shadow of a w^atcher by sunset stains the marble pillar near which he stands ; unless your will open to receive the sin into yourself, you are not guilty. Some men's temptations are intensely vivid; but the utmost depth of shadow* makes no impression, nor does the most keen temptation of necessity create sin. 12. Do not be discouraged at finding but little marked advance in your spiritual condition as con- cerns purity; at your age there will be often but . slow apparent advance ; temptation will increase in importunity wdth age ; you wdll not be free yet ; and the increase of desire will often give an impression of retrograde movement, while in fact you are strug- gling successfully in His Eye. Nor be alarmed at what seems the absence of simplicity of mind on this point ; advancing age, knowledge of sin, inter- course with life, must to a certain degree destroy simplicity ; you can never be again quite as a little child. Having given these rules, I w^ould offer a few suggestions by way of motive, wdiich may stir you up to purity. a. Consider the multitudes who have fought your VL] PURITY OF LIFE. 145 fight, and arc now safe for ever, and free from temp- tation. Tliere are boys in Paradise now, who have won the victory which you long for. You are not treading an unbeaten and untried path ; their con- flict was Uke yours, and if they have come off con- querors there is no reason that you should not ; there is no difficulty, no anguish, no severity, wdiich you are called upon to use, but they have borne it before you, and in your strife you are but the rear- guard of a vast army of holy youths, who, through denial and many prayers, ridicule and reproach, good report and ill-report, discouragement and dark- ness, have fought the battle and w^on the crown, and are for ever at rest. There is something noble and great in feeling that we belong to a host of warriors and conquerors. There is something soul- inspiring in marching behind banners marked with victories, and which are old in a war as ancient as the world. We can record the victories, and read the names of many, and the glorious catalogue raises our spirit, and cheers on our drooping cou- rage. The van of the army we march in was filled with men whose names are great in the heraldry of the earth, and treasured in the records of the ever- lasting Catholic Church ; they have struggled in the first ranks, and gained the mastery ; they have won the victory, and have crossed the threshold, and arc at the land they longed for ; and we but follow on to be where they are gone. They look on us as brothers, and we may regard them as the same. And who does not know the soul-inspiring L 146 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. influence of being recognised as partners and com- panions of the noble, the brave, and the true ! Fore- most in that host is the first martyr, who won his victory amid the stones ; and blazoned on the ban- ners which they bore, are marked the high and heroic acts of youth's devotion to God. Joseph's purity, Isaac's patient meekness, and David's youth- ful heroism ; — who would not fight in such a host ! who would rank with the vile, the profligate, and the mean, when such may be their companionship, and such the army of their enlistment ! b. And this reminds me of another motive, the difliculties of your strife. It may seem strange to ofler this as a motive of encouragement. But why should I not ? what is the history of boyhood in all ages but the pride of surmounting difficulties, and the heroism of imitating manliness ; the glory of courage, the shame of cowardice ; and the excep- tion in boyhood is meanness, or shrinking from difficulty. Every undertaking of greatness has been marked with the heroism of boyhood, and the bold daring of heroic youth ; then why should not the difficulties of the heavenly race be a reason for striving ? why should its hardships be otherwise than a whet to their energy, or a reason for in- creased exertion? If for an earthly honour, and the praise of a human commander, no difficulty is too great ; if at the first call of national want, thou- sands of youths emulate each other for the first post of peril and alarm ; if in the most terrible scenes of warfare and death, boys have been found to face VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. 147 the front of battle, because none others possessed the heroism to brave the imminent destruction ; is it too much to take for granted, that for a higher than any national call, the call of God, — for no- bler than any earthly reward, the crown of immor- tality, — a higher than animal courage, the decision of the will for the side of truth and holiness, — boy- hood will furnish its noblest candidates? Why should it be that in many of our great schools we find a hardihood, a shrinking from softness, a self- denying braving of danger and pain, which elevate the soul ; and yet scarce in proportion of one to a thousand, a youth who is willing to bear one cross, and strive through one conflict, for Christ and his own salvation? With this view I will not fear to place forward as a motive for the strife of purity, its exceeding difficulty, and need of daily denial. c. A third motive for purity I would suggest, is the perfect peace it produces in this life. It may seem strange that the sufterings of intense desires should be causes of peace and happiness ; but so it is : it is a matter beyond the province of reasoning. This peace is a principle inherent in us, a law of our moral being, a matter of experience. There is a consciousness of integrity, a high self-respect, a conviction of God's favour, an heroic triumph over self, a confident trust in the future, a lull of tor- menting desires in the conquest over lust, which are indeed peace. There is an unsatisfactoriness in a life of in- dulgence of these desires. Strikingly forcible are L 2 148 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. the verses in Holy Scripture which infer this ; the hfe of yielding is empty. In seeking and pursuing the ohject of lust we are delighted and fascinated with the chase ; but it is trite to say we pursue a rainbow, it fleets before our grasp, it is pictured as further and further off still, and after we have wearied ourselves in a vain pursuit, the dark chill cloud comes over the coloured phantom, and we find that we have lost all and gained nothing. This unsatisfactoriness of the indulgence of passions is a truth discovered by every enlightened heathen, witnessed to by daily experience, and asserted from one end to another of Holy Scripture. We are so formed that we do not gain the goal of satisfaction and peace by indulgence but by discipline. If in the pursuit of our lust we do gratify it by a cowardly and sinful yielding, the result is a distressing sen- sation of disappointment, a feeling that there is something beyond, which we have not after all at- tained, a gratification gained far from commensurate with the desire ; while the result often is a ruined health, a shamed face, and, above all, the sacrifice of a peaceful conscience at the shrine of what all nature has proclaimed degrading. d. There is one other motive I will advert to in ])assing; not that it is of inferior weight, but so great that though it should have its own separate consideration I cannot pass it by unnoticed : — I mean the crown which lies in the power of many of you ; forfeited alas ! for ever by most ; the crown of innocence ; the never having given u]) the re- VI] PURITY OF LIFE. 149 ligioiis life. There are degrees and various estates in heaven ; there are approaches to tlic throne of the Lamb of greater and less distance ; there are grades even among the redeemed ; and the highest of all positions seems assigned to those who have preserved their baptismal purity; they stand nearest God, they gaze more intently on the beatitic vision ; they strike the first notes of the song of the Lamb ; they are more deeply absorbed in the ocean of glory; they lead the everlasting choir, and theirs is the key-note of the harmony of heaven. That place is in your power ; to many, how many ! of those wdio have w'andered further on the path of life, is it forfeited past recovery ! The dark fornica- tion ; the blasphemy wilfully indulged in the face of knowledge clear as a sunbeam ; deadly sins fearfully yielded to in days now gone, though all repented of and forgiven, have lost for many that place. God know^s how bitter and scalding the tear with which they lament their bartered birthright ; but it may not be recovered ; thank God, as penitents they have their place, and gloiy be to Him beyond ex- pression, that that place will be one of perfect peace. Some of you may have what they have lost — won- derful and blessed thought ! and can you renounce it ? will you give up the highest place for ever for the gratification and softness of a few fleeting days ? A little while will close all ; even now for some of you the sun may be going down, and the evening shade be slanting over the horizon. Time is short, eternity is long. 150 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. I mean by baptismal purity, the having served God faithfully, continuously, earnestly, however im- perfectly and poorly, from baptism onwards. I mean the never having given up the effort at the religious life, the never having thrown the rein on the neck of lust, and never having given up the stem, earnest, persevering effort to restrain sin, and to sorrow for it when committed. I mean the never, fi'om childhood up, having given up prayer and longing after holiness and heaven ; the never hav- ing gone with the tide of the world's streams ; he that has done that has retained his baptismal purity. I do not mean the never having sinned, nor the having gone one day without falling ; it is indeed true "there is none good, no not one." I do not mean the freedom from severe temptations. There are mighty rivers which belt the countries of the earth with their onward waters ; as they roll in calm and silent majesty on to the ocean which is their home, they sweep past cities and mountains, plains and fertile valleys, and they do not rest till they enter the vast waters that girdle the earth. No obstacle stops their courses ; if a boat sail against the tide, or a rock be hurled into the midst of its current, it would check for a moment but not turn their direction ; presently they will flow on as ever, calmly and silently to their bourne. Such a river is as the soul, setting out from the font of baptism to wend its way through earth's scenes and temptations, to its object and its portion, God. The infirmities, the temptations, the yieldings of a VI.] PURITY OF LIFE. lol day, may divert its ciuTent for a few moments, but that is all ; the soul that retains its baptismal purity- goes onward calmly as ever, and rests not until it has found what it sought, the bosom of God. As dis- tinet as is the effect of that momentary obstacle from the actually diverted tide, will be the sin of the pure heart from the state of him whose heart is severed from Christ by wilful perseverance in sin. Remember you are entering on a tenible and deadly conflict. I would not hide that from your view ; I would not spread flowers over your path to conceal its thorns ; no wound has been given to re- ligion deeper and sorer, than the investing it with poetical feelings : it is a stern deadly strife. The life you will have to live is a severe one ; tempta- tion will be constant, persevering, harassing ; when you think it past it will return ; at the hour of death you wnll not be free ; you will often be with- out the comfort of religion when you have had to yield the dearest object of sensual delight, and the strife will assume a cold, dull, leaden aspect, with- out light or devotion ; you will have to be vigilant to irksomeness, and often be inclined to say. Where is my reward ? the knit brow, the sudden shade of sorrow, the deep sigh, the passing sadness, will often mark to a close obsen-er how severe the in- ward anguish is. I tell you plainly and boldly, because I should be dishonouring you if I thought that telling would discourage you ; there is no rest for the Christian warrior till the last breath has re- 152 PURITY OF LIFE. [Serm. VI. leased bis spirit to Paradise ; then there will be the fulness of joy for evermore ! Purity of mind is the holiness of boyhood ; it is a pearl of gi*eat price, sought after through many a weary voyage, and found hidden in the deep re- cesses of the sea of life. So high and holy it is that heathens have praised it, and men who knew not Christ have caught glimmerings of its beauty. Homer saw it, and Euripides has sung of it ; it was the consolation of Hippolytus before his doom to say, A€)(ovs yap €9 ToS" rjjjbepas dyvov Se/LLa^. ovK oc8a irpa^tv rrjvhe, ttXtjv XoyM kXvcov, ypa