The collected writings of Edward Irving

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LIBRARY

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Theological Seminary,

PRINCETON, N. J.

BX 6559 .17 1866 v. 3
Irving, Edward, 1792-1834
The collected writings of
Edward Irving

EDWARD IRVING'S WRITINGS

VOL. III.

Edinburgh : J'riiiiiii hy liollautynf 6-' Conipatiy.

THE COLLECTED WRITINGS
OF EDWARD IRVING

Edited by his Nephew, the Rev. G. CARLYLE, M.A.

/.V FIVE VOLUMES— VOL. III.

'liic/ioi

ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER

L O N D (; N AND NEW YORK
1866

PEIITGJSTOK
CONTENTS.

ON PRAYER.

THE REASONABLENESS AND RULE OF PRAYER

II.

THE INESTIMABLE ADVANTAGE OF PRAYER

III.

ITS APPROPRIATE PLACE AND OCCASION .

IV.

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD .

V.

THE CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PRAY

VI.

THE MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE .

VII.
THE MISAPPREHEXSION OF GOD'S GRACE .

VIII. .

PRAYER AND ACTION

THE LORD S PRAYER

THE LORD S PRAYER

IX.

X.

PAGE

3

15

26

38

51
62

74

87

96

108

VI

CONTENTS.

THE LORD S PRAYER

THE LORD S PRAYER

THE LORD S PRAYER

THE lord's prayer

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

PAGE

119

126

140

150

L

n.
in.

IV.

ON PRAISE.

165
177
183
199

ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD ,

II.

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD .

III.

DUTY TO PARENTS

MATRIMONY

IV.

V.

DUTIES OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN

VI.

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE

217

231

244

258

268

276

CONTENTS. vii

VII.

rAGE

ON FRIENDSHIP ....... 297

VIII.
SOCIAL RELIGION THE NATURAL OUTFLOW OF PRIVATE RELIGION 309

IX.
THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION TO THE RELIGIOUS . . 324

DISCOURSES DELIVERED ON PUBLIC
OCCASIONS.

I.

FAREWELL DISCOURSE AT ST JOHN'S, GLASGOW . . .343

II.
PREPARATORY TO THE LAYING OF THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF

THE NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE . . 363

III.

THANKSGIVING AFTER LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF THE NATIONAL

SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE .... 37O

IV.

ON EDUCATION ....... 382

V.
THE CAUSE AND THE REMEDY OF IRELAND'S EVIL CONDITION . 430

VI.

THE SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF SCOTLAND .... 470

VII.

LAST SERxMON IN THE CALEDONIAN CHURCH . . 5CX)

VIII.
FIRST SERMON IN THE NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH . . 51'0

The three series of Practical Discourses on '■'•Prayer^'' " Praise^"" and
'■'■Family and Social Religion^'' tuhich compose the greater part of this
volume, wei-e preached to Mr Irving s congregation in Hatton Garden,
in the years 1823-24 — soon after his settlement in London. Of the
'^Discourses on Public Occasions," ivhich complete the volume, the dates
are given in foot-notes.

ON PRAYER.

VOL. III.

THE REASONABLENESS AND RULE OF PRAYER.

Matt, vi. 8.

Be not ye therefore like unto them : for your Father knoweth what things ye have

need of before ye ask him.

'T^HE avocations of God, however manifold, do not hinder
Him in the least from bestowing as much attention upon
this earth as if He had nothing else to attend to ; and to sup-
pose the contrary, is to transfer to Him the ideas and attributes
of a limited creature. If we judge from the fine balance which
there is between the necessities of nature and the supplies of
Providence, — the rare occurrence of famine or starvation upon
the earth, and the ample means of meeting these occurences by-
prudent foresight and proper economy, — from the adaptation
of every creature to its abode, and of the productions of the
region to its wants, and in general from God's being so ready
even much beforehand with His gifts to man and beast, we
shall, instead of concluding against a similar intercourse be-
tween the Creator and the creature in things religious, con-
clude that here also there should be a correspondence of want
and of supply, of request and of gift. It is very well, there-
fore, for men who have made a few advances into the know-
ledge of the universe, to conjecture from its ample population
that the Creator has not time to attend to our little wants,
when it is the universal acknowledgment of the learned, that
the least microscopic insect is as richly furnished with organic

4 ON PRA YER.

structures and beautiful adaptation to its birthplace and
habitation, as if the Almighty had occupied His faculties upon
that invisible creature alone. Another cavil against prayer is
drawn from the unchangeableness of God, which is founded in
bad reasoning, as the other is founded in imperfect knowledge.
God's unchangeableness is the very foundation of desire, and
hope, and activity, in things religious as in things natural.
The uniformity of nature's operations in the one, and the
constancy of God's promises in the other, give aim and calcu-
lation and certainty to events ; God's promises being so many
pledges of His procedure, upon the immutability of which
the Christian conceives hope and anticipation, and waits for
accomplishment. It is His unchangeableness that gives con-
fidence so soon as you know what His purposes are. Of these
purposes the Scripture is the record. They are laws like
those of the Medes and Persians, which alter not, and their
fulfilment may be built on as securely as the rising of the
sun, or the revolution of the heavens, or the most stable of
nature's courses. This objection is another instance of the ease
with which men find objections to religion, and you have only
to apply it to another subject in order to discern its fallacy.
Let me do so for a moment with that now in question. In the
administration of justice, its inflexibleness or unchangeable-
ness is that very quality which makes all men bold in offering
their petitions in its courts. If it were at the call of power, or
party, or selfishness, or favouritism, or even of mercy, it would
be unheeded, instead of awfully respected, and surely calcu-
lated on. So far from hindering men from addressing prayers
which are consistent with the laws promulgated, its steadiness
of purpose is the very life of all such petitions. A man has
no sooner claim for redress than he expects it and sues it out.
A man is no sooner defrauded in an inferior court, than he
expects and petitions for justice in a superior. The flocking
of all the injured in the kingdom to the judges as they go
their rounds, and to the magistrates where they reside, is the
clearest proof of the effect of an unchangeable mode of opera-
tions in begetting confidence, and calling forth active and
urgent requests. Now, it is so not only in matters of justice,
but every other department of our affairs. A father that is

ITS REASONABLENESS AND RULE. 5

constant in his procedure is sure to beget expectation, and
desire, and confidence in his children; who, knowing where to
find his will and pleasure, look for it, and converse of it, and
calculate on it as a thing secure. A friend that is constant
in his friendship, a counsellor that is constant in his wisdom,
a master that is constant in his requirements, a man that is
consistent in his public or private behaviour, — each one of
these begets expectation and anticipation, which are the very-
food of desire and of prayer. For there is little or no desire
of a thing which we have no hope of obtaining. It is the
expectation begotten which turns chance or indifference into
desire, and the desire to possess is the only thing which can
justify the request to obtain. So that without expectation
there is no prayer properly so called, and without constancy
of procedure no expectation will be generated ; so that con-
stancy is the soul of prayer.

On the other hand, I am willing to allow, that while con-
stancy, either in the laws of nature, or the ways of men, or the
promises of God, begets expectation and desire and prayer in
that direction to which they constantly tend, it never fails to
destroy expectation, and along with it desire and prayer, in
the opposite direction. If justice be inflexible, it is vain to
petition against it ; if a father be unbending from the rules of
his household, his children soon learn to confine their wishes
and prayers within the given bounds. And a friend who is
known to be stanch, is not bored with undermining surmises ;
nor a counsellor that is always wise, with fallacious sophisms;
nor a master that is firm, with vain suits for relaxation. While
steadiness of purpose and character is the life of expectation
and prayer within the bounds of its fixed procedure, it is the
death of all without them.

Now, though these illustrations bring out by example the
truth of that doctrine, that the unchangeableness of God, in-
stead of begetting torpor, is like the loadstone, which, though
restful itself, draws all things towards it, that it is all the ground
upon which rests that anticipation which is both wind and
sails to the movements of the mind ; yet these same illustra-
tions, especially that from justice and an unchangeable father,
have in them a hardness and sternness which may have

L_

6 ON PRA YER.

engendered a wrong conception of God, which it is neces-
sary to remove before advancing further. If God's pro-
mises did embrace nothing but abstract justice, and did
measure out nice and strict desert, then their unchange-
ableness were the death-blow to all expectation of future
weal; but seeing they contain mercy, and forgiveness, and
peace, and everlasting blessedness to all who receive His
oracles and walk thereby, — being a rule not to equity only, but
a rule to mercy and to bounty, and to whatever else is ami-
able and attractive to the soul of man, — it comes to pass that
their stability and unchangeableness is the stability and un-
changeableness of that wise, and wide, and lovely administra-
tion which sufficeth to comfort and upbind the fallen, as well
as to strike down and discomfit the refractory and rebellious.
It may be said. It is all true which you advance, that
God's promises, by reason of His unchangeableness, may be
relied on, and that expectation of their fulfilment will generate
itself; but what occasion, then, of prayer, seeing the thing
promised will come round of its own steady accord, whether
you open your lips or no .'* To this the answer is short and
simple. These promises are made only to those who expect
and desire and ask for them. They are not promised indiffer-
ently, and come not of their own accord to all, but to such only
who have meditated them, and who value them, and desire
them, and earnestly seek them ; being, in truth, too valuable
to be thrown about to a scrambling mob ; being the high and
holy attractions by which God intended to work upon the
nature of man, and lead it out of its present low and sunken
estate into glorious liberty and unwearied ambition of every
noble excellence. They are prizes in the hand of God to
stimulate the soul's activities, — more glorious prizes than
laurel wreaths, or the trumpetings of fame, or principalities
and thrones, — and they are yielded only to an application of
faculties, at the least, as intense and ardent as is put forth in
pursuit of human ambition. God doth not cheapen His pro-
mises down to a glance at them with the eye, or a mouthing
of them with the tongue, but He requireth of those that would
have them an admiration equal to that of lovers, an estima-
tion equal to that of royal diadems, and a pursuit equal to

ITS REASONABLENESS AND RULE. 7

that of Olympic prizes. He hath promised them, He hath
pledged His faithfulness to give them only, to such strong and
ardent desires ; and no one need expect them of course, or
even think to deserve them by often asking, but by having a
raging thirst and an inconsolable want of them. At the same
time, while the gifts are thus restricted to those who eagerly
covet them, there is enough to induce the desire of all man-
kind to whom they are offered. God doth not require men,
as it were, to lash themselves into a furious desire of His
favours before He will confer them, but He has given evi-
dence and argument enough of their importance to work upon
the reasonable mind their admiration and desire. The advan-
tage of them in time, and the advantage of them in eternity, —
the high price that was paid for them, even the precious blood
of Christ, — their continual increase and growth, — their ever-
lasting duration, — and the honour of receiving them from
Almighty God, and being acknowledged as His esteemed and
favoured people ; — these and a thousand other points of value,
when taken into balance against the things that set the
chase and hunt of the world on foot, should naturally give
them such a decided preference, and work in the mind such
an admiration and longing desire, that it is to be concluded
nothing but self-will and self-blinded obstinacy keep men
from that earnest desire which is all that God requires to the
free gift of them.

It now remains that, in conformity with this principle, upon
which alone prayer can reasonably proceed, we draw out for
practical advantage what constitutes a genuine prayer, to
which an answer may be expected. Agreeably to the doc-
trine which hath been advanced, no man can calculate upon
an answer to his prayers, except upon the unchangeableness
of God's promises. If God had promised nothing, we could
have expected nothing: and if His promises were not stead-
fast, we might have been deceived in our expectation. There-
fore it is that the first revelation was a promise, and the
revelations to Noah and to Abraham were promises, and
the law was a prefiguration of good things to come, and the
prophecies are dark declarations of the events of promises, and
the gifts of God's Spirit, with all the attainments of the Chris-

8 ON PRA YER.

tian life, are promises, and the Apocalypse is a promise ex-
tending to the end of time ; and when it comes to pass that
there are no promises unaccompHshed, then will prayer cease :
but that will never be, till prayer and all other instruments of
grace be rendered useless by the revelation of glory, when
instead of faith shall come honour, and in place of hope the
things hoped for.

The first step towards prayer, therefore, is the knowledge of
the promises of God, which are, as it were, the charter to go by.
They are the edicts of His government, from which He hath
sworn by His unchangeableness that He will not depart.
Further than these revealed purposes, His will is an impene-
trable mystery, into which we have neither the right nor the
power to penetrate. The man who adds to his prayers a
request that God would manifest Himself in another way of
operation than He hath promised to do, is guilty of the great
impiety of setting his own will on a level with the Almighty's;
he also impeacheth the sufficiency of God's bounty, and prov-
eth himself either ignorant of, or ungrateful for, the largeness
and freeness of His grace. But most of all doth he transgress
in praying for a thing without any hope of obtaining it. The
Scripture being so peremptory as to allow no shadow of
chance to a prayer which hath not faith ; let not the man
that doubteth think that he shall receive anything from the
Lord ; and there can be no faith where there is no petition.
But, besides, no one, for his own sake, should presume to ask
anything which God has not pledged Himself to give; because
if he were possessed of it, it would not advantage him in the
end. It was not because He could spare no more, that God
promised no more ; He is not impoverished by giving, nor by
withholding is He enriched. He gave us the best He had to
give — His only-begotten Son, with whom He will refuse us
nothing. Providence and protection He hath promised us in
the life that now is ; glory and immortality in the life that is
to come. He hath permitted us to ask at His hand. His favour,
which is life, and His loving-kindness, which is better than life.
His Spirit, whose fruits are joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle-
ness, patience, meekness, faith, and temperance. He longeth to
impart to us. That Wisdom whose ways are ways of pleasant-

ITS REASONABLENESS AND RULE. 9

ness, and whose paths are peace, — in whose right hand is
length of days, in her left riches and honour, is also within our
reach. That wisdom from above, which is first pure, then
peaceable, and gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of good
fruits, without guile and without partiality, is open to every
one that will ask of God, who giveth liberally, and upbraideth
not. Wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and re-
demption, the peace of mind that passeth understanding, the
joy with which the world doth not intermeddle, — in short, every
good and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of
lights, with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.
No one who knows the largeness and liberality of the Divine
promises, will complain of their being scanty. The roll of the
promises let down from heaven is more full of varied food for
the spirit of man, than that great sheet which the apostle saw
in vision was full of varied food for his body. They are a
goodly body of most gracious intentions, full of imperishable
riches, an apt and sufficient store for equipping the immortal
spirit for its wilderness-journey, and, moreover, like the ark
of Noah, containing the seeds and rudiments of everything
which can minister to her necessities and enjoyments in that
new world where she is soon to rest for ever ; or, according to
St Peter, they are like so many beacons lighted up in the
dark, wild, and untrodden future, whereunto we do well that
we take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until
the day dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts. And, to
carry the figure a little further, in each of these enlightened
beacons resides an oracle from the Most High to guide the
goings forth of the believer's hopes and purposes. In sight of
these he is not far from tidings of the land to which he so-
journs; out of sight of them, he is guideless, aimless, and help-
less, in the midst of a wide and waste ocean of uncertainty.

All the arguments building prayer upon the unchangeable-
ness of God go for nothing so soon as we travel beyond the
record into wishes of our own not included in the covenant.
Then truly, the nature of the thing being changed, we change
sides in the argument, and inquire with the objector. Who are
you, to dictate times to God .'' If what you ask be against
His promises, think you He will reverse His fixed and stead-

lO ON PR A YER.

fast purpose, to which the ends of the earth are lookuig, for
the sake of your crude device ? If it be beyond the scope of
the promises, will He enlarge His counsels and designs, confess
Himself narrow-hearted, and allow His nature to be wrought
upon and cajoled, and give in to the presumption of a mortal?
Besides, what an ungrateful wretch art thou to ask for more
than the Son of God, with all the things which are promised
with Him, — the kingdom of God and His righteousness, with
the "all things" that shall be added thereunto !

In reason, therefore, and in gratitude to God for His many
great and gracious promises, the scope and spirit of our prayer
should be limited by the promises of God. This is to make
prayer a matter of serious premeditation. And, to keep it pro-
gressive with an understanding of the Scriptures, a knowledge
of the purpose of God must precede it ; and without that know-
ledge it is an empty form, or rather a sinful liberty taken with
the ear of God. As if you would go to a judge and ask him
to favour your case, or to a friend and ask him to do you a
wrong ; or it is as if having received intelligence from a dis-
tant correspondent, you should presume to write back to him
upon the subject, without being at the pains to peruse what
he had said. It is most lamentable to hear very often how
this necessary rule of prayer is broken through, and with
what rude unprepared language the ear of God is vexed.
They heap petition upon petition, with a volubility that defies
all order, and sets all scriptural reference at naught. They
heat themselves into a glow of enthusiasm, and pour out
rhapsodies of words without weight, and multitudes of peti-
tions without warrant. Repetition follows repetition, topic is
wrought into and warped with topic, the language and tones
of familiar conversation are taken, until all reverence depart
from the mind both of speaker and hearer, and it becomes to
the one the most silly and commonplace of all mental employ-
ments, to the other the most unheeded and the most heartless
of all services. I deny not that the way into the Holiest is
open to all ; but it should never be forgotten that it is a conse-
crated way, never to be profaned. Well cleaned was the body
of the high priest, and pure was his raiment, and great the
preparation, ere he ventured into the Holy of Holies. Pure

ITS REASONABLENESS AND RULE. 1 1

also should be our thoughts from all unscriptural admixture,
and well ordered the words of our mouth, and great our
spiritual preparation, and reverently grave the frame of our
soul, before entering the presence of no emblem, but of
Jehovah himself Send these very people, that make so
slight and stupid an affair of speaking to Him that rules on
earth and heaven, — send them to ask a favour of superior in
Church or State, and see how it will interest their hearts and
occupy their minds. Set them to write a petition for prefer-
ment in any worldly interest, and see how it cramps their
wits to express it in becoming style and with skilful address.
I consider it the highest vocation by far to which a man's
faculties can be called, to demean his spirit properly in prayer
to Almighty God — incomparably the gravest, weightiest, and
most productive part of the public service. And did I not
think that discoursing was one of the best instruments for
urging, inspiriting, and furnishing the mind for private and
public devotions, I would rate it in a very inferior place.
Discoursing is to be esteemed as an awakening to prayer —
it summons the mind from its worldly, unspiritual haunts and
avocations, arrests it with thoughts of its eternity and im-
mortality, binds it to heaven by cords of love and hope and
interest, informs it of God's ample promises and its own
high and heavenly vocation, and so, by argument and holy
eloquence, aims at bringing on those very frames of mind
which are proper to prayer, and without which prayer is an
unmeaning ceremony, or a direct insult to the Majesty on
high.

The result, therefore, both of our appeal to reason and to
the sense of God's majesty is this, that unless we take pains
to acquaint ourselves with the purposes and promises of God,
we pray altogether at random, wandering at large in the
imagination of our own hearts. The first requisite, therefore,
to prayer is, knowledge of the Scriptures, where God's gifts
are laid out in full plenty. Unless a study be made of
them, it is impossible they can come to be proved. After
the knowledge of them, come the estimation, the desire,
and the pursuit of them ; to which we can only glance at
present. They must grow in the mind, by frequent medi-

1 2 ON PRA YER.

tation, into their due importance, from which they are
edged out by the multifarious objects of sight and time
to take a hold on the heart, like riches, or love, or health,
or renown, ere they will pull with any force. I ask, what has
God's Spirit to work withal against Satan's full possession of
the human faculties, — what power, what instrument hath he
but those objects in the picture which God sets before us?
Strike out peace with God, peace with the world, and peace
with conscience at home, — strike out the conquest over our
passions and our evil affections, — strike out heaven, and all
that is beyond the grave, and what power has the Spirit of
God over our hearts or our lives ? By these gentle, noble
influences, God hath purposed to stir us up, and draw us out
of our present abject condition. He therefore made them
known, placing them in such lights and colours as are attrac-
tive to our nature. But how shall our nature thereby become
attracted, if we send our regards, our thoughts, our hopes,
into other quarters, passionately admiring, fondly pursuing
that from which it was God's purpose to wean our nature.^
We must turn about and look the other way. We must study
and inquire into the things unseen, until they come to beget
ardour within the soul. If they are worth the having, they
are worth the knowing ; and they never yet were had, nor
never shall be had, without most strong and solicitous pursuit.
If we do not feel much, what do we ask for } God doth not
admit men as kings do courtiers, for ends of idle state. His
state is sustained by another kind of creature than man. We
are suitors for mercy, having been rebels ; we are petitioners
for supplies, being blind, and naked, and poor, and miserable ,*
we are under a load of debt, without aught to pay, and we
are suing out a free discharge ; we are promised that free
discharge, and we are reverently pleading on that promise,
and gratefully acknowledging the same. Oh, it moves the
inward parts of a pious heart, and ruffles it all with holy
indignation, to see the mean mistaken views of prayer. One
comes and says prayers to shew his respect to the Church, —
another, out of custom, — a third, to while away an hour, — a
fourth, to get the entertainment of the after-piece, and he oft
comes rudely stalking in at unseasonable hours, through the

ITS REASONABLENESS AND RULE. 13

silent, solemn ranks of the worshipping people he parades
himself, as if he would draw away the attention of the congre-
gation from God unto himself. Out upon all such worship-
pers, I would say, unless it were the still small hope of recall-
ing them to the love and admiration and veneration of God.
Let us have men, men of a pious mood, men of understanding
in the Scriptures, men of a panting spirit after godly things,
— then have we a proper band for carrying up petitions of
grievance, of right, and of reverent desire unto the Lord.

Blame me not, my Christian friends, for uttering deep feelings
in bold and ardent language. Until the cause of our immortal
souls be pleaded with greater feeling and boldness, it will fare
as now it doth. Its present languishment is the weakness of
its advocation. Our ears are accustomed to tameness and
temperateness, when there should be warmth and soul-stirring
energy; and we have come to associate with methodistical rant
that fervour which, in the senate or at the bar, being present
to a good cause, and grounded on a strong argument, would be
held becoming the occasion, and honourable to the feelings of
the speaker. Therefore, we begin with laying our foundation
on strong argument. And for the cause is nothing less than the
honour of the Godhead and the success of your prayers, which
is your salvation, therefore we again reject, with high indig-
nation, from the subject of prayer all these paltry feelings of
decency, and prudence, and expediency, calling upon you
to meditate the majesty of God you speak to, the mighty
interests you are pleading for, the encouragements to come
into His courts ; so that with the triple cord of reverence,
zeal, and expectation, you may draw down the things which
are agreeable to His will. The spirit would faint before His
majesty, were it not the abundance of His grace. Anxiety
over such mighty stakes would make hope to flutter, were it
not the unchangeableness of His purposes. And to ask so
much after having abused so mUch already given, would be
beyond all boldness, did we not know that it was purchased
for us, and ready to be delivered out to every one who in
good faith desires to have it. Let us, therefore, examine into
our condition, and ascertain our manifold wants. Let us
examine the Word of God, and see there our necessities most

14 ON PR A YER.

abundantly provided for. Then, out of craving hunger and
assured confidence, let us advance into the presence of God,
by the new and living way which hath been opened up by the
blood of Christ, — assured that a father would as soon give to
his hungry child a stone or a scorpion, as God will refuse His
good gifts to them who ask Him.

11.

THE INESTIMABLE ADVANTAGE OF PRAYER.

Matt. vi. 8.

Be not ye therefore like tmto them : for your Father knorveth -what things ye have

need of before ye ask him,

TN this discourse which we have thought it good to hold on
prayer in general, we have thus far laid the foundation of
the duty in the unchangeableness of God, and shewed that
there is no meaning nor hope, but on the other hand much
presumption and folly, in prayer, unless it keep by these pro-
mises of God which form the ground upon which the soul is
privileged to indulge anticipation, and even certainty, of suc-
cess. We would now go on to speak, from the place we have
reached in your conviction, upon the inestimable advantage
to be gained from prosecuting prayer after this only reason-
able and scriptural principle, of holding by the revealed pur-
poses and gracious promises of God.

And in the first place, just as we come to love a fellow-
mortal by becoming acquainted with his good and generous
intentions to mankind in general and to ourselves in particular,
even so we shall come to love the Almighty, when we learn
by the knowledge of His promises how great is His goodness
to the sons of men. There is no way of falling in love with
the Divine nature but by knowing His mind and purpose,
which, being unchangeable, is the secret record of His perform-
ances. For here on earth, such is the nature of human insta-
bility, and the limitations of human power, and the rapid flight
of time, that a man plentiful in promises or professions is either
suspected for a deceiver or held as inexperienced in his narrow
means. But God having in Him that truthfulness and stability
of purpose over which we were all agreed, both objectors and

1 6 ON PRAYER.

favourers of prayer, the number of His promises becomes an
exact measure to the magnitude of His goodness ; while His
power almighty is pledge of His ability to perform all for
which He undertakes. And for that mysterious attribute of
existence called time, whatever it is, He made it also, and will
make it long and durable enough for containing the accom-
plishment of His design. Therefore, the more promises we
find the Almighty to have made, we have not only the more
securities over the welfare of the future, but the more ties of
admiration, and gratitude, and love, to bind anew, the sym-
pathy between creature and Creator which the fall hath erased
from human nature. Every promise is a new instance of His
excellent attributes, and a new argument to our souls to
unite with Him in tender fellowship. Then, moreover, accord-
ing as we discover the length and breadth of His promises, we
come also to discover the extent of His sovereignty over the
supply of all our needs. We find that He hath made a pro-
mise for the bread which we eat, and for the raiment where-
with we are clothed, — that He hath made a promise for the
rain which watereth the earth, and for the dew which maketh
the outgoings of the evening and the morning to rejoice, — that
His bow in the heaven is a promise of seed-time and harvest,
to endure for the nourishment of everything that lives. We
find also that He holdeth the gifts of knowledge, and under-
standing, and a sound mind in His hand, and serveth them
out to the minds of men ; that power also is His, and length
of days, and riches, and honour. All those regions which
aforetime floated in our minds as the domain of fickle fortune,
or were given into the hands of a fixed fate, or made depend-
ent on the agency and free-will of man, turn out, upon know-
ing the promises of God, to be administrations of His bounty
to sustain the world and comfort its afflicted state — remnants
of His gifts which He did not remove at the great forfeiture of
all our joy and bliss, but secured for ever as divine attractions
to hold us to Himself against the great current of sin drifting
us away into the cold and frozen regions of the mind, where He
is forgotten and unknown. Thus fortune, and fate, and human
power, and every adventure and change in human life, become
hung and suspended from the throne of God, so soon as we

ITS INESTIMABLE ADVANTAGE. ly

comprehend the revelation of the Almighty's purposes. The
atheism of human thought and the godliness of human action
pass away, and instead come a knowledge of the divine
nature, and a confidence in the divine promises. The blank-
ness and blackness of the future become all enlivened with
light ; and footing is found for the bright daughters of Hope
to clear the way for warm wishes and constant purposes to
follow after, and the fancy of the poet is realised —

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast,
Man never is, but always to be blest."

Having thus gathered, by perusal of God's revelations, how
much in the past time, when we did not acknowledge Him,
He was working out the health and happiness of our life, —
how the sun did rise and the rain did descend upon our
fields all the same as upon the fields of the righteous and
devout, — we become wonder-struck with a sense of His forgive-
ness and His good-will to the worst of men. We say. What
could induce Him to feed, and clothe, and comfort us who
were shutting our ears to the knowledge, and steeling our
hearts to the feeling of His goodness, and counter-working all
His gracious designs.^ Why did He not contract His bounty
or send the stream of it another way? We deserved nothing;
we returned Him nothing. Surely His loving-kindness hath
been great and His forbearance unspeakable to us, while we
followed false and fabulous imaginations : how much more
kindly loving, and how much more forbearing will He be now
when we give ourselves to search into His revealed purposes
and to walk in all His statutes and commandments !

Thus the soul, when she betaketh herself to consult the
counsels of the Lord, cometh to love Him at every new dis-
covery of His carefulness, and to admire His mercy and for-
giveness and most disinterested goodness towards her, while
she lay enveloped in a darkness of her own making.

But I have spoken hitherto only of the lost provinces of
creation and providence, which are thus restored to the owner-
ship of God. What shall I say of the new provinces of grace
and glory, which then for the first time come within the limits
of the mind.'' Then the soul beginneth to expand her wings,
VOL. III. B

1 8 ON PRAYER.

and arise to heaven, and float over the visions of eternity ;
then she soareth like the eagle, and looks steadily into the
face of God. She feeleth for His Spirit within her, and
setteth her heart upon divine excellence. So many predic-
tions and promises of God to put her corruption to death
and reconcile her unto Himself, to write "holiness" upon all her
members, and "holiness" upon her inward parts, and strike
fruits of righteousness in her barren bosom, and take away her
hard and stony heart and give her a heart of flesh, upon the
tablets whereof to write His laws, that it may be a temple for
His Holy Spirit to dwell in, — to hide all her transgressions
and cover up all her sins, — to give her rest from a clamorous
conscience and accusing fears, that she may have peace, and
be refreshed with the full river of joy which maketh glad the
city of God; — these promises, no less abundantly made than
faithfully executed, draw us to God with cords of the
strongest love, as all our salvation and all our joy. Thus
Cometh the end and communication of His love — the fulness
of future glory, worthy, and alone worthy, to have such a
procession of creation, and providence, and grace, the three
visible kingdoms of the Almighty's bounty. The promises
which fetch this out from the hidden place, beyond the limits
of time and visible things, are the brightest of all the rest.
This body, the seed-bed of pains and diseases, the nurse of
appetites and passions strong, shall be renovated most glori-
ous to behold, most durable, most sweetly compacted, and
yielding most exquisite sensations of bliss. This society, so
ripe with deceivers, betrayers, slanderers, and workers of all
mischief, shall be winnowed of all its chaff, and constituted
anew under God's own government. Then shall be conjoined
such intimacies and loving unions as shall put to the blush
friendship, and iove, and brotherhood, and every terrestrial
affinity ; and the soul which peeps and feels here about the sur-
face of things, shall dive then into the mysteries of knowledge;
and intuition shall see far and near the essences of all created
things ; and all knowledge shall fan flames of benevolence,
and feel eternal purposes of well-doing to every creature
within our reach. All heaven shall smile for us, — for us every

jrS INESTIMABLE AD VANTA GE. 1 9

neighbouring creature shall labour, and we for them, — and
angels with the sons of men shall exchange innocent love, —
and the creatures under man shall serve him with love, and
drink from him their joy, as we shall drink our joy from God.
Oh, who shall tell the glory of these new heavens and new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness ! The imagery of in-
spired minds is exhausted on the theme, and all their descrip-
tions, I am convinced, fall as far short of the reality as the
description of nature's beauty is weak, compared with the
sight and feeling of her charms, — all language is a pale reflec-
tion of thought, all thought a pale reflection of present sensa-
tion, and all sensation this world hath ever generated a sickly
slight idea of what shall be hereafter.

Now, these revelations of God, touching His presidency
over the four great kingdoms of His dispensations, — creation,
providence, grace, and glory, — are all unknown, until out
of the promises we discover them. Prayer, therefore, which
rests upon the promises, and can rest upon nothing else, by
drawing our minds to them, makes us familiar with all the
character of God, and His inexpressible love towards mortals.
Such knowledge will, if anything will, produce upon the mind
attachment to God. Most certainly no attachment to Him
can rationally exist till the character of His operations
come to be known. God is not to be beloved by sympathy
of heart or similarity of conscious nature, as man loveth his
fellow-man. His manner of existence is a mystery, undis-
closed and undiscernible, and unfelt by every creature. He
liveth unapproachable. What He is, where He is, how He is,
no created thing can understand. All knowledge of Him and
love of Him must come from beholding some of His works,
or feeling His workmanship within us, or rejoicing in the
power He hath denied to us, or knowing the counsels and
intentions of His mind. These are all expounded in the record
of His promises, and of His performances, which are only
promises fulfilled. Therefore, it stands constant that until
these promises are studied and trusted to, no sincere love or
generous devotion to the Godhead will divulge itself in our
thoughts, words, or deeds ; and that when they are fixed and

20 ON PR A YER.

rooted in the mind, there is no end to the delight which it
will have in fulfilling the will and pleasure of Him who doth
so much and intends so much for its everlasting welfare.

If so much advantage is likely to flow from the mere know-
ledge of God's promises or designs, which is only the prepara-
tion for prayer, as it were the laying up of the materials, how
much more may be expected when the mind digests and incor-
porates them into its own being, which we shewed to be indis-
pensable to the right performance of the duty! Then prayer
comes to be the great instrument of religious discipline, re-
quiring all our hopes, and wishes, and apprehensions, to fall
into the same union with the Lord's intentions. Our schemes
must be redressed after the Divine pattern, — our desires re-
strained to the Divine gifts, — our labours conformed to the
Divine rule, — our dependence removed to the Almighty arm.
The outlookings of the mind into the future, its anticipations
of things to come, the nature of its joys and sorrows, of its
hopes and fears, become altered so soon as the rule by which
it governs itself is taken from the promises of God. And as
the tact and energy of action depends entirely upon the bent
of our designs, it will come about from this new regulation of
our purposes that our life will acquire a new character, and
our enterprises be conducted after a different spirit; so that
prayer is the education of the soul, its discipline for the field
of duty, without which there can be no success in the ways of
righteousness. For no man ever acted well without having
well forecast his actions; certainly no man ever acted Avith
any heart till he loved and desired the ends of his actions.
This love, this desire of holy ends, Avhich must precede the
effectual fervent pursuit of them, we shewed to be indispens-
able to the success of prayer; so that prayer is, as it were,
the middle stage between the conceiving of good in the mind
and the realising of it in the life.

For in all this discourse you will perceive that I hold the
promises to be the guides of our actions as well as of our
prayers, seeing it cannot be that we are enamoured of any-
thing without endeavouring what in us lies to possess it ; so
that if we thirst after the things promised by God, we will
take steps to obtain them, seeing that His promises make

ITS INESTIMABLE ADVANTAGE. 21

them not only hopeful, but even certain to those who follow
them with a sincere desire and in the appointed way. The
whole of a Christian's transactions, from morning to night,
should be an endeavour after some good thing held up by
God as the prize of his holy industry. His labours, mechani-
cal or mercantile, literary or political, should be pursued with
the hope of obtaining that daily bread which the Lord, in
permitting us to ask, has permitted us to expect ; or, if daily
bread be already ours, then, for ends of benevolence or
charity, to win some more substance than we need in our
own household, that we may devote it to God's glory. Every '
Christian I regard to be like the bee, sucking sweetness from
sourness and turning poisons into wholesome food. What-
ever he accumulates is so much stored from the enemy, which
the enemy would have consumed on lust, or ostentation, or
wickedness. It is a conquest made from debateable ground,
and being in our hands can be turned to godly purpose.
Thus the hours of labour, which make such encroachments
upon our disposable time, may be peopled with holy inten-
tions, which will effectually banish from the details of busi-
ness all meanness and fraud. Thus we fulfil the command-
ment of the apostle, to be "active in business, fervent in
spirit, serving the Lord." Likewise, at home, our walk and
conversation, the rearing of our children, and the well-order-
ing of our house, our hospitality to acquaintances and enter-
tainment of strangers, our residences and our removals,
should all be regulated so as to obtain for ourselves, our
families, and our circle of friends, those personal graces and
those social excellences which God hath promised to His
people. Our public and political interests no less — our debates,
our speeches, our associations, whether in religious or social
bodies, and our behaviour there — should all have a straight
intention to uphold virtue, and honour, and religion, and
every other pillar of the public weal ; so that, from morning
to latest evening, at home and abroad, in the closet, in the
street, and the various rendezvous of active men, we may,
nay, should, have it in our eye, to select some landmark of
promise erected by God to guide our undertakings.

Now it may be said. What then availeth prayer, which you

2 2 ON PR A YER.

call the stepping-stone between holy conceptions and holy
endeavours to bring these conceptions into being ? — how does
it confirm the one or expedite the other ? My brethren,
were you ever full of any purpose without longing to un-
bosom yourselves to your friend ? Were you ever well coun-
selled by a friend without thanking him for his counsel ?
Did you ever eagerly enter on a thing without seeking the
favour of those on whom it depended ? Were you ever suc-
cessful in a hard encounter without thanking those that had
given you a hand in your strait ? The tongue, which to other
animals is but an instrument of tasting their food or roaring
for their prey, was in man gifted with language, and melody,
and heavenly eloquence, to be the great bond of society, by
communicating with more than electric speed between heart
and heart the ten thousand emotions which arise therein.
Not to utter these emotions, but to let them die untold, is to
bury the soul in the sepulchre of the body, instead of letting
it forth to sway the souls and bodies of other men. So prayer
is the employment of the tongue to its noblest purpose, of
recounting unto the Lord the experiences of His goodness
which occupy the breast. It would have been cruel in God
not to have allowed the bosom so to speak its pious emotions.
Had He commanded them to be imprisoned there when they
were working, it would have been hard and fearful to endure.
But God is not the Father of such tyranny : He sets no spies
upon the words of His servants, nor does He require from
them set forms of speech, but permits them as they feel so
to speak, before the multitude, in public places, in audience
before Himself, in the closet or in the solitudes of nature.
Oh, it would have been a fell bondage to endure had He said,
" You shall not speak my praise for this rich treasure of pro-
mise,— you shall not invoke my aid in the pursuit of those
prizes of your high calling, — you shall not return me thanks
in the happy hour of your success, or sing me songs of jubi-
lee while you enjoy the harvests of my bounty." Who is he
that calleth prayer a bondage .'' who is he that wondereth
God should require it, or disliketh to render it according to
His will .^ Then that man's bosom is a desert wilderness,
where no divine graces are implanted, where no divine pro-

ITS INESTIMABLE ADVANTAGE. 23

mises shine bright ; his life is a worldly turmoil after empty-
gains or airy fantastic joys, — no diligent endeavour after the
gains and enjoyments which God hath sanctioned and made
patent by His promises. That man knoweth not of whom
he holds the wonders of his creation, or the goods of his pro-
vidence ; he is in the dark upon the riches of grace and the
rewards of glory. Prayer is not a bondage to a heart that is
full of holy feeling, and a head that is full of divine know-
ledge ; but it is the language which the promptings of the
thoughts within us sends rushing to our tongue, which it were
the cruellest bondage of nature to stifle. Why, it were to
muzzle reason, and knowledge, and piety, and purpose, and
gratitude, and devotion, — to doom to deep dungeons of silence
the spirit which boundeth for the liberty of utterance and
enterprise. And who could endure that confinement .'' It
were death, and worse than death, to be first charged with so
much elastic, buoyant, resolute animation, and then bound
down to rest and quietude by the same power which filled
us. Have ye seen a dumb man under strong mental ex-
citement ^ How he distorts his countenance with fearful
expression, and his body with frightful gesture, and opens
wide the portals of speech, and strives to give motion to his
fastened tongue, while hollow workings of ineffectual sound
are heard deep in his breast, and his whole body, hands and
feet, and writhing frame, labour and are in distress, — so that
the very soul of every beholder is touched with pity and deep
regret to see a fellow-creature so frustrated of the glorious
faculty of expressing thought ! Even such unspeakable pain,
such severe amputation of the religious man's nature, would
you cause were ye to deprive him of prayer, Avhich is the
utterance of strong desire, and purpose, and feeling unto his
Maker. Oh, it were heartless and cheerless to be cut off
from such communications ! You might as lief take God
from the universe as prevent the soul holding intercourse
with Him. What were all His disclosures, and all His
advices, and all His promises and commandments, if He had
taken Himself far away, and drawn a deafening veil between
His hearing ear and the habitation of mortal man ! Then
He were no longer a Father to appeal to for protection, — a

24 ON PRA YER.

Friend to apply to for aid, — an almighty Power to trust in
for success, — a Comforter into whose bosom to utter our
grief, — a Companion to take with us into our dangers, and
our troubles, and our exiles. They know not the effects of
prayer upon every faculty of the religious man who would
deprive him of its use.

All power of cool argument forsakes our mind when we
think of the advantage of prayer. Then come floating before
memory a thousand hapless conditions which prayer alone
could comfort : pining prisoners and persecuted worthies,
saints forced into exile, religious heroes bound to toil at the
oar of triumphant power, all come arrayed in the content-
ment and joy which this privilege brought them in their
calamities ; orphan children, weeping over a last parent de-
parted, come, heartened by the assurance of another Parent
who never departs ; widows, mourning over him that won the
bread of themselves and their children, come, being comforted
Avith the providence and presence of Him who is a Husband
to the widow, and a Father to the fatherless ; hearts broken
by oppression, despair begotten by the faithlessness of man,
adversity's bleak day and bitter food, cheered by the assur-
ance that the children of the righteous shall never beg their
bread ; virtue blackened by slanderous tongues, patriotism
borne down and misjudged by selfishness, religion held
hypocrisy, benevolence railed at as ostentation, and the
thousand other mistakes and mistreatments of the world, —
all comforted by the bosom of God, into which we can utter
our complaints and look for righteous judgment ; — all these
unhappy conditions, ministered to by promises of Scripture,
and visited with hope of better things to come, and never
deserted by the presence and ear of God, come rushing before
our mind in discoursing of prayer, and leave neither temper
nor time for deliberate argument.

These rapid sketches of thoughts, which it would take
many discourses to develop into regular and well-built argu-
ment, we leave to produce their own effects ; but not without
prayer to the Most High for their success, seeing it would
be a confutation of ourselves did we not, however full of
desire or laborious in endeavour after your spiritual edifica-

ITS INESTIMABLE ADVANTAGE. 25

tion, seek the same from the Lord with all prayer and sup-
plication. May He who first appointed the foolishness of
preaching for the salvation of men, and who by His presence
in earthen vessels hath in every age enriched His Church
with a holy people, bless these words of weakness and igno-
rance to the persuasion and conversion of many souls ; and
so kindle in our breasts the love of prayer, as that we shall
meditate with great delight this prayer first spoken by the
lips of His only-begotten Son, and derive much fruit of right-
eousness from the same ! And may He signalise the com-
mencement of the year to this people by working in their
hearts a stronger fervency of purpose after the performance
of His will, and a closer application at His throne for the
fulfilment of all His promises !

III.

ITS APPROPRIATE PLACE AND OCCASION.

Matt. vt. 5, 6.
And when thou prayest, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are : for they love to pray
standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be
seen of men. Verily I say unto you. They have their reward. But thou,
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,
tray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in sec7-et shall
reward thee openly.

'npHE form of prayer commonly called the Lord's Prayer,
to which it is our purpose in the strength of God to
bend our thoughts, was not given upon an occasion formally
set for that purpose, but stands in the heart of the sermon
which Christ delivered to His disciples from the mount. It is
not even one complete topic of that discourse, but only part
of a topic, which begins with the verses that we now read, and
continues two verses beyond the conclusion of the prayer.
This topic is of prayer in general, and comes in between the
kindred topics of almsgiving and fasting. These three, alms-
giving, prayer, and fasting, form a distinct division of the ser-
mon, which might be entitled " Of acts of religious worship ;''
therefore it would be injustice to the Lord's design to take up
His prayer as a separate and distinct lesson, without consider-
ing- the abuses which it was intended to rebuke. For we shall

o

see, as we advance along the train of thought which introduces
it, that it was not a separate study upon the fittest form of
prayer, but a practical exposure of certain mistaken practices
which existed and still exist in that most important part of
Divine worship.

You will regard it, therefore, as proceeding, not from a taste
for prolixity, but from a desire to apprehend the meaning of
our Lord, that we enter upon this topic from the beginning

A PPR OPRIA TE PLACE A ND OCCA SION. 2 7

and follow it out unto the end, endeavouring to ascertain the
design and intention of this prayer as a whole, that we may
know precisely where to place it in our judgment, and what
use to make of it in our devotions. With this view, we have
read out the two first verses, which make us acquainted with
an abuse common in our Lord's age, and we suppose in every
age, of making prayer a passport to the favour and friendship
of men. They likewise point out the way in which that abuse
is to be corrected. Then follows, in the two next verses, an
abuse, not proceeding, like the last, from design, but from the
mistaken idea that we shall be heard according to the length
and frequent repetition of our prayers ; to remove which He
gives the assurance that God knows all that we need before
we ask Him. Having corrected these two forms of abuse,
whereof the one originates in fraud and hypocrisy, the other
in erroneous notions, He proceeds to give an example which
should illustrate His views and serve as a model to His dis-
ciples. This done. He adds a condition upon which alone
God will hear our prayers for forgiveness — that we be forgiving
towards those who have trespassed against us. So that His
instruction upon this subject of prayer hath in it the nature
of a regular discourse, first pointing out the evil practices He
would correct, and the proper way of correcting them ; then
giving an example illustrative of His doctrine ; and finally
deducing from the practice a wholesome lesson of mutual for-
giveness and friendship. Following in the same track, we
would endeavour, in like manner, to expose the hypocrisy and
instruct the ignorance which exist in the practice of prayer;
then shew forth the excellent point of this specimen, as well
as the import of its several petitions ; after which it will remain
to connect heaven with earth, by shewing that we must be-
have by our fellow-men when they petition us as we would
have God behave by ourselves when we petition Him. May
the Lord, from whom cometh both human understanding and
the unction of the Holy Ghost, so endow our faculties and
bless our discourse, as to make it profitable to every worship-
per in this place, that he who still walketh in darkness may
be enlightened, and every one who walketh in the light may
be encouraged !

28 ON PRA YER.

The refined state of society in which we live, and the shrewd
observation cast upon every man from a thousand eyes, and,
above all, the illumination of the age, have driven the hypo-
crites from making their prayers in the streets to be seen of
men. In Catholic countries it still exists under the fostering
hand of ignorance and superstition, where you will behold
them in places of resort diligently telling their beads, or with
their eyes bent in seeming adoration upon the image of a
crucified Jesus, But we have no such custom in these Pro-
testant countries, w^here street-praying, so far from winning
favour to any one, would expose him to be hooted by the
mob as one who was practising upon their credulity, or seized
by the police as one who was interrupting the course of affairs.
In this dispensation which we have got from the psalm-sing-
ing parades of continental Protestants, and the endless pro-
cessions of Catholics, with the mummery of mendicant friars
of every name, we should be thankful to the providence of
God over these lands, and the righteous spirit of our fore-
fathers, who would not brook such impostures upon their
good sense, and insolences towards God. It is good to find
the Founder of our faith, in whose words I love to peruse His
religion, and from whose life to copy it, so strenuously set
against all unnecessary exposure of our religion to public
gaze. It falls sweetly in with the good sense and feelings of
men who love to cover what they revere from the public gaze.
No one of any feeling or prudence speaks before a mixed
assembly of the happiness he hath at home, of his affection
for his wife or children, or any other sentiment which lies
near to his heart. These he keeps for the ear of his particular
and beloved friend, and for seasons which are hallowed by
the tenderest and closest fellowship. In such respect and
reverence Christ wisheth religion to be holden. Our inter-
course and communion with God He wisheth to be more
hallowed than loving affection or tender friendship, whose
delight is not to be gazed upon but to be felt, and which have
all their reward in the inward happiness which they yield ;
and you may rest assured, that so soon as prayer comes to be
appreciated as a refined and noble exercise of the heart, it
will not need a commandment of Christ to drive it from the

APPROPRIATE PLACE AND OCCASION. 29

eye of men, but of its own accord will seek the time and place
at which the heart is best fitted to partake it. While by-
standers were present, Joseph carried out his part with his
brethren ; and when Judah pleaded that Benjamin should be
allowed to go for their old father's sake, and that he would
remain behind a captive in his room, being overcome he could
no longer refrain himself; yet, before he would allow his
feelings vent, he cried, " Cause every man to go out from me.
And there stood no man with him while Joseph made himself
known to his brethren ; and he wept aloud." This is a pure
stroke of nature, a genuine exhibition of a true-hearted man,
God hath not taken the name of a Father, nor Christ of an
Elder Brother for nought, but because these names import more
nearly than any other the nature of the affection which they
bear towards us. Therefore, like Joseph to his brethren, pour
out your souls to Christ alone; like Christ to His heavenly
Father, pour out your souls to God in retired and solitary
places. This is the chief mark to distinguish true feeling
from the affectation of feeling, sentiment from sentimentality,
that the one is choice and prudent in its signs and utterances,
the other rash and forward and always intruding. And the
reason of this is obvious : one who feels truly never expresses
anything which he is not at the moment feeling; and the heart
does not feel at will, but when proper objects and occasions
move it. But the other, thinking it fine and becoming to be
accounted tender-hearted, learns the language and plays the
part when any observers are by, and the consequence is, that,
like stage-players, he loses the capacity of true feeling, and is
usually the dullest to recognise an object worthy of emotion,
and the deafest to listen to a real call upon his sympathies and
help. Therefore I counsel you to take heed to our Saviour's
doctrine, as grafted upon human nature, and suit the time and
place to the thing. For even though out of genuine piety
you were to make prayers under the eye of men irreverently
engaged, you would be apt in time to lose the proper feeling,
and fall under some of the evil influences which attend upon
ostentation and effect.

It is not, however, the place so much as the motive our
Lord rebukes: "to be seen of men." I can conceive, nay, I

30 ON PRA YER.

have felt, that in the midst of a crowded city, while the body
is making its way along the streets to its proper destination,
the mind will be wandering over the ends of the earth, or
ruminating over future schemes, or reflecting on past adven-
tures, or entertaining itself with thoughts of wickedness and
folly. Every passing object will set it on a new hunt, every
curious article of merchandise awakening fresh wonder, and
every known character leading to some reflections often not
charitable to him or honourable to our Christian feelings.
Now, as it is not the occasional feast but the daily fare which
nourishes the body, so it is not the stated services but the
constantly-recurring feelings and thoughts which nourish the
soul. One act of envy is as injurious as one act of true devo-
tion is beneficial ; one surrender to vanity, or voluptuousness,
or anger, will destroy the good effects of one surrender to
self-abasement, self-denial, or self-command. It is the keep-
ing the heart, out of which are the issues of life, and devoting
the whole soul, and mind, and strength, and might, which
constitute the service of God. Therefore, do not think, be-
cause Christ excommunicates such religious acts as may be
seen of men from being performed in streets and unbecoming
places, that He hinders the mind from turning itself then and
there to serious and solemn subjects, or permits it a free range
of unholy thoughts. His holy law is over us in the street as
much as at home ; piety of heart is there as incumbent as in
sacred assemblies. And I see not why, in our musings by the
way, we should not, like Bunyan's pilgrims, turn to solemn
and serious things, — why the vain spectacles we behold
should not excite trains of disgust rather than of envy, and
suggest silent prayers to be kept from these temptations, —
why the wicked sons and daughters of Belial whom we meet
should not suggest prayer for their repentance and reforma-
tion,— and why the schemes on whose execution we are bust-
ling about should not suggest silent prayer for their success.
It would indicate a hardened heart and an unimaginative
mind to move about our streets without any thoughts or
endeavours suggested by all that we behold. So it indi-
cates an irreligious mind when none of those thoughts
have a bearing upon religion, and an undevout mind when

A PPR OPRIA TE PLACE A ND OCCA SION. 3 1

none of them have a reference to God. And in the same
manner as it would be insincere towards God to utter
prayers when we have no movements of pious desire, so would
it be unjust to ourselves not to allow ourselves in these pious
trains of thought and silent ejaculations of heart. They have
not the form of prayer, but in God's sight they are all the
same, and without such constant discipline the heart will have
no feelings to pour out when in good earnest we address our-
selves to our devotions.

There is one other proviso that I will make before leaving
the subject of praying in the streets — that it may become
necessary, and in this very city hath become necessary, from
the hardships of the times. Not much more than a century
ago the Society of Friends were hindered from assembling in
their houses of prayer ; and, to shew that they would obey
God rather than man, they did not forsake the assembling of
themselves together, but convened in the street before the
door, and bore whatever penalties arbitrary power might im-
pose upon them ; and I think they acted like men that were
not ashamed of the testimony of Christ. And in the present
times, when the multitude forsake the house of God, and
wander like scattered sheep among the fields, any pious man
would do service both to God and to their souls, who could
speak to them with effect, and persuade them to listen to him
while he set forth their duty, and prayed to God for their
sakes. These do not act to be seen of men, but to save men.
They go after souls like the shepherd after the strayed sheep ;
and while they conduct themselves with prudence, and pre-
serve order among those whom they gather together, every
good and pious person, I think, will give them his countenance
and blessing. Not that I consider field worship as likely to
be so useful as worship within doors, but that it is better than
idle stroUings and ale-house or tea-garden assemblies. Isaac
went out to meditate in the fields at even-tide, and our Lord
spent whole nights in devotion under the silent canopy of
heaven; so that there is no reason, but the greater convenience
of the thing, that our devotion should be restricted to house-
hold places. He needeth not temples made with hands, He
needeth not the intervening words of liturgy or priest — these

32 ON PRAYER.

are things of expediency alone. The heart, the genuine
sentiments and desires of the heart, is all He asks ; the place,
the time, the words are nothing, but as they help to suggest
emotions which otherwise might be dormant, or deliver us of
emotions which might distress us for want of utterance.

Next in our Saviour's catalogue of abuses comes prayer
made in the synagogue to be seen of men. Now, in thinking
over with myself to what people in this day the same charge
will apply, I regret to think it should be applicable to so
many. Indeed, hardly any are to be excepted, save those
who present themselves in the house of God out of true
and sincere devotion. Those who are there from a regard
to grave and decent custom are clearly chargeable with
making prayer to be seen of men ; because a deference to
custom is nothing more than a tribute offered for the good-
will of others. Those who join in the prayers of the Church
to patronise with their presence so good an institution are
still more chargeable, for they go expecting to be taken
notice of, and thinking to give an eclat to the Lord's assembly
by their appearance. Those, again, who go out of respect to
the pastor are also courters of observation, and those who go
to please their friends, or to keep the good graces of their
masters, or because it becomes their station; within which lists
will come a larger proportion of worshippers than I would
choose to guess at. As was said in a former discourse, there
are respectable feelings everywhere but in the house of God;
which is a sanctum sanctorum, a holy of holies, that frowns
upon sentiments which, at home, or in houses of business, or
in courts of justice, or anywhere else, would be allowable.
We meet here under the eye of Him that is the Almighty,
we meet here on purpose to secrete ourselves from intruding
thoughts of time and temporal things, we bring no book but
the Word of God, we utter no voice but the praises of God,
we allow no intrusion, we suffer no interruption, — all which
conventional customs of this house are to signify that in truth
the place and the time should be set apart to God alone ; the
soul should look to Him alone, and, save His all-seeing eye, no
eye should be regarded. Therefore, we are not excusable if
we mingle any foreign ingredients in the spiritual cup of our

APPROPRIATE PLACE AND OCCASION. 33

libation, if we sacrifice to show, or outward form, or ancient
custom, or interest, or anything else, than to Him who seeth
in secret and rewardeth openly. It is of the utmost import-
ance, brethren, that we carefully examine what spirit we are
of, and what purposes are moving us when we enter this house
and stand up to present our supplications at the throne. He
is not far from any one of us ; not, however, as a spy, but as
a God who judgeth righteous judgments. A petition coming
from a heart otherwise occupied hath in it no virtue. It doth
not benefit the heart of him who conceives it, nor doth it
pierce the ear of him who hears it. Attention with difficulty
keeps alive, the contagion of thoughtlessness catches, and a
whole assembly will sometimes seem as drowsy and heedless
in their prayers as if they were uttered by the priest in a
tongue unknown. Much of this listlessness may be caused
by himself: if he feels not what he utters, the dulness and
monotony of his words will not be long of bringing the most
hearty worshipper into a condition of heartlessness of which
he is ashamed. But much of it also arises from the people :
if in spite of all his sincerity and zeal the preacher cannot fix
their minds, if there be not the stillness of thoughtful men, if
there be the rustling of many movements, if there be the in-
terruption of rude incomers, and the eager gaze of many eyes
turning to inspect him, — this will soon convey itself to the eye
or ear of the minister, and draw his mind from the elevation
and entire absorption of prayer in despite of himself That
there may be a heartfelt service, there must be genuine feel-
ings of devotion on both sides ; and if the heart feels not for
those things it professes to want, how can we expect God
should .'' Therefore, that there may be any return to our
prayers, any open and manifest reward, do be at pains to
purge your minds of all unworthy and improper motives be-
fore crossing this sacred threshold, — take a muster of your
serious tlioughts, — remember the days of old, full of gracious
fruits, — look to the future, full of immortal destinies, — weigh
your lives in a balance, — measure your wants with a measure,
— meditate the fulness of the promises of God ; and, being
thus filled with suitable feelings, you shall find the exercise
of prayer to be a relief rather than a trouble, a thing which
VOL. III. C

34 ON PRA YER.

nature calls for, rather than a thing at which she murmurs.
While I thus instruct you, I would not be unmindful to take
the lesson to myself, being convinced that much of the cold-
ness of the assembly, especially in extempore prayers, ariseth
from him whose heart and lips go before those of the people.
It is a solemn function and too little thought of, and though
we would not be critical, yet we cannot pass, when discoursing
of prayer in the synagogue, without noting the humbleness
and vulgarity, both of style and manner, which many conceive
themselves privileged to use before Him before whom Moses
prayed in the sublimest strains, Daniel in the most heart-
searching, Christ in the most reverent, and all with the utmost
stretch of soul. Let any one read these prayers and others
recorded in Scripture, — as that of Deborah and Barak for
Sisera's overthrow, that of Solomon at the dedication of the
temple, the prayers interspersed through the Psalms, the
adoration throughout the Prophets, the benedictions through-
out the Apostles, — and mark the fervid and deep emo-
tion of heart, the lofty and exalted sentiments of the God-
head, the breathing and burning adoration, the calm and
settled repose in His providence and grace, and the secure
anticipations of future glory ; let him then come into the
house of prayer, and witness in their room cold intellect, and
narrow form, and dogmatical orthodoxy, and mean language,
and meaner manner, and he will see how the glory is departed.
Our prayers have more the air of disquisitions and creeds
than of devotional exercises. They are expressions, not so
much of our heart as of our faith ; they travel within a narrow
compass of feelings and wants, instead of embracing the whole
scope of our spiritual and bodily necessities, to which God
hath ministered abundant promises. They are often a tribute
rather to the popularity of received opinion than to the all-
seeing and unchangeable God. And if men were not fallen
into a tame neutrality upon religion, if they were stirred by it
as by political or worldly affairs, they would call and crave
for some more powerful and effectual presentation of their
case before the Lord, instead of delighting to have their
narrow-minded prescriptive orthodoxy of opinion sacrificed

APPROPRIATE PLACE AND OCCASION. 35

to at the shrine of God, where no sacrifice is received but
that of a sincere and fervent heart.

In correction of these and all other hypocritical abuses of
prayer, He commands us to enter into our closet, and having
shut the door, to pray to our Father in secret. Those who
can possess the convenience of literally performing this com-
mandment will understand it literally ; those who have not
will understand it figuratively to mean, that of all employ-
ments of the mind, prayer should be the most sincere and
confidential, — that it should not need to seek any foreign
excitement of place or persons, but depend alone upon the
heart of the petitioner and the ear of Him who is besought.
It does not forbid the devotions of the sanctuary, or of the
family, if they be not performed out of regard to human
custom or authority ; but it intimates, that if to these there
be not superadded the exercises of the closet, or of the solitary
mind, these are to be suspected as proceeding from sinister and
unworthy motives. He would not have commanded, beyond
all these, secret confessions and devotions, if public or domes-
tic would of themselves suffice. He gives, as a test of sincerity,
the matter of fact whether we so employ ourselves in secret.
He does not go into an enumeration of the many shapes
which hypocrisy may assume so as to deceive our very selves,
but gives us at once a sign that cannot be mistaken, whether
we employ ourselves as diligently in secret. For it is not
natural for two hearts which love each other dearly to be
content with interviews before others. Everywhere their
manner towards each other will speak their mutual affection,
but much will they long to talk of it and manifest it to each
other unobserved. I take you to witness if this be not true,
that you may receive many flattering compliments and much
flowery praise from a public speaker in a public place, who
all the while in his heart regards you not, perhaps hates you,
for those very qualities to which, to save appearances, he is
obliged to render a public tribute. And do not enemies and
rivals, when accident brings them together into domestic
society, cover with seeming courtesy the wounds which they
bear from each other .'' What a deal of courtesy and good-

36 ON PR A YER.

will and friendly intercourse shall take place amongst men
who, next day, shall not have a friendly salutation or greeting
to tender to each other ! You bring the matter to the test
by a private interview, — you try your sentiments when no
one hears, — you pledge your faith when no one witnesses,
and you wait to see whether it stands good. You ask a
favour, — a private favour between yourselves, — andsee whether
it is granted. To this same test Christ would bring our
prayers. When you are alone, whitherward wander your
thoughts .'' To God } When your cogitations are weighing the
past or pondering the future, is God's providence and God's
promise in the foreground of the picture .'' When your eye
wakes by night upon your sleepless pillow, what within the
mind filleth up the void which darkness and silence hath
made without .-* Is it God .-' Do you bend the knee to God,
and has your heart warmth, your tongue liberal utterance,
your soul deep absorption .'' Doth time flee on wings of haste,
and sitteth rapture upon all the faculties of your mind ? So
that when you stretch your limbs upon the bed, calm and
sweet repose steals over you, as sweet and silent twilight
falleth upon the noisy, garish day. And when unconscious
sleep hath drawn a midnight curtain over conscious nature,
do heavenly, holy visions come flitting across the natural
fancy .'' And when God looseth again the downy chain of
sleep, and light visits your eyelids, do your thoughts turn
again to God, and a flush of gladness burst over your heart
that He hath brought you again out of the realm of uncon-
scious being .'' Do your words arrange themselves into matins
of praise to Him who maketh the outgoings of the evening
and the morning to rejoice over you .-* Then, indeed, it is well ;
— your heavenly devotions, your public worship, will come
forth nobly and acceptably after such preparation, and the
favour of the Lord shall be your excellent reward.

In arguing between these two principles of prayer, — to be
seen of men, and to be seen of God, — our Saviour displays His
characteristical meekness, saying of the former, "Verily, it
hath its reward ;" of the latter, "God, who seeth in secret, shall
reward it openly." But what a difference is there in these two
calm declarations of the truth, and what an argument of pre-

A PPR OPRIA TE PLACE A ND O CCA SI ON. 3 7

ference in the one over the other! "It hath its reward :" it
receives what it works for — the approbation of men, a good
name upon the earth, perhaps some favour from those who
patronise godliness in the land, perhaps an unfounded con-
fidence of God's favour. " It hath its reward." And what is
it worth } It is worth the countenance of a few changeable,
short-lived creatures, — it is worth the breath of the public
tongue, which, like Jonah's gourd, is oft exhausted in a day ;
perhaps, if it escape detection, it is worth the outward gloss
of a few fleeting years, and a monument, perhaps, and a
godly inscription ; and then it ends. Yes, it hath it. And
what doth it avail .-' Will these witnesses stand us good at
the throne of God } or will that monumental inscription be
taken in evidence at the solemn bar of judgment .■*

But openly, before angels and before men, in the world
that is, and in the world that is to come, will the Lord bring
forth with praise, and load with benefits, those who looked to
Him and prayed to Him in the confidence and affection of
their hearts. They may be held cheap, and of small reputa-
tion, and have no admission to stately cathedrals and royal
chapels ; and on high days and holy days their paltry, shabby
dresses may keep them far aloof from crimsoned altars and
pompous rituals ; but as God liveth, they who seek Him with
their heart shall in their heart possess Him. For though He
be the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity and the
praises thereof. He dwelleth also with those who are of a
humble and a contrite heart, and who tremble at His word.

Therefore, beloved brethren, be of one mind to worship the
Lord God in your hearts and to seek Him for His own sake,
keeping your foot when you enter into the house of God,
and not offering the sacrifice of fools, that you may possess
His benefits in answer to your prayers, and live in the assur-
ance of His salvation through Christ; to whom be glory and
majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen !

IV.

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD.

Matt. vi. 7, 8.
Biit when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do : for they think that
they shall be heard for their much speakittg. Be not ye therefore like unto
them : for your Father knoweth 'luhat things ye have need of before ye ask him.

' I ^HERE is no one who believes in a God that has not a
certain notion, accurate or inaccurate, of His nature,
and by which the character of His worship is determined.
It is rehgion when it goes upon accurate conceptions ; super-
stition, when it goes upon inaccurate conceptions ; and be-
tween these there are a thousand varieties formed by the
intermixture of the two. Our feehngs towards God, in the
same way as our feehngs towards man, depend upon the
notion we have of His character. It is natural to love what-
ever is merciful and kind, to stand in awe of what is just and
upright, to admire enlargement and comprehension of mind,
and delight in liberality and benevolence of heart ; — as natu-
ral is it to fear tyranny, to hate vindictiveness, and to be
vexed by the neighbourhood of suspicion. We cannot help
ourselves in this matter, so as to love what is not lovely, or
hate what is not hateful. We may disguise or misname the
feeling which we have, but Ave cannot hinder it from arising
and producing its effects. According, therefore, as our idea
of God takes in the amiable, and the v^enerable, and the just,
or takes in the suspicious, and the arbitrary, and the vindic-
tive attributes of being, our feelings towards Him will be
generous and joyful, or timorous and painful — our service of
Him heartfelt and ennobling, or slavish and degrading ; and
the only way of correcting any abuse which may exist in the
worship of God is to remove the misconception upon which

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD. 39

that abuse is founded. Accordingly our Saviour, in the case
before us of vain repetitions in prayer, just states the mistake
in which it originates, — "they think that they shall be heard
for their much speaking," — and then corrects it by the injunc-
tion, " Your heavenly Father knows what things ye have need
of before ye ask him." In the same spirit, we would endea-
vour to correct abuses in the worship of God, by enlightening
the understanding upon the nature of Him whom ye worship.
This we shall do in the following discourses, reserving our-
selves to another occasion for bringing forward the practical
abuses unwittingly gone into in the present times. To-day,
we propound the remedy, which is the better knowledge ;
next Lord's day we shall apply it to the disease, which is
undesigned offence in worshipping God. This we do, trust-
ing in His grace to open our own understanding, and find
favour in your minds for our instructions.

It is most natural for the mind of man to transfer to other
intelligent creatures the form, and feeling, and character with
which he is so familiar in himself If any one will examine
what is his notion of an angel, he will find that it consists of
human form, with human energies, and human affections. So
also God was at first conceived to be of form and feature,
and passion and action, similar to man, and was so sculptured
by the ancient artists and set forth by their mythologists.
The Jews were hindered from making an image of the Divinity,
that they might derive their knowledge of Him, not from be-
holding with the sense a polished work of man's fingers, but
from perusing the facts recorded of His ways, and the de-
scription given of His character, in their inspired books. Yet
so prone is man to connect human form with intelligence, that
they were constantly lapsing into idolatry and setting up
images before their eyes. We Christians, at least we Protes-
tants, are delivered from the sensible imagery with which the
ancients invested their idea of God ; but there is hardly any
Christian whose conception of God is free from some ingre-
dient of human nature. I consider that one great use of God
manifest in the flesh was to give us a form of Godhead upon
which we might concentrate the various affections of our
nature, and be joined to Him as humanity is joined to

40 ' ON PRA YER.

humanity ; and, therefore, I see no objections to artists putting
forth their imaginations upon the person of Christ. This
incarnation of the Divinity was designed to address man's
compound nature through every avenue and by every win-
ning method, in order that having won its loves, it might for-
ward them to the adoration of the invisible God, who hath
no form that it may be beheld, who hath no dwelling-place
that it may be approached unto, but dwelleth evermore in
light inaccessible and full of glory, hath His seat in every
pious heart, and filleth all existence with life and joy. Christ,
therefore, I regard as the avenue through which the soul
reacheth to God. Christ's visible person I regard as the
great preservative from idolatry, being the legitimate pre-
sentation of the nature of God to all the faculties of man ;
and, save through Him as the avenue, no one, it seems to me,
can win his way to the unformed, incorporeal Godhead ;
and, therefore, all Unitarian and Socinian doctrines are to be
held as cutting asunder the bridge and pathway which God
hath made for the mind to pass from the conception it is
familiar with here below to the conception of Himself. They
take the words God is painted with ; but what are words
compared with life and gesture, with sight, touch, and living
spirit. They take the cold words, but will not take the
image God impressed of Himself upon clay ; and their reli-
gion will never come to have in it any heat, warmth, or affec-
tion. It is as if a mail should conceive love from the descrip-
tion of a female form, and live upon that unsubstantial feel-
ing, and refuse to see, or hear, or hold intercourse with the
fair object of his entranced affection. But, by the way, I may
remark, that however serviceable the incarnation be to prevent
us from idolatry, I have observed it produce the opposite
effects. I have witnessed a devotedness to the incarnate Deity,
a resoluteness to rise no higher, or conceive no further, a fond-
ness for the hymns that exalt His living attributes, a disrelish
for those which set forth the Deity not incarnate, — in short,
a limitation of all their sympathies to the manifestation of
God in Judca for three short years, which, in my opinion,
vergeth and inclineth to idolatry itself, and is the indulgence

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD. 41

of that very corporeal taste in things divine which the ancients
built their religion upon, and which the Jews constantly-
hungered after. They greatly err in this, and, I think, greatly
offend ; for Christ while He lived drew men to the Father,
and commended men to the Father, setting Himself just as
the wa} to the Father, as the Word of God, and the life of
men. So also the apostles call Him " the form of God," "the
image of God," "the brightness of His countenance," "the
new and living way," " the High Priest to the holy of holies,"
"the Mediator" or "Daysman," "the Advocate," "the In-
tercessor,"— all indicative of some step beyond to be taken
through His aid and intervention. — To return.

There is nothing more to be guarded against than this
investiture of God with human attributes, to which we are
the more inclined from the images of fluctuating, imperfect
humanity with which the inspired writers have found it neces-
sary to shadow Him forth to our apprehension. They say,
God is angry with the wicked ; and we straightway fancy His
nature to be ruffled with the affection of anger ; but it means
simply that the wicked shall experience the same effects from
His providence and judgment as they would from one whom
they had set on edge against them by their flagrant miscon-
duct. The Scriptures say God repenteth ; and immediately
we fancy that He is unsteady in His mind, and revolveth in
various directions according to circumstances ; and so we seek
to steal a march upon Him, by flattery, by entreaty, by per-
tinacity, as we would do upon a mortal. But it means simply,
that if we change our courses for the better, we shall have
a corresponding improvement in all our treatment and ex-
perience, in the feelings of our own breast, and in all the
happiness which human nature enjoyeth. So also He is said
to hear and answer prayer, and we are commanded to fill our
mouths with arguments, and make Him acquainted with our
wants ; and we straightway infer that the stronger we can
make our case, the more frequent and pressing our solicita-
tions, the more copious our petitions, and the more necessitous
our whole condition, the more chance we shall have of a
favourable hearing and a liberal reply. This is the particular

42 ON PR A YER.

prejudice against which Christ guards us in the text before
us, and to which He applies the remedy, that God knows all
beforehand.

I would not, by what hath been said above, disrobe God of
those human sympathies which the Scriptures have attributed
to Him, and rebuke as criminal the imagination of these to
reside in Him ; but I would rebuke the adding others of our
own imagining. I think these affections are necessary to be
imagined in Him, in order to awaken the kindred sentiments
in our own breast ;— that we must invest Him with the quali-
ties of a Father in order to approach Him with affection ;
and with the qualities of a generous Benefactor, in order to
approach Him with hope ; and with the qualities of a Patron
of happiness, in order to approach Him with joy ; and also
with the qualities of Almighty Governor, that our affection
may not fall into freedom ; and, above all, with the qualities
of the Searcher of hearts, that Ave may be driven from all
untruth, and disguise, and deception. The perusal of His
acts and promises is useful, as it enables us to build up within
our minds these general conceptions of the Godhead, and to
create the moral and spiritual image of the Deity to which we
render our homage : His paternal providence of all, testified
through His Word, convincing us of His Fatherhood ; His
unbounded liberality of promise and providence, convincing
us of His generosity ; His penetration through all disguises,
and unravelling of all mystery, convincing us of His heart-
searching and rein-trying knowledge ; His anticipation of all
our necessities, convincing us of His perfect acquaintance
with every want which our tongue can express.

We do not, therefore, discourage the forming of these
similitudes of Father, Governor, Benefactor, King, and Omni-
present Beholder, by what we have said of the danger of
arraying God in human attributes. Take every character
upon earth which awakens noble sentiments and warm attach-
ments, you shall find it applicable to God for His works and
promises, and you shall most likely find it applied to Him in
the inspired Scriptures. But we warn you against applying
to Him the weaknesses and imperfections of man, which have
the effect of awakening unworthy affections towards Him.

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD. 43

For instance, when you think of His heart-searching attribute,
associate nothing with it of prying, or spying, or holding over
us the office of an inquisitor, but associate it with the quaH-
ties of a true, wise, and penetrating judge, who detects hypo-
crisy only to encourage merit, and give a fair field for truth
and open dealing. When you think of His sovereignty, and
are carrying up petitions to Him, oh! think not as the devotees
do of an arbitrary, stern, and terrible Being, who must be
crouched to and fawned upon, or gained over by severity
upon ourselves, but think of a perfect Governor, who loves
all His subjects, knows all their wants, and wisheth them all
happiness under His government.

Now, brethren, in order to be guarded against thus degrad-
ing by unworthy associations the nature of God, to which we
are prone from the constant connexion there is here between
fallen nature and moral attributes of being, and to which we
are further prone from the imperfect nature of language,
which typifies things unseen by things seen, things perfect by
things imperfect, — in order to be so guarded, you must sum-
mon up the faculties of your understanding to understand
the revelation of God, to harmonise its several statements in
your minds, to collate one part with another, to check one
duty by another, and not to run into the extremes of folly to
which ignorant, outlandish, vain sectaries are often led by the
constant meditation and enforcement of some one passage or
strain of passages, to the oblivion, nay, to the utter oblitera-
tion of all the rest. Summon up the gift that is in you of a
sound mind, exercise the judgment and discretion in religion
which you do in business and action, rank and enroll your-
selves under no leader. We speak, or we should speak, as
unto wise men, and ye should be the judges, not the advo-
cates, of what we say ; — at least Paul, not surely the least
enlightened of Christian preachers, was of this mind. "We
speak," says he, " as unto wise men ; judge ye." Until your
minds stir themselves up to as much earnestness, and be
patient of as much thought upon religion as upon other con-
cerns, they will never escape out of the snares which the devil
layeth to deceive our understanding, and so degrade oun
worship and service of the living God.

44 ON PR A YER.

Now to apply these remarks to the case in hand, of praying
to God. Nothing will defend us from manifold errors but
the distinct adherence to that principle which we have laid
down as the foundation and guide of prayer — the principle
that God's promises, not floating fancies, or evanescent feel-
ings, are the warrant and the guide of prayer, — His promises
standing to the future of things spiritual in the same place
that past experience doth to the future of things natural.
We did not admit one petition which was not congenial with
the spirit of promise or prophecy. Now, this principle em-
braces the principle of our text — that God knows what we
have need of; nay, not only knows, but hath promised to
grant it. It is not to inform Him, therefore, that we make our
wants known, for it is He that hath informed us in His pro-
mises ; it is not to supplicate Him, in the ordinary sense of
that word, — that is, to bend Him to our purpose by pitiful
language, — for He is already full of compassion and waiteth
to be gracious ; it is not to turn Him round to favour us, for
He hath equal favour for all men, and His ear is open to
the cry of all His children. Neither ought we to aj^proach
Him as enthusiasts do, as if He had a special interest in and
loved us above all others ; nor as fanatics do, as if God were
beholden to them, and under a necessity to supply them ;
nor as devotees do, who have fasted all day long, inflicted
penalties upon their spirit, if not also upon their body, and
come to God with a claim of rights for Him to discharge.
But we should approach Him as the Father of an infinite
majesty and the God plenteous in mercy, — as the Inventor of
all the promises, which He will surely fulfil, — as the Giver of
His only-begotten Son, the greatest and the best of gifts, a
sign and pledge that He will refuse us none of the lesser
gifts. We should come to Him out of the conviction that
He is ready to receive us through the channel of His blessed
Son our Saviour ; we should lay our wants before Him,
because we feel them pressing upon us ; we should ask them
of Him as a child does food of a tender father, because we
hunger, and know that He will and alone can give us.

But something much more minute than these general
reasonings and directions is necessary to guide the spirit of

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD. 45

our prayers, and prevent them from becoming degrading to
our own character and unacceptable to God ; for, as we said
at the outset of this discourse, there are a thousand shades
between pure and superstitious worship, according to the
quantity of truth or error that is mixed up in our conception
of God. I conceive this subject to be of such importance
that I shall endeavour to classify some of those sources of
error and expose them, that ye may be upon your guard ;
and the first to which I shall devote what remains of this dis-
course is the common error of conceiving God as a sovereign,
who proceeds by will in the conferring of His favours, and
not by any stated rule.

That this association of arbitrariness and wilfulness with
our idea of God's sovereignty should be popular in countries
which know nothing of government but as power proceeding
blindly to the execution of its wishes in the face of wisdom,
and justice, and mercy, we do not wonder ; but that it should
ever have got a hearing in a country where power is hated
when it destroys the right and feelings of mankind in the birth,
is to me utterly unintelligible. But seeing it has got a hold
of the religious world, it only operates with the more baneful
effect against religion, through that hatred which this people
hath ever had against arbitrary power. Now it is a pity that
any one should be disaffected to religion, through the ignorant
and unfledged conceptions of its advocates, when they have
the oracles of God to go to, which shew it to be a gross, un-
founded prejudice that God's purposes are so many enact-
ments which may or may not consist with wisdom and equity.
They were all balanced and ordained at first by God's wis-
dom and equity ; and those of them that are revealed in the
promises are all capable of approving themselves to man's
wisdom and man's sense of equity, so far as they can be
understood by man ; and it is equally a mistake that they
come into execution by unexpected and unaccountable fits
of activity on the part of God's Spirit — strong exertions of
Divine power making way for themselves, all practices and
principles notwithstanding. Do we then mean to assert that
the Almighty is overruled in His plans and operations by any-
thing in us or the things which He hath made } This notion

46 ON PRA YER.

is still more absurd — putting God to a stand in His purposes
until He be helped out by things which He hath himself to
set into being and action. But this extreme is not necessary
to be run into in order to escape from the other. The Al-
mighty's sovereignty lies in His having had no guide but
that of His own attributes in constructing- all thino-s. In the
arrangement of the world, natural and moral, in giving to
everything its properties and habitation, He was not inter-
meddled with by any power foreign to Himself; — He was
a law unto Himself, and sought counsel of no one, as there
was no one of whom counsel could be had. But think you
at that time His wisdom was asleep, or His goodness, or His
tender mercy, and that wilfulness ruled alone .'' Strictly speak-
ing, there is no wilfulness, no arbitrariness, with God. Every
act has an end, and is merely planned to bring that end
about. Then only is it will, when one cannot, or chooseth
not, to proceed by rule or reason. Of this will there is none
with God. Wisdom singeth a song of the busy occupation
she had with Him before He had prepared the world, or set
a compass upon the face of the deep ; the Prince of mercy
says He was with Him in the beginning, and incorporated in
His nature ; often do Justice and Holiness speak for them-
selves— "He is just in all His ways, and holy in all His works ;"
but I have not found where absolute Will sets up such a
claim. It is true that, being alone and unaided when He
devised, and being alone and unaided when He carries His
decrees into effect, there is something akin to the nature of
arbitrary power, where only one ruleth all. But give me that
one, wise enough, just enough, merciful enough, and power-
ful enough, to carry his wisdom, justice, and goodness into
effect, — let there be no caprice, nor malice, nor infirmity of
any sort, — then to whom could the government of all be so
well committed .'' It is because no such man can be found,
that you introduce those checks against the weak parts of
human nature — those checks in which liberty consists. But
God surely needeth no such checks ; and if He did, who
could interpose them } He lacketh not wisdom, nor penetra-
tion, nor foresight, to lay the plan ; nor can any unforeseen
incident, or unexpected conspiracy, occur to thwart the execu-

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH 10 GOD. 47

tion. He being the sole Sovereign, wisdom, and justice, and
goodness may be looked for, because He is wise, and just,
and good. Were He not the sole Sovereign, we could not
predicate so much until we knew what kind of a power shared
the government along with Him. Inasmuch, therefore, as
the sovereignty of God means that He was moved by nothing
foreign to Himself, it is true ; inasmuch as it means that ?Ie
casts loose from wisdom, justice, and goodness, and every
fatherly, friendly affection, it is utterly false.

You may think these arguments hardly worth the while,
but this idea of sovereignty against which they are directed
is one which hath met me more frequently in religious society
and religious books than any other; and wherever it exists
it worketh upon the minds of worshippers the selfsame effects
which the mastership of a self-willed man or a tyrannical
ruler doth upon his servants or subjects. The laws answer in
the State what the promises answer in religion ; which laws are
held in reverence. We know where to find the favour, and
where to pass the displeasure of our rulers. But once let our
rulers trample upon law and substitute their own unknown
will, then what is the effect .'' Every good counsellor takes his
leave, and every tool and instrument of power supplies his
place ; the autocrat becomes surrounded Avith slaves, because
men of thought and manhood cannot put up with his whims
and caprices ; every free and erect spirit is banished or taken
off by force, and the stage is left clear for creatures who can
tremble before the frown of a fellow-mortal, or pass into
ecstasy before his smile. It is no otherwise with them who
look upon the Godhead as not to be calculated on, but pro-
ceeding, nobody knows how, in its choice of men and the
bestowal of favours. Therefore ensues a like banishment of
the high and noble-minded, a like attraction of the timorous
and slavish. And I do believe that at this day many stand
aloof from making the experiment of a religious life because
they believe, and believe rightly, that without heavenly help
they shall have no success, but deem, and deem falsely, that
this help no man can calculate on, but every man must wait
for. Calculate on! — it may as surely be calculated on as God
hath promised it.

48 ON PRA YER.

Go unto the promises, which are the records of His will, and
see if they do not contain in them grace and tenderness and
love ; shew us one which is not constructed so as to attract
our affections and secure our interests. Are not these pro-
mises intended to beget expectation ? Are they not intended
to move men into certain courses in which alone they are to
be reaped ? They would be useless, and worse than useless,
if God did not walk by them. The people who worship
under this idea of sovereignty are paralysed in mind, — they
dare not think a free thought, — their bosom is the sepulchre
of their feelings, and their words hardly rise above their
breath. They are ever blaming themselves, and offering God
adulation. Oh! it is the death of a noble mind, — it blasts all
its aspirations, and frowns on all its liberal thoughts, — it
makes God's worshippers, the worshippers of the great and
glorious God, a herd of fawning, crouching slaves, who, in
order to do Him service, have cut off every noble and gene-
rous quality which could have fitted them for His service.
Religion to such hath no life nor spirit of joy. They become
dull and morose, gloomy and sequestered, and a chill, chill
atmosphere of habitual fear oppresses the faculties of their
soul.

There are two other common errors by which the worship
of men is degraded : the one, that they purchase God's favours
by their worshipful acts; the other, that God is on their side,
and that they may take all liberties with Him. These we
cannot enter into at present.

To be delivered from these and every source of error in
your worship, there is no other resource but to devote
yourself to the study of God, and to obtain right concep-
tions of His nature, for these conceptions determine our
worship, just as our conception of a man's character de-
termines our behaviour to him. This is best discovered
in His Word and in the person of Christ; and of His Word,
the promises are the most fruitful in the revelation of
His character. They are also the most interesting to us, and
therefore they ought to be carefully studied. Nothing indeed
will give the mind confidence in God but through the study
of Christ, His likeness, and through the knowledge of His

THE SPIRIT OF APPROACH TO GOD. 49

designs and purposes towards men. And we are bold to
affirm, that until men do really study Christ as the image of
the invisible God, and take the promises as the sure and
steady rule of His government, they will remain afar off,
overwhelmed with the idea of His stupendous power and
their own insignificance. You need not to be informed that
worship is nothing until the heart engage in it ; whether it lies
in imagination, or in knowledge, or in eloquent language, it
is nothing. Worship is the devotion of all our powers to
Him who gave them ; it is the resignation of all our means
to Him who furnishes them, the dedication of all our goods
to the wise ends for which He gave them, and the surren-
der of all our liberated nature to Him who redeems us. In
this sense, the Psalmist, after calling upon the angels that
excel in strength, and the glorious hosts, and His works in all
parts of His dominions, calls upon his own soul to worship
Him. Arise, then, Christian brethren, to worship Him in your
courses, by the graces of a charitable spirit and the aspirations
of a devotional spirit, by the affections of a tender heart and
the utterances of a thankful heart, by the duties and content-
ment and bountifulness of a godly life.

Nothing less than this will pass for worship under our
present dispensation. It is not now first-fruits, but it is the
whole heart, and soul, and strength, and might, that must be
laid upon the altar of God. There is now no temple but the
temple of the human heart, — no symbol of the Holy One
but the spacious universe, the written Word, and the person of
Christ. It is perished with the ritual, and it is perished with
the sacrifice. The ministry is now a ministry of repentance
and love and new obedience. Therefore, however regular
your attendance in this and other places, however long and
frequent your prayers, it mattereth not, unless your heart hath
been won from its follies and made fruitful of wisdom and
righteousness, — unless your eye hath been won from its lust
and made joyful in the sight of God's wondrous works, — un-
less your hand hath become forgetful of mere worldly gain,
and become devoted to all godly actions, and your whole life,
denied to pride, hath become regenerate, from the least even
to the greatest of its occupations.
VOL. III. D

V.

THE CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PRAY.

Matt. vi. 5.

And -when thoti prayest, thoii shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray
standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they 7nay be seen
of men. Verily I say jinto yon. They have their reward.

lUJT'E proposed to follow the Lord's own example, by taking
into consideration the prejudices by the influence of
which prayer is rendered an unmeaning or an offensive service.
These are delivered in the context under two heads — those
that originate with intention, and those that proceed out of
ignorance or imperfect knowledge. Hypocrisy, ostentation,
and other unworthy motives for prayer, which come under the
first head rebuked by our Saviour, we have already treated of,
and we are now exposing those which may arise from crude
or erroneous conceptions of Him whom we worship. Now,
that you may be sufficiently apprised of the importance of
this subject, and the difficulty of forming the right conception
of the Divine Being, we pray you to consider the difficulties
of conveying to mortals any idea of things they have not
seen, or of which they have not the resemblance within their
reach. Suppose any of you, possessed of your present know-
ledge and refinement, were cast upon an ignorant and savage
coast, little advanced in the arts of life, and that you wished
to give them the benefit of your instruction. You would need,
first of all, to learn their language, and speak of objects that
are under their eye, and feelings with which they are familiar;
in short, to descend to their measure and structure of thought,
before you could raise them to yours. Suppose, for example,
you wished to convey to them an idea of our king, you would
have to make use of the word which, among them, signified

CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PR A Y. 51

the chief man ; and that moment you did so, they would trans-
fer to our king those same powers and conditions which be-
long to the leading man among themselves. To correct this
misapprehension, you would next have to give them an idea
of the supremacy of law ; but the moment you used their word
for law, they would catch up a misapprehension of that term
as great as of the former, taking it to be the same rude insti-
tution to which they conformed themselves. Every new word
would carry with it a new misapprehension, and through a
thousand such you would have to flounder your way to the
truth ; and after, it would only be a hallucination of truth,
their notion of the thing being, in point of vividness, but as a
shadow, and, in point of correctness, but as an outline of the
truth. In this condition precisely does the Spirit of God find
Himself when He would endeavour to convey to men an idea
of God. There is no office upon earth, and consequently no
name in the language of mortals, which will represent Him,
and, therefore, many are adopted, as Sovereign, Lawgiver,
Judge, Preserver, Father. If one of these would have an-
swered, that would have been invariably used. Many are
given, that each may supply its part in making up this most
enlarged of all conceptions. The one operates as a check
upon the other. To guard against the arbitrariness of Sove-
reign, there is the equity of Lawgiver ; to guard against the
sternness of both Sovereign and Lawgiver, there is the mercy
of Saviour, and the affection of Father. Now, if you confine
yourselves to any one of these similitudes, you will surely ern
as the savage erred by not only transferring from the human
conditions, which are not applicable to the Divine, but by
leaving out conditions in the Divine nature, which that simili-
tude docs not represent, to which you confine yourself Con-
fine yourself to his terms, you have a greater chance to be
correct, because then you can only take every quality in the
one which is consistent with the other. By taking these, you
make another approach both to accuracy and completeness.
And so your idea both enlarges and corrects itself, according
to the number of these terms or similitudes, which you em-
brace within the comprehension of your mind. Suppose, now,
to continue our illustration, the sojourner amongst these un-

52 ON PRAYER.

educated savages, perceiving his small success while he pro-
ceeded by verbal instruction in giving them ideas of the laws
and customs and manners and arts of his native land, should
turn himself to exemplify these, — should dress himself in his
native costume, and construct his habitation, and cultivate his
land, after the manner of his native home, and behave him-
self with the good breeding, and execute justice with the ex-
actness, and worship God with the rites in which he had been
instructed, it is manifest that he would now be in a fair way
to teach the people, addressing them through sight and feel-
ing, and sense of advantage, and every other avenue by which
instruction can enter in. Now, in the exercise of the same
wisdom, God, perceiving how ineffectual language was to re-
present His character, and how mortals were plunging from
one extreme to another, according to their fondness for one
or other of the similitudes which he had taken, adopted this
same method of proceeding by example, and shewed, by a
series of manners and actions and sufferings, the exact char-
acter which He wished to occupy in the minds of men. This
He did by the incarnation of Christ, or the revelation of His
image, without which no effectual advancement could ever
have been made in teaching men to comprehend His nature.
Jesus Christ presents the Divine character harmonised and
exemplified, to which if men would bring their conceptions
of the Almighty, they would be guarded from the mistakes
into which language is constantly betraying them. In the
life of Christ we can study the moral character of God, as an
artist chisels beauty from a model, or from the life ; and not
more does an artist prefer models and living figures to verbal
descriptions, than Christians should prefer studying the char-
acter of God from His express image. His manifestation in
flesh, to studying it from verbal descriptions, which they can
only harmonise by the greatest caution and effort of mind.

But instead of adopting this caution, and making use of
this portraiture of Divinity, men do frequently cleave to some
one similitude, and upon that construct an imagination of the
Divine character most remote from the truth, and most detri-
mental to the whole cast and spirit of their worship. Into
one of these extravagances wc have already inquired, —

CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PR A F. 53

the conceiving of Him as all sovereignty; and we have shewn
the most enslaving effects which it produces upon the whole
tenor of the man, especially of free-born men, who hate
instinctively, and by education, all sovereignty that hath not
equity and goodness ever before its eye. The next prejudice
upon the nature of God, and which is hardly less prevalent
amongst good people, is, that He hath certain favourites
amongst the human race. That a man is in favour with
Him according to his worth and well-doing, and out of
favour with Him according to his wickedness, is as certain as
that He governs the world with equity, and will judge it in
righteousness. At the same time, that there are great
differences both in the moral and physical formation of men,
and great differences likewise in their religious attainments,
there can be no doubt ; but it is a great mistake to refer
these differences to God's partiality for one and His dislike
of another. These different gradations of place and natural
gifts are necessary for fulfilling the various offices of the
world, as, to use St Paul's illustration, different vessels are
necessary in a great house, and different members in the
body of man ; and therefore they are to be accounted not an
act of partiality, but an act of wisdom, in order that the
affairs of the world may go on and prosper. It would be
partiality if God, after distributing His talents unequally
amongst men, required as great return from those who had
few as from those who had many ; but when He hath de-
clared, on the other hand, that of those to whom much is
given much shall be required, and that a man shall be
judged according to that he hath, and not according to that
he hath not ; it is, on the one hand, most envious, discon-
tented, and unreasonable to complain, — on the other, most
ungenerous and thoughtless to exult. What hast thou that
thou hast not received, and for which thou shalt not be
accountable .? The highest-born and most highly-favoured
man is not entitled to exult, because God, who made him
to differ, will make him to account for that difference.
Neither is the meanest-born and worst-conditioned entitled to
complain, lest God take away his single talent, and confer it
on the man with ten talents, against whose undue proper-

54 ON PR A YER.

tion he murmured. Now, it is not otherwise in religion,
where equal differences exist. I shall not take it upon me to
explain, as being a question far beyond the compass of a
discourse, how it happens that whole nations know not God,
and of those that do, whole hosts neglect to acknowledge
Him, and that there be but a few who cleave to His com-
mandments ; but while I pretend not to explain the diffi-
culty, I will take upon me to resist every explanation which
refers it to partiality and favouritism. Thus much I can
perceive, that the progress of religion at home and abroad,
and the progress of religion in every breast depends upon
the use of human wisdom and human energy as much as the
preservation of liberty, or the enlargement of fortune, or any
other good thing under the sun. And while all men revolt
from the idea that these natural things come by partiality in
the Creator, they ought equally to revolt from the idea that
religious things come of that partiality. I believe that God
has given us not only the best scheme of religion, but the
fittest for propagation that could be given ; and I attribute
its imperfect propagation at home and abroad not to any
letting or hindering on His part, but to base neglect and
shameless prostitution of the means which He hath re-
vealed for its propagation. But waving these questions of
how things might be, and taking things as they are, it is vain
and delusory, nay, it is self-conceited and blasphemous, in
any one to attribute his religious condition to an act of
favouritism. It is an act of grace, but it is not an act of
favouritism. An act of favouritism lies in exalting us at the
expense of another, or over the head of another, who hath
laboured as well for the prize. An act of grace lies in having
exalted us at all. An act of favouritism Avould cease if all
were equally exalted. An act of grace would only be made
the greater. An act of favouritism reflects upon others. An
act of grace does not. An act of favouritism springs from
weakness, and engenders vanity ; an act of grace springs
from goodness, and engenders gratitude. While, therefore,
every one gives God the glory of all his religious exaltation,
he should be careful lest he sully the Divine character with
weakness, or gather upon himself the airs and conceits of a

CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PR A Y. 55

favourite, and affect towards others the tone and manner of
a superior. For every other to whom Christ hath been
preached, by the use of the same means might have obtained
from God the same grace, and therefore they are to be
argued and remonstrated with, not superciHously treated.
And by having reached that superior station, a man is not,
as it were, set free to range in larger hberty, or hcentious-
ness of feeling, but to enjoy more strength and opportunity,
that he may devote it to the more holy avocations. Paul,
upon whose words this measure of God's grace is commonly
rested, was never found calculating upon his high place in
the Divine favour; and when, in self-defence, he was called
upon to open up the grace that had been shewn to him,
though it was in self-defence, and to establish his Divine
commission, he three times calls himself a fool for his pains,
and craves indulgence for doing what he considered to be
the part of folly ; not that I object to the use of such expres-
sions as Scripture sanctions, — chosen of God, elect of God,
■ people of God, holy nation, and royal priesthood, — but that I
will not allow them to strangle the life of other parts of
Scripture, or mar the proportions of the Divine character. It
is thus, as we said at the beginning, that the imperfection of
language hampers the Spirit of God, and that men pitch in
each other's teeth passages of Scripture which it is their part to
reconcile, not to set at variance. There are not two names of
God which one might not find inconsistent with each other
in a thousand things, as Sovereign and Father, Judge and
Saviour, and so of any act or faculty ascribed to Him. The
reason of which we have already explained. But give your
study, as we advised, to the living model of Godhead, Jesus
Christ. Did He turn aside from the wicked, or instruct His
disciples to do so .■* Did He separate and divide Judea into
two parts, the chosen and the reprobate, loving the one,
abjuring the other ; keeping company with the one, abstain-
ing from the other } He did not so ; but there were those
who did so — viz., the Pharisees, against whose policy and prin-
ciples He directed a thousand weapons, and guarded all His fol-
lowers ; but, for Himself, He kept with publicans and sinners,
He spoke gently to the down-trodden. He took the part of the

56 ON PR A YER.

proscribed, He washed the feet of the meanest, and put forth
His grace and power for the salvation of all. Now, He is my
pattern of the Godhead ; and until they will reconcile these no-
tions of favouritism in God with His conduct, I hold them vain
and idle as the empty chaff; and until they reconcile their part-
ing the population asunder, and allocating the saints from the
sinners, their cleaving to the one, and their forsaking the
Ishmaelite tents of the other, — reconcile this with the practice
of Christ, I hold it ungodly and unchristian.

This notion of being God's favourites, against which we
argue, when it obtains a seat in the mind, works the most
baleful effects on every side. Towards God it places us in a
most unbecoming familiarity. We fancy Him to be all on
our side — that He has fairly taken us up and will carry us
through ; we identify our crudest conceptions with infallible
inspirations of His Holy Spirit; we join ourselves to those
who are, in like manner, initiated into the Divine mysteries.
A school is formed, a sisterhood, or brotherhood of devotees,
not a church of the living God. Everything held therein is
right, — everything else is wrong, — we are the people, the
people of God. And for the rest, they must be held as
heathen men and publicans until they can adopt our dis-
cipline in whole and in detail. They are looked upon as
people in whom God is not interested^ nay, as a people for
whom the Saviour has not died, whose prayers are an abomina-
tion to the Lord. This idea is the very seed-bed of persecution,
which springs seldom from bloodthirstiness, sometimes from
a love of power, but far more frequently from the idea that
we are doing God's service. Our cause is thought to be God's
cause, and the end being always presumed holy, the means
are less rigorously inspected. Now, though the age has ab-
horred and abolished persecution for conscience' sake, — that
is, violent forcible measures, — it consists with my observation
that there exists a spirit of exclusion and suspicion towards
all who do not think exactly alike with the leaders of the
religious world ; which spirit is, to all intents and purposes, the
same as persecution, — is, in truth, persecution carried as far
as the age will allow it. The root of the evil is in supposing
that we hold our opinions by a direct patent from God, and

CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM IV E PR A Y. 57

can by no means be wrong in any particular. Our scheme of
doctrine and of duty, our scheme of reHgious sentiment and
practice, is the approved infallible one, which we never dream
of being wrong any more than we dream of any other being
right. Now, what difference is there in being so held to the
infallibility of a fraternity, or to the infallibility of one man .''
None that I can discern.

These delineations are within bounds, being taken from
truth, not from idea, and aiming to represent the general
effect, not the extreme instances. For if, in exposing this
monstrous sentiment of God's favouritism, our object were to
produce effect, we would set about it in another style. We
would shew you all the persecutions of the Roman Church
springing from the notion that they were infallibly right, the
heretics infallibly wrong ; that they were God's ancient people,
the heretics novices taken in the snare of the devil. We would
shew you the same sentiment, so disguising the nature of the
most enlightened Protestants, as that they should ascribe to
God the rejecting and reprobating from all eternity, and so
forestalling unalterably the cruel fate of the great body of man-
kind. We could shew you them eloquently discoursing on the
unconscious babes that never saw the light being conveyed
to hell, with a thousand other monstrous sentiments which it
harrows up human feelings to repeat. And, in this day, we
could point to many who plume themselves upon being God's
small remnant, reckoning with Elijah that they are left alone.
And should God vouchsafe to them a revelation, as He did to
the Tishbite, they would be wofully afflicted to find how
many thousands of those communions they level against have
not bowed the knee to Baal.

This self-delusion and self-adulation shelter under the wing
of God's free grace. Thus to hav^e picked them out, and
advanced them, and adopted them into favour, they call a
free, unbought act of grace. And so it is, doubtless ; but first
let me ask if the same call which came to them, cometh not
to all of us, — if the same offer of free grace, made to them, is
not made to all of us .-* Does it make the grace less free, that
it is free to all .-• Does it make their obligation the less, that
others have been entreated, but have not accepted .-* What

58 ON PR A YER.

mischief under heaven is done to God or man, by taking the
drift of Scripture, and offering the gospel as the message of
glad-tidings to all mankind ? What benefit under heaven is
done to God or man by putting a construction upon the
Scripture, by hampering it with theory, and obscuring God's
fatherly nature with a mask, and taking away the wish on
His part, the power on our part, the intention on the part of
Scripture, that all should come to the knowledge of the truth ?
Let me ask, in the next place, to what they are called ? Is it
to closeness of heart, or to charity of heart ? Is it to bowels
of hatred, or to bowels of compassion ? Is it to harshness, or
to tenderness towards the rest of men ? What, then, meaneth
their distance, their seclusion, their frozen-heartedness to the
world ? Surely the world is not worse in these parts than it
was in Judea when Christ knew it ! Surely it is not worse
than in Rome and Greece, when the apostles went first to
Christianise it ! Surely it is not worse than these heathen
regions which our missionaries go to heal in the strength of
the Lord !

This baneful prejudice of favouritism generally goes along
with that of sovereignty, which we in our last discourse ex-
posed. One who proceeds by blind will, puts forth the gentle
parts of his nature which still survive, in acts of favouritism.
For favouritism is an act of will, no less than cruelty. The
one is reward put forth without desert ; the other is punish-
ment put forth without a cause. Now, truly, if God cannot
consistently with His nature look out for objects worthy of His
favour, and other objects deserving of His disfavour. He is not
a fit Governor for the nature of man, which abhors more than
death to be maltreated without occasion, and which is cor-
rupted into every base and vicious form by having favours
heaped upon it without regard to its deserving. If you would
degrade a man to the very uttermost, make him the slave of
a tyrant, or a tyrant's favourite. In the one case he sinks
into the lowest ebb of humanity, — cunning, treacherous, vile
and menial ; in the other case, he adds to these, mock-majesty,
late-sprung greatness, mockery of the dust from which he
hath been exalted, weakness, silliness, often the pandcrism of
every vice, and the ministry of every vanity. Oh, if God is

CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PRA Y. 59

to be translated into such a Ruler, I crave exemption for my-
self, and must be fain to put up without His government.
But perish the thought! be spurned for ever the horrid thought!
It never lived but in souls base-born and base-bred, who would
have licked the dust for the favour of princes, and been con-
tent to be trodden on by a royal foot. Religion is an awful
thing; and I believe it to be a most ennobling thing, for want
of which the finest natural faculties suffer shipwreck ; but
awful though it be, it is intelligible, and the way in which it
ennobles can surely be laid down. If this be the way, then
it is strange nobility, and I will endue it not.

But it is not the way by which it ennobles ; neither is there
any such secrecy, nor inscrutable mystery in the awarding of
its favours and penalties. It is man's timidity, it is the slavish-
ness of man, which thus makes religion to be abashed and
blush before the noble-minded of human nature. The idea of
God's power is so overwhelming, that unless it be counteracted
in some way or other, it entirely incapacitates the mind from
exercising its faculties upon the subject at all. Therefore He
gave counteraction, both in nature and in grace, by prescrib-
ing to Himself certain modes of procedure, and revealing them
to us. He made, as it were, a voluntary contract with His
creatures, that thus and thus they would find Him going on.
Not that He disguised aught of His will, but that He disclosed
it. His rule in nature is called the laws in nature ; and we
believe there are laws of grace as determinate, and as seldom
flinched from, — flinched from on occasions, as in Paul's case,
where it was needful even to suspend nature's rules also.
Now, if these rules given in Scripture be abolished, and things
referred to sovereign will and favouritism, are we not where
we were, without a guide .-' If you say the Spirit of God
works by unknown, inscrutable methods, according to what
seemeth good at the time, picking and choosing, then your
Bible is not worth the turning over, any more than Kepler or
Newton, or the calculations founded thereon, would be worth
the consulting, if the heavens and the earth should forget their
wonted courses, and wander forth into all the varieties of a
wild, irregular, lawlessness. The Bible is as good as done up
by these short-visioncd zealots ; for the Bible has no use but

6o ON PRA YER.

to tell us how things to come are to be secured by present
means. And if there is no connexion between present means
and future things, what serveth it ? Not a Httle, I say !
To be withheld by an excessive fear, or by a conviction of
incapacity, from going into the laws which govern our sancti-
fication, is all the same as if it were locked up in an unknown
tongue, and defended from the access of the people by laws
and force of arms, as it was locked up to our fathers. Now,
if we go into the Bible to discover God's will upon this matter,
we find these delusions scatter like the exhalations of the un-
healthy marsh before the fresh breeze of heaven. It is there
set forth in ten thousand forms that those that seek Him shall
find Him : those that ask of Him shall receive of Him ; and
to those that knock it shall be opened. His grace is to all
and upon all that believe ; His loving-kindness is to the ends
of the earth ; and the people are greatly blessed who receive
the glorious sound of His salvation.

Let the spirit of every one, therefore, be reassured ; let no
cloud obscure the gracious countenance of God. It is not
with your persons, but with your wickedness, He is angry ;
and your wickedness being put away, His favour will encom-
pass you like a shield. Expect not to be heard of Him out of
partiality, for He regardeth no man's person ; neither fear to
be rejected out of rooted dislike, for He wisheth all men to
repent, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. His
face is set against the workers of iniquity, utterly to subvert
them. His favour is with the just, and His ear is open to their
cry. Why did He refuse the appointed fasts — the feasts, the
blood of bulls and of he-goats, incense, and a sweet-smelling
savour .^ Because their hands were full of blood. Saith the
prophet, "Put away the evil of your doings ; cease to do evil;
learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let
us reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red
like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and
obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land : but if ye refuse
and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword ; for the mouth
of the Lord hath .spoken it."

CHARACTER OF HIM TO WHOM WE PR A V. 6i

So account of God, therefore, as of a merciful Saviour and
a helpful Father, whose doors are never barred against the
returning prodigal ; who sendeth messengers into all countries
for his return; who hath prepared every welcome and rejoicing
for his reception ; and who, when he returneth, will entertain
him with the fattest of His house, that he may have no riiore
temptation to stray from his native home.

VI.

THE MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE.

Rom. VIII. 28-39.

And we kncnv that all things zvork together for good to them that love God, to them

who are the called according to his purpose, &c. &c.

"Vi'lT'E feel it expedient to diverge again from the course of
our general subject in order to explain ourselves more
exactly upon the matter of our last discourse, which exposed
the danger of applying the notion of partiality to God, and of
being favourites to ourselves. In our desire to open the door
of divine grace wide as the wants and sinfulness of men, we
may have happened to disturb the well-grounded confidence
of those who have already entered into acceptance with God,
and become sealed in His favour ; not that there was anything
said to offend the trust of the most advanced Christian, but
because there is a vile profitless controversy upon the sub-
jects of election and perseverance, which hath predisposed
the mind of man to be irritable on anything which looks in
that direction ; and though we hold the controversy cheap
and profitless, yet, that no one of our charge may suffer, but
profit by what we say, we judge it right now to discourse a
little upon the confidence and security which those that have
walked with God are not only permitted but commanded
to entertain. We laid before you last Lord's day the equal
favour which God had for you all, — the equal richness of pro-
vision which He had made in the gospel of His blessed Son
for every one to whose ears the gladsome sound of it should
arrive, — that the preaching to you Christ and Him crucified
is a bona fide transaction on the part of God — not a feint or
fraud, but a sincere offer of that which you need, which He
presents, and which you are at liberty to possess without

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE. 63

price. The onus of refusing lies upon us, not upon the Giver.
This broad banner of the gospel, having written on it, " Free
to all, without money and without price," no argument of the
metaphysician or theologian shall ever beguile out of our
hands. Should they even make propositions like Euclid's
own, concluding that God neither intended nor offered the
salvation of Christ to all, but only to a few, and that for the
rest it went wide of the mark, and could by no possibility
come near them at all, I would not adopt these propositions
even though I could not detect their fallacy ; becau.se it is
more likely they should contain error which I cannot detect,
than that God's Word should be untrue, of which it is the
drift that the gospel should be preached unto all the ends
of the earth, and to those that are afar off upon the sea.
This free offer and power of acceptance we will never give
up ; and, on the other hand, we will as little give up those
passages of Scripture which, like our text, speak with special
affection to the accepted people of God. We shall suppose
that a number of you, beloved brethren, perceiving the free-
ness and largeness of this offer of mercy to pardon and grace
to help, should humbly believe, and accept the great good-
ness of the Lord, and set forward the good work of faith and
repentance ; and we will shew by what process there will
come to be engendered in your minds such new feelings as
will make you peruse with heartfelt gladness those very
passages of Scripture touching election and perseverance
which now are so frightful, insomuch that you will adopt, as
most excellent and wholesome food to your spirit, that which
formerly you loathed as the food only of trouble and despair.
In which task, if I succeed, I shall consider myself as having
done more excellent service to your understanding of the
Scripture, and promotion in the grace of God, than if I had
waged war against the Arminian heresy for a thousand
years. Suppose, then, that having perceived every obstacle
and barrier removed out of the way by the work of the
Saviour, and beholding in Him the reconciled countenance
of God, you take heart, and, no longer fearing because of sins
unpardoned, but rejoicing in sins forgiven, draw near to the
Word of God, as Moses did to the bush, in order to examine

64 ON PRA YER. .

it more closely ; and there you find a light unto your feet,
and a lamp unto your path ; and many bright promises, like
prizes, scattered along the way — promises of help in weari-
ness, of deliverance in trial, of consolation in trouble, of mas-
tery over sin, and progress in the work of sanctification. You
find promises for your families of the providence of God,
promises for the past of indemnity, promises for the present
of love and union, promises for the future of everlasting
glory. Taking these in good earnest, as meant for you no
less than for the rest of the children, you take courage,
and advance onward in that way which is so plentifully
blessed with the promises of the Divine Saviour. You en-
deavour to keep your heart, out of which are the issues of
life, watching its motions towards envy, covetousness, malice,
and all evil affections ; you put a watch upon your lips, that
you offend not God, speaking of things with gravity, sincerity,
and truth, abstaining from levity of speech and foolish jest-
ing, which are not convenient; you go down into your several
walks of business, setting the Lord continually before your
eye, doing righteousness and executing justice between your-
self and your neighbour, watching your talents to improve
them, and in all things doing the office of a faithful and
judicious steward; also, you set your house in order, ac-
cording to the Lord's commandment unto a parent and a
master, loving your children, rebuking them in wisdom, and
correcting them in love, and opening up before them the way
to honour, and immortality, and life ; and you adopt over
your servants a kind and gracious rule, giving them a share
in your prayers and religious exercises. Through all these,
and every other department of your occupation, you endea-
vour to introduce the regulation of wisdom, and temperance,
and piety ; endeavouring to guide your affairs with discretion
unto the end. Meanwhile are not forgotten the duties of the
sanctuary, the duties of the closet, the duties of almsgiving,
the duties of society, and the duties to the brethren, the com-
mon members of Christ. This thorough radical reformation
of the life and character you hopefully enter upon, looking to
the commandment of God, and trusting in the promises of God,
which are sufficient for their performance. You enter upon

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOUS GRACE. 65

it full of gladness, because, after so many years of folly and
wickedness, the power of retrieving your reputation with God,
and redeeming the future, hath been put within your reach
by the judgment of Christ. You enter upon it with the more
zeal that you have been such profitless servants hitherto, and
with the resolution that, through God's grace, you will make
amends to the world for your long sinfulness, and shew forth
at length, to angels and to men, your estimation of that Saviour
upon whom you have trampled so long and so profanely.

Here let us pause a moment and consider what it is you
have undertaken, and what is likely to be the result. You
have opened, if I may so speak, the largest, broadest negotia-
tion with God, upon the faith of documents written by His
hand, and sent by special messengers to the sphere which we
inhabit. You have gone into an intercourse, not of com-
modities, but of feelings and affections, of hopes and desires,
grounded upon the promises held forth in His Word, and in
anticipation of the return of providence, and peace, and hap-
piness, and improvement which these promises hold out. A
great deal have you staked upon the issue, and in the
strength of faith you have staked it all, — left off your sins,
forfeited your false gains, changed your manners and your
principles, and commenced a new style of conducting your-
self, to the end of reaping a manifold reward. Now, consider
this matter like business -doing men. One cannot go into
large transactions with any person without soon having cause
either to rejoice or to repent. If the anticipated advantage
be realised even beyond anticipation, faith is strengthened,
and confidence secured, and the grounds of a close inter-
course are laid. If our expectations are disappointed, and
nothing is realised but broken promises, frustrated hopes,
and unfair transactions, then we are covered with indigna-
tion, and dissolve further dealings with him who has so
wantonly betrayed us. We cannot help ourselves in this
matter, so as to hinder confidence and assurance from aris-
ing in our minds, and strengthening in proportion by our
experience of trustworthiness. We willingly yield ourselves
to such sweet and natural affection; and would trust a thou-
sand lives upon a friend who hath stood fast to our side, or
VOL. III. E

66 ON PRA YER.

to a wife who hath been as confidential as our own bosom,
or to a brother who hath stood true to us, or to a man of
business who hath never broken faith, nor failed to fulfil the
letter of his contract. The man who yields not his confi-
dence on such occasions is indeed much to be pitied : he
indicates a suspicious turn which must trouble his peace, a
jealousy which must ever sicken his love, a caution which
must ever hamper his transactions, and a closeness within
which no bud of affection will expand itself, until he alters
his nature. He is cut off from the regions of happy enjoy-
ment, and doomed within the secrecies of his own selfishness
to dwell, — when he comes forth, to be treated with the
reserve and coldness with which he treats others, and to
banish innocent, aff'ectionate people from his company, as
being uncongenial to their enjoyment.

Now, brethren, the weight of our argument is over, and
needs only to be applied to the case in hand. Having re-
posed in God such a deal of trust, and made at His desire
such a multitude of arrangements as were mentioned above,
committing ourselves before the eyes of men, and breaking
with the world in many of these fond and cherished customs,
things must speedily come to issue between our souls and
God, and they must either realise their expectations, or they
must not. The matter must immediately come to discus-
sion. If the fruits do accrue, and the peace of mind draws
on, and light springs up within the soul, — if sinfulness cometh
to lose, and holiness to take a hold, — if our affections come
to sweeten, and irritations to die away, — if the world no
longer drives us at its will, but we can make head against
it and overcome it, — if our families grow into good order
and affection through the economy newly introduced, — and
serenity, like the canopy of peaceful night, closes in our
days, — and conscious joy, soft as the dawn of morning,
awakens us to life and activity again, — and all the day
long we move abroad in contentment, and invested with a
new strength, which enables us to stand for things that are
honest, and true, and lovely, and of good report ; — if, more-
over, we see a Providence watching over our estate, and
never bringing us to loss but for our good, so that in what-

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOUS GRACE. 67

ever condition we are we feel content ; — moreover, if within
our breast there is a strong and hon heart after the right
and godly of "human affairs, — a trampling, restless scorn of
the base and mean, — a moving pity of the wretched and
miserable, — a hatred of the wicked and ungodly ; — if, in
short, those fruits of the Spirit, which are the present re-
wards of the promises, do reveal and manifest themselves
before our sight, so that we cannot be self-deceived, but are
truly become partakers with the children of God, — then,
men and brethren, do you not perceive that towards God,
who hath been so true to His engagements, who hath shewn
us the road out of such troubled waters, and brought us unto
such fresh and peaceful pastures, we must feel, we cannot
help ourselves from feeling, not only the utmost gratitude,
but the utmost confidence and assurance, for the things that
are expected in the time to come ? He hath accomplished
His covenant ; we have tasted His rewards, and they are
good. They are incorporated in our soul, secured in our
inward parts, a part of our life, an element of our indivisible
thought, ours inalienable by any human power. O my
brethren, can any one who hath lived degraded by abomi-
nable customs, or torn and rent within his soul by a thousand
contending thoughts, like vapour, and smoke, and raging
winds within the bowels of combustible Etna, and thence
been brought to the erectness of a holy man, enjoying a
calm contentment within, and beholding without, a wise,
though mysterious providence of God, — can it be that
this same man, so delivered beyond power of any earthly
emancipation, should not delight himself and trust in the
Lord Jehovah, who hath done such wondrous things for his
soul ?

It is not possible, for there accompanies every improve-
ment of the soul an inward joy that is unspeakable and full
of glory. A man may grow in wealth, and be thankless to
his benefactors; or in power, and spurn from his foot the
ladder of friends by which he rose ; or he may grow in know-
ledge, and afterwards despise his masters. But these are
because of the bad parts of human nature predominant over
the good ; of which predominance of the bad this improve-

68 ON PR A YER.

ment we discourse of is the very death-blow and prevention,
for it is the destruction of the bad and the exaltation of
the good. The improvement itself is the best security that
such improvement will be acknowledged at the proper source,
for it consists in the extirpation of selfishness, and blind-
ness, and ingratitude, which might have hindered us from
acknowledging the gift to the Giver. Therefore, both be-
cause of the stability of God to His engagements, because
of the good things we possess that cannot be taken from us,
because of the improved perceptions and feelings- of our
minds, it must happen that towards God, from whom it all
hath come plentifully down, there must arise within our
breasts the greatest confidence, and tfust, and assurance for
the time to come.

Thus it appears that it is as much (it could be shewn that
it is far more, but this is enough for the present) of the
nature of religion to beget trust and confidence in God, as
of friendship, or love, or commerce to beget trust in those
with whom we interchange interest and affection ; and it argues,
no less in the one than in the others, a jealous, suspicious
spirit, when this feeling is not generated, and does not go on
increasing with the number and extent of our transactions.
And should such jealousy and suspicion have previously
existed in the mind of one who enters upon religious inter-
course with the Word of God, this obnoxious feature of his
character will be pointed out to him amongst others, and he
will be encouraged, nay, obligated, to address himself to its
correction ; so that in every case where a man's religion is of
the genuine kind described above, — viz., the making of sacri-
fices at the command of God and upon the promises of God,
— it must necessarily happen that as God is faithful to His
promises, he must grow in confidence according to the num-
ber of promises in the strength of which we adventure, and
with the fruits of which we are rewarded.

Having arrived at this conclusion, we are now ready to
shew you how natural it is in God to utter, and how delicious
to His people to hear, those expressions of their election and
perseverance which have wrought such dismay in many
breasts. If you write to a dear friend, you subscribe yourself

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOUS GRACE. 69

" his till death ; " you call him the " friend of your choice,"
for whose sake you could "lay down life itself," and that
" nothing- shall divide you from his love but the grave ; " that
distance only strengthens your attachment, and misfortunes
do but reveal the value of his friendship. Again, between
husband and wife, which of all other relations is perhaps the
most confidential, after the relation of the religious soul to
God, — in that relation there springs up, when it is joined by
true affection, such a degree of trust and confidence as no
common language can express : all the language of choice
and constancy which God employs towards His people, and
much more, does not suffice to represent it. Even servant
and master sometimes join an affection hardly less strong in
its kind, which, though it does not utter itself in the language
of equality, utters itself by the fact that nothing can part
them. In all these affectionate unions, when death comes, the
survivor mourns that he was not taken. I could bring for-
ward a great many other instances if you would not think me
fanciful ; but, alas ! it is not my fancy which exaggerates, but
our misfortune to dwell in the midst of the artificial life of
cities, where interest plays deeper in the game than affection,
— ^where advantage too often joins marriage, and convenience
friendship, — where show and fashion is the soul of social life,
— where all things have in them a portion of the counterfeit
as well as of the real, of the artificial as well as of the natural ;
so that nothing becomes so difficult as to think or feel accord-
ing to nature, nothing seems so ridiculous as to speak accord-
ing to what you feel, and the whole work of affection is
marred and suspected. But I speak not of such; I speak of
the strength of pure affection — what one soul is capable of
feeling and saying to another soul with whose true feelings
it hath been long acquainted.

Now God's affection longeth to utter itself in the same terms
of dear and precious language towards those who have joined
themselves to Him, and deserted for His sake all the pleasures
of sin. He calls them His chosen people. His beloved chil-
dren, whom He shall keep by His Spirit until the day of re-
demption ; and Christ calls them His friends, whom He loveth
more than doth an elder brother — His spouse, in whom He

^0 ON PRA YER.

beholds neither spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing. God
and Christ promise to dwell with us, — to become our shield,
our buckler, and our high tower. Though ten thousand fall
at our side, it shall not once come near to us. Because we
have trusted in the great name of the Lord, He will deliver
us in the day of trouble. Nothing shall separate us from
His love, — neither height nor depth, nor things present nor
things to come. This is the language of God's affection
towards those who have come and seen that He is good. And
while it is natural for God to utter, it is delightful for those
who have become acquainted with His faithfulness to hear,
such language from His mouth. It is the natural food of that
confidence and love which have grown between them through
the experience which they have had of each other. God
hath beheld the sacrifices which His servants have made;
His servants feel the benefits which He hath conferred upon
them : they are embraced by the memory of a thousand acts
of mutual trust, and they hunger for expression of that happy
communion into which they have been brought.

Those parts of Scripture, therefore, which express the pecu-
liar delight and attachment which God hath in His people
above the rest of men — His having chosen them, His having
sealed them. His preserving them in safety. His keeping them
unto the end — can no more be spared from Scripture than those
which express the largeness, the freeness, the universality of
His love. His nature would be incomplete without both; and
our nature would be unsatisfied if either the one or the other
were cut off. If you were to remove the largeness and uni-
versality of His love, then you strike a blow at the root of
religion, — you cut off the very commencement of affection be-
tween the soul and God, — you shut the door and lock it, and
write above it that it is impassable. If, again, you exclude
those expressions of interior fondness and love, of peculiar
attachment, of finished friendship, of completed confidence, of
assured repose, — you hinder the progression of attachment,
you cut off the increase of affection, and do away all argu-
ment to advance onwards into the heart of the Almighty's
tabernacle. Then might it well be said, it is all common
general expressions of love, but when one comes to try, it

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE. 71

roots not, it grows not, it ripens not, — we come no nearer, we
are still amongst the crowd. It is all invitation, but no feast.

But while neither can be spared, both can be retained ; and
why not retain both, seeing both are written in the Scripture,
and both necessary for the satisfaction of human nature ?
They do not interfere or war against each other, but are
equally suited to people in different circumstances — those
setting out, and those advanced ; equally suited to every
believer in different circumstances — when beginning to hold
intercourse with God, and after having proved the faithful-
ness and goodness of His word. It is Godlike to make free
overtures to all the family, and it is also Godlike to notice
those who accept these overtures, and attach themselves to
His interest, from those who do not. In the family it be-
comes a father to feel a common favour for all ; but to make
a distinction, and a great distinction too, between those that
cleave to his love, and those that arm their hand or their
tongue against him, — it may cost him much to cast any off,
as it cost the old British king much, and wrung his heart-
strings sore, to forswear his two eldest daughters. And, oh,
how much doth it cost God to cast any one of us off! — what
pains to conciliate us all, when He gave His only-begotten and
dearly-beloved Son to reconcile us to Himself! But it were
weakness in any father — weak, blind affection, mere dotage
— not to be able to sit upon a seat of authority and utter com-
mandments against a rebellious child; while at the same time
he took an obedient child affectionately to his bosom, and
breathed over him the softest, sweetest accents of affection.

Thus, brethren, we have justified the wisdom of Scripture,
the fulness of the Divine character, and the suitableness of
both to act agreeably upon human nature. We have abstained
from all controversy, which we are resolved ever to do. We
will lift up the narrow limits of popular theology, and take
our scriptural liberty; we will remove stumblingblocks in
the way of your entering into the peace and love of God; but
we will neither say nor gainsay with any of the theological
factions which divide the land. Our part is to interpret the
good Word of God, and shew what use it is of to the happi-
ness of your spirits, to the welfare of your lives, present and

/-

ON PRA YER.

to come. This we have endeavoured to do, according to our
abihty, in the foregoing plain discourse.

If any one would have us to advance further, and discourse
of the decree from all eternity, and of the secret counsels of
God, we beg to decline, as totally incompetent to the task. It
is sufficient for us to deal with things revealed ; all other
speculations we hold as most culpable curiosity. It is a repe-
tition of Adam's sin — partaking of the forbidden tree ; God
having forbidden all approach to Himself, save by the way
revealed: "I am the way; no man cometh unto the Father
but by me." Enough of mischief has come to the Church
from those daring inquiries to deter me, if I were not already
deterred by my inability to the task. Further curiosity must
sleep until the revelation of all things : only it is pleasant to
see how the spirit of a believer, from dwelling at first upon
the generality of the offer and freeness of the gift, comes at
length to dwell upon the expressions of special love and spe-
cial security, which shews that he hath advanced many stages
on his journey. Let us therefore conclude by praying you
all, in order to realise the same enjoyment, to make that expe-
riment of a religious life which we described at the beginning.
Encouraged by the door opened to forgiveness and favour by
your Lord and Saviour, — encouraged likewise by the ample
promise of grace and strength presented to you by the Spirit
of all grace and consolation, — undertake the trial of the com-
mandments in thought and word and deed. Be not discour-
aged by the expressions which per\^ade the Scripture of spe-
cial favour. You have to do with the expression of universal
favour at the outset. This is the invitation to the feast — the
other is the dessert with which it closes ; if you look to the
latter, the words of special love, look to them as yours in pros-
pect— as the young soldier does to the triumph of his general,
or as the young statesmen does to the confidant of his sove-
reign. Let these expressions of special love be your encour-
agement to go forward till you have attained unto that inward
court of favour. Every one who is there began where you
began — upon the general invitations alone ; and, according as
he trafficked more and more with the Word of God, he rose
more and more in favour with God. He felt it in the strength

MISAPPREHENSION OF GODS GRACE. 73

of his faith, he felt it in the answer of prayer, he felt it in
the sanctification of his soul, and the sunshine of contentment
around him, — he sees it in the mercies gathered about his lot,
— he reads it in all the experiences of his past life, — he knows
it by the anticipation of future joys. These experiences change
him into another attitude to God than when he first set out.
He was then a beginner; he is now an advanced Christian.
He fed then all on hope untried; he hath now hope fulfilled,
and certainty of a thousand goods. He looks to Scripture for
good suited to his altered condition of mind, to his closer
place, and he finds it written in those passages of which it has
been our object this day to justify and defend the use, with-
out allowing them to devour, as they commonly are made to
devour, the general and common expressions of the Divine
love ; which truly is as bad as to make the child devour the
parent, — to make the future devour the present, by which
alone that future can be reached, — hope to devour faith,
which is all we possess of things hoped for.

VIT.

THE MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE.

Rom. VIII. 28-39.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them

7vho are the called according to his purpose. Sec. &c.

TT is our intention to continue the digression of our last dis-
course, and enter more at large into the proper and im-
proper application of such passages as that which hath been
read. To this we are moved by a desire that the character of
God may be freed from the impeachment of what is odious, and
be presented as embracing every attribute which is calculated
to impress veneration and affection upon the mind of man. For
through the obtrusion of these passages upon the attention of
unconverted men, to whom they have no application, it will
come to pass, not only that the character of God for impar-
tiality and universal good-will is blemished, but that the Scrip-
tures themselves are violated and purloined of the precious
treasures which they offer to the community at large ; among
whom there spreads, in consequence, a general dissatisfaction
with sound doctrine, which more than anything else predis-
poses them to fall into the sickly and meagre arms of Uni-
tarianism, or into the noisome embrace of the infidel school,
which hath degenerated in these times into the nestling-place
of everything unholy. Now, in undertaking this office of
conveying to others the comfort which we have ourselves in
meditating on the Christian's God, and perusing every part of
His holy Word, we again protest against being misinterpreted
as levelling at any opinionists whatever : yea, we are endea-
vouring, in deed and in truth, to do our feeble part for your
edification and growth in grace ; for we do feel that, unless we
do our best to expound, and you your best to understand, and

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE. 75

both our best to put in practice, the good word of God, it is a
mockery to ask His grace to help us, and His strength to be
made perfect in our weakness. There is no humility in being
idle and thoughtless because our actions are imperfect and
our thoughts infirm, but there is humility to feel our weakness
and perceive our limitations, after we have done our best to
think and to act ; and that is prayer which springs from a sense
of the necessity of superior aid. If these inquiries were pre-
sumptuous sallies of unsanctified speculation, and not humble
endeavours to find out the use and fruitfulness of the Word of
God, — if they ended in disaffecting the mind towards God, or
doing away with the work of our blessed Saviour, or making
the offices of the Spirit vain, then we would desist for ever;
because these are truths which in our heart we hold essential
to godliness, and which we shall ever labour to defend.
Therefore be not afraid, as if we went about to unsettle any
good or wholesome truth, but rest assured that we humbly
endeavour to explain these truths to the thinking, inquiring
men with whom we are surrounded.

The merit of preserving in their purity and simplicity those
passages which speak the sentiments of our text is due to
the Calvinists, who are wont to be held in such abhorrence
in certain places ; and had they done nothing more, they are
worthy of everlasting gratitude from the Christian Church.
All men can read in the gospel the freedom of its overtures,
which it is the utmost solecism for a moment to doubt. God
never hath given, never can give, a boon which is not to the
world generally. That it should not come all at once to the
knowledge of all, or be accepted of all to whose knowledge it
hath come, we shall take another opportunity of examining
at large, and justifying from the envious but ignorant attacks
of fanciful and weak-minded men who would screen their own
guilt and quiet their own misgivings, by alleging the many who
know not, and the many who knowing, like themselves, reject
the gospel. But that it should be free for those to whom it
comes to accept it, and that if they reject it, they do so at
peril and loss, as they would if they rejected liberty, or know-
ledge, or power, or any beneficial blessings placed within their
reach, — this is a point which stands so legibly out, that no-

76 ON PR A YER.

thing but the uttermost stupidity, or the most bhnded opinion-
ativeness can make a man miss finding it in every page of
Scripture ; and therefore there was no merit nor resolution in
upholding those parts of Scripture which make free overture
of the blessings unto all. But it was a more difficult and
more invidious part, and required more boldness, to come
forth with those other parts of Scripture which speak the
language of particular and special favour towards those who
believe over those who do not believe. This was at once to
constitute a difference, to make a separation of actual privi-
leges, between those who were of the Church and those who
were not, and it could not fail to draw down odium from the
world upon those who uphold it. The Calvinists did not
flinch from this odium, but upheld the special grace of God
to His people. They brought out from the shade into which
they are cast by others those parts of Scripture which uphold
what they call the covenant of grace and its privileges; and
in doing so, they did most capital service to religion. For,
as we shewed in our last discourse, religion would cease to
be progressive, like every other thing which human nature
handleth, if we could jump at once into its very centre of light,
liberty, and enjoyment. There must be something to stimu-
late industry and encourage perseverance, something to re-
ward activity of thought and steadiness of purpose, in order
that it may be suited to the nature of men. Observe that of
every dispensation of providence, the good parts come in
degree ; the reward is progressive. Avith, and proportionate to,
the diligence and continuance of the labour. In knowledge,
for example, the pleasure is prospective, and draws you on ;
in affection, we proceed by slow approaches, one parallel after
another being mastered, until we are seated in the citadel of
the heart ; in obedience to a good master, we set out with
difficulty, and get on by degrees, and at length come to love
that which at first we hated as a task. In virtue also, taking
it as independent of religion, the steep at first is hard to climb,
but yields such balmy freshness and vital health at every
step that we at length forget that we are ascending. Now,
if religion be, as it is, a combination of knowledge, affection,
and holy obedience, it should also, to suit human nature and

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOUS GRACE. "JJ

lure it on, have rewards proportionate to the advancement
Ave make. Besides having Hberty to set out, or rather strong
pressing invitation proportionate to the first difficulty of the
task, it ought to have constant experience of its advantage,
and an increasing pleasantness and growing health to draw
us onwards. These interior and more advanced rewards,
these special revelations of God's Spirit to the believer, the
Calvinists maintained under various names, — the grace and
accomplishments of the new man, the peace and joy to
which the natural man is a stranger, the mercies of the new
covenant, and various other significant terms drawn from
Scripture itself, — and in doing so they did most especial service
to the cause, not only in speaking to the experience of those
who were within the temple of grace, and upon whom all its
reputation depended, but, I will maintain it, they did also
most material service to those not initiated, by pointing out
to their eyes the happy deliverances and enjoyments of those
who had come and tasted that God is good. For it is a vain
thing to go about inviting busy people to this or that, unless
you set forth the entertainment which they shall have if they
will accept the invitation. Even the porters who, with pole
and ticket, station themselves in the streets, inviting the pas-
sengers to the entertainment of the evening, have set forth
most legibly an account of the treat, and often a picture of
it, to speak the more promptly and efficaciously to the passer
by. So if the preacher of the gospel did but cry, " Come,
ho, come, enter into this way opened up by Jesus Christ,"
he would make little impression upon the people posting
with what diligence they can, each one after his proper busi-
ness. He must cry out what he will give them to come, as
Isaiah doth : " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters, and he that hath no money ; come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price ;" or, like Christ himself,
he must set forth an entertainment worth the going to — the
entertainment of a king, a banquet given by a king at the
marriage of his son. Thus furnished, his messengers may
expect much.

More highly, therefore, on every account are the Calvinists
to be applauded for having held the tone of a special as well

7^ ON PRA YER.

as a general grace, of having preached to the people within
the pale as chosen and secure, the redeemed and adopted sons
of God, and having pointed out to them the evidences of
their calling and election. In doing so, they did nothing but
justice to the Scriptures, which, with all courtesy and invi-
tation towards the world without, contain also praise and
encouragement of the church within ; with all forgiveness and
reconciliation to sinners, contain assurance and rewards to
saints. The Calvinists, besides preaching before the door of
the temple to the unwilling crowd, went into the temple to
serve the necessities and entertainment of those who had
entered, and to those hesitating brought out particulars of
the feast, and displayed them, to work upon their decision ;
and they ever and anon kept opening views into the temple,
that all might see what great and gracious things they were
heedlessly passing by. It was preaching such as this which
reformed these two kingdoms and all the Protestant states of
Europe; and into whatever preaching this doth not enter as
a capital ingredient, that preaching will not speed. Such
passages, therefore, as our text are not to be hid in a corner,
but are to be oft and boldly brought forth as the only good
which suits the enlarged affections and devoted confidence of
the advanced people of God; and when they are so used for
pasture to the sheep of the flock, and for encouragement to
those without the fold, they are well and wisely used.

But I need not tell you, because it is known like the sun
at noon, and openly avowed by the Calvinists themselves,
that it hath happened to them to fancy that these passages
of election and perseverance are the capital and main things
to be offered to the unconverted world ; whereas they are as
unintelligible as midnight to such, and bear to them no grace
and no encouragement. Had they been presented in pros-
pect to allure them on, had the unregenerate been told the
time was coming when they would be able to appropriate to
themselves all these specialties and personalities of God's
Word, they had acted wisely. But this, and this alone, hath
engrossed them, until positively they have no overtures
of pardon to all, no offers of grace to all, no compassion of
a Saviour to all, no incitements of a Holy Spirit to all. The

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOD'S GRACE. 79

people pass the temple gate, they hear the feasting and mirth
within, but no voice that they also are welcome. Certain
ministers stand at the gate describing, eulogising the high
calling of those within, but no tidings to the people how they
may approach ; consequently the people take it as a mockery
of them, — their desire is aggravated of the good thing, but no
hope permitted of its ever being theirs, no thought indulged
that they have as good a title as the best. This, this is the
misuse of these passages when they eclipse the free light of
salvation and seal the lips of the forerunners of grace. Now
to perceive the fatal effects, and to find out the source of this
weakness, we pray you to listen to the following illustration,
which will explain ho>v the high and pure minds of the Cal-
vinistic divines, exercised as they have ever been with the per-
fections of spiritual life, have come to forget the steps by which
they reached their exaltation both of faith and of practice.

If it should happen that a college or university of know-
ledge, celebrated for its learning, should, out of admiration of
that they enjoy, be constantly setting forth their great bless-
ing over ignorant and illiterate people ; if the works they
wrote should display the ultimate reaches of their science,
the mysteries they had penetrated, which no uninitiated
person was able to comprehend from want of similar educa-
tion and learning ; if, moreover, to replace their numbers,
thinned by death, they chose youth and secreted them from
the public, and privately tutored them until they had arrived
at the same pitch of knowledge and imbibed the same spirit
of exclusion with themselves ; if, moreover, this college of
learned men did positively prohibit and interdict all discourse
from being holden with the multitude upon the way by which
they came to their present happy state of knowledge, and
all books from being written in any other style than that of
profound and far advanced science, in short cast a mystery
over the path by which they ascended, and a radiancy over
the ascent itself, — what effect, I ask, would such an institu-
tion have in the bosom of any community ? It would draw
the wonder and admiration of the ignorant, who would gape
and stare, and give it all into the hands of mystery and en-
chantment. But the thoughtful it would disgust; those of

So ON PR A YER.

gentle spirit, who might have been taught, it would overawe ;
those of bolder spirit, who would break the chain, it would
persecute : in short, it would be a further evil to those unini-
tiated, whatever it might be to themselves. All the while there
might be no deception in the matter, — they might be the
learned men they set up to be, — they might have the delights
accruing from their knowledge which they claim to have;
only they had one defect, they thought more of their own
happiness than the happiness of the many. They might be
sincere in preferring the high rewards of their knowledge to
the trouble of enlightening the ignorant and advancing the
desirous ; nay, they might be naturally brought into this
condition from oversight, caused by this, that their devotion
to this enjoyment and study overshadowed their benevolent
interest in the common good. But it doth seldom happen
that it proceeds from such defects in oversight alone, for there
come to be added the many unholy influences of being ad-
mired, and wondered at, and revered, and giving the law, and
being blindly served and awfully listened to, to all which
human nature is incidental. But I need not speak by hypo-
thesis or supposition, for every religion under the sun will
supply me with examples. The ancient priests of Egypt
shut up their knowledge in hieroglyphics, of which we are
but now breaking the seal, — the ancient Greeks in fables, —
the later Greeks in mysteries lesser and greater, — the Druids,
our fathers, in dark verses, which they forbade to be written,
and in depths of embowering woods. They do so in the
East to this day. The Brahmins and Buddhists and Sha-
manists secrete the mysteries of their faith. There is not any
religion but the Christian, and the Mohammedan, which is a
base corruption of the Christian, that does expose to common
perusal all its secrets. Even the Old Testament, by all the
commandments of publicity, was not prevented from being
shut up in the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees, who,
according to the Saviour, held the key of knowledge, and
entered not in themselves, neither permitted others to enter
in. The Christian faith in the hands of the Catholics hath
been liable to as gross a secretion, being shut up in an un-

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOU S GRACE. 8i

known tongue, and spirited away into an infallible man, — a
sort of Lama of Christendom.

When men, therefore, do actually possess any superior
light or privilege over the great body of the people, it doth
appear they are liable to appropriate it to themselves, and
hinder it from being encroached upon by the vulgar. Now,
as was shewn in our last discourse, the people who have
joined themselves to God, through His blessed Son, do actu-
ally enjoy a new world of happy existence. Their affec-
tions are sweetened, their hopes enlarged, their confidence
for eternity made sure, and their whole heart above measure
rejoiced. They are at sea in no respect — settled and §tab-
lished, rooted and grounded, in the favour of God. They are
protected from the chief evils of misfortune, and misrule, and
wickedness. They know that their sins are forgiven, and
their iniquities pardoned, and that there remaineth for
them an everlasting rest. They have shed abroad in their
hearts all the fruits of grace, and over their lives all the joy
and satisfaction of holiness. They are a peculiar people, a
chosen nation, a royal priesthood, to shew forth the praises of
Him who hath called them out of darkness into His marvel-
lous light. In a remarkable degree, therefore, they stand
liable to the weakness of- human nature mentioned above — of
forgetting the method of ingress into this elysium of the soul
which God hath brought them to possess. And if I say
they have fallen into it, let me do it with deference, and not
be understood to bring a railing accusation, but to say that
they are not perfect, but only men, though sanctified men :
in truth, it is the excess of a good quality which hath made
them incidental to the weakness. It is not the pleasure
of keeping others in darkness, nor the desire of exclusive
right, that hath made them cloud with mystery the passage
out of nature into grace, instead of making all men ac-
quainted with its plainness ; it is the excessive reverence
they have for the work of the Spirit, the excessive feeling
of their own incompetency to explain His goings and com-
ings, the excessive fear lest by entering into the means they
took they should abstract from God, and take the glory
VOL. III. F

82 ON PR A YER.

to themselves. I reverence, I most highly reverence, their
motives, while I profoundly lament that they are so barren
of counsel to the unconverted. I defend them from all im-
putation of premeditated secrecy or exclusive appropriation ;
while, at the same time, I have the hardihood to think and
say they have acted injudiciously, and spread among those
who do not know them well all the prejudices and dislikes
which arise against a narrow-minded and exclusive corpora-
tion. The idea is widely spread among the worldly that the
Calvinists have not liberality of heart, and that they shut the
door of grace upon their brethren. They say. When we ask
for help, you give us hopelessness ; when we ask for instruc-
tion, you answer, that nothing can be done for us until God
move in the matter, and that His motions are hid from our
knowledge ; you cast a veil over the Scriptures, alleging that
without an inward light they cannot be understood ; when
we ask for guidance to the light, you give us vague and
unintelligible mystery ; we ask bread, you give us a stone ;
we are in weariness, but we find not from you that rest unto
the soul which Christ himself promised to the weary and
the heavy laden. Thus, most unfortunately, it comes to
pass that, though there be amongst the followers of Christ
none of the fraudulent designs which cause the secrecy in
false religions or in narrow-minded incorporations of know-
ledge, the effects upon the unjudging world have become
almost as prejudicial to the cause as if these fraudulent
motives were stimulating this most unwarrantable and in-
judicious seclusion of the truth.

This unwise conduct of the Calvinists ariseth chiefly from
the misuse of such passages as this before us, which they
interpret by the head rather than by the heart. Now, you
will remember how we shewed that these passages are the
language of affection, due only to well-proved worth, and
well-purchased favour. Now, affection hath a language of
its own, which those not under its influence are apt not
only to misunderstand, but to ridicule. Love is not logical,
nor precise, but large and unbounded in its utterances. Its
language is that of partiality and favour, and abounds with
terms of choice, exclamations of fondness, and assurances

MISAPPREHENSION OF GODS GRACE. 83

of perseverance. This is not weakness nor affectation, but
the natural language of affection, which will be dumb for
ever if it is to speak to the satisfying of casuists or logicians.
This is the sense in which election and perseverance are to
be understood — as fond utterances by the Spirit of God over
those who have become tenderly affected towards God, and
nicely observant of His holy and good law. So long, there-
fore, as they are presented to those for whom they are meant,
they are pregnant with the happiest fruits, being the words
of God's tenderness and love to those who are in a state to
receive and entertain them. When offered to those unac-
quainted with God, they seem either without meaning, or
bespeak the grossest favouritism. It is as if you would write
a letter of most confidential friendship to a perfect stranger,
who would forthwith conclude you were the most capricious
man alive so to confide in one unknown. It is as if you
would address a letter of love to a person unknown, who
would conceive it so beyond all bounds of explanation as
to hold it a premeditated insult. Now, as we said, it hath
unfortunately happened that Christians think it their duty
to offer such passages touching election and perseverance
to those whose souls are not in a case to receive them, who
see truly that it is a very comfortable condition to be stand-
ing in, if one could but attain to it. But how can he have
the face to adopt this language of choice, and fondness, and
assured safety, while he is yet at a distance from God, and
has hourly experience of his hatred to what is good, and
his proneness to what is evil, — his dislike to God, and his
dishonour of Christ. He cannot, unless he were a fool or
a knave, take such language as meant in earnest for him ;
and nothing else being offered to him, you lose the oppor-
tunity which, by better management, might have redounded
to the glory of God, and the salvation of a human soul,
which you have but hardened the more. I urge you again,
that a beginner in the knowledge of the gospel, a stranger
to the powers of the world to come, a babe in Christ, hath
no part nor portion in that food which is for the nourishment
of full-grown men. He must be fed with the tenderness of
counsel, with the invitations to forgiveness, and the freeness

84 ON PRA YER.

of grace, and the fulness of promise. And of the other food
you present, it must be prospectively as that to which God
will surely advance him. Be not afraid ; counsel him in
what God requires ; assure him of God's universal love, and
Christ's universal offer, and the Spirit's unbought operation.
Shew him the course, — pilot to him the hidden rocks, — go
before him, and encourage him, as God hath a thousand
times commanded.

I exhort advanced Christians to feed their own souls with
these revelations of God's grace, for they are intended to
reward and satisfy them. It is their right part to forget the
general offer, and apply to the special favours — to take Christ
as their Saviour, God as their God, the Spirit as their Com-
forter, in a sense familiar and distinguishing. But while they
thus embosom themselves in His secret tent, and feed on the
fatness thereof, let them remember it was not so from the
beginning, — that then they needed counsel, and watchfulness,
and diligence, — that they tired and fainted, hoped and feared,
and joined trembling with their mirth. They did not come
by one stride into confidence of favour, and assurance of con-
stancy. They learned from the Word of God, from the mouth
of the priest, from the counsels of the ancients, and at length
they came to feel strong in the inner man, good soldiers of
Christ, that could war a good warfare. Then came their time
for favour: they now can interpret without a commentator
those passages of election and perseverance which once upon
a time no commentator could make intelligible. The Scrip-
ture is a book that is to be understood like any other book,
through experience of the truth of what it contains, through
the answer of head and heart, of intellect, and conscience, and
feeling. To one that has had no experience of religion, it
will seem dark in many parts, as will a law book, or a medi-
cal book, or a poetical book, or a sentimental book, to a plain,
plodding, homely countryman, but in other parts it will be
as intelligible to a first reader and a first scholar in religion
as to the most advanced. It will speak to the sins he is
guilty of, — it will speak to the fears he hath of coming wrath, —
it will speak to the wishes he hath of deliverance, — it will speak
to his love of what is generous, and tender-hearted, and com-

MISAPPREHENSION OF GOUS GRACE. 85

passionate, and merciful. Well, take him upon -what he
understandcth, deal with him in as far as he alloweth. You
cannot by any means work upon him by that of which he
hath no experience, and with which he has no sympathy.
Therefore it is folly, perverse folly, and moon-struck madness,
to hold discourse with him upon the eternal decree, and the
hidden mystery, and the inalienable right, and a thousand
other things which nothing but the gradual enlightening of
the Spirit of God can teach. Would you make a man whose
eyes had been couched look first upon the sun shining in his
strength .'' Would you take a man first from the miry clay
into the inmost chamber of the sanctuary of God .-*

This I will say, that if the Bereans, and Glassites, and San-
demanians, and the Antinomians, and others who take such
passages as our text for the whole gospel, and hold that
assurance of salvation is the first act of faith, had their way
of it, they would make such a Church as never was seen since
the days of the German Anabaptists. For, in the name of
all that is reasonable and godly, if a man by one stroke finish
his work, what has he to do ever after .'' If a man by one
fetch brings up all the fish in the deep, or all the diamonds
in the mine, what more use is that deep or that mine to him ?
And if a Christian grasp the promises at one embrace, and
step by one stride into the bosom of God, what use to him
for ever is the Scriptures, the promises, the hopes, the warn-
ings, the stimulations, the chastenings .-' I do allow, nay, I
do always preach, that the first act of a Christian's pilgrimage
commences from the fear of coming wrath, and hope, how-
ever faint, of deliverance ; but with old Bunyan, that man of
many thoughts, I do think he may wear his burden upon his
back some little while before he finds the cross at which it
unlooses and drops oft" of its own accord, and, being rid of it,
that he has a hard and weary pilgrimage before him, with
various assaults and deliverances, various hindrances and
advancements.

Thus again have I endeavoured to throw some light upon
a difficult subject ; doing it as to wise men, and constantly
appealing as to impartial men, not flinching from my con-
victions through fear of being mistaken, but trusting all my

86 ON PRA YER.

thoughts fearlessly to your candour. For it is the wish of my
heart that you should understand the truth, and that the
truth should make you free ; it is the wish of my heart to
stand on the bridge which bestrideth the gulf between the
Christians and the world, and to pilot the people over. For as
the religious world goes, there is little of this clearing of the way.
There is much rejoicing over those safely passed, much merry-
making as prodigal after prodigal reacheth the happy shore >
but ah ! ah ! for the poor world, blind and astray, — there are
few messengers amongst them, few Pauls or Silases struggling
in the press of the population to restrain their vain, their
sinful sacrifices. This perceiving, this feeling, this lamenting,
I do from time to time step into paths that are thorny, and
that are suspected by the sanctified, in order, my beloved
brethren, that each one of you who may happen to be ill at
ease, sick at heart, restless and discontented, weary and heavy
laden, may know of a surety that God is seeking to deliver
and save you, and will most kindly receive and entertain
you, and establish your feet in the way of His commandments,
which is a new and living way that Icadeth to honour, and
glory, and life.

Therefore, men and brethren, take from the Word of God,
and from the preachers of the word, that which best suiteth
the present condition of your soul, and be not disconcerted
by that which you are not yet in a condition to appropriate
unto yourselves. You are all sinners, and conscious of sin-
fulness ; have recourse, then, to the Son of God, who saveth
you from your sins. Come unto Him, and take lessons at His
feet how you may struggle with the body of sin and death
which oppresseth you with its carnal load.

VIII.

PRAYER AND ACTION.

A PIOUS and devout spirit is so interwoven with the repose
of the mind over the uncertain future, and with its tran-
quilhty when the miserable and adverse accidents of the future
come to open up, that, independently of the command of God,
and His promise to hear and answer prayer, we have thought
the subject worthy of examination, simply as an instrument
for the attainment of happiness. Piety, wisdom, and action
ought to be placed upon the same level as ministers to the
peace of man : piety to confide to God the uncertain part of
every undertaking ; wisdom and action to secure that other
part which God hath made dependent upon ourselves. These
three give true fortitude to meet the event, and resignation
to bear it when it is arrived, and pleasure to reflect upon it
when it is past. We shall confirm the argument for uniting
these ministers of our peace, by shewing the evil effects which
result from desecrating them ; in doing which we shall draw
our examples, not from imagination, but from the real and
existing world, religious and irreligious.

It is possible for piety to encroach upon the province of
mind and action, and to beget a torpid and inconsiderate
superstition ; but the common case is for the latter to encroach
upon the former, and almost or altogether to discharge it from
our thoughts and our affairs. The evil effects of the one and
the other of these encroachments, the good effects of a mutual
harmony and encouragement, we shall point out to you.

Piety is always in that excess which entitles it to the name
of superstition when it checks our exertions, or hinders us
from the use of lawful and appointed means. The captain

^^ ON PR A YER.

who would throw up the helm in a storm, the seamen who
would betake them to their knees for a continuance, and allow
the opportunities of deliverance which God is sending to pass
unimproved, are as unpardonable as the captain who in such
a crisis gives his orders with an oath, or the seamen who go
about their duty with imprecations. The prayer to God is as
easily uttered as the hasty profanation of His holy name, and
the silent ejaculation of prayer is as speedily said as the bold
and bloody invocation of His wrath ; and, in my esteem, it
doth bespeak as brave a man to adopt the one course as to
adopt the other ; and any one who hath been in such risks, will
agree with me in thinking that the cool, collected state of a
devout man, is fitter to take the necessary measures than the
hot and heady state of a blasphemer. In our countrymen the
devout doth seldom carry it over the active; but amongst
Catholic seamen, who repose such confidence in vows and the
number of their prayers, it is most usual in a storm for all
hands to betake themselves to their images, when they should
betake them to God with their trust, and to their business
with all their resources. It is so, also, amongst the Moham-
medans, who are such strict Predestinarians as to strike to the
fates when they fancy they discern them drawing near. And
so also, I believe, with the seamen of the East Indies, who in
the midst of a storm can with difficulty be kept to their posts.
These are all instances of piety setting action to a side, and
becoming ignorant and fatal superstition. The same tendency
exists in pious people everywhere by land as well as sea, in
Protestant countries no less than in Catholic ; and against fall-
ing under it we ought constantly to be upon our guard. For
instance, the same misuse of God's foreknowledge which ener-
vates or rather annihilates the Turk, produces the same effect
upon multitudes amongst ourselves who have a desire after
religion, but fancy that they are powerless, incapable of help-
ing themselves, till the angel of the Lord move the waters. It
hath been my lot a thousand times, when pressing the subject
of religious duties upon men, to have in reply, " You know we
can do nothing of ourselves;" which I hold paramount with
the Turk's saying he can do nothing to save his ship. Paul,
when he was tempest-driven in Adda, had revelation from

PRAYER AND AC210N. 89

the angel of God that there should not a soul be lost of all
that were on board. Yet when the seamen would have come
by the boat, to leave the rest to their shifts, Paul told the cen-
turion to hinder them, for " unless these abide in the ship ye
cannot be saved;" thus demonstrating that even the issue, when
known, did not prejudice nor affect in any way the use of the
proper means. But not only among those who are upon the
outside of the holy temple of religion, and take no means of
entreaty or activity to obtain admission, looking for a door to
open by invisible agency, and themselves to be transported
at once within the wall, — not only among these deluded by-
standers, but amongst the religious themselves, doth this pre-
ponderance of piety over wisdom and action manifest itself-
If they were as wise as they are pious, and had studied the
means of grace as well as they know the fountain of all grace,
they would not feel loath to tell a sinner what steps to take,
— nor fondness to impress him with the idea of his inefficiency,
— nor constantly conclude every discourse of active duty with
the saving clause, that we can do nothing of ourselves ; which
method of proceeding doth cut the throat of all thought and
action, and impede all progress, as much as if the captain of
the ship should preach in the hour of need to his seamen how
vain it was for them to put forth any endeavour. I reckon
the separation of the religious from the company of worldly
men to be another evidence of the same preponderance in
this age of piety over well-directed and strenuous activity ;
otherwise they would embrace intercourse and free com-
munion as the best instrument for serving the good cause
which they have at heart. Also, the deafness of the religious
towards the free and manly sentiment for which their pre-
decessors have been evermore distinguished is a proof of the
same overwhelming force of the pious sentiment over the
active measures, otherwise they would know how much every-
thing that is free, and manly, and liberal serves the ends of
pure and undefiled religion. But we thank God that this
state of things is rapidly giving way, and that human agency
is coming to display in the religious world its wonted mighty
power when conjoined with divine trust.

To descend from the general to the individual, I shall point

90 ON PRA YER.

out for the edification of the pious present, how their piety-
may carry it over their wisdom and action in the affairs of
life. They may presume upon the Divine ear, and prescribe
a method of proceeding to the Lord. Now, however much it
is our nature to form wishes and schemes, and lines of happy
fortune for ourselves and those who are dear to us, and how-
ever much our duty to present these, purified of all vanity
and selfishness, to the Lord's approval, and humbly to solicit
the performance of the same, yet our desire should never rise
into the magnitude of an assurance, for then our prayers
would be without meaning and without use, or rather an act
of dictation to Him whom we petition. Still let it be in the
floating indecision of a wish, however oft besought; for God
may intend something infinitely better, and certainly if He
send not that, will send something infinitely wiser. You do
but prepare yourselves for resistance to God's will, and for
the snare of the devil, which is self-confidence, so to magnify
your wishes into predictions, and place yourselves above the
wisdom and the will of God. But if to your forecast, and pre-
/ sentiment, and endeavour to bring about that which seemeth
' to be best, you add devout trust in God, and, if need should
be, perfect contentedness to be disappointed, and perfect con-
viction that all will turn out for the best, then you are in
the most wholesome state of anticipation in which the mind
can repose. Again, the spirit of piety is in superstitious ex-
cess when it overawes the thought or paralyses the action
which the case calls for. Such expressions as, " Leave it to
the Lord," "Wait till the Lord's time," are only allowable
after all means have been taken : and truly, even then they
bespeak an error, as if there was a time for men to work, and
afterwards a time for God; whereas, all the time we work, we
ought to work together with God, in the spirit of that wise
saying of St Paul : " Work out your salvation with fear and
trembling : for it is God that worketh in us both to will and
to do of his good pleasure." Another very popular mistake
in this matter is the deferring endeavours after the conversion
of our friends and family, till, as it is said, " God seems to be
dealing with them." If it means only that wc seized the
opportunity, that is well ; but if it means there is a time when

PR A YER AND ACTION. 91

it becomes our duty, and not till then, — a time when we can
have God's co-operation, but not before, — it is most self-mag-
nifying conceit, as if we knew the times and the seasons, or as
if God were not always disposed to save sinful men.

Now all these cases, whether in the individual or in the
Church, in which piety overbears wisdom and action, are at-
tended with most evil consequences to the cause of Christ.
What hath brought the name of priest into contempt almost
all the world over, but because they trust in the power of their
prayers and services, to the prejudice of wise and prudent
measures .-• What at this moment, in a neighbouring country,
makes the policy of priests decried, but because they set up the
God of their saints against all reason and the rights of men }
What associates the name of saint with the idea of silliness
at home, but because there is a body of the people which are
ahead of them in the prudence and energy of their counsels .-'
What makes the Methodists lose that right which they have
to be blessed, as the best friends of order and morals, but
because they have mixed up Avith their labours for the weal
of souls so much superstitious confidence in their prayers,
and so much mystery and incredible mummery in their con-
versions,— because they have made that most important of all
events in the life of man turn upon some fortuitous incident or
some unaccountable possession .'' To remove these slanders,
by removing the occasion of them, to make the name of Chris-
tian awful for its wisdom and energy as well as for its sanctity,
and to procure for the cause all the suffrages of unprejudiced
men, we have thus been at pains, in the first place, to point
out the cases in which piety is found in excess.

Let us now look upon the other side of the picture, and
remark the instances of wisdom and activity being trium-
phant over piety, and the evil consequences which ensue ;
and exceeding sorry are we that it is so easy to point out
the infinite number of people who are suffering in their peace
and prosperity, and likely to suffer in their eternal interests,
by separating two things which should never be parted — the
exertion of our wisdom and endeavour upon the one hand,
and trust in God to render us a blessing upon the other. For
lack of this pious trust, behold, in the first place, what multi-

92 ON PR A YER.

tudes surrender themselves to wicked and crooked practices.
I do not speak before this congregation of the thieves and
swindlers and cheats of every name, who, forgetting trust in
God, fall into the snare of the devil, and are by him directed
into those paths which lead to the chambers of the grave.
Had these unfortunate and beguiled men conjoined a trust
in God with the honest exercise of their labours, they would
never have been forsaken, so far as to draw down disgrace
upon themselves and upon those to whom they are dear.
But as I speak to honest and reputable men, it behoves me
to point out, for their advantage, the evils to which they are
subjected by depending more upon their wits than upon the
grace and blessing of the Lord. And, beloved brethren, I
pray you, first of all, to reflect that you are liable to the stroke
of adversity, and may come to be tried with those sore trials
which prove the ruin of men as reputable and well-born as
any who now hear me. In the vicissitudes of life you may
be forsaken of all; and then, having no confidence of God,
you are fallen indeed, and open to the evil ingress of the de-
signing ; which should you nobly withstand, — as many of you
I doubt not have, upon the strength of honesty and honour
alone, — still, it is a fiery and comfortless trial. God, truly, is
the patron of the honourable and honest, and will not cease
to send a blessing upon such conduct, whether it is besought
from Him or not ; but the blessing comes without any know-
ledge of the coming, — the morning dawns without any antici-
pation of its dawning, — liberty arrives without any tidings of
its approach, and during the night of trouble the soul is with-
out the comfort of hope; whereas had you put your trust in
God, you would have recognised His hand in bringing you
low, and you would have sought out the reason of it, and you
would have discovered the improvement of it, and you would
have laboured under this cloud with as hopeful and profitable
a labour, as under the eye of day ; and in God's good time you
would have expected the dawn, either in time or in eternity,
assured that He would not desert your soul while you con-
tinued to trust in Him, or desert your estate, but would
provide bread and make water sure to you and to your chil-
dren. Time would fail if I were to speak of the use of trust

PR A YER AND ACTION. 93

in God ill those seasons of affliction when our wits are scat-
tered Hke unsubstantial chaff", and all our designs are melted
like the shadow of a vision ; or when our souls are weighed
down within us by reason of grief, and our whole mind is a
dungeon of sorrow, whence every faculty of thought and
action are fled. These are seasons which you must encounter,
and for which you should be furnished, and it is great folly
for you to be without resources for these seasons, or to post-
pone the preparation because at the present smiles and health
bloom in your house ; as great folly as it would be for the
ship circumnavigating the stormy globe, to carry with her no
storm-rigging, to have no reefing tackle or spare ropes and
sails and spars, and strong storm-anchors and boats, to give
a double chance for the lives of the people. Have not you
to navigate the round of trials, from dust back again to dust,
the complete age of time, from the cradle to the grave ? And
shall not you meet the same accidents, trials, and discom-
fitures, which all before you have proved, and in which, of all
that have proved them, those only have not been shipwrecked
or lost who had their piety and trust in God to stand them in
stead when every other help had failed ?

But not to forecast the evil day, which we admonish you
to provide against, we now pray you to mingle with us in
the active, gay affairs of human life, which ye either daily
witness or read of, if not participate in, and observe whether
the want of piety doth not desecrate and deform the fair
character of men. The future being so uncertain and so
unstable, notwithstanding every endeavour of ours to secure
it, it comes to pass that men join shoulder to shoulder
and weave strong defences and alliances with each other,
against its disasters. Herein they do well ; and all insur-
ances of property and life, all friendly associations against
the day of distress, all savings-banks, and economical re-
sources which men fall upon to fend each other's feeble-
ness against the terrific future, are greatly to be admired
as the most benevolent and delightful inventions of society
for its own happiness and preservation. Moreover, they
are another exemplification of that anxious restlessness
which man hath about things to come, and another proof

94 ON PRA YER.

how little composed he is in his mind until he has taken
every step to secure himself against vicissitude and change.
And it seems to me, that if men would but believe that after

-/ death there is a long, long future, big with momentous fates
and destinies, they would address themselves to those insur-
ances and policies which God hath opened in the gospel to
stand between them and risk, and bring them into the fair
haven of His rest. But to return. We do not object to such
defences as man's wisdom hath devised honestly to meet the
occurrences of the eventful future ; that is, if they do not
come instead of piety and trust in God. But, alas ! man be-
taketh himself to many other shifts, which utterly degrade
him. Wealth being a commodity which hath a sort of stability

/ in it, (though, God knows, it is only a sort!) men become
servants of it, and proud of it, and devoted to those who have
it, to a degree which degrades their spiritual and immortal
nature far beneath its true dignity. They will wed them-
selves to sickliness, to ignorance, to impiety, to age, and loath-
some lust, for the sake of fortune, and embitter the whole of
their worldly existence in order to build up, by means of a
dowry and portion, a puny embankment against the tide of
misfortune, and penury, and want, sacrificing youth, love,
and happiness upon the altar, (if it deserves that honourable
appellation,) — upon the drossy altar of mammon. They will
toil from morning to night, and from night to morning they
will dote and dream upon the securities of their wealth, and
their happiness in having escaped the fluctuations of life,
amidst which so many are struggling still. And sure it is
great cause of thankfulness to have so escaped the tossings
of anxious affairs ; but, oh ! it is a sad misplacement of affec-
tion to give these thanks, and the confidence which they
should engender, to heaps of treasure, — to bills, bonds, and
title-deeds, which the fire of a night may consume, or a thou-
sand fortuitous chances invalidate. Oh, but though they
f- were safe and secure as the steady earth itself, of which they
are but a part, still, still it is a gross misplacement of the
immortal soul's affections to ally them with the gross ele-
ments of fortune, and it works a total destruction of the pure
and noble parts of manhood ! Now, my brethren, ye are

PRAYER AND ACTION. 95

active men engaged in money-making transactions, (and God
prosper you, for your own and your children's sake ! ) but as
you would not be so tarnished and vilified in your immortal
souls, be careful, I pray you, to cultivate a commerce with
God of piety and prayer, and to take empledgements of Jesus
thrist against the calamities of the future, both in time and
eternity, which must assuredly pass over you. Then go on
and prosper in the name of God, — make fortunes, become rich,
become great, become renowned ; for you will not then be-
come avaricious or sensual by becoming rich, — proud and
imperious by becoming great, — haughty and unapproachable
by becoming renowned : of which evil affections you shall
become possessed, as assuredly as that the devil is present in
that breast whence God is absent ; as assuredly as that the
devil's agents, which are the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the
eye, and the pride of life, are present in that breast whence
the fruits of the Spirit, which are peace, joy, long-suffering,
gentleness, meekness, and purity and truth, are absent.

IX.

THE lord's prayer.

Matt. vi. 9.
After this manner therefore pray ye.

'T^HE custom of the Gentiles, from which our Lord took
occasion to give His disciples an everlasting type and
model of prayer, was to repeat, and cry aloud, and multiply
words, out of the ignorant notion that their god might be
otherwise occupied, and needed to have his attention sum-
moned,— or that he was asleep, and needed to be awakened,
— that he was unwilling, and needed to be fatigued into
compliance, — that he was hungry of praise, and needed to
be flattered, of meat and drink, and needed to be fed, of
avarice, and rteeded to be feed, of revenge, and needed to
be propitiated with blood. Which custom our Lord brought
to folly, by revealing that our Father in heaven knovveth
what things we have need of before we ask Him, and is
ready to bestow them, without the meed of any costly gift
or tedious supplication, to the simple and sincere desire of
men. " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall
find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you : for every
one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ;
and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what
man is there among you, whom if his son ask bread, will he
give him a stone .-' or if he ask a fish, will he give him a
serpent } If ye then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father
which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him } "
So gracious a revelation is not less good and gracious for
us than for the Gentiles, to remove whose blindness it
was given ; because each man by nature is blind as the

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 97

heathen to the true knowledge of God, and liable to mis-
shapen opinions concerning Him, and ignorant practices of
worship, which, though softened in the outward appearance,
are, in the spirit and substance of them, which God regardeth,
the very same as those more sensual and unseemly, but not
more untrue notions and practices which our Lord rebuked.
For example, though few in our Protestant churches are
engrossed with the heathenish and Catholic delusion that
they purchase, by the number of their askings, that good
thing for vv^hich they pray, yet there be many everywhere,
and, I doubt not, some now before me, who think they make
a settlement or quittance with God of their transgressions by
prayer and praise, and the other acts of charity and piety
which they perform, thus making their prayers to stand as
the payment for past debts, if not the purchase-money for
future goods. This cometh of the idolatry of all men, the
great catholic error of our fallen race, that we need to work
for God's favour, and purchase for ourselves a place in His
esteem, and a title to His benefits : some, like the priest of
Baal, by the price of blood ; some, like the worshippers of
Moloch, by the offering of their first-born ; some, like the
classical religion, with the firstlings of the flock, the first-
fruits of the harvest, libations of the untasted wine, and the
first shakings of the olive-tree ; some, like the votaries of
the Romish usurper, with a tale oi Aves, and Patcr-nosters,
and penances, and alms-deeds ; some, like the Unitarians,
with their good and honourable works; some with noble
and virtuous sentiments ; some with wishes, and desires, and
unperformed intentions: all, all, all people that dwell on
earth seeking, by some gift which they esteem worthy of
their God and equivalent to their prayer, to purchase His
favour, and stand well in His regards. There is a holy
Catholic Church founded upon this foundation, that God's
favour is purchased by the death of His Son, and offered
to us without money and without price. And there is
Catholic idolatry founded upon this foundation, that the
grace of God is purchased by our own merits, be they gifts,
prayers abundant, or works of any kind. The former prin-
ciple is capable of being misstated and misinterpreted — as oft
VOL. III. G

98 ON PRA YER.

it is ; but, with all its misstatements, and misinterpretations,
it is the seed of godliness. The latter cannot, by any state-
ment or interpretation, be made the seed of any godliness ;
and is the most fatal power of the heart, the sure antidote
against which is the righteousness which is in Christ, and
Christ only ? The heathenish custom of trusting to their
prayers, which has been fairly naturalised in the Romish
corruption, and steals unperceived into our Protestant wor-
ship, and which truly is the universal form of unregenerate
piety or natural religion, is but one outpost or flanking
tower of this great fabric of natural error; to demolish which
and rase it to the foundation the Son of God took unto Him-
self flesh, and in flesh revealed the way of redemption, and
in flesh died to finish the work of the world's redemption.

That great demonstration of the inestimable grace of God
hath nonplussed all the selfishness of man, and wherever it
is believed doth destroy the very idea of renunciation, and,
involving us in an unredeemed debt, doth leave us to be
drawn unto God by the chords of love, and to be evermore
possessed with the sense of overpowering obligation. So
that he who receiveth the atonement and propitiation of
Christ, and holdeth it in constant remembrance, as in our
Protestant churches we profess to do, is delivered from the
law of works in all things, and made obedient to the law
of love ; and in his prayers will not claim to err on that
side on which the heathen and all the forms of Antichrist
have erred. And here it is appointed that all our prayers
should be offered up in the name of Christ, that we may
never at any time relapse into the antichristian error that
we obtain this on account of our many words, or our meri-
torious actions. And, therefore, to pray to saints, or for the
sake and in the name of saints, is to overthrow the foun-
dat'ion of prayer, and convert it into a medium of separa-
tion, from being the great medium of communion with the
Father.

I shall now, therefore, good Christian people, take it for
granted that you are delivered from this error against which
the Lord lifted up His testimony, and that your prayers are
the breath of your desirous spirit, the uplifted vow of your

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 99

affectionate hearts to your heavenly Father, because you
know that He is good and bountiful, and that His mercy
endureth for ever ; and that no selfish idea of right, or com-
mercial idea of equivalents, enter at all into your thoughts.
But think not, therefore, that the Lord's Prayer is no longer
useful to you because you are no longer under the prejudices
from which it was given to deliver men ; for there are many
other prejudices by which our prayers are blinded, many
other errors into which they fall, from which the careful
study of this model may deliver us. For be it remarked,
that He who is the truth could utter nothing but the perfect
truth ; and, therefore. His sayings, though suggested by the
occasion, must have in them an indestructible wisdom ; and
when giving His disciples a model of prayer, when teaching
them how to pray, His lesson will be applicable to all His
disciples, and His style to all ages of the Church. That,
as in the missionary work, though His first instructions
were given upon a particular occasion, and to answer an
immediate end, they are not, therefore, occasional, or tem-
porary, but contain in themselves a seed of truth which shall
endure for evermore. But as it is a matter of great import-
ance to put the authority of this prayer beyond a doubt,
we shall go into the argument of those who infringe it, and
counsel them at large ; after which we shall endeavour to
explain the precise end which this prayer was intended to
serve ; and conclude by pointing out the great grace, and
kindness, and blessing, which our Lord bestowed upon His
disciples in giving them such a precious document, having
such high and important ends.

We are then, first, to deal with those who undervalue
its authority in the Christian Church. The argument which
they make use of for their end is, that its petitions are
all to be found in the Old Testament, or the prayers of
the synagogue then in use, and that it is not offered in
the name and for the sake of Christ, and containeth none
of the peculiar doctrines of the Christian faith, and there-
fore ought to be regarded as a form for the use of His
disciples in their then unenlightened condition ; afterwards
to be superseded when the more full dispensation of the

lOO ON PRAYER.

Spirit should be bestowed upon the Church. If so be
that the several petitions are to be found written in the
Old Testament, and used in the nineteen prayers of which
the synagogue service consisted, — concerning which I do
not dispute, — it is to my mind not invalidated thereby, but
rendered, if anything, still more sacred. For the Old Tes-
tament is the revelation of the same everlasting word and
wisdom of God, the inspiration of the same unchangeable
Spirit, as the New ; and the prayers of the synagogue
then in use are such prayers as any Christian may be
well content to offer up, being generally collects from
the Holy Scriptures. If, then, our Lord, from these two
sacred and plentiful fields, doth, as it were, cull the most
odoriferous flowers, and give them to His disciples for the
spiritual incense of a sweet-smelling savour, with which our
Father loveth to be approached, are we to reject His gift
because He brought it from these most holy sources, and
did not create it anew by His almighty power and wis-
dom.'' Why create what He had already created? The
Old Testament is His creation : the Word of God which
became flesh spake it to the fathers by the mouth of the
holy prophets. And being once spoken, what authority
doth it further need } A great privilege it is, out of the
large contents of its devotion, to have a selection, and, as
it were, the quintessence of the whole brought into short
compass for our sakes. As the Sabbath-day was holy
among the portions of time, because the Lord chose it from
among the days to rest thereon, and to bless it ; so ought
the petitions of this prayer, if so be that they are all
derived from the Old Testament, to be more sacred, be-
cause the Lord chose them from that which was already
sacred and holy to make it more sacred and holy by His
unerring choice. For the second part of the argument, that
it is not presented in the name of Christ, or its petitions
couched in the forms of Christian doctrine, whosoever
dwelleth upon that head, had rather make the addition
than daringly abrogate the prayer. He might as well
abrogate all the parables because they do not contain the
explicit doctrine of His Messiahship, but took a wise veil

THE L ORU S PR A YER. i o r

for the sake of Jewish blindness; and abrogate all His say-
ings and doctrines, because they partake the same spirit of
accommodation. But they err, not knowing what they affirm.
Hath the title "Our Father" no Christian significance, by
which He was seldom entitled of the Jews .^ Has "Thy
kingdom come " no relation unto Christ, who was the Prince
of that kingdom } " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors," — doth not that petition tell of the Christian dis-
pensation ? But the best proof of its being a Christian, and
not a Jewish prayer, is this, that it hath in it nothing Jewish ;
and to my mind it is most manifest that a Jew could not
enter into its spirit. There is no mention of the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, — of Zion, or Jerusalem, or His
people Israel, or their deliverance from their enemies, and
vengeance, and visitations of wrath, — of the temple, or the
sanctuary, or the ark, — of the covenant, or the cherubim,
— of the law, or of the testimony, or aught else peculiar to
that favoured people. It breathes no spirit of a separate
interest, but consists of expressions enlarged as the human
race. It builds nothing upon sacrifice or offering, contains
no symbolical language, hath no allusions to the events of
Jewish history, — nothing, in fine, of that nationality and nar-
rowness which we recognise in every prayer contained in the
Old Testament, or in the synagogue service of the Jews.
Therefore, from whatever source derived by our Lord, it is
most manifest that it was devised to His disciples of every
kindred, and people, and tongue; and of all is the least
fitted for a Jew, who, if he could understand its enlarged
and copious spirit, — which indeed I question, — were certainly
wholly indisposed to relish it as the expression of his devo-
tions and desires unto Jehovah the God of Abraham, who
dwelt between the cherubim, and loved the gates of Zion,
and had made Jerusalem the desire of the whole earth.

It is true that the name of Christ is not subjoined to it, as
is now the form among the Christian churches ; but to have
the name of Christ appended no more constitutes a prayer
Christian, than not to have it appended constitutes it un-
christian. That which forms the essence of a Christian prayer
is not any form, however reverent, or any mention of Christ's

I02 ON PRA YER.

mediation, however frequent, but the constant feeling, through
all its parts, of that confidence, and love, and filial submission
unto God for the generation whereof in the human soul His
Son became flesh and dwelt among us. So that we conceive
the perfection of Christian prayer may be expressed without
even the mention of Christ's name, by a heart which breathes
out the thoughts, and feelings, and holy raptures with which
it hath been impregnated by the Word and Spirit of Christ,
by the doctrine of the heavenly Teacher, and the unction of
the Holy One. Nay, we reckon that the moment we feel it
incumbent as it were to stipulate with God for the freeness
of our approach by the formal revealing of our right in Christ,
that moment we have fallen from the highest pitch of confi-
dence, and subsided towards a lower level of doubt and for-
mality. As it indicates a feebler communion with any man
to be ever and anon casting up in your mind the memorials,
and pledges, and other evidences of your intimacy, and re-
counting in his ear the encouragements, overtures, and other
inducements which he held out to its formation, than when,
without reserve or hesitation of any kind, and without formal
summoning of strength, you go forward and cast yourself
upon his sympathies, and open your inmost heart to his
observation, counting surely upon the reception of a bosom
friend : so in prayer it doth indicate a more close communion
to have been begotten towards the Father when our heart
hath been converted to Him with all her affections, our soul
with all her desires, our mind with all her faculties, our
strength with all its powers, which they express by every
opening of the mouth, and manifest by every action of the
life, than that we be halting along by the help of particular
doctrines, and bracing our spirits by the recollection of various
encouragements, and keeping our lips to the precise and
formal mention of our right and privilege to speak in God's
most high and holy presence. The perfection of feeling is
to enjoy, and the perfection of the utterance of feeling is to
be unrestrained. And he who hath been brought nigh to
God by the blood of Christ, and near the centre for the en-
joyment and expression of the blessedness which he there
partakes, hath better learned Christ, and doth better please

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 103

God, than he who but knows that there is a new and hving
way to come nigh, and employs himself in thanking God
for the same, and assuring his soul to venture to approach
unto Him thereby. The whole mystery of Christ's death
and resurrection, the whole reformation and renewal of the
spirit, with all the varied revelations of God by prophet, priest
evangelist, and apostle, are intended merely to beget within
the bosom of an alienated creature that primeval feeling and
confidence towards God, which is the original and abiding
consciousness of every creature in its unfallen state. And that
man hath most profited under the restoring dispensation in
whom the primeval feeling of the love of God hath been
restored in largest, sweetest, most assured experience, so that
he feeleth it like a child to its parent, and speaketh it with
the simplicity of a child who knoweth it and knoweth nothing
beside. And whoever hath come to the condition of doing
so, doth evince far better than by a thousand accomplishments
the work of Christ upon his heart, and is nearer the answer
of his prayers than if he made mention of the name and
merits of Christ a hundred or a thousand times. To speak
thus is not to undervalue but to magnify the office of the
great Christian Advocate and Intercessor, seeing that only
through the grace and truth which came by Him can this
lofty reach of communion be attained ; but being once at-
tained in its breathing, unstipulating confidence, in its close
and certain fellowship, there needeth not to evince its reality
that we descend to some of the lower gradations through
which it was arrived at, or condescend upon the particular
helps and achievements by which we ascended so high into
the confidence of God, but rather use our noble and blessed
place for the satisfying of our own souls, and encouraging the
souls of others, for presenting petitions for the sake of ourselves
and children, for the sake of the Church of Christ, and the
unregenerate world.

The lower gradations of devotion need doubtless to be
passed through, and the helps of Christ's revelation to be
diligently employed ; and in our public prayers, where the
case and condition of many are to be touched upon, these
helps and encouragements should be faithfully recounted in

I04 ON PR A YER.

the hearing of the people, and taken advantage of for awaken-
ing divine communion within their souls ; but, nevertheless,
I insist that this is a lower state of communion between
man and the Godhead than the other which we have de-
scribed, and of which we have a specimen before us. Now,
as our Lord, when speaking for this occasion, spoke also for
all occasions, which makes his sayings and parables to be
as applicable now as when they were uttered; so when giving
a rule upon any part of duty, or a measure to any feeling, it
is always the perfection of the duty and the highest exalta-
tion of the feeling which He commends, so that from His lips
we are to look for a form of prayer, not from the lowest but
the highest condition of the pious and devout soul. In proof
of which you will bear me witness that this sermon on the
mount, in the bosom of whose brilliant purities the Lord's
Prayer is enshrined, lays down, not the ordinary and common
attainments of man in the various departments of duty
whereof it treats, but the utmost lengths to which the human
faculties can go in its ideas of chastity, justice, forgiveness,
piety, and trust, — not trite rules to be conned and kept with
an easy, every-day regularity, but certain lofty ideas and
perfections which are to be kept in the soul's eye through
the whole of life, and shewn often as the unattained, and
perhaps, in this life, unattainable, yet true form of the human
soul, with which she will be crowned as a palm of triumph,
after she hath run her race, and finished her course of earnest
pursuit and fiery trial. So this form of prayer is on a level
with these, perfect in its kind, a model for all generations — to
utter which in its true spirit is the last attainment of devotion,
as not to resist evil is the last attainment of forbearance, to
love our enemy is the highest pitch of forgiveness, and to
take no thought for the morrow is the strongest evidence of
faith in the good providence of God.

Having thus defended this precious document from the
hands of those who would rob us of its treasure, we come
now, in the second place, to point out what purpose our Lord
intended it to serve in His Church. I do not think that these
words, " After this manner pray ye," are to be understood as
presenting to His disciples an exact form of prayer from which

THE L ORU S PR A YER. 1 05

they were not to deviate, but a style of prayer after which
they were to conform this part of the Divine worship. So
that the idea of this prayer, as if it contained everything
which man needed to ask of his heavenly Father, is not more
inconsistent with the other parts of Scripture which touch
upon prayer, and direct us in all things to pray and give
thanks, than it is extravagant in itself, and unwarranted by
the preface with which the prayer is introduced. The Gen-
tiles erred in the style of their prayers, thinking that vain repe-
titions were necessary to interest their idol ; the Pharisees also
trusted to the length and number of their prayers ; and He
undertook to guard His disciples from their errors. To which
end he gave them a specimen of what a prayer ought to be,
and told them to pray in that manner, — not in " these words,"
but in "this manner." Now, it is not needed, in order to value
the magnitude of the gift, to exaggerate it, as if it contained
the whole burden of the soul's desires ; it is but to encourage
the soul in indolence, and bring her under the dominion of
formality, and therefore we reject this idea of it altogether.
Neither, upon the other hand, do we think that our Lord's
desire is fulfilled when we transfer this form into the number
of our prayers, and oft repeat it during the service of God.
This is to come short of the commandment, "After this man-
ner pray ye ;" which is not, " often pray thus," but " pray after
this manner." But thecommandment is fulfilled when we depart
from the rant and rhapsodies, from the pompous expressions
and turgid declamations, from the long-drawn and wearisome
details, of which our prayers too frequently consist, and gather
up our spirits to the exact thoughts, distinct feelings, and ap-
propriate language in which the prayer is expressed, — when
we take it not for a form but for a model, when we make it
not so much a part of our prayers as the spirit of our prayers,
learning from it the style and manner both of feeling and
language which we should use towards our Creator.

There is no point in which man needed so much a lesson
as in this. For how could he, who was accustomed to con-
verse with his fellows, be able to know in what way to ex-
press himself to the eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only
living and true God. -* There was almost a perfect certainty,

io6 ON PRAYER.

that both in the manner and matter of our addresses we
should transfer to God some of those quahties of man, with
whom and for whom all our other forms of discourse are held,
— or slide into familiarity of manner, as if He were an equal, —
or condescend to tedious explanation of our meaning, as if,
like men. He were undiscerning of our inward thoughts, — or
that we should treat His ear with eloquence of words, or fall
into some other forms of discourse which are proper to the
spirits with whom we are wont daily to converse, but not
proper to the Father of spirits, with whom we hold fellowship
by prayer, — or that, conceiving of His awful majesty and
infinite power and holiness and inflexible justice, we should
fall into utter dismay, and prostrate our spirits in speechless
fear, or seek to win His favour by flattering speeches and
costly offerings, and other means which prevail with the kings
and potentates of the earth. There are a thousand errors on
every side to which we are liable, and from which nothing
could deliver us but a pattern or model for our study and
imitation. This model Christ hath given to His disciples,
and requireth of them to study it with care, and follow that
style of thought and feeling and language which it contains.

While on the one hand, therefore, we maintain the author-
ity of this Christian document, on the other hand we are far
from giving to it that mysterious importance which it hath
received in our sister Church; where, by a strange perversion
of its purpose, it hath by frequent and vain repetition come
to keep up the heathenish delusion of vain repetitions and
much speaking which it was meant to do away and abolish.
For I do not hesitate to affirm, that while the disuse of it in
our Church has removed it from the public eye as a standard
of Christian devotion, the frequent repetition of it in other
churches has given to it, in the minds of the less informed,
(nay, gave it in the mind of such a man as Dr Johnson,) a
certain mysterious, talismanic virtue, savouring not a little of
the muttering and oft-repeated exclamations which still form
the characteristic of heathen worship. Its end is answered,
not when we repeat it once or often, but when we conform
the feeling and expression of our prayers to its model; when
they have the same fulness of meaning, the same sobriety of

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 107

words, the same distinctness of conception, the same con-
formity to the spirit of the Divine revelations ; when wordi-
ness and tautology are rebuked by the weighty matter which
is wrapped up in {c\v words ; when adoration is conveyed with-
out adulation, and praise ascribed without flattery; when want
is expressed without meanness, and desire urged with hope,
and faith breathes through every part of this blessed occupa-
tion ; when it is an exercise, not of the ingenious mind, but
of the believing soul, — an utterance, not of the eloquent
tongue, but of the speaking heart, — a discourse, not for the
ear of any audience, but for the all-hearing ear of God. If
any one hath thus proposed it to himself as a model, and is
in the habit of regarding it as such, we think he has fulfilled
the spirit of his Master's injunction, "After this manner pray
ye," even though he should not go through the form of regu-
larly using it whenever he bends his knee. But though it
should be used as an integral part of our devotions, if it pro-
duce no influence on the spirit and style of the other parts,
which continue to wander loose and ill-digested and prolix, as
if there were no model after which to conform them, then we
think that the spirit of the commandment, " After this manner
pray ye," hath been altogether missed. We shall be better
able to draw out its characteristics when we have examined
its several parts. Whatsoever these are, our Lord would have
them to be the characteristics of all our prayers. It is more,
therefore, a standard whereby to estimate our devotions, public
and private, than a form under which to express our souls'
manifold wants ; and being of such high importance, nothing
can be more reasonable than that we should occasionally
use in worship that which ought to be the copy for all our
devotions ; while, at the same time, we guard against the
idea, that when it hath been so employed, its purpose hath
been fulfilled. This, then, we regard as the chief design for
which Christ gave it to His disciples — strongly to mark the
contrast between the Christian and the heathen worship of
God, and to stand for a memorial to all ages of His Church,
lest at any time His Church should stray in her devotion from
purity and simplicity, into some of the endless varieties of
errors or refinement of human taste.

X.

THE LORD'S PRAYER,

Matt. vi. 9.
Our Father.

AX7HEN God appeared unto Moses in the burning bush,
and commissioned him to save and deliver His people
Israel from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage,
Moses, among his other doubts and hesitations, proposed
this question unto the Lord : " Behold, when I come unto the
children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your
fathers hath sent me unto you ; and they shall say to me,
What is his name ? what shall I say unto them ? And God
said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM : and he said, Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto
you." This was the name by which He chose to be known —
I AM, the self-existent Being, or Jehovah ; the incommunicable
name, which could not without horrid blasphemy be applied
unto any other besides Himself Thereby God made known
His unchangeable existence, and constituted Himself an ob-
ject of faith and request, — for he that cometh unto God must
first believe that He is, — and taught men that the Godhead
was not an imagination of the fancy, nor a speculation of the
intellect, nor a work of the sense of man, but an outward
existence, though invisible, a living and acting Being, whose
highest designation was not how He is, or where He is, or
why He is, but that He is as He is, and as He pleaseth to be.
In thus taking a name which denoted existence independent
of all time, place, and cause. He made known the foundation
of all religion ; which, while it is founded upon the reason-
ings of the mind concerning the Divine attributes, is no reli-

THE L ORD' S PR A YER. 1 09

gion, but only an idolatry of that faculty of the mind which
employeth itself in the speculation. As the poor heathen
fashioneth an idol of wood and stone, and then falleth down
and worshippeth the work of his hands, so the intellect
fashioneth an idea of God, and falleth down and worshippeth
its work ; and the heart in like manner fashioneth a God all
benevolence, and mercy, and sweetness, and straightway fall-
eth down and worshippeth its work ; to which different forms
of idolatry, proper to different conditions of human cultiva-
tion, the Lord brought an end by revealing to Moses, as the
name He was to be known by, I AM THAT I AM ; not that
which ye understand or desire me to be, but that I am, which
I will teach you if you will but hear my voice and believe the
word of my testimony — a God revealed to faith, from faith
to faith, not found out by searching, or constituted and
created by metaphysical operations of the human mind.

To this name of self-existence, God added other names
taken from His acts, also revealed to faith — names embody-
ing acts in His government of the world, not abstract ideas
of power and goodness, such as are contained in the definition
of God in our Catechism, and exhibited at large in such
books as " Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and Attributes
of God ;" that is, a God of infinites, which I hold to be no
God at all, but a deification of the powers and laws of human
thought. Those names which He takes are of this kind :
" The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," bringing to
mind the history of His dealings with the patriarchs ; " The
God which led them out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage," bringing to mind His mighty acts shewn
by His servant Moses; "The Lord of hosts," bringing to
mind the battles which He had won for them by Joshua,
and Jethro, and Samson, and David, and all the princes over
the nations round about ; " The God of Zion," bringing to
mind the worship which was performed to Him in Zion ;
" The God that dwelleth between the cherubim," bringing to
mind the more sacred worship of the holy of holies, the ark
of the covenant, the mercy-seat, the oracle of Urim and
Thummim, and whatever else was extraordinary in the dis-
pensations of His government. All these names have refer-

no ON PRAYER.

ence to His actions, and contain a brief record thereof; they
are helps to faith, not incitements to speculation — resting
upon facts which had an outward existence, not upon ideas
which have their origin in the mind. And this is the differ-
ence between the God of the Christian and the God of reason
or of poetry, that the one is the I AM who hath done thus
and thus, and hath promised to do thus and thus ; the other
is the being whom my mind creates thus and thus, who is
because I am, and who is thus because I am thus ; the God
of the Christian, a God of faith ; the God of the sceptic, a
God of reason ; the one the Father, the other the child of the
human spirit ; the one governing, the other governed by the
human spirit ; the worship of the one being true worship, the
worship of the other being self-worship, or idolatry.

Those names by which God was commonly known under
the old dispensation partake generally of the narrow and
limited character of that dispensation, because His chief
revelations and acts were amongst a part, and for a part, of
the human race ; but when the prophets arose, who were the
preachers amongst all nations of His righteous judgments,
they sometimes used a larger and more general style in
speaking of God ; and amongst them Isaiah is conspicuous,
who had this remarkable anticipation of brighter views :
" Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be igno-
rant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not : thou, O Lord,
art our Father, our Redeemer ; thy name is from everlasting."
But it was left for the revelation of grace and truth by Jesus
Christ to naturalise this name of God upon the earth, " Our
Father." It doth occur at times in the Old Testament on par-
ticular occasions, as " He is the Father of the fatherless," but
even in that sense most rarely ; and very seldom — nowhere
indeed that we remember, save in the passage quoted from
Isaiah — is He set forth free from all restriction and limita-
tion of any kind, as the Father of all families, the common
Father of the children of men. And the reason is obvious
— because the fulness of time was not yet come for mak-
ing known the revelation of His Son, who was to bring
the children into peace with their Father, to bring the
prodigals back again to their Father's house. But when

THE LORDS PR A YER. 1 1 i

this time was come which was set to favour Zion, the Son
came forth from the bosom of the Father, and published
the glad tidings of peace, and made known the revelation of
God the Father, and that henceforward all who would come
unto Him by the Son might call Him Father, and expect all
the privileges of the sons of God. He came to gather all
nations into one, and redeem them from false idols to wor-
ship God, even the Father ; and He appointed His apostles
to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost; and He taught His disciples in their prayers
to begin from this beginning, "Our Father;" and in the Gos-
pels alone this appellation of God occurs about a hundred
times ; and in the Epistles no less constantly, — so that it may
be regarded as the name expressing most nearly the sense in
which God wishcth to be regarded by us, the tender and
compassionate relation in which He desireth to stand unto
the human race.

Therefore, all forms of prayer which begin from conceptions
of God as the God of nature, the soul of the universe, and
wind themselves through high-wrought and long-drawn
periods concerning the infinite enlargement of His attributes,
and power, and works, however expedient they be for raising
the soul to a high temper of adoration, want the essential
character of a Christian prayer, and speak rather the man of
science or the poet than the humble and faithful believer in
Christ ; and all forms of prayer and schemes of doctrine which
uphold God in the character of a sovereign doing His will
and dividing amongst men according to His pleasure, — some
advancing and blessing, some reprobating and cursing, for
the pleasure of His will, — however expedient they may be
to restrain the self-confidence and humble the vanity of men,
are essentially Jewish in their character, and out of place in
the Christian temple, whereof the gate is open to all, where
there is no longer any middle wall of partition, but all of
every nation are welcome who fear God and work righteous-
ness. The spirit of a Christian prayer is to regard God as
the most bountiful of fathers, who out of the greatness of
His grace hath given His Son to open the barred gates of
His house unto the children of men, and bring the chief of

112 ON PRAYER.

sinners even to His royal presence to kiss the end of His
sceptre, and in that blessed aspect regarding Him, to come
unto Him as children to a father able and ready to help
them in the time of need, — never to doubt, never to misgive,
but to rest assured that as a father pitieth His children, so
the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. Our prayers, therefore,
should be from the heart, — copious effusions of affectionate
hearts towards Him who first loved us ; not invocations of
fear, nor beautiful disportings of fancy among the wonderful
works of God, nor high-wrought eulogiums of His goodness
and grace, but breathings of tenderness, expressive of true
affection to Him whom we love, of penitence towards Him
we have offended, of praise towards Him whose praise is
recorded in the experience of our soul, of assured trust and
confidence as of children to the most long-suffering and
patient of fathers. Our hearts should open themselves in
prayer to God for their many wants, as the infant openeth
its hungry mouth and lifteth up the cry in the ear of its
mother ; and as that infant, being filled and satisfied, smiles
in the face of its mother, and spreads its little hands to
embrace her in token of the gladness of its heart, so ought
our spirits, being filled with the answers of their prayers, to
feel an inward joy and thankfulness to the Father of spirits,
and call upon the lips and hands, and every other obedient
member, to express with songs and attitudes of praise the
emotions with which they overflow.

But, alas ! this most tender and heart-moving designation
of God doth seldom impress our hearts with that tenderness
for which the Almighty in His grace did permit its use, and
our Saviour did purchase the privilege of using it with His
most precious blood. Most frequently it passeth from our
lips without any outgoing of affection or sense of duty, and
into God's all-hearing ear it oft ascendeth from a most thank-
less and rebellious offspring. I suppose the man doth hardly
exist in Christendom whose first utterance to Heaven was not
couched in these simple and tender sounds, " Our Father."
But where is he in Christendom who shall lift up his face to
Heaven, and say without a blush, " I have been Thy dutiful
son.^" To One, and One alone, it was given to testify with His

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 1 1 3

departing voice, " Holy Father, I have glorified thee on the
earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."
Against this want of reverence, and piety, and affection, in
uttering this privileged name, no one here present will hold
himself guiltless, and many will readily confess that they
deserve much rebuke, and are obnoxious to much wrath and
indignation for the heartless formality with which they have
ofttimes uttered it ; and it were no improper office in me to
administer that rebuke, and shew forth the iniquity of which
we are all guilty. But it seemeth somewhat out of place by
rebuke to plead for a Father's sacred rights, or with strong
words to win back the affections of an erring child. There-
fore, as upon earth the voice of forgotten duty is not re-
awakened in the heart of a froward child by bitter upbraid-
ings or sentences of judgment, but by the welling memory of
parental acts and the knowledge of a parent's longing love ;
so, without addressing myself to any fear, I shall endeavour,
by the recital of our Father's goodness and our Father's love,
of the high obligations of our birth, of our bountiful inbring-
ing in the home of our Father's providence, of the largesses
of His grace, and the stored treasures of His glory, — by these
I shall endeavour to move within your mind that love of God
and reverent use of His parental name, which slumbers in
all, and in many, I fear, is well-nigh dead. And while I
so endeavour, may the Spirit bear witness with our spirits
that we are the children of God, and may we receive the
Spirit of adoption whereby we shall cry, " Abba, Father."

Then, brethren, I pray you to look unto the rock whence
ye are hewn, and unto the hole of the pit out of which ye are
dug. Take up a handful of dust and ashes, and then behold
the materials out of which the Lord God Almighty hath
fashioned man, — this living, moving frame of man, so quick
and pregnant with all sensual and spiritual feeling. And if
you would know the pains which your Father hath been at
with the work of His hands, look to the tribes, from the worm
to the lion, all made of as good materi^als and many of them
better, — in size, in strength, in fleetness, and in durability sur-
passing man. But where is their counsel, their government,
their science, their religion.' Which of them has any fellow-
VOL. III. H

H4 ON PRAYER.

ship with God, or any reasonable intercourse with one
another ? The other creatures are as it were but the outward
endowments of man's being — to clothe him, to feed him, to
lay their lusty shoulders to his burden, to carry him, to watch
him, and to minister in other ways to his entertainment
And what is the earth whereon we tread, and which spreads
its flowery carpet beneath our feet? and what are its fruits,
with their various virtues, to sustain, refresh, and cheer our
life, as the corn, the wine, and the oil ? and what the recurring
seasons of divided time — the budding spring, the flowery
summer, the joyful vintage, and the lusty harvest, and the
homely, well-stored winter ? and what the cheerful outgoings
of morn and eve, and balmy sleep, and radiant day ? — what
are they all, I ask, but the soft cradle and gentle condition
into which our Father hath brought His children forth. Is
there nothing fatherly in the costly preparation and the glad-
some welcoming of our coming, in the bosom of plentiful
affection stored for us, in the fruitful dwelling-place, to the
inheritance of all which we are born ? Is it nothing that the
range of our mansion is to the starry heavens, and not cooped
within the circumference of a narrow state ? Is it nothing
that the heavens drop down fatness upon us, and that the
river of God's bounty watereth all the earth where we dwell,
rather than that we should have griped the rock for our bed,
or found our birth-place in the oozy channels of the deep ?
Let us praise our heavenly Father that He hath made us with
more understanding than the beasts of the field, and with
more wisdom than the fowls of heaven ; that He hath made us
a little lower than the angels, and crowned us with glory
and honour, and made us to have dominion over the work of
His hands, and hath put all things under our feet, all sheep
and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowls of the
air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through
the paths of the sea. What is man, O our Father, that Thou
art mindful of him.'' or what the son of man, that Thou remcm-
berest him with such loving-kindness and tender mercy '^.

And now, my brethren, from looking upon the honours
and blessings of your birthplace and inheritance, look, more-
over, upon the treatment which ye have received at the hands

THE LORDS PR A YER. -i 1 5

of your Creator, and say if it doth not bespeak Him more
than fatherly in His love and carefulness. Our bread hath
been provided, and our water hath been made sure ; we have
been protected from the summer's smiting heat and the
winter's biting cold. The damps of the night have not settled
chill upon our raiment, nor hath the pestilence which walketh
at noon-day blown its deadly blast across our path. The
Lord hath been the length of our days and the strength of
our life, from our birth even until this day. And He hath
surrounded us with kinsmen and friends ; or, if we be alone.
He hath proffered to us His own fatherhood, and the brother-
hood of His only-begotten Son. And happily he hath sur-
rounded us with lovely children, to stand in our room when
we are gone. And He hath given us a house and habitation
among men, and found us in their sight more favour than we
deserved. Hath He not hidden our faults from the know-
ledge of men } Hath He not been very tender to our repu-
tation, which, by a turn of His providence, He could easily
have blasted ? Hath He not restrained the wrath of our
enemies .'* No sword hath come up against us, — no famine
hath pinched us, — no plague, no pestilence, nor blasting winds
have bitten us, — no weapon formed against our liberty hath
prospered. Another year hath told out its months and sea-
sons ; each day of it hath brought us our necessary meals
and luxurious entertainments, each night its refreshment of
downy sleep ; each Sabbath its rest and blessed ministry
of salvation. The heavens hath dropped fatness upon our
habitations, pleasant are our dwellings, and the places where
our lines have fallen are very good. The exile doth visit our
shores for a secure shelter ; the slave doth touch our shores
and he is free. The land is a good land, and floweth with
milk and honey. The land is a good land, where judgment
and justice, right and equity, piety and religion, have taken
up their abode, and every man sitteth under his own vine
and his own fig-tree, and none dareth to make him afraid.
Because God is our Father, and the Holy One of Israel is
our Preserver, He that was the God of our fathers hath also
become the God of their children. We will praise Him, and
teach our children the praise of their Father, who, though He

ii6 ON PRAYER.

dwelleth in the heavens, hath pitched His tabernacle in the
midst of us.

Earthly fathers, during the years of unconscious infancy and
idle boyhood, are well content to provide food and raiment
for their children. But infant and school-boy days being
passed over, it were thought high indiscretion in a son to sit at
his father's board and consume his father's substance, without
offering a helping hand to procure it. And our fathers would
be thought not unfatherly, but discreet, in sending us away
to shift for ourselves, if thus we continued to hang on,
thoughtlessly profuse or sullenly perverse. But which of us
hath yet escaped out of the unconsciousness of childhood or
thoughtlessness of boyhood towards our Father which is in
heaven, have yielded Him filial reverence or common grati-
tude, or even respected the laws of His household.-* We have
all been sitting at His conjmon board ; we have been all
served out of His stores, from sufficiency to the utmost pro-
fusion. We have been beholden to Him for all things, from the
least even unto the greatest, and without Him have we nothing
which we enjoy. Not one of us can create a morsel ; not one
of us can make the bitter sweet, the poisonous nutrimental.
We can hand it about from one to another, and cast the seed
of God's giving into the earth of God's fertilising, and wait
the increase of God's sending ; but if it pleases Him only to
send ninety-nine fold, we cannot make it one hundred fold.
And yet, wretched and ignorant creatures ! we fancy we do it
all. We place it under lock and key, and call it all our own.
Our own hand, say we, hath gotten us this ; and of what we
have not the impudence to claim, we give the credit of it to
chance or fortune, saying it is our good luck ; or if we stumble
at a time upon the word Providence, it is often only a name
for the course of events, unaccompanied with any feeling of
God as their Sovereign and wise Director. Now what is like
to this in the disobedience of earthly children } This is
worse than refusing to help our father in the provision of
those good things upon which we fatten ; it is to laugh our
Father out of His own, — it is to mock His authority, which we
should reverence, and to seize and pillage His gifts, which we
should thankfully partake. Well might our heavenly Father

THE LORUS PR A YER. 1 1 7

appeal to heaven, which had looked upon such ingratitude,
and to the earth, which had clothed our wickedness and sup-
plied our helpless need by the appointment of her good
Creator : " Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth : I have
nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled
against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his
master's crib ; but my people doth not know, my children do
not consider."

Oh, what afifection, then, passing the ordinary bounds of
fatherly love, doth it bespeak in the Almighty, that He over-
looketh our ingratitude, and forgetteth our ignorant mockeries,
and feedeth us so copiously with food and gladness, making
His sun to arise upon the evil and the good, and sending
rain upon the just and the unjust! It is not inability to
change the course of events ; for He is Almighty, and could
revoke His gifts with the same facility with which He bestowed
them upon us. It is not ignorance of our ingratitude and
wantonness; for He is omniscient, His eyes behold, and His
eyelids try the children of men. It is not insensibility to His
own honour and glory ; for He is a jealous God, and in the
first commandment upon His first table of laws hath written,
*' Thou shalt have no other gods before me." It is not tolera-
tion of sin ; for He hateth iniquity, and wickedness cannot
stand in His sight. How, then, doth He come to suffer our
misusage of His gifts, and to continue His gifts none the less
bountifully.'' He is just and jealous of His glory, — He is
conscious of every secret thought and hidden action, and able
to bring summary and condign vengeance if He chose; but
the love with which He loveth us preventeth Him, — His
fatherly love stayeth His almighty hand, — His long-suffer-
ing patience withholdeth His prompt and instant execution of
justice. It is the excess of His indulgence, the patience of
His affection, the ardour of His love towards us, His most
ungrateful children, whom He follows with a stream of bounty
like the waters of Meribah, if haply they may by His kind-
ness be persuaded to return; and for our return He waits
with longing carefulness, ready to welcome us with the joy
which is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Yea, in
our most rebel courses and ungodly moods, that God against

1 1 8 ON PR A YER.

whom we have rebelled doth wait upon our wants with kindly
ministry, strewing the wilderness with food, and showering
down His gifts from heaven, even though in the midst of His
showering gifts we should revel and blaspheme.

O brethren, if it be true, as the Psalmist hath said, that as the
eyes of the dumb and needy creatures wait upon their feeder
when he goeth his rounds at meal-time, so the eyes of all things
wait on God, and He giveth them their meat in due season, —
He openeth His hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living
thing, — that which He giveth them they gather, — when He
openeth His hand, they are filled with good, — when He hideth
his face, they are troubled, — when He taketh away their breath,
they return unto their dust, — when He sendeth forth His Spirit,
they are created, and the face of the earth is renewed ; and
that all our toil and labour under the sun is but the work of
the servant who prepares and serves our table, while the great
Householder provides the ample store ; — oh, if this should
be actually true, what a load of ingratitude we are pressed
withal, and what an intensity of fatherly care hath pursued
us, though we have had no feeling of His parental tenderness
in the lot of our life — no remorse for our greedy and thank-
less absorption of our Father's plentiful dowry, as the sand
absorbeth the dew and rain of heaven !

XI.

THE lord's prayer.

Matt, vi. 9.
Our Father,

AXT'HILE I thus discourse of God's liberality, and tell of all
His goodness, I am fully alive to the varieties of our
fallen condition, and that though we be all born in this splen-
did and well-furnished palace of creation, some are destined to
chambers cheerless enough. I am alive to the straits amongst
which many an unconscious innocent is doomed to make its
hapless entry into life; and that, for the lack of the warm
accommodation and shelter which tender age requireth, many
depart prematurely, to seek their nourishment and upbring-
ing in another world than that which frowned on their birth;
how the feeble infancy of man is girdled round with acci-
dents and diseases, which take a special delight in preying
upon childhood ; and the little babe hath to pass one deadly
line, and then another deadly line, and a third, before it can
be said to be fairly entered into life ; and being there arrived,
how infirm and uncertain is our tenure, and how death nods
and threatens us on every side, and our worldly condition is
unstable, and cannot for a moment be trusted in as sure. I am
not ignorant that adversity occupieth in human experience as
large a field as prosperity, and when it comes sheds a gloomy
twilight over all our remaining enjoyments. And it is most
true, that if a man came into the world naked, and hath had
his soul filled with all affections, and his house with all riches,
he hath gradually to part with them one after another, — with
friends, with pleasures, with entertainments, and with what-
ever life contains, and to depart out of it naked as he entered
it at first. These things are true, and are not to be over-

I20 ON PRAYER.

looked in a discourse of this kind, which would make it mani-
fest that God in all His acts acteth the Father ; and that
we in all our prayers should make our approach to Him as a
Father.

And perhaps in these dispensations of seeming ill, His
fatherly care of us shineth more conspicuously forth than in
the former dispensations of seeming good. But in the first
place it must be distinctly known and acknowledged by us,
that these dispensations of evil, wherewith the estate of man
doth now abound, were not brought unto us by the will of
God, but against His will, by the wilful disobedience of man.
The Lord's commandment was, that man should abstain
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and live
ignorant of that fatal distinction, conscious only of the un-
divided occupation of his faculties with w^orks of holiness,
whose end is the glory of God, and blessedness to the crea-
ture who performeth them. But now that man by his wick-
edness hath let sin in to ravage the garden of his blessedness
and exile him thence for ever, it hath pleased God to turn
these disasters to our favour, and make them profitable to
our recovery, — to use them as corrections of our frowardness,
in order to bring us unto Himself, and finally to deliver us
from all suffering. " Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son that he receiveth." " It hath pleased
the Father through much tribulation to give you the king-
dom." " The sufferings of this present life, which are but for a
moment, do work out an exceeding weight of glory." "Count
it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations, for the trial
of your faith worketh patience; and let patience have her
perfect work, that ye may be perfect, lacking nothing." But
this, say you, doth not change the painfulness, the woefulness,
of these sad experiences of our life. But I answer, it doth.
Doth it not widely differ that a wase Father should correct
our faults with a loving look to our future well-being, than
that an angry man should smite us in passion for them, or
that a judge in justice visit us with the stern issues of the
law .'' And doth not a wise son look back upon these parental
acts of chastisement as the most clear demonstration and most
wholesome exercise of a father's true love of him .-* And doth

THE L ORD' S PR A YER. i 2 1

not a wise parent feel it to be a far higher act of fatherly
duty to take a rod and chastise his child, than to smile upon
it and caress it ? The one is an instinct of love, — the other is
a deliberate resolve of love ; the one is from the surface of
the heart, its natural overflowing, — the other is a draught of
affection from the depths of the heart, which it costeth the
heart much to give up.

Therefore, every man who receiveth the revelations of God,
— and it is such only who are desired to address God by the
endearing title, "Our Father," — every disciple of Christ can
look upon His adverse dispensations and say, These are high
manifestations of my heavenly Father's love. If his children
be taken hastily away from him, he can say, But the little
one was not removed in darkness, for previously the Lord
had permitted him to be washed from his sins in the bap-
tismal fountain, and had taken for the little spirit such an
affection as to be called its Father, its Saviour, and its Sanc-
tifier; and even though the holy sacrament of absolution
was not bestowed upon the child before death had seized it,
yet, sure I am, that His grace, which dependeth not on any
ceremony nor waiteth for any time, will not be denied the
little unbaptized infant, who would have been welcome had
it been spared, welcome at an/ time and at all times, to the
sacred fountain. Therefore, though this affection knows not
where to find its dear object, now wrapped in the sleep of
death ere its heart could conceive the grace of God in Christ,
yet loath, very loath shall I be to believe otherwise than that
it is removed to the arms of a better Parent from the evils to
come, and hath been greatly amended by the change. And
if my friends or dear relatives have been removed away from
me, while my soul yet partook of their affection, I will not be
wroth with the dispensations of God towards them, because
they were not taken from this sin-invaded and sin-wasted
world until previously a wider door of entrance had been
opened to them into the untroubled abode of His beloved
presence. And for myself, though I am afflicted and go
about weeping, I know assuredly that it is good for me to be
afflicted; for though affliction for the present be not joyous
but grievous, it worketh out the peaceable fruits of righteous-

122 ON PRAYER.

ness to them that are exercised therewith. And if our goods
be snatched away from us, then we know of those good
things which cannot be removed ; and if our health, we have
in our heart the fountain of salvation ; and if heart and flesh
should faint and fail, God is the strength of our heart and
our portion for ever. Yea, and as the Psalmist doth sing,
when he was deserted of father and mother and familiar
friends, and left as a pelican in the wilderness, or a sparrow
upon the house-top alone, — when by reason of the voice of
his groaning his bones clave to his skin, — when he had eaten
ashes like bread, and mingled his drink with his weeping,
because of the indignation of the Lord who had lifted him
up and cast him down; — as the Psalmist doth take his com-
fort in these words, " But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for
ever, and thy remembrance unto all generations. Thou wilt
regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their
prayer. For he hath looked down from the height of his
sanctuary; from heaven did God behold the earth; to hear
the groaning of the prisoner, and loose them that are ap-
pointed unto death : " so can the Christian say when he is
reduced to poverty. But my Lord blesseth the poor ; and
when he hath been brought to emptiness, But my Lord bless-
eth the hungry ; and when he is forced to weep, But my Lord
blesseth those that weep ; and when he is persecuted and
evil spoken of for righteousness' sake. But my Lord blesseth
those who are evil-entreated for His name's sake, and calleth
upon them to be glad therefore, and to rejoice exceedingly
in that day. Therefore I will rejoice, for they cannot remove
my poverty of spirit, which is the kingdom of heaven, and
my meekness, which is the constant inheritance of the earth ;
and my mercy, which is my pledge of everlasting mercy;
and my pureness of spirit, which is the constant sight of God ;
and my peace-making and charitable spirit, which insure
me of being a child of God. They can remove none of those
spiritual riches in which my heart is, or deprive me of those
mansions of glory which my Lord hath prepared, or those
precious gifts I am receiving, showered down from those
cloudy dispensations in which I am glad and rejoice as
much as did Elias and the people of Israel in the little cloud

THE LORDS PR A YER. 1 2 3

which brought rain to the land when it had been parched
and chapped with three years of continuous drought.

Thus it is that the Lord, by reveahng the doctrine of a
wise and merciful providence, as well as of a beneficent and
bountiful creation, hath taken the poison out of the cup of
affliction, and converted its bitterness into the most whole-
some medicine of the soul. So that His people feel truly as
much indebted and beholden to Him for their trials as for their
gifts, knowing that the trial of their faith worketh patience, and
patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh
not ashamed, through the love of God shed abroad in their
hearts. They know, moreover, that God doth not willingly
afflict the children of men, but as a father pitieth his chil-
dren, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. Gifts cor-
rupt men, and much prosperity is their ruin. As we grow
rich, we generally grow wanton ; as we grow great, we
generally grow proud ; as we grow in favour with men, we
grow vain and ostentatious ; and growth in the favour of
God is often not unattended with spiritual pride. Lest by
the multitude of his revelations Paul should be lifted up,
the Lord gave him a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan,
to buffet him. Ah ! it is true we are of such an unstable
mood that the outgoings of our Father's love are cramped.
The mild effusions of His unaltered and unalterable tender-
ness our present condition cannot bear, even though this de-
jected and distant dwelling-place of man could hold them.
What could the best of fathers do amidst such a family as
David's, but either clothe his countenance with austerity, or
else retire from their rebellion and weep the woes of a broken
heart .-' And what were better for the family — that its
father should retire from constraining its rebellious moods,
and let it run into all excesses, and riot in headlong wicked-
ness, or that he should timeously interfere with wise counsel
and wholesome discipline .-' No more can the family of
Adam, even of the second Adam, bear that God should
always act the tender and loving Father : He needs to hide
the light of His countenance, and to break in with acts of
mastery to keep us under. The earth was not built for a
seat of discord or lamentation; and correction is not known

124 ON PRAYER.

by the children in heaven when the Lamb that is in the
midst of them doth lead them by rivers of living waters,
and doth wipe all tears from their eyes. But since to this
we have fallen, God hath b£cn gracious enough to accom-
modate Himself to our conditions. But if we were able to
bear with His indulgence, then would His showering benefits
know no stint nor sudden alterations as at present. Our
afflictions are a new evidence of His fatherhood, another
form and expression of His love.

But such is the fatherly affection of God to the children
of men, with whom His delights have been from everlasting,
that it was not content with creating all things very good,
and making man lord of the goodly frame which He had
made ; and when man had brought upon himself evil and
sorrow, it was not content with changing the face of the
dispensation from this judgment into fatherly providence, —
but, at once to abolish death, and bring sorrow to an end,
and redeem the soul of man into the enjoyment once more
of an unfallen creature, and of His own ineffable blessedness,
He spared not His own Son, but gave Him up to the death
for us all. If any one doubt of God's fatherly love to man,
let him come hither and behold the high mystery of the
incarnation and atonement of the everlasting Son of God,
wherein He consented to abolish for a season this love
which had no beginning and hath no measure, and called
upon His sword to arm and smite the man of His right
hand, in order that the children of Adam might be brought
near and reconciled to His love. All that temporary sus-
pension of powerfulest affection, that putting of His Only-
begotten to grief, that hiding of His countenance and de-
sertion of Him with whom His delights were before the
foundation of the world, is but the expression and estimate
of this love which He bore unto the sons of men. And this
ascendeth beyond all measurable limits into the sublime
regions of Divine fatherhood. It passeth the love of angels,
and surpasseth the burning love of seraphs, and ascendeth
into the mysterious recesses of the Eternal's affection to the
Eternal's everlasting Son. In the high mystery of this un-
known emotion, your souls being rapt, then say unto your

THE L ORU S PR A YER. 1 2 5

soul, This, even this and no less, is God's affection, is God's
fatherhood, to a fallen world. There is in this simple and
solitary act of surrender more displayed of fatherly solici-
tude in our world's well-being than if He had made an end
at once of all distressing providences, and restored the world
to Eden's first bloom. In this veiling of the glory which
never was created, and reduction into narrowest limits of
Him who created the multitudinous universe, and transition
of God's bright image into mortal form and feature, and of
God's blessedness unto earth's most mean and sorrowful
estate, is figured forth the Divine parental tenderness more
than in the creating of a thousand replenished and infallible
worlds. Such, such is the fatherhood of God, — an incompre-
hensible mystery of love — which hath no measure nor simili-
tude upon the earth.

But how is all this enhanced if we consider the objects
upon whom it was bestowed, — their unworthiness, their in-
gratitude, their insensibility ,'' Being in distress, had we
called upon Him and earnestly besought Him for aid ? No ;
we were in arms against Him. Being solicited with His
love, did we receive His gracious overtures? No; we scorned
His messages of grace, and put His messengers to death,
and crucified His only-begotten Son. His commandments
we trampled under foot, and His authority we set at naught.
And the aggravation of our wickedness is only to be sur-
passed by that which surpasseth all dominion of His fatherly
love, whereof the length, and the breadth, and the height,
and the depth, pass understanding.

XII.

THE lord's prayer.

Matt. vi. 9.
Onr Father.

/^UR Father in heaven, perceivhig the disaffection and
^^^ alienation of His children, notwithstanding all His gifts
of creation, and blessings of providence, was moved with pity-
by those very acts of dishonour and disobedience which would
have roused an earthly parent to wrath and indignation, and
perceiving that the broken peace of the family, their mutual
wounds and sufferings, and their common ruin could never be
arrested until they should submit to the sweet influences of
His parental government, He did at the very time they were
rebels against Him bring into operation His grand device of
mercy and love, whereby the children might be restored to
their inheritance and receive the adoption of sons ; and thus
displayed another proof of his fatherhood far more stupen-
dous than those concerning which we have already discoursed.
He had sent messenger after messenger to the world, to whom
they would not give an ear ; He had made His arm bare in
the midst of His children, and given them strokes of His
chastisement ; but He would not altogether remove His love
away from them. He made Himself a tabernacle amongst
men, a most holy place where He would abide and give
oracles to the earth ; and He chose a people to be the
keepers of His law and testimony, and save it from the un-
godly nations. But even His chosen people turned against
Him, and the nations profited not by their ministry. Prophet
arose after prophet to make known overtures of grace to the
penitent, burdens oftener to the impenitent, but it availed
not. The earth held on its rebellious course, departed from

THE L ORU S PR A YER. i 2 7

its Creator and Preserver, cast off the honour of His heavenly
alliance, bowed down to stocks and stones and brutal crea-
tures, defiled and commingled their being, abused their power
and might to their mutual misery and ruin. And still the
Lord sent them rain, and sunshine, and fruitful seasons, and
maintained with them terms of faith and repentance ; but it
availed not, they would not have Him to reign over them,
and cast His laws behind their back, and trampled his
statutes under their feet.

Then it was that He brought into visible manifestation
that great work of our readoption into His household which
from the fall He had given the world to expect, and with
a view to which He had been preparing the way in all His
other revelations. For it is carefully to be observed that the
Lord did not leave Himself at any time without a witness in
the minds and hearts of men, but from the first made them
acquainted with His purposes of grace, and continued to make
them known in what measure the ear of man could hear
and apprehend them. The world was never without the light
of revelation in many quarters, and would not have been with-
out it in any quarter had they not made a darkness around
them which it could not pierce, — a gross darkness which
would not admit the beams of light. Even as at present,
when the full sun of the gospel hath arisen upon the western
nations of the world, there be whole countries which have
covered themselves with a darkness which it cannot pierce;
and amongst ourselves, where it shineth, if it anywhere ever
shone, there be classes of the people, both high and low,
who contrive by various sensual and worldly veils to hide
it from their sight, and so to perish, from loving darkness
rather than light : so in times of dimmer revelation it fared
also with the nations of the earth, though the Lord was con-
stantly presenting to them such a vision as might have
delivered them from their idolatrous and barbarous condition.

But at length, when Jew and Gentile were equally con-
cluded to be under sin, and when the whole world was
guilty before God, — when they had all gone out of the way
and become unprofitable together, and there was none that
did good, no, not one, — their throats an open sepulchre, their

128 ON PRAYER.

tongues using deceit, the poison of asps under their lips, their
mouth full of cursing and bitterness, their feet swift to shed
blood, destruction and misery in their ways, the way of peace
utterly unknown to them, and no fear of God before their
eyes; — even in such a condition of His children the Lord
made known to them the revelation of the gospel, offering
His Son as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world,
and through Him purposing to unite all things in one,
whether they be things in heaven or in earth, Jew or Gen-
tile, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, to bring them into one
by breaking down every partition which divided men asunder,
and preaching peace by Jesus Christ to those who were near
and to those who were afar off, sending the gospel of recon-
ciliation to every creature under heaven.

Now, that you may in some measure appreciate the value
of this gift of Divine love and fatherhood unto the children
of men, I pray you to consider the greatness of the surrender
of the only-begotten Son, whom the Father did not spare,
but delivered Him up to the death for us all, it is written
that He was in the beginning with God, and that He was
God ; and by the mouth of the prophet He speaketh of Him-
self in this wise : " The Lord possessed me in the beginning
of his way, before his works of old. I was by him, as one
brought up with him ; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing
always before him." And thus God speaketh concerning
him : " Behold my servant, whom I uphold ; mine elect, in
whom my soul delighteth." And again : " Ask of me, and I
shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utter-
most parts of the earth for thy possession." And again: "Sit
thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy foot-
stool." And again : " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased." And in the days of His flesh Jesus prayed,
" O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the
glory which I had with thee before the world was." And He
prayed that His disciples might be one as He was one with
the Father ; and " that the love wherewith Thou hast loved
me may be in them." The nearness and dearness, the oneness
of this relation between the Father and the Son ascendeth
beyond all measurable limits into the excesses of the Divine

THE LORDS PRA YER. 129

fatherhood. It passcth the love of angels, and even passeth
the burning love of seraphim, and ascendeth into the myste-
rious excesses of the Eternal's affection to the Eternal's ever-
lasting Son. Now if any one doubt of God's fatherly love
to man, let him come hither and behold the high mystery of
the incarnation, the humiliation, and the death of this un-
created object of Jehovah's love ; — that for the love He bore
the children of men, that they might not die but have life
everlasting. He spared not His dear Son, but laid His hand
heavy upon Him, and with His reproach did break His heart.
Mystery of mysteries ! mystery of love ! the everlasting
Father suspend the everlasting Son of His affection, and draw
His sword to smite the man of His right hand, in order to
recover children who were corrupted, rebellious, and buried in
transgression ! But true it is that this powerfullest affection
in the bosom of God was suspended for a while, and His Only-
begotten was put to grief, and His Father's countenance was
hidden from Him, and He was forsaken of His God, out of
love to the sons of men, that they might not perish but have
everlasting life. If you say. How great is His love! I say, con-
sider the mystery of this fountain of love from which all love
in creation hath flowed ; and be it known unto you and most
surely believed amongst you, that the same fountain of love
was quenched for a season in other outgoings that it might
overflow in one mighty stream upon the sons of men. What
love the Father hath to His Son, that is the measure of
God's affection, of God's fatherhood, to a fallen world. This
surrender is a greater proof of His solicitude in the world's
well-being than if He had made an end at once of all distress-
ing providences, and restored the world to Eden's first bloom.
Yea, I will declare more, and say, that in this veiling of the
glory which never was created, in this reduction into creature
conditions of Him who created the multitudinous universe, is
figured forth the parental regards of God more clearly than
if He had created for our possession and delight not one, but
a thousand replenished and infallible worlds. In the one case
there is an exhibition of that power which we know to be un-
wearied in producing and reproducing; but in that whereof
I speak there is a voluntary dismemberment for a time of that
VOL. III. I

I30 ON PRAYER.

union which had never been created, and a putting to silence
of that creating Word which spake the worlds into existence,
and which by its truth upholdeth the stability of their being.
Oh, the height and the depth, the length and the breadth, of
the love of God in Christ Jesus ! — it passeth knowledge !

All this was undertaken and undergone in order to make
peace by the blood of His cross, and reconcile us unto God,
and open up a new and living way of love and liberty into
the holiest of all, to which heretofore there had been only a
way of fear. It was to destroy the enmity which was between
us, and restore confidence in their heavenly Father to the
conscience-stricken children. Law came by Moses, but grace
and truth by Jesus Christ. Hitherto, men had, under the
sense of their sinfulness, sought to propitiate the favour of
God by every costly sacrifice and painful observance, being
conscious that God, as a God of holiness and justice, could
not look upon the workers of iniquity but with detestation
and abhorrence. They crouched in timorous devotion at
their shrines ; they subjected themselves to severe mortifica-
tions of body and of spirit ; they deprecated with strong cries
the offended deities ; with clouds of incense they filled their
temples, and upon the altars they made the blood of costly
sacrifices to bleed. And even the children of Israel knew
Him only as their King and Lawgiver, yielding to Him the
subjection of servants and the fealty of subjects, for law
came by Moses. But no one knew of the grace and truth
and fatherly love which was in the bosom of the Creator until
Christ came and revealed it, and by the one offering of Him-
self brought all sacrifices to an end. To them that believe
gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them who
believe on His name. It is not, brethren, that there is any-
thing magical in this word "believe" which changes the nature
of things and the character of men; but that in the truths
revealed by Christ unto the faith of men, there is now brought
into the nature of God and His purposes what cannot be
obtained from intellectual speculation or worldly experience,
but enters into the soul by faith only ; so that he who hath
truly believed this new doctrine and information concerning
things spiritual and divine, hath thereby obtained the key

THE L ORU S PR A YER. 1 3 1

to the secrets of the Almighty's nature, government, and in-
tention, and of the relations of his own spirit to the great
Father of spirits. Suppose a man hath served you in the
capacity of a hired servant with uncommon fidelity, and that
by some means both you and he come into the possession
of documents proving him to be your long-lost and much-
desired son, — how instantly and how effectually will that
change the nature of your alliance, and how changed in
spirit is everything which he now doth for your sake, how
tender and full of affection! — and servile fear is cast out by
filial love, and the joyful, hopeful activity of the son and heir
casts out the unwilling service of the hireling. That simple
discovery, though it adds not to the amount of the work
which he does, but, perhaps, takes from it, doth at once
inspire him with another and a nobler set of feelings, so that
he becomes speedily a new creature in the interest he takes
in your affairs, and the love he bears to your household. So
it is with one who, from being a legal servant, becomes a
loving child of God, by believing the revelation of Jesus
Christ concerning His heavenly Father. Before this revela-
tion, he had not known and could not take to heart the
interest the Almighty has in such a worm of the earth ; and
what service he did give was yielded under fearful apprehen-
sion, and did but strengthen the principle of fear out of which
it was given, and increase the distance in which they stood to
one another. But when Christ cometh in the brightness of
His glory, and is not ashamed to call us His brethren, and
forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood,
He himself also took part of the same, then we know that
His Father is our Father; and though high and infinitely
exalted, He is also of great grace and condescension ; and
though most terrible in His judgments, is of infinite affection
even to the rebellious, and wisheth them to return, and inherit
the blessings of His house ; and will not be served with for-
mality and fear, but with a loving and an overflowing heart.
Those who believe not, or know not the foundation of Christ
crucified, are constrained to adopt a foundation of their own
upon which they may raise the superstructure of slavish and
fearful observance, but upon which the superstructure of filial

132 ON PRAYER.

reverence and love can never arise. To be in earnest belief
and application of the truths which Christ hath brought to
light touching heaven, redemption, and Divine reconciliation,
is the only way of being brought into communion of spirit
with the Father of our spirits. The entering in of these
truths, the taking of them into our homes and our bosoms,
casteth out the ancient notions, and during the struggle there
is the trouble, and fear, and excitement of conviction and
conversion; after they have obtained the throne of the soul,
they bring the perpetual peace and joy of the adopted
children of God.

Such is the power and tendency of Christ's incarnation,
humiliation, and death, to draw us near to the love of our
heavenly Father from that timorous distance at which we
now stand ; but there is a power not less in what followed
His death to work out and perfect the same all-gracious
work of our adoption. His incarnatioin and death purchased
our redemption, and when He ascended up on high. He
received gifts for men, even for the rebellious. These gifts,
which He purchased by His death. He did not scatter abroad
in wide difference and wild disorder, but gave them to the
administration of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit of comfort
and of truth is an omnipresence upon the earth, constantly
dealing with those souls which have received the testimony
of the Word of God, and bringing to them the supplies of
those gifts which their Redeemer purchased for their sakes.
Whosoever, therefore, giveth ear to the Word of God, which
is Christ, shall have monitions of the Holy Spirit ; which if
he regard, he shall also have operations of the same Holy
Spirit, until he be " changed in the spirit of his mind, and be
renewed in the image of God, which is created in righteous-
ness and true holiness." The knowledge opens the way, and
the Spirit leads us in the way; the knowledge disabuseth us
of the error, and the Spirit watcheth over the seed of truth
until it growcth into a stately tree. The Son made known
the grace and truth of the Father to the reason of man, but
the Spirit witncsseth with our spirit that we are the sons of
God. The Son took all instruments to persuade the world of
peace, by publishing the gospel of good-will and peace, but the

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 133

Spirit of His Son within our hearts cricth, " Abba, Father."
This witness of the Divine Spirit in the souls of believers —
which is called in Scripture the " earnest of the Spirit,"
the " seal of the Holy Spirit with which we are sealed until
the day of redemption" — is not to be mistaken for those wild
and unspiritual doctrines diffused among the credulous vulgar
concerning sensible impressions of the Divinity, by which they
are suddenly taken, and held in a divine ravishment for a
season. Such things have been for great ends given unto
men, as to the two disciples, James and Peter, upon the
mount of transfiguration, and to Paul in his vision, that they
might make assurance doubly sure to these much-tried saints,
and be to their souls as a sure anchor in the midst of their
terrible vicissitudes. And I say not that when it is the
Almighty's purposes greatly to try some of His children. He
may not bestow upon them, in vision or otherwise, some extra-
ordinary sign of His favour, in order to carry them through this
extreme trial, with which, for the gospel's sake, He is to try
them. And of such a thing, if it have occurred, the favoured
saint will be little careful to make mention to a disbelieving
and mocking generation. But for those sensible conversions
and sensible communions, concerning which so much is writ-
ten and spoken amongst the ignorant, they grow out of
superstition, — they subject the spiritual to the sensible, — rest
all religious trust upon a bodily feeling and a momentary
instinct, — breed the longing desire after similar sensible signs,
— destroy the evidence of faith and love and new obedience,
and the other fruits of the Spirit, and make a religion inherent
in the sense, the lowest, the basest, and most degrading of all
superstitions. This sensible form of faith is kept up by the
foolish notion with which ignorant men are possessed, that the
further they can remove things from the ordinary course, the
more they throw them into the immediate hands of God; as
if a common thing was, by its commonness, separated from
the Divine Providence, which must be read only in things
extraordinary ; — which is to destroy Providence, and to make
religion vain as a principle ever present, ever felt, the food and
element of a new life. Amongst the fruits of the Spirit so
often commended in Scripture, I find peace, joy, long-suffering,

134 ON PRAYER.

gentleness, patience, meekness, temperance, love, and truth,
and a sound mind ; but I find neither tremblings, nor pains,
nor cold shiverings, nor horrors, nor long sleeps and entrance-
ments, nor any of those sensible visitations concerning which
they circulate such wild accounts. This witness of the Spirit
that we are the sons of God consists in spiritual, not in sen-
sible or intellectual eftccts, and is possessed by those who
feel their fears waning and their love growing apace — towards
Christ a brother's affection, towards the Father the obedience
and dependence of a child, and towards the Spirit the conso-
lation and joy which the growing communion of truth beget-
teth within the soul. Such a one hath the witness of God's
Spirit to his being a child of God, when his consciousness of
his Father's love ariseth to such a pitch as to banish all his
apprehensions, and leave him filled with the single emotion of
his Father's love, out of which come a thousand acts of willing
duty, and the desire to discharge ten thousand more ; when,
with all his imperfections around him, he knows and feels
that he is accepted for his Saviour's sake, and can even glory
in his infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon him;
when he feareth not to suffer for every transgression, but
to be forgiven and assisted in a better way, — seeth great
transgressions on every side, and confesseth them with a
humble heart, yet in that sight and confession of sin hath more
hope than he formerly had in the false notion of his own
moral worth and ceremonial cleanness. He hath the witness
of the Divine Spirit within him, when all debates concerning
his calling and election have ceased, through the assurance
that his peace is made by the cross of Christ and his hopes
made for ever sure. And moments do occur to such a patient
persevering disciple of the gospel of Christ, wherein his soul
masters all its natural unbelief, and struggles above the deep
waters of its corruption, and rejoiceth in God its Saviour, and
unbosoms itself in unrestrained expressions of attachment
and devotion to its Father in heaven. They occur unto the
hungry and thirsty soul like the visions and inspirations of
ancient seers, to tell of an immediate connexion with the
Godhead, a spiritual alliance with the great source and fountain
of spiritual existence, which may comfort its many penitences

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 135

and reward its many prayers. There are moments of such
unhindered communion given to comfort us under some
sterner trials, and Hft us to some nobler performances, which
stand out bright as that moment when the day dawned and
the day-star arose upon our hearts. We are not doomed to
eternal gloom, as the world misjudgeth, but we live in a con-
stant light, and the light of our spiritual enjoyment often
bursteth out more brightly when we have moments of sweet
composure and spiritual possession, ■ — revelations of high
thought, — silent contemplation of things which we cannot
and care not to utter, — strong assurances of the Spirit, which
tell us of what better things we shall yet behold, and what
brighter times await us; just as, upon the other hand, men of
the world, amidst their wealthiest and joyfullest seasons, have
moments of deep disquietude and agonising pain, which warn
them of the inexorable doom to which they are hastening their
souls.

Thus do we become the children of God, by the revelation
of His Word and Spirit unto our souls : being taken from
the family of the first Adam, we are joined to the family of
the second Adam, made heirs with Him of the promises ; and
we feel a growing resemblance unto our crucified and risen
Lord, we are crucified with Him in our affections and lusts,
and our other members which are upon the earth, and with
Him we rise to newness of life. Out of the corruption of our
natural ruin the seeds of our immortality spring, whose fruit
is holiness of heart, and a divine contentedness with the
ways of Providence, — yea, a joy in trouble, and a prosperity
in adversity, and a triumph over death and the grave, and
the hope of an abundant entrance into the joy of our
Lord. " Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be ; but we know that, when He
shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as
he is," — as He is seated at the right hand of God, with
honour and glory, and all power in heaven and earth reposed
on His almighty head. We are fallen creatures no longer,
but creatures risen again to the fellowship of heaven, — aliens
no longer from His house, but admitted to all its present
privileges and future hopes, — heirs no longer of our Father's

1 36 ON PR A YER.

wrath, but heirs of all His good gifts and better promises, —
no longer blind worms of the earth, but bright heirs of im-
mortality. And Christ praycth for us that we may be pos-
sessed of that glory which He had with His Father before
the world was, that we may be one with Him as He is one
with the Father, and that we may reign with Him, and be
presented in the presence of His Father with exceeding joy.

Here then, brethren, is a subject for your contemplation.
Christ hath set the seal of His Spirit upon men, and taken
from them a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a peculiar people, whom He hath introduced into
the adoption of His children, into whose spirit He hath
infused the rich inspirations of His own blessed Spirit, with
whom He is sharing His victories over evil, and the earthly
rewards of His victories, and is soon to share the full enjoy-
ment of His heavenly kingdom ; which is a distinction that
by its very excess seemeth mysterious. It seems hardly
credible that upon beings so like ourselves in all respects
such an adoption should have passed, and such a testament
of gifts be in reserve. We can hardly persuade ourselves that
there can be such a difference, while all other things remain
so much alike. We eat the same food of toil and carefulness,
and are subject to the same infirmities of flesh and blood,
and yet one part of us are the children of God and the heirs
of life, the other the children of the devil and the heirs of
wrath. We seem to want more perceptible testimonials than
the silent progress of the new man within us — something
which can be felt to be overpowering, and pointed at as irre-
sistible ; and hence the wonderful narratives of sensible con-
versions find such a ready ear. But there is not any need of
such extraordinary assurances. No man, looking upon our
Saviour's person, we suppose, would have said that it em-
bodied the Divinity ; His external motions were like those of
other men, — His privations greater, His sufferings more severe,
His life more tried. His end more wretched. It was only when
He opened His lips and made known His message full of
grace and truth, — when He stretched forth His hand to do acts
of unequalled power and goodness, that He was recognised,
not by any glorious halo that enshrined His body, but by the

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 13 7

perfect holiness that possessed His soul. And in like man-
ner the rest of the children are denoted, not by anything
striking in feature or in fortune, but by the simple presence
within their breast of a divine serenity and a constant
heavenly zeal.

Such are the revelations of the gospel, in order to enlighten
men upon their true relation to God, and win them from their
present miserable estate of rebellion against Heaven, back to
their place in their Father's love; and such are the several
operations of the Godhead — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost —
to fit the soul for being reinstated in the paradise of blessed-
ness which it hath lost; and without the faith of these revela-
tions, and the help of these intercessors, I have no doubt that
none of you shall ever be reinstated in that blissful estate.
When I delineated formerly God's bounty in your creation,
and watchful care in providence, — His physician-like admin-
istration of wholesome though unpalatable medicines, — His
fatherlike dispensation of chastisement to the whole family,
it was not in the expectation of being able to prevail by these
representations, however full of heart-moving and conscience-
striking details, but that I might justify, through all the
departments of His government, the fatherhood of God. I
did not wish to leave one soul, believer or unbeliever, without
a witness within his heart of God's good title to the name of
a Father, and of His good right to expect at our hands the
obedience of children ; that, as all use this prayer, no one
might use it without a sense, of a lesser or a higher kind, of
the fatherly character of Him whom they approached with
the name of Father. But I had no expectation of being able
to fix the permanent feeling in any but those who have taken
up their right, and sought their adoption, upon the faith of
Christ's atonement and intercession. For though others,
upon a review of these objections, might be able at a time to
feel a rising emotion of filial gratitude and family alliance
unto God, yet so intensely are they wedded to some form of
present good, some idol of the sense, or the intellect, or the
outward visible world, and so volatile is their mind towards
things unseen, and so conscious are they when they reflect
on their most unfilial ingratitude, most undevout and un-

0

8 ON PRA YER.

heavenly state of soul, that the momentary emotion is made
to fly before some other feeling more habitual, more power-
ful, and more welcome. Yet I hope to them it will not be in
vain that they have been reminded of these emblems of God's
love they are in daily use of; and if they advance not so far
as to recognise Him as their chief good and supreme love,
they will not speak of His holy majesty lightly, or allow His
thrice holy name to be lightly mentioned in their hearing ;
which truly in a son towards an earthly parent were thought
monstrous.

But be it surely known unto you, and most surely believed
amongst you, that, let God manifest Himself as liberally as
He may to one who has not seen the beauty of Christ, and
the necessity of His salvation, such a one will not be translated
into the feeling of true affection towards God, or possessed with
the sense of perfect security of His love and favour. Provi-
dence may shower down its utmost bounties, and prosperity
bring its best success, and nature bestow its kindest tempera-
ment, and crown him with the largest, most comprehensive
intellect, but all will not avail to put into the bosom any
feeling towards God kindred to the feeling of a dutiful son
unto his parent, — will not cause God to be thought upon or
to be had in remembrance as He is by the most unendowed
peasant who has been reformed by the word and anointed
with the Spirit of God. My experience has most surely
revealed it to me as a fact, that there is no general emotion
of filial affection towards God emanating, as it were of its
own accord, out of a highly-gifted mind, or a richly-endowed
inheritance. I do not say that naturally there will be no
thought of God ; there may be a reverence of His name, a
regard to His ordinances, a religious pity of the poor, a
liberal devotion of means to their relief, an upholding of the
decent face and form of religion, and no small acquaintance
with its doctrines and its duties ; yea, and there may be a
more complete routine of service, a severer ritual and a heavier
sense of responsibility, all without once generating the tender
glow of attachment, the constant warmth of love, the living,
breathing affection which is entitled to the name of filial, and
to which the sacred title, " Our Father," properly respondeth.

THE LORDS PR A YER. 139

Many a servant toils harder for his master than all his sons,
but he is not therefore a son. No more doth the amount of
performance constitute a child of God ; but the spirit which
breathes over it, the devotion and heartiness with which it is
performed. Which abiding feeling, I again declare, no one is
adequate to catch out of nature's fairest forms or the heart's
most generous moods. It is the production, the holy fruit
and most abundant reward of faith in those doctrines of the
blessed evangel which have been set forth above. And who-
ever is conscious of being still a novice in the divine house-
hold, or strange to its divine liberty of love, must seek his
birthright from the hand of his Redeemer, who hath purchased
it, and be instructed in the privileges and duties of his Father's
house by the Spirit which his Redeemer sent abroad over the
earth, and now sendeth over the earth to win the children
to their home again ; of which Spirit I am a poor, weak,
and inefficient minister. Else, were I endowed with any in-
ward might, or if your hearts were not harder than the nether
millstone, I would this day have found some once strayed
sheep to bring back w'ith me to the fold, over whom the
angels of God might strike their harps to a joyful strain ; for
I have touched the most soul-subduing, soul-converting wea-
pons of our faith, but handled them most imperfectly. Oh,
brethren, why should you exclude yourselves from the closest
alliance with Heaven, and the most plentiful participation of
Heaven's gifts ?

XIII.

THE lord's prayer.

Matt. vi. 9.
Which art in heaven.

'T'O the tender name of God as our Father is added His
dweUing-place, " which art in heaven," in order to teach
us, that when we pray to Hirri our souls should pass into that
state ol holiness and truth of which heaven is the sure abode ;
that we should not only lift up our eyes and look upon the
azure vault, which is the type of the infinite and the invisible,
but that the eye of the soul should look from the earthly region
of practical prudence into the heavenly regions of spiritual
hope and desire, seeking after the unattained conditions of
excellence, and longing for the time and place when they
shall be realised and possessed. At the time we pray, God is
not far from any one of us, though we address Him as dwell-
ing in the heavens. We do not need to ascend to the tops of
mountains, like the priests of Baal, nor to seek Him in the
deep silence and seclusion of woods, like the priests of our
fathers, for in Him we live and move and have our being.
Nevertheless, we are commanded when we pray, to say, " Our
Father, which art in heaven," to signify to us continually that
He is not to be found in any earthly or in any hellish mood of
our soul, but only in the heavenly, — that is, in the holy and
pure and charitable and true. Hence the soul is taught to
purge herself of all malice and wickedness when she nameth
the name of God, because He dwelleth in the pure heavens of
her blessedness, and to hold herself above the humours and
follies and low pursuits of the earth with which the Lord hath

THE LORD'S PRA YER. 141

no fellowship or communion, except to reprove and restrain
them ; that she must dwell in her heaven, if she would hold
communion with God, who dwelleth in His heaven ; that she
must be girt about with her best and holiest attributes, if she
would have access to the pure and holy abode of Him whom
she seeketh. And though she knows God is at hand and not
afar off, she must address herself as to a high undertaking
when she prayeth to Him, having to pass out of worldly busy
occupations into the higher region of spiritual feeling and
desire.

It is written in the Psalms that the heavens are God's throne,
and the earth is His footstool ; and by the prophet Nahum it
is added, that the clouds are the dust of His feet. And Solo-
mon, in his dedication of the temple, addresseth Jehovah as
dwelling in the heavens : " Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-
place." And when He regardeth men, He is said to look down
from heaven upon the children of men ; and when He visits
them. He is said to bow the heavens and come down. And
in this Christian prayer our Lord and Saviour hath adopted
the same form of language, and said, "Our Father, which art
in heaven."

Nevertheless, by Solomon, in the same dedication of the
temple, it is declared that the heaven and the heaven of hea-
vens cannot contain Him. And the Psalmist also hath given
his testimony to the ubiquity and omnipresence of God in
these sublime verses : " If I ascend up into heaven, thou art
there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there ; if I
take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy
right hand shall hold me." And Paul, in his apology before
the Areopagus, hath said that He is not far from any one of
us, seeing in Him we live and move and have our being. And
our Lord, of that Father whom we pray to as in the heavens,
testifieth in another place thus, " If a man love me, he will
keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we Avill
come unto him and make our abode with him ;" which Jehovah
himself hath thus confirmed: "I am the high and the holy One
who inhabiteth the praises of eternity ; whose name is Holy,
and who dwelleth in the holy place; yet with him also who is of

142 ON PRAYER.

a humble and a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at my word."
What, then, meaneth it to pray to our Father, as we are here
directed, as dwelHng in the heavens, if so be that His presence
is diffused everywhere abroad, and that even from hell He is
not debarred by all the wickedness which abideth there ? And
where is that heaven to which we are directed to look up when
we make our prayers, and from which, in a good time, we are
taught to expect an answer in peace ? To these questions I
shall now, by the blessing of God, endeavour to render an
answer ; while I explain the kind adaptation to human nature
which there is in this form of speech, and the many emblema-
tical meanings which it bears to the mind of the suppliant.

Men are so conscious themselves of the pollutions which
defile the earth, and of the enormities which are transacted
in its various corners, that in all their superstitions, even the
most rude and barbarous, they have placed the habitations of
their good deities away from its confused noise and unresting
wickedness ; while they have quartered their evil deities in
the bowels of the earth, compressing them down to work
their devilish works in the centre of that wicked orb, on
the outside of which so much wickedness is transacted ; and
when they would do their worship to the gods above,
they chose the elevation of more high places and the deep
silence of groves to bring them more near to their habitation.
The heavens — from the pure light with which they arefilled
by day, and the vast magnificence with which they are over-
spread by night, from the manifold motion of the sun and
moon and stars, all accomplished in silence and beauty, and
from the boundless extent of the blue expanse to which the
sense and the imagination in vain seek to find a limit — have be-
come to all people the emblem of those higher and nobler ideas
which the soul conceives concerning purity and peacefulness,
order, and justice, and righteousness. And if these ideas have
anywhere a reality, a local habitation and a name, the soul
conceives it must be somewhere within the compass of the
azure serene, where all looks so lovely and peaceful. Hither,
therefore, she removes the better deities, which are the per-
sonifications and patrons of those more excellent things which
the soul conceives within herself, but nowhere finds exempli-

THE L ORD ' S PR A YER. 1 4 3

fied upon the earth. Moreover, the earth is so dependent upon
the heavens, and the heavens so masterful over the earth, be-
stowing upon her hght and heat and fruitful influences, or lay-
ing her waste with whirlwind and storm ; splitting her bulwarks
with the lightning and the thunderbolt, or with the earthquake
making her to shudder to her very centre, that the imagina-
tion of man hath placed in the regions above, the dwelling-
place of all that is mighty and powerful, as well as of all that
is just, orderly, and good.

The heavens being thus to all nations, in all ages, the
emblem of harmony and beauty, of peace and quietness, of
vastness and infinity, and being, from their very nature, likely
to continue the proper contrast to the disorder and jarring
confusion of the earth, it hath pleased the Lord, in His reve-
lation, to accommodate Himself to this condition of human
thought, and represent Himself as having His throne and pro-
per dwelling-place in the heavens, thereby encouraging men
to follow after those ideas which are higher and nobler than
the earth, and constituting Himself patron of every high and
saintly desire of the soul. I dwell, saith He, in that place
with which all your better thoughts are associated ; and you
dwell nearer to my presence according as you surpass the earth,
and have your hopes and desires upon the things above. You
cannot come near me by being earthly; but by being heavenly
in your thoughts you can come near to mine abode : whence,
if you have lived in earthiness, you shall, after death, be
debarred, and thrust down to the lower parts of the earth ;
but if you have loved the higher aspirations, and sought the
holier occupations of the soul, you shall be disrobed from
earthly vestments, and translated from earthly habitations to
my own spiritual and blessed habitations.

Now, it is to be observed that, in thus taking to Himself a
local habitation, Jehovah did not knowingly deceive men into
the idea of His limited presence ; for He at the same time
taught them that He was everywhere, on the earth and in
the lowest depths of hell — upon the earth, beholding the
evil and the good, making the wrath of men to praise Him,
and restraining the remainder of wrath ; in hell, holding the
devils by His stern right hand from bursting abroad, and by

144 ON PR A YER.

the manifestation of His justice making them to believe and
tremble. But He signified that heaven was His home, the
abiding place of His presence, the seat of His glorious
majesty, into whose gates nothing entereth that defileth or
maketh a lie, where are fulness of joy and pleasures for ever-
more ; and thus He did accommodate Himself to the previ-
ous conditions of the human soul, and patronise what super-
terrestrial thoughts dwelt amongst them, without abusing
their minds by misrepresentation, or falsifying their conduct
by error.

Any one who is at all acquainted with the human spirit
must know how helpful, if not necessary, to all its thoughts
of outward things is the idea of place. It is the nature of a
limited creature to conceive all things in some place. Hence
the metaphysicians have said that space is the form of all our
outward, and time the form of all our inward ideas. But be
this as it may, things seem but dreams or fancies until we
have got them associated with place, and also with person.
Justice, for example, though an idea common to the human
kind, is of little or no service until it becomes personified and
placed in the lawgiver and the judge, in the tribunals and
the awful seats of justice. Taste, also, though more delicate
and shadowy, must be personified and placed in the works of
the fine arts, in the ornaments of the person, and the beautify-
ing of nature. Power and dignity also must have their out-
ward form in the emblems and attributes of magistracy, and
their dwelling-place in the palaces and thrones of kings ; and
mercy also hath her dwelling-place by the side of power, and
her emblem in the sceptre of power. And in all things we
may claim and assert it to be of the nature of man, not a
weakness, but in some sort a necessity, thus to give a local
habitation and a name to his most spiritual conceptions ; for
otherwise he could not make them known to others, and but
indistinctly conceive them to himself Our speech to one an-
other is a revelation by emblems of those invisible thoughts
and immaterial feelings which are passing within us. The
thought is not here, neither is it there ; but by putting it into
words, we have, by the help of things here and there, given it
a manifestation unto others. This is poetry, to make the

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 145

emotions of the spirit manifest ; and he is the greatest poet
who maketh the greatest number of high and noble emotions
most distinctly manifest. Now, we represent ourselves by
the finest and best aspects of things upon the earth : woman's
beauty by the flowers of the field, and childhood's innocence
by the lamb, the gentlest of the creatures which move upon
the earth, and the dove, the most harmless of the fowls of
heaven ; man's fortitude and strength by the oak, the stout-
est tree of the field, or the lion, the noblest animal which
roams over the wild. The infinite forms of nature, and the
infinitely varied impressions which they make upon our
senses, are all put into requisition in order to set forth the
emotions of our spirit, and make them intelligible to the
spirit of another man. But the emotions of the. spirit have
no resemblance to, nor proper dwelling-place in, these forms
of nature, or impressions of the sense, which are not pictures,
but only emblems and intermediate things, upon which the
attention of the other spirit is arrested, till it examine itself
for the kindred emotion which is thus shadowed forth. When
I explain the feelings of my soul to another soul, that soul
looketh not to my words or images, which would mislead it
altogether, but it looks in upon itself to see the effect which
these words or images are producing. And if they are pro-
ducing no effects, nothing is understood; if they are producing
effects, then let him shew the effect by his words and natural
gestures ; and so, by comparing spiritual emotion with spiri-
tual emotion, through the help of sensible visible things, or
words which are originally the name of them, we come to
understand what is passing within our souls. It is a necessity,
therefore, rather than a weakness, which obligeth man to give
to his spiritual conceptions " a local habitation and a name."
And out of this necessity cometh, among the other wise
adaptations of revelation, this one — that the Lord hath a
place of abode assigned to Him in the heavens, though He
is everywhere, beholding the evil and the good.

We seldom endeavour to apprehend the difficult undertak-
ing which Jehovah undertook when He sought to reveal His
infinite and incomprehensible divinity to the sons of men.
Science doth a great work when it makes known the appointed
VOL. III. K

146 ON PRAYER.

rule and law by which matter shifts its place and changeth
its form ; and such names as Newton's have thence their glory.
Poetry doth a higher work, and serves to this end when it
watcheth the emotions and vicissitudes of the soul, and, turn-
ing them to forms, giveth " to airy nothing a local habitation
and a name." And philosophy, if indeed there is any such,
doth the highest work of all, in tracing the law and rule after
which these emotions come and go and shift themselves in the
theatre of the soul. But theology, or revelation, hath a work
infinitely more comprehensive and difficult to perform. For
science meddleth but with the visible, and poetry with the in-
visible of the human spirit ; but theology hath the invisible
of the Divine Spirit to demonstrate unto man's most limited
apprehension — the being and attributes of God, the manner
and maxims of His government, the nature of His relation
unto us and of our obligations unto Him, the history of our
creation, the secrets of our preservation, the way of our re-
demption, the high mystery of our regeneration, the after-
scenes which lie beyond the grave, and the whole condition
of the future world ; — all these hath theology to reveal in such
a manner to the narrow and evil-conditioned soul of man, as
that they shall take a hold on it so sure and steadfast as to
unclasp the hold which the science of the visible hath obtained
over the sense, and to correct and reform the impression which
the poetry of the invisible hath made upon the heart and
soul. To do this work was above the invention and art of
man. It was too high for him ; he could not by searching
find out God, or know the Almighty unto perfection ; and it
was a work in which Jehovah himself laboured with slow
and gradual skill, through four thousand years training man
for its declaration ; and after it was declared, training his
understanding other two thousand years for its entertainment;
and even now the mystery is but partially understood, for
still the world is but as it were in the infancy of its under-
standing, and shall grow as much wiser in the interpretation
of God's revelation than we at present are, as we at present
judge ourselves to be wiser than the primitive fathers were.
And this revelation is made as it were by a system of accom-
modation ; not by exact representations of the things, but by

THE LORD'S PRA YER. 147

accommodation of them to the forms of the human spirit.
The first dispensation, Paul says, made nothing perfect, but
shadowed out the second dispensation to the sense and under-
standing of a rude age ; and our second dispensation hath not
yet made things perfect, for we see but as through a glass,
dimly, and know but in part, and prophesy but in part ; it
is a representation by emblems of the true things which arc
to be hereafter. Hence wc have an incarnate Deity as the
foundation of the whole, or a revelation of Godhead to the
infirmities of manhood ; and we have a manifestation of the
divine Spirit in the emblem of baptism, and the various attri-
butes of the new man created in righteousness and true holi-
ness ; and the revelation of creation and providence under the
emblem of the father of a family ; and the habitations of the
blessed under the emblem of a pure and undefiled city ; and
the habitations of the cursed under the emblem of a burning
fiery lake ; — and everything which is revealed is revealed
by emblems to the soul, and without an emblem nothing
is or can be revealed. It is truth veiled by flesh, for the
sake of flesh. It is divine and unalterable truth conformed
to the mould of the human soul, yet with the living virtue
of expanding the mould into which it is cast, and puri-
fying it, until at length, by the helping hand of death, the
mould yawneth and falleth to pieces, and the spirit bursteth
out into new fruitfulness, like the plant from the corrupted
seed, and enlargeth to a new capacity, whereby it compre-
hendeth the whole fulness, and partaketh the perfect blessed-
ness, of those things which heretofore it held only by dim
shadows and unsatisfying savours, by earnests and pledges, by
hope, by the filmy evidence and shadowy substance which
faith giveth to things unseen and hoped for.

To speculate upon the locality of these heavens in which
Jehovah hath His throne is as idle and unprofitable as it would
be to speculate concerning the sceptre with which He rules,
or the throne from which He giveth His commandments, or
the bodily parts of hands, eyes, ears, and nostrils, which are
all given to Him, in accommodation to our faculties, the
more generally to take the various parts of our nature, and
convert them to good and holy ends. All such speculations

148 ON PRAYER.

concerning the place of heaven are frivolous, and worse than
frivolous, arising out of a misuse of the emblem, and tending
to perpetuate and propagate the misuse. These emblems
are but shadows of the truth, and when they are taken as the
very things they are misused. Had the revelation been for
the use of the sense, it would have been presented to the
sense, whereas it is given as a place where dwelleth righteous-
ness and devotion and fulness of joy and pleasures for ever-
more. If sensible forms be given to these spiritual affections,
as of harping and singing psalms, it is only for the end of
presenting the spiritual affection under the most significant
of these earthly forms. All these desires to give a sensible
meaning to the emblems of divine revelation come of the
tendency of our souls to idolatry. The desire to define the
situation and occupations of heaven comes out of the same
error of the mind which makes a statue stand for God, or
holy water for the unction of the Spirit, or a wafer for the
body, and wine for the blood of Christ. The same struggling
with the spirit would make the emblem of things unseen,
which the spirit lives upon, into sensible realities, and so
starve and becloud the spirit, which it would fain overcome.

The soul of man, being too large and noble for the earth, its
present dwelling-place, and for the laws and customs and
forms of society which are established on the earth, is ever
ranging, in its desires of good and speculations of excellence,
beyond the bounds of vision and experience ; sighing and
lamenting over the degradation to which it is doomed, and
grieving over the broken and ruined condition which is every-
where around — grieving over its own falls and transgres-
sions and forfeiture of its natural capacities. Which self-
convicting, complaining, and penitent moods of the soul it is
the aid of the Gospel to encourage ; to foster discontent with
all practicable or possible enjoyments upon the earth, and to
call out those higher aspirations and holier desires which find
no entertainment, no home, nor safety upon the earth, but
are mocked and trampled under foot by our sensual and
worldly nature, and by the sensual and worldly nature of
those around us. To save and prosper these, to make them
triumphant over all our baser and lower desires, it was neces-

THE L ORU S PR A YER. 1 49

sary to find for them a place to dwell in, to be realised in, a
season at which we should come to these enjoyments, and live
in the midst of them. For if they have no place or season,
they are to me only a shadow and a dream. The world is not
their place, nor the present life their season. Therefore,
heaven beyond the visible — no fixed star nor planetary orb,
which are parts of the visible, but the invisible heavens, which
eye hath not seen — was revealed as the seat of these purities
and refinements of the soul ; and eternity beyond time, the
boundless eternity, was appointed to be their season. And as
every place must have a ruler and a governor, the Lord made
known that He hath established His throne in the heavens.
The Son of God called it His Father's house of many man-
sions, where every believer hath a place prepared for him.
And as every hour must have an occupation, the occupa-
tions of heaven are set forth by the highest raptures and
ravishments whereof the soul is capable in her purest estate,
in order that all things being made agreeable to her nature,
the emblem might serve her wholly, and work with the more
power over her sanctification, which is the great end of the
revelation of God.

Now, it is to misunderstand the nature of those emblems to
interpret them literally, or endeavour to define them to the
sense or natural understanding. They must have a reference
to things seen, otherwise they would not be intelligible. But
if understood in that sense only, they would profit us nothing ;
it is the other part, which is not of the visible, for the sake of
which the visible emblem is taken, and this is the part to the
apprehension of which we are to endeavour to arrive by the
ladder of emblems which is let down from heaven for that
end.

XIV.

THE LORD'S PRAYER.

Matt. vi. 9.
2''hy kingdom come.

'T^HE preservation and prosperity of Christ's kingdom upon
the earth is not due to poHcy and arms, and the many
resources of other kingdoms, but hath come about through
the prayers of the saints, and the mighty working of the
Spirit of God which follows their prayers, — as entirely as
Israel's deliverance out of Egypt, and guidance through the
wilderness, came about through the repeated applications of
Moses and Aaron at the throne of God. And John, in the
Apocalypse, informs us, that an angel presented before the
Lord the prayers of the saints, upon which the seven angels
that had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound,
thereby giving us to know that no greater thing is necessary
to set heaven in motion than the prayers of humble and holy
men. Their witness and their wish, uttered from various
secret corners of the earth, arise like an odour of a sweet-
smelling savour before the throne on high, which God tastes
with delight and rejoices to reward. The utterances of the
hearts of the redeemed are the despatches and chronicles of
the Church passing ever and anon to the court of the heavenly
King, which He listens to with a delighted ear, and in due
season sends down angels to minister unto her needs. The
prayers of the saints are, as it were, the exhalations of the
soul, which arise and then descend again in showers of divine
grace, which are more refreshing and full of fruit than the
dew upon the mown grass. Paul was not more a saviour to
all that were in the ship, than the saints of God are to all
that are in the world ; over which, when all the saints shall be
gathered out, the consuming fire shall spread desolation, and

THE L ORUS PR A YER. 1 5 1

shrivel up the pride and grandeur of thrones and dominions
and sceptered kings, as the flame of our domestic fire shrivels
up and obliterates a paper scroll.

Among our prayers, to which God, in the disposal of His
providence and grace, gives such mighty prevalence, there is
not any one more fraught with blessing unto mankind than
that which is the subject of our present discourse. It em-
braces, in the compass of three words, the sum total of the
world's well-being ; for, as God's kingdom comes, Satan's
passes, and evil with suffering abates. It leaves nothing out
which God governs and patronises. It contains all which He
dispenses, every good and perfect gift which cometh down from
the Father of lights to His needful children. And, moreover,
as God hath given all power on earth into the hands of His
blessed Son, our Saviour, it is the welcome of redemption, the
salutation of our Redeemer, the all-hail of Christ our King !
So mighty a request, and so pregnant with blessings, being
so briefly expressed, we are apt to prefer with little conscious-
ness of what our lips are uttering ; and being part of that
form of prayer which from childhood we have been taught,
it hath come with the rest to be formally, not feelingly,
uttered. Since ever we can remember, and before the date of
memory, we have used it, until in religion the Lord's Prayer
hath become what the forms of civility and politeness are in
ordinary discourse' — said without reflection upon what they
signify. Its petitions have almost forgotten to awake emo-
tions in our breast, and it really requires an effort to put life
and meaning into that form of words which is perhaps more
pregnant with meaning than any other piece of equal extent.
Now, when any petition is uttered unto God without a lively
sense of our own need, or the need of others in behalf of whom
we pray, it is regarded by Him in no other light than an
insult ; great according to the importance of that which we
mutter over with our lips, and make the appearance of re-
questing from His hand. Therefore, brethren, I shall interrupt
the ordinary course of our ministrations, in order to interest
you in the progress of that kingdom whose plantation in the
earth by its righteous King we have already discoursed of;
and that hereafter when your lips utter these three words,

152 ON PRAYER.

your hearts may be full of feeling. And may the supreme
God hasten the progress of Messiah's reign over the dark and
benighted portion of our race ! And may He send His own
testimony along with our feeble services, and bless each heart
in the congregation with a richer effusion of His royal pres-
ence than they have ever felt, that so we may yield increase
of the fruits of righteousness, and wave to Heaven an offering
more joyful than the treasures of harvest or the cattle upon a
thousand hills.

Accompany this petition, then, Christian brethren, with the
feeling of your own spirit, whatsoever is its real condition.
When the candle of the Almighty burns bright within you,
and dispels all darkness and pain, so that you rejoice with
fulness of joy in God your Saviour ; when your feet are
established strong in the ways of holiness, and run with joy
the race set before you ; when these times of refreshing have
come from the presence of the Lord, — then in the full glow of
gratitude stand before Him, and pray that His kingdom may
so come over the hearts and lives of all, and that your
friends, and your brethren, and all men, may come to know
these, the joys of His chosen, and to rejoice with His inherit- .
ance. For the poor world without this is starved and
wretched ; and many Christians, being lukewarm, and scanty
of grace, are in daily fear. Cry out, therefore, in their
behalf, as Paul did over his brethren and kinsmen after the
flesh, as Christ did over the blood-shedding Jerusalem ; and
even be willing, as they were, to part with your happiness.
Endure the hidings of God's countenance, so that the glory
you love may be extended over those that sit in darkness
and the region of the shadow of death. But not only during
these victorious scenes of your Christian warfare, and these
high days of enjoyment, when the soul is ravished with the
near approaches of her Maker, but when running patiently
the race, and contending steadily for the prize, with all
your spiritual armour in exercise, and all the temptations
of life plying their insinuations against your Christian virtue ;
even then, it is your part to rejoice that God's Spirit hath
awakened you out of the thraldom of sin, and taught your
hands to war against it, — that the gospel of His Son hath

THE LORD'S PR A YER. 153

opened up the barred avenues of hope, and given you peace
towards God, whom He hath reconciled by His death. And
being possessed of this hope of success, and assurance of
Divine favour, take pity upon the multitudes who will not
listen to the gospel, or be roused from lethargy and pro-
crastination, but yield themselves willing servants of the
devil, and run with greediness in the path of ruin. Oh,
mourn over them, your townsmen, your familiar friends, per-
haps your brothers and sisters ! Mourn over them, as one
who mourneth over a fatherless family, or a hopeless exile
from his native home, or a noble man early doomed to an
ignoble end ! For, truly, they are without God their Father,
and heaven their hope, and in hourly risk of coming to ever-
lasting dishonour and degradation. Pray, therefore, that
God's kingdom may come upon them ; that, like you, they
may be raised up, and taught to fight their foes, even though
their life should be a constant battle — well assured that there
remaineth a rest to them and to you, and a harvest if ye do
not faint or weary in doing well. Nay, further. Christians,
in your seasons of darkness and disconsolateness, when, by
lack of prayer and watching, we fall back, and misgive in our
hearts, God's presence being withdrawn, or rather clouds
raised by our sins darkening the unchangeable face of His
love, and the enemy, coming in upon our faintness like a
flood, threatens a complete overthrow of our righteous estate;
when we yield once more to the movements of sin within
our members, and taste the bitter fruits and afflictions of
those that fall away, — then by our very woes, by the insurrec-
tion of our inner man, and our broken peace, and forfeited
hopes, we should pray hard, both for ourselves and others,
that God's kingdom may come, and Satan's kingdom pass
away. And if God may be pleased to hear, and return us to
the stronghold of hope which is for the chief of sinners in
the blessed Gospel of Christ, then, also, in the twilight and
sickly cast which our recovering spirit wears, when there is
great cloudiness over our head, and great uneasiness at heart,
and much weakness to walk onward, and dread of the net
out of which our feet have just been freed; when we feel the
sorrow of repentance and the pain of recovery, — then let us

154 ON PRAYER.

pray hard for ourselves and others, that God's kingdom may
enlarge more and more, and never again be narrowed within
us or without us, that men may not be set around with
the sorrows of death, and cast down by departing from the
living God. Christians, therefore, whatever be their state,
whether triumphant, militant, backsliding, or recovering, can
never be devoid of argument, from their own feelings, to pre-
sent the petition, " Thy kingdom come," and so enforce it
with such feelings of gratitude, of sorrow, or of contrition, as
shall find for it acceptance from God, and an answer in
peace.

Next, from looking into your own bosoms, and drawing
arguments out of your own experience, look around you upon
the world, and draw arguments from what you behold upon
which to found a petition that God would do something for
His kingdom, which suffereth violence and is taken by force.
Look upon heathen lands, where Satan has never been bridled,
nor the spirit of men pacified, where all is raging like the
troubled sea which cannot rest, and is casting up scenes of
cruelty and woe. Look upon Mohammedan lands, where sense,
under the mask of faith, has triumphed over reason, and strong
delusion hath extinguished every ray of Divine knowledge,
and almost every ray of intellectual truth ; so that, through
very ignorance and barbarism, the fairest regions of the earth
which they inhabit, and among the rest the land of milk and
honey, have been spoiled and dispeopled, once more turned
into the wasteness of sterility, and to tenantry of noisome and
noxious creatures ; or if some forms of the human race dwell
there still, their minds, through very pride and contempt of
all knowledge and generous intercourse are as unpeopled of any
noble sentiments as the solitudes and ruins which they have
made around them are unpeopled of their former free-born
races of men. Look, also, upon the outcast and vagabond
house of Israel, whose god is their money, which having
hoarded, they keep with fear and trembling from the rapacious
paw of the needy nations ; a poor pitiful race, whose wretch-
edness is written legibly in their starved persons, and whose
synagogue, I declare it, is not less unseemly in the eye of re-
ligion, and, I judge, not less hateful in the eye of God, than

THE LORDS PR A YER. 155

is the Mohammedan mosque or heathen temple. Look unto
CathoHc Europe, which hath fallen under the curse of God,
because of the long series of cruelties and abominations trans-
acted in that mystery of iniquity, Babylon the great, — an
abject priesthood, a people either of crouching devotees or
regardless unbelievers, living either in the hotbed of a mis-
guided superstition, or in the perfect callousness of confirmed
Atheism. O fellow-Christians, what is to become of these
benighted wastes of the world t How is an end to be put to
this long carnival of wickedness, if we, who are enlightened
to see their wretchedness, cry not unto the Lord day and
night for the miseries of the earth } But here at home, in our
Protestant lands, look and be ashamed, mourn and weep
because of their distance from the living God ! How His
Sabbaths are profaned by high and low ! how His temples
are deserted, and the places of amusement and dissipation
crowded ! how busy market-making, and busy book-keeping,
will hardly rest one day in seven either for fear of Divine or
human laws ! how the drunken men reel among our church-
going people, and the solemn silence of our temples is dis-
turbed by the rolling of chariot wheels, and dissipation keeps
no disguise, and irreligion no shame ! My brethren, let us
pray hard to God that His kingdom may come here at home
no less than abroad ; and give Him no rest for our countrymen
and kinsmen who may be caught in their iniquities ; and for
the commonweal, which carries such an undermining evil in
her body. And if you will not intercede with God, and lift
up the voice of your strong crying into the ears of the Lord
God of Sabaoth, and refuse to hold your peace, then the
undermining disease will gain upon the parts which still re-
main fresh and sound, and the whole commonweal will be-
come the prey of selfishness and thoughtless pride in rulers,
of sour discontent and prowling revenge in people ; and Reli-
gion, with her healing daughters Mercy and Peace, will flee to
the mountains, like Lot's solitary family out of Sodom, or our
Saviour's family out of Rama, when Rachel wept for the slain
of her children, and would not be comforted because they
were not.

My Christian people, here we sit in our solemn assembly

156 ON PRAYER.

in quietness and peace. We praise God with understanding ;
we pray to Him with the heart. We read His word with
knowledge ; we inquire into its meaning with all our faculties.
In a sister assembly they are this day engaged holding the
supper of the Lord, in remembrance of Him they love, and
warming their hearts with the symbols of His dying love, (and
God fill their hearts with a celestial elevation, and diffuse
over their souls ethereal communion !) But, oh ! let us think
the while of the woeful festivals of our brethren in other parts :
of the heathen, which consist not in weaning souls to God and
virtue, but in sacrificing wretches to their grim idol, or burn-
ing widows and a hecatomb of slaves to the manes of the de-
parted ; — of the Mohammedans, who are trooping in caravans
across the trackless deserts to the Holy City, there to crawl
around the shrine of their Prophet, and return glorying in
paradise secured ; — and of Catholic lands, where, ever and
anon, along the streets do pass the pompous train of the
Host, bearing a consecrated wafer unto some dying creature,
to cheat him into a delusion of his eternal welfare ; — and
at home, of the sensual, living the Sabbath out in hot excess
of drinking, and laying their feverish heads at night upon a
couch whence they may never rise ; also, of the fashionable
people, this day parading it in pride and vanity, or worse
affections — whirling from place to place, and after a night
of feasting, without a prayer, casting themselves upon their
couches to dream of vanity ! Of these things, then — true
realities, not fancied pictures — think, my Christian people,
with full and overflowing hearts, when you are here in the
house of God, worshipping, as is good and comely ! Lift up
to your sovereign Lord the voice of your weeping, for the
sake of the wretched people and the suffering Church, and
utter abundantly the memory of its long-continued suffering,
and tell of its present misery and hopelessness, until He shall
break up the barriers which oppose His going forth, and
travel abroad in the greatness of His strength, and make all
men see and know His salvation !

And, truly. He hath broken up many of the barriers which
were set against His goings forth; and in this our age He
seems preparing His chariot for riding in triumph over the

THE LORDS PR A YER. 1 5 7

necks of His enemies. When this prayer, "Thy kingdom
come," began first to be offered up, His kingdom consisted
but of a handful of Gahlean peasants, possessed of no
earthly treasure, save a treasure of contempt and derision.
Now it has a people in every corner of the earth. Policy
and arms at first set themselves against our King, and cut
Him off; and they combined against the infant Church, and
sought to cut off its memory from the earth. Ten several
times they essayed it with all their might, but prev'ailcd not
against the prayers and blessings of the saints — their only
armour. The infant Church, clothed with innocence and
endurance, was, among the armed offensive and warlike
nations, like a defenceless woman cast unto a mighty dragon,
upon whose existence one might not calculate for a moment.
She was forbidden to strike an alliance, offensive or defensive,
with any earthly institution. From the sphere of her purity
she shot a rebuke upon them all, for she was not permitted
to yield up one point of her laws, or conform to one of their
maxims. And when smitten, she was forbidden to smite in
her own behalf. Cast into this world with her own customs
and manners, diverse from those of all existing institutions,
she was like a naked foreigner cast upon a hostile shore,
ignorant of its manners and language, and incapable of
acquiring them, who might in compassion be nourished his
lifetime, but who could never be expected to bring over to his
language and fashion any one, much less the Avhole of the
people. Yet, behold, she liveth still, though so often pre-
vented. She hath at length softened the dragon into whose
jaws she was cast defenceless. She hath brought over to
favour and to uphold her those human institutions among
which she was cast, like one shipwrecked among his enemies.
She hath made herself a great name upon the earth. She is
cherished even in courts. She is not excluded from armies,
but hath many of her humblest and meekest children upon
the tented field. Kings do her reverence in their proclama-
tions, legislators take her to a share in their councils, generals
ascribe to her the glory of their achievements, and none
but a few abandoned men are found to mutter a word against
her mild and merciful influence.

158 ON PRAYER.

Oh, how another psalmist might sing the preservation and
triumphs of the Church ! She has been watched in times
the most perilous, and her prayers heard and answered from
the depths of dungeons. When discarded from all observation
of men, and extirpated, as they vainly thought, for ever, her
psalms and her prayers have ascended from the crannies of the
rocks unto the ears of the Highest in heaven. She has been
visited in the desert like another Hagar, when she was weep-
ing over the last of her children ready to die, and could afford
them no more nourishment from her withered breasts. Her
meek-eyed priests, clothed with salvation, have been drawn
from their cloistered seclusions to minister a word of grace
to national diets and assemblies. Her saintly maidens have
walked forth washed in innocence, and clothed with the
beauties of holiness ; and in this land, from the scaffolds of
martyrdom, with more than manly fortitude, have testified
till their ruthless persecutors blushed with shame, and the
stupid crowd stood transfixed with admiration. And her
men, when driven from every refuge, have given up homes
and possessions, and everything dear to man, and done their
religious worship in the sanctuary of inaccessible wilds ; and,
when hunted to desperation, have sometimes girt themselves
with rude weapons, and, being set on, proved themselves lions
in fight for the sake of the Lord of hosts. These were the
triumphs of the kingdom in the former ages, and should not
remain unsung.

And in the present, if her triumphs be more gentle they
are not less glorious. They who were the Church's persecu-
tors have become her friends, and joined in society with their
meanest subjects to make way for her holy laws. Nations
have forborne to molest her missionaiy servants, who are the
ambassadors of the kingdom. They have joined in a common
union to send her voice through all the earth, and her words
to the world's end. The heathen and barbarous powers are
suing for embassies of her ministers, against whom lately
their territorities were barred. All Christendom is beginning
to forget its partitions, and each party its long-remembered
grudge. The zeal for conformity, which threatened in Pro-
testant countries as much bloodshed as the mother of harlots

THE L ORU S PR A YER. 1 5 9

drank from the cup of her abominations, is giving way to
charity and forbearance. The wounds in Christ's mystical
body are heahng. The various members are content with
their various offices, and the word of the Lord is prospering
apace. Heathen lands see the salvation of our God, and dis-
tant isles rejoice that the Lord God omnipotent reigncth.
Oceans are crossed and continents wandered over for nations
to bring unto the obedience of the truth ; and God, by mani-
fold tokens, prepares the way of His servants before them;
and the hearts of the barbarous people are opened for the
reception of her laws. I call upon you to be stirred up to
magnify the Lord for His wonderful goodness unto the chil-
dren of men, whom He is visiting in mercy, to call out of them
a people for His name. He hath heard the prayers of His
people, and He hath answered them according to their re-
quest. He hath looked down from the seat of His holiness,
and had compassion upon the outcasts of Israel, and is pre-
paring to gather them into one. His anger is turned away
from heathen lands, and the isles have been made partakers
of His grace. He hath made bare His arm, and cast the idols
of the nations into the depths of the sea. He hath fulfilled
His promise to His saints, and given them favour among
princes. The name of Jesus is named in every tongue, and
the poor of every nation begin to hear His gospel gladly.
Let God be magnified for His great goodness, for His
loving-kindness to the children of men.

Here, then, brethren, is encouragement ! Formerly we pre-
sented you with argument to be unwearied in your applica-
tions to God for His blessing upon the wretched nations.
Pray that His kingdom may come, and that Satan's kingdom
may be destroyed, and that the kingdom of glory may be
advanced ! And that your prayers may be acceptable in the
sight of God, let these be with the uplifting of holy hands,
lest God bring against you the accusation He brought against
Israel : " When you make many prayers, I will not hear you ;
your hands are full of blood." " Who is the man that shall
ascend unto the hill of God .■' He who hath clean hands and a
pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn
deceitfully." " Wash you, therefore, make you clean ; put away

i6o ON PRAYER.

the evil of your doings; cease to do evil, and learn to do well;
seek judgment ; relieve the oppressed ; judge the fatherless ;
plead for the widow. Come, then, saith the Lord, and let us
reason together." But if you refuse to be of His kingdom your-
selves, how can you pray that others should be brought unto
it .'' If you belong to the enemy, and have in your hands the
weapons of rebellion, how will God accept any petition from
your hands ? But if you be servants of God, and partakers
of His Holy Spirit, then upon all occasions speak boldly in
behalf of the kingdom of His dear Son. Not only pray to
Heaven, but shew allegiance and bravery before men. So did
Peter and Paul at Jerusalem, when their lives were threatened
for it ; and Stephen, when his life was taken ; and in later
times Wickliffe, Jerome, Luther, and Knox. The kingdom
of God will never come if its subjects allow themselves to be
cowed and kept in check by the subjects of darkness. There
is a bravery, intrepidity, and devotion which become a Chris-
tian as well as they do the defender of his country; and there
is a skill in weapons which you must have if you would fight
the good fight in the place and age we live in. There are men
amongst us who affect to break the bands of God and His
Anointed, and to cast their cords away; who call their most
blessed government blind and grovelling superstition ; and
distil their power secretly through a thousand rills, like those
who take a city by poisoning its fountains and streams of water.
Be not alarmed. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh ;
the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak
unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his hot displeasure.
He shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in
pieces like a potter's vessel." Be stout-hearted and courageous,
therefore; allow no iniquity nor infidelity to be spoken before
you. Speak boldly in the behalf of Christ, and, when need is,
contend for the faith as it was once delivered to the saints.
Learn constancy here by the example of the children of
this world, who are wiser in their generation than the chil-
dren of light. Look to the history of England, and latterly
of Scotland, and remark with what unwearied steadfastness,
through long centuries of oppression, with hardly a ray
of hope or a chance of success, the friends of freedom and

THE L ORU S PR A YER. 1 6 1

constitutional liberty — who, I glory to say, were Puritans
chiefly, men of God — united, and were broken, and rallied
again, until they made good that fair form of government
under which we live. Yet these noble sons of this free-
born race adored not the reality but the idea of freedom ;
for she had not yet been carved out in her beauty. These
men of constancy and patriotism — I glory to say again they
were men of private worth, and mostly men of religious
lives — had no certainty nor assurance of success ; they were
crushed, and bruised, and scattered, and suppressed for long
intervals ; but their blood flowed warm and their hearts beat
high in the noble cause. They had no certainty of success,
I say ; no divine premonitions that their hopes would come
to pass, no guidance of Heaven how to bring it round ; but
they persevered, and, after many miscarriages. Providence
gave them what, with such pure and noble intentions, they
had laboured for. But as for us Christians, (mark the dif-
ference !) we have perfect certainty of success ; it is in the
fates ; it hath been revealed by a divine opening into the
cloudy future ; and come about it must, as sure as God exists,
who hath resolved and revealed it. Be courageous, then ; be
cheerful, as the mariner is when he discerneth his haven,
though far off; as the traveller, when he discerns, through
darkness, the twinkling light of his home. Exert you ; come
forward willingly and boldly. Think you of the reign of civil
freedom, — which, though the best of temporal blessings, is yet
but a temporal blessing, — it was not granted to your fathers
but at the instance of such imprecations, and covenanting, and
desperate contentions, as our history, from Magna Charta,
doth unfold. Think you of the universal reign of righteous-
ness, which canopies and contains the other, as the heaven of
heavens doth the ball of this earth — will it come about, think
you, at no expense "i Will God cheapen it down to the price
of a few cold prayers } No, indeed ! There must be such a
conjunct movement of Christians, — such a wrestling in prayer,
such a contention at home and abroad with the prince of
darkness, as hath not yet been seen or felt within his region.
Up, then, fellow-Christians, encouraged by the promises of
success, and stimulated to exertion by the greatness and noble-

VOL. III. L

1 62 ON PR A YER.

ness, and even difficulty, of the undertaking ! Let us join
hand in hand in behalf of God and the regeneration of the
world, praying Him in season and out of season, labouring by
word and deed, by sacrifice of time and of means, and by
every imaginable resource, to be instruments and means
in His hand for accomplishing the grand consummation,
when the wilderness and solitary place shall be glad, and
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose, and when
the earth shall be full of the glory of God as the waters cover
the sea ; when all men shall be blessed in Jesus, and all shall
call Him blessed! Amen, and amen.

[It is to be regretted that the remaining Discourses of this series were not
preserved by the author, — Ed.]

ON PRAISE.

ON PRAISE.

'"pHERE are various relations in human life which nature
hath established of her own self, independent both of
society and of religion, — as those of husband and wife, of
father and child, of brethren and kinsmen. The whole patri-
archal or family state, whose happiness and innocence poets
have sung and the oracles of truth recorded, and from whose
simple customs philosophers have derived the rudiments of
law and government, is the oldest and most constant associa-
tion of man to his fellow-man ; and it is everywhere produc-
tive of more virtue and happiness than all the associations
engendered by sentiment or established by society, — inso-
much, that one of the surest tests which can be had of any
project for the common weal, is to observe whether it tends
to weaken or confirm those alliances which nature hath be-
gotten, and for the maintenance of which she hath deposited
ample stores of affection in every breast.

There are, next, certain other relations of man to his fellow-
man which grow in the progress of political society, and
which are necessary to the common weal, though they have
no foundation in the natural constitution of our being. These
are the relations of servants and masters, of rich and poor, of
ignorant and wise, of high and low, of governors and governed,
— in the wise regulation whereof consists the happiness and
prosperity of a state ; in their unwise regulation, the slavery,
degradation, and thraldom in which many nations are held.

1 66 ON PRAISE.

The former is the work of the Creator, who hath implanted
the feehngs of domestic affection out of which they spring ;
the latter is the work of the creature for its own comfort and
defence. But the heart of man hath within itself a thousand
feelings which neither domestic nor political life can gratify.
It is rich in sympathies and antipathies, in love and enmity,
and hath a shade of feeling towards almost every one of its
fellows : some loving with more than brotherly love ; some
admiring for their nobleness ; some revering for their wis-
dom ; and some longing after for their goodness and mercy.
The soul asserts to herself a choice among the varieties of
men, and fills up her powers of liking and disliking, of admir-
ing and of despising, of trusting and of fearing, of loving
and of hating, out of the various characters with which she is
surrounded.

Hence there ariseth a third set of relations : those of sen-
timent, diverse from those of nature and those of society,
which spring out of the mind's free-will and choice, and which
are numerous according to the activity and wilfulness of every
spirit. These are the relations of friendship, through all the
degrees of intimacy, the varieties of esteem, the Platonic
forms of love, the communion of party, and the little circles
of society into which a community is divided upon some
principle different from that of blood or of political law.

These three distinct kinds of relationship are none of them
hid from the observation of religion, which takes cognisance
of them all, and teaches how they may be honestly and hon-
ourably performed. Nowhere are the affections of the family,
or the obligations of the state, or the sentiments of love and
kindness towards all, so strongly urged and maintained, as in
the Word of God ; and nowhere are the want of natural affec-
tion, the spirit of turbulence and misrule, the sentiment of
enmity and revenge, so frequently and severely condemned,
and so threatened with the penalties both of this life and of
that which is to come.

But it is not for the purpose of shewing the wholesome dis-
cipline under which religion holdeth these several departments
of human fellowship that we have distinguished between
them, but in order to shew you that after all these relations

ON PRAISE. 167

of the family, of society, and of sentiment, are fulfilled, there
remaineth a fourth set of relations — our relations to God —
which are not yet entered on, and out of which spring reli-
gion, the highest exercise of the soul, and all the acts of
public and private worship. The relation of man to his Maker
is founded upon principles as distinct as that of a child to his
parents, or of man to his fellow-man ; and to neglect it is
productive of results as unfavourable to our happiness and
dignity, as to fulfil it is productive of results favourable to
both.

Now, having proposed to discourse to you of public wor-
ship in general, and of its several parts, it seems the fit and
proper way of proceeding to open up to you at large the
various relations in which you stand to God, as your Creator,
your Preserver, your Redeemer, and your Sanctifier ; that
your minds being filled with the knowledge thereof, may per-
ceive it to be as unnatural a thing not to praise Him, and
worship Him, and serve Him, as it would be unnatural in a
son to abstain from the honour of his parents, in a servant
to abstain from the obedience of his master, or in a subject to
abstain from regard to the magistrate, or in a man to abstain
from the love of those who possess the qualities of amiable
and worthy men. Such knowledge of our standing towards
God, I hold absolutely necessary for the existence of true
devotion : which being founded on ignorance, is superstition ;
being founded on error, is will-worship and fanaticism ; but
being founded on truth, is the noblest exercise to which the
soul of man can address itself in this lower world.

In opening up this fourth set of relations, the highest, the
best, and the most honourable, — the alliance into which our
souls are honoured to stand to the Most High God, the Crea-
tor of heaven and of earth, and the Father of the spirits of
all flesh, — we shall begin with our relation to Him as our
Creator.

Had it not been for the fall, this feeling of connexion with
the God who formed every faculty, and furnished to every
faculty its proper action and enjoyment, would have been as
habitual and constant within us as the feeling of self-exist-
ence. Indeed, we would have had no feeling of self-existence.

1 68 ON PRAISE.

but of existence in God, had we been standing in the com-
pleteness in which our Creator's fingers left us. Our thoughts
would have been of Him, our feelings towards Him, our
actions for His sake ; and what the believer is represented to
be, — a member of the body which is Christ, a branch of the
vine which is Christ, — we would have been of God, members
of Him ; that is, sympathising with the Divine mind so far as
our nature gave us the ability, loving what He loved, and
hating what He hated, and pursuing what He desired.
Adam heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the midst
of the garden, — that is, his ear recognised the footsteps and
voice of God, to which ours are deaf in all His goings forth.
And Adam conversed with God, — that is, his faculty of reason
could commune with God, as man communeth with man.
But, alas ! darkness and an impassable gulf of separation hath
come between the sense and Him that planted the sense ;
between the reason and Him that endowed the reason.
There needeth a new birth, a new creation, a new image in
the soul ; there needeth a revelation, an uncovering of what but
for the fall would never have been veiled. We are, each one,
by nature blind and benighted as to our obligations to God,
and we yield Him no homage for what we hold of His hand.
The consciousness of high endowments doth beget no fervent
gratitude ; the conception of noble truths doth move the lips
to utter no praise ; the meditation of great designs doth
engender no looking into the sanctuary of our strength, and
we break not forth into singing when our purposes are crowned
with success. Ah, no ! Satan hath our faculties in his hold,
and he turneth these acknowledgments a thousand ways, but
never to God. He flatters our vanity by possessing us with
the selfridolatry that we are obliged only to ourselves. You
hear men boasting of their gifts, and applauding their actions.
They smite the hand upon the breast, and speak of their vir-
tues, of their honesty, and their honour ; they smite their
forehead, and boast of their knowledge ; they open up their
history, to prove how a man is the artificer of his own for-
tunes. Satan deludes others to refer their goodly condition to
education, and others to the age and country in which they
are born, and others to their noble stock and good descent.

ON PRAISE. 169

And to every quarter of idolatry he allows the people to go
astray, keeping them diligently from acknowledging the
Father and fountain of their being, the length of their days,
and the strength of their life.

Now, the heathen, who know not the noble origin of their
being, are not to be blamed for taking to themselves the credit
and honour of their actions. But we, who have had it revealed
to us from on high, that we are furnished with all strength and
sufficiency from the sanctuary above, and who know that,
without God's vital spark, we are but dust of the earth, and
shall, when that vital spark is withdrawn, resolve into idle
dust again, — we are guilty before God of every crime in exalt-
ing ourselves like the heathen, and boasting of our prowess
as they do, and by self-will exiling ourselves from the fellow-
ship of God.

To instruct our ignorance, the Lord Jesus, who is our Wis-
dom, who is the Word of God, hath come down ; and He
who is the Sun of righteousness hath arisen upon us with
healing in His beams. He hath come to turn us from dark-
ness to light, and from the power of Satan to serve the living
God. And by this Messenger of the covenant God com-
mandeth all of us to repent, seeing " he hath appointed a day
in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that
man whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath given assur-
ance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead."

And hath the Most High God, to instruct our ignorance,
made Himself known as our Creator, and asked of us to ac-
knowledge Him as such, and we choose not so to do ^ What
a horrid crime is this ! Is there no honour, is there no no-
bility, is there no love, is there no gratitude, or high ambi-
tion, that worms of the earth, being solicited by the High
and Holy One, who inhabiteth the praises of eternity, should
hold aloof, and be content to grovel still, — should be obdu-
rate, and render no tribute of thankfulness .'' What baseness,
what grovelling meanness, that will recognise no favour, no
dignity, no honour, in deriving our name and being from
Jehovah the highest ! And we will fight for precedency
here, and we will ransack antiquity to find an honourable
ancestry, and we will lust after the distinctions of heraldry,

I70 ON PRAISE.

and strive to get a name for the sake of our children ; but
the high origin of God for our Father, the ancient stock of
the Eternal, and the lofty line of the Most High, hath in it no
nobility ! What shocking perversity! what shameless impiety!

Now, that which the Lord our God requireth of us by the
ministry of His Son, is that we should draw near to Him in
full confidence, as children to a father, and hold with Him an
intercourse of affection, as with the Being from whom we have
derived our being, and who hath nursed and brought us up as
children. He doth not wish to burden us with obligations ;
but He wisheth that we should not be lost for want of affec-
tion. He pitieth to behold us under Satan's influence, led
astray amongst cold regions of selfishness and malice ; at war
with others, and at war with ourselves, and at war with His
Holy Spirit. He longs to restore us our lost peace ; to
adopt us back again as children, and admit us to all the
privileges of His family.

With such overtures of grace He hath sent forth His only-
begotten and well-beloved Son, who hath by the blood of
His cross made peace between us, and brought us nigh who
were heretofore afar off. There is no let nor hindrance ; you
may join the family of the angels and the archangels; you
may partake of the Divine nature, which spreads through all
the unfallen children of His hand ; be delivered from all self-
idolatry, and idolatry' of outward things ; brought into peace
with mankind, and restored to the worship and service of
your heavenly Father.

We are His workmanship, formed out of the dust of the
ground, and breathed upon by the living Spirit of God. And
the same inspiration of the Lord which gave us life, hath
given us more knowledge than the beasts of the field, and
more understanding than the fowls of heaven. Certainly
there was nought of it while yet we lay in our mother's
womb, or hung upon our mother's breast. It hardly dawned
in infancy, and in childhood it was feeble as the springing of
day ; and had the Almighty not found for us books and
teachers, and all the ministry of knowledge, we had arisen
untutored as the Indian, and savage as the denizens of the
wilderness. The meals of meat upon which we implore a

ON PRAISE. 171

blessing, and for which we render our thanksgiving, are not
more gifts of the Almighty than the lessons of knowledge or
the examples of goodness by which He maketh life and
health to overspread the soul. Truly, I know not to whom
the credit of our understanding is to be given, save to God ;
for man cannot create an understanding in any of the lower
creatures, neither can he set a crazed understanding to rights
in any of his fellows. The process of vegetation in the ground
is not more beyond our knowledge and our power, without
the help of the nutritious earth and the fostering sun, than is
the process of reason in producing thought and feeling from
outward impressions and intercourse with books and men.
The soul of man is a great unfathomable depth of wisdom.
Its thoughts, its feelings, its passions, its joys and griefs, its
fancies, its ambitions, and its far-ranging speculations, — can
any man reflect on these without wonder and astonishment }
Within so little compass, what wonderful things are con-
tained ! What knowledge ! what design ! what wonder-
working power ! A star is not too remote, though set in the
utmost depths of the azure heaven, but man shall fetch it out
of its dark chamber, and make it visible. He shall find a
line to sound its depth, and give you a conception of its in-
finite remoteness. And how he reacheth into time, backward
to the very edge of creation, and speculateth onward to the
very edge of the general doom ! He minuteth the changes of
the revolving heavens, and writeth beforehand the courses of
the stars. And he not only worketh in deep thoughts as an
occupation, but he hath entertainment, and taketh enjoyment
therein ; he maketh himself merry with their curious combi-
nations of wit and humour, and thence'deriveth a recreation
far above the recreations of sensible and visible things. In
short, the understanding of man hath in it a function almost
divine of inventing and creating. His ingenuity is immense,
and his devices without bounds ; and the imaginations of his
heart are beyond comparison more numerous than the sands
upon the sea-shore, or the stars in the firmament of heaven.
In the 8th Psalm, the Psalmist, after surveying all the handi-
works of God, rests upon man, and expatiates beautifully upon
this favourite child of the Maker's hand.

1 72 ON PRAISE.

Think, then, of the noble form of being which you have
derived from the hand of your Creator, and consider what
obHgations are thereby imposed upon you, — obhgations of
gratitude, love, and praise. God should be interwoven with
the whole tissue of our thoughts, seeing He is the Father of
thought. Every high imagination should bow the head to
Him, and every bold design should seek His safe-conduct to
its issues ; every affection should ask His permission to go
abroad ; every doubt should consult Him, and every resolved
doubt acknowledge His counsel. Enjoyment should pay a
first-fruit to Him, and sorrow should cry to Him for aid.
Health should praise Him with all its strength, and sickness
should repose its head upon the bosom of His consolation.
Fear should flee to Him for succour, and courage should
dress herself in the armour of God. Success should triumph
and glory in the Lord, and defeat rally itself beneath the
buckler of His salvation. And where to stop in this enume-
ration of our obligations to the God who formed our spirits,
and sustaineth them in all their goings forth, I find not ; for
we live in Him, and move in Him, and breathe in Him,
and in Him have all our being. Then I see not but that
every action and every movement of life, every aspiration or
word breathed from our lips, and every consciousness of our
existence, every emotion of the heart, every desire of the
heaving breast, and every pulsation of throbbing life, should
feel itself, and confess itself to be from the Giver of every
good and perfect gift, who giveth liberally, and upbraideth
not. And a habitual sense of the Divinity, a habitual rever-
ence of Him, should go with us, and dwell with us ; and as
we cannot forget ourselves, so ought we to be unable to forget
Him. He should cleave to us like our very being ; and, in-
stead of pride, vanity, or pleasure being the moving prin-
ciples of our life, it should be moved throughout by senti-
ments of piety, and gratitude, and wisdom. I do not say
that we should do nothing but express or feel these senti-
ments. We should do whatever is right to be done in our
station, think what is right to be thought, and speak what is
good to be spoken ; but the righteousness of the thing done,
felt, or spoken, should always be in mind ; the Source of our

ON PRAISE. i-jz

ability to do, feel, and speak rightly, should always be in
mind ; the regret for having failed to feel, speak, and do
righteously, or the thankfulness for having succeeded, should
always be present to us. And therefore, though our thought,
speech, and action differ not outwardly or ostensibly from the
world's, yet the faculties of the soul they exercise differ en-
tirely : in it, selfishness, vanity, or pride, or some ungodly
temper ; in us, faith, piety, and love towards God, the author
of our being.

Now, this worship of God, considered as the Creator, the
Preserver of our being, is what they are wont to call natural
religion ; and it is natural, in contradistinction to Christian
worship, which comes of our relation to God through a Re-
deemer, but natural it is not, in contradistinction to revealed.
For our relation to God as our Creator and Preserver, with
the worship which arises thence, is as much the fruit of reve-
lation as our relation to God as the Father of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, with the worship that springeth thence.
So that those who adopt the former, and do without the latter,
do, as it were, half believe God ; they believe in part, and
disbelieve the rest, though both parts are built upon the same
authority. If any one say, nature apprehends the former ; I
ask him how the Athenians, the learnedest of nations, were
ignorant thereof. For Paul first taught the Areopagus of
Athens, the most learned court of the world, those very doc-
trines of God, as the Creator of all men that dwell upon the
face of the earth ; their Preserver, and the Bounder of their
habitation ; God, who made the world, and all things therein,
(Acts xvii. 24-31.)

But Satan, who sitteth on a throne of division, and is the
father of division, being a murderer and a liar from the be-
ginning, suggests to our carnal minds that these overtures of
Fatherhood are common to all ; the peasant and the beggar,
and the vulgar mob may have it no less than we ; there is
no distinction in it, no aristocratic dignity, no solitary prero-
gative. Ah ! the bitterness of my heart ariseth against such
wretched sentiments. Nothing dignified, say you, in what is
common .-' Is there no dignity in a heart to feel, in a head to
understand, in a tongue to speak, in a hand to do, and in

1 74 ON PRAISE.

senses to enjoy ? And yet these are common as our kind.
No ; the dignity is not in the feeling heart, but in the heart
trained to feel according to form ; not in the understanding
head, but in the head taught to understand according to the
customs of our rank and party ; not in the truth-speaking
tongue, but in the tongue which can con the hypocritical
jargon of faction ; not in the head to do, but in this or that
skilful accomplishment ; not in the body to enjoy, but in the
colour or fashion of its raiment, or the modestness of its man-
ners. It is thus that Satan deludes us by his sophistry ; but,
O brethren, if there be no understanding, no just discern-
ment, no conscience of truth, then, I ask. Is there no charity*
is there no humanity, is there no fellow-feeling in the heart
of man, that thus they should be divided and separated
asunder by the devil's vile pretexts, — that they should forget
God's noble community of gifts, and part from each other
upon silly pretexts of vanity and selfishness ? Thus it is that
envy, hatred, contempt, dislike, and all unfriendliness are
engendered. We will not take counsel of God, or acknow-
ledge God ; we will take counsel of the devil, and him only
will we serve.

Be not you so, beloved brethren, who join together in the
common name of Christ to worship God, even the Father-
Be mindful of your common origin, and regard God as the
great Author of your being. Acknowledge to Him all your
gifts, and let a common, undivided sacrifice of thanksgiving
ascend to Him who hath formed us all so wonderfully and
well. We are His offspring ; He hath formed us of one
blood, to dwell upon the face of the earth, and hath before
appointed the bounds of our habitation. Therefore regard
each other as the tenants and occupiers, each one of so much
power and of so much enjoyment, not derived from your
own ability, but bestowed by the grace and goodness of your
heavenly Father. If any one, at any time, be possessed of
self-magnifying notions, and would be disabused of them, let
him try to restore sight to the blind, or feet to the lame ; to
create a blade of grass for his cattle, or a morsel of bread for
himself; to restore the memory of dotard age ; to give man's
experience to the infant, or self-command to the lunatic ; or

ON PRAISE. 1 75

to restore reason to the crazed idiot ; or, as the poet says, " to
minister to a mind diseased," or to " pluck from the heart a
rooted sorrow." What, then, meaneth this self-idolatry ?
What is man, that we should worship him ? or the son of man,
that we should bow before him ? He is of yesterday ; he is
crushed before the moth, and is altogether vanity. While he
standeth well with his Maker, he is a noble plant, whom the
great Husbandman shall transplant from earth to heaven,
from amongst the drooping, withering plants of earth, to the
perennial plants of heaven. Away from his Maker, he is
nothing: a tolerated rebel, whom his rightful Master could
crush with a blow ; a vaunting fool, whose self-willed words
are endured for a day by his Creator, even as a father
endures the folly of his child, if happily by long-suffering he
may bring him to repentance.

Seeing then, brethren, we are the disciples of Christ, and
know the common origin of our creature-gifts, and who it is
that maketh us to differ, it behoveth us to bestow upon God
all the honour, and according as He hath exalted us the
more, to devote ourselves to Him the more, and to behave to
each other after the Christian rule, that he who is strongest
should help the weakest, and he who is oldest should assist
the youngest, and so enjoy, as it were, a community of spiri-
tual gifts. This is the root of Christian charity, and of the
congregational brotherhood after which we seek. This is the
death of envy, malice, and all unrighteousness. That moment
we recognise God as the fountain of our strength, that
moment we die to ourselves and to the world, and join our-
selves to His Spirit. Without such dependence, there is no
religion ; without such acknowledgment of our Creator, there
is no love of the Saviour ; without such devotion, there is no
love of Christ. Therefore, beloved brethren, attend the more
carefully to that which hath been said, and the Lord give you
understanding in all things.

Therefore, beloved brethren, our joy and crown, join your-
selves to God, your Creator ; acknowledge Him in all your
ways, and He will direct your paths. Pay your vows to Him,
and He will increase your store. Possess your souls in peace,
and your bodies in purity before Him, and to the one He

176 ON PRAISE.

will send salvation, to the other balmy health. You will love
the light of His countenance all your life long ; and when He
calleth you away, you will depart to honour, and glory, and
immortality; and His work shall be glorious upon you when
mortality is swallowed up in life, and corruption hath put on
incorruption, and then your soul shall know its nobility, which
here is all defaced. Then shall the gold, which now is dim,
become bright as at the first, and the fine gold, which now is
changed, become seven times refined ; and the world shall be
purified, and wickedness shall cease, and your Creator dwell
with you in very deed, and your Saviour rule you with His
rod of righteousness, and his sceptre of love.

II.

"P\EARLY-BELOVED Brethren, — In a former discourse
we set forth the necessity of spiritual fellowship and
brotherhood among the members of the same Christian congre-
gation ; — not intending thereby to break down the good and
wholesome distinction of rank and profession, which are neces-
sary to both the spiritual and temporal welfare of all, but to
suspend their operation whenever we are met together for the
purposes of religion. In all the avocations of human life, God
hath appointed a righteous rule for our guidance, and to every
rank He hath taught their relative duties, which can at no
rate be neglected ; and thus it comes to pass that the doctrine
of Christ joins and cements and hallows the various relations
in which man standeth to his fellow-man ; and when any one
in the name of Christ preaches discontent and disagreement
and insurrection, he is a deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing,
and unworthy of this holy ministry, which is peace, piety,
and love. The lesser feeling of worldly difference must give
way to the greater feeling of spiritual and eternal equalit}'.
And when we gather ourselves together as into this place,
servant and master, man and child, governors and governed,
to worship the God of our salvation, and meditate on the
things of our peace, we are equal and alike, and no senti-
ment of difference or distinction should then be permitted ;
no act of reverence or service should then be enforced. The
master should be as willing to help as the servant, the
greatest should be as the least, and the oldest as the youngest.
For we are met on purpose to forget the world and our worldly
avocations, and therefore every memorial of them should be
VOL. III. M

178 ON PRAISE.

dismissed as an evil intruder. We are met to worship one
God, and serve one Master ; therefore other masters and
other services should not divide our thoughts : and we are
met to humble ourselves, and bow our heads in the dust
before One that is alone exalted ; therefore we should shake
off all self-magnifying acts or thoughts, as arts of the Enemy
to hinder the humility of our souls. Finally, we are in truth
and verity the members of the same body, which is the
Church, and under the same head, which is Christ, whose rule
is, that the greatest should be as the least, and the highest as
he that doth serve. And to crown all, God will not accept a
divided service ; a part will not content Him ; the homage of
the whole man is His ; and no one dare intermeddle with
His rightful sovereignty, who hath said, "Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and strength, and soul, and
might."

Then what is due in the house of God during the service of
public worship, is likewise due from one to another in every
place where an act of worship or of spiritual communion is
carried on. In families, when the father performs the office of
priest, and warns his household on things pertaining to their
souls, or offers their spiritual sacrifices of praise and prayer be-
fore the mercy-seat of God, he should regard all as equal and
alike, and speak to his servants as to his children, and to his
children as to his servants. Likewise, when men meet together
for spiritual converse, or when, upon ordinary occasions, things
of the Spirit are discoursed of. In all things appertaining to
the Church of Christ and the edification of souls, the Christian
community of feelings should prevail, the eternal equality of
gifts should be remembered ; for we are then on sacred
ground, and the shoes of every man's dignity should be taken
from his feet, and we should walk upon the same common
earth, and feel the natural equality of sinful men. It is not
sight, but faith, which then directs our goings ; and the
sightly things of life have no eftect, save to cloud and eclipse
the revealed things of faith. It is of things unseen we com-
mune, of things above the earth that we discourse, with things
eternal that we are concerned ; and therefore the degrees that
should be observed arc the degrees of faith and of charity ;

ON PRAISE. lyg

the station that should be held in estimation is the spiritual
station of the Church; and the promotion that should be
sought after is the promotion in the stature of the new man,
which is created after the image of God, in righteousness and
true holiness.

To establish such a sacred region of communion and fel-
lowship, whence no earthly ambitions nor vanities should
intrude among the children of this flock, is the high aim which
we proposed to you in our last discourse. To create in every
man's mind a habitual reverence for things spiritual, and a
relish for spiritual discourse, and love of spiritual men, so
that in your goings out and comings in you should love to
dilate upon the concerns of the soul and the daily experi-
ence of the grace of God, rather than upon the transient
novelties and follies of life ; that in the home and by the way-
side we might be at home with God, and nourish the senti-
ment of His presence and guardianship at all times, and be
ready to commune thereon with all men who are not deaf to
Divine admonition ; — this, beloved brethren, is the desire of
our hearts, and our prayer to God for the sake of yourselves ;
and for this end we shall gladly expend the utmost powers
of argument and persuasion which the Lord our God hath
vouchsafed, and may be pleased to vouchsafe, to our spirit.

For this purpose of building up in every man's heart a
sanctuary of spiritual things, and of establishing amongst you
all a spiritual fellowship in the members of Christ, we thought
it best to discourse in order of the various parts of Divine
worship, that your minds, being filled with their sacredness,
and your hearts burdened with their obligations, no vain and
worldly thought might find room, and your spirits have rest
for a season, to be possessed and filled with the things of the
Spirit of God. It seemed to us better to enlarge your know-
ledge of these holy engagements, than to rebuke the ignorance
which may at present exist ; to address ourselves to your
understanding, rather than provoke your zeal ; to stir your
minds up by way of remembrance, rather than challenge what
at present may be wrong. And now may the Lord, while
we teach others, teach ourselves ; and while we shew to them
the holiness of His service, may He shew to us who lead and

i8o ON PRAISE.

guide the same, how we may best direct the people in the
paths of His hohness.

Follow the inhabitants of this land to the remotest regions
of the earth, which they have won with their spear and their
bow, and where they dwell among the nations which they
have subjected, and see if they do not associate with each
other ; and when they are met together, if they do not dis-
course of the land of their fathers, and the home of their
childhood ; if they do not peruse again and again every
account they receive from its distant shores ; if they do not
read it to their friends, and talk of it to their acquaintance,
and interest their hearts about it, though it is past and distant,
more than with all that is passing around. It is not fear that
leads them to associate together ; for they fear not to dwell
alone, surrounded with whole nations of the subject people ;
but it is love, it is sympathy, community of sweet feelings
and proud recollections, and happy hopes of returning again
to their well-beloved land. Again, if you follow the footsteps
of our countrymen resident among the nations of Europe,
when they leave you in quest of health, or recreation, or
amusement, what, of all they find in these lands, is the most
dear to their eyes .'' Is it not the sight of a countryman,
walking in the fearlessness, and talking in the liberty, of his
native land .-' And dearer than all the music and melody of
foreign parts is the voice of their native speech ; and the
privileges of their native land are the theme of their consolation
amidst the state of arbitrary power ; and the hope of return-
ing to it, after a season, is the most delightful of their earthly
visions. Now, are not the disciples of Christ as settlers and
colonists amongst enemies whom they have subdued .-* — that
is, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of
life, the evil affections and passions of the mind, worldly
desires and worldly honours, with all the ambitions and
desires that follow them. In these it is their profession to
intermeddle not. Christ hath put them under their feet.
They have overcome them in the name and strength of the
Most High ; and being surrounded with them on every side,
what is left but to despise them, and pity those who are led
astray of them, and to hold themselves for the communion

ON PRAISE. i8i

and fellowship of those things into the love of which they
have been born by the Spirit of God ? Also, they are as
noble strangers living amongst a degraded people, whom
they may and will endeavour to excel, but in whose degrada-
tion they will have no fellowship whatever. They know that
they are descended of a high stock, men of God, whose chil-
dren they are by a spiritual birth. The people around them
know of no such noble alliance with Heaven, but act as the
children of the world and of the wicked one. They know
that after a season they shall return to dwell with their
Father in heaven ; the people around them think of nothing
beyond death and the grave : they hold intercourse with the
home after which they sigh, and with the Lord whose absence
they lament, by prayer, by His Word, and the indwelling of
His Spirit ; the people around them hold no such noble inter-
course. What sympathy is there between light and dark-
ness } what communion between Christ and Belial i* — even as
little is there between the true servants of Christ and the true
children of the world.

Much more could I say of the bonds of brotherhood in
which Christians are united by their work of faith, their
patience of hope, and their labour of love ; and to much
greater extent would the Scriptures bear me out which repre-
sent His disciples as one with Him, as He is one with God, —
as united to Him as wife with husband, bone of His bone,
and flesh of His flesh. Hence He is not ashamed to call the
Church His spouse, and to promise that He will present her
unto God, pure and blameless, without spot or wrinkle, or
any such thing. Again, He saith, " I am the vine, and ye are
the branches ; whosoever abideth in me, and I in him, the
same beareth much fruit ; for without me ye can do nothing."
Again, " I am the bread sent down from heaven ; unless ye
eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no part in me."
Again, " Ye are the temple of the living God ; as God hath
said, I will dwell in thee, and walk in thee ; I will be their
God, and they shall be my people." And again, " Ye are the
body of Christ and members in particular ; by one Spirit we
are all baptized into one body." And again, " For we are
members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." And so,

1 82 ON PRAISE.

in a thousand places, is this mystical union of Christ with
believers set forth, which is the perfection of that community
of saints which we have been this day setting forth, and for
the sake of which we are commanded to leave father and
mother, and brother and sister, and become His disciples.

These things I say not to encourage a spirit of separation
and pride on the part of believers, and of enmity towards the
unconverted world, but in order to justify that peculiarity
which there is in their nature, that organisation which there
ought to be in the Church, and that frequent congregation of
themselves together for their mutual edification and growth
in grace.

III.

rSALM ix. I, 2.

I will praise thee, O Lord, with 7ny ivhole heart; 1 7viU she7v forth all thy mar-
vellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee ; I will sing praise to thy
name, O thou Most High,

TN proceeding to discourse of the praise of God, which forms
a common, and, I think, the most noble and exalted part
of divine worship, I recall to your minds a previous dis-
course concerning the knowledge of God, and of His acts,
that love of His character, and other forms of feeling to-
wards Him, which are all presupposed by the act of praise ;
for before we can praise we must approve, and before we
can approve we must apprehend, and before we can appre-
hend we must inquire and know. The mind first informs
itself of the existence of God, then of His attributes and
works, which having well perused and considered, and highly
approving, it becomes wrought upon by its much delight, and
bursts forth into a song of celebration and joy. The heart is
satisfied beyond what it can contain, — it calls upon the ima-
gination for conception, and the imagination calls upon the
fancy for images, and these call upon the tongue for language,
and the language calls for melody and music to enliven the
sense, so that the whole man is wrapt into a kind of ravish-
ment,— the sense, the understanding, the heart, and the
imagination do all join together to adore the most excellent
Author of their being, who, well pleased with so full a share
of the powers of man, lends His gracious ear to the praise of
His lowly creatures, and sheds upon their awakened and
opened souls blessings which refresh their spirits like the dew
which falleth upon the tender grass. In this solemn and ex-
alted service of praising our Creator and Redeemer, all other

i84 ON PRAISE.

religious employments lend their aid. We read the Word to
know the only true God, and Him whom He hath sent, and
we observe the ways of His providence, to be instructed in
His dealings towards men. His works, which are wonderful
and wise, we peruse, in order to see the might and cunning
of the right hand of the Most High ; and the knee we bend
in prayer, in order that our heart m^y be softened by the
tender mercies, and enriched with the blessings of Jehovah.
And the prayer lifted up and answered from on high, the
creation round about discoursed over and understood, provi-
dence observed and wisely interpreted, the word studied and
spiritually discerned ; these and all other religious duties do
but furnish those materials upon which the soul may brood,
until, being filled with her high and heavenly musings, she
overfloweth in the utterance of praise and adoration to Him
who hath filled her with good, and crowned her with loving-
kindness and with tender mercy.

The praise which is not founded upon knowledge is for-
mality or flattery, and may be accounted of by man, who
hath not an eye to perceive its hollowness, or a heart to reject
its falsehood, and whose vanity may feel flattered by that
which his honesty would reject ; but even the better and
nobler sort of men will not bear praise from those who know
them not sufficiently, but hate its heartless tones and extra-
vagant expressions, and forecast how soon it may turn into
spiteful abuse ; and those who offer such lip-language and
tongue-service are set down as the most fallen and ignoble of
their kind, who sell approbation and praise, the most valuable
utterances of the soul, for some speculation of personal gain.
If such an offering of praise be hateful to the better and
nobler sort of men, how much more hateful to God, who hath
no ear for flattery and no eye for beholding deceit, who can-
not be deceived by appearances, or won upon by protesta-
tions, but must have heart-homage or none ! The Roman
Catholic maxim, (with what truth imputed to them I know
not, but most certainly acted upon in their service of God,)
that ignorance is the mother of devotion, is the most wicked
and irreligious notion which ever possessed the heart of man.
For though there be parts of religion for which no evidence

ON PRAISE. 185

of the sense, nor demonstration of reason can be had,
standing simply as revelation, with no other evidence than
that external evidence with which it was first ushered into
the world, and that inward manifestation of light and happi-
ness which it makes within the souls of all who by faith
receive it, for the obtaining of which faith is the organ, as
sense and understanding are the organ for things created and
made, — still even of this there is a knowledge to be had before
it can have any influence over the soul or life of man. It
must be studied where it lies revealed in the Word of God, —
it must be received by faith into the inward parts of the soul,
there to work its natural effect, and afterward come forth in
word and deed with its natural demonstration. So that
knowledge of things believed of God, as well as knowledge of
things visible and experienced of God, is necessary before
any act of worship or of obedience can proceed. And ignor-
ance is the mother of many things towards men, with which
purblind man is fain to be content, but of nothing towards
God is it the mother except sin, dishonour, condemnation, and
wrath. And therefore, before you praise the Most High, or
pour out your souls in His holy presence, be sure that you
know and believe that He is, and what He is, and wherein
consisteth that excellency of being which calls forth your
admiration and praise. For St Peter says, "Add to your faith
knowledge," or know Him in whom you have believed, and
know those things which He hath delivered unto you ; and
St Paul prayed for his converts, that their souls might be
enriched with all knowledge and spiritual understanding, and
exhorts them to the remembrance of those doctrines which
he had taught, saying, " By which ye are saved, if ye keep in
mind the things which I delivered unto you." But the know-
ledge of God, as manifested by His only-begotten Son,
and revealed by the Spirit to the prophets and apostles, —
the various truths concerning creation, providence, redemp-
tion, and everlasting salvation set forth in the Holy Scrip-
tures,— do form, if I may so speak, but the rude and raw
materials out of which the living temple of the renewed heart
is built up for the spiritual sacrifice of praise. For though,
as hath been said, no honest praise can be bestowed upon

1 86 ON PR A /SB.

anything whereof we know not the properties, the mere know-
ledge of its properties will not alone suffice to produce in us
admiration and praise. To know certain things is to despise
them, to know others is to hate them, to know others is to
pity and compassionate them, and so on through all the con-
ditions of dislike into which the soul is cast by the perception
of outward things. There are an infinite number more of
qualities to which the soul is indifferent, and of which, there-
fore, it is content to remain in ignorance. And even of those
to which it draws with sympathy, there are few which it
feels called upon to exult over and praise. Some it adheres
to with a slight social affection, to others it joins itself in
friendship, and to others it knits itself in closest bonds of love.
But those forms of attachment do not yet arise into the strain
of praise. Praise in opposition to blame we bestow upon
them ; but this is only the praise of approbation, which hath
little kindred with the praise of our Creator. This aims
above the strain of love, and requires to be conjoined with
the sincerity and ardour of affection, the exhilaration of joy,
the exaltation of the mind, the seizure of the imagination, the
ravishment of the soul, a certain astonishment of the faculties
of thought, and an enthusiasm of the faculties of feeling,
which is not produced upon man save when he is wholly
engrossed and taken up with some grand and mighty object.
When something stupendous is presented to his eye, or some
most full and overpowering melody to his ear, — when his
imagination is carried to soaring flights upon the wings of
genius, or his heart is captivated with the account of some
mighty act of devotion, — when his energies are wound up to
some dreadful enterprise, his hope upon the eve of some great
disclosure, or his fear stands trembling upon the edge of
some precipice from which, by a most unexpected providence,
it is delivered, — when plucked like a brand from the burning,
or fallen from a wreck in the midst of the stormy wave, and
placed in a sure place ; — when such events as these occur,
they bring the soul into conditions analogous to that which
should possess it when celebrating the mighty Lord, who is
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders.

To the knowledge, therefore, of His nature gathered out of

ON PRAISE. 187

those three books, — the book of revelation, the book of crea-
tion, and the book of providence, — there must be added many
thoughts and meditations thereon, much exercise and dis-
ciphne of the soul therewith, before any effect will be produced
capable of throwing the mind into those moods which are
proper for the God of our salvation. The judgment must
ponder the lessons which have been learned of His mighty
acts, — it must weigh them against those actions upon the
earth which breed admiration : His doings as a man of war,
by His name the Lord of hosts, when He overthrew Pharaoh
in the Red Sea, and the Assyrians in the dead of night, and
smote the Amalekites and the nations of Canaan ; His doings
as a deliverer of His people from the hands of the encn)y, —
of Israel out of the hands of Pharaoh and out of the hands
of Haman, of David from his persecutors, of Daniel from the
lions' den, and of the three children from the sevenfold fierce-
ness of the fiery furnace ; His doings as a faithful friend, when
He preserved Joseph from the house of his father in order by
him to preserve the house of his father ; when he preserved
Moses from his childhood, and brought David from feeding
sheep, and the apostles from being fishermen of the Galilean
lake to convert the world ; — all these His wonderful acts unto
the children of men, the judgment must weigh against those
puny and imperfect works of men to which it yieldeth the
incense of its praise; and perceiving these to be as the small
dust of the balance, it must keep and reserve itself for the
admiration and praise of Him whom alone it becometh the
comprehensive soul of man to exalt. And those actions of
men which we do behold and admire, what are they but a
little of His power conceded for the accomplishment of His
everlasting purposes ; so that, like the subalterns or soldiers of
an army, they do but carry into effect the prearranged con-
ceptions of the Lord of the hosts of men. Then the reason
of man should strive to take measure of the wisdom of God,
which, though it exalt itself above the clouds, and hide its
head in light which is inaccessible, is still in its visible and
comprehensible part so excellent as to amaze the faculties of
the mind. The wisdom of things created and made, their
skilful contrivance, whether you pry with the microscope into

1 88 ON PRAISE.

the subtlest parts of subtlest things, or with the telescope
take the scope and depth of the starry heavens, — whether
you regard the things which fluctuate and change at every
instant upon the outward surface of things, or the solid things
themselves which undergo no perceptible change, — whether
you mark the effects of seasons, or the slighter effects of day
and night, or, rising into higher science, mark by distant
periods the libration of the solar system, or the slight shift-
ings of the fixed stars, — whether, with Newton, you resolve
all their motion by the law of the fallen stone, and weigh the
several planets in a balance, or with a gauge try the sta-
bility of the whole system, and put it to the proof of calcu-
lation as you would an orrery or any other mechanical instru-
ment,— examine how much it will give in one direction and
find its counteraction in another, and so work out the great
result that it is stable, and hath in it no principle of self-
destruction, but will endure until the same arm which con-
structed it take it to pieces again ; — in whichever way you
search into the wisdom of the invisible God, as manifested in
His wonderful works, you are fain to cry out, " O Lord our
Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth ! who hast set
thy glory above the heavens. When I consider thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou
hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and
the son of man, that thou visitest him ?"

And again, if from this we turn to the visits He hath paid
to men, from time to time, by His ministering servants, and
finally by His own Son, and consider the wisdom of the written
Word, the soul is filled with a delight more inward, more
conscious, (if I may so speak,) and therefore more full of joy.
Oh, if I were to speak of the majestic apparitions of Jehovah
in the days of old, and the words which have proceeded out
of His mouth, since the promise first given in the garden of
Eden down to the end of His revelation in Patmos ; of the
pleasure which the souls of righteous men have taken in the
psalms of David, and the wisdom of Solomon ; of the majesty
of each prophet in his kind, and of the fulness of wisdom
which is in Christ Jesus, and the teaching of His Holy
Spirit, time would fail me for the task.

ON PRAISE. 189

The wisdom of all these things created and revealed having
been weighed and compared with anything wTought by the
soul of man, we are taught to refrain our high commendations
of poets and philosophers and sages, or to honour them in a
lower degree, as themselves the workmanship of the invisible
God, and reserve the elevations of our soul, the ecstasies of our
joy, the exuberances of our feeling, and the ardour of our heart,
for the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, who alone doth
wonders, that excelleth in glory, and speaketh words which
surpass in wisdom.

But these contemplations of God, however high and elevated,
and however they fill the various chambers of the mind, and
cause it to overflow with utterances of admiration and praise,
are not of themselves able to produce the highest frames of
the soul with which our Maker should be served. To these
must be added feelings of our personal obligation, produced
by the study of those things for which we are beholden to
Him as individuals, and which constitute Him our Father, our
Redeemer, our God, and our King, — the preservation of our
past lives, our deliverance in perils, our escapes from tempta-
tions, our thousand meals of meat, and ten thousand inward
feelings of happiness, and ten thousand times ten thousand
active cogitations of the mind, — our fears which He hath
made to miscarry, our griefs which He hath turned into joys,
and our adversities which He hath converted to advantages,
— our dear parents and tender relatives, our kind friends and
forgiving enemies ; — these the good gifts of His providence to
us who have been a stififnecked and rebellious generation, and
who would not have Him to reign over us, must likewise be
remembered in order to add the enthusiasm of gratitude and
of confidence and love, to the admiration and astonishment
produced by the study of His wonderful works, and the know-
ledge of His most excellent wisdom.

But there is a part of the mind more influential still which
requireth to be touched ere we be altogether wound up and
addressed to the praise of our God ; which are the affections
of the new man created in righteousness and true holiness.
If the soul hath been converted from the service of Satan to
serve the living God, and have the sense of His everlasting

I90 ON PRAISE.

favour through the atonement of Christ ; if, from being rebel-
lious, she hath become- obedient, and from being wilful and
obstinate, hath become gentle and docile to the word of God ;
if she have become merciful from being proud, meek from
being high-minded, holy from being sinful, temperate from
being lustful, and through all the various faculties of her
nature, regenerated in the image of God ; — then it cometh to
pass that not only as a creature to a great and mighty
Creator, or as a fool before the Perfection of wisdom, or as a
blind mole before the Father of lights, but as a son before a
Father, as a captive before a Redeemer, as a doomed criminal
before a Saviour, she rejoiceth with fulness of joy, and hath a
peace which passeth all understanding, and which the world
cannot give and which it cannot take away. These personal
experiences of God as our Preserver from the snares of this
world, and as our Redeemer from the thraldom of sin, and our
portion for evermore, being added to the former estimation of
His counsels and His acts, and all growing out of the rich
and liberal knowledge which is to be found written of Him in
the books of revelation, creation, and providence, do work up
the whole man to those high elevations with which it is comely
to serve the living God, and with the service of which He is
well pleased. Praise produced by the intermingling of these
various feelings is acceptable praise. And when the soul is
full of such knowledge and such feeling, it is never weary of
praise. And it is only because of our ignorance of God and
preoccupation with visible things that we praise Him not with
a constant song, with a constant dedication of all our powers
to His holy service.

But alas ! instead of drinking at the true fountains of praise,
and obtaining thence the exhilaration of soul and cheer-
fulness of heart, the joy and rejoicing which would make the
praise of the Lord necessary to our very existence, we surren-
der ourselves up to various low spheres of thought and obser-
vation, filling our minds with the knowledge of some portion
of His creatures, exercising our souls with the delight thereof,
until they come to occupy the place of the Creator; and instead
of being thankful to God for the delight which He hath made
them to yield, and deriving from them an occasion of praising

ON PRAISE. 191

Him, our fallen nature devotcth itself to the sensual visible
thing, — to the creature-comfort, the heart's ease, the soul's
delight, instead of arising to the Creator. We wed our-
selves to those transient forms of pleasure, we give our mind
to their study, and our heart to their enjoyment ; all those
sensibilities which were formed for the Creator are intercepted
by the creature ; we grovel upon the earth, are of the earth,
earthy; we never know the dignity of our being, and die in
the pit in which we were born, without any newness of life
begun here, or any expectancy of life hereafter. Some men
of the lowest condition will apply themselves to and grow
skilled in things of the lowest kind, and extol the meats and
the drinks of which they daily partake, whose god is their
belly, and whose glory is in their shame ; to whom it is like
life from the dead to have tidings of a feast, and. to prepare
for it is their joy, to go up to it their delight ; the savour and
relish of it is their ecstacy, and the enjoyment of it the
devout worship of their soul ; to be filled with it is their
benignity and peace, and to talk of it afterwards the refresh-
ment and delight of their brutal being. This swinish bestiality
of nature hath been begotten by the knowledge and under-
standing of things sensual, and must be cast out by the under-
standing and relish of things spiritual, by the knowledge of
God's nature and excellency in all parts of His dominions,
and the cultivation of those parts of our nature which long
after higher and better things than those created and made.
Above this idolatry of the appetites, there is the idolatry
of our outward estate, whether it consists in our personal
beauty or accomplishments, in our manners, our attire,
our wealth and inheritance, our reputation or our influence ;
upon the excellences of which the mind brooding, be-
comes so delighted as to forget the duty of gratitude to
God, and the becomingness of modesty, and breaks forth,
whenever occasion offers, into ascriptions of praise to. these
transient and unprofitable creatures. One to his horses,
another to his dogs ; one to his house and wide domain, an-
other to the profits of his speculations ; one to his gracefulness
of person, and another to his accomplishments of mind, — will
pour out those strains of an exulting and triumphing soul.

192 ON PRAISE.

which they find not in all the services of public or of private
worship. O brethren, if we plead off from so vain a parade
of our estimable qualities, who is he that can plead off from
the silent meditation of the same, or say that his chief hopes
and fears and desires are embarked therein, or deny the
delight which he hath when they prosper, the blank dis-
appointment when they decline and fall away ? which, if
we speak not out, do we not manifest them by signs stronger
and less equivocal than speech, by display of them in our
person and our equipage, by our proud bearing to those who
have them not, and our courtesy to those whom God hath
honoured with like honour as ourselves ? A third class, again,
bestow their idolatry upon something more intimate still,
which the world hath not and cannot have, which is ours and
no one's elsye, and therefore highly valued because it is our own.
Every man as he hath a countenance which differeth from
all men, so hath he a distinct character, a distinct history, a
distinct disposition, and indeed hath every thing distinguish-
able from all others. Thus his personality, his egoism, or his
selfishness, is dearer to him than all which he hath in common
with the species. And everything he will allow to be tram-
pled upon before he will permit this to be infringed. It is
the holy of holies of a man, within which no one may presume
to set foot but himself alone ; and as the high priest entered
not into the holy of holies without incense, so we hardly enter
into our holy of holies save for the purposes and with the instru-
ments of self-adoration. I myself, my opinions, my gestures, my
schemes, my feehngs, my experiences, how highly these pre-
ponderate in my mind, and how magnificent in the minds of
others, who are in like manner occupied and taken up with
themselves! As we walk along the street, and sit unoccupied
at home, and lie awake upon our pillow, and converse with
a friend, or even with one who hardly hears it, this person-
ality hath its homage and its ascriptions of praise. It takes
alarm on the slightest aggression, hath pleasure to hear
another's invaded, but as death hateth an invasion upon itself
In high life it is called a man's honour, in middling life a
man's character, and in low life a man's honesty. It is the

ON PRAISE. 193

root of malice and injustice, the source of strifes and quarrels,
— its service is oaths and blows, its incense blood.

These and the other idolatries which occupy the soul of
men, and cheat the Creator of His homage and His praise, are
all preceded by a knowledge of the thing which we idolise,
and a frequent consideration of its merits, and preference of its
virtues to all other things, a frequent taste of its enjoyments, and
dedication to its service. For from the lowest to the highest of
these idolatries there arc some charms for which they are
valued. The idolatry of the body and the things of the body
ariseth in the first instance from the pleasure there is in those
bodily sensations which arc called health, and the hatred of
those which are called disease; this being much thought upon
keeps away the thought of higher pleasure, and induces a love
of pleasant sensations in general — of the savour, of the taste,
and of the palate; and then a most studious care of bodily
health is often punished by that which is the destruction of
health, the studious desire of corporal pleasures. Again, the
idolatry of outward things ariseth from the pleasure which
we have in society, in approbation, and in ease. What-
ever contributes to the good opinion of others we there-
fore covet, and possessing we adore. Knowing nothing
higher than the approval of our brethren, we seek out-
ward and inward commendations which we may display
before them, and which we know they are prone to admire
and exalt. And having found them, we bring them for-
Avard into the great mart of opinion and display; and being
passed current with those amongst whom we have cast our
lot, we are satisfied ; being admired, we are exceedingly de-
lighted ; and where our heaven of delight is, there our heart
being also, we have no regards, but cold, formal, and conven-
tional ones, for God and the things of God. The third kind of
idolaters perceiving how fluctuating and uncertain are those
things which can be outwardly gazed on, how versatile is the
public voice, and how helpless to a man in his greatest straits,
make a more noble deduction, and observing those parts over
which others have no influence, they address their observations
to those things which are purely selfish, — their own estimation,
VOL. III. N

194 ON PRAISE.

their own inward praise, their own good condition in respect of
knowledge and understanding and conscience. These are the
epicures of the soul, if I may so speak, as the first were of the
body. And though each of the three veins be shallow and
unproductive of the true ore of manhood, this surely is the
richest of the three ; but though the richest it is the most diffi-
cult to work, and, if I may keep up the figure, splits into various
veins of various degrees of impurity ; but when the right one
is hit on, as by the fathers of the stoical philosophy, it is the
far noblest vein of character which man can work. But if
from the first class come forth all those forms of voluptuaries
who are devoted to the refinements of the sense, each in
his beastly kind, after that sense to which he devotes the
immortal soul he is possessed of; and if out of the second
class of idolaters come those tribes of vain showmen and show-
women, the figurante and performers upon the stage of life,
who die like the butterfly in their season, and come forth
decked again in their showy trains, to be gazed upon and praised,
vain children of Belial, by children of Belial admired, and by
Belial hereafter to be exalted to his limbo of vanity, there to
live in heartless vanities, in reproaches, in exposures, and in
false flatteries, to all eternity ; — then there come out of the
third class of idolaters selfish men of every name; selfish in
their opinion, that is bigots ; selfish in their benefits, that is
certain of a return ; selfish in their schemes, that is dark
intriguers ; selfish in their gains, that is monopolisers ; selfish
in their pursuits, that is malcontents ; selfish in their speeches,
that is churls ; and, finally, selfish in their joys and pleasures,
that is misers and misanthropes.

But it is not to describe nor yet to malign these three
forms of idolatry to which the world is devoted, that we intro-
duce the notice of these remarks into the body of this dis-
course concerning the praise of God, but to teach you the
truth of that doctrine which we laid down before — that
praise is not the beginning of our acquaintance with the
thing which is praised, but is the result of much knowledge
of its nature, of much understanding of its secrets, of much
preference, and of much enjoyment, — the result of long ac-
quaintance and intercourse of the soul with that thing to which

ON PRAISE. 195

•it devotes itself. The idolater of the body cares not for the
name of sensualist or voluptuary, which is bestowed upon him
from without ; he separates to his own little circle of joyful
companions, who retire from the world's observation and ob-
loquy, that they may worship their deity in peace. And, in
like manner, the worshippers of approbation care not that
they are looked upon and laughed at by the philosophic wor-
shippers of the perfection of human nature, but betake them-
selves to their theatres of display, where they may have the
matter to themselves. And so it is throughout, each asso-
ciates with his fellow ; they exhort one another ; they entice
one another to the mysteries of their worship; they keep each
other in countenance, and by constant anticipation, engage-
ment, or recollection, they contrive to exclude every other
concern from their minds.

Now, from all this would I learn wisdom as to the way in
which we should be delivered from these idolatries, whose end
is damnation, and should grow into the worship and praise of
the only living and true God. Another kind of knowledge
must be sought than the knowledge with which we become
acquainted by our natural education, this world's school ; for
that knowledge in which they encourage each other leadeth
directly unto one or other of those damnable heresies and
detestable idolatries which we have been recounting. The
knowledge of God must be sought elsewhere than, as it is, as an
ingredient in the mass of floating opinions, into the knowledge
of which men grow as they grow into the knowledge of their
bodies, and of their minds, and of the outward world ; which
knowledge, being had from the Word of God, must enter
into debate with the adverse knowledge which we have else-
where, and, being approved by the judgment of the mind
and advanced into the first place of our opinion, it must act
upon the will ; and the will must direct the practical experi-
ment, and, the experiment being made, the soul must taste
the fruit of it ; — which fruit of the knowledge and obedience
of God being found profitable and pleasurable to the soul, it
will be encouraged to undertake again, and again to be filled
with satisfaction, and again and again, until by gradual cus-
tom former things become old, and all things become new;

196 ON PRAISE.

the tastes of the old man die away, and new tastes are begot-
ten ; and with new tastes, new desires and new enjoyments and
new expectations, and a new manner of existence, -both in-
wardly and outwardly ; — which regeneration, as it gradually
proceedeth, makes the name of God to be loved, and His
character to be held in reverence. We joy and rejoice in
God ; in Him is our confidence and our chiefest joy. We
praise Him in songs, and sing of Him in psalms with sweet
melody. Our souls, and all that is within, are stirred up to
praise and magnify His glorious name. We praise Him in the
congregation of His saints, and we praise Him in our homes,
and we praise Him in our inmost soul. His name is like oint-
ment poured forth, and His humble courts are more joyful to
us than the high places of sin ; and with His people we would
rather suffer reproach than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a sea-
son ; and in the light of His countenance we have more joy
than when our corn and our wine and our oil do most abound.

Thus the objects of our former idolatries are covered with
disgrace, and we hasten to give them to the moles and to the
bats. We avoid their high places, which our souls lusted
after, because there is there no reverence of our God ; and
their companies, who sacrifice unto the idols of vanity, or
pride, or lust, we forbid our souls to desire. We walk not in
their ungodly ways ; we sit not in their scornful seats ; and
if we be found there, it is like Christians in the heathen
temples, because we know that an idol is nothing in the
world, and that there is no God but one ; or it is like Moses
in the court of Pharaoh, to warn the idolaters of the plagues,
tenfold worse than Egyptian, which they shall be doomed to
undergo, if they liberate not those higher capacities of their
souls which now they hold in miserable thraldom. But to
these, the temples of strange gods, to the fea.st, or to the parade,
we are seldom drawn, save out of constraint of duty, or to
watch over some dear soul, and expose their folly in his
sight, or to keep a certain gharacter and standing with the
deluded votaries, that haply we may speak persuasively in
their ear for the service of the invisible God.

The haunts and beloved abodes of the pious soul are the
habitations of God's holiness, and the courts of His house.

ON PRAISE. 197

which he rejoiceth in, as the Psalmist did in the courts of
Zion. The companions of his soul are the people of God,
with whom he may communicate in the praise and worship
of God, and from whom he may learn new causes for which
to admire and praise Him. If he contemplates the beauties
of nature, the beauties of nature demonstrate to him the
loveliness of their Creator. If he studies the haunts and
habits of the lower creatures, they speak to him of God ; and
he saith, with the Psalmist, " In the cedars of Lebanon,
which he hath planted, the birds makes their nests ; as for
the stork, the fir-trees are her house. The high hills are a
refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. He
sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the
hills. They give drink to every beast of the field ; the wild
asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the hea-
ven have their habitation, which sing among the branches."
Again, if he look upon the earth, and behold the pleasant
and plentiful face thereof, it teacheth him lessons of his God,
and he singeth again, with the royal Psalmist, "He causeth the
grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man :
that he may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that
maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to
shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart." And if
the pious man exalt his soul a little higher, to consider the
elements of nature, as they perform their various parts in the
production and preservation of things, he attunes his soul
thereat, and saith unto God, " Bless the Lord, O my soul ;
O Lord my God, thou art very great ; thou art clothed with
honour and majesty; who coverest thyself with light as with
a garment ; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain ;
who laycth the beams of his chambers in the waters ; who
maketh the clouds his chariot ; who walkcth upon the wings
of the wind ; who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers
a flaming fire ; who laid the foundations of the earth, that it
should not be removed for ever ; thou coveredst it with the
deep as with a garment ; the waters stood above the moun-
tains. At thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of thy thunder
they hasted away." If the pious man have had experiences of
prosperity, either outwardly or inwardly, cither in respect to

198 ON PRAISE.

this world or the world to come, or if, in the multitude of his
thoughts within him, he meditate upon past experiences of
good, then, instead of exalting himself, or expatiating in
praise of fickle fortune or of blind chance, he bursteth out,
and singeth aloud to God, "Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all
that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O
my soul, and forget not all his benefits ; who forgiveth all
thine iniquities ; who healeth all thy diseases ; who redeemeth
thy life from destruction ; who crowneth thee with loving-
kindness and tender mercies ; who satisfieth thy mouth with
good things ; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's."
And again, if he should be overtaken with adversity ; if war,
or pestilence, or violence, or any other calamity, should
come upon his goodly condition, instead of bursting into
violent execration, and resigning himself to despair, he reas-
sureth his soul in God, and singeth aloud, " Although the
fig-tree should not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ;
the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no
meat ; the flock shall be cut oft' from the fold, and there
shall be no herd in the stalls : yet I Avill rejoice in the Lord, I
will joy in the God of my salvation." " The Lord God is my
strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he
will make me to walk upon mine high places." Thus, in
every case, the soul of the pious man hath a refuge in his
God, and hath a song to sing unto the praise of his God. He
ceaseth not day nor night to celebrate His praise ; his soul
dwelleth evermore at ease, and rejoiceth in God, saying, " The
Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer ; my God,
my strength, in whom I will trust ; my buckler, and the horn
of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the Lord,
who is worthy to be praised ; so shall I be delivered from all
mine enemies round about, and brought at length to the
habitation of His holiness, to abide for ever and ever."

IV.

Heb. X. 25.

Not forsakiug the asseinhU)ig of ourselves together, as the manner of some is ; but

exhorting one another ; and so tnueh the more as ye see the day approaching.

"jLTAVING treated already of the foundations upon which
the praise of God should be built up within the heart,
I should now proceed to the subject of praising God in the
congregation of His saints, which the Psalmist recommends
as comely, and which the apostle requires us not to forsake,
but that I perceive the previous question of social religion in
general, to which I would now address myself ; for there
have been in all ages instances, as there seem to have been
many in the apostolic, of a total neglect of social acts of
worship ; and these not instances of profane and worldly
men, who, having no religion personally, cannot be expected
to have any socially, but of most devout and pious men, —
Milton, for example, — who have been contented, under some
strong prejudice, we conceive, to live in neglect of this, if
not necessary, most consolatory, edifying, and fruitful part of
religion.

And inasmuch as there are no express commandments
given in Scripture upon this subject, it is the more necessary
to examine into the principles of human nature upon which
it is founded; for something reasonable there must be, and
something singularly useful in that which, in all ages and in
all countries, hath, with the exceptions alluded to above,
universally prevailed. Now, in looking into the nature of
man to discover whence the social worship of God derives
this universal sanction of his practice, I perceive that it is
a universal fact, holding not of religion merely, but of every
feeling and aftection of the breast, to seek for and discover
those in whom a similar feeling and affection is present, and

200 ON PRAISE.

to join with them in society, which societies dehght to hold
frequent assembhes and congregations for the purpose of
encouraging each other in the enjoyment and cultivation
of that feeling which they have in common. There is a part
of human nature which draws man asunder from his fellow,
and engages him with his own peculiar interests and affairs,
which isolates him, and arms him in his own behalf, out of
which grows the feeling of property and personal right, and
also of justice, and from the excess of which come pride,
envy, jealousy, cunning, and every form of malice and malig-
nity. And to work against this, and hinder it from these
fearful issues, there is another part of human nature which
draws him to his kind, which makes him thirst for fellowship
and communion with kindred spirits, and which binds him
in a thousand associations, out of which arise some of the
most exquisite enjoyments of his life, — a principle of attraction
and communication diverse from and opposite to the other,
by which he is carried away from himself, and made to have
pleasure in the giving to others of that which by his own
private industry he hath acquired.

Is knowledge that upon which he hath set his heart .'' —
then he removes himself from affairs, and shuts himself up
from company, and subjecteth youthful passions, and ab-
stracteth himself from places of youthful gaiety and folly,
that he may dig the mines of knowledge, which are better
than the mines of gold, and carry on the merchandise of
wisdom, which is better than the merchandise of silver ; and
thereto he hath the convenience of a college cell, w'ithin
gates which are shut betimes as carefully as a besieged city,
it being well thought by the fathers and founders of learning
that the outward world is not more adverse to knowledge
than to true religion. Here he trims his midnight lamp, and
paleth the bloom of his youthful cheek ; he stinteth himself
of sleep, his books are* his silent company, the thoughts of
the learned are his banquet. His inward man engrosses
him ; his outward man often altogether neglected, health
itself hardly cared for, while he is passing through the chry-
salis state of the mind, and obtaining for his soul that
plumage which shall bear it into regions of thought and

ON PRAISE. 201

fancy hitherto unexplored, and reward him with discoveries
hitherto unknown, and weave a chaplet of laurel for his brow,
and bequeath unto his name an immortality of fame ! But
if I keep my eye upon the bookworm, and follow him on-
ward through the more advanced stages of knowledge, then I
perceive the selfish, the avaricious, and the monopolising
feeling which moved him to such sacrifice of time, pleasure, and
health, begin to abate as he becomes well fraught and stored ;
and as if God used his soul for a transport vessel, which
doubtless He doth, he is driven with his spirit full of know-
ledge to carry the same abroad to communicate it to his
fellows. He no sooner discovers truth than he hastens to
reveal it ; he no sooner detects errors than he hastens to
warn the world of them ; he joins himself to the societies of
the learned, he enters into fellowships, and academies, and
colleges ; he meditates in his mind, and stirs up his stores ; he
writes books, and communicates his gathered knowledge to
all mankind. So that, in the first instance, while there is
nothing so avaricious as the spirit of knowledge, there is in
the next instance nothing so generous. It reveals, without
being put to the question. It bestows, without being be-
sought. The more precious its discoveries, the more it
hastens to make them common.

If, again, I consider the pursuit of wealth, then I perceive
a like counterpoise of the selfish and the social. The mer-
chant and tradesman are indefatigable, making the most of
every occasion, and driving every bargain with a nicety as if
their all was at stake. They measure with exactness, they
weigh out scrupulously, they gather up the remnants of
things, and suffer nothing to be lost. They introduce an
economy of time into their business, almost as if every day
were the last ; they lay oiT their several branches each to a
several hand, and then they ply it at their department with
a haste and with an accuracy which nothing can surpass.
Their books are kept like the book of fate. Every man's
account is there as if it were the book of divine remembrance.
Not an error through the whole year escapes their pen, and
when the balance is struck, it turns out just and exact to
the uttermost farthing. And to see them here in the work

202 ON PRAISE.

of accumulation you would suppose every man a niggard, a
miser — who could part with nothing, and who could not bear
that any day should be lost. But this is only half the man.
To know him wholly you must see the other half likewise in
action. Follow him from his workshop to his home, and you
will see a spirit of profusion, equalled only by the spirit of
accumulation, and often, to his misfortune, not equalled by
that. Here is generosity in every form. It is lavished on
elegances of the house, on attendants, on equipage, on
sensual enjoyments, on magnificent schemes of pleasure, on
churches, on subscriptions, on every profuse, liberal, and
noble undertaking. Insomuch that those men who in the
morning gathered with a hundred hands, in the evening
scatter with a hundred hands that which they gathered, and
are, under the providence of God, but instruments for chang-
ing the current of His beneficence, — for gathering it when
otherwise it would be wasted, and bestowing it where it could
not othenvise be had. He gathereth it at a thousand foun-
tains, as the streams which come out of the recesses of a
thousand solitudes are gathered into one lake ; then he dis-
penseth it through the fertile plains of society, and settcth
in action and encourageth a thousand departments of busi-
ness, just as if you should sluice off that lake into a thousand
rills, with each of which to fertilise a productive field, or give
force to the wheel of some active machine.

Again, of present well-being, which includeth all other
instances, except that of religion, to which these instances
arc to be applied ; — of well-being this also is the law, that
though it requireth of a man much cogitation of his own
mind, and much activity of every powder, he can by no
means have any portion of it without bestowing it also
upon another. Can a man be just (and that is one great
part of well-being) without benefiting every man with whom
he transacteth .-' Can a man be quiet and peaceable (which
is another part of well-being) without blessing all over
whom he hath an influence .-* He cannot be a good hus-
band without blessing his wife, or a good father without
blessing his children, or a good master without blessing his
servants, or a good neighbour without blessing the country

ON PRAISE. 203

round. And yet, without being a good father, husband,
master, and neighbour, no man can have any measure of
well-being. Another great point of well-being is liberty, for
want of which all the world groaneth, save two or three
blessed spots. Now, consider this well, for it is a nice illus-
tration of the thing in hand. Liberty or freedom we can
by no means have without a great confederation in its be-
half. A man cannot have it all to himself. But in order
to have any, he must be liberal to all around. There must
be equal laws, and no partiality in their administration.
There must be a body of equal rights, in order that the pri-
vileges and prerogatives of every order may be respected. If
there be slavery, it must die in the progress of freedom.
Every man must be respected in his place, and in his place
defended ; his blood must be as precious in the sight of the
people as if it wxre royal blood, his little cottage as sacred as
a palace, his staff as secure to him as a monarch's sceptre,
and his peasant's cap as sacred as the royal crown. There
must be a common wealth, a common law, a common right,
all before any particular man, high or low, can be secured in
his well-being.

All these are illustrations of a general principle, that to all
good and prosperous conditions of the mind or of the outward
estate, both the selfish and the social must conduce. In
knowledge, in wealth, and in well-being, there is an exercise
of both. The state of learning, the state of merchandise, the
state of civil society, standeth well only by the active cultiva-
tion of both ; and, in short, the life of every well-condi-
tioned man consisteth in the well-balanced play of both the
selfish and sympathetic parts of his nature.

In knowledge, if a man, while he zealously makes acquisi-
tion, takes no pains to communicate what he acquires, but
broods upon it himself, without trying conclusions upon it
with the fellows and companions of his studies, then he be-
comes opinionative ; he sees everything as a part of himself,
and himself in everything ; and in the end a confirmed
pedant is formed, a narrow-minded bigot, and, if he have the
power, a persecutor for conscience' sake. Next, again, if a
man, while he is zealously accumulating, adding penny to

204 ON PRAISE.

penny, and pound to pound, and is at no pains to expend and
give forth in some proportion to his accumulations, then, for
want of other pleasures and gratifications, his chief delight
is in the very act of accumulation ; it grows upon him, and
engrosses his own soul ; he becomes a miser, grudging him-
self, and churlish to all around — a poor man in the midst of
wealth ; a beggar, and worse than a beggar — for a beggar
can enjoy his scanty earnings in the midst of abundance.
Again, if in his schemes a man communicates little with
his fellows, but works by his own address and penetration,
— turning, as he would say it, with his own arm the wheel
of his own destinies, — then, what doth he become but a
misanthrope, a churl, whose sour blood no kindness can
sweeten ? Nay, even in benevolence a man may be selfish,
and so plant a thorn in that finest blossom of the heart.
For, in his pride, have I often seen a spirit of great kind-
ness refuse to make his good feelings known, — steal to his
object unperceived, bestow upon it under promise of per-
fect secrecy ; thus hiding two good things — goodness in
himself, and gratitude in him to whom he hath been kind,
and subjecting the benefited to a tyranny, the tyranny of
silence, over that which of all things the heart bursteth to
acknowledge. Meanwhile the iron man sitteth cap-a-pie
in his pride, his soul boasting itself against those who do
these kindnesses only to be talked of But time would
fail me to describe those who, being selfish in their joys,
become the basest of epicures ; who, being selfish in their
spirit, become churls ; who, being selfish in their pursuits,
become malcontents ; and, selfish in their ambition, become
dark intriguers. And so on through all the varieties of
human life, wherever the companionable and social part is
wanting, there cometh every form of degraded and wicked
characters.

Now, what is religion but a new object with which a man
occupies his thoughts, a new pursuit to which he turneth all
the energies of his mind ; which hath in it a body of new
knowledge — the knowledge of God and of divine wisdom ;
which hath in it a new world of gain — the salvation of the
soul, and the treasures which are in heaven ; and a new prin-

ON PRAISE. 205

ciple of well-being — perfect peace of conscience, the renewing
of the whole soul in the image of God, and deliverance from
the power of sin ? This new science, new gain, and new
well-being, which religion is, must be obtained and occupied
in the same way as those visible forms of knowledge, gain,
and well-being with which the sons of men are taken up,
and which we have shewn are first prosecuted as private
concerns, and, as they accumulate, are not stored up, but
communicated to others, with a liberality proportionate to
that wherewith God communicateth them to us. In which
communication the social and benevolent part of our nature
is cultivated, while the personal and selfish part is cultivated
by the acquisition of them. Now, human nature operating
upon this new object, proceedcth after precisely the same
fashion as in the old ; and if it do not, is liable to the same
evils which we have shewn it is liable to in the former in-
stances. For though religion be as to its origin supernatural,
and in its great and leading truths not discoverable by reason,
but revealed to faith ; yet, being received by faith into the
mind, it doth work efi"ects not against the natural laws of the
mind, but in conformity therewith, and hath therefore those
analogies of which we are now endeavouring to establish
one of the most important. As in the merchandise of know-
ledge and of wealth, and also of well-being, it is necessary
that we first attend to accumulation before we can have
wherewith to indulge the social and communicative part of
our nature ; so this in religion is also the first thing to be
attended to. And for want of attention here, it generally hap-
pens that we have in these social meetings the form only,
and none of the substance of religion to communicate.
Until religion be made a personal question, — until we seek
for ourselves, with all our faculties, that knowledge of God
which is unto life everlasting, and cultivate for ourselves those
fruits of the Spirit which are alone able to cast out the lusts
and affections of the old man, it is vain to think that we can
have any desire for religious converse, or any longing after
social worship, or anything upon which to communicate with
others, except the outward forms and customs of religion.
To these, indeed, we may yield a reverence, because it is

2o6 ON PRAISE.

the order of the time and place in which we live ; but take
us to a place of which it is not the order, and we fall away
from the desire ; or set us by a sick-bed, where religion is
craved for ; or place us in a company of saints, where religion
is conversed of, and we find no words because we have no
feelings, and we have no store of feelings because we have
not yet made it a personal and private pursuit to obtain
them.

Therefore, in order to the obtaining of any communion or
fellowship upon the subject of religion, — any distribution of
it from one to another, or any combination of it from the
hearts of many to present it in full congregation before the
throne of God, — any burst of united feeling, with which the
ear of the Almighty may be Avell pleased, — any united groan,
as of a whole people, over their sinfulness in His sight, — any
p-eneral fast, or universal humiliation of a whole land, as a
trespass-offering, or any jubilee of gratitude and joy for an
offering of thankfulness, — or any great movement of heart,
and soul, and hand for Jehovah, as at the reformation of the
Church; — ere holocausts and hecatombs of the soul like these
can be offered unto the King of saints, there must have been
a warfare waged in every breast of the congregation, or
assembly, or nation, — a uniformity of feeling towards God, a
common devotion, which, being struck by the spark of God's
providence, bursteth forth into those explosions of natural
feeling, which, being called upon Sabbath after Sabbath,
brings forth that spiritual worship with which the Lord is
well pleased, and for which He blesseth all the land in which
it is offered up. Therefore, in order to the full development
of social religion, it is necessary to dwell upon this personal
religion, without which the other is naught but formality or
hypocrisy.

But so strong is the social principle within the nature of
man, that whatever he has in common with another attracts
him to his society ; and thus are formed the various societies,
from the great political associations down to the smallest and
lowest society in this metropolis, which are so numerous, to
its high praise be it spoken, that in science there is hardly
a branch, in jurisprudence there is hardly a department, in

ON PRAISE. 207

philanthropy there is hardly a walk, in the large catalogue
of human sufferings and wants there is hardly an individual
instance, for watching over and waiting upon which there
are not associations, voluntarily formed, of members the
most diverse in rank, pursuit, disposition, and everything,
save that particular liking and inclination for the ends of
which they are associated together. It may be laid down,
therefore, as a great principle in human nature, that when
men feel anything in common, this kindred feeling draws
them together, at the sacrifice of their private convenience,
and even of their private interests, to form themselves into
communities and corporations, of which the standing rule is
to foster that sympathy which drew them together.

Now the question becomes. Doth religion engender in the
bosoms of men any such common sympathies of the soul as
should lead them out of the way of their worldly interests to
congregate for communion and fellowship .-' That it doth
engender sympathies of the strongest and largest kind, it will
now be our endeavour to shew. First, It teacheth a common
knowledge which is not once talked of in all the schools, and
which had been hidden from the beginning of time: the know-
ledge of the only true God, the Creator and Preserver of the
world ; the knowledge of the original dignity and purity of
human nature, and our present fallen state; the knowledge of
the Son of God the Redeemer, and of the Spirit of God the
Sanctifier ; the knowledge of life and immortality beyond
death and the grave, of the resurrection of the body, and of
the eternal judgment. This science of Christian doctrine,
theology, as it is nobly named, — not the theology of any sect,
which is but a fragment of the whole, but the theology of
revelation, which will bear searching into, and will reward
the research, and fill the mind with most unerring and
ennobling truth ; — this science none of the schools possesseth ;
it is not in the classics of Greece and Rome, nor in the philo-
sophy of the east or west ; it is not to be detected by the inter-
pretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, nor discovered in the his-
toric and antiquarian monuments of any people save only of the
people of God. And if each earthly science, whose limita-
tions are narrow, and which sustaineth but intervals of time,

2o8 ON PRAISE.

be the rallying point of all who follow after or have possessed
them, why this highest knowledge, which is conversant with
the eternal and unchangeable and invisible, and affecteth our
present and everlasting estate, why this knowledge alone
should not congregate its followers and possessors together,
the one to listen, the other to expound it, I see not, if human
nature be not altogether revolutionised. But the community
of knowledge is the least part of the Christian bond. After
it, there cometh the community of divine law. For God
hath laid down a law, new and to the world unknown, until
it pleased Him to bring it from the secret place of His
counsels ; — a law which is holy, just and good, and accommo-
dated to the predispositions which the hand of the Creator
hath impressed upon man ; which consisteth not in a few out-
ward visible ordinances, but looketh inward upon the soul ;
which doth not overawe, put under, or enslave the soul, but
seeks to deliver it out of the hand of its sinful masters, and
bring it into divine liberty. It is not a law without pre-
vious assent, to which we are bound by fear or bribed by
advantage, but a law whose reward is in keeping it, whose
recommendation is its suitableness to all our conditions, and
which captivates the full consent of heart and soul, and
strength and mind. Exact justice, which is the perfection of
human laws, is only, as it were, the foundation-stone of the
divine law, whose superstructure and details lie all in the
region of charity and love, upon which human laws venture
not. For it is not a rule only against injustice, but against
unkindness, against uncharitableness and disaffection of every
kind. In short, it is the exposition of whatever conduceth
to peace and unity, the hindrance of whatever bringeth on
strife, quarrel, and disagreement. The province of human
laws is to right the wronged, and arbitrate disputes ; the
province of divine law is to prevent wrongs, and propagate
peace. The one is the remedy of an evil, the other is the
preventative of the evil, and the propagation of good. Now,
if, as hath been seen, community of law and privilege unites
mankind in bonds, and brings them often together out of the
love they have to hear right expounded and see it carried
into practice ; I sec not, unless by a revolution in human

ON PRAISE. 209

nature, that those who live under the new law of love, so
different from the laws under which as men we live, should
not thereby have generated within their bosom the feelings
of a peculiar people, the desire of frequent fellowship with
one another, frequent assemblies that they might hear this
Divine law of the soul expounded, and applied to the several
conditions of life in which they stand. If the laws of Moses,
notwithstanding their many burdensome exactions and tedious
ceremonies, did engender such a national feeling as kept the
people in close union, and preserved them amongst many
enemies, and preserves them still, scattered as they are
among the nations ; how much more shall the laws of Christ,
purifying the hearts and sweetening the intercourse of His
people, draw them apart from the fickle laws of fashion, or
the outward formal law^s of the state, and bind them together
by every kindly feeling of brotherhood, after they have eradi-
cated the hostile and envious principles of which the heart
is full ?

Then there is next — to draw these together, and form
them into congregations for serving and praising God —
the new government of Christ under which they live. The
outward protection of fleets and armies and national de-
fences, the inward superintendence of magistrates, from him
that sitteth upon the throne to his lowest vicegerent, the
Christian regardeth no higher than as instruments in the
hand of God for accomplishing His ends, and as such treat-
eth them with honour, and submitteth to them, so far as his
conscience and the law of God permit. But his defence is
Jehovah's right arm, and the shadow of Jehovah's wings is
his covert. The king whom he serveth is the Lord Jesus, to
whom he looketh for protection, and by whom he is pro-
tected, even by Him unto whom God hath given the heathen
for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for
His possession. In respect to his outward estate, and the
safety of his person, and the preservation of his liberty, he
looketh to that institution which the providence of God hath
placed him under ; but for his inward estate, the safety of
his soul and the preservation of its liberty and health, he
looketh unto Christ, the Author and the Finisher of his faith.
VOL. III. O

2IO ON PRAISE.

Though an inhabitant of the earth, his citizenship is in heaven,
whence he looks for the Saviour. He is a pilgrim passing
through the wilderness to a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God. He looketh not on things
seen and temporal, but upon things spiritual and eternal ;
he walketh by faith and not by sight.

Therefore, to have any social religion which is worthy of
the name, each man must begin at home in his own bosom,
and set all his faculties to work upon the Holy Scriptures, in
order to fill himself with the knowledge of God, and the law
of holiness, and the redemption from sin and misery, and the
new objects of thought, feeling, and affection which it con-
taineth. He must imbue his soul therewith, he must brood
thereon, he must know it thoroughly, he must feel it heartily,
he must approve it cordially, he must desire it wistfully, he
must engross it in the most sacred places of his soul ; for while
it is an object contemplated outside of him, looked at and
studied, it will avail him little. He must seek to have the
Holy Spirit within himself The spirit of the law he must
embosom, the well-spring of obedience he must contain.
There must be formed a new nature within the shell of his old
nature, a new heart, a right spirit ; a ray of new light must
illumine his understanding, a divine mastery must overrule
his will. The inward man must be wrought into the image of
God, that the outward man may come forth conformable to
the outward law of God.

There is an outward law of God, and there is the Spirit of
God, of which that outward law is the expression. There is
a revealed word of God, but there is an eternal Word, which
was in the beginning with God, which was God, of which that
revealed word is but the voice. These eternal realities must
be sought after. God did not mean that man should plod on
like a slave by rule, and work up against the stream and cur-
rent of his will, but He intended that he should be filled with
a divine power, under the influence of which he should sail
down the pleasant stream of his inclinations and affections ;
that he should ascend through the written word to the eternal
Word, which was made flesh, and join himself to Christ as a
member of His body, become of His flesh, and of His bones ;

ON PRAISE. 211

one with Him, as He is one with God; united as the branches
are to the stem of the tree, as the members are to the head.
Thus hath he within himself the Spirit of revelation, the divine
unction of knowledge which understandcth all things, yea,
the deep things of God. Thus through the knowledge and
admiration of charity, humility, meekness and mercy, and
peace and gentleness, and the other revealed affections of the
Holy Spirit, he must ascend to a sighing and longing after
that very Spirit ; he must seek for it from the throne of the
Highest, he must feel for its stirrings within his own soul, he
must entertain it hospitably, he must not quench it or set it
at naught, but encourage it by obeying its suggestions and
serving its purposes, — and thus it will work upon the heart and
will, even as the "Word of God worketh upon the knowledge
and the conscience. And thus, as we are inwardly filled Avith
the inspiration of the Holy One, outward things will come
into order. The spirit of manifestation within will answer to
the spirit of revelation without, the changed heart will speak
to its affections, the enlightened conscience will speak to its
opinions, the heaven-directed rule will speak to all the inward
faculties, and these will speak to the outward servants, the
tongue, the hands, the form, the features ; and thus, out of
inward motive and consent, outward visible action shall be
set to right.

This inward possession of the eternal Word and living Spirit
of God must be earnest, hard followed after, besought, en-
treated, and waited for with longing expectation, as those
that watch for the coming of the morning, by every son of
man. And though it be that from which God excludeth no
son of man, yea, from which no son of man is by God excluded,
but to which every son of man is by God invited, whereof He
hath given assurance unto all men in that He hath sent His
only-begotten Son to be our prophet, priest, and king, — who
commissioned His apostles to preach His gospel, not to a few,
but to every creature under heaven, — yet it is that to which
human nature is disinclined, which loveth no such revolution
of its being, but would rather grovel on in its suffering, sin-
ning estate, than essay this mighty change to which its
Creator heartcncth and prcsseth it. It goes not with the

212 ON PRAISE.

nature of man to be so shocked, although the shock be
from Heaven. It goes not with his pride so to humble
itself, with his will so to submit itself, with his affections
so to change their objects, with his understanding so to
change its estimates of value, with his pleasures so to turn
round and retrace their course, and enter upon another
bent. Man hateth it like death ; and worse to him than
death is this new birth, and regeneration of his nature ; and
the great multitude will not think of it at all ; and those
who do are content to understand it by the head only, and
those who enter on it heartily find it a stiff and stubborn
undertaking, as Paul himself testifieth in his own case, and
witnesseth through all his epistles by the language in which
he sets it forth, as death, crucifixion, rising from the grave,
mortification, partaking of the sufferings of Christ, dying with
Him, and so forth, through the whole compass of the hiero-
glyphical language of the New Testament.

Therefore, with more unwearied perseverance than student
uscth in his solitary cell, with more economy of time and
value than merchant useth in his never-ending toils, with more
cogitation and care than that wherewith nature useth to pro-
vide for her well-being, must each several soul for itself pur-
sue this inward sanctification and outward obedience, seek
the indwelling of the Spirit of holiness instead of the indwell-
ing of sin, the indwelling of the Word of God instead of the
indwelling of our own error and foolishness. And unless it
take pains to accumulate some store of this, it is unprepared
and disqualified for any social intercourse upon the subject
of religion.

For all social worship is the union of heart with heart,
of soul with soul, of strength with strength, of mind with
mind ; for with no other faculties will the Lord our God be
sei^ved. It is not the harmony of many voices in praise,
nor the uniting of all voices into one in prayer ; it is not the
uncovered head, or the reverend bending of the knee, or the
heartily uttered Amen. Still less is it the noble pile of Gothic
or Grecian structure, the solemn voice or becoming dress of
priest, or aught else before which sentimental spirits drop
languishingly down. No, verily ! It may be, it hath been.

ON PRAISE.

213

'in a barn, in a cottage, under the open canopy. I my-
self have seen the communion administered under the vault
of heaven — the communicants seated reverently around a
table spread among the tombs, and the beholders seated on
the tombstones of their fathers all around. And there was
no accompaniment to their music but the rushing of the
neighbouring stream, or the hoarse roar of the swelling sea.
But when that congregation, by the nightfall — for long and
unwearied was their communion service, and the people
measured it not by hours, but occupied the day with its
various parts, and in some places stole upon the evening —
by the fall of evening twilight when that congregation lifted
up their concluding hymn of joy, then the jubilee of the soul
was completed. It arose into the open heavens ; it swelled
and echoed amongst the hills with an overpowering majesty
and sweetness which tuned the heart, and wrought into har-
mony the discords of the soul, and which, I am sure, ascended
into the ear of the omnipresent God. Oh no ! my brethren ; it
is not the form and ceremony of the service, but it is the pre-
sent Deity in every heart ; it is the common inspiration of the
Holy Spirit; it is the swellings of the common soul like
Carmel, and the shouting of the common joy like Lebanon ;
— this it is which possesseth the worshippers with the sacred-
ness of the time and place, and makes them feel. This is none
other than the house of God and the gate of heaven. It is
then that the presence of the Lord descendeth upon the
people, and filleth the temple of their hearts as once it filled
the temple of Solomon, so that the priest could not stand to
minister for the cloud of the glory of God with which the
temple was filled.

Before there can be any union of heart, soul, strength, and
mind, there must be individuals out of which that union is
made ; and therefore it resteth, that the first thing towards
worshipping God in company is to worship Him in secret ; the
first thing towards communicating religious feeling to another
is to possess it within ourselves ; and therefore every one
must become a student of Divine things, a merchant in wis-
dom, a searcher after spiritual welfare in the first place. And
then it will come to pass, that wherever two or three are met

214 ON PRAISE.

together, God will be in the midst of them, abundantly to bless
them, and to do them good. For He cannot but be in the
midst of them, being in every one of them ; and Christ can-
not but intercede for them, because they are His members,
with whom He feels the closest sympathy ; and the Spirit
cannot but make intercession for them with groanings which
cannot be uttered, because their prayers are His very prayers,
seeing they are breathed forth of that Holy Ghost which pre-
vaileth in each one of them over all the world and those wicked
spirits with which they were naturally possessed. And their
worship must be acceptable unto the Father, when it is pre-
sented by the Son and the Holy Ghost. And thus it cometh
to pass that God is worshipped in spirit and in truth ; and the
house becometh a temple of God, though it were a lowly cot-
tage or a rude barn, and had never known any vain rite of
consecration ; and the souls of the people have had a spiritual
feast, and they go on their way rejoicing. They also open
their ear to instruction, and they seek God in His holy Word,
and they talk often one to another of the things which they
experience ; and the Lord hearkeneth and heareth it, and a
book of remembrance is written before Him for those that
fear the Lord and that think upon His name. " And they
shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I
make up my jewels ; and I will spare them, as a man spareth
his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and
discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him
that serveth God and him that serveth him not."

ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL
RELIGION.

ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

Josh. xxiv. 15.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom, ye will
serve ; -whether the gods which your fathers served, that were on the other
side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell : but as
for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

V\^HEN I look upon a family, of father, and mother, and
flourishing children, with perhaps a goodly retinue of
household servants, I say unto myself, What a work of Divine
providence is here, what a signal manifestation of the good-
ness of God ! Some ten or twenty years ago, there was nothing
of this substance, none of these thriving children, nor did any
of those happy domestics tend the many cares of this little
state. Then those who rule it in nobler state than king or
queen, whose smile is the joy, whose embrace is the highest
ambition of the little ones, and upon whose nod the grown-up
people wait with willing attendance ; — this king and queen of
the hearts of all {which that father and mother are not
always, is their own wicked mismanagement, for God hath
designed it, and hath provided it so to be) were some few
years ago in subjection to their own parents, and most fre-
quently without anything they could call their own. The
one, like young Jacob, crossing the fords of Jordan to seek
his inheritance, with a staff for all his portion, ("With my

2i8 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION,

stafif I passed over this Jordan ;") the other, like Rebekah,
waiting on her father's flock, until it might please the Lord to
send her a husband and to find her a home. These two the
Lord brought together, with nothing but each other's love for
their portion, perhaps Avithout a home to dwell in, or a servant
to minister to them. And from these two needy dependants
of the Lord's providence all this little nation hath arisen. One
immortal soul after another the Lord sent them, and with
every hungry mouth He sent the food to satisfy its hunger.
And in coming into existence, pain and trouble and death
lay in wait for mother and child, but the Lord's arm sustained
both. And often against the soft childhood of the little nursling
death brought up various diseases, and shot his infectious
arrows abroad amongst the children, but still the Lord sus-
tained them. And while He blessed maternal carefulness at
home. He blessed paternal carefulness abroad, finding them
thousands and thousands of meals, so that they consumed
not faster than He supplied ; — the barrel never went empty,
the cruse never ran dry, the wardrobe was ever full. And oft
when that mother's heart was sick with sadness, and that
father's arm weary in the rough encounter of the world,
and ready to resign the oar which won his children's bread,
the Lord sustained their hearts, and restored their souls. And
here they are, brought by the Lord into a haven of rest, and
their home is a little paradise of contentment, and perhaps
there is a good store provided against the future, when their
children shall have ripened into manhood, perhaps there are
many attendants ministering in the house, perhaps many
dependants abroad, and every comfort and every luxury
which the present life can enjoy. Oh, when I look upon a
family thus brought out of nothing, this miracle of the
Divine providence and goodness, and haply sit with them
cheerfully round the evening fire, and mingle in their enjoy-
ment; it doth so delight my heart to hear them discourse of
their family difficulties — to see the eye of a father brighten
while he looks upon his present happiness, and the heart of a
mother glad while .she beholds her children opening into the
liveliness and beauty of manhood ! And if they intersperse
their discourse with pious thankfulness to God, and dcA'out

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 219

acknowledgment of His goodness to them and theirs, — if they
teach their children to know the Lord God of their fathers,
and to walk in His ways and to keep His precepts, — if they,
moreover, bow the knee in homage unto Him who feeds the
raven, and clothes the lily of the field, and walk before Him
in a perfect way at home; not only say with Joshua, but with
Joshua perform, " As for me and my house, we will serve the
Lord ;" — when this I behold, I say unto myself, Here is the
happiest scene under heaven, the true seed-bed of greatness,
the nursery of heaven. To this let the palace, (as palaces are
generally ordered,) to this let the senate, to this let the aca-
demy, to this let the exchange, to this let every tabernacle
under which worldly interests shelter, yield. Here is the
abode of my soul, — here will I rest, for I do like it well. But
if it should otherwise happen that these two children of God's
hand, for whom He hath builded a nest, and furnished it with
plenty, and peopled it with dear children, and given it the
children of others to do its servile work, forget all the doings
of the Lord for them and theirs, and ascribe the glory unto
themselves and unto Fortune, (that usurper who hath nothing
of his own,) and boasteth that all the wealth of Providence is
of his procuring ; — oh, if I see this family estate, with no fear
of God in the midst of them, consuming their meals with no
thankfulness, rising in the morning with no prayer for coun-
sel, and laying them down in the evening with no commen-
dation of their spirits to God ; if I hear His name passed
amongst them like a household word, and His service slighted,
and all the soul-cheering spirit of religion banished out of
doors to dwell in the church or the cathedral, — oh, how I
pity the children ! They are rising for a prey to the enemy,
who lieth in wait to take their souls after they have served
him all the days of their life. Poor children! no one to care
for their souls. Poor famished children! no spiritual food for
you from the father and mother who bore you. The Lord
preserve you, for your father and mother have forsaken you I
The Saviour take you up, for surely ye are destitute ! But
for the parents — what ingrates are you ! what a hardened
and ungodly pair, thus to forget the Lord who found you
solitary, and founded for j-ou a habitation, and prospered you,

2 20 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION,

and gave you children, the most valuable gift ! Oh, it is
pitiful to be in such a house, where everything is present but
piety, which is the titular saint of all household graces. It
seems to me a miracle that it should stand before the Lord.
And I almost look for the moment when it will disperse like
an illusion. But the Lord is long-suffering and spareth much.
He wisheth all to come unto Him, therefore He is kind. Oh,
then, revere Him in your houses, and return Him thanks for
His great mercies, and you shall dwell safely and securely in
the midst of those family infirmities which we now go on to
declare as arguments for a godly establishment of the house-
hold.

When I look upon this family, and further think of its risks
and dangers, its hopes and fears, and all its infirmity, I pity the
more that it should be without the great patronage and pro-
tection of the Almighty Father of all. The life of the indus-
trious father and of the careful mother hang by a thread,
which a thousand accidents may cut asunder ; and what then
is to become of the little nest } To what serve the securities
upon your lives — to what your houses and lands, which have
no affections to cherish kindred affections, no bosom upon
which the helpless infant may hang, nor lip to impart to the
ear of listening childhood maternal counsel or paternal wis-
dom .'' And what are guardians, and what wealthy relations
and friends, in the stead of parents in whom God has planted
the rudiments of affection, and made their ministry as neces-
sary for the rearing of a healthy soul, as for the rearing of a
healthy body, in their offspring .'' Each child's life contained
a thousand anxious affections and precious hopes, which by
death are all scattered, as a fine elixir is when the frail vessel
which held it falls to the earth. And if they ripen into man-
hood, how many pitfalls are in their path, and most alluring
seductions, wherein being caught, the hearts of the parents are
oft broken, and their gray hairs brought with sorrow to the
grave ! And contentious feuds in families do oft slay affec-
tion, and counteract nature, so that there shall be strokes in-
stead of embraces, and frowns for smiles, and bitter wrath for
melting love. And hoping the best, that death is escaped,
and vice and passion fended off, (although in the absence of

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 221

religion I see not how,) what foul winds may cross the course
of the vessel in which this domestic state is embarked ! Life
is not a gay voyage upon the bosom of ample streams through
luxuriant and beautiful fields, like that which kings and queens
are reported to take at times through their ample territory ;
but it is a rough and traverse course amongst adverse cur-
rents and rough impediments, requiring each day a constant
outlook, and ready activity of all concerned. Each post that
arrives may bring to the father the heavy burden of a ship-
wrecked fortune, or to a mother the tidings of some scion of
the house in foreign parts lopped off for ever from the parent
stock. Each fair daughter, as she walks abroad, may catch
the basilisk eye of some artful wretch ; and each hopeful
youth fall into the snares of some wicked woman, who lieth
in wait for the unwary. Why should these things be hid
from the thoughts of parents .'' Why should not all the in-
firmity of a family be laid open, that they may have their
refuge in Jehovah's everlasting strength .'' Look upon this
city where ye dwell. Behold the daughters of misery and
vice. Was not each one of these a father's delight and a
mother's joy, and the dwelling-place of as many natural affec-
tions and hopeful wishes as the daughter of a king .'' Each of
these is a proof of a family's infirmity. And every youth who
in fallen wretchedness paces these weary streets, and every
haggard boy who looks into your face for charity, and the
thousand striplings who prowl about and lie in wait for things
not their own, having often upon their heads more capital
offences than years, are all instances of domestic infirmit}'.
And so are the lists of ruined merchants and broken traders,
and the shipfuls of heavy-hearted emigrants from the various
ports of this blessed island, and the large population of
paupers which crowd the poorhouse, or depend upon the
parish, and infinite cases more lamentable than those, which
modestly hide their want, pining in secret over broken hopes
and humbled fortunes, or haply relieved by the unseen hand
of charity, — these are all instances of that domestic infirmity
with which I now desire to impress your mind, that ye may
seek your strength in Him who "placeth the solitary in fami-
lies, and maketh the children of the }'outh to be like arrows

222 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION

in the hand of a mighty man." There is refuge nowhere else
against these infirmities, whether of the outward condition, or
of the inward happiness of a family. In the outward infirmi-
ties, on which I insist the least, what refuge is there in the love
of father or mother, or both, save in Him who is a father to the
fatherless, and a husband to the widow, and the orphan's help .-'
And in the ruin of our household wealth, what refuge save in
the arms of His providence unto whom every creature openeth
its mouth many times a day for nourishment, and findeth it
either in the air or upon the earth, or in the waters under the
earth .-' He alone can fill the house which is empty, and stock
our exhausted barns, and make our presses to burst out with
new wine. And when riches have taken unto themselves
wings and flown away, like an eagle towards heaven, there are
treasures on high, where neither moth nor rust corrupts, and
where thieves break not through nor steal. But for the inward
and spiritual infirmities against which it concerneth a family's
weal to be defended, — against the quarrels and animosities and
jealousies of husband and wife, — against the misdirected affec-
tionateness of parents toward children, which hath the sentence
of God upon it, " He that spareth the rod hateth the child,"
and doth more than all other things fill the asylums with
lunatics, and against the quarrels of children, and family
feuds of every kind ; — what protecteth but the fear of God as
the common head of the whole, which becometh like a centre
towards which the wills of all do bend inwards, and from which
they receive their directions outward .'' And what furnisheth
the young men and young maidens against the temptations
of the world, and especially of cities, which are as thickets
limed by the fowler for the feet of youth .'' Ah ! what can
furnish their souls with that unfailing grace which shall pre-
serve them from their own frailties in worldly desires, and so
condition them around as that they shall grow up in the
rough weather of life, and become patriarchs and matrons in
their turn, and rear up a holy offspring to carry down the
spiritual seed in their line till the end of time } Ah! where are
those outward defences and inward supplies, save in the gift
of God, who giveth liberally and upbraideth not .-* Whence
are they but from the Spirit of God, who workcth in us to

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 223

will and to do of God's good pleasure ? Now, which of you
would wish your children to be tossed to and fro on passion's
wave, shipwrecked in some of the gulfs of hell, which are sen-
suality, worldliness, pride, cunning, ungodliness ? Who of
you would have his sons strong as the lion, and his daughters
pure and innocent as the virgin before whom the lion crouch-
eth ? Who would live his honourable life over again in his
honourable children, and see, like Abraham or Jacob, a long
line of godly sons and pious daughters ? Let that man plant
the roof-tree of his house in holiness, and rear its walls in integ-
rity ; let him purify its threshold three times with prayer, and
make the outgoings of the evenings and the mornings to re-
joice together with a holy joy and mirth-making unto the
Lord. Let him make his hearth holy as an altar; let him
sanctify the inmost nook of his house with prayer ; let his
servants be of the seed of the godly, yea, the porter of his
gate let him be a brother in Christ.

Now, I have no time for digressions, but I will have no man
say to me that these things are Utopian. If he be a commoner
who saith it, I will take him to the north and shew him the
reality of which I faintly sketch the picture. Our poet hath
given it not amiss, because it was in his father's house ; and,
poor man ! in his better days, when his father was gone, he,
as the head of his father's house, fulfilled the holy office,
which, had he continued faithfully and spiritually to perform,
then at this day he would have been the first, yea, the very
first, of Scotia's sons. For the holy fire still here and there
shineth through the witch-light of genius. And it was the
severe religion of his father which gave to his poetry that
manly tone, and to his sentiment of love that holy tenderness
which is the chief charm of his works. But I say he hath
done it but faintly. For no man bred in towns can compre-
hend the nature of a Scottish peasant's prayer, and the
martyr-wildness of their psalmody. Except it be in the
service-book of our sister Church, which is the gathered piety
not of one age or country, but of all ages and countries in
Christendom, — except in that volume, there is nothing I have
seen in print or heard in pulpits that cometh near to what I
have heard in the smoky cottages of my native country. The

2 24 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

prophetic wildness of their imagery, the scriptural richness of
their diction, the large utterance of their soul, the length, the
strength, and the fervour of their prayers, is a thing to be
talked of by the natives of the towns, in which religion seem-
eth to me oft a kind of marketable commodity. And it is a
thing to make pastors and bishops look to their gifts, as truly
it did amaze two of the most spiritually-gifted and learned of
bishops, the pious Leighton and the learned Burnet. Let no
man talk, therefore, of these speculations as Utopian, but go
and see, go and learn, go and do likewise.

And if the man who chargeth utopianism upon these insti-
tutions be a great one — a peer or noble of the realm — I tell
him it is a shame, a crying shame, a sin that smelleth rank in
the land, and reacheth even to heaven, the way in which these
spacious households are ordered, men-servants and maid-ser-
vants, man and child, noblemen and noblewomen, and the
hopes of noble houses, without morning or evening prayer, or
any spiritual exhortation ; all the day long huddled together
in horrid moral and spiritual confusion, — week-day and Sab-
bath-day spent nearly alike, — lying a necessary accomplish-
ment in servants, unseemly hours, meetings at midnight, and
housefuls of people commencing the night in hot and crowded
places, till the sun ashamed looketh upon such doings of im-
mortal men. In the name of Heaven, what piety, what vir-
tue, what manhood, what common sense, or meaning, can
stand such customs .-* They would corrupt an anchorite, and
a saint would rise and run like Joseph from the temptation.
I think an angel or an archangel could hardly endure it. Can
any pious prayer co-exist, any melody unto the Lord, any
jubilee or merry-making of the Spirit, with such disjointed
living .'' Can repentance, can meditation, can reflection, or
any mood of mind which consisteth with God, or savoureth
of nobleness, live in such a vain show and idle rout .'' But
there have been noble families otherwise ordered, both in this
and the other end of the island; and happily there are some
still, wherein chaplains were kept for use and not for show, —
learned men, and men who feared God, not men who hung on
for a scrap of patronage, but men who stood for the Lord, and
for the spirit of holiness in the family, — to offer up its prayers,

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 225

to counsel the heads of the house, to instruct the children, to
teach the servants their duties in a religious sense, to gather
the whole household together and exhort them all, — one
who was a minister of God amongst them, and shewed his
gifts in watching over the souls of a household, thereby-
manifesting his worthiness to be translated to a parochial
or a diocesan cure. The Protestant religion made its way-
through the noble families of the north. Knox first preached
the doctrines of the Reformed religion in a nobleman's hall ;
and there he first administered the sacrament of the Supper in
that simple form which soon laid low the vain and wicked
foolery of the mass.

So that the idea which I represented of a godly family-
is far from being Utopian in high or in low life. Nothing is
Utopian for which God hath given forth His rescript; and in
this way He hath ordered houses to be trained up, adding His
promise, that when they are old they will not depart from it.
But while the world lasts, fashion will whirl it about, and
luxury intoxicate it, and passion drive it headlong. Let the
world go ; let it go its wicked round to its miserable end.
But ye are not of the world who have come up to serve Him
this day in His courts; or if yc be, come out from them and be
saved. Who is upon the Lord's side ? Who .-* Let that man
look better to his children than the world doth to its flocks
and its herds. Let him look to the holiness of his home more
than they do to the profits of their business room. Oh, let him
look to the righteous standing of his children with God, more
than they do to their right standing with great men and their
prospects in life. Then shall the infirmity of his family be
cured, and in weakness it shall be strong, and in poverty rich,
and in the darkest hidings of the world's countenance it shall
be glad. In its afflictions it shall be comforted, in its sicknesses
healed, in its bereavements blessed, and in everything made
superior to the vexations of life and the troubles of time.

I look upon a family, and think of its dissolution — how it
shall disappear before the touch of death like the frost-work
of a winter morning, and all its strong attachments dissolve
like the breaking-up of the ice-bound waters at the approach
of spring, — how snowy age, and tottering feebleness, and stark
VOL. III. r

2 26 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

death, shall at length come upon the stately supporters of the
domestic state, and they shall fall into the grave, bearing with
them the thousand loves and affections which can find no
second stem to which to transplant themselves. And then
comes strong grief for an honest and wise father, and the sad
apparel and pale countenance of widowhood and fatherless
children, who know not where to look for bread or for patron-
age. And a mother hath the right over her children shared
by some relative or friend, who supplieth the evening and
morning consultations of parents over their offspring. And
oft the children, like incumbrances, are got rid of to the earliest
employment, without any study of their natural disposition or
turn of mind, and sent into a cold fatherless world to make the
best of it. And perhaps also, ere this, a mother is reft away in
her tenderness from the midst of her babes and immature
children, who go about the cold house, and cry for her that
bore them ; but she is not to be found, neither answereth to
their cries. And now cometh orphanage, fatherless and mo-
therless orphanage. A stranger comes to nurse the babe, and
the babe is happy in its unconsciousness of its loss ; but the
little ones know not the voice of the stranger. Then asylums
are sought for some, and charitable foundations for others,
•where, far from the chamber of home, their hearts winnowed
of their natural loves, they grow as upon a rock, hardy but
stunted, strong but crooked and twisted in their growth, for
want of the natural soil and genial atmosphere of a father's
and a mother's love. And if it is ordered otherwise, that the
children should be plucked away in their youth or in their
prime, and the two parents left, naked and solitary, without
a scion from their roots, or any fruit upon their boughs ; then
they go all their days mourning; the joy of their life is cut off
in the mid-time of their days, their best hopes and dearest
affections are buried in the dust. But in whatever way the
king of terrors maketh his approach, and in whatever order he
taketh away his victims, certain it is that he will not cease
until he hath taken them all. He will leave none to tell unto
future ages the domestic tale of sufferings and death. One by
one they shall be plucked away; after intervals of days, or
months, or years, he shall come again, and a mother's tears and

SBRV/NG GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 227

a father's repressed and silent sorrow, yet too big for his manly-
breast to contain, and fond children, and the tender years of his
victim, — nothing shall withhold his arm, or ward off the blow.
Time after time he shall come, and fill the hearts of all with
sorrow, and clothe their countenances with sadness, and de-
luge their couch with tears, and fill the house with lamenta-
tions, until, one by one, he hath gotten them in his hold, and
all the affection that smiled and prattled, all the happiness
that glowed around the fire, and all the festivity of birth-day
and bridal-day that gladdened the halls of that house, are now
converted into the dampness and darkness and unsightliness
of the family vault, where father and mother, and children,
and children's children, with all their beauty and strength, lie
a heap of unsavoury earth. And perhaps the mansion where
they were reared is roofless and tenantless, and the garden
where they took their pleasure overrun with weeds ; and
if some descendant come from foreign parts to visit the place
of which his father spoke so much, haply he hardly findcth its
ruins, or discovereth the spot which once glowed beneath the
fires of the patriarchal hearth. " Our fathers, where are they }
The prophets, do they live for ever.''" Is not our life like a
vapour, and the days of our years like a tale that is told }

Now, I know not how a family without the comforts of reli-
gion, and the hopes of reunion in heaven, can see its way
through this succession of terrible afflictions which must come,
wave upon wave, until they be all washed away from the shores
of time ; how they can join affections in this uncertainty of
their abiding ; how they can knit them in this certainty of their
being reft asunder ; how they can thus sleep and take their
rest ; how they can thus rejoice together and make happy,
while the terrors of death are around them, and the dark skirts
of eternity are shifting from place to place in their neighbour-
hood, ever hovering more and more near, and, now and then,
enfolding one and another in its dark bosom. And what
comfort, what shadow of consolation, remaineth to a death-
invaded famil}', to which there is no hope beyond death and
the grave .'' The Catholics have a provision for this in the
deceitful doctrine of purgatory ; but we Protestants have none.
Ours is a remorseless religion to the irreligious ; no bowels of

2 28 ON FAMIL V A AW SOCIAL RELIGION.

compassion can move it from its awful truth, no tears of a
tender wife or grief-distracted mother can win one compromis-
ing word. As sure as it is written, " Blessed are the dead who
die in the Lord from henceforth, yea, saith the Spirit, that
they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow
them," so surely it is written, " He that believeth not the Son
shall not see life, but the Avrath of God abideth on him." " De-
part from me, ye workers of iniquity, into everlasting fire, pre-
pared for the devil and his angels." Why should these things
be hidden, and men left in their lethargy and sleep till the
awakening of the last trump.''

As sure as father and mother, and stately sons and beau-
tiful daughters, do now live in the bower of family blessings,
so sure shall father and mother, and stately sons and beauti-
ful daughters, be taken, one after another, into the grave of
all blessing, and the house of all cursing, unless they seek the
Lord while He is to be found, and call upon Him while He
is near. And as strong as your aftection now is to one
another, so strong shall your grief, your inconsolable grief be,
when one and another and another are taken away, until at
length one is left, like Rachel, weeping for the rest, whose
bosom hath received all the wounds, and hath been doomed
to live and behold all the arrows of the Lord accomplish their
unerring aim. And what comfort is there, I ask you, but
such as Cometh from eternity and immortality.'' Do you say.
Time heals every wound .'' Ay, time heals the wounds of
time by slaying eternity. He vampeth up a kind of endur-
ance of threescore and ten years by the death of ages and
ages. That is the cure of time. Do you say. The shifting
scenery of the world wears the impression out .'' Then again
the visible pleaseth us by obscuring the invisible, — the ups
and downs of life and its goings to and fro whirl the brain
out of its musings and contemplations, — and that is comfort.
So a mother comforts her baby with a toy, and wiles it out
of the memory of what it hath lost by a gaudy thing given it
to look at or to handle. And what kind of affection is that
which gaieties and diversions can obliterate.'' and what affec-
tion is that which looks for its remedy in the oblivion of a few
years .'' It is of the very essence of affection that it should

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 229

last and last for ever. The soul knows no death in its feel-
ings except the death brought on by vice, and the world, and
unspiritual desires. And that affection which in its sense and
touch looks for the remedy of change or of oblivion contains
its own power and its own death within itself; and though it
open itself fair and full as the opening rose, there is a serpent
under it to sting him that layeth hold thereon ; and there is
a canker-worm in the heart to consume itself. Affection
thinks not of dissolution ; if it be true affection, it thinks only
of everlasting, of lasting for ever. And such are the affections
of nature ; they knit themselves for everlasting, and they
grow up for everlasting, and they are arguments of an ever-
lasting life, and death cometh upon them in their prime,
and beareth them away like lovers on their bridal-day. Oh,
then, what is a family full of affection, which have no hopes
of eternity! It is like a nest of callow young seized upon by
the kite ere yet they have known to float over the azure
heaven in that free liberty for which nature was feathering
their little frames.

But when the family is impressed with the spirit of holiness,
then affection opens itself without any fear of untimely disso-
lution, and grows up for eternity, and hath therein the gratifi-
cation of its proper nature. For as it is the nature of the
understanding to conceive all things under the conditions of
time and place, it seems to be the nature of the affections to
forget these conditions, and to act under the opposite condi-
tions of eternity and omnipresence. They seem to defy time,
and to unite as it were for ever; they are regardless of place,
consume the intervening distance, dwell with their object,
and rejoice over it. The contemplation of change by place
or time is the death of affection — it lives for all places and for
all duration, and cannot abide the thought of dissolution ; nor
is it ever dissolved, as hath been said, save by the withering
hand of vice and worldliness.. Therefore without hope of ever-
lasting, affection is miserable ; and if I had time, I could shew
that it enjoys itself only by a kind of illusion that it is to be
everlasting, from which, alas ! it is awakened by the bereave-
ments of death. But with hope of immortality, affection is in
its element, and flourisheth beautifully. And the family state

230 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

being a web of interlacing affection, religion is its very life ;
and in proportion as it is present, the affections wax warmer
and warmer, purer and purer, more and more spiritual, less
and less dependent upon adversity or affliction or death.
And when so rooted and grounded in Divine love, and glorious
hope of immortality, a family is fenced against evil, and made
triumphant over death. Life is but its cradle, and the actions
of life are its childhood, and eternity is its maturity.

II.

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

Josh. xxiv. 15.
And if it seem evil unto you to scrt'e the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will
serz'e; whether the gods which your fathers served, that were on the other side
of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell : but as for me
and my house, we zuill serve the Lord.

\X7'E followed the family from its growth onwards, till, by
the slow consumption of death, it had all passed into
the invisible world from whence the goodness of God brought
it forth ; and if it ended there, our discourse concerning its
regulation should likewise end. But it is not a congrega-
tion of mortals met together for Avorldly ends ; it is a con-
gregation of immortals associated by the immortal bonds of
affection for heavenly ends, and immortal enjoyment. God
doth not bring forth man to be, as it were, king of the brutes,
and after doing some earthly offices, and tasting some sensual
enjoyments of a higher kind than they, to go down like them
to the dust, and be no more for ever. Nor did He make
woman to minister in her place to the enjoyment of this regal
creature. Nor doth He give them a houseful of children as
He giveth cubs to the lion, or young to the raven, that they
may grow up under the guidance of instinct to continue their
race, and fulfil their higher allotment of earthly offices. Nor
doth He make the heart of father and mother and child in-
stinct with feelings and affisctions, gathering more and more
of strength, and growing more and more in purity and love-
liness, only at last to be a banquet — a banquet dressed during
the whole of life to glut the maw of unsightly death.

Such mean views of man and woman and their children our
blessed Saviour hath for ever cleared away from the earth ;
and though men of corrupt hearts will always, by philosophy

232 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

falsely so called, be endeavouring to obscure the life and
immortality which He hath brought to light, there is such an
inward evidence of the soul to the high revelations of Scrip-
ture— she perceiveth her dignit}-, her thought, her being, so
implicated therewith, that in proportion as she emerges from
the slavery of sense and the darkness of ignorance, she
seizcth upon them with greediness, and will not let them slip.
In Scripture, the soul of man is set forth as created '^ in the
image of God, which, destroyed by sin, Christ hath come to
renew in righteousness and true holiness, and to which He hath
assigned the high vocation of thinking, and feeling, and acting
in unison with the will of the Highest. And to give supreme
dignity to the head of a family, God hath chosen to Himself
the name of Father, and therein given to the parental relation
the highest and holiest place. And woman He hath exalted
to the level of man, making her bone of his bone and flesh of
his flesh, in every respect, of body and of mind, meet com-
panion for man. And in order to double the happiness of
both, and lay the foundation of the dearest amity and the
closest union, He hath formed the body and soul of the one
to need and desire the help of the other. So that, being
joined as He purposed, they might be one. Each nature
maketh request for the nature of the other, whereby it may
be completed. And marriage is the completion of these
designs of the Creator. And being the wedding, not of the
body only, but of the heart and soul, marriage is followed not
only by natural issue of the body, but also by issue of the
soul. And the children find already prepared for them a
couch of affection in their parents' hearts. The heart, if I
may so speak, becomes conceptive, and with its teeming
affections is ready to embrace the offspring 'which God may
send. And as God, to dignify the station of father, hath
taken to Himself the fatherly relation to His creatures; so, to
dignify the station of mother. His only-begotten Son was
made of a woman, and called her mother. And to sanctify
the relation of the children to each other. He who sittcth on
the right hand of God on high hath called Himself the elder
Brother of the family. And God hath said that children are
His heritage, and that the fruit of the womb is His reward.

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 233

And He hath promised that the wife of him that fcarcth Him
shall be as a fruitful vine by the side of the house, and the
children as olive plants around his table. And His Son, our
Saviour, to teach us the excellency of childhood, taught that
in order to enter the kingdom of heaven we must become as
little children, and that the angels of little children do con-
tinually behold the face of God ; and He hath admitted the
little immortals to the privilege of His Church so soon as they
are born ; and in everything God hath honoured the family
estate, and given an immortal intention to all its relations.
It is God who placeth the solitary in families ; it is God who
joineth the marriage knot by a thousand sympathies, where-
with He hath made the heart of man and woman full ; it is
God who sendeth children, and prcparcth for them a place in
the hearts of parents ; it is God who chartereth to parents
their high prerogative, and cemcnteth families in their close
and lovely union. And, oh, think you that He weaveth that
fine web of interlacing affections which a family is, only that
all its life long sorrow may prey upon its weakness, and death
at length riot in its dissolution } No, no ; He weaveth that
fine web of interlacing affections which a family is, that He
may make their hearts blessed and fruitful with mutual love;
He weaveth it weak and liable to calamity, that it may be
taught to find its strength in the sufficiency of His grace ;
He maketh it subject to the dissolution of death, that its dross
and corruption may be purged away, — that its pure and pious
affections may be put beyond the power of a scornful world,
and beyond the fluctuations of time, which vexeth and afflict-
eth all things.

Therefore a higher strain of discourse is called for to a
Christian and godly people, in order to satisfy their higher
views of family dignity and of family blessing, which have been
opened up in the revelation of God. The discourse which we
formerly held was true in all its parts, and had, I know, the
answer of tender emotions within your breast ; but we seek
the answer of a higher faculty than natural affection, even
the answer of the spirit of men. It remains, therefore, in the
further prosecution of this subject, that we address ourselves
to the faculties of the new man, and endeavour to shew how

2 34 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

families should be regulated according to the new views Avhich
are given of them in the Holy Scriptures, and how they may
be reared up, not for the transient use of a perishing world,
but for an inheritance which is incorruptible, and undefiled,
and which fadeth not away, — how the heads of families may
make to their children friends, not of the mammon of un-
righteousness, but of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, and embrace their household, not with the instability
of earthly affections, but with the faith and hope and ever-
lasting charities of the kingdom of heaven.

To fulfil which high office we shall do our utmost endeavour,
and ask, as now we do, the blessing of Almighty God. But,
my beloved brethren, the subject concerneth you, and there-
fore join your prayers that we may be enabled to discourse of
it with such truth and tenderness, with such demonstration of
the Spirit and power, as shall be blessed to the persuasion of
many parents who hear me, to the blessing of their children,
their children yet unborn, and of their children's children to
the third and fourth generation, — the blessing upon good
parents being at the least co-extensive with the curse pro-
nounced upon those that are wicked and disobedient.

Now, in meditating upon this subject, two ways of handling
it present themselves to our minds. The one by detailing
their religious duties to parents and children, and to hus-
bands and wives, and to masters and servants, and so pre-
senting to each member of the household a chart to guide
him in his behaviour. Thereto to add descriptions of the
happiness, and contentment, and perfect security of a family so
ordered in all things after the will of God ; to paint the hallowed
offices of religion night and morn around the household hearth,
when, in full choir, small and great, high and low, do equalise
themselves, and join in the same strain to the common Father
of all; to represent the lisped prayers of childhood taught from
a mother's lips, and the first shootings of the soul under the
constant careful husbandry of a mother's watchfulness, directed
by a father's wisdom, and aided by the occasional pruning of
a father's chastening hand ; to paint the mornings and the
evenings of such a household, coming in and going out with
joy, and its days spent in a constant quiet and serenity, afflic-

SER VING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

~'j5

tion borne with heavenly composure, adversity grappled with
and overcome, and death himself deprived of his sting and the
grave of its victory, through the faith of Him who is the resur-
rection and the life, and the operation of that Spirit which
raised Him from the dead, and gave Him to sit in heavenly
places for ever.

This method it were pleasant to follow, as being the most
varied and the most capable of powerful and pleasing illus-
tration; but I am convinced it serveth little purpose, and is
well-nigh labour lost ; and that all preaching of religion in
detail, with reference to the outward word and action, is of
little effect; and to succeed we must go to the fountains of
conduct in the heart, and cast into them the salt of purification —
we must endeavour to amend the mother principles and sen-
timents upon which the word and the action depend. Sure
I am that to state the strength of God's commandment, and
to paint the moral beauty which cometh from its obedience,
though it might excite a transient remorse for having broken
the one, and a transient sigh for the want of the other, Avere
able to make little debate with the inward principles which
the devil, the world, and the flesh have debauched from the
service of the living God. You must plant new principles
in the heart if you would look for new fruits in the life. The
true feeling of loyalty is worth a thousand acts of knee-
homage and court-attendance ; the true feeling of patriotism
is worth a thousand patriotic speeches ; the feeling of friend-
ship is worth a thousand protestations, and in higher things
the anointing of faith is before all obedience. And in like
manner to the religious regulations of a family, religious prin-
ciples in the heart must conspire ; and till they arc present,
sentimental pictures will serve little, and thundered command-
ments still less, to bring about any change in the outward
members and visible demonstration of action, while the main-
springs within are under the same opinions, the same notions,
the same feelings, and the same sentiments as before.

The first thing which goes to determine the character of the
household, and which requireth to be reduced under the power
of religion, before any religious effect will be elsewhere pro-
duced, is the sentiment which governs the intercourse of the

236 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

two heads and guardians of the little state. Until the relation
of husband to wife be religiously understood and religiously
discharged, it is vain to think by any rules to counteract the in-
fluence of constant example, and as it were to enforce religion
to grow amongst their children and their servants. The refor-
mation must begin at the fountain-head of affection and of
authority, if it would descend and bless the streams into which
that affection and authority flow. Here, then, it becomes me
to give my first lesson, however unable, upon the spirit which
should breathe through the intercourse of the husband and
wife, the father and mother of the family.

Though rule be given to a husband and obedience enforced
upon a wafe throughout the Holy Scriptures, and in the solemn
ordinance of matrimony, it is so rather as a beacon set to
guard against the danger, than as a landmark to lead and
guide the course ; for the governing spirit of their inter-
course is in Scripture held out to be not authority but love,
and the greater meekness of women is urged as an argument
for tenderness on the part of men ; whence it hath always hap-
pened that woman hath been raised to her proper dignity,
and protected in her rights, wherever our faith hath made its
way in the world. The purity, the sanctity of the married
state is so defended in Scripture, and infidelity to its vows so
constantly branded as a damning sin, and divorcement from
it made so penal, except for one righteous cause, that in pro-
portion as our Protestant faith makes the eye and mind of
the people familiar with these things, in the same proportion
are modesty and chastity, with all domestic riches and graces,
found to spring up and flourish in the home. And to throw
a savour of heaven and an interest of eternity into this holy
condition, it is said in one place that the believing wife is
sanctified by the unbelieving husband, and the unbelieving
husband by the believing wife. And finally, to crown all, and
give it the highest possible dignity, it is chosen as a fit emblem
for representing the relation of Christ unto His Church, — " The
husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head
of the church, and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore,
as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to
their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 237

even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for
it. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.
He that loveth his wife loveth himself"

Now it ought to be the endeavour of the heads of every
family to realise something of this divinely sacred and mys-
terious feeling towards each other. They should regard
themselves as one and complete within themselves, their
interests one, their purposes one, if possible their faith one,
and certainly their affections one. From the moment they
are united they have to bend their will and their tempers so
as to embrace the same objects ; and if the mind of one soar
into higher regions than the other, it is that one's part to do
what can be done to obtain the sympathy, if so be the com-
pany cannot be obtained, of the help which is meet for him.
I say not but each hath a proper sphere, — the one to work out
of doors, and serve God's glory and his family's weal in the
pursuit of his calling, the other to work within the house and
preserve its domestic happiness and comfort ; the one to bring
the stores of a wisdom and experience gathered without, and
add them to those practical stores gathered by the other
within, and so taking sweet counsel together to see that all
things be well and meetly ordered in that which concerneth
them in common. But they ought in their hearts to have as
little opposite as possible, no affections which it is necessary
to hide, no by-interests or purposes which it is necessary to
conceal ; and the thoughts of their mind being oft exchanged,
should come into harmony and unison, that their intercourse
may be freed from all discord and contention, which might
mar domestic love, and draw moody humours, like heavy
clouds, over that sweetest scene in the moral world, a happy
family, and that their afifections may be hindered from divid-
ing different ways upon the children, and a twofold interest
from being engendered, with favouritism, and envy, and the
death of brotherly love. But what I count upon the most from
such a sweet understanding in all things, is the genial influence
under which the little ones will grow up, the union that will
be produced, the culture that will be given to every sweet and
pious affection, the strength of parental respect that will be
wrought into their little hearts, the idea of love and unity

■0

8 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

which will sink deep into their souls, the self-government, the
bonds of brotherhood, which will wax stronger and stronger
with their years. I count far more upon evil being thus kept
in shade than upon its rebuke when it comes into light, upon
its being chased away by the sweet parental loves and smiles
and embraces than upon its being frowned down when it
sheweth face. And when it doth appear, think what weight
a mother's affectionate reproof hath when supported by a
father's authority, and what power hath a father's sage advice
when afterwards rendered into soft language by a mother's
sweet and silver-toned voice.

If fathers and mothers, therefore, would have a household
pious towards God and dutiful towards them and towards one
another, they must look for the foundation of it in themselves,
and their reciprocal behaviour as husband and wife. If pas-
sion at first drew them together, they must put it under
Divine control, otherwise their house shall be little better
than the wild beast's den or the wild fowl's nest, — a place for
continuing the race, whence to turn out sons and daughters
upon the world to tread in the sensual steps of their parents,
and encumber the overloaded earth with new forms of car-
nality. If worldly motives drew them together at first, dowry
in the wife or rank in the husband, and whatever else is in-
cluded in that common saying, a good marriage, — then, if
they cured not the fatal error by such mutual compliance as
I have shewn above, their marriage, begun in convenience,
will continue in convenience, cemented by no affection and
able to endure no trials, — its delights, form and equipage and
show; and, alas! the poor offspring of it will grow up under
the influences, fashionable or customary, of that rank in which
they are born, untutored of a father's wisdom, unschooled
of a mother's affection, with nursery-maids for their com-
panions, and strangers for their teachers of good and ill, and
for their fortune some form of that same worldly character in
Avhich their parents delighted. If, again, their marriage, rising
above sense and convenience, be made a matter of taste, whe-
ther for person or accomplishments or mental endowments,
then it may chance to engender bitter feuds, unless speedily
it be founded upon a more permanent basis. For, as hath been

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 239

often said, taste of any kind is but a variable and fluctuating
thing, not sufficient to found happiness on ; — the rcHshin"-
of what is excellent, but no proof of the wholesomcness
and worth of that which it relishes. And unions founded
upon taste I have generally observed to end in a meagre and
ill-conditioned household, a niggard and bastard-like race of
progeny, who growing as they listed, without the careful forma-
tion of principles, or the sweet culture of affection, were apt to
become self-willed, and follow some of those vagaries of the
mind which drew their parents together. Thus it is that the
governing principle of intercourse between the parents begets
a kindred character and a correspondent fate in their children.
But when it happens that a marriage is founded upon the
principles of the mind and the deep affections of the heart,
which is the only form of love entitled to the name, those
parts of our nature which in our last discourse we shewed
to be independent of place and time, and to act under the
conditions of eternity and omnipresence, — this it is that is
blessed. For the heart is the pole-star in the firmament of
the soul, and will not shift. It may be over-clouded with
error, and the varying medium of the understanding may
refract it somewhat from its true place. But if it be simply
consulted, and not warped by the fancy or the interests, — if
it be as strictly obeyed as it ingenuously answereth, — then,
I say, the voice of the heart is the voice of truth, and will
not vary. It is the representative of the eternal within a
man, as the understanding is the representative of the local
and temporary. Marriage proceeding with its approval, will
stand the test ; and families springing from such wedlock
will be well cared for ; and the household which came to-
gether by that attraction, and congregated around this centre,
— the union of two hearts, — will be ordered according to affec-
tion ; and things will grow into that happy condition of
which it is the aim of this discourse to point out the cardinal
principles.

And next, after this of a well-regulated intercourse between
husband and wife, between father and mother, the heads and
guardians of the household, I place right and spiritual senti-
ments towards the children whom it may please God to

240 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

bestow upon them. I have already set forth the value
of children in so far as the honour of their parents' name
and the happiness of their parents' hearts were concerned, —
how much of life's enjoyment depended upon the good be-
haviour and character of children, — and how a single error
here counteracted all other happiness and enjoyment, and
often extinguished the very light of life within their souls.
But unto how much more exalted a height doth this argu-
ment pass, when we consider the domestic state in a spiritual
sense, and regard each individual who composeth it as more
varied in his relations and more estimable in his worth than
the whole fabric of the world, and see in each little one that
cometh from the womb of non-existence, not so much beauty,
so much intelligence, so much affection, as it containeth in
itself and is capable of producing in us, but so much spirit, so
much Divine nature, so much glory, and so much immortality,
as through time and through eternity it is capable of develop-
ing towards God. In this sense, each babe is a gift from
heaven, a gratuity from God, of an infinite value, and, little
as parents think of it, is a greater treasure than an estate or
a kingdom, and the care of it is more honourable than the
royal sceptre, which, with the honours and power, conveys also
the care and trouble and endless fatigues of governing. But
this little spirit, whereof the administration and management
is delegated to us, comes forth already linked by the invisible
cords of nature to the hearts of its parents, a part of them-
selves ; and we feel it as being of ourselves a part, grieving
not so much in our own ailments as we sympathise in its
trials, so that our rule over it is sweet as the rule which we
have over ourselves. And a mother would rather starve herself
than her child, and she would expose her own naked bosom
to save her child. And in the inclement storm, a mother,
when she could no longer maintain the struggle with the
blast, hath been known to take the warm cloak from her own
shivering frame, and having wrapped it around her infant, lay
herself down in the drifting snowto perish, contentwith the hope
that her child might thus haply be saved. Whosoever, then,
hath been presented by God with a child, hath not only gotten
something that shall outlive the world, and which doth in its

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 241

Creator's eye outvalue the world, but this spiritual realm over
which he hath been made the governor is so sweetly joined to
himself, that to care for it is to gratify himself, to watch over
it is to double his own well-being. Care here is sweetness,
power is love, and trouble is pleasure.

What, then, is a family of such } — it is a little diocese of im-
mortal souls ; and what are the parents but the diocesans
thereof, not joined by outward ceremony of the Church, but
by the inward harmonies of spirit with spirit 1 And for what
end is such a diocese given unto any one i* — for their ever-
lasting salvation. And why did' God, the great Parent, link
their natures together .? — that thereby the experience of the
one might draw upon the inexperience of the other, the know-
ledge of the one upon the ignorance of the other. And why
did Christ permit children to be presented in their earliest
infancy at the holy font of baptism .'' — that the parents
might know their child had an immortal soul, for which He
died. And why did the Church, over the fountain opened for
sin and uncleanness, require obligations of these parents .•" — in
order to constitute them parents in the spiritual sense. Each
father is thus a prophet and a priest unto his child, and the
law constitutes him a king. So that he mystically represents
to his family the threefold relation of Christ to His people — of
prophet, priest, and king.

Behold, now, into what deep waters we have come, pursuing
the stream of this discourse. We began with a certain shallow
notion of obligation, founded upon the wonderful providence
which had, out of two young persons, made the little state
with all its prosperity to arise. But what have we now .'' —
consignment after consignment froni Heaven of immortal
souls, testimony after testimony by the sacrament of baptism
that Christ hath died for their sakes, covenant after covenant
before the Church that we will rear their spirits for immor-
tality. In which there is a threefold obligation of an eternal
kind: first, the obligation arising from the intrinsic value
of the gift ; secondly, the obligation to the Son of God for
His death on its account ; thirdly, our own voluntary obli-
gation to do for it those functions of a spiritual parent which
before God and the Church we entered into at baptism. And
VOL. III. 0

242 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

we spoke of an infirmity arising out of fluctuating fortune, of
uncertain health, of unregulated temper, out of temptations
and artifices of deceiv-ers ; but what is that to the infirmity of
the immortal soul, preyed against by all the arts of the devil,
the world, and the flesh ? And what a charge resteth upon
those who were instrumental in bringing these immortal crea-
tures into the world, who stood sponsors for their spiritual
education at the sacrament of baptism, whose soul is all im-
plicated with their souls, whose happiness dcpendeth upon
their happiness, and whose salvation, if it depend not on their
salvation, doth yet depend upon the prayers they have offered
for their salvation, upon the instruction they have given them
concerning the things of their peace, and upon the pains they
have taken in training them up in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord ! And, oh ! Avhat an affliction, what a huge afflic-
tion,— affliction enough to darken heaven itself, were some
essential change not wrought upon our nature, — that our
children should be torn from us in judgment, and consigned
to the miserable condition of the wicked ! I say not that
heaven's joy will be afflicted with any sadness, nothing doubting
the plenary fulfilment of joy which is to be partaken there;
but left as this matter is under the veil, what a motive for
parents to apply themselves to the opening souls of their
children, and, while they neglect not things convenient for
their bodies, to be at pains to feed their souls, to nurse their
souls for heaven, to be instant in season and out of season (if
ever out of season) at the throne of Divine grace, — to watch
as those that have to give a solemn account, — to sprinkle the
door-posts of their house with the blood of purification, and
to carry a censer of incense through all its chambers, — but
above all, to give them the most healthful shelter of parents*
piety, and the sweet recreating atmosphere of conjugal unity,
— the audience of aff'ectionate speeches between man and
wife, which will beget the feeling of union, the desire of it, the
ensuing of it, until at length they find it in the union of their
souls with Christ, which, as hath been said, is the thing of
which matrimonial union is an emblem, and for which the sight
of matrimonial union doth discipline the expectation of the
mind ! And heavy as this task appeareth of rightly express-

SERVING GOD IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 243

ing by word and action that high rcsponsibihty which the
knowledge of immortality imposeth upon Christian parents,
it is not heavy, for it is light, being with the heart performed;
it is the very way to case the heart of paternal and maternal
carefulness, and to assure it with paternal and maternal confi-
dence. It transfcrrcth the fortunes of the child from the rest-
less waves of this troublous world to the certain promises of
God, — to the fixedness of the word of God, which liveth and
abideth for ever. Oh, brethren, this is the salve to a parent's
heart, to commit his child unto the Lord! And it is the best
insurance of his child's destiny to write it in the chronicles of
the Lord's hearing ear. And, oh! what can be compared with
the heaped-up treasures of a parent's prayers when a child
cometh of age, — what to this heap of requests collected in
heaven, as the cloud coUecteth from the rising dews and
vapours, and about, like the cloud, to shower down in spiritual
blessings upon the opening and tender years of the youth, and
ripen him for the garner of God, — what compared with this is
the inheritance of wealth, of estates, of titles, of royal dowries,
and of princely establishments, yea, of crowns and kingdoms !
These pass away with the life of him who is their present
frail incumbent. Those come down like dew upon the spirit,
diffusing fragrance round, and make it to grow up and flourish
in all honest, virtuous, and noble ways, and at length to in-
herit a crown of glory that fadeth not away.

in.

DUTY TO PARENTS.

Exodus xx. 12.

Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which

the Lord thy God giveth thee.

^"pHE relation of children to parents is so important in the
eye of God, as to have received a place in the decalogue,
and the very first place after our duties to Himself. There
are four commandments which relate to the honour and wor-
ship of God ; then cometh a fifth, to secure parents in their
high arid holy prerogatives; then follow five for the welfare of
society — one to protect life, another to protect chastity, a third
to protect property, a fourth to protect truth, and the last to
cultivate good-will. So that the decalogue consists of three
divisions — the first for God, the second for families, and the
third for society ; in which order I perceive no less wisdom
than in the statutes themselves. Before the laws for the sake
of society and of our neighbour cometh the law for the sake
of the family, in order to shew that the well-being of families
is that out of which the well-being of society springeth ; that
the family is the mother of all associations, the radical court
of society, in which the issue is first joined. And before the
law for the sake of the family come the laws for the sake of
God, in order to shew that the family next standeth in religion
and piety. So that of righteousness and moral obedience,
this is the Divine economy — first, the fear and reverence, within
the heart, of the only living and true God; secondly, the right
feeling and discharge of family alliances; thirdly, the perform-
ance of social and neighbourly duties ; and, fourthly, morality,
which they often put the first, is the last in order, for which
piety to God and duty to our parents must prepare the way;
— which confirmeth all that hath been heretofore advanced

DUTY TO PARENTS. 245

of the importance of home, before God and the community,
and encoLirageth us in the work of shewing forth at length
the rehgious spirit of its various relations. That of children
to parents, which hath such prominency in the decalogue, is
thus expressed, — " Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy
days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee ;" and that no one might think it abrogated by the coming
of Christ, St Paul hath thus repeated it in his epistle to the
Ephesians, — " Honour thy father and thy mother, (which is the
first commandment with promise,) that it may be well with
thee, and that thou mayest live long upon the earth."

And what serves to characterise this commandment per-
haps still more than the place which it occupies, is the form
in which it is conveyed. All the rest are negative, running in
the authoritative style of a lawgiver, — "Thou shalt not." They
are restraints and prohibitions upon the license of human
nature, bounds set to the liberty of the human will in various
directions. Several of them have threats and comminations
annexed to them, and others are couched with a brief severity
of language, and end with so unmitigated a tone, that they
fall more terrible upon the ear than if they had been rounded
off with a particular threatening. But the fifth hath in it no
stern prohibition, no negation of liberty, but is couched in
terms dignified and tender, — " Honour thy father and thy
mother," — to which the ear listens well-pleased, and the heart
assents at once ; and instead of a heavy threatening, or an
inflexible reason, there is added a gracious and most pregnant
promise, — " that thy days may be long in the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee ;" or, as St Paul hath given it, "that
it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long upon
the earth." The welfare of which all are in quest, the long life
which all who are well-conditioned desire to have, these two
greatest of blessings, which the Psalmist thus expresseth as
the universal desire, " What man is he that desircth life, and
loveth many days, that he may see good," are sweetly insinu-
ated in the midst of stern and awful threats, to win acceptance
for that which has been already couched in the softest lan-
guage, " Honour thy father and thy mother," as if the tone
which the Almighty found necessary for the presei'vation of

246 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

His own divinity in the midst of idol superstition, softened
when His finger wrote of that dear relation of life which is
revered in all quarters and regions of the earth, — as if He re-
membered that He was yet to be known to the world as the
Father of an only-begotten and well-beloved Son, and wished
to set this relation round with soft entreaty and kindest pro-
mise, which having done, He resumed His terrible and forbid-
ding state when He proceeded to give the five fundamentals
of social order, which He foresaw were ever to be thundered,
and would need the support of terror no less than of love.

If any one would obey this commandment which the Lord
hath given to children, he must take cognisance of his inward
feelings, and put this question to his heart, whether he holdeth
his father and mother in honour ; and he must be careful to
distinguish it, for there are various sentiments towards par-
ents, approved amongst men, at war with the sentiment of
honour approved by God. There is a pride, commonly
called an honest pride, in our parents for their worth, which
will dictate ostentatious epitaphs, and call forth frequent ebul-
litions of praise : this is not the honour required of God, but
self-complacency and boasting, which is hateful in His sight.
There is a pride of ancestry, and an idolatry of the name
which we bear, because of the deeds which our fathers have
done, which also, as it is commonly exhibited, is a very mixed
and equivocal sentiment. There is also towards parents whose
condition of life we have surpassed, a feeling of shame, which
prompts some to exalt them by liberal gifts into the neigh-
bourhood of their own exaltation, and which prompts others
to forget and disavow them as much as possible. In either
case, it is a contemptible, and in the latter, a vile and wicked
conceit. There is also towards parents an oblivion, arising
from the manifold occupations of life, and from the new rela-
tion in which we ourselves are placed, which is not to be justi-
fied by any demand that society hath upon us, but only by
the cause of Christ, which is the demand of God, whose glory
is the only thing that standeth before parental honour.

In order to guard against these spurious forms of this sen-
timent, as well as to rebuke the want of it altogether, it seem-
eth good, after the general explanation given above, that we

DUTY TO PARENTS. 247

should enter a little into particulars, and point out some of the
ways in which it expresscth itself, and by which its presence
within us will be revealed.

And to begin from the lowest point of the scale. It will
surely include all that we are bound to feel and to do for the
sake of our neighbour. For though everything distinctive of
a parent were wanting, — every sentiment of love, and every
action of duty; though so far as memory could reach back, we
could remember nothing but frowns and blows and cruelty;
though we had been begotten in sin, and brought forth in
shame, and cast naked and forlorn upon the charity of the
world, — yet the worst case can do no more than exile such guilty
parents into the condition of a neighbour, under which the
whole family of mankind is included, when it is said, " Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Surely our parents, at
the least, deserve that mother feeling which God commanded
us to have towards all men of whatever name, — the feeling
of love, and that no weak form of love, but strong as the love
which we bear unto ourselves. Though of the wickedest cha-
racter, we are to bear towards men pity and tenderness, and
to utter interceding prayer, which will shew itself in acts
best fitted to recover and bless them : however persevering
in their enmity and their persecution of us, we are to do them
good, and to be gracious towards them. They may scoff
against the Lord and His Anointed, and it may be necessary
for us to assume the high tones of anger and commination ;
we may deliver them to Satan for the destruction of the body,
but still it must be in love, that their souls may be saved in
the day of the Lord. The sentiment of love may put on
various expressions, and these expressions may coincide
with the expressions of malice, but they must not proceed
from malice, which is of the devil. All our feelings towards
all men (the very worst) must be in love; all our transactions
with them expressions of that love, though in various forms,
even as all the visitations of the providence of God, from
the most soft and prosperous, to the most stern and inflic-
tive, are dispensations of His love. Now, if in duty to our
neighbour, of whatever cast and character, we must be moved
in all our actions by the mother principle of self-love,

248 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

surely, to our parents, whatever they may have been to us^
and whatever they may be in the eye of the world, it behov-
eth us to feel no less, but something more. The blood that
is in our veins is theirs, the natural dispositions within our
hearts are theirs, our name is theirs, and the sanctification of
grace, or nobility of the world, cannot save us from the hon-
our or dishonour of their fame. And if they were guilty in
bringing us into being, it was their weakness; and if they were
ashamed of our birth, it was their misfortune ; and oh ! if they
cast us off from their bosom, it was some stern and frowning
adversity which they feared, a sad and sore penance done to
the fear of the world, or some strong temptation of the evil
one that over-mastered them. And if they still live in a dis-
honour which God's grace hath taught us to abominate, then
that same grace teacheth us to pity them, to forgive them, to
bless them, to honour them, and to seek to save them. Go
to them, if any one here holdeth his father and mother in dis-
repute, and hath excommunicated them from his heart; — go to
and be reconciled to them ; treat them at least like a neighbour,
with love equal to that which thou bearest to thyself; treat
them with honour such as thou bearest to one who, in the
appointment of God, is placed over thee.

This leads us to remark, secondly, that whatever we owe to
the magistrate we owe to our parents. Now the mother feel-
ing, in which God hath commanded us to live towards thp
magistrate placed over us, is in this wise. Because regular
government is that without which nothing prospers upon the
earth, and which, being shaken, all things just and sacred are
rushed upon and trodden down ; therefore He who watcheth
over men hath seen it good to consecrate for its sake a nurs-
ing or mother sentiment within the breast of His people, and
commanded us to maintain to judges and magistrates and
governors a constant reverence within our breast. Instead of
which, if we allow the opposite sentiment to prevail in the
inner chamber of our soul, and to have the mastery during
its silent and brooding seasons, — if we live in jealousy, suspi-
cion, and complaint, — it will come to pass that the obedience
which we must yield will be a forced and unwilling obedience;
our tempers will be soured, and the way prepared for turbu-

DUTY TO PARENTS. 249

leiice and disquiet. Which respectful feeHng is not to the
man for his own sake, but to the man by reflection from the
office. Those who give the reverence due unto him as an
office-bearer for the commonweal to him as a man, are flat-
terers, parasites, courtiers, the sappers and miners of the
foundations of states ; but those who give it to the office, and
thence derive it to the man who fills' it, are the assurance of
regular government, while they arc the terror of usurping and
self-aggrandising governors. For the moment the office-
bearer betrays his office, their fears for that which they love
awaken and take arms. He hath cut the tie which held him
to their reverence ; he hath wounded that which maintained
him in their hearts. The loyalty upon which he sat exalted
he hath madly removed, and sunk from his high estate. He
is a private man ; and worse, he standeth at that bar where he
formerly sat supreme. And he hath placed himself at the
bar of that law which formerly protected all his personal
faults with its sacred shield. So that the reverence for the
magistrate, which the law of God prescribeth as the mother
feeling of governments, is not only the stability of the ship
while the pilot steereth well, but, when he hath ignorantly or
wilfully steered amiss, it righteth the vessel, chasteneth him,
and haply sheweth him his place. Now, that this feeling
is due to parents cannot be doubted, inasmuch as parents
are magistrates over us to a great extent, and acknowledged
as such by the state. So that, even under the law, they hold
an office, and are overshadowed by the sacredness of law,
which casteth a canopy over all its servants ; but still more
by God, who setteth this honour towards parents before the
duties to society in the order of the decalogue, thereby inti-
mating that the sovereignty of parents is before the sove-
reignty of kings and rulers. For certainly the patriarchal was
the first of all governments, and no form of government can
supersede the patriarchal, so as to render it nugatory. And
if government resteth its claim to reverence, and hath from
heaven received its title to the same on account of the service
it is of to the weal of every man, much more upon that same
foundation doth parental authority rest. For they have nou-
rished and brought us up, divided with us their bread.

250 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

their home, their property, their heart, their all, — found us in
the means of knowledge and spiritual improvement, opened to
us an honourable way into the world, given us the best coun-
sels, and besought for us the friendship of all their friends, and
regarded everything in common, — which doubtless are tenfold
greater advantages conferred upon us than the best govern-
ment has conferred upon its obedient and respectful subjects.
Therefore, even by parity of reason — if to reason these
things are to be brought, or rather a fortiori by much more
than parity of reason — are they entitled to the reverence which
we yield to superiors in office or in station. If men have
a natural superior on earth, it is the father and mother who
reared them, gave food to their appetites, taught their limbs
motion, filled their mouths with language, discerned to the best
of their judgment between the good and ill of their thoughts,
and, when they could not do so, found them teachers and
instructors. Can any honour express the sense of that infe-
riority of strength, of understanding, and of condition in which
we so long stood by them, and during which they acted so
condescendingly towards us .'' Can any service repay those ob-
ligations which we owe them } If we should live many years
their only stay and prop and dependence, we must die their
debtors. And that debt we shall never discharge. It must
stand over for the sake of our children, and be paid over to
them ; and so the debt must go down from father to son to
the latest generation, and bind families together from the ear-
liest to the last of their line.

This brings us to remark, in the third place, that, in addi-
tion to the love which we owe to a neighbour, and the rever-
ence wdiich we owe to a superior, this honour in which we
should live and move and breathe towards our parents in-
cludeth, if need should be, all that a servant oweth to his
master. Not that any father would willingly put a son into
the condition of a servant, but rather, like God, adopt servants
into the condition of sons; according to St Paul, "Hencefor-
ward we are no more servants, but sons, heirs of God and
joint-heirs with Christ ;" — but that, if by the adversities of life
and through the infirmities of age our parents should be
brought into straits, as oft they are, it is the duty, it is the

DUTY TO PARENTS. 251

honour, and it ought to be the glory of children to turn out
as labourers, yea, as bondsmen and servants, for their fathers'
sake. And it is a stigma, a most gross stain upon the
scutcheon of any family that a father and a mother should
pine in want, or hang dependent upon charity, while their
children have enough and to spare. And when this bccometh
prevalent in any country, it is time that they should take the
state of sentiment of the realm into their thoughtful delibera-
tions, and take measures against the evil, by a more pure and
plentiful diffusion of religion; for there is a disease at work in
the joints and ligaments of society which will dissolve its
union, and make of it an unwieldy mass.

Oh, who would refuse to lay down his hands, and work and
toil, yea till blood started from his willing fingers, for the sake
of an aged father and mother ! For laboured not that father
soon and late for us, laboured not that mother night and day
for us .'' Whither is the strength of the one gone } — in bowing
himself for his children. And whither is the beauty of the
other flown .'' — in much anguish for her children. Where are
the fruits of their labour and anguish i* — they went in bread for
their children. And to what served that bread purchased with
a parent's strength.'' — it went to nourish health and strength
in their children. Strength was reared by strength. Health
was bought with health. Are children their own .'' No, they
are bought with a price, with the price of their father's and
their mother's youthful labours. Let them redeem themselves
by labour in return, if God should so make it needful in His
providence. In whom centred all the early feelings of our
parents' hearts .'' — in their children. For whom ascended their
prayers unto God i* — for their children. Why do they grieve
over their broken fortunes .-• — because of their children. And
for whom had they destined all 1 — for their children. For
them every pound that accumulated was doubly dear ; for
them its loss is twice lamented. And can the children allow
them — the stays and props of their childhood — to fall for want
of a stay and prop .-• Can they allow these servants, these slaves
of their youth to die, worn with cares, and gray with years, and
yield them no service .'' Can they allow these ministers of
all their peace and blessedness to be in their old age single

252 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

and uncomforted ? Then, verily, upon them and theirs will
the heaviest curse of Heaven descend, the curse of a broken-
hearted father and a despairing mother. They shall have the
inheritance of their own mockeries, and their own children
shall inflict manifold upon their hearts the wounds which they
deserve, by having inflicted them upon the undeserving,
upon those who deserved smiles and caresses. A father's
blessing in the religious homes of the patriarchs was a thing
which children besought with tears, which they propitiated
with the most grateful kindness ; because to have it they knew
was propitious of all good — to have it not, ominous of all evil.
And poor Esau, when he had been sorely defrauded, said,
" Hast thou not one for me likewise, father V But a father's
curse let no one abide it ; it is more terrible than exile or
excommunication, and next to the curse of God the heaviest
thing which falleth upon the head of any mortal.

And, finally, into this mother affection of honour towards our
parents, there enter many other tender feelings which I have
not time to treat particularly: as the gratitude that we feel
to benefactors is their due ; all the tenderness which Ave owe
to most devoted friends is their due, for what friend sticketh
by his children like a father } All that we owe to the most
devoted servant is their due, for what servant ever waited
upon her children like a mother.? And if we have had reli-
gious parents, all the reverence we owe to the priest should
alight upon them, for they have sent up more prayers than
any priest, and taught us more lessons of goodness, and given
us more wholesome counsels, and administered to us more
faithful rebukes. The heart of man is very capacious, and
hath a chamber for every possible relation of life. For the
relations of life are all offsprings of certain affections of the
mind, which predispose it to unite itself in such relation to
the beings with whom it is surrounded. Now whatever is
just and honourable, and true and praiseworthy, and affec-
tionate and devoted, in the breast of man, doth commonly
pour itself upon the heads of children, from the frank and
generous breasts of parents. For an unnatural parent is far
less frequent than an unnatural child, though an unwise parent
be more frequent. Therefore, in addition to all the obliga-

DUTY TO PARENTS. 253

tions which have this day been discoursed of, it is the part of
every child to recollect whatever more extraordinary attention
he hath received, and to repay these with more extraordinary
returns. And if any one render these extraordinary returns
where there have been no such extraordinary gifts, such un-
paid affection is well-pleasing to God ; and if any one render
these extraordinary returns where there hath been neglect
and mistreatment, it is the more acceptable to God, who
maketh " His rain to descend upon the evil and the good, and
His sun to rise upon the just and upon the unjust."

I would not, as I said, bring cold reasoning — still less would
I bring calculating exchange — into the mother feelings of the
breast of man. They arc there for the sake of the soul's own
well-being. It is the soul's noble constitution to be capable
of them. To evolve them is the prerogative, the very defini-
tion of spirit; and therein it stands distinguished from matter.
And had the soul abode in her primitive glory, she would
have gone on for ever peacefully evolving these feelings to
their various proper objects, whereby she would have en-
joyed her own well-being, and constituted the blessedness of
the spiritual world ; and the movements of human society
would have been as still, as regular, and as harmonious, as the
motions of the heavens ; and the heart of each would have
beat as pure, as beautiful, and as constant to the feelings of
every other heart, as each several star of the heavens doth
shine pure, and beautiful, and constant, in the eye of all the
others which behold its beaut}^ and are beheld beautiful in
their turn. But from the fall of man his inward principles have
grown into disorder, he is usurped by the feelings which be-
long to reprobate spirits, and there remain nothing but the
fleeting shadows of those better feelings which heretofore pos-
sessed him wholly. He is possessed with the evil, and by this
he is overcome ; whence occur the dissensions of families, the
destruction of states, impiety to God, contentions, and every
evil work.

From which warring, contentious state the Almighty, being
minded to deliver mankind, and restore as much of former
righteousness as might be in this fallen world, and to prepare
•our souls for another, did take upon Him the ofilce of setting

254 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

man in order again. Artifice had got in among the secret
springs of his creation, and the outward end and purpose of
his being was destroyed, and he waited for his Ci'eator's hand
to set him right again. The Creator did the work hke a
Creator. He took conscience, which is His vicegerent over
the state, and led him by the hand through all its chambers,
and shewed what mark and rule was proper to each, and left
him to take charge of the same as he would answer at
the great day, giving him free access to conference with
His blessed Spirit in all difficulties and emergencies. He
shewed that the mother feeling towards His providence was
contentment, — tow^ards the gospel of Christ, faith, — towards
His Spirit, communion, — towards evil done, repentance, —
towards good desired, hope, — towards an enemy, forgiveness*
— towards a superior, respect, — towards an inferior, kindness,
— towards all men, good order, — towards our parents, honour.
In these He requireth the soul to abide towards these several
objects, — to admit no other feelings; to think under the in-
fluence of them, that her thoughts may be holy; to speak
under the influence of them, that her speech may be as
meat and drink to the spirits of men ; to act under the influ-
ence of them, that she may become a blessing to all with
whom she holdeth intercourse. But above all, in her medi-
tative moments, when resolutions are taken and purposes
formed, — in her reflections on what is past and her medita-
tions on what is to come, — in her broodings during which
her tempers are formed, — in the musings and meditations
and moods of the mind, we ought to preserve these con-
ditions of soul towards all, in order that she may become
full of right dispositions and inclinations, and bring forth
of her free will the words and actions which are proper to
each. Over these mother feelings conscience is the guardian,
— no eye perceiveth them but hers. As to words and
actions, others perceive them ; and for the sake of vanity
and interest, and other motives, they may be assumed, and
are therefore no certain marks to judge by; but the former,
being beheld only by ourselves and God, are real sub-
stantial indications of our righteousness and regeneration
and being wrought in us, they will not only fill all the occa-

DUTY TO PARENTS. 255

sions which are offered to them, but they will go far beyond,
and seek occasions, — not only passively fill the routine of the
world's customs, but invent new customs, and find out new
fields on which to expend themselves.

Now, of these abiding, constant feelings, which are the
mother of action, that proper to live and die in towards our
parents is the feeling of honour : " Honour thy father and
mother." He doth not say that we should always agree with
our parents, for like frail mortals they may be sometimes
wrong ; but if, for the sake of truth, it be necessary to dis-
agree, we should do so with the respectful and reverential
tone of one who beareth them honour. He doth not say that
we should always follow their counsels, or limit ourselves by
their wisdom, but that however we pass beyond their limited
views, it should not touch upon the honour in which we hold
them. And if we disobey, as for conscience' sake we behove
to do, we shall in our disobedience be mindful that our rever-
ence for them is not shaken ; if we have to forsake them, as for
Christ's sake we behove to do, still in our voluntary exile to
yield them all respect ; and if they abandon us, and disinherit
us, still to reverence wherever we can the words and person of
those who gave us birth ; never to allow our souls in hatred
or spite; never to express ourselves in bitterness or scorn;
but in all conditions, and under all treatment, good or evil,
to bear ourselves with submission and reverence, and make it
manifest that w^e honour them, though we find it necessary to
honour God and Christ and truth and righteousness still more.

One of these mother feelings of the mind we have endea-
voured to unfold, and we had many considerations by which
to enforce it, but time forbids us to enter into them at pre-
sent. Only, then, one word before we close : that if chil-
dren be left in their liberty from their youth without any
constraint of religion, not only will their feelings towards
parents, but every other feeling, grow wild and disordered.
They will yield to parental authority while parental authority
is stronger than their own wilfulness ; but when the time
comes that the latter acquires the mastery, they will burst
away from the restraint, and run a course of their own, — how
often a course to ruin ! But if parents do from the earliest

256 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

dawnings of the mind put their children under the govern-
ment of the laws of God, they will be taught reverence and
obedience in the inward parts of their mind, and their out-
ward actions will conform thereto. Yet there will be no
slavery, no drudge of rule-keeping, no degradation of unwill-
ing service. It is a discipline of the principles of action, not
a slavery of form. There can be no hypocrisy, there can be
no reaction of self-willedness. For the will hath been in-
structed, the will hath been subjected to God. And there
will occur no time at which parental authority will be a sham
or a burden, until the fear of God become also a sham or a
burden. Let parents meditate this matter well ; for, while it
is the only way of breeding noble-minded and pious children,
it is the only way of securing the reverence of children. While
it seats you in the heart, it secures you all the obedience
you can wish. While it keeps your children under subjection,
it keeps them from slavery. While it saves them from self-
willedness, it saves them from hypocrisy. And, under God,
it gives the only fair prospect of continuing one calm and
peaceful union in families while they are spared here, and of
obtaining for them a united fellowship for ever in heaven
above.

If we owe such duties as I have this day discoursed of to
our earthly parents, who are compassed about with weak-
ness, how much more to our Father in heaven ! They are,
under Him, the authors of our bodily. He of our spiritual
part ; they bring us up to a short and chequered life. He hath
prepared for us a life of everlasting blessedness. " They for a
few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but He for
our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness." If we
honour them for their affection, let us adore Him for His
everlasting love. If we obey them for their high prerogatives
of parents, much more let us submit ourselves in all things to
our Father which is in heaven. And as Christ, though a Son,
yet learned obedience in affliction's sorest school ; so let us,
though adopted sons for Christ's sake, bear the cross of con-
tumely and contempt, of labour and sorrow, if need be, for the
sake of our Father which is in heaven. Then upon us shall
descend the blessing from above, life without end. And we

DUTY TO PARENTS. 257

shall dwell under the shadow of the wings of His protection ;
and there remain for us mansions in heaven, which our blessed
Saviour hath gone before to prepare for all those who, like
Him, love and obey the heavenly Father, and hold the be-
ginning of their confidence steadfast unto the end.

VOL. III.

IV.

MATRIMONY.

'"T^HE two great cardinal sentiments which the Christian
rehgion seemeth to cultivate are communion and sub-
jection, existing at one and the same time within the same
soul, — communion in its various forms, first of charity to all
men ; then of love to the brotherhood, commonly called the
communion of saints ; then of union to Christ, commonly
called the mystical union of Christ with believers ; then of
the fellowship of the Spirit ; and lastly of that in which they
all terminate, the union of the soul with God, the participa-
tion of the Divine nature, the new creation after the image of
God in righteousness and in true holiness. Along with this
principle of communion in its various forms, it is the object
of our religion to cultivate the principle of subjection or obe-
dience in its various forms, — submission to the dispositions
of Providence, and subjection to the kingly authority of
Christ, patience under the persecutions of men, obedience to
our parents and to all in lawful authority, subordination of all
the faculties of the inward man to the law of conscience, and
yielding of the conscience to the laws of God, These two
great sentiments of communion and subjection, or, in other
words, love and humility, our religion setteth itself mainly to
cherish, in order that we may be delivered from the two oppo-
site sentiments of enmity and pride, which are the bane of
happiness in this world, and the misery of the wicked in the
world to come. Enmity and pride, with all their tribe of de-
pendants, which are malice, envy, revenge, selfishness, hatred,
cruelty, and the like, come of too strong a concentration of
the powers of human nature upon itself, too frequent a medi-
tation of our own concerns, too little care for those of others;

MATRIMONY. 259

too much trust and dependence upon our own address and
resources, too little upon the providence of God ; too much
tribute of success paid into the treasure of our own merit,
too little into that of the praise of God ; too much of our
failure and misfortune ascribed unto the wickedness of others,
too little to our own undeserving-, and the righteous displea-
sure or well-intended visitation of God ; — in short, too great
a determination of all thoughts and events selfward, too
little outward. From which causes of malice and pride to
redeem the children of men, our Lord and Saviour hath, in
every sentence of the Gospel, sought to draw us out of the
strong and enchanted hold of our own personality, to com-
mune with all spirits, from the Spirit of the living God to the
spirit of the meanest, yea, and most wicked creature; and
throughout all that range of intercommunion hath given us
some form of the sentiment of love whereunto to lash our
soul, yea, also some form of the sentiment of humility under
Avhich patiently to possess it. So that it may be said, these two
sentiments of communion and subjection are the poles upon
which the spiritual world revolves, — the two eyes of Chris-
tian life, which conduct it to harmony and peace ; the two
wings of the Christian spirit, by which it is raised from the
selfishness and worldliness of the present life to the refine-
ment and blessedness of the life to come.

Now He in whom were hid all the treasures of wisdom as
well as of goodness, hath sought not only by positive com-
mandment to establish the reign of humility and love, but by
the wisest measures to win favour for them, and to insinu-
ate their sweet influences into the souls of men ; and as the
rudiments of character are laid in the earliest childhood, and
grow good or ill according to the discipline of those years
we live under the observation of our parents, the Lawgiver
and Saviour of men hath taken the family under His special
management, and hath given it such a constitution in the
Holy Scriptures as to make it favourable to the extinction of
selfishness and pride, the rulers of the w^orld, and propitious
to humility and love, the rulers of the world to come. That
nursery of men which home is, He hath regulated so as to
make it a nursery of Christians, by constituting it a type or

26o ON FA MIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

symbol of these two sentiments of communion and subjec-
tion for which He seeketh access into the breasts of men ; so
that it shall present unto the children the constant exhibition
of these two cardinal sentiments, to which their eye being
turned during all the years of opening nature, they may
gain favour in their sight, coming in company with all the
sweet charities which live about a home, and all the dear
affections which cluster around the parents to whom we owe
life and all its blessings. As Baptism and the Lord's Supper
are the emblems or visible notation of the two great doctrines
of the faith — cleansing from natural depravity by the blood of
Christ, and our sustenance in the new life by the grace which
Cometh from above, — so, in the family, the relations between
husband and wife, and between parents and children, are the
two great emblems by which are held before the eyes of the
children the two great sentiments of the Christian spirit —
communion and subjection. And in this sense it is that the
Christian constitution of families is of such admirable import-
ance, in order that the children may grow up amidst the
beautiful incarnation of these two sentiments, and grow into
the apprehension and admiration of the sentiments them-
selves.

While I explain this, I request your grave attention, as to
a matter of the last importance, and worthy to be oft solemnly
entreated of from this holy place, though, alas ! it be f^r
more frequently made the subject of idle jest and thoughtless
folly. The estate of matrimony, at its first establishment in
the garden of Eden, was made the closest union upon the
earth, for the sake of which all others should give way :
" Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and
shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh ;" — the
constancy of which union was defended in the Decalogue
from all invasion, as the next thing in importance to life
itself, before property, and honesty, and good-will. It was
further confirmed and defended by our Lord at the renewal
and re-enforcement of the law from the Mount ; and the
whole mystery hath been opened up by Paul, in various parts
of his epistles, as emblematical of no less than the union of
Christ to His church, of the souls of believers to their living

MATRIMONY. 261

Head. In this relation between husband and wife, it is the
design of God to exhibit the most perfect union whereof two
spirits living upon the earth are susceptible. He intcndeth
that there should be community between them in all things,
individuality in none ; that whenever they differ they should
find a common ground on which to agree, and not separate
and recede into their proper provinces of thought and feeling;
but do their most diligent endeavour to be of one heart and
of one soul. He meaneth it to be the perfection of com-
munion, the masterpiece of affection, and the parent of all
other associations — friendship, acquaintance, and society.
And this, not for the sake of domestic happiness and pros-
perity alone, but for the sake of religion and spiritual blessed-
ness. For in joining such a communion, it is manifest that
both parties must surrender their personality, and come forth
from the magic circle of their self-love ; that their natures
must become intenvoven, each resigning self for something
better, which is not self, but communion, which is not a thing
seen, but a thing unseen — something made from the union of
the two, which hath no existence in either. Now, in this
resignation of self, which Christian matrimony is intended by
our Lord to be, the great step is taken towards religion.
Communion is deliberately preferred to selfishness; and if
communion with a spirit of like infirmity with our own, how
much more communion with the Father, and with His Son
Christ Jesus ! When this community, not of goods, nor of
person, but of purpose and design, and everything which is
communicable, hath taken place, and is in sweet operation,
then it not only assisteth the parents to the higher and more
perfect communion which religion is, but is to the children a
constant emblem, as hath been said, of communion in general,
and from the earliest dawn of feeling, it maketh a strenuous
debate with the principle of selfishness, to which human
nature is so prone. They behold, from the first moment
that their spirit can behold spiritual things, a common inter-
est as well as a self-interest. All that blessed family estate,
of which they are a part, they perceive to come from the sac-
rifice of the personal, and the triumph of the common. Its
regulation proccedeth altogether by consent, and whenever

262 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

dissent comes, then come discord and every evil. The face
of peace is marred, the harmony of the household is con-
founded with jarring interests, and the guardian genius of
home departcth. But when communion returns, then with it
the blessedness of the whole family is restored. In this way
it cometh to pass that the married estate becomes a standing
type or emblem of communion, a constant argument against
selfishness, a constant incitement of the generous and pious
parts of human nature in all the household ; and being so
established, it is worth a thousand lessons to the heart ; it is
an atmosphere in which the heart lives, and breathes, and
hath its being ; and the blessing to the family of such a cor-
dial union is not to be estimated. It is not to be estimated,
because no one's consciousness can ascend so high into the
rudiments of his being. There the dawn of thought and
feeling God hath mysteriously hidden from us in the dark-
ness of childhood ; like as, at the same period, He hid from us
the prospective view of life. There our spirits grew, feeding
upon smiles and embraces; our morning of life dawned in the
holy light of a father's and a mother's shining face. Joy was
our frequent companion, and carelessness went ever with usj
hand in hand. If, instead of such an auspicious ushering into
this world of care, we had been fed with the sour grapes of
maternal fretfulness and paternal tyranny ; if our ear, for the
dulcet and soothing sounds of a mother's fond love and a
father's sprightly joy, had been accustomed to sharp quarrel
and contentious discord ; if the comfort we had in our homes
had been banished out of doors by feuds and contentions,
and peevishness had usurped the place of sweetness, and stern
command of loving-kindness, and contention of communion,
and we had grown up under these storms and troubles of the
domestic estate, rather than under its pacific influences ; — then,
just as in troubles of the political estate every mind is a little
shaken off its centre — some unhinged, and many altogether
deranged, and a spirit of wild speculation and factious dis-
sension scizeth all the children of the state, — so in the family,
it cometh to pass, is such anarchy, that all the springs of
thought and character are troubled at their fountain, and a
brood of discontented, disunited, ill-thriven children grow up

MATRIMONY. 263

fulfilling the terrible, yet true commination of the Lord, that
He visitcth the iniquities of the parents upon the children to
the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him and
keep not His commandments. But, upon the other hand,
when true community and harmony of feeling are preserved
by the parents and guardians of the family, the children
grow up under the sweet influences of love and blessedness,
and become unconsciously attached to home, — with how
much strength they know not, until they are torn away
from it, or some of its endeared objects are removed.
They grow up as the subjects of a well-ordered state, in the
midst of their privileges and possessions, working, each one in
his place, with diligence and contentment, holding no disputes
or noisy brawls, and venting no wild patriotic effusions, but
living upon those things concerning which your would-be pa-
triots talk. Such people, though quiet and simple, are strong
and strongly united, and, being invaded or assailed, woe to
those who stir them or wound their peace. They rise from
their quietness, and they dash them in pieces, like the pot-
sherds. Thus nourished in peace and unity, the tender shep-
herds of the tender flock have oft crushed and trodden upon
the mailed and battled strength of armies that had swept
whole portions of the earth. In such peace, in such love,
and in such strong attachment to home, do children grow up
\A\o are nourished under the sweet consenting sway of united
and harmonious parents.

Thus have we explained how the family, which is ordered
after the institutes of Christ, becometh a constant emblem of
the spiritual world, in which the soul of man should live with
its Maker; and it ought to be an argument stronger than all
others for so ordering it, that our children are thereby in the
right way of being trained up for life and immortality. To
which agree the words of the wise man when he saith, " Train
up a child in the way he should go ; and when he is old, he
will not depart from it." As to those spouses who consult
not for such communion, but give way to the stream of this
world's fashions, which corrupteth all things, and live not for
God, or for one another, or for their children, but for the dis-
play of their rank, or the obtaining of distinction, or some

264 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION

worse consideration, — as to those parents who exercise no
such godhke government over their children, but give way, the
man (for I call him not father) to money-making, time-
serving, or ambition ; the woman (for I call her not mother)
to her dress, and companies, and most ostentatious entertain-
ments, leaving their offspring (for family it is not) the while
to every random influence of the nursery, or the academy, or
the public school ; — let such spouses, let such men and women,
come not into the assemblies of the righteous, or if they
come, let them know that God's messengers have for them
nothing save "Anathema Maranatha," until they repent of
their sinful ways, and reform the economy of their houses,
and make their homes no show-rooms, nor eating-houses, but
temples of God, — their nurseries no house of exile for orphans,
but the abode of fatherly and motherly charities, — until they
make their babes and little children acquainted with the
right of commonty they have in a father and a mother's
heart, and the duty of respectful obedience which they owe
to a father and a mother's charges. I know the engagements
of life, — I know its vanities and its ambitions also, how they
defraud home, and make it oft nothing more than an inn or
a caravansary of the night. I am not here to combat such
excuses ; but here I am to teach the spouses who are
willing how they may reach that communion nearest to
heavenly whereof I spake, and to teach parents how they
may reach that authority likest unto God, in the shelter of
which their children will grow up great and good.

It is not difficult to unite these two sentiments of love and
submissiveness, for in truth there can be no love without sub-
missiveness, and true love sheweth itself by sacrifice. The
next purpose which a family is intended to serve in the
economy of Divine grace is as an emblem of subjection, the
second great sentiment of religion, and a school for the same,
which it doth as well to the parents as to the children. For
both of these two sentiments of communion and subjection,
which religion requireth to co-exist in the same breast, are con-
tained, embodied together and working in concert, in the family.
The sentiment of love or communion when existing alone work-
eth towards God familiarity, and produceth fanaticism, and

MATRIMONY. 265

must be guarded by humility or submission, which addeth the
awful and the venerable to the affectionate and the lovely;
and towards men the sentiment of brotherhood needeth the
same restraint, otherwise we lose the respect due to superiors,
and expect it not from inferiors, and things tend to equality
and commonness which suit not with the present condition of
the world. And herein is the family so excellent a school of
religion, that it containeth these two sentiments in the most
heavenly combination. For while the parents are maintain-
ing with each other what community they can, they are, in
the act of doing so, submitting and deferring, I do not say to
each other, but to the common good and united condition
after which they seek. They are submitting the personal to
the common, the selfish of their nature to the generous,
the seen and felt good to that which is not seen and is not
of themselves, which is the nearest approach that can be
made to the submitting of our rule to the will of God, and
entering from a state of alienation into a state of communion
with the Spirit of holiness. So that the state of matrimony
being religiously maintained, is the best school by far which
the earth holdeth for the perfection of spiritual life.

But it is to the children that I would particularly refer this
use of the family as an emblem of, and a school in which to
learn, that kind of subjection which the Lord regardeth. For,
as communion without subjection turneth into fanaticism, so
subjection without communion turneth into slavishness and
superstition. God cannot abide panic-struck devotion. He
cannot away with timorous rites. The love of Him casteth
out fear. The heart, the whole heart must go with the ser-
vice. He loveth a cheerful giver to the poor, and loveth the
same hearty, cheerful offering unto Himself. For He is not a
tyrant though He be a sovereign. Righteousness and peace
are the habitations of His throne ; mercy and grace go con-
tinually before Him. Yet He will be observed and obeyed,
but with the heart and soul. He doeth according to His will
in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
For why .■• Because He doeth righteously and bounteously.
He is glorious in His holiness, and fearful in His praises,
doing wonders ; and none may stay His hand from working,

266 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

or say unto Him, What doest Thou ? Yet there is to be found
with Him mercy that He may be loved, and plenteous re-
demption that He may be sought after. Now, this union of
love and humility, of communion and submission, being the
state of soul in which God wisheth His people to be found con-
tinually, it is of an unspeakable value that they should grow up
during those years in which the mother instincts of men are
developing themselves under a similar conjunction, — that they
should be born under, that they should be reared under, this
happy and religious aspect of the governing sentiments of
the soul. A family regulated after the pattern shewed by
Christ is such. For the parents have in their hands a power
almost divine of governing and ruling over their children.
And, as we shewed in a former discourse, they have con-
veyed to them a trinity of offices — prophet, priest, and king.
And no man is permitted to be a bishop in the Church if he
rule not his own house well, and have not his children in sub-
jection. And the Son of God was in subjection to His
earthly parents for thirty years of His life. And next after
He had provided for His own worship and glory, whereof He
is jealous, and which He yieldeth not to any other, God pro-
vided in the decalogue for the high and holy prerogatives of
parents, securing the family weal in preference to the com-
mon weal. And in high and solemn language He hath laid
down the fatherly office, saying, " Honour thy father and thy
mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee." Yet in a thousand places He
requireth of them love, saying, " Parents love your children,
and provoke them not to anger ;" and it was one object of the
coming of Christ, and of the Elias of Christ, to turn the
hearts of the parents to the children, and of the children to
the parents. And Jesus, though He dwelt in the bosom of
His Father's love from everlasting, having taken upon Him
our nature, as a son learned obedience ; and though it cost
Him groans and drops of bloody sweat, He said, " Yet, holy
Father, not my will, but Thine be done." And what is the
whole incarnation of the Son of God but a great act of filial
obedience, undertaken to bring the rest of the children back
into the arms of their Father's love, and the joy and fatness
of their Father's house .'

MATRIMONY. 267

So that the condition in which a child standeth to his
parents is the best emblem of the condition in which the soul
should stand to God ; the mingled love and authority which a
father holdcth over his household is the best example of the
feeling of God towards the children of men. And the com-
munion and subjection which mingle together in the soul of a
child towards his parent is the best lesson of the state of mind
which we should preserve towards God. And if that parent
learn of God how to fulfil his high and careful office, his chil-
dren will grow up in the fittest frame for religious and spiritual
men ; and as the parental bond relaxes, will feel the want of
some congenial bond in which their soul may have equal
delight, and will pass by an easy transition into a filial sub-
jection to the Father of spirits.

Oh that families were so ordered ! Oh that religion were
so brought over our souls by early influence of those persons,
things, and places in which our souls have pleasure ! Then
we should not run the gauntlet of wild dissipations when we
have slipped out of a father's sight, and die in our prime full
of wickedness and disgrace, or live full of shame and bitter
regret for the follies of our youth. We should not, if we
became religious, become blind bigots, or puny zealots, or
fanatics, or superstitious fools. There would be no revulsions
and revolutions of nature in order to become a servant of
God. It should come upon us by unseen degrees, and, as
is reported of Jesus, as we grow in grace we should grow in
favour with God and man. And our religion would be soft
and reverential as family love ; and the household of saints
would become as the great family into which we had been
translated, of which Christ was eldest brother ; and the rest
of the world we would visit with kind remonstrance, and
much sacrifice, as He did, in order to bring them into the
fellowship of our peace and security, and then we should
come to be bound in the arms of communion and subjection
to the great Father of all ; and, living in His embrace, we
should live in peace, and rejoice in hope of His glory, when
He should send His Son the second time without spot
unto salvation, that He might gather us together into the
mansions of His Father's house, which are prepared on high
for those that love Him.

V.

DUTIES OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN.

Prov. XXII. 6.
Train up a child in the way he should go ; and luheit he is old, he will not depart

from it.

/^UR children are a gift more immediately derived from
the hands of God than any other thing which we call
our own. The goods of fortune change hands and descend
from father to son, and we are but the temporary tenants of
their enjoyment. They are tools and instruments for training
the immortal spirit, which office having discharged for us,
they pass downwards to discharge for others, and are but the
furniture and accommodations of our present lot. But a child
is a sister spirit, a joint heir of immortality, who being once
impregnated with the breath of life by its Creator, can no more
return into non-existence, but shall survive the conflagration
of the heavens and the earth. The soul of each babe is not
to be exchanged, according to our Saviour, for the whole world.
The redemption is precious, it is not to be purchased with
gold, neither can silver be weighed for the price thereof
How highly honoured is man to be the parent of such an off-
spring. The earth produceth plants and flowers which bloom
and sow their seed, and perish and return to dust ; the animals
do the work appointed them by man, beget other servants
for his use, and likewise perish ; but men, whom the plants
of the field do feed, and to whom the animals do willing obe-
dience, or are fain to yield themselves a prey, areborn to endure
for ever, and to give birth to beings who shall likewise endure
for evermore. Human nature is the handmaiden of God, and
bringeth forth productions upon which the Almighty doth set
His love and impress His heavenly image.

DUTIES OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN. 269

Which highest worth of children is not only taught by
revelation, but even by the instinct of nature. The first sight
of them begetteth in the bosom of parents an emotion of love
and a devoted attachment, which in every one that vice hath
not brutified, is strong as death, so that nothing beneath the
sun, not all beneath the sun, shall bribe a virtuous parent to
part with his infant child. And though it is long before affec-
tion shews itself in return, the passion grows and strengthens,
until our children become the chief objects for which we
labour and are ambitious — the joy of our life, or the grief and
sorrow of our hearts. " Lo, children are an heritage of the
Lord ; and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows
are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them : they
shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies
in the gate."

Each child, moreover, may become the parent of a long line
of posterity, and single children have become the parents
of many nations. And it rejoiceth the heart of a child to
have a pious and virtuous parent, and introduceth him both to
the favour of God and man. And if a father hath been at
pains to instil excellent lessons, and cultivate righteous habits
in his children, and to pray much with them and for them,
then God hath pledged Himself that in their old age they shall
not depart from it, but shall hand down the legacy of piety and
worth to another generation. Whereas, upon the other hand,
if parents be neglectful of the Lord God, and fail to make
mention of His wonderful acts unto their house, allowing them-
selves in folly and wickedness, then God, who is a jealous
God, will visit their iniquities upon their children's children to
the third and fourth generation ; which Divine commination,
though it seem hard, is nevertheless fulfilled in the experience
of the whole world. Not but that even the offspring of the
wicked are invited, and often enabled, to seek after the God
whom their father despised, but that they find it difficult to
cast off the deformity of early youth, and conform to religious
government.

Meanwhile the state suffers or rejoices in the possession of
a reprobate or religious people. For righteousness exaltcth a

2 70 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

nation, but sin is the disgrace of any people. Pious men are
the salt of the earth, which keep society from hastening to
decay and dissolution. Good and wise rulers find all their
trouble from the wicked and the lawless, but the righteous are
their joy and rejoicing. Whereas wicked rulers have more to
dread from a holy generation than from the armies of the enemy.

On every account, therefore, — of God's appointment, of
nature's inclination, of our children's benefit here and here-
after, and of the common weal, — it vitally concerneth every
parent to take the most vigilant oversight of his youthful
offspring, and in their behalf to postpone every other care,
however urgent the world may deem it. " Labour not," saith
our Lord, " for the meat that perisheth, but for that which
endureth for evermore." " Fear not men, that can kill the body,
but God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell-fire for
ever." In the same spirit we say to parents, Of all things com-
mitted to your trust, cherish in the first place the immortal
spirits of your children. Compared with this, the nourish-
ment or decoration of their bodies, soon to be defaced by the
wrinkles of age, and consumed by the mouldering grave,
is as nothing. Compared with this, the prosperity of
a few years, the ample fortune, the elevated station, the
short-lived renown, are as nothing. Ah ! it doth sicken one
to look on and witness the troubled and tempestuous waters
upon which parents launch their children, without any outfit
or provision of stable and lasting principle. The brave and
gallant youth goes forth to encounter a thousand forms of
vice, unwarned and undefended, and he falls into their wanton
embrace, thereby despoiling the gracefulness of his immortal
soul, and shipwrecking his everlasting life. Oh that parents
would learn from the experience of their own youth what a
gauntlet of temptation their children have to run, and not
send them like sheep to the sacrifice, or fuel for the fire that
is never to be quenched !

To which end, let me pray as many parents as are here
present to bear with me, while I do my endeavour, in the
strength of God, to put them in the way of training up their
children in the way they should go.

You may take it for granted, that, if left to themselves, your

DUTIES OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN. 271

children will go astray ; for there is a law in our members
warring against the law of our mind, and bringing us into
captivity to the law of sin which is in our members. This
sentence of the apostle, which brings us acquainted with the
corruption inherent in our nature, doth bring us also ac-
quainted with an opposite principle, which contendeth against
the corruption, but without success. This better nature in
every man — the law of the mind, warred upon and triumphed
over by the law of the members — the whole tenor of early dis-
cipline should go to nourish into a strength which might keep
its enemy under. To prosper and promote such an under-
taking, whether in youth, or manhood, or latest age, the
gospel is constructed on very purpose. It is an invocation of
the better man within the breast, by every gracious and
gainful method of address, and a discountenance of his an-
tagonist by every threat and denunciation of terror. The
authority of God, the tender mercy of Christ, the auxiliary
influences of the Holy Ghost, peace of mind within and
promise of prosperity without, acquittal at the last judg-
ment, and an inheritance incorruptible and undefilcd, and
that fadeth not away, are presented under every favourable
aspect, with a constant application, to keep in heart every
good principle, and make it victorious over the evil. While,
on the other hand, present and eternal judgments, dispeace of
conscience, remorse, rejection of God and man, the present
punishment of every crime, and the future reaping-time of
indignation and wrath, of tribulation and anguish, — are mus-
tered in fearful forms to overawe and restrain the evil prin-
ciple of human nature. And this contention, which, without
these evangelical aids, were hopeless, we are taught is not
only hopeful, but certain of good issue through the grace of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I consider it, therefore,
to be the office of every parent who believes the gospel, to
make himself acquainted with these its encouragements of
the good, and these its discouragements of the evil, and to use
them, according as God giveth him the ability, for the sake of
his child. There is no difficulty in this. The truths of reli-
gion are not hid in mystery, but level to the plainest capacity,
and just as they are mysterious, they are unimportant. The

2 72 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

most homely mother is as able — perhaps more able, taking
all things into account — to bring them home to the concep-
tion and heart of her child as the ablest minister of the
gospel. The ideas are simple, being affection, forgiveness,
and help ; anger, threatening, and punishment ; and being so
simple, the Lord will not hold any parent guiltless upon the
score of his ignorance, at least in this Christian land.

But it is not by formal lectures, given at seasons of great
transgression — though these are not to be withheld — but by
constant presentation in our familiar discourse of those sacred
motives, that a godly effect is to be wrought upon our chil-
dren. These religious truths must become household truths,
and be interwoven with the very structure of our nursery dis-
course ; and to utter them the countenance must not fix itself
into an iron mood, or the voice take a terrible tone, though reve-
rence and solemnity do become them well ; but with all affec-
tionateness of manner, and winning accents of speech, with em-
braces, with caresses, and with blessing, such as Christ never
failed in towards children, ought these lessons of the great
Parent on high to be communicated by parents upon earth.
For what are parents on the earth but honoured agents of the
great Father of all to train some of His offspring unto glory .''
The soul of the little innocent is from Him, and by Him
joined in wedlock to the material part, which is born of dust;
and the material part, which cometh of dust, shall to dust
return ; the immaterial part returns unto Him who gave it.
Seeing, then, that parents are but commissioned tutors, hon-
oured guardians to the growing spirit, they must take their
example from the great Parent over all, who tendereth His
counsels in the most gracious language, and bestoweth His
gifts in the most winning mood.

In pleasant and attractive forms, therefore, let each parent
present to his child, for the edification of its soul in righteous-
ness, those wholesome truths of salvation which God by His
own Son hath opened up and made free to the whole earth,
skilfully applying each to the present necessity, and ad-
dressing it with the utmost affection. During the years of
infancy and boyhood, let a mother ply this useful care with
more diligence than she does her household occupations ;

DUTIES OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN. 273

and let a father, with Hke application, lend the influence of his
superior wisdom and authority ; and if it be needful, after the
virtues and affections of home have taken root, to send him to
a distance, in order that he may be accomplished for his voca-
tion in active life, let them seek out masters that fear the
Lord, and follow godly courses in their homes and occupa-
tions. To all which let them join parental solicitude, and fre-
quent fervent prayer, and they may safely trust their children
to the care of the Lord, who doth not forsake the righteous,
nor suffer his seed to beg their bread. Then truly, whereso-
ever your children sojourn, they will bring a blessing upon
the neighbourhood, and your ears will be charmed with the
voice sweetest to a parent's ear, the voice of their children's
praise. Foreign lands will bless the womb that bore them
and the paps that gave them suck ; and God will make them
to the distant nations what He made Joseph to the land of
Egypt ; and for their sakes whole cities shall be preserved.

There has gone forth in the present day a most narrow
opinion, as if nothing more were necessary for working these
good effects upon the rising generation, than to teach them the
use of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, and the ten Arabic
numerals ; as if these were to operate like talismans of the
East, or magic numbers of whose powers the ancient Pytha-
gorean fabled. And in support of this narrow notion the
instance of Scotland is constantly cited. But be it remem-
bered, that Scotland is not only a country famous for letters,
but for religion. Her priests are priests indeed — parish
priests — the pastors of their flocks ; and her peasantry are
men full of thought — not human animals ; and her Sabbaths
are days of religious teaching in every house, and public
worship in every family; and parents aim at the duties
mentioned above, and so do teachers of schools ; and the
ministers of religion encourage all. But let her Church hasten
in its race of subserviency to political purposes, and let her
Sabbaths become profaned, and her parish schools be stripped
of their sanctity, then it will be seen in what stead mere
letters will stand her.

Nevertheless, it is a crying sin that in a Christian land the
people should not be able, every one, to peruse the word of
VOL. III. S

2 74 ON FA MIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

God, and the treasures of good principles which our language
contains. Nothing would serve so effectually to take them
from the indulgence of animal instincts, and rouse within their
breasts the consciousness of intellectual power and the appe-
tite for intellectual gratification. But along with this there
must be circulated amongst them wholesome books, and they
must be stirred up by active agency to peruse them. To all
which ends, no institution under heaven is so efficient as a
laborious, painstaking priesthood. And truly, until some
such Promethean spirit be communicated to the people, it is
vain to think that they will discharge the office of training up
their children in the way in which they should go.

Oh, if I had a thousand tongues, each more eloquent and
pious than that of Paul, I would employ them every one
to move the people who now listen to me, not only to fulfil
for their own offspring the offices mentioned above, but to
cast an eye of sympathy upon their various neighbourhoods,
and do a part for the poor children who rise under ignorant
parents without any knowledge of the ways of God, and fall
an easy prey to the snares of the tempter. And here, again,
I crave your indulgence while I counsel you upon the best
way of carrying this Christian charity into effect. For there
is a zeal without knowledge which harms the cause it would
endeavour to serve. To step into the bosom of a family, and,
as it were, draft so many children out for a charitable estab-
lishment, there to be fed and clothed, and educated, is always
a most expensive, and often, very often, a prejudicial mea-
sure. Of children, nature hath intended parents to be the
guardians, and for this purpose she hath joined them in the
closest ties. Too frequently it happens that sensual gratifi-
cations stand in the way of the sacrifices which nature prompts
to in behalf of the children. Then the true friend of the
family is he who will administer counsel to the parent, and
open up to him the loss which his child is suffering by his
unprofitable indulgence. His interest in his children is the
best hold you have upon a dissipated parent. Economy, on
their account, is the best principle you can bring into the
bosom of his house. An ambition that they should be wiser
and better than himself is the noblest feeling of a parent's

DUTIES OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN. 275

breast. These, and the obligations of rcHgion mentioned
above, if well applied, may almost always be made to suc-
ceed, if not in destroying, yet in diminishing the evil. He
who works reformation by these means, regenerates both
parent and child at no expense but persuasion, and he has
his means to meet the really necessitous cases with which so-
ciety abounds. But to pour supplies out of your purse into a
family into which already Providence is pouring a sufficiency,
to take upon you the gratuitous education or clothing or feed-
ing of the children, is to take away from the parents all
remorse of their unparental ways, to give a loose to their own
personal indulgences, and to break up, in a great measure,
the natural attachment which God binds between parent and
child, and whereon the chief pillar of civil polity doth rest.

VI.

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORrHANAGE.

Psalm xxvii. lo.
When my father and my mother forsake me, theti the Lo7-d 'will take me up.

TJTAVING lately discoursed of the family, and pleased our-
selves with meditating upon its rich and varied afifec-
tions, and with the hand of religion endeavoured to strengthen
its infirmity, and to heal its troubles, we shall now attempt
the same office for the estate of orphanage, of fatherless and
motherless orphanage, bereft of all earthly stay, and left to
depend upon the providence of God, and the tender mercies
of His people. God, whose way, though dark and mysteri-
ous, is in the end just and righteous, and whose dealings with
us, though stern, are all in goodness and mercy, doth not
tear away the father and the mother from the tender offspring
without recompensing them for their loss by giving them a
double portion in the promises of His word, and a double
honour in the dispensations of His providence, which it shall
be our endeavour this day to set forth, that those whom He
hath bereaved may know and betake themselves to their
refuge under the shadow of His wings ; and that the soul of
every one may be exalted who putteth his trust in the Lord
our God.

The natural evils of orphanage are fourfold : — First, the
loss of parental nurture and tuition ; secondly, the timidity
and reserve, and uncongenial restraint of all the powers of
the soul which would have pleasantly unfolded themselves
under the warm shelter of a father and a mother's love ;
thirdly, the want of that introduction to the world which the

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 277

name and station and exertions of a father give unto his
children ; and fourthly, the exposure upon all hands to the
arts of the wicked, who are ever ready to profit by inexperi-
ence, and to take advantage of the unprotected. Upon these
four sides the orphan lies exposed. He hath no parent to
cherish him ; his soul is thereby withered or stunted in its
growth, or forced into unnatural forms. He hath no one to
instruct him in the ways of men, and introduce him to the
business of hfe, and, therefore, he is a prey to a thousand
forms of imposture. Against these four inclemencies of his
condition, we shall shew how careful the Almighty hath been
to protect him, to place him not only in safety, but to exalt
him far above all his enemies round about.

For the first, it is not the occasional admonitions of a father,
or the lessons of early piety dropped by a mother in the ears
of childhood, whereof we lament the loss to the orphan ; these
may, in some measure, be supplied by a good guardian and
a pious teacher, which, alas ! are not often to be found in any
rank — seldom in the lower ranks to be obtained at all ; it is
not the control of a father's authority, or the admonition of
a mother's watchful affection, which also are hardly to be
found a second time upon the earth, but it is the ever-present
picture of a father working for his family from break of day
to evening-fall, from week to week, and from year to year ;
his enduring of all weathers and encountering all hazards for
his wife and little ones, and the ever-present picture of a
mother labouring in the house all the day, and often watching
all the night over the objects of her unwearied solicitude ;
and not the union of their hands only, but the union of their
hearts, their consultations together by the evening fire over
the interests of the little state, their fears, their hopes, their
prayers, and all other demonstrations of their incessant care ; —
this is what we lack and lament in a family which God hath
bereaved of its natural heads. Those conditions are all gone
from the house which make it the nursery of affections in the
children. It is home no longer ; no longer sweet home which
contained the excitement of every tender feeling, and its
reward when excited. A mother's smile no longer unlocks
the heart, and a father's knee no longer unbends the tongue

278 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

of the little prattler. And there is no commonweal round
which their opening sentiments may concentrate ; no father
whose labours the sons may share so soon as their hand can
form for itself labour ; no mother whose cares the daughters
may divide so soon as their hearts can understand to feel.
They look not on conjugal love and parental union, which,
being present before the eyes of children, is, as it were, the
practical representation of all those tendencies of the mind
to unite with others, the actual demonstration of that which
brotherhood, and friendship, and religion aim to become.
There is nothing to counteract the selfish, to which individual
nature tendeth ; nothing to represent the social and the com-
mon. The little ones bereaved are not drawn forth by the
natural heat of parental affections, nor united by the cement
of family bonds. They grow up lonely and divided, and are
liable to divisions. And when divisions arise, there is none
to heal them. There is no mark nor sign no banner round
which their affections may unite when they are broken and
scattered abroad. And herein is sustained the most grievous
loss, which it boots not to enlarge upon, but rather to set forth
the cure which God hath provided for the same. In His word,
which describes the redemption of this world out of suffering
and mercy, it is revealed that orphans, though they be father-
less and motherless, and without a certain home or dwelling-
place, are not therefore forsaken upon the face of the earth,
but become members of His family who is the father of the
fatherless, and the husband of the widow, and the orphan's
help, and the refuge of all the destitute who put their trust
in Him. And though they be cut off by the afflictions of
Providence from the happy establishment of home, and have
lost their portion and inheritance of a father's industrious
arm and a mother's tender care, they are not removed from
the watchfulness of that Eye which never slumbereth nor
sleepeth, nor from the help of that ample Hand which dealeth
out its portion to everything that liveth. And though they
be unheeded and alone, and the step-dame world use them
roughly, they are certainly of more value in the sight of the
Lord than the lilies of the field, which He arrayeth in more
royal robes than the monarchs of the earth ; and their immor-

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 279

tal souls are dearer in His sight than the raven's brood, which
He carefully nourisheth, or the wild sparrow of the field, which
cannot fall to the ground without His notice and permission.
The orphans may be cast forth and ejected from their father's
tenement or farm, when they have no longer the scheming
mind and busy hand of a father to pay the rent thereof to the
needy or heartless lord. With the wTccks and fragments of
their household, they may have to take their heavy way to
crowded cities, or to foreign lands, or, without the means to
move themselves away, they may become burdensome to the
charity of those around them, and lose the noble rank of
independent men ; but though the worst should befall which
cold poverty and helpless orphanage are heirs to, let them not
despond or be cast down, for they are not one jot further re-
moved from the kingdom of heaven than before, which cometh
not with observation, neither consisteth in meat and drink, —
which is independent of, and to be insured without help of,
yea in opposition to, father and mother, and brother and
sister, — which is before riches, or food, or clothing, yea, more
instant than to-morrow's fare. For it is written, " Care not for
to-morrow ; say not. What shall we eat .-^ or. What shall we
drink ^ or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed.^ but seek ye first,
the kingdom of heaven, and all things shall be added there-
unto. After all these things do the Gentiles seek ; but your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."
An orphan, therefore, is one of God's family, and hath a
rich inheritance in the promises of God, to obtain possession
of which it needeth to be instructed in that faith which is the
gift of God, and to wait for that blessing which maketh rich
and addeth no sorrow. They are not destitute nor forlorn,
but have constantly at their right hand and at their left hand
a Parent who provideth for them, and will provide for them
as He provided for Joseph, whom brotherly envy had made
an orphan and a bondsman in the land of Egypt; as He pro-
vided for Ruth, whom God's providence had made a widow,
and her own piety had made a stranger in a strange land ; as
He provided for Esther, who was an orphan in the land of
captivity ; as He provided for Daniel and the three children,
who were cut off from their kindred, and trained up in the

28o ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

house of bondage to wait upon the humour of an Eastern
king. These examples, and the promises of Scripture which
they exemphfy, and whatever other instances are to be found
in history, ancient or modern, sacred or profane, of God's
wonderful watchfulness over those bereaved of their parents,
forsaken of their friends, and cast forth to perish ; — as of
Ishmael, the father of nations, delivered by the angel of the
Lord ; of Cyrus, exposed to perish, suckled by the she-wolf,
and sheltered in the shepherd's cot, to be afterwards anointed
by the Lord to work mighty changes upon the earth, and set
His people free ; of Moses, in his bulrush-cradle, left to the
Avaters and the crocodiles of the Nile, to be afterwards
advanced into the familiar friend with whom God conversed
and talked face to face ; — these, the annals of the orphan and
the destitute, being gathered together, and instilled into the
opening minds of those whom God hath in like manner tried,
teach them confidence and trust, and their uprooted affec-
tions transplant themselves to another Parent, and for earthly
trust there shall be heavenly, and for a worldly ambition
there shall be a spiritual, and they shall grow up rooted and
grounded in the Rock of their salvation, and, in the strength
of their invisible but ever-present Father, shall look their
enemies in the face, and not be ashamed of their oppressors
in the gate. And tlie boy, thus tenderly affectioned of God,
and shielded of God, shall go forth to serve his master with
faithfulness, and shall seek the company of his brethren, who
are, like himself, of God's family, and he shall avoid the
company of the wicked, and of those who kidnap the souls of
the unwary, until his master discerneth in him a trusty and
a faithful servant, and moved by the Spirit of the Lord, who
hath the hearts of all men in His hand, he promotes him in
his service, until at length, from one degree of honour to
another, he makes him ruler over all that he hath, as
Pharaoh did unto Joseph in the land of Egypt. And the
tender maiden, thus affianced to God, the father of orphans,
and joined to the Lord Jesus Christ, the elder brother of all
who put their trust in Him, shall be decked in the graces of
modesty and meekness, and defended with the armour of
faith and righteousness, so that if any wicked man, thinking

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 281

her an easy prey, do set his snare for her chastity and virtue,
he shall find that his tongue hath not art enough to beguile
her artlessness, nor his estate wealth enough to bribe the
guardians of her innocency ; that though he be a man of
fortune, or a noble of high degree, he must woo her with
his heart, as woman should be wooed, and win her by his
worth, as woman should be won, or else brook his defeat
as best he may, and meet the shame and scorn of the
righteous, and the ire and indignation of God, against one
of whose daughters he hath dared to conceive harm and
attempt wickedness.

It ought, therefore, to be our great and our last aim and
endeavour to direct the thoughts of orphans to the care
which God taketh of them, to carry those affections, which
have no father or mother to rest upon, up to Him who is the
father of the fatherless, and the refuge of the destitute.
This lesson should be wrought into them like a second
nature, until affection to God come to domineer in their
hearts, as the love of father and mother would have done, and
God take the very place of father and of mother in their
souls, and His word become instead of a father and a mother's
counsels, and their prayers to Him be with that frequency
and trust and fond assurance with which children open their
minds to fathers and to mothers. And under the canopy of
their affections they will cast off the timorousness of orphans,
and have the hope and trust and assurance of love which is
necessary to the right growth of the early mind; and they
will have that consolation always present which their pitiful
condition needeth ; and they will be united by a more con-
stant affection than that of children to parents, and one
which is still more prolific of other pure and noble affections;
and they are under the discipline of God's gracious com-
mandments, which are better than the best instructions of a
parent; and they are wooed by instances of His love, more
frequent and more winning than what the most liberal parents
have to bestow. And the orphan's Father is a great pro-
tector, and delivereth His children with a strong hand and an
outstretched arm, under the canopy of whose defence their
hearts shall wax valiant for truth and righteousness ; and

282 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

they shall grow up trees of righteousness, the planting of the
Lord, and bear much fruit, to the praise and glory of Him
who hath made them strong for Himself A certain bold-
ness is given to the little spirit which hath stretched its wings
to heaven, and taken shelter under the Parent of all ; and a
stability is wrought throughout all its affections, derived from
the unchangeableness of Him to whom they have been given;
and its principles acquire a consistency like the consistency
of truth, and its tempers in the midst of trials have a serenity
like unto the temper of the Son of God ; and their designs,
like His, will be of a celestial purity, and of a large benevo-
lence to the children of men.

In the next place, when an orphan comes to take know-
ledge of his state, and to compare it with that of others,
whom God is rearing under more soft and favourable con-
ditions, he is apt to shrink, and misgive, and grow timorous.
The helpless boy, or more helpless girl, finding shelter under
the roof of some kindly relation, cannot by all kindness be
brought to forget the difference between itself and the rest of
the children. This difference it discerneth, not so as to ex-
press it, or to comprehend it, but still it is shewn in its back-
wardness, in its timorousness, in its bashfulness to take its
rights, or to plead its cause when its rights are invaded.
But how seldom does affection try to establish itself in an
orphan's fluttering and uncertain heart — how seldom is affec-
tion in any form an orphan's lot ! They are sent to live at
schools, with no parents' home to bind their aching hearts
at time of holidays ; they are apprenticed out to masters,
with no parent to protect them from a master's harshness ;
or brought up in asylums, where, let the best be done,
there is small compensation for the loss of home. It is
good when these asylums are under a man devoted to the
Lord, because there the orphan is instructed in the Divine
helps for these i'ts natural ills. But when otherwise it hap-
pens, as for the most part it does, that no such instruction
is tendered to it, the little helpless thing, buffeted and beat
about, under much authority and little affection, grows dis-
satisfied and distrustful ; and having no natural guardian to

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 283

whom to unbosom its grief, it grows reserved and jealous,
and logeth that noble sense of equality and resolution to keep
its own which is so necessary to the unfolding of a manly
character. Often its spirit altogether droops ; sometimes it
sours ; and more frequently it worketh cheerlessly on till
something occurs to determine it to good or ill, though it
wants that cheerful setting out, that morning sprightliness
and buoyancy of hope, which so well becomcth a young man
entering life in the pride of his youth, and which is so good a
promise of a successful issue to the journey.

This constant feeling of their loss, and sense of their lone-
liness, which presseth down the spirit of orj^hans, and being
helped by the hard and niggard conditions into which they
are thrown, hinders the fair development of their character
and makes their success to depend more upon fortuitous
events and chance patronage than upon hopes fairly formed,
and measures steadily pursued, is not to be removed save by
some feeling as constantly present in the mind, to counteract
that feeling of their rejected and forlorn condition which
produceth the evil. And this consideration the Almighty
has abundantly provided in the revelation of the gospel.
For whereas things go on in the worldly estate of man by
transmission from father to son, by family help, and by in-
heritance of one kind or other. He hath made it quite the
reverse in the religious estate, which He doth promote inde-
pendent of all these aids, by honouring the state of orphanage.
So that it is a very condition of its success that we be able to
forsake father and mother, and brother and sister. Religion
rests upon the individual, and gives dignity to the individual,
and is the only thing whereby the heart of the orphan can be
sustained, and the inequalities of his condition made up, and
the withering effect prevented which the solitude of soul in
which he grows hath upon the bloom of his opening char-
acter. Here he is upon a level with the best-conditioned of
his fellows, and he breathes the inspiration of perfect equality.
Nay, more, he hath here the advantage. There is here a
counterpoise, and more than a counterpoise to their earthly
advantages. For if you will reflect with me for a moment,

284 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

you will see how the dispensation of the gospel exalts the
condition of orphanage, and gives it whereof to boast itself
over every condition upon the earth.

When the Son of God condescended to take upon Him the
limitations of human nature, and to dwell in a tabernacle of
clay. He had His choice of all conditions in which man is
found, and He chose the lowliest, and wrought His way
through tribulation into glory — through servile and mean
estate to a name which is above every name that is named in
heaven or on earth. He divested Himself of all worldly pos-
sessions, patrimony, or honour; and though He had a mother
when He entered upon His holy vocation, He solemnly, at
the first act thereof, denuded Himself likewise of that conso-
lation. For why } To teach His followers that the way to
His kingdom was a lowly path ; that the spirit of His king-
dom was a meek and enduring spirit ; that the communion
of His people was with the abject and wretched conditions of
the earth ; and that there was nothing in human form which
they should shrink to encounter, and nothing in the provi-
dence of God which they should not with contentment re-
ceive. And it was to teach the world where to look for His
spirit ; not in courts, nor in feasts, nor in splendid halls — not
in the revelries nor crowded spectacles of the earth — not in
the march of armies, nor in the debates of senates, nor in
the congregation of mighty men ; but where their Head and
great Teacher was found, amongst the despised and rejected
of men — those wounded and bruised of sorrow, those stripped
and made bare by the providence of God — among the or-
phans, and the helpless, and the destitute. Oh, that coming
of Christ in low estate is a noble equipoise to the estate of
poverty and misery which, when poverty and misery shall
understand aright, will chase their sorrow, and counteract
their envy, and set their restlessness quiet, and make them as
satisfied, yea, more satisfied with their reproach than with the
pleasures of sin — more contented with the countenance of
God shed upon their estate in the life of His Son, than though
their corn and their wine and their oil did abound !

Furthermore, Christ, when He sent His apostles and evan-
gelists forth, did make them all orphans ; no staff", no scrip,

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 285

no change of raiment, no money in their purses, and they were
to salute no one by the way. Having thus disencumbered
them of all former helps and friendships, he sent them forth
into the cities to preach the gospel. They were to go, not
like mendicants seeking the means of life, but like ministers
of peace dispensing peace amongst the towns and cities of
the land. All this was done in order to teach them first, and
all the world after, that when a man is stripped to very naked-
ness, his spirit may be rich to overflowing ; when he hath not
one grain of that which the world prizeth, he may have whole
dispensations of that peace which the world by all its wealth
can in no wise procure. ,

Thus, in the sending forth of these men the estate of or-
phanage and poverty was honoured. Now, further mark how
it was still more honoured in their reception. "And into
whatever house ye enter, say. Peace be upon this house. And
if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it, and
if not, it shall return to you again." Now, what is this son of
peace but that gracious and heavenly disposition which look-
eth upon outward want and poverty without contempt, and is
not thereby prejudiced against the message which it beareth .?
" If the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it ;"
that is, you shall find welcome. Then go on eating and
drinking whatever things are set before you. Heal the sick,
and say unto them. The kingdom of heaven is come nigh unto
you. But if they receive you not, shake off the very dust of
your feet against that house and city, and leave them to a
fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, mark
this connexion between humanity and religion. When there
was an hospitable reception of him who came in the name of
the Lord (and every orphan cometh in His name, who is the
orphan's Father,) there the peace of the gospel abode, and
brought forth its healing fruits. But wherever the hospitable
reception of the destitute stranger was not, thither the peace
of the gospel found no more resting-place than did the raven
which Noah sent forth from the ark ere the waters had sub-
sided from the earth. Now, I would pray men to thmk of
this passage in the gospel history a little ; for it is not only
honourable to poverty, and blessed to those who treat poverty

286 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

well, but it revealeth the great secret of the gospel propagation
upon the earth and amongst ourselves. If any man harden his
heart, or shut up his bowels of compassion to his fellow-men, or
measure them by their rank and station, and look not to the
image of God upon every form of humanity, but to the world's
stamp thereon, — then, mark you, that man cutteth himself off
from receiving the gospel of Christ, which he contemneth in
these haughty moods. And he must humble himself to men of
low estate, he must work the world's leaven out of him, his
heart must soften, and his bowels of compassion yearn towards
his kind, and the image of God in every man must be respect-
ful and honourable in his eye, before the peace of the gospel
will come nigh unto him, or Christ's message of salvation be
acceptable unto his soul. And exactly in proportion as that
maketh progress in his soul, he will unlearn contempt, and
high-mindedness, and ambitious honours, and conceits of
rank and place and office, and learn humility, and meek-
ness, and condescension, and compassion, and graciousness to
the afflicted, lowly condition of manhood. As he sideth off
from the world, and forgetteth its gradation of men to whom
court is to be paid, he will join himself "to Christ, and pay
his court to such as Christ was ; to such as those men into
whose hands Christ delivered the commission of dispensing
peace to the children of men.

By these two great examples, — first, of His Son, by whom
the world was saved, presented to the world in the most
abject and unprotected condition ; secondly, of His Son's
ministers, by whom the world was evangelised, having been
reduced into a state of orphanage before they could be fitted
for the work, — God hath not only taken away from orphanage
its reproach, but He hath stamped it with a certain honour,
as the best condition from which to commence any mighty
work. And hence I doubt not Samuel was brought up an
orphan, and the Baptist reared an orphan, in exemplification
of the same truth, that when properly used it is a vantage
ground upon which to fight the battles of the Lord, being
a disengagement from worldly objects, in order that with
undivided heart we may join ourselves to God, and serve
Him in every righteous and holy way upon the earth. Let

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 287

orphanage therefore despond no longer, but take heart and
join itself to God, who hath taught such lessons of the honour
of this estate in His holy word, and hath humbled the pride
of all goodly conditions, and made them to defer unto
poverty, in order to be blessed with peace and with the glad
tidings of great joy, which He sent His orphan outcast ser-
vants to publish abroad. In the spiritual world they have
their refuge, their encouragement, their triumph. In the
natural world they have every disadvantage to contend with.
Therefore, in order to be nerved for the latter let them draw
upon the former. In order to go forth equal-handed into
the contest of human life, let them go strengthened by the
example of Christ, and of His apostles, and of His evan-
gelists, and of all who, since these times, have promoted the
interests of the gospel, and who, to become eminent in this
the highest walk of human exertion, had first to bring them-
selves into that very condition into which they are already
brought by the providence of God. While they look at
things seen they will despond ; when they look at things
unseen they will take heart again. Therefore let the orphan,
if he would prosper, be conversant with spiritual things,
which is the field of his glory, and in the strength of which
they will conquer till the end of time.

In the third place, in order to meet the want of friends and
patrons, to which the fatherless are at all times exposed, and
to bring them forth from their solitude with a high and
mighty hand, in order that they may not pine unseen, or
make their plaint unheard, that their modesty may not be
put to the blush of frequent suing, and their hearts to the
pang of frequent refusals, and that they may always have
friends wherever their Father hath friends, — He hath done no
less than make them over, in sacred consignment, in solemn
trust and bounden duty, to all who make any pretensions to
religion. Every saint He hath constituted a guardian of the
orphan, in the most direct and pointed language. And that
man's religion is vain who will not take upon himself the
charge of the fatherless. For it is written with much solemnity
and precision: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and
the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and the widows in

288 ON FA MIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the
world." Whatever it be before the world, whether in visiting
church or chapel, whether in making prayers, speeches, or
contributing of our means to the spread of the gospel, —
"whether in being Churchman or Dissenter, Calvinist or Ar-
minian, — most certainly, before God and the Father, before
Almighty God and the common Father, it is this — " To visit
the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep
ourselves unspotted from the world." In which the care of
the widow and the fatherless is made equal, nay, is placed
before holiness and purity, as if the way to the latter were
through the humility and affectionateness of the former.
But whichever be first, they are equally necessary to the
perfection of a saint. For as God is not holiness alone, but
mercy combined with holiness, love regulated by justice, and
justice tempered by love, so neither are God's people, who
are renewed in His image, all sanctity, (for all sanctity suiteth
only heaven, and upon the earth were sternness and severity;)
but they are sanctity combined with charity — charity which
loveth the sinner, and sanctity which hateth the sin — charity
which seeketh out the sufferer though sunk in wickedness, and
sanctity which blesseth him and counselleth him when he is
found. And the reason why the tender and affectionate part of
the Christian is preferred by James before the pure and blame-
less is the same for which St Paul preferreth charity to faith and
hope, because it draws us to our kind, and unites us to them>
and seateth us in their love, after which we may profit them
as best we can, but before which, while we stood awfully apart,
ensphered in our saintly purity, we were too august, too un-
approachable, for the fallen and miserable to draw nigh unto
us. The open hand of charity draweth them nigh, the open
bosom of kindness cherisheth them, the soft tone of affection
stealeth into their mistrustful and timorous souls. All the
conscious backwardness which the modest petitioner feeleth
is met by all the tender affection and open-hearted charity
which the Christian giver bringeth. All the remorse, and
shame, and haggard wofulness which the prodigal bringeth
is met by the hearty affection and open forgiveness which the
Christian father bestoweth. And thus the good leaven being

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 289

brought into contact with the unleavened part until the whole
is leavened, the salt of the earth is brought into contact with
the corruption of the earth, and preserveth it from decay and
dissolution. Therefore it is that visiting of the fatherless and
the widow in their affliction is not only exalted to the level,
but placed before the other necessary part of religion pure
and undefiled, which is to keep ourselves unspotted from the
world. Of this visitation of the widow and the fatherless we
have also many beautiful examples in Scripture. Elijah,
when he was senfforth to seek shelter from the vengeance of
Ahab, was directed to the house of the widow and the father-
less, to bless them in their affliction. And Elisha, to protect
the widow from the creditors of her husband, and to save her
fatherless children from being taken for bondsmen, visited
her in her need, and multiplied her pot of oil to pay her
debt, that she and her children might live in peace and in
plenty. Our Saviour, seeing the misery of the widow of
Nain for having lost her only son, unsolicited touched the
bier and restored him to his mother. And He likewise re-
stored Lazarus to his sisters, who were a family of orphans.
And the gospel was first preached to the Gentiles in the
person of Cornelius, who gave much alms to the widow and
the fatherless. And at Joppa, Peter raised from the dead
Dorcas, who was full of good works, and of alms-deeds which
she did, and made coats and garments for the poor. And
John wrote a letter of encouragement with his own hand to
the elect lady and her children. And in every possible way
the Lord and the servants of the Lord have shewed by their
example, as well as taught by their precepts, that it is one
great province of religion to visit the widows and fatherless
in their affliction.

Therefore, let the saints who hear me look to their ways,
for surely the Father will see His helpless children righted,
and in judgment will inquire whether His holy commission
was fulfilled to the widow and the fatherless. His family
is one family. He is God and the Father. Some of the
brethren have enough and to spare, others are hungry and
naked, and in need of all things ; which difference God hath
allowed, that the children may communicate together, the
VOL. III. T

290 ON FAMJL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

one giving, the other receiving, — and more blessed is he
that giveth than he that receiveth. How to discharge your-
selves of this duty. Christian brethren, judge for yourselves.
One may seek out the orphan, and take him as a servant
into his family, and be to him instead of a parent ; another
may adopt him altogether into the place of a son ; a third
may take him and teach him his profession ; a fourth may
bring him to the asylum, and have him carefully provided for
there. But surely in some way or other God intendeth that
this function should be discharged by you His servants ; and
that you should not wait for solicitation, but should go round
and visit them, and comfort them in their affliction, and do
for them whatever the bowels of your Christian compassion
move you to do. Here, again, let the orphan rejoice in the
protection of their Father, who hath brought to their help all
the chosen ones of the earth, the servants of Christ, and the
sons of God. Let them not fear for helpers, for they have as
many in the land as God hath obedient servants, as Christ
hath faithful disciples. In their evil day, God hath not left
them without comforters ; in the hard passages of their life
He hath not left them without friends. He hath not left
them like lambs forsaken of their dams, to pine in the bleak
waste, and bleat in the deaf ear of the howling winds, but He
hath provided shepherds to seek for them, and to bring them
in safely, and teach them the salvation and household which
is provided for them on high. He hath divided their service
between the habitations of the bereaved and the habitations
of His holiness ; and no more may they forsake holiness,
without which no man shall see God, than they may forsake
the house of mourning and the solitary dwelling-place of the
orphan.

In the last place, to protect orphans from that advantage
which the mercenary and the wicked take of their unpro-
tected condition, to guard them in their nonage from needy
and greedy relatives, to save their tender lives from the
bloody hand of the next heir, to guard them against pilfer-
ing guardians and dishonest executors ; or if they be of the
poorer sort, to guard them from tyrannical masters and
neglectful teachers, from artful knaves and from seducing

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 291

villains, to draw around the simple boy and the artless
maiden a defence of terror, yea, to overawe the hardened
spirits whom the rights of the orphan petition in vain, and
who see in their unprotected state the incitement and the
avenue to their hellish plots ; to overawe these men, whereof
the world is full, and to enforce from their stout hearts and
rebellious wills Avhat from the pious He softly petitioneth by
the example and doctrine of His Son, — what hath He done
less than write the orphan's rights in letters of blood and
flame, and taught mankind that from the awful throne of
judgment, before which heaven and earth shall tremble. He
will make fiery inquisition after every one who hath not
helped and assisted the least of these his little ones ? He
hath bound it upon men, by their welfare throughout all
eternity, to look unto the condition of the needy, and to help
them in their distresses. For when the judgment shall be
set, and the books opened out of which the souls of men are
to be judged, these are the counts upon which men are to be
tried, and by which they shall be found worthy of the king-
dom of heaven, or doomed to the kingdom prepared for the
devil and his angels. I was an hungered, did ye give me
meat } I was thirsty, did ye give me drink .'' I was naked, did
ye clothe me } I was a stranger, did ye take me in .? If ye
did so, not to me, but to the least of these my children, enter
into the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of
the world. Now, verily, if any scholastic disputer about
words quibble and say. But who are God's children .'' choose
me out the elect from the non-elect, that I may know which
to visit, and clothe, and nourish ; then I answer. The
orphans are God's children, for He hath said, I am the father
of the fatherless and the stay of the orphan. Do so to them,
and thou shalt be safe of doing so to God's children. Nay,
do so to any child, thou art safe of doing it to one of Chri.st's
little ones. For never did Christ see children but He
blessed them ; and when His half-schooled disciples would
have repulsed them away, He said, " Suffer little children to
come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom
of heaven." And so much did He honour the estate of child-
hood that He said, " Except ye become as little children, ye'

292 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

can in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven ;" and to be
born again — that is, to unlearn earthly wisdom, duplicity, and
all the world's schooling, and enter into a second childhood
of simplicity, and sincerity, and single-heartedness — He hath
placed at the very entrance-threshold of a spiritual life. So
that they do but wrest the Scriptures who seek to deprive
the orphan of that heritage which it hath in the revelation of
judgment to come, as well as in the revelation of a present
providence. If the penalty be so terrible for refusing help to
the orphan, how much more terrible to those who take
advantage of their condition to oppress them, to injure them,
to seduce them from virtue, and to use them for other vile
ends ! The orphan is holy. If his helplessness doth not
make him holy, God's commandment will. And if that doth
not, the right hand of His vengeance will. Therefore- stand
in awe, and sin not against the orphan, otherwise condign
punishment through eternity is your doom. And if any
have injured an orphan, let him repay it manifold. And if
any hath evil- entreated an orphan, let him seek forgiveness
of Heaven, and make what reparation he can. And if any
hath ruined an orphan, let him afflict his soul with the godly
sorrow of repentance, and do works meet for repentance.
Let him repay in kind the wrong which he hath done, help-
ing many for the cause of her whom he hath ruined ; bless-
ing the houses where they are entertained, assisting the
charities which keep many from ruin, and labouring to the
very utmost to testify the hatred he feels for his sin, and the
desire he hath for forgiveness and amendment.

Thus have I spoken in behalf of the estate of orphanage,
and endeavoured to build up the house of its peace, and shew
the protection and the defence which God hath provided for
its want. And let the orphans who hear me take heart from
that which hath this day been declared unto them from the
word of their Father. God hath adopted them into His own
family, and fulfilled for them the offices of those who are
deceased, guiding the reins of His providence with a special
consideration of their destitute and afflicted case, tempering
the rough and inclement storms of life to their nakedness.

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 293

extending over their heads a canopy more secure than the
roof of a father's house, and fostering the excellent part of
their nature more skilfully than the most wise and tender
mother. And when He sent forth His first-begotten into the
world, He sent Him in a condition as destitute as that of any
orphan, in order that the rest of the family might not be
dismayed by anything which can befall them, when they be-
hold Him in whom His delights were from everlasting. His
only-begotten and well-beloved Son, in a worse condition
than they. And when He made a selection of chosen spirits
to publish the acceptable year of the Lord to the children
of men. He first stripped them of everything and made them
orphans. And so instant was He, that when they asked to
be permitted but to bury their father. He said, " Let the
dead bury their dead; arise and follow me. For a man must
forsake father and mother, and brother and sister, in order to
be my disciple." So that what is an orphan but one ready,
delivered, and set free for the service of the Lord — one who has
not to tear himself, but one who, by God's providence, is torn
from the dearest and nearest enticements of life, and stands
girt about for the good work of glorifying God } So that
truly the orphan, if he rightly knew these things, should not
only be content, but take courage ; should not only take
courage, but rejoice and give thanks that the Lord hath
gathered in their affections all unto Himself, — that He hath
separated and set them apart, made their character, not as to
the body but as to the soul, without any worldly indulgence
of the affections, in order that they might devote themselves,
if not from the womb, from the day of their bereavement,
unto the Lord.

But whereas, if left, like lambs forsaken of their dams,
tender and helpless, to shiver in the cold wilderness, and
bleat in vain in the ear of the howling winds, they would cer-
tainly perish, and never know the shelter which heaven hath
provided for them on high, the Lord hath been careful to give
one half of religious duty to them, and been content with a
half to Himself. And whatever interest He hath in the
bosoms of the pious He hath shared with the orphan, giving

294 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

one part to the dwellings of the fatherless, the other to the
dwellings of holiness, and guaranteeing no part to the dwell-
ings of mammon, or vanity, or lofty-minded pride. And to
command obedience when His love might fail, to enforce
upon the stout of heart and the rebellious what from the
pious He softly petitioneth by the example and doctrine of
His Son, He hath written the orphan's rights in letters of
blood and flame. And from the awful throne of judgment,
before which heaven and earth shall quake. He hath taught
that He shall make fiery inquisition after those who have
refused to help the destitute, or to visit the widows and the
orphans in the houses of their affliction. The former part is
to the orphan ; this latter part is to us, responsible and ac-
countable men. And let us all, men and brethren, look to
our ways, and consider the case of the fatherless. For whoso-
ever hath no heart for relieving the miserable condition of
humanity ; seeth them, and passeth by upon the other side ;
knoweth them, but reasoneth down his knowledge by alleging
that he hath not time, or hath not disposable means,-:— that
man is far from the kingdom of heaven, and living in the
kingdom of selfishness, or of vanity, or of pride, or of some
other of the princedoms of this world. For it is not possible
for a man to enter into that state of spiritual existence, that
condition of the soul, which is called the kingdom of heaven,
without having a heart to help the helpless, a desire to suc-
cour the distressed, and a fatherly feeling towards the orphan.
And he must be poor indeed who hath not some crumbs from
his table to feed these withal, or some mite to cast into the
treasury which is devoted to their use. Now, mark this which
I now say, for it is the secret of religious life. So long as we
serve the god of this world, he sweateth us with toil in order to
gain that which he sweateth us with lust to consume ; or he
pricketh us by ambition to reach that estate which he prickcth
us with ambition vainly to display, or gorgeously to set forth
in the eye of gazing people ; or he worketh us by avarice to
amass and store up that which corrodes our own souls, which we
leave behind us, and which hangs like a millstone around the
necks of our children, weighing them to the earth. But when

FOR THE ESTATE OF ORPHANAGE. 295

Satan is cast out, those avaricious, ambitious, and sensual appe-
tites lose their function over us ; and instead, gracious and
charitable, humane and benevolent dispositions take the lord-
ship— the divine lordship over us. And the vast means which
formerly men devoted to expensive and extravagant and
ostentatious objects are now set free by the temperate and
moderate and simple life which we follow after; and we find
ourselves rich, though formerly we were poor, after our mo-
derate wants are supplied, — though not richer in our income,
rich in disposable substance. And to what should we dispose
them, but to those new masters, the gracious and charitable, the
merciful and humane masters who now have the sway over
our spirits .'' And where do they look for these objects but
amongst the orphans and friendless, the dejected and forlorn .-'
Thither they go to dispense their means, as naturally as the
sensual man doth to seek the materials of a banquet in those
places where appetite is ministered to, or the vain woman
goeth to the Vanity Fair where she may find bravery for her
person, or furniture for her showy apartments. And it is
as much the nature of the Christian spirit to travel about and
about in quest of his objects, if he find them not near him,
(but how can that be ? for the poor and the fatherless we
have always and everywhere,) — if he find not his objects at
home, to find them abroad, over the whole earth, even as the
sensualist ransacks all climes of the earth for his banquet,
and the vain woman all provinces of nature and art for the
equipage of her person, which being thus trimmed she dis-
playeth to the rude eye of every gazer. Thus it happens
that these actions — feeding the hungry, giving drink to the
thirsty, clothing the naked, and taking the stranger in — be-
come the marks of a Christian spirit, as the wine-cup and
the feast, and the unchaste eye and indecent speech, are the
marks of a sensual spirit ; as jewels and finery and equip-
age are the marks of a vain spirit ; and posts of honour, and
offices of state, and titles of nobility, and military orders, and
dictatorships, are the marks of an ambitious spirit. And no
one entereth into the kingdom of heaven but through these
humble and lowly gates ; and no one hath the spirit of Christ

296 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

till he hath the desire to fulfil these humble and kind offices
to his fellow-creatures. And the more ripe he is for heaven,
the more is he intent upon these offices ; and the more he
hath of faith, the more he tendeth to these works of mercy.
For what is the effect of faith ? it purifieth the heart, it over-
cometh the world, and worketh by love.

VIL

ON FRIENDSHIP.

Prov. xxvii. 17.
Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

' I "*HERE appear to me to be four offices of a good friend,
the two latter of which are contained in the figura-
tive language of the text, and specially applicable to social
religion.

The first great office of a friend is to try our thoughts by
the measure of his judgment, and to task the wholesomeness
of our designs and purposes by the feelings of his heart. The
knowledge upon which the mind works is such a compound
of truth and error, and the mind hath naturally such a fond
partiality for her own children, and the heart of the best man
is so beset with straitening prejudice, that, conscious of our
weakness, we no sooner commence any new thing than we
long to discourse of it to our friend, that he may take hold of
it with his judgment, and try it by his conscience of good and
ill. And being approved by him, we have, as it were, an
initial test and first experiment of the conception, which we
are thereby encouraged to work into form, and bring out
either by word or deed for the welfare of our fellow men.
To fulfil this office will require that our friendly affections be
subordinated to a sound judgment and an honest heart, other-
wise we are not worthy the first and equal confidence of
things, and fit only for the inferior station of partisans, bribed
by affection into that service which our higher faculty of
reason hath not yet approved. For this cause, I doubt not,
it was that our Saviour sent His twelve apostles and seventy
missionaries, two by two, to preach the gospel, that they

298 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

might be to each other a counter-test of all they did and
said.

As this office of a good friend is to guard against the im-
perfections of our nature, and protect the world from the
effects, and ourselves from the responsibility, of our folly, the
next office of a friend is to protect us from the selfish and
wilful and malicious part of our nature. To stand alone in a
good cause, to be the first to strike out of the unknown and
invisible some great idea or device, is the most royal pre-
eminence which God bestoweth upon His creatures. But if the
yearning of the soul to communicate the same be resisted, and
it remain buried in our own bosom, then, however good and
generous in its first conception it might have been, it will
grow full of selfishness, and in the end perhaps reveal itself
in malice. It toucheth the soul's pride to possess a great
scheme or idea all unto herself, it raiseth her pride of superiority,
and exciteth her lust of rule. If no heart will be the partner
of her thoughts, or no ear the hearer of her complaints, or
if by her own peculiar nature she will confide neither in the
one or the other, then let society be upon its guard, for it
harboureth one that is dissocial ; and let that one be on his
guard against himself, for he is in a lonely place, which
is cold and friendless, and he is on a high place which is
giddy. He loses the capacity of fellowship from the want
of it — he loses the capacity of friendship from his nourished
selfishness and secrecy — he grows self-willed, submitting his
will to no discipline of equality — he grows self-interested
because he findeth none fit or worthy to take a part in it.
He broods over his purposes alone, grows domineering, and
for the execution of his purposes makes tools and instruments
of men. Those that are around him he winds and works to
his will ; he will receive only suppliancy or service, and those
who will not give it he sideth from. And so, if he have
strength given him, whether of intellect, of taste, of persua-
sion, or of power, it all cometh under the sway of his selfish-
ness; he becomes the head of a school, sect, or party, which
will breed disturbance with the things existent, and generally
an evil disturbance, (for selfishness and power are generally
evil ;) and therefore such a man should be looked to by those

ON FRIENDSHIP. 299

who are interested in things that are already established.
This self-collected spirit, which in the end becometh turbu-
lent, a good friend or a band of good friends would have con-
ducted down by degrees, and converted him into a benefactor ;
and hence it is that good men do sometimes attach them-
selves to those evil beings like their good genius ; as if hope-
ful to conciliate them to good, or in the evil day to ward off
the ill which they might bring to the commonweal.

A third great office of friendship is to awaken us, and lift
us up, and set us on nobler deeds. There is living in the
heart of man a diviner light which is aye sparkling through
the gloom of his benighted nature, and shewing him in the
world the light of better ways, which it is the part of a friend
to tend more carefully than the virgins of Vesta did the sacred
fire, lest it be smothered by the carnal and gross elements
which we bear about in us, and its occasional gleam be
swallowed by the darkness which covereth the earth, and the
gross darkness which covereth the people. There is not a man
in whose soul schemes and purposes of a nobler life than he
now liveth in the flesh are not ever budding, or rather I should
say, thoughts and ideas of a better life, which, if fostered,
would form the rudiments of schemes, which schemes being
perfected, would constitute a virtuous and pious man out of
one who is herding with the vilest of the people. Oh, it
toucheth one to the quick to see a mob or rabble of men,
chance-collected, addressed by some wise and high-minded
minister of truth, held mute while he shews them pictures of
excellence, answering with their brightened countenances,
with their sighs, haply with their tears, to the true feeling
of the noble things which his noble soul deviseth, thereby
testifying that they have high faculties for scanning truth,
that they can climb to the top of his high argument, and
taste the proportions of his finest characters ; — I say, it touch-
eth me to see these men dispersing to wallow again in the
trough of their sensuality, or labour in the service of their
malicious passions, quarrelling, contending, and fighting for
those wretched matters which are scattered upon the dung-
hill of this earth. Oh for wiser and purer mothers to rear us
in our childhood, for skilful masters to open upon our sight

300 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

the path of virtue and true nobility, for pastors worthy of the
name to feed the souls of the people, and friends to stand
around them, and bear us faithful company towards things
exalted and pure. Then should you see men, and the sons
of men rise in the land, men like unto the sons of God, to
contend with those children of the earth, earthy and devilish,
which at present by far the greater part among us are found
to be. Let it be the office of true friends to do for each other
that function which may have been neglected by mothers, and
teachers, and pastors, those great functionaries of the common-
weal— to bring to light every stifled purpose of good, to rally
every reluctant faculty of well-doing, to awaken what is dor-
mant, to chafe what is torpid, to point the way, and shew us
wherein we may excel, not others, but ourselves; not to
shrink from shewing us our faults, to recover us, to reassure
us, to extricate us from dilemmas of the judgment, to resolve
us of the casuistry of the conscience, to work upon the irreso-
luteness of the will, to hold up the hands which hang down,
to confirm the feeble knees, to make straight paths to the
feet, and to pioneer the way of that great work which in this
life it is given unto every one to do.

The fourth good office of a friend is to rally us when we
are defeated in our schemes, or overtaken with adversity. And
so much is the world alive to this office, as to have chosen it
out as the true test ; it being one of our best proverbs that a
friend in need is a friend indeed. Oh, but a man is well off
for friends while things flourish with him ! The great world
is always ready with its friendly ministry for whatever he
may need. The great world will then become our friend,
and serve us with a ready and willing ministry of whatever
we need, — flattery for the ear, incense for the nostril, sweet-
ness for the taste, beauty and elegance for the eye, rapture and
ravishment to the soul. You, too, will take well with them, and
they will take well with you while you are rising. They will
filch the credit of your prosperity from God and become your
patrons ; and when you can reflect honour, they will take you
into their train, and seat you by their sides. But sure as
David, who harped in the palace of Saul, and had Saul's
daughter to wife, had to take the wilderness of Sin for his

ON FRIENDSHIP. 301

refuge, and the rock of Machpelah for his habitation, when
the countenance of Saul turned against him, so surely shall the
man whom prosperity hath exalted have to shift for himself,
forlorn and abandoned, when adversity setteth in upon him.
And his talents shall now be discovered to have been nousrht,
and his accomplishments to have been nought, and his ser-
vices to have been nought. All the cords which lifted him
on high and held him in his place shall untwist full rapidly,
and he shall find himself solitary and unbefriended of all that
fashionable crew who heretofore delighted to do him honour.
Therefore let every man rising in the world's favour look to
his ways, and deal faithfully by his former friends and asso-
ciates, and most faithfully by his God, that he may have a
hiding-place and a secure refuge when the time of his trial
and the days of his darkness come. For then he will surely
be deserted — the greater part pressing no farther good out of
him, a better few willing to help but without the means, and
those who have the means and are well disposed hardly know-
ing the way.

A man in adversity is like a shipwrecked and dismantled
ship upon the deserted strand — he needeth much reparation
and outfit before he can be of use to any one ; a man in
prosperity is like a ship full laden with costly goods, which is
a prize to every one that is needy, and an honour to every
one who hath in her any share or interest. A man who is
rejected and despised of the world is like a ship that is not
seaworthy, in which no one will risk an atom of his wealth,
and which proves a clog upon the course of any free and fair
sailing vessel ; whereas a man whom the world embraceth
with its favours, and who flourisheth in prosperity, is like a
convoy ship, under whose lofty and armed sides many sail in
safety. Who is he that hath had the world set against him,
or whom the world hath dashed from his anchorage-ground,
that hath not known, amidst these back-waters of the
soul, the good and the strength of heart there is in a friend
upon whom to fall back, and by whom to be received as
into a haven, and fitted out again for another encounter.-*
Happy is he who hath one into whose ear his soul may tell its
calamities, shew its weaknesses, and lay open its wounds ; from

302 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

whose lips it may receive the consolation and tender counsels
it needeth ; at whose hand accept the help, and, if need be,
the medicine which cures adversity, and whose bitterness is
savoury when administered by the hand of a friend ! Elo-
'^quence might exhaust itself in speaking the praises of a
man who can discern the value of a soul in its dismantled
state, stripped of all outward embellishments, and struggling
hard with its bristling ills and thick-coming trials ; who can
say, Come to my home with a welcome ; come for a season
and take shelter until the storm be overpast ; come, and I
will make thee a chamber upon the wall, where thou shalt be
free to go out and in unmolested, and share our bread and
our water. I tell you of a truth, my beloved brethren, the
man who can so entreat a ruined man, is worth a whole street-
ful of visit-exchanging citizens. He is the good Samaritan
whom Christ painted to the life for all His followers. He
will stand in the judgment, because he took the stranger in,
and clothed the naked, and fed the hungry, and gave the
thirsty drink. There is immortality in these actions ; their
memory never fails, and the remembrance of them delights
the soul for ever. And if there be one thing for which I
would exhort my wealthy and well-conditioned brethren to
come out from amongst the gay and giddy spendthrift and
heartless world, and conform themselves to grave and sober
habits of life far within their means, it is, oh it is for such ex-
ploits of Christian friendship, that when men good and true
are tried by the Lord with evil days, and tossed out by the
ruffian world like wreck and weed, as if the excommunication
and brand of Heaven were upon their foreheads, you may
have the bread, and the water, and the house-room wherewith
to entertain the heartbroken outcast, and harbour him from
mockery and insult, until the Lord, having sufficiently tried
him, do once more lift upon him the light of His countenance.
But the heart, the heart to do such tender acts, is what the
world eateth out, and the rust of its riches corrodes ; the
lust of its pleasures hardens and " petrifies the feeling," the
fumes of its vanities intoxicate the head, and pride and ambi-
tion turn sour all the milk of human kindness. There is a
corruption of your means by extravagance ; but what is that

ON FRIENDSHIP. 303

to the corruptions of your soul by those wicked ways after
which the world hasteth ? Cultivate mercy, humanity, charity,
and meekness, which are the fruits of the Holy Ghost. Seek
to have the spirit of Christ, and then it shall not be more
difficult for worldly people to waste with riotous living the
portion of goods which their Father hath divided them, than
it shall be for you to bind up the broken-hearted, and to pour
the oil of joy into the wounded spirit, and to comfort all who
mourn.

Such is the fourfold office which a good and faithful friend
can do for us in the pilgrimage of this present life : — First, To
weigh and deliberate, and give judgment upon the first fruits of
our mind. Secondly, To protect us from the selfish and solitary
part of our nature. Thirdly, To speak to and call out those finer
and better qualities within us which the customs of this world
stifle, and open up to us a career worthy of our powers. Lastly,
To succour us in our straits, rally us in our defeats, and bind
our spirit in its distresses. Now, as every man hath these four
attributes, — infirmity of judgment, selfishness or wilfulness of
disposition, inactivity and inertness of nature, and adversity
of fortune, — so every man needeth the help of a friend, and
should do his endeavour to obtain one. And the fourfold
nature of his office requires in a good friend a fourfold qualifi-
cation for discharging the several parts of it aright. For the
first, sympathy with our thoughts and pursuits, for where there
is no sympathy there will be no communication; and not only
sympathy with them but understanding of them, and a solid
judgment and an honest heart to give us good counsel and
true upon all our plans. For the second, a generous nature
which looks to the commonweal, and will not yield it to the
pleasuring of a friend ; also a manly and tried mind, which
will not veil truth and manhood, even before a friend, so as to
give in to his wilfulness, but will be an equal friend or no friend
at all. For the third, a high and heroic soul, which can strike
out noble duties in every path of life, and behold in all classes,
from him that sitteth on the throne to him that grindeth be-
hind the mill, the elements of a heaven-born nature, and the
destinee of an immortal glory; and perceiving them, will sti-
mulate us thereto, however much against the stomach of our

304 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

own present inclination, or the spirit of our present life. For
the fourth, a tender and a true heart, which keeps to its affec-
tions, and as it is not beguiled into friendship by outward
forms or conditions, so is not alienated by the absence of
them, but loves the soul, the unadorned soul, for its own in-
trinsic qualities ; and while it preserves them, will love it in
good report and in ill report, in prosperity and in adversity,
in life and in death, and for ever. According as these
qualities meet in any one, he rises in the scale of friendship;
where they all combine together in one, they form a friend
more precious to the soul than all which it inherits beneath
the sun.

Now, it is not our intention, as it is not our office, to apply
these doctrines of true friendship to the occurrences of the
natural life which men live in the flesh, or to shew instances
how it hath been nobly exemplified in every age of the world,
which pertains to the moralist or the sentimentalist ; but it is
our intention, as it is our duty, to shew what abundant occa-
sion there is for this help of a genuine friend in the religious
or spiritual life which we should live by the faith of the Son
of God, who died for us and rose again.

In applying this doctrine of true friendship to religious or
spiritual life, we observe that the first office of trying and
approving the thoughts and purposes of our friend applies
chiefly to the beginning and earlier stages of his Christian
course. When the soul hath come to be sick of worldly com-
panies, and of superficial excitements, and momentary delights,
and desires to go deeper and to search about for the foundations
of her happiness and peace, and to meditate upon the high end
of her creation, and her eternal destinies ; when she perceives
the necessity of a change, but discerneth not well what it is to
be, or whence it is to come, but is dissatisfied and ill at ease,
— then who shall tell the value of a friend who hath already
made that mysterious passage through conviction and conver-
sion, and struggled in those deep waters of the soul, who can
take the measure of the distress and discover the remedy, and
the Rock of salvation, which is Christ.-' Oh ! it is a great office
of friendship to help a man in whom God hath made His
arrows to stick fast, to shew him how to deal with the huge

ON FRIENDSHIP. 305

convictions of sin which distress his soul, and the fears which
overcloud his hopes — to find him a rest, a tranquillity, a peace,
a joy, that he may go on his way rejoicing. For want of good
counsel at this the setting out of Christian life, many souls
stumble to the end of their days, and die in doubt and in
darkness ; some trusting in their outward works, and some in
their inward feelings, and some in their religious ceremonies,
— the first bondsmen, the second superstitious, the third form-
alists, and all in error, — " for no other foundation can any
man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ." This step
being taken, and the desperate made hopeful through the for-
giveness by faith, and being entered to the school of Christ to
drink into His spirit, and follow His discipline, all old things
are done away, and all things become new, and he feels as in
a land of vision, where all the objects and the ways of the
people are strange, and much, much doth he need some sage
friend at his side, from whose experience his ideas and princi-
ples may take measure and proportion. The great end of his
being is now the glory of God, which formerly he thought
not of; the organ by which he finds out his way is new, being
faith, not sight ; his fundamental principles of action are new,
being the answer of a good conscience, and the unchangeable
word of God, — no longer the expedient customs or fashionable
forms of life ; the sentiments and feelings which fill up the de-
tails of his life are new, being duty to God and charity to men,
forgiveness of enemies, and inward purity to the very core
— no longer envy, pride, malice, vanity, or moral honesty and
natural goodness of heart ; his forms of speech are grave,
chaste, savoured with the salt of wisdom, no longer one of
those latitudinarian dialects, pervaded with truth and false-
hood, satire, scandal, and swearing, in which the unconverted
permit themselves ; and the outward ritual of life is so new, —
glee gone mute, tastes for the visible grown weak, habits sim-
plified, homes ordered against all fashion, and haunts, not of
levity, but of gravity. All these things, inward and outward,
amongst which the new life is spent, burst upon the young
convert so fresh and vivid, that, like a man transported from a
savage to a civilised life, he needs much, and will much profit
by, an experienced friend, to explain to him the measures and
VOL. III. u

3o6 ON FAMILY AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

bearings of things, and how they come into harmony with one
another. But this first stage being passed, and the young
convert having been fairly planted in the house of God,
and brought to the feet of Jesus, being prevented from run-
ning wild in extravagant fanaticism, or losing himself in
hidden mystery, or satisfying himself with bare formality,
being brought in simplicity to learn of Christ, he must after-
wards be left to measure his thoughts and purposes by His
word, and to regulate his spirit according to the Spirit of God,
which judgeth all things, and is judged of none. In these, as
in other things, I think Bunyan, that truly spiritual classic,
hath shewn his sagacity. When CJiristian is fairly out of the
city of Destruction, he makes Evangelist appear to him, and
gives him a roll for the direction of his future journey. So
when once a man hath believed in Christ, I would have him,
like St Paul, to take counsel of no one, but to go unto the law
and to the testimony, and to order all things between con-
science and God through the mediation of Christ alone. At
this stage, then, I make the first office of a Christian friend in
a good degree to cease.

Now, with regard to the second office of Christian friendship,
in protecting us from the selfish and solitary part of our nature,
I consider that without it the Christian is liable to a fourfold
disease, according to the direction into which his faculties run :
if towards the creation and providence of God, they are full of
sad contemplations and endless moralities ; if to himself, ascetic,
self-troubled, and tortured; if to the command of others, he is a
religious bigot, and persecutor upon principle ; if to the charac-
ter of others, he is an inquisitor, an over-zealous Puritan, who
finds in no community the marks of the true Church, but lives
dismembered from all religions, in himself and with himself,
and too often only for himself

With regard to the third office of Christian friendship, that
of cherishing the latent powers of well-doing, and pressing us
onward to still higher attainments, it is needed to the very
end of our pilgrimage. For that notion of perfection into
which some few speculators in these and other days have been
betrayed, is only an evidence of the blindness of their con-

ON FRIENDSHIP. 307

science, and the inferiority of that rule by which they mea-
sure themselves. In our Christian course, we constantly
need to be stimulated and roused to higher attainments, lest
we fall under the mighty enemies whom we have to encounter.

Now, the fear is, that the spirit should grow weary, and
strike a compromise with the body and the natural soul, that
the forces of action and of resistance should come into equili-
brium, and we should cease from further advancement. And
herein consists the office of a friend to stir us up, to shew us
the things yet unattempted, to shew us the infinite resources
of the grace of God yet unoccupied, to rouse us out of our
lethargy, and urge us forward from one degree of grace into
another, until we reach the stature of a perfect man in Christ,
" that our path may be as the shining light, which shineth
more and more unto the perfect day,"

The last office of a Christian friend is to give us consola-
tion in our adversities, and shew us the way of recovery ;
when, through the multitude of our temptations, we are over-
taken in a fault, to shew us wherein we are to be blamed ;
if we stand not fast, but give ground, to help us ; if we are
utterly baffled and defeated, to succour us ; when we are
overclouded with doubt, to shew us the salvation of our God ;
and when He hideth His face from us, to keep us from being
utterly confounded ; when He brings upon us calamities of
providence, to shew us the good lessons which are concealed
under their gloomy signs ; when He sendeth us bereaving
afflictions, to sustain us, that we faint not under the heaviness
of His afflictive hand. It is the office of a Christian friend to
rejoice with us when we do rejoice, and to weep with us when
we weep ; to help us to bear our burdens, and to give glory
to God when His billows pass over us. The life of a Chris-
tian is more full of trials than that of another man. For,
besides having to struggle with the natural infirmities of
humanity, and the persecutions of the world superadded, he
hath moreover the difficulties which arise from a rebellious
will, and perverse inclinations, and a misdirected mind, and
false tastes, and erroneous judgments, and a whole nature
already conformed to an opposite way of life from that which

3o8 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

it is now the desire of his soul to alienate and tear itself away.
To help us in all these struggles against the difficulties and
impediments of the way, is the office of a Christian friend.

Now, to induce you to discharge these offices of Christian
friendship to one another, let your common cause and com-
mon necessity be the argument. You are members of one
body, which is Christ ; ye have one spirit, even the Spirit of
Christ ; and ye have one hope of your calling. When one
member suffers, all should suffer; when one member is caught
away by the evil one, the whole hath suffered loss. The
Church of Christ ought to love like one man, and to be bound
together like one man. Their sweet fellowship ought to be
a constant contrast to the divided world, and a Goshen in the
midst of the- land : not plagued with its plagues, nor vexed
with its torments. To conclude, I think that every one who
cometh over from the world hath a claim even of justice upon
the Christian ; for that step involves with it the loss of many
former companions, in the abandonment of worldly honour
and glory for the cross of Christ, and converteth this cheerful
world into a weary wilderness, and the pride of life into a
troublous pilgrimage.

VIII.

SOCIAL RELIGION THE NATURAL OUTl<l.o., ^x fKLVAiJ.
RELIGION.

A LL social religion must rest upon personal religion as its
-^ ^ foundation, and personal religion cometh out of the
desire of our well-being, the feeling of our wants, and the
desire to have our wants supplied. To escape impending
judgment and wrath to come, and from present fear to be
delivered into good hope of the glory of God ; to obtain the
forgiveness of sins, and therewith the blessedness of those
whose transgression is hid, and whose sin is covered ; to be
brought into the way of righteousness, and confirmed in the
paths of peace ; — these inward benefits, and others of the like
kind, are the great standing inducements to think betimes of
God, and of Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. The arguments
for a religious life depend not upon the specialties or casual-
ties of man's condition ; they come not into play at a certain
age, like the laws of civil society, nor at a certain age are they
relaxed, like the fashions of society, from the tyranny of which
the aged are generally exempt ; they bear upon householders
or heads of families, and no less upon single and solitary
men ; they will not give way before the immunities of any
rank, or the prerogatives of any place, however noble ; and
no misfortune, imprisonment, or exile can set us loose from
these obligations, as no prosperity or elevation can set us
above them : for why ? — because every man, wherever he is,
and whoever he is, has a soul to be saved, a Saviour to re-
deem and save it, a work of salvation given him to work out,
a Creator to answer to, and everlasting life or everlasting
destruction to inherit. Therefore, meat and drink are not
more necessary to man than are the faith of Christ and the

3IO ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

sanctification of the Spirit ; and meat and drink are not more
the personal, anxious concern of every living man, than the
knowledge and the obedience of the gospel are and ought to
be his personal, anxious concern. For his soul is more precious
than his body, his immortality more valuable than his life,
and eternity more momentous than the span-breadth of time.
Whosoever, therefore, is religious for form's sake, or for de-
cency's sake, or for the sake of a good example to others,
forgetful of these his personal interests, that man is a fool, his
notion of religion is foolish, and the end of it is foolishness,
and worse than foolishness ; for he hath not considered his
ways, nor applied his heart unto heavenly wisdom. He hath
made God's worship a convenience, a spectacle, a speculation
of temporal profit ; he hath poured out his soul to the idolatry
of an established church or of public opinion ; he hath not
descended into the depths of his soul, to set it in order before
the Lord ; he is an outward-surface man, who can brook the
superficial glance of the world, but the eye of the Heart-
searcher, who trieth the reins and unfoldeth the mysteries of
man, he shall not stand. He shall be searched and known ;
his hypocrisy and folly shall be discovered by Him before
whom all things are naked and open, and with whom every
one of us hath to do.

If a man had only to save appearances, and keep up the
comely face of religion before his own soul, and before all the
people ; if there were no inward diseases to be cured, no obli-
gations of feeling to be rectified, nor shameful thoughts to be
purged out ; if there were no heart-sicknesses to be ministered
to, nor grievous discontents to be allayed, no losses, crosses,
and mortal bereavements to be comforted ; if the world were
as noble as man, and his wants found ready supplies, his
highest thoughts welcome entertainment in the world ; and
instead of being dragged down at every hand from her freedom
and nobility, the soul were at every hand wooed and beckoned
to higher seats and larger freedom by the fashions and cus-
toms of the present life ; if man were the being he could
wish to be, if he fulfilled himself, if he magnified himself and
made himself honourable, and carried into practice those

SOCIAL RELIGION. 311

measures of truth which in his soul he conceiveth and longeth
after; or, finally, if in natural knowledge there were any dis-
cipline, fostering, or nursing of the highest, purest, best facul-
ties of man, — then I were willing to forego the universal
bounden obligation of religion upon every mortal, and permit
them to make a cloak of it, putting it on upon occasions, and
for occasions casting it off again. But while man is, by the
baseness, falsehood, and foolishness of life, by its drudgery,
its hypocrisy, and its idleness constantly demeaned, and all
his better qualities diminished ; while the godly within him is
obscured by a world that hath always been ungodly, and the
aspirings within him chained down by a world that hath always
been tyrannical, and the everlasting spirit made to anchor
itself to things unstable, as fashions, interests, fancies, and
speculations, — while this degradation goeth on and this iniquity
is practised, it never can be that man should be beyond the
necessity of religion which his soul needeth : as a nurse, that it
may get out of swaddling bands ; as a mother, that it may be
sweetly furnished with just principles and rules of action; as
a teacher, that it may be introduced into the higher walks of
wisdom and godliness, which it wanteth as the staff of its
life, as the rod of its correction, as the guider of its goings,
and as the portion of its happy inheritance both in time and
through eternity.

Therefore, whether you regard your obligations to Christ
the Son of God, who came to save you ; or your responsibility
to God, who will not hold you guiltless if you neglect such
great salvation ; or your own consolation in the adversities of
life, or your own perfection in the noble part of your being,
your present or your eternal w^elfare, religion is a personal
concern that may not be omitted for any sake, but for the
sake of which every temporal good, from the lowest to the
highest — that is, from mere convenience to the loss of life —
may and ought to be postponed, but which itself may for
nothing under the sun be postponed.

While I thus plead so absolutely for personal religion as
the only basis of social religion, it is not out of insensibility
to the comeliness of family and congregational worship, nor,

312 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

though our Church hath no provision for such, to the soul-
expanding and heart-exciting influences of cathedral service,
where the songs of Jehovah, which once were sung to organ
and cymbal and trumpet in Zion, are renewed, in nobler
and more magnificent temples than Zion could boast, to
the sound of more perfect instruments. But while I regard
the outward seemliness of these things, I wish the soul
to be present in the sound, — not the soul of harmony only,
but the soul of adoration and praise, that when it as-
cendeth to Jehovah's ear, it may be accepted of Him "who
is a spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth."
Also, while I thus take the value of social worship away
from form, and build it on inward spirit, I am alive to
the necessity of outward forms for man's present being, and
contend that it is a measure of good government to see that
religious rites be duly celebrated through all the temples of
the land ; and were the state now rashly to withdraw its hand
from religion, which it hath taught to depend upon its sus-
tenance, I perceive that much confusion would ensue, and
much convulsion and peril, before religion established herself
upon the common wants of men, as industry and frugality
and other personal household virtues are established. But
while I am alive to these considerations, I cannot blind my-
self that I should not perceive that there are in the com-
munity multitudes, and those the most influential, who are
moved to waiting regularly upon the temples of religion, in
order to set a good example, and do a duty to the neigh-
bourhood in which they dwell ; many who think religion
beholden to them, and God their debtor all the week for
their Sabbath mortification ; many also who go out of zeal
for a particular doctrine or sect ; many out of curiosity ;
many to while away the weary hours of Sabbath ; many out
of custom ; many they know not why, — so that every congre-
gation before which you stand up to minister, being less or
more moved by these erroneous, or at best secondary motives,
I have judged it necessary again to expound those great,
universal, and everlasting motives which bind religion upon
every man to whom the knowledge of salvation by Christ
hath arrived through the tender mercy of our God.

SOCIAL RELIGION. 313

When religion hath so prevailed over the inward man as to
possess it of the divine knowledge, the Christian law, and the
principles of spiritual well-being, it cometh to pass that social
religion groweth of its own accord, a wise and godly discipline
is produced, the spirit of love and charity reigneth over schism
and division ; humility and poverty of spirit in respect to
ourselves, kindness and gentleness in respect to others, take
the place of the envies and emulations and grudgings of the
world ; outward decency is the expression of inward rever-
ence ; the harmony of the voice of the attuning of the heart ;
the oneness of prayer of the single-heartedness of the whole ;
the stillness, the anxiety, and the eagerness become proofs of
zeal ; faith cometh by hearing, conviction cometh out of re-
proof, the word of God is profitable unto all things, and the
man of God is thoroughly furnished unto every good word
and work. Not only would men, thus possessed with one
common principle of religion, be drawn regularly to the
house of God by an inward motive, and while there, held in a
mood suitable to the various parts of the service, but over
their ordinary meetings a spirit of order, and peace, and
wisdom would prevail ; and for prayer and fellowship, and
other recreations of the soul, express meetings would be held ;
and the whole intercourse of life would be impressed with a
spirit of truth and sincerity, and all hypocrisy and dissimula-
tion would be done away with ; and in place of formality there
would be affection ; and in place of ridicule there would be
counsel; for satire, kindly admonition; for enmities, forgiveness;
for malice, benevolence ; and charity and love instead of un-
righteousness,— all which we shall endeavour to shew at large.

And, first, the bond of union which is produced by the
presence of Christian principle within the breast. For
when religion hath been founded in the common wants
and common benefits of our common nature, it is not possible
that it should not form a bond of closest alliance between
man and man. Being a principle of such extent, affecting,
not a part of man, but the whole of man, and transforming
every man into the common image of God, it cannot be but
that it \\\\\ produce the strongest fellow-feeling, and lay the
foundation of the strongest social principle. Even though it

314 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

had not been a part of its doctrine to extinguish envies and
divisions, and to enforce love and unity, it would have had
this effect by the natural influence of its common principles, —
one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one hope of our
calling, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and
through all, and in us all. Any one of these, being really,
not formally present ; being felt, not professed ; being acted
upon as a principle, not idly entertained as a matter of
opinion, were sufficient to be the basis of a community : all
together they produce the strongest bond by which the
world is blessed. This will appear with great conviction if
you will consider the effect which is produced by any one
of these common sympathies when exhibited in those minor
degrees which the world contains. One common sovereign,
who loves his people and is worthy of their love, begets
amongst them a loyal fealty, which makes them forget their
private convenience to contribute to his royal state, and,
when need is, forget their private quarrels to fight for the
throne of his fathers. Of which, let the history of the whole
world bear testimony. One common law is the basis of a deeper
and more enduring union still, the union of a free nation, which
is more powerful still than the union of a loyal nation ; and
when the two combine together, they render a nation almost
invincible. How strong this sense of common right becomes
in a people, is best to be seen when it is threatened with any
injury. What gatherings of the land when any point of con-
stitutional law is threatened, — what remonstrances to the
guardian authorities of the state, — what fearful demonstrations,
which, being coolly and resolutely made by a whole people,
no power on earth can withstand ! And hence ariseth out of
many divided hearts the heart of a nation, out of many con-
tending powers is produced the power of a nation ; and so the
character of a nation, the pride of a nation, the terror of a
nation, and all that enters into that sacred name, the com-
monwealth. These two principles of union both concur in
Christians, for Christ is their Lawgiver and their King, whose
laws and government inspire in those who have in truth
submitted themselves to their gracious protection, a feeling

SOCIAL RELIGION. 315

of heavenly citizenship and of Christian rights, and there-
with a bond of brotherhood kindred to that which is felt
by the loyal subjects of the same wise and gracious prince,
and the citizens of the same free and privileged com-
munity. This bond of union hath suggested to the minds
of the apostles many beautiful expressions ; such as, " Our
citizenship," (for so the word signifies in the Greek,) "our
citizenship is in heaven." "Ye are a chosen generation, a
royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, which in
times past were not a people, but now are the people of
God." The law we are under is called the perfect law of
liberty, the royal law of the Scriptures. And in these terms we
are spoken to : " Now therefore ye are no more strangers and
foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the
household of God." So that religious men are a nation
within a nation, or rather they are a nation scattered among
all nations, who are not divided by seas nor borders, by
rivers nor mountains, from each other's sympathy and love ;
they live under one law and under one Lord, and have a
common interest in each other. They pray for the common
weal of all, and they act for the common weal of all ; they
fight against the common enemies of Christ, the devil, the
world, and the flesh, under a common Captain of their salva-
tion, and for a common inheritance in which they shall dwell
together, see each other face to face, and know each other
even as they are known by the Searcher of their hearts.

Now, observe upon another side of the mind how common
affections join men together, and form sweet associations in
the bosom of the same community — how families and kin-
dred are united together in the tenderest fraternities, which,
though far separated and disjoined, keep up the intercourse
of kindness in defiance of every obstacle, find a thousand
apologies to shake oft" business and meet together, and if they
meet not face to face, meet oft in memory, in hope, in prayer,
and in discourse, and keep up the best debate which the
soul can make with the narrow conditions with which upon
the earth she is invested. And wherever they go, they still
remember home ; and however they may prosper in foreign

3i6 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

parts, they still sigh for home ; and at length to home they
direct their weary steps, though it were but to die, and be
buried in the grave by the side of their fathers. "And Jacob
charged his sons, and said unto them, I am to be gathered
unto my people ; bury me with my fathers, where they buried
Abraham and Sarah his wife, where they buried Isaac and
Rebekah, and where I buried Leah. And when Jacob had
made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his
feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered
unto his people." Now, this feeling which binds men together
in families, and unites them to the dwelling-place and to the
graves of their fathers, Christians have in the strongest sense.
By what name doth Jehovah prefer to be known.? — our Father
which art in heaven. By what name doth Christ prefer to be
called ? — our Friend, who sticketh closer than a brother ; our
Elder Brother, who laid down his life for the rest of the
children. " Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh
and blood, he also himself took part of the same, that by
death he might destroy him that hath the power of death."
And what is heaven but the house of our Father ? " In my
Father's house are many mansions ; behold I go to prepare a
place for you, that where I am there ye may be also." And
what are we here but sojourners and pilgrims, who seek a
country, even a heavenly, a city which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God ? So that there is the feel-
ing of a common Father from whom we are descended, of a
common inheritance which we have lost, of a common Re-
deemer and Brother who has won it back to us, of a wilder-
ness through which we are travelling to our home, of an
enemy's country round about, than which no combination of
feelings can be stronger to unite a people together, — adding
to the loyalty of a common Lord, and to the privilege of a
common law, the affection of a common family, the union of
a common adversity, the hope of a common deliverance, and
the pursuit of one common inheritance, which had been
wrested from us, and now again hath been restored. If,
when the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, they were
like men that dream, their mouth filled with laughter and
their tongue with singing, then how much more ought the

SOCIAL RELIGION. 317

family of Christ, who have been redeemed from the bondage
of sin and the fear of death into everlasting hope, to go on
their way rejoicing, with one heart and one soul, singing the
praises of Him who hath redeemed them out of all nations,
and kindred, and tongues, and is bringing them to the
habitations of His holiness, where the wicked cease from
troubling and the weary arc at rest, where there is fulness of
joy and pleasure for evermore !

And, again, there is the bond of a common interest, through
which Christians make common cause, and that not the inte-
rests of time and sense, which so often divide men asunder,
by means of their envies, and jealousies, and malignant pas-
sions, but the interests of the soul, which are promoted by
love and unity, and of which envy and jealousy are the death
— the interests of eternity, which are not impoverished by
being spread amongst all, nor increased by being restricted
to a few. When men are driven, by the fear of a common
loss, or the foresight of a common advantage, to forego their
petty jealousies, and join hand in hand, in what confedera-
tions they will league together, and through what hard-
ships they will struggle ! Common interest will bind ban-
ditti in the woods, and pirates upon the high seas ; it will
make thieves honourable and honest to one another, and
keep in faithful community gangs of felons, whose hand is
against every man, and against whom every bribe, even par-
don and forgiveness, is held out, insomuch that it is among
them the greatest of all crimes to bear witness against a
confederate. This same principle joins honest men in corpo-
rations and companies for assisting each other in the pursuit
of gain, and often so strongly worketh upon them, that they
will forget the rights of their brethren, and become the
oppressors of their kind in the pursuit of their common good;
so that it hath been often remarked, that the tyranny of a
corporation is the severest of all, — which proves that com-
mon interest is so powerful a motive as to carry men be-
yond the limits of rectitude, of affection, and even of natu-
ral feeling. This principle of a common interest uniteth
Christians together, no less than worldly men ; for, though
the Christian calling giveth them no additional interest in

3i8 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

the silver and gold of this world, but rather decreaseth that
which, as men, they already have, they get an interest in
many things of which they were formerly careless. The inte-
rests of righteousness and well-being upon the earth, against
which the wickedness and pride of men are waging constant
warfare ; the interests of peace, which the nature of the heart
doth always mar ; the liberty of conscience, against which
power worketh without ceasing ; the interests of the poor, and
the needy, and the oppressed ; the interests of the prisoner and
the profligate, whom society hath cast off from her embrace ;
the interests of the degraded heathen, of the deluded, and of
the ungodly everywhere ; those spiritual interests which the
multitude of men care nothing about, and which, for them,
might perish from the earth ; in short, the interests of the
Church, which, in this world, is like the woman in the Apoca-
lypse, which was cast unto the dragon ; — all these cares and
interests, which appertain to the religious well-being of man,
hang heavy upon the children of God, and bind them together
in those societies and fraternities of which this city and
empire are full.

Time would fail me if I were to speak of the other prin-
ciples of union which there are to associate Christians in the
bonds of brotherhood. Besides those of common government,
of common affection, and of common interest, their com-
mon baptism, by which they are admitted to the covenant of
the purification of the blood of Christ ; their common com-
munion of the Supper, by which they are made partakers of
the same body and blood of Christ ; their common faith,
which is a new organ for perceiving truth ; their common
hope, which is an anchor cast within the veil, sure and stead-
fast ; their common peace, which the world cannot give and
cannot take away ; their common joy, in which a stranger
doth not intermeddle ; and, which includeth all the rest, their
common charity and love.

Now, if it be found a consistent law of human nature, in all
its states and conditions, that a common sentiment hath ever
the effect of establishing to itself some form and body of
outward communion and fellowship, interchanges of visits,
words of politeness and friendship, meetings for sociality,

SOCIAL RELIGION. 319

academies for knowledge, associations for charitable and bene-
volent purposes, insomuch that in science there is hardly a
branch, in jurisprudence hardly a department, in philan-
thropy hardly a walk, in the large catalogue of human suffer-
ings and wants hardly one genuine kind, for which, in this
city, to its immortal honour be it spoken, there is not an
association voluntarily formed of members the most diverse
in rank, opinion, and disposition, and line of life, in every-
thing save that particular case which associates them to-
gether, and causcth them to organise themselves, to hold fre-
quent meetings, to contribute time, thought, and means, —
how should it be otherwise than that a number of men, who,
not in one sentiment, or in one affection, or in one interest,
but in all, or almost all, are identified or striving to be identi-
fied,— how is it possible that such men, soul of one soul, and
heart of one heart, and mind of one mind, nay, I might say
bone of one bone, and flesh of one flesh, — for are they not all
of one body, whereof Christ is the head ? — how is it possible
that Christian men, embosoming such common feelings as I
have above insufficiently set forth, should not meet together,
should not long to meet together, should not shun and forego
every thing to meet together, — how is it possible, save by bolts
and bars, and main force, they should be hindered to meet to-
gether or should be kept asunder? The thing were the greatest
anomaly in human nature, the most wonderful and unaccount-
able phenomenon which the history of mankind hath exhi-
bited,— so wonderful, that in all its vacillations, and oddities,
and absurdities, human nature hath not, for eighteen hundred
years, exhibited such a phenomenon. For the people of
God have always met together, and love to talk together, and
to pray together, and to sing psalms together, and will con-
tinue to do so while the bands of Christian truth and sym-
pathy hold together, — ay, and until they are dislocated by
bigotry, sectarianism, and schism.

Those who feel these common principles and sentiments in
their heart, cannot keep asunder ; their souls are bound by ties
over which time and place and worldly interest have not any
power. They are one by a thousand obligations, any one of
which is enough to join the associations of the present world.

320 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

And that they who are so united should keep asunder, is the
most complete of all evidence that they have not, in this, the
Spirit of Christ, and that, however they may profess, they are
none of His. If the diversities of Christians keep them
asunder in their hearts, and cause them to think and speak
uncharitably of one another, that is proof enough that they
are under ecclesiastical pride, and not under Christian charity.
If the diversity of rank keep them asunder, that is proof
enough that they are under worldly pride, not under Chris-
tian humility. If the diversity of learning or wisdom keep
them asunder, it is proof sufficient that they are under the
dominion of intellectual conceit, not of spiritual humility. If
the diversity of doctrine keep those asunder who hold Christ
the Head, and engender sectarian pride, then are they under
the paltry spirit of a religious corporation, not of the great
household and community of saints.

I know how the spirit of strife and discord stealeth into
Christian breasts, and how a spirit of high-mindedness will
possess whole bodies of Christians, and they will plume
themselves upon being the people of God ; and likewise how,
at this day, the Christian Church is rent asunder by various
divisions of doctrine, and discipline, and government ; and it
would argue great inexperience to expect that it should be
otherwise while the name Christian standeth for every one
that is baptized with water and partaketh of the bread and
wine of the communion. But notwithstanding these outward
divisions, there is in every section of the Christian Church,
and through every Christian nation, a people in whose breasts
those principles and sentiments of brotherhood are present,
and who love each other with a constant love, and pray for
each other with a constant prayer ; who are a sprinkling of
salt amongst the nations, that hinder them from corruption,
and preserve for them the tender providence of God. Those
are the people who are Christians indeed, under the influences
mentioned above, — whose breast is full of brotherhood, whose
mouth is full of blessing, and whose hand is full of benefits.
These men, in spite of national distinctions and national
aversions, in spite of dividing tongues and customs, and in
spite of dividing rank, without any place to meet together,

SOCIAL RELIGION. 321

except the place of hope beyond death and the grave, are in
closest bonds, — feel in common, labour in common, endure in
common ; and you shall find them the same all the world
over ; — abstaining from companies of worldly men, who sac-
rifice to mirth and jollity, and from vain companies, which
sacrifice to levity and ostentation, and from companies of
wits, who sacrifice truth to cleverness and satire, — keeping
themselves unspotted from the world for the service of God ;
living upon those inward feelings which we have described
above, and in them delighting, whether they be found at the
helm of state or grinding behind the mill.

I know that outward appearances are against the argument
of this discourse, and that those called Christians do oft
speak bitterly and contemptuously of each other. I see it,
and I lament over it ; and this day I have prescribed the
remedy, which consists in the spiritual nutrition of those sen-
timents of brotherhood which have been set forth. If, instead
of lauding and applauding our several sects, churches, and
opinions, and fixing upon the points in which we differ from
each o':her, we would be content to use those excellent things
which we have had derived to us from our godly ancestors as
arguments of our inferiority, and incentives to perfection, and
those things in which we differ as arguments of our imperfec-
tion, and motives to our charity and forbearance ; if, instead
of keeping ourselves constantly in the attitude of judging
others, we would preserve the attitude of loving others, and
hoping of them all things that are hopeful, and hoping even
against hope, we would come, by the blessing of God, first
into the condition of mutual respect, then of mutual esteem
wherein we were estimable, and of exhortation wherein we
were lacking, and of rebuke wherein we were blame-worthy.
But would there be any bitterness of spirit ? would there be
any barbed words of controversy .-" any contempt, any falsifi-
cation or disguising of the truth } No ; not a word. But
there would be a deep-toned feeling, a serious spirit of in-
quiry, an ardent breathing of love, a union of fervent charity,
manly boldness, uncompromising faithfulness, yet perfect
brotherhood, which, methinks, were this age to see, it would
hardly know, so long hath it been fed, and so plentifully
VOL. III. X

32 2 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

gorged with philippics or eulogy, with slander or flattery, with
virulence, violence, and all ungenerousness.

Into the causes of this anti-social aspect of religion, it is not
my province now to enter. Suffice it that I have pointed out
the great, everlasting bond of brotherhood which there is
among the members of Christ, and out of which all social
worship that is worthy of the name must come, by the same
natural influence by which affection produceth the society
of families, common laws, and communities — the society of
states, and common interest — the many more private associa-
tions of life. And if it be not thought enthusiastic or fanati-
cal in the learned oft to meet together in their societies, and
for the honour of learning to found colleges and universities
and seminaries of knowledge, and to send forth travelling
Fellows into foreign parts, and to have foreign members of
every country, and keep up the traffic and merchandise of
knowledge all the world over, and otherwise construct that
outward establishment and activity of knowledge which is the
glory of a nation ; — and if for the sake of justice (that quality
in man more godlike than knowledge) we have all over the
land, in every city and town, courts and counsellors and
magistrates, and, lest injustice should fall out, send forth twice
a year, into every corner of the land, royal judges to make
their blessed circuits, and hold their godlike assize of justice,
whereby the honest heart of the whole land is made glad ;
— and if, for good government and security of the com-
monwealth, we have meetings of freeholders, and suffer all
the grossness and violence of elections, and have our high
courts of parliament, and our king over all, and such an
establishment of governors, defenders, and officers of every
name, as costeth the people dear, which, nevertheless, the
people cheerfully sustaineth, being well and faithfully admin-
istered ; — shall we not, for religion's sake, for the sake of
our soul's good government and security, for the sake of
the Church of Christ, which is the pillar and ground of the
truth ; for the sake of each man's several well-being through
eternity ; for the sake of the purity of faith, that our children
may have the water of life pure and unadulterated; — shall we
not meet for the worship of the Most High God, who ruleth

SOCIAL RELIGION.

o^o

in heaven and in earth, and make His name glorious among
the nations, and proclaim it to the distant lands, the dwellers
in the isles of the sea, the lonely inhabitants of the deserts
of Kedar, and the tenants of the rocks ? For all this unburden-
ing of our souls to the God of our salvation, — for all this in-
dulgence of our common sympathies, — for all this expression
of our benevolence to foreign lands and distant isles, — shall
we be called enthusiasts, if we meet. Sabbath after Sabbath,
in the house of God ? Shall we be called fanatical, if we
meet in smaller companies during the week ? Shall we be
called mad, if we associate over the land, and join together in
brotherly bands, and lift the horn of our power on high, and
know each other's hearts, and sharpen each other's faces, that
we may prevail against the powers of darkness which reign
upon the earth, and stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free ? Then is knowledge fanatical, and justice
is superstition, and civil government is madness ; which when
any one is reduced by his argument to confess, he may be
safely left there to alter his position, or be held as himself
the advocate of madness.

IX.

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION TO THE RELIGIOUS.

Prov. XXVII. 17.
Iron sharpeiieth iron ; so a man sharpencth the countenance of his friend.

T PURPOSE in this discourse to open up the good fruits
which flow unto your own bosoms from communicating
your rehgious feehngs, and holding social intercourse in your
religious duties, and joining, as here we do, from Sabbath to
Sabbath, in the public worship of God. And as we shewed
that the rudiments and first principles of social religion ought
to be laid in each separate heart, so shall we now shew that
the gain of it is first returned into each separate heart.

For the sake of opening up the good fruits to be derived
in their own bosoms by those who, being already personally
religious, follow nature's suggestion, and communicate with
each other upon that which their soul cherisheth in com-
mon, I have chosen that beautiful proverb of Solomon,
" Iron sharpeneth iron ; so a man sharpeneth the counte-
nance of his friend ;" because it forcibly expresseth the
effect of religious converse and communion by a beautiful
figure, which likewise not unhappily represents the way in
which the effect is produced. Iron sharpeneth iron by remov-
ing the rust which hath been contracted from their lying
apart ; so intercourse between friend and friend rubbeth
down the prejudices which they have contracted in their sepa-
rate state. The iron having removed the rust which ate into
the good stuff of the blade, and hindered its employment for
husbandry or war, straightway applieth itself to the metallic
substance, brings it to a polish and to an edge, sheweth its
proper temper, and fits it for its proper use ; — so the inter-
course of friends having removed the prejudices which were

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 325

foreign to the nature and good condition of each, and which,
while they remained, did but fester and hurt the good temper
of their souls, proceeds in the next place to bring out the
slumbering spirit which lay hid, to kindle each other into
brightness, and prepare each other for action. Again, when
by hard service and rough handling the iron hath lost its
edge, and grown unfit for further use, if you bring it again to
its former companion, though equally disabled, they again
prepare each other for action ; and again and again, until the
substance of both be well-nigh worn away, before which their
master, grateful for their good service, hangs them upon
the wall, in honour and triumph, amongst the memorials
of his ancestry. So when friend, by the intercourse of
friend, being polished and hardened, goes forth into active
life, and, after various rough adversities or hard encoun-
ters, grows weary or disabled, and revisits the former com-
panion of his soul, haply as much belaboured by toil and
trouble, (for who, in this world of care, escapeth it .'') then the
two, exchanging their various experiences, recounting their
dangers past, and their present condition, are refreshed again ;
they open up their schemes to one another, their difficulties
and their fears ; and, before the good countenance and en-
couragement of our friend, our difficulties, like the great moun-
tain before Zerubbabel, become a plain ; we feel like new
men again ; our countenance is renewed, and we go forth to
renew the struggle in the sea of difficulties wherewith we are
encompassed. Which friendship, if it be not mere worldly
friendship — which too often is enmity with God — but true
intercommunion of the spirit, I may carry out the figure and
say, that when they are worn out in His service the Almighty
will give them rest, and translate them in honour and tri-
umph to the house of His glory, where, amongst the spoils
and trophies of His victorious Son, won from the adversary of
souls, they shall remain for ever in honour and glory.

As God, the possessor of all good, is likewise the author of
all good ; and as the Son of God — though He possessed the
sovereignty of things created, and enjoyed the praise of the
unfallen orders of creation, and above them the confidence of
His Father's bosom — did, for the pleasure of communicating

326 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

hope and gladness of heart to fallen man, forego all He en-
joyed in heaven — did disarray Himself of all His glory, and

Z' take upon Him the form of a servant ; — so every one who
weareth the image of the Father and the Son, or aspireth to
wear it, must not only cultivate his own inward well-being,
his own riches of knowledge and spiritual understanding, but
go forth to communicate the same ; and the more wickedness
he is surrounded with, the more must he be stirred up against
it ; and the more difficulties he encounters, the more is the
argument of this necessity, and the more should be the assi-
duity of his endeavours. Which features of the Divine char-
acter, if we neglect to copy, we do in so far lose the likeness
of God, and continue in our natural likeness, or approach unto
the likeness of the devil, who, though one of the worst and
most powerful of spirits, useth his wisdom only for darkening
the understanding of others, and his power for keeping them
in miserable bondage, and so reapeth to himself bitterness of
spirit, and in the end greater damnation. He knoweth no
happiness in the possession of all his glorious faculties, be-
cause he communicateth none ; he is miserable in the midst
of all his knowledge, because it sheweth him no good ; in
his sovereignty over hell and over the darkness of this world,
he is sovereign only in anguish and dismay, because his soul
is incapable of well-doing, and sickens with jealousy at the

/ sight of contentment. And if any man, as he groweth in any
acquisition, grow not in the desire of communicating it to
others — if, while he teaches its sweetness to his own taste, and
its goodly effects upon his own condition, he glows not with
the desire of teaching others how they also may become in
like manner blessed, and, so far as he can spare them of his
blessings, at least suffering them to partake of the crumbs
which fall from his table, — then, whatever it be, (such is the
retribution of God,) it shall turn and change its very nature
upon him. Like the apple of Sodom, it shall become to him
hollow-hearted, or full only of disgust. Like the little book
which the prophet in the Apocalypse was commanded to eat,
it shall be in its first part sweetness, and its after effects gall
and wormwood.

Now, though we will not take for a text that similitude

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 327

which was meant only for the sake of illustration, and not of
reality; yet, so apt is the resemblance between the manner of
the natural and of the moral operations, that we shall thence
draw the division of our discourse, which we mean to be of
two parts. For the iron hath upon the iron which it sharp-
eneth two effects : the first, to remove the rust and im-
purities which are contracted apart ; the second, to give polish
of surface, and keenness of edge, and beauty and usefulness,
to that which formerly was unseemly and useless. Agreeably
thereto, we shall first speak of the advantage of meeting and
encountering each other, though it were even a little roughly,
for the purpose of rubbing down those peculiarities, and wear-
ing out those prejudices, which solitude and recluseness beget
in religion as well as in other things ; and secondly, of the
positive advantage to be derived from intercommunion of
religious feeling, in the way of confirmation and encourage-
ment wherever we are right, and of further suggestion and
inspiration beyond what we had ourselves conceived.

In a former discourse we shewed the effects of seclusion
and secrecy in the walks of the human mind : how in know-
ledge, unless the assiduous desire to possess was coupled
with the benevolent desire to communicate, there was not
only lost to the people the services of an intellectual light
which should guide their activity of mind, as the lights of
heaven guide their activity of body, but there was lost much
more to the individual himself, in whom, instead of a noble
ambition of knowledge, and a high relish of its blessings,
there is produced a lean and threadbare bookishness, a slavery
of the cell ; and instead of a glorious deliverance from preju-
dice, self-mastery and self-guidance of the understanding, the
dictatorial magistracy over a school, the law-giving and domi-
neering over a few slaves, by whom he is surrounded and
admired for a short season, but despised by the liberal and
enlightened world, of whose thoughtshis seclusion renders him
unworthy while he lives ; and when he dies, his works are
shelved with all their prejudices, have a short life perhaps
in the admiration of his enslaved followers, with the first
generation of whom his labours and his knowledge are haply
consigned to the grave. The merchant, again, who commu-

Y

o

28 ON FA MIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

nicates not what he gains, but saves and stores it all, may do
so at first for the best and wisest ends ; but, sure as God is a
God of charity, and wisheth no man to hide his talents in the
earth, it cometh to pass that the rust of his hoarded metal,
the canker of the gold and silver, eateth into his soul, and
works therein the most base and downward inclinations which
the world holds — the adoration of mammon, which is the root
of all evil, the most vulgar pride, the most ignorant self-
sufficiency, the most debased standard of worth and excellency,
contempt of benevolence and charity, forgetfulness of all noble
or even natural relationships and alliances, even of father and
mother, if they be not wealthy enough, and in the end de-
grading the soul in gross avarice and penuriousness, and
misery in its worst and ugliest forms. So also it is with the
man of sensibility, who makes a banquet of his own feelings,
despising to communicate them if they be pleasant, and scorn-
ing to seek sympathy for them if they be painful ; who never
fails to become a misanthrope, full of moralisings which end
in no good ; full of grief which will have no cure ; mocking
the calamities of others, and laughing at the means which
they take to remedy them.

From this tendency of secrecy and seclusion to change the
nature of everything which one calleth his own, to make good
evil, and bitter sweet, religion is not exempt, which, having
been bestowed on the soul by the free grace of God, must with
the same freedom be communicated, according to the rule of
Scripture, " As every man hath received the gift, even so min-
ister the same one to another, as good stewards of the mani-
fold grace of God." The heart being filled with good feelings
towards all men, must liberally utter them ; the mind being
filled with devices of well-doing, must not allow them to be
unattempted ; our treasury being filled with plenty by God,
must be used for well-doing. All our talents must have use,
and all our profiting must appear ; " our light so shining
before men that they may glorify our Father which is in
heaven," There is only one limitation that I remember in
Scripture, that we cast not our pearls before swine, lest they
trample them under foot, and turn again and rend us. But
from the low and filthy habits of the creature which our Lord

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 329

chooseth in this similitude — and among the Jews it was lower
still, being among the creatures which were held unclean — we
may infer that He includeth thereby only the very basest and
most abandoned of the people, who for their great sins are
thus cut off by a just retribution from the offer of Christian
pearls, which arc offered to all besides.

Now, if instead of such a generous communication of those
riches of grace and treasures of spiritual knowledge which the
Lord hath bestowed upon us, we allow a natural love for
seclusion to withdraw us from the power of holding inter-
course with our fellows ; or if, holding intercourse with them,
we allow self-sufficiency and spiritual pride to shut us up in
the admiration of our religious peculiarities ; or if, from too
great a straining after perfection, an ultra-puritanism, if I may
so express it, we have a severe and pharisaical countenance
towards the meaner attainments or humbler ambitions of those
around us, — if by the operation of these or other causes our
spirit separates from the communion of our Christian brother,
and dwelleth apart in the enjoyment of its own experience,
we never fail to be punished in that very spiritual part which
hath offended, by contracting some spiritual diseases, and
exhibiting some fantastical or spurious forms of the Chris-
tian character.

"1
Such religious recluses, thus withheld from the communion

of their brethren, do often bend their minds to the contem-
plation of the works and ways of God, and by reason of the
solitary cheerlessness in which they dwell, their contempla-
tions are generally clouded with gloom, and their reflections
shaded with melancholy. By the same infirmity of nature
which parted them from their kind, they seize upon the darkest
passages of the Lord's providence, and perplex themselves
with fears and apprehensions of their own estate. Their walks
are full of meditation, and pensive thought sits upon their
pale faces ; they go forth in the twilight, and wander in dark-
ness. And if the enemy catcheth them at disadvantage,
and suggesteth to them horrid thoughts, which lie brooding,
uncommunicated, undispelled, waiting melancholy moods
and sad occasions, — which occurring, I have known them, yes,
men otherwise most devout, who permitted themselves in

330 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

this unnatural abstraction, so far left to themselves as to
lift their hand against their own lives, and perpetrate the
deed of self-murder. Of this disease, though by the mercy
of God defended against its fatal issue, was our gifted
countryman Cowper a melancholy instance, whose whole life
was clouded by that bashfulness which, far from yielding to,
he ought to have cast all his strength and graces against.
And not only was the serenity of his most inoffensive life
beclouded by this fatal disease, but all his writings have a
tinge of it For the lyre which he touched was, to use his
figure, his own over-sensitive heart. The cure of this disease
is kindly and frequent communication of our feelings, which
drains off the poisonous exhalations as they arise, and in the
end exhausts the ground of bitterness from which they come.
If by a friend the most arduous and desolate journey is be-
guiled— if our home, though upon the rough and solitary and
stormy sea-beach, is endeared by the objects of affection
which dwell therein — if all enjoyment is doubled by the par-
ticipation of a friend, and by his strengthening presence ad-
versity is defrauded of more than half its grief, — why not like-
wise may the dark contemplations of religion, its gloomy
prospects, and its unfathomable mysteries, be cheated of their
painful effects by the frequent converse and communion of
those who have experienced and overcome them }

Another form of this spiritual disease is when the mind,
hindered of its spiritual outlet, turns inwards upon itself.
This self-examination, which, if prosecuted in the spirit of
Christian charity, and with due allowance for the frailties of
our nature, issues in humility and amendment, when prose-
cuted in the severe spirit of seclusion hath commonly issued
in mortification and self-inflicted punishment. Often have I
witnessed such self-accusing and self-tormenting Christians,
into whose gloomy fears and distrusts when you inquired,
you can find no reasonable cause for them, except the seclu-
sion in which they keep their minds. These are the misan-
thropes of religion, who will not be comforted, but delight in
the gloomiest conceptions of themselves, and the saddest
pictures of humanity in general. Out of this cometh all the
rites of monachism, which is an institution formed on purpose

. THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 331

for generating and fostering this abstraction from the holy
charities of the family, and the sweet communings of friend-
ship. Narrow cells, sepulchral glooms, and horrid shades, pro-
duce the disease, and bring it to perfection ; while self-denial,
and self-mortification, and confession, and penance, follow as
the natural effects rather than a part of such a system.
Human-heartedness dies, the charities of the gospel are made
of none effect. God becomes the inquisitor-general of the
earth, and the human race miserable slaves of their own self-
torturing souls. In its most favourable aspect, this solitary self-
searching casts a deep shadow over our religion, even where
it doth not disturb it, as may be seen beautifully illustrated
in the work of Thomas a Kempis upon the " Imitation of
Christ," one of the ablest works upon subjective Christianity —
that is, as it affects one's self — but never failing to cast the
mind under shade, unless it be relieved by an active exer-
cise of objective Christianity — that is, as it bears upon those
around us.

There is a third form of this disease, where the exclusionist
cometh abroad to take a part in human affairs ; and in this
case it hardly ever fails to work wretchedness and woe upon
those over whom it hath the power. He is zealous for the
smallest forms, and has no respect for the conscience of others,
which he would offend in the highest matters, and consign to
condign punishment rather than relax the smallest portion of
his prejudices. And why .-* not because he was cruel to them
in particular — he would have been equally cruel to himself —
but he had not learned by intercourse with men to distinguish
the proper value of forms and ceremonies in the sanctification
of the soul, and thought them essential to salvation, and thus
did his intolerance greatly help to cast this country into a
flame. This form of the disease extending to sects, produces
those jealousies, and enmities, and bickerings for power,
which have degraded the history of the Church, and have
reaped to themselves from the God of charity a barrenness of
Christian graces, and a plentiful harvest of the proud and
ambitious tempers of the world. If, for example, proud of
the simple forms under which our fathers have been trained
to heaven, and shutting my eye to the august and imposing

332 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

forms of other lands, I were to condemn them Avith a sweep-
ing accusation, and endeavour to inoculate you with a similar
spirit, I should wear this form of the disease. Or if, because
our creed is Calvinistic, and ascendeth into the high region of
that mystery, taking care all the while to secure the lower
region of a sinner's free acceptance in Christ, and justification
through faith, and sanctification through the Spirit, and per-
sonal holiness — I were to cast off all those who, not venturing
so high into the mystery, do yet preserve the lower practical
regions with equal sacredness ; or if, because of our higher
aspirations, those who are content with lower flights do cast
us Calvinists off, calling us antinomians, and worse than
atheists, — then are we both labouring under this disease, and
to be cured, need only to be brought into converse and com-
munion with each other.

Again, this recluseness of the spiritual man often runneth
into the visionary form. Into this last form of the disease
fell that soul of every excellence, the glorious Milton, who
so dwelt in the ethereal regions of his poetry, and the
empyrean of his refined religion, that all his busy life, in the
most temper-trying and frailty-revealing times, he could not
learn to accommodate his ideas to the existing forms of man
so as to worship with him. He saw illiberality in one class,
and ignorance in another ; he was disgusted with the pride
and irreligion of a third, and with the intolerance and world-
liness of all. And so he fell into the greatest of all intoler-
ance, and for the latter years of his life dwelt apart within
the temple of his own pious soul.

" His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

Thus doth the Almighty, in various ways, punish the soul
of man for contracting its sympathies, and shutting up its
bowels of compassion to its kind. For as He, the possessor
of all good, is likewise the author of all good ; He, the sole
inhabitant of eternity, is the Father of all who dwell within
the bounds of time.

Therefore, brethren, I exhort as many of you as the Lord
our God hath called with a holy calling, to hold intercourse
with each other on all religious points in which you can con-

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 333

scientiously agree ; and these are far more numerous than
those in which you differ. For I hold that this same recluse-
ness of the soul, when it exerciseth not itself with the sad
contemplation of the outer world, nor with the severe inspec-
tion of its own self, but cometh abroad to take a part in
human affairs, hath always wrought wretchedness and woe.
Being shut within its own sanctuary, and brooding over its
own thoughts and designs, taking little or no counsel of others,
it worketh according to its own particular prejudices, rather
than for the commonweal. And being conscious of honest
intentions, and fully persuaded in his own mind, the spiritual
bigot, whom power hath lifted up, becomes a spiritual op-
pressor. Conscience armeth him against the consciences of
others ; he hath not known his own imperfections by bear-
ing the contradictions of others ; he hath not been taught to
distrust himself by submitting to the schooling of opposite
opinions. He thinks he alone is right, that God favoureth
the right ; and so adding trust in God to natural foolhardi-
ness, he rusheth like a horse into the battle, and generally
mangleth himself amongst the resisting weapons of men. So
reigned, and so fell, one of the most injurious, and yet, so far
as man can judge, one of the most pious, primates of England.
Again, this recluseness of the spiritual man often runneth, as
in the case of the glorious poet alluded to above, into an ex-
cessive puritanism too high for this earth. When the poet
meets with the Christian, and the practical philanthropist
combineth not with both to hold them in check, the result of
the combination is to beget an over-refined life of the soul,
which I might call its prophetic life. It surveys the possibili -
ties, not the realities of things. And perceiving the glad
consummation to which God is conducting all things, it vaults
the intervening space, and devours the long interval necessary
to the accomplishment of the vision; by help of imagination,
bodies it forth; by hope possesseth it and enjoys it, and in
these enjoyments the prophetic Christian lives. And these
inhabiting his better being, having his citizenship in times
long distant, and his tempers set thereto, when he cometh into
actual contact with men, he is wounded and irritated on all
sides; he complains and quarrels with the actual state of

334 ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

things, and being too far gone in the ethereal disease, he with-
draws to his closet, and sings his royal fancies, laments that
he hath fallen on evil days and evil tongues, calls for hearers
fit though few, wonders if there be faith still left upon the
earth, and, like Elijah, complaineth that he is left alone, when
there may be thousands of true men known to God's more
charitable eye. Which condition of the recluse soul I do
rather pity than blame, for to himself alone is he harmful —
to posterity one such enthusiast, one such Christian hero, is
often more profitable than perhaps a thousand of those more
practical believers who have not bowed the knee to Baal,
neither worshipped the images which are set up to him.
Four forms of the recluse Christian spirit — the contemplative,
the ascetic, the despotic, and the visionary — every one of us
will necessarily fall under, unless, while we grow in grace,
and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
we do also communicate freely with one another that light
and spiritual understanding which is freely given unto us.

The rule which, following myself, I recommend to each
one of you, is to hold intercourse of speech and communion
of soul with every Christian with whom you meet, upon those
things wherein you can honestly agree. Discourse of the
Christian temper, which all believe consisteth in meekness,
gentleness, and love ; discourse of the Christian life, which all
consider includeth good morals, agreeable manners, an upright
and honourable spirit ; discourse of the wisdom of God's
creation, and the bountifulness of His providence, and the
exceeding greatness of His promises towards those who believe.
Confess to each other your imperfections, and open up, accord-
ing to your knowledge, how these may best be removed ; and
though you cannot agree upon the exact measure of your
Lord's dignity, or the exact end of His coming, certainly you
can admire and praise Him, so far as you are agreed ; and
where you differ, if you cannot agree to differ, you can be
silent. The good breeding of the world requires as much ;
and, sure. Christian charity will not yield the palm of patience
and forbearance to the spirit of the world ! So you can have
infinite compass of sweet and improving discourse ; and if
you wish to act together, there are regions unbounded. You

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 335

can agree to disseminate the Scriptures, which is your com-
mon faith ; to dispel ignorance, which is your common
enemy ; to hmit the reigning of power ; to build up the
tabernacle of peace in the midst of us ; to succour the dis-
tressed, and recover the fallen ; to save penitents, and pluck
the wicked as brands from the burning ; to confirm the
doubting, and to stay the march of unbelief ; and to do works
of mercy and loving-kindness towards all who need your
help.

By these and other forms of intercourse, I do not say that
you will bring yourselves to think alike upon every subject,
which, were it possible, is hardly desirable ; for here the
force of truth upon the earth, like the forces of the material
world, consistcth in the balance of opposite powers ; and the
motion of truth, like the motions of the heavens, is produced
by the adjustment of opposite forces; — but though you will
not come into complete harmony of the intellect, which is
reserved for heaven, where we shall know even as we are
known, you will remove many discords from the feelings of
the heart, and by keeping in concert where you are really in
unison, you will come into unison in things where you were
formerly discordant. The errors of each other, which dis-
tance always magnifies in good people, and hides only in
bad, will cease to appear of such magnitude or amount ; and
the truth, which, in an honest, well-meaning man — and still
more in a sincere Christian — greatly overbalanceth the error,
will manifest itself to be far greater than we could have
believed ; and the soul, by living in sweet sympathy, which is
the milk of its existence, will become strong to cast off its
own desires, and active to hold intercourse with men of vari-
ous tempers and opinions. It will also become conscious of
its own imperfections, and thus tolerant to those of others, and
grow in that charity which thinketh no evil, which hopeth all
things, which believeth all things, and which rejoiceth ever-
more in the good which it discovereth in all things.

The man does not exist, in a civilised community, with
whom any other man hath not more in common than he hath
in opposition : the laws of their physical being are the same ;
they are subject to the same wants, the same adversities, the

30

;6 ON FAMIL Y AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

same diseases, the same death ; all which are to be met with
the same medicines, and overcome in the same strength.
And the laws of their moral being are likewise the same by-
nature, and, if developed by the same religion, are still more
harmonious ; and, though developed by conditions the most
adverse, do still agree in more respects than they discord,
— having the same desires, admiring the same characters of
excellence, pursuing the same good conditions, fearing the
same catastrophes of crime and guilt, hoping the same de-
liverances, and rejoicing in the same joyful issues. And even
their acquired knowledge agrees far oftener than it differs.
We believe the same histories, the same sciences, so far as we
know ; the same causes and effects ; and in opinion we agree
far oftener than we differ. Were it not that men more generally
sympathise than disagree, what legislature could devise for
them laws, — what book could give them instruction, — what
speaker could please them, — what oratory hold them mute,
— what persuasion unite them .'' The whole framework of
civil and political society is the proof and manifestation of
that which I affirm. But likewise it is the proof and mani-
festation of another property of human nature, — its tendency
to fly away from the region of its sympathies into the region
of its antipathies ; to counteract which evil tendency, these
laws are fain to be defended with terrors ; the region of
agreement hath, as it were, to be barricaded, and the out-
ward region of disagreement to be planted with manifold
obstructions, threatenings, and losses. So our blessed reli-
gion, knowing the same tendency of human nature to flee off
into the region of its antipathies and dislikes, hath given forth
the royal law of love, which is embodied through the whole
system of divine truth. It was founded in love from all eter-
nity— God's love to a fallen world ; in the fulness of time it
was manifested in love — Christ's love to the rebellious children
of men ; and now it standeth in love — the supreme love of our
hearts to God, and love to our neighbour equal with that unto
ourselves ; and it will end in joyful love — the love of the
redeemed in heaven through all eternity. While law, there-
fore, hindereth quarrel and discord, promoting as far as it can
social and friendly union, religion, with all its mighty power,

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. ZZJ

sustaineth law, and passcth far beyond it in the same good
and benevolent direction. But so strong is tins tendency of
human nature to harp upon the one discord rather than
enjoy the ninety and nine harmonies, that, while the principles
of society doth not hinder those political parties and private
quarrels, which are ever crowding our courts for adjustment,
so the charitable spirit of religion doth not hinder most un-
seemly divisions amongst the members of Christ.

Shame upon Christians for their discords and their dis-
trusts ! They are more like jealous competitors for a petty
place than the living members of Christ. They have no hand .
for welcoming, no heart for blessing a brother, unless he
belong to their sect. They misjudge him, they asperse him
unjustly, they think evil of him. Shame upon them for their
disloyalty to the Spirit of Christ, which is love ! They dwell
in their little fraternities ; or if they come forth, it is as spies
upon each other ; they gather up the vilest garbage of public
slander, they love it, and nourish by recounting it their spleen
and their uncharitableness. Shame upon them for such an
unchristian temper ! This cometh of their separations ; they
roost together in a certain twilight of Christian knowledge ;
they teach their eyes to love the gloom, which cometh to dis-
like the glorious light of day ; they keep within their narrow
lines, and can bear no speculation ; and if aught they hear
beyond these, they tremble in their hiding-places, and go not
forth to discover whether it is the coming of friend or foe, — if of
friend, to welcome him — if of foe, in the strength of the Lord
to withstand him. There they lie smothered and inert, and
rest upon the providence of God.

And is this the spirit of Christ, who came forth in loving-
kindness to the chief of sinners .'' and is this the spirit of the
apostles, who went from barbarous clime to more barbarous
clime in the strength of their universal commission, to every
creature under heaven.'' And oh, I ask, is this the Christian
spirit which Paul taught to his son Timothy, when he said,
" For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power,
and of love, and of a sound mind .''" Where is their power, if
they timorously seek the twilight and the night, and, like
men walking in darkness, dread the sound of every voice, and
VOL. III. Y

33^ ON FAMIL V AND SOCIAL RELIGION.

tremble at the approach of every footstep ? Where is their
love, depreciated and broken down into rival factions, of
which one speaketh a good word of another only in compli-
ment and by sufferance of their natural disposition, which is
rather to point out faults and speak dislike ? Where is their
soundness of mind, that they have not discovered in how
much more they agree together and differ from the world, than
they differ amongst each other ? Yet for all the ninety and
nine points in which we agree, such is the divided condition
of the religious world, that experience, sad and painful ex-
perience, hath taught me to expect, if not all, almost all, my
sympathy from the honourable of this world, and little — alas,
how little ! — from the members of Christ.

This artificial condition of things ariseth from their knowing
each other only by their distinctions, and being classed and
named by these distinctions. Still, though differently named,
they are brothers in Christ. And as brothers, notwithstand-
ing their different names, and even notwithstanding their
complexional differences of character and temper, dwell to-
gether in unity, because they have common parents, a com-
mon home, a common inheritance, and feel a common blood
circulating around their heart ; so ought the separate indivi-
duals of the body of Christ to regard each other in love, and
speak of each other with amiable temper, and dwell together
in harmony, not unvaried with occasional free discourse and
good-natured agitation of their opinions, because they have a
common Father, even the God and Father of all, — a common
Saviour, the Head of all, — a common speech, the soul of all,
■ — and dwell under the pleasant canopy of a common taber-
nacle, the Church of the living God, — and fare onward to-
wards a common inheritance, the land of promise beyond the
river of death.

These strictures, brethren, which I freely make amongst
you, and could hardly make elsewhere, are intended to guard
you against living overmuch in the narrowness of your own
prejudices, or within the margin each of your own sanctified
opinions, and to encourage you to mutual intercourse and
communion, that the rust of your prejudices may be worn off,
and you may be made more serviceable to the cause of your

THE GOOD OF SOCIAL RELIGION. 339

Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is not content with wish-
ing that a part of men, but that all men should come unto
Him and have life. Therefore be humble in the spirit of
your minds, each one thinking of another more highly than
of himself Let the elder be serviceable to the younger; even
as the Lord washed the feet of His disciples, so minister the
one to the other. Be not slack to open up your hearts to the
brethren, that ye may know and profit by each other's ex-
perience. Be more willing to listen than to speak, more
disposed to harmony than to discord ; as brethren, loving
one another, and keeping the unity of the faith in the bond
of peace.

It remaineth, therefore, as the conclusion of the whole
matter, that where personal religion is present social religion
cannot be absent. And it may easily be inferred negatively,
that where personal religion is not present, social religion
truly so called cannot be present. So that whoever would
worship God in families, or in the congregation, or have
wherewithal to hold social converse with his friends and
acquaintance upon things spiritual and divine, must begin the
work upon himself, and lay in stores of personal experience
and of personal piety, and be built up in his whole mind
after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness.
Therefore, as the improvement of what hath been said, let
me exhort every one to the cultivation within himself of
religious knowledge and religious feeling, not only as the
means to the end for which we assemble here and elsewhere,
but for the greater end of your present welfare and everlast-
ing salvation.

DISCOURSES DELIVERED ON
PUBLIC OCCASIONS.

DISCOURSES DELIVERED ON PUBLIC
OCCASIONS.

FAREWELL DISCOURSE AT ST JOHN'S, GLASGOW*

2 Cor. XIII. II.
Fi>iaUy, hrethrcu, farewell.

"^XZHEN friends part, they part in peace, making mention
of the kind passages which have occurred between
them, and giving assurance of the good-will and tender
attachment which these passages of kindness have wrought
within their hearts. At such a time, to remember aught but
affection, or to utter aught but blessing, were an indecency
to revolt the common heart of nature, and draw down the
visitation of God. For it is the ordinance of nature and reli-
gion both that friends should part in peace, — nature, con-
scious of her weakness, whispers with a still, small voice,
" Ye may never meet again ; ye may have no other oppor-
tunity to testify your attachment : therefore, lose not this —
entertain your friend's last interview with your choicest and
richest mood, send him on his way in peace, and speak into
his ear words of comfort and encouragement ;" while to the
departing sojourner she saith, " Receive with affection, and
treasure up these tokens of love — these blessings and bene-
dictions prize, and bear along with you like parting legacies,

• Preached in 1822, on Mr Irving's leaving the church in which he had been
associated as colleague with Dr Chalmers ; to whom this discourse, on its first
publication, was dedicated.

344 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

they are your best credentials wherever you go ; and though
unwritten, unsealed, and uttered in no ear but your own, and
transient as a voice, yet coming from the heart, which God
beholds, and bringing forth heartfelt desires of good, which
God delights in, they will draw down from Him, if aught will,
favour and protection upon the path in which you are to go."
To which soft suggestions of nature, religion adds her autho-
ritative voice, and commands, " Ye are brethren of one blood,
whithersoever ye sojourn : part, therefore, with the tender
embrace of brethren ; ye have gone up to the house of God
together, there worshipped, there vowed, there taken counsel
together; part then as the redeemed of the Lord. Have ye
not broken of the same bread of blessing, and drunk from
the same cup of blessing, and supped around the holy table
of Christ .-' therefore, part as the sworn brothers of Christ.
What though differences may have arisen, and injuries
ensued thereon, this may be the last opportunity for forgive-
ness ; seize it, therefore, before broad lands or wide seas
intervene between you ; forget and forgive, and part in peace,
that when you come to the altar, and present unto the Lord
your gift, there may be naught between you and your brother
to prevent it from being accepted." Thus nature and reli-
gion meet hand in hand to sweeten and hallow the parting
scene of friends, and to clothe its naked grief with decent
expressions of kindness and love, and to suppress its sighs
and tears with the voice of blessing, and the promise of a
welcome meeting again, either here or hereafter.

Need we mention to confirm this, the solemn touches of
nature in the partings of the patriarchs from their children
and from one another ; Naomi's pathetic parting from her
daughter-in-law, which to Ruth was more heart-rending than
to leave country and kindred and all ; David's parting from
Jonathan his brother, sealed with a covenant of affection true
till death, and when by death's fell touch divided, mourned
over with the tenderest of elegies. Need we speak of Christ's
farewell to that execrable city, whose murders of the pro-
phets, and impending murder of Himself, did not hold Him
again that He should not pour over it a farewell of parental
tenderness and deep commiseration: or, His long farewell

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 345

of comfort to His disciples, wherein His heart bursts with
utterances of peace, consolation, and joy; with promises of a
Comforter evermore to dwell within their breast, and of
mansions in His Father's house, to be by Himself made
ready against their coming, all sanctified by mysterious and
earnest intercessions with His heavenly Father for their sakes.
Or need we speak of His servants the apostles, how they
comforted the brethren in every city, before they departed,
and how the brethren at their parting hung around their
neck ; how, in the hours devoted to recreation and rest, they
came together and heard Paul prolong his discourse till mid-
night ; how they bore him company to the solitary shore of
the sea, and there mingled the voice of their prayer and
weeping with the hoarse voice of the ocean ; how they brought
him on his ways, took measures for his safety, and com-
mended him from city to city, and by every means made
manifest, and concealed not the tender and pathetic emotions
which they felt at parting.

Being reassured by these authorities of nature and revela-
tion, that when there exist feelings of gratitude and affection
towards the people of his charge, and longing desires after
their present and everlasting welfare, the pastor is doing both
a manly and a Christian part to bring these feelings forth,
and to seal with the strong impression of love, all the pas-
sages of love which have occurred between him and his flock ;
we are resolved to depart from the approved custom of
preaching upon some useful topic, which might be forced, in
a short application, to bear upon the occasion of our parting,
and to address ourselves to this painful work, as our Lord
did on parting from His disciples, and Paul on parting from
the elders of the Ephesian Church, with a full and constant
allusion to the matters in hand. We would rather be ab-
solved from the utterance of feelings which concern ourselves,
and which are hardly to be uttered without egotism, or lis-
tened to without the sense of intrusion. Our heart calls for
a voice to speak its fulness ; but the fear of giving offence to
ceremony and taste would restrain it. We must cast our-
selves upon your indulgence, beloved brethren, as we have
often done, praying you, if we seem to be foolish, to bear a

346 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

little with our folly, while we let nature speak, casting away
from us fear of failure, and fear of offence, and fear of criti-
cism, and every selfish consideration whatever.

This station, which brought us into the ministry of a people
wont to listen to the most eloquent of men, we entered upon
with a single trust in the providence and grace of God, rather
rejoicing in the mighty champion by whose side we were to
lift our arm, than mindful of the humiliating contrasts to
which we would stand exposed. It is the nature of trust in
God to abolish every other reliance, and render the soul care-
less to the issues of fortune, or fame, or worldly favour. So
at least it fared with us when we first offered ourselves
to this people. Consequences were disregarded ; we stipu-
lated for no conditions, being content with the portion that
was offered to us. Like St Paul among the Corinthians, we
brought no introductions, and adopted no arts of address or
insinuation, but gave ourselves with a light and cheerful heart
to the manifold duties of this congregation and parish. The
cabins of the poor and the workshops of the mechanic we
have made our resort, rather than the ambitious steps of
power, or the sly and crooked approaches of influence. And
that alone which we coveted after, God hath given us, the
hearts and blessings of the poor, the favour and friendship
of many Christians in higher conditions, and the undeserved
approbation of your pastor, under whom we laboured.

These simple truths we mention, not out of self-love or
vanity, but out of piety and gratitude to Him in whom we
trusted, and who hath not suffered His servant to be put to
shame. It is the burden of our acknowledgments to God we
offer up, not any achievements of our own we boast of He
knows, and He alone doth know, how unworthy we are of
the meanest of those favours whereof it hath pleased Him to
grant us many. But we will not be silent in this congrega-
tion of His people, to meditate and speak His praise, and
make mention of His loving-kindness to the most unworthy
of His ministering servants. Neither formality, nor the
breeding to which even this chair of God must conform, nor
the fear of a critical generation, shall hinder us from weaving,
like king David and the apostle Paul, out of our own per-

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 347

sonal history, a song unto Jehovah, and singing it aloud before
all His people.

He is the best of patrons, He Avho casteth down the proud
and exalteth those of low degree. He is the best of friends.
He who hath the hearts of men in His hands, and turneth
them at His pleasure. He is the best of masters. He who
doth not chide nor keep anger still, but waiteth to be gracious,
and sendeth down every good and every perfect gift. Ye
people, put your trust in Him continually. The strong man
shall become as flax, and the mighty man as the clod of the
valley ; and friends shall be comfortless or fade from your
sight ; the strength of youth and the joy of life shall utterly
fail, and the bonds of nature may dissolve, so that parents
shall forget, and the mother cease to love the child whom she
bore; — but God, if ye trust in Him, shall be to you a shield
and a buckler, and a strong tower and an everlasting portion.
He shall feed you by the still waters, and anoint your head
with oil, and make your cup to overflow. He who made
Abraham a great nation, and brought His servant David from
feeding the ewes great with young, to feed His people Israel,
He is still powerful to constrain principalities and powers,
and to make for His people a name upon the earth, and a
secure habitation to dwell in. - Therefore, let all the people
trust in the right hand of the Most High. Especially let the
young men, in the season of their youth, when they begin to
venture upon life, inexperienced and headstrong, their path
unknown, their name and fortune in the hidden womb of the
future — then, when a thousand cloudy uncertainties overhang
them, and a thousand solicitations perplex them in their path,
let them cease from the flattery of the great, and the cozenage
of the wealthy, and be ashamed of sinister policy and all
impure arts of aggrandisement. Let them stand by stern
honesty, and walk in the ways of the Lord, which are truth,
industry, and religion ; then shall their mountain stand strong,
and their horn be exalted ; yea, the Lord shall make His
name glorious by their exceeding exaltation. And most
especially let the youth destined for the holy ministry stand
aloof from the unholy influences under which the Church hath
fallen ; from the seats of power and patronage let them stand

348 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

aloof; from the boards of ecclesiastical intrigue on both
sides of the Church, let them stand aloof; from glozing
the public ear, and pampering the popular taste, with
unprofitable though acceptable matter, let them stand
aloof; and while thus dissevered from fawning, intriguing
and pandering, let them draw near to God, and drink in-
spiration from the milk of His word ; and though poor as
the first disciples of Christ, without staff, without scrip, still,
like the first disciples of Christ, let them labour in the minis-
try of the word and in prayer with their families, their
kindred, their neighbourhood, the poor who will welcome
them, the sick who desire them, and the young who need
them, — then their Master will find them field enough of use-
fulness, though the Church should deride such puritan youth ;
and the providence of God will find them in food and rai-
ment, though no patron's eye may deign a look to such
friendless youth ; and the paradise of God will find them an
eternal reward, though the world should cast forth from its
fortunate places such heavenly-minded youth. Such a seed
would make the Church once more to be glorious. One such
youth trained amidst nature's extremities, and hope's obdu-
rate fastnesses — his soul fed not on patron's hopes nor favour's
smiles, but upon the stern resolves, and heavenward enjoy-
ments of an apostle's toilsome calling — that youth, I say,
were worth a hundred, and a hundred such were worth a host,
to revive and quicken this our land — the land, the only land,
of a free plebeian church, which never pined till she began to
be patronised.

These humble acknowledgments to our Father in heaven
are well due from a heart which He hath purchased to Him-
self with His many benefits, which hath ill acknowledged His
sovereignty, and now but feebly expresseth the obligations
which it feels. But, however feeble the expressions, they are
His by right who hath brought us through the perilous days
of youth, not visiting our many transgressions with stripes,
who hath prospered us beyond our deserving in His Church,
and put to flight the foreboding fears which a mind, ill-
attuned to the present economy of the Church, conjured up
in our path. He hath taken us from the sight of much in

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 349

our Church that wounded a zealous spirit, but which neither
zeal nor wisdom seem able to amend, away to the observation
and fellowship of men, who are sustaining the interests of
religion at home and abroad — to the bosom of a city which
is the Mount Zion of the Christian world, whence the law
and the testimony are going forth to the ends of the earth.
May that abundant mercy which hath done so much, even for
the most undeserving, take in good part these our utterances
of gratitude and praise, and enable us to testify, in the bosom
of that activity to which He hath called us, how zealous we
are over the people of His hand, and how indefatigable in the
strife which His servants are there waging against the dark-
ness of the world.

Our soul being discharged of the sentiment of devotion,
which above all others moves us, on the eve of stepping from
a lower to a higher station in the Church of the living God,
we are now at ease for the utterance of all we feel towards
this congregation and parish, of which we are taking leave.

For the congregation, it is almost the first in which our
preaching was tolerated, and therefore whatever name Ave
may acquire, and whatever good our ministerial labours may
turn to, we give to your indulgence of our early and most
imperfect endeavours. Take not these for words of compli-
ment to you, as if you had found in us anything worth while ;
nor for words of congratulation to ourselves, as if you had
awarded us any honour. We know, upon the other hand,
that our imperfections have not been hid from your eyes, and
that they have alienated some from our ministry. But still
it is our joy and reward, that so many have given us a patient
and willing ear — an honour, we say again, to which we were
not wont, till providence cast our footsteps hitherward. Of
this superior acceptance we would have given the -credit to
alteration or improvement in our view of doctrine, if we had
any such to boast of, but, being conscious of no such thing,
we leave the credit in the hands of your indulgence, and re-
gard as our patrons under God, this intelligent and inde-
pendent congregation of citizens. Whatever advances we
have made, or are to make in this world's favour, let them
rest where they are due, with that phalanx of friendly

350 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

men, who thought us worthy of their attendance and appro-
bation.

There is a tide in public favour, which some ride on pros-
perously, which others work against and weather amain.
Those who take it fair at the outset, and will have the
patience to observe its veerings, and to shift and hold their
course accordingly, shall fetch their port with prosperous and
easy sail ; those again, who are careless of ease, and court
danger in a noble cause, confiding also in their patient endur-
ance, and the protection of Heaven, launch fearlessly into the
wide and open deep, resolved to explore all they can reach,
and to benefit all they explore, shall chance to have hard
encounters, and reach safely through perils and dangers.
But while they risk much, they discover much ; they come to
know the extremities of fate, and grow familiar with the
gracious interpositions of Heaven. So it is with the preachers
of the gospel. Some are traders from port to port, following
the customary and approved course ; others adventure over
the whole ocean of human concerns : the former are hailed
by the common voice of the multitude, whose course they
hold ; the latter blamed as idle, often suspected of hiding
deep designs, always derided as having lost all guess of the
proper course. Yet of the latter class of preachers was Paul
the apostle, who took lessons of none of his brethren when
he went up to Jerusalem ; of the same class was Luther the
reformer, who asked counsel of nothing but his Bible, and
addressed him single-handed to all the exigents of his time ;
of the same class was Calvin, the most lion-hearted of church-
men, whose independent thinking hath made him a name to
live, and hath given birth to valuable systems both of doc-
trine and polity. Therefore, such adventurers, with the Bible
as their chart, and the necessities of their age as the ocean to
be explored, and brought under authority of Christ, are not
to be despised, because they are single-handed and solitary,
by the multitude of useful men, who wait upon those portions
which some former adventures have already brought into the
vineyard. And long let this audience, which listens to the
voice of a pastor, who, without sacrificing the gospel of Christ,
hath diverged further than any of his age from the approved

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 3 5 1

course of preaching, and launched a bold adventure of his
own into the ocean of religious speculation, bringing off
prouder triumphs to his Redeemer than any ancient pilot of
them all — long may this the people of his pasture, give coun-
tenance to those in whom they discern a spirit from the Lord,
and a zeal for His honour, however much they may hold of
ancient and venerable landmarks, which, though they might
well define the course proper to a former generation, may be
quite unsuitable to the necessities of the present. Such ad-
venturers, under God, this age of the world seems to us
especially to want. There are ministers enow to hold the
flock in pasture and in safety. But where are they to make
inroad upon the alien, to bring in the votaries of fashion, of
literature, of sentiment, of policy, and of rank, who are con-
tent in their several idolatries to do without piety to God,
and love to Him whom He hath sent .'' Where are they to
lift up their voice against simony, and arts of policy, and
servile dependence upon the great ones of this earth, and
shameful seeking of ease and pleasure, and anxious amassing
of money, and the whole cohort of evil customs which are
overspreading the ministers of the Church } Truly, it is not
stagers who take on the customary form of their office, and
go the beaten round of duty, and then lie down content ; but
it is daring adventurers, who shall eye from the proud emi-
nence of a holy and heavenly mind, all the grievances which
religion underlays, and all the obstacles which stay her course,
and then descend, with the self-denial and the faith of an
apostle, to set the battle in array against them all.

Fear not, brethren, that many will be so bold, or that the
body of good custom will break up, and give place to wild
rovings and huntings after novelty. Against this you are
secured by the strongest desire of the youthful mind, the
desire of pleasing the greater number, by the rewards which
lie all upon the side of conformity, and by the risk and ridi-
cule wdiich lie all upon the side of adventure. The danger is
of too much sameness of the style and method, not of too
little. The multitude of preachers will plod the beaten track,
and weary you with the same succession of objects and views,
constantly presenting the same aspect of things to the same

352 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

faculties of the mind, and if you would have the relief of
freshness and novelty, no less necessary for the entertainment
of the spiritual than of the natural eye — if you would have
religion made as broad as thought and experience, then you
must not discourage, but bear patiently with, and hear to an
end, any one who takes his natural liberty to expatiate over
all the applications of the Word of God to the wants of men,
bringing him to no bar of favourite preachers, but to the bar
of your own religious feelings and experience alone.

Thus we plead and exhort, not in defence of ourselves,
though it is well known to you we have taken such freedom,
but in behalf of our brotherhood, and of the ancient liberty
of prophesying, against those narrow prescriptive tastes, bred
not of knowledge, nor derived from the better days of the
Church, but in the conventicle bred ; and fitted, perhaps, for
keeping together a school of Christians, but totally unfit for
the wide necessities of the world — (else why this alienation of
the influential of the world from the cause?) — we are plead-
ing against those Shibboleths of a sect, those forms of words
which now do not feed the soul with understanding, but are
in truth as the time-worn and bare trunks of those trees from
which the Church was formerly nourished, and which now
have in them neither sap nor nourishment. We are pleading
for a more natural style of preaching, in which the various
moral and religious wants of men shall be met, artlessly met
with the simple truths of revelation, delivered as ultimate
facts, not to be reasoned on, and expressed as Scripture
expresses them — which conjunction being made, and crowned
with prayer for the Divine blessing, the preacher has fulfilled
the true spirit of his ofiice.

This certainly is what we have aimed at. It hath led us
to be suspected, it hath led us to be blamed, it hath led us to
be stigmatised, by the timorous slaves of customary men and
customary preaching; but ye, nevertheless, have borne with
us, for which we now render you our hearty thanks. Ye have
borne the free utterance of all our thoughts, upon all subjects
that came under our ministration, thereby afibrding us the
highest 'treat of a thinking, and the dearest right of a consci-
entious man. Ye have seen the inmost foldings of our hearts.

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 353

for nothing have we disguised, and little reserved, — all which
ye have taken in good part. Ye have given us liberty, and
we have taken it, yet hath there been no quarrel between us.
The Lord reward you for your kindness. Ye have advanced
us from the condition of an unknown stranger to be your
guest, your friend, your confidant in things spiritual and tem-
poral. Kindly counsel ye have given us often — harsh rebukes
never. An unfriendly word hath not passed between us and
any mortal of the hundreds now before us. We have not one
known enemy in a congregation from which we have gathered
a large accession to our friends.

May the Lord, who heard the prayer of Solomon and
Daniel for the congregation of Israel, hear our prayer for this
congregation of His people — that they may long assemble in
peace within these sacred walls to enter into fellowship with
the Father of their spirits, and drink edification from the lips
of priests gifted with the Spirit of God, and strong in the
discipline of Christ — that they may be defended by God's
providence from want, and by His grace saved from falling,
— that they may live united together in the bonds of their
Saviour's love, and be sustained by the hope of His calling
under the trials and afflictions of this sinful estate — that, full
of years and good fruits, they may be gathered to their
fathers, and leave of their loins a seed to serve the Lord while
sun and moon endure.

This place has been the cradle of my clerical character,
whatever it may become — this congregation its nurse and
fostering mother, God above all being its protector. Your
indulgence has restored me to the confidence of myself, which
had begun to fail, under the unsanctioning coldness of the
priesthood, restored me to the Church from which despair of
being serviceable had well-nigh weaned me, and restored my
affection to this holy vocation, which I shall labour to fulfil,
and by God's grace to magnify. Take, then, my acknow-
ledgments in good part, they are all I have to offer, and they
are well deserved by men whose good and honourable report
hath borne down the misjudgments with which my opening
ministry was assailed.

But, in a still dearer sense, we stand related to the people
VOL. III. Z

354 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

of the parish than to the congregation, inasmuch as the in-
dulgence of nature's affections is dearer than to discharge
the duties of the highest office, or to inherit the honour of
having discharged them well. Here, in the pulpit, we filled a
station, and took upon us an official character, and played one
part amongst the many which are played upon the stage of life.
There in the parish we went forth in nature's liberty, conso-
ciating with the people as man doth with man, or friend with
friend ; a soother of distress, a brother of the youth, an en-
courager of the children, and often listener to the wisdom of
the aged. We took no clerical state, assumed no superiority
of learned, nor affectation of vulgar phrase, served ourselves
with no imposing address ; but in the freedom of natural feel-
ing, and speaking from the fulness of the heart, we wandered
from house to house, depending on the gainliness of genuine
nature, and the patronage of Almighty God, — which two staffs,
nature and God, have sustained our goings forth, and brought
us with great delight through the thousands of families in this
parish, and failed us never. Oh ! how my heart rejoices to
recur to the hours I have sitten under the roofs of the people,
and been made a partaker of their confidence, and a witness
of the hardships they had to endure. In the scantiest, and
perhaps sorest time with which this manufacturing city hath
been ever pressed, it was my almost daily habit to make a
round of their families, and uphold what in me lay the de-
clining cause of God. There have I sitten, with little silver
or gold of my own to bestow, with little command over the
charity of others, and heard the various narratives of hard-
ship, narratives uttered for the most part with modesty and
patience, oftener drawn forth with difficulty than obtruded on
your ear, — their wants, their misfortunes, their ill-requited
labour, their hopes vanishing, their families dispersing in
search of better habitations, the Scottish economy of their
homes giving way before encroaching necessity, debt rather
than saving their condition, bread and water their scanty fare,
hard and ungrateful labour the portion of their house, — all
this have I often seen and listened to within naked walls, the
witness, oft the partaker, of their miserable cheer, with little
or no means to relieve. Yet be it known, to the glory of God,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 355

and the credit of the poor, and the encouragement of tender-
hearted Christians, that such application to the heart's ail-
ments is there in our religion, and such a hold in its promises,
and such a pith of endurance in its noble examples, that
when set forth by our inexperienced tongue, with soft words
and kindly tones, they did never fail to drain the heart of
the sourness which calamity engenders, and sweeten it with
the balm of resignation, often enlarge it with cheerful hope,
sometimes swell it high with the rejoicings of a Christian
triumph. The manly tear which I have seen start into the
eye of many an aged sire, whose wrinkled brow and lyart
locks deserved a better fate, as he looked to the fell conclu-
sion of an ill-provided house, an ill-educated family, and a
declining religion, which hemmed him in, at a time when his
hand was growing feeble for work, and the twilight of age
setting in upon his soul, — that tear is dearer to my remem-
brance than the tear of sentiment which the eye of beauty
swims with at a tale of distress ; yea, it is dear as the tear of
liberty which the patriot sheds over his fallen country ; and
the blessings of the aged widow, bereft of the sight and stay
of her children, and sitting in her lonely cabin the live-long
day at her humble occupation — her blessings when my form,
darkening her threshold, drew her eye — the story of her youth,
of her family, and husband, wede away from her presence —
her patient trust in God, and lively faith in Christ — with the
deep response of her sighs when I besought God's blessing
upon the widow's cruse, and the widow's barrel, and that He
would be the husband of her widowhood, and the father of her
children, in their several habitations, — these, so oft my engage-
ment, shall be hallowed tokens for memory to flee to, and
sacred materials for fancy to work with, while the heart doth
beat within my breast. God above doth know my destiny ;
but though it were to minister in the halls of nobles, and the
courts and palaces of kings, He can never find for me more
natural welcome, more kindly entertainment, and more refined
enjoyment than He hath honoured me with in this suburb
parish of a manufacturing city. My theology was never in
fault around the fires of the poor, my manner never misin-
terpreted, my good intentions never mistaken. Churchmen

356 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and Dissenters, Catholics and Protestants, received me with
equal graciousness. Here was the popularity worth the having
— whose evidences are not in noise, ostentation, and numbers,
but in the heart opened and disburdened, in the cordial wel-
come of your poorest exhortations, and the spirit moved by
your most unworthy prayer, in the flowing tear, the confided
secret, the parting grasp, and the long, long entreaty to return.
Of this popularity I am covetous; and God in His goodness
hath granted it in abundance, with which I desire to be
content.

They who will visit the poor shall find the poor worthy to
be visited, — they who will take an interest, not as patrons, but
as fellow-men, in the condition of the poor, shall not only con-
fer but inherit a blessing. 'Tis the finest office of religion, to
visit the widows, and the fatherless, and those who have no
helper, — so secret, so modest, so tender-hearted ; most like it
is to God's providence itself, so noiseless and unseen, and
effectual. Communion of this private kind is likest prayer
to Heaven ; two spirits conferring, the one needing, the other
having to give ; no third party conscious, the want is made
known, the known want is supplied, love and gratitude all the
return. There needs no formality of speech, every word being
addressed to a present feeling ; there needs no parade of bene-
volence, every gift being offered to a pressing want. There
needs no society, no committee, no subscription list, no memo-
rial of any kind to make it known. Would that in this age,
when our clergy and our laity are ever and anon assembling
in public to take measures for the moral and religious welfare
of men, they were found as diligently occupying this more
retired, more scriptural, and more natural region ! Would
they were as instant for the poor, the irreligious, the unpro-
tected of their several parishes, and several neighbourhoods, as
they are for the tribes, whose dwellings are remote, and whose
tongue is strange ! Then would they find what we have found,
and have oft averred in the teeth of prejudice and power, and
are proud now in public to aver, that the poor and labouring
classes of Scotland are Scotland's pride and glory still, as they
were wont to be — the class they are out of which have sprung
her noblest men, who have earned the far-famed honours of

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 357

her name in all foreign parts. They stand as superior to the
peasantry of the modern world for knowledge, religion, and
character, as in ancient times the Greeks did for arts, or the
Romans for glorious arms. The peasantry of the country
parts, and the unadulterated Scottish population of her towns,
are not yet fallen from the places of their fathers ; and if this
mother Church, which has been to us in the place of all liberal
institutions, and to which we are indebted, under God, for
almost everything we have worth the having, almost as much
indebted as was Israel to the law and the ephod — if she would
again become the Church of the people, to whom, and not to
rank, she is indebted for her being, and would study the real
interests of the people, and gather them as the great Head of
the Church would have gathered the people of Jerusalem,
even as a hen doth her chickens under her wings, then the
national character, whereof the root and branches are still in
vigour, would cover itself with its ancient fruits of peace and
godliness, and overpower that canker of disaffection and dis-
content, whereof through bad husbandry some signs have
appeared of late.

Nevertheless, my brethren, though the Church may seem
to have parted interests with the people, let me pray you to
nourish and not to desert her. Remember how your fathers,
the common people of a former age, loved her, and for her
sake made want their portion, and the waste wilderness their
abode, and arms their unwonted occupation. Remember
how she sprung from their hearty love and embrace of God's
Word, and their hatred of intermeddling men. They dressed
her vineyard, and it became fruitful ; they defended it, and it
became strong and terrible, and it did yield them wine and
milk, while the nations around fed on sourest grapes. Your
civil rights she gave you, your education that lifts you to
stations of confidence ; your high standard of moral purity,
whence come your temperance and sobriety ; your taste for
reading and knowledge, whence comes your adventure ; and,
lastly, your prudent and faithful character, which makes you
welcome amongst the nations. But the people of this parish,
whom I now address, I need not court by ancient recollec-
tions, but by present enjoyments, to the love and admiration

358 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

of our national Church. Theirs it is not to complain of glory
departed, but to rejoice in glory returned to their borders.
Theirs not to lament over the cure of their souls neglected,
but to joy in the cure of their souls watched over with more
than primitive diligence. For it hath been the lot of this
parish, brethren, as you well know, to possess the voice of
the most eloquent, and the assiduities of the most tender-
hearted of Scottish pastors, who hath gathered around him a
host of the most pious and devoted agents, — a college doubt-
less of the best men that it hath been our lot to find around
any single cause. Go ye to the cathedrals of our sister
Church, you shall find a bishop, a dean, store of stalled
prebends, priests, singers, and officers of every name. There
shall be all the state and dignity of office, and all the formali-
ties of the various degrees of the priesthood ; magnificent
fabrics withal ; infinite collections of books ; unlimited con-
venience for every religious enterprise, and unbounded com-
mand of all the means. Inquire what is done by these
dignitaries, with their splendid appointments. Prayers are
said each morning to some half-dozen of attendants, anthems
sung by trained singers, and cathedral service performed each
Sabbath by well-robed priests. Ask for week-day work, for
the feeding of the flock from house to house, for the comfort-
ing of the poor, for the visitation of the sick, for the super-
intendence and teaching of the children ; all assiduous
nourishment of the flock of Christ, and all apostolical earnest-
ness with the enemies of Christ, — these are nowhere to be
found. Come, then, to this parish ; ye shall find no chapter-
house of ancient furniture, nor lumber-rooms of undisturbed,
volumes, no array of priests, nor legal command over means
or assistance. One priest to attend the cure of many thou-
sands, with what voluntary help he can draw from the flock
itself. Yet such is still the vigour of our religious institutions,
when wrought with the spirit of Christ, and such the willing-
ness and practical wisdom of our people, when properly called
out, that our single priest hath been surrounded with pious,
intelligent, and industrious men, unhired with money, unpaid
with official honour, deriving nothing but trouble, and con-
suming nothing but their means, and their more precious

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 3 59

time ; who do a Christian father's office to the children, a
brother's office to the poor, a friendly office unto all, — stirring
and stimulating the lethargic spirit of religion ; forcing vice
from its concealments, or overawing it with their observa-
tion ; making the Sabbath orderly in the day season, and in
the evening rejoicing every street with the voice of children
hymning their Maker's praise. There is not a child who
need be ignorant of its duties to God and man, for spiritual
instruction comes beseeching to every door. There is not a
misfortune which may not find the voice of a comforter, nor
a case of real want which doth not find a seasonable relief;
nor a perplexity which may not be met with religious counsel.
These things are not to seek, they are ready at hand, and
served not out of constraint, but out of a willing mind. And
while nature's ailments are thus healed by ministering hands,
and the poor of God's house fed in time of need, the spirit
is not debased by a sense of dependence, nor broken by
insolence of office. There are no official visits of inquisition,
nor speeches of harsh authority. Everything cometh. forth
of Christian willingness, and is tender as nature's feelings,
and soft as the administration of mercy, which droppeth
unseen upon the pining spirit, like the dew from heaven upon
the parched earth. Such another institution as this parish
hath for raising the tone of virtue and religion among you,
I am bold to say, the Church, perhaps the world, doth not
contain.

Bless the day when the Lord sent amongst you, from the
sequestered valleys of his native county. His ministering
servant, to work out for you the wondrous devices of his
enlarged and simple mind. Bless the Lord, who hath given
him strength and encouragement to carry through his schemes,
and hath found him chosen men, men of knowledge and
understanding, and the fear of God, to stand by him, and aid
him in all his undertakings. I have been three years the
observer, and, to my ability, the abettor of their schemes,
but no party nor principal in any of them, only an humble
minister ; therefore I violate not modesty while I do them
justice, and declare, that to me they seem no other than a
forlorn hope, mustered under a valorous, cautious, and enthu-

36o DISCOURSES DELIVERED

siastic leader, who have volunteered out of the army of Christ,
to go against the strongest hold of the enemy, and regain for
the Church the precious position which she had lost in the
crowded cities of our land. Their success hath approved
their valour and their skill. Other bands have started, in
other quarters, against this, the most rugged front of depra-
vity and vice. And, as hath been already said, if churchmen
would become once more the shepherds of the people, not
petty politicians, or pitiful dependants upon the great, — would
they stand for themselves upon the basis of their sacred
function, and become God's royal nation, Christ's ambassa-
dors, and the captains of the militant Church, then would
health spring up in darkness, and the cities, now famous for
disaffection, and branded with sedition, would become the
nurseries of new devices for the good of Church and state.
Let the people of this parish, therefore, bless the Lord, who
made this renovation first to arise within their borders. But
if ye will not rise, with one accord, to bless Him for all His
gracious benefits, then your children will, who, from being
starved, are plentifully fed with the word of life ; if they will
not, then the very stones of your houses will, in which these
pious men have so often ministered, and the walls of this
church will, which have so oft echoed to your pastor's un-
rivalled voice.

For myself, I render to him and to his spiritual staff the
tribute of my admiration and gratitude. Our walks together,
amidst the streets and lanes of this parish, the sweet counsel
we took over its needs — our devisings for the relief of the
poor, and the upholding of the broken . in heart, and the
reclaiming of the hardened ; our sick-bed, death-bed, funeral
scenes — when shall these be forgotten .'' And can I forget, my
fellow-labourers, your fatherhood of the orphans, your school-
ing of the destitute, your search after the lost sheep and
wanderers from the fold, where you gave your money, your
time, your influence, your service, everything which nature,
which religion could suggest .-* No ! these things I never
shall forget. They shall remain the annals and memorials of
this blessed parish — they shall remain the proof of your

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 361

Christian worth — a trophy to the city you inhabit — a credit
to the species itself.

These obligations, which I speak to you in general, such is
your harmony of character, I might speak to you individually;
but to him who is the soul and head of all, I dare not trust
myself, though of the firmest nerve, to speak the nature and
number of my obligations. But these obligations are not to
be told in public ; they are the private treasure of the soul,
which she should visit, like the miser, in secret, and dote over
alone, and, because she prizes them dearly, speak of them
seldom, lest some daring hand should seize and scatter them
abroad in sport, or in cruelty use them against himself

In fine, then, this is the burden of my obligations to my
God. He hath given me the fellowship of a man mighty in
His Church, an approving congregation of His people, the
attachment of a populous corner of His vineyard. I ask no
more of Heaven for the future, but to grant me the continu-
ance of the portion which, by the space of three years, I have
here enjoyed. But this I need not expect. Never shall I
again find another man of transcendent genius whom I can
love as much as I admire — into whose house I can go in and
out like a son, whom I can revere as a father and serve with
the devotion of a child; never shall I find another hundred
consociated men of piety, by free-will consociated, whose
every sentiment I can adopt, and whose every scheme I can
find delight to second. And I fear I shall never find another
parish of ten thousand, into every house of which I was
welcomed as a friend, and solicited back as I had been a
brother.

And now, brethren, I thank you, in fine, for the patience
with which you have heard me on this and on all other occa-
sions. I have nothing to boast of, as St Paul had when he
parted with the Ephesian elders. I can speak of your kind-
ness and of the Almighty's grace ; but of my own perform-
ances I cannot speak. Imperfections beset me round, which
it is not my part to confess, save to the God of mercy. All
these imperfections I crave you to forgive. Forget your
injuries, real or imagined. Lay asleep your suspicions. My

362 DISCOURSES, ETC.

failings forget. For fain would I have a place in your esteem,
as you have in mine. And besides this I have no favour to
ask — your kind remembrance, that is all.

No favour, save this one, that I might be of service in my
turn. And this, my last request, take not as words of course,
but in good and sober truth — that if any of my friends in this
people, any, the poorest of my friends in this parish, do find
themselv^es in the capital of this empire, whither I go, in
need of a friend, they will do me a welcome service, in the
day of that need, to apply to him, who hath laid before you,
in the preceding Discourse, no empty show of feeling got up
for the occasion, but genuine and heartfelt emotions, delivered
against custom, against suggestion of bashfulness delivered,
because they were too strong to remain unexpressed.

" Finally, then, brethren, farewell." The Lord of heaven
and earth prosper you in your various conditions of wealth
and poverty, good fortune or evil fortune. May your spirits
prosper in the way of peace and holiness, through the word
of the gospel of Christ, and the supply of His ministering
Spirit. May your families rejoice in unity, in pure affection,
and in unblemished reputation. May you see your children's
children, with God's blessing upon them all. May your
affairs prosper, and your hearts, filled with fatness, rejoice
before the Lord all the days of your life. In sickness may
your Comforter be nigh, and in death your Saviour be not to
seek but to enjoy. Finally; live in peace and good brother-
hood. Honour those who are over you in the Lord, even as
ye have honoured us. Pray for us and the ministry of the
gospel in the city we are bound to.

And now God grant, that while the roof-tree of this temple
stands, and these walls resist the hand of all-consuming time,
there may be no voice uttered from this chair but the voice
of the gospel of peace, that all who come up to worship here
may be accepted of the Lord, and that we who have met so
oft together, and joined the voice of our prayer, and the notes
of our praise together, may yet lift the voice of our prayer
from beneath the altar of the living God, and minister our
praise around His holy throne. Amen and amen.

II.

PREPARATORY TO THE LAYING OF THE FOUNDATION-STONE
OF THE NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE *

TV/TEN AND BRETHREN, — After long and anxious delibera-
tions, and many prayers intermingled with many fears,
it hath at length pleased the God of Zion, having proved
your patience and trust in His name, to grant the desire of
the hearts of this people, by the appointment of a day during
this week in which the house shall be founded wherein you
and your children may worship the Lord God of your fathers.
This is a most important event, and the greatest blessing from
the Lord which hath come to us since we were united as a
Church of Christ, and which ought not to be passed over
with neglect, or treated with indifferent ceremony, but
regarded, as it is in truth, the bountiful answer of many
prayers, and the beginning of a good work which you have
been honoured of the Lord to undertake for the spiritual
edification of generations that are yet to come. For how-
ever frequent custom may wear out its impressiveness, or
idle ceremony tread upon its sanctity, to the minds of all
thoughtful and pious men, the founding of a new church,
wherein the gospel of Christ is to be preached, and the whole-
some discipline of the Church of Christ is to be administered
over the souls of a believing people, is a most gracious and
most valuable boon from Heaven to the flock for whose secu-
rity the fold is constructed ; is to the Church a token for
good from her ever-living Head ; and to the city within whose
bounds this sacred place is founded, it is an occasion of gratu-

* Preached on Sabbath, 27th June 1824.

364 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

lation more worthy than if a strong bulwark were added to
her walls, or a high tower to her palaces, for verily a bulwark
of righteousness is added to her from the Lord of hosts, and
a temple of peace, whose gate is never shut, is constructed to
the praise and honour of the Saviour of men.

Now, the Psalmist, who had experience of the defeat and
success of worldly hopes almost beyond any other man, hath
beautifully said, " They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall
doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves
along with him." In which sentiment he toucheth not with
more tenderness than truth the feeling with which the seed of
every good enterprise should be cast upon the uncertain
waters of this troubled estate, whenever there is such fluctua-
tion of aftairs, and such combination of evil accidents, and
withal such short-sightedness in those who devise, and such
feebleness in those who execute, that by far the larger num-
ber of enterprises undertaken by men prove abortive and
come to naught. Of which uncertainty being prudently and
feelingly aware, a wise man setteth no work on foot without
apprehending all the hazards to which it is exposed, and
with a certain sadness committeth it to the care and provi-
dence of the Lord. He droppeth a tear over those the chil-
dren of his soul, as they go forth from their native home of
hope and desire within his breast, to force their way into
existence amidst the trials of the world, with all their infirmi-
ties on their head. And such schemes and ideas of good as
have been thus set forth amidst much carefulness and appre-
hension, and even tears, the Psalmist pronounceth as sure,
so far as anything in the future is sure, to be prospered by
the Lord ; and often the faithfulness of His people hath been
sufficiently tried, to be answered with gladness, and then
Cometh the time for joy — then their apprehension shall be
turned into gratulation, and their mouth filled with laughter,
and their tongue with singing, and they shall be like them
that dream, when they look upon the things which God hath
done for them, whereof they are glad. Nevertheless, though
at the undertaking of every work it be good to join trembling
with our mirth, it is not less so to join faith and hope with

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 365

our trembling. And as it gilded the evening of King David's
days with a serene glory, and served his last hours with a
most grateful theme of prayer and praise and pious rehearsal
to the people, that he had been honoured of God to receive
the revelation of the device, and to bring together the mate-
rials for His holy temple, although he was not permitted to
lay one stone thereof upon another ; so do I think you ought
now to rejoice together that we have been enabled of God to
overcome the difficulties which stood in the way of our under-
taking, that He hath gotten you the means of carrying it for-
ward, and that ere we meet on another Sabbath for His holy
service, we shall have set our hands to the work for which we
have long prayed with our hearts. The Sabbath will come,
and many of us, we trust, will be spared to see it dawn, when
we shall assemble under the completed arches of that house
whose foundation we are about to lay in prayer and right-
eousness, and whose walls have been reared in anxiety and
carefulness, look upon the work of our hands, and rejoice
that it is good, to sing with acclamations of joy, and to fill the
house with the loud song of our praise, even as Solomon with
the elders and congregation of Israel, being assembled in high
ceremony, did consecrate with sacrifices and with the voice of
earnest prayer and supplication, and fill with the triumphant
jubilee of their praise that same house over which his father
David glorified himself while yet it had no being save in the
word and promise of the Lord. It came even to pass, as the
trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be
heard in praising and thanking the Lord ; and when they
lift up their voice with the trumpets, and cymbals, and instru-
ments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, " For he is
good, for his mercy endureth for ever," that then the house
was filled with a cloud, even the house of Jehovah; so that
the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud,
for the glory of Jehovah had filled the house of God.

Therefore we are moved to treat this event, which custom
hath secularised, as a great spiritual blessing which it be-
hoveth us rightly to consider and weigh. We would treat of
it as a dispensation of the grace of God, not as a work of man,
and fill our hearts with all joy in believing that the Lord

o

66 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

hath heard and answered our many prayers. And we would
consider the spiritual magnitude of the work, that we may
strongly contend with all its hindrances ; we would shew
the value and worth of it in the highest sense, that we may
not be alarmed at the cost of time and thought and mate-
rials which it requireth ; we would shew the common interest
which we and our children have in its completion, that with
our heart and soul we may labour in the work ; and so we
would commit it for success or for defeat, for good or for ill,
into the hands of Him who hath written in His Word,
" Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in him, and he
shall bring it to pass."

Christian brethren of this flock, give thanks and praise unto
the Lord your God, who hath so prospered you and the
labours of His servant, your pastor, in the midst of you, that
it is become necessary to strengthen the stakes and lengthen
the cords of your tabernacle, and to build a house unto His
name, wherein you and your children may worship the Lord
God of your fathers.

A few years ago you were a scattered flock ; but a rem-
nant was saved from wandering, which it hath pleased the
Lord to reckon for a generation. In little more time than it
took Paul to gather a church at Ephesus, hath your pastor
been blessed to gather a church amongst you, and to ordain
elders over the flock, and to set the congregation in order
before the Lord ; and now the seed of our Church in these
parts, and those of our countrymen who go down into the sea
in ships, have a place wherein they can rest and sanctify the
Sabbath unto the Lord. And ye have a spiritual coun-
sellor in all your spiritual distresses, a man of God to set
forth the words of sound doctrine, and to labour amongst
you from house to house. Therefore have you good occa-
sion of joy and rejoicing, you and your children, this day
before the Lord ; and I call upon you to rejoice with all
your hearts, and to sing psalms with mirth and great glad-
ness, in these the courts of His house.

To have brought of your substance to the work, you have
contributed in your degrees, and given portions, as did the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 367

princes and captains of Israel to the building of Solomon's
temple, and because the silver and gold are the Lord's, you have
not refused to render up to Him a part of that which He gave.
And what remaineth to do, I know your liberality will accom-
plish, when the Lord shall have further blessed your pastor's
labours, so that this place shall be ready to overflow, like to
that which you have left. But better and more precious far
than silver or gold, or heaps of prey, is the grace and service
of the Lord. And though I commend your generosity in
erecting so comely a structure to His holy service, I tell you
of a truth that much, much remaineth yet to be done. It is
with the heart and the soul, and the strength and the mind,
that our God is to be loved ; and our Saviour requires that, if
need be, we should part with all and follow Him, forsake father
and mother, and brother and sister; yea, and our own life, in
order to be His disciples. Therefore, beloved brethren, that
the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified,
cleanse your hearts before the Lord, and seek Him with all
your soul. And if any man have a sin and a transgression,
let him come up unto the house, and make confession with
his lips, and be humbled in his heart, and the blood of Christ
shall wash his iniquity away ; and if any man have an infirmity
of spirit, or any of his children have a thorn in the flesh, or a
messenger of Satan to buflet him, let him come up into this
house, and make it known before the Lord, and He will make
His grace sufficient for him, and His strength shall be per-
fected in his weakness ; and if any man is sick, let prayers
be made for him by the elders of the congregation in this
place before the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall heal the
sick ; and if any man is going into perilous places to behold
the wonders of the Lord in the mighty ways, or see His
footsteps in another land, let him come up into this place
and seek the protection and providence of the Lord, and he
shall be preserved in the day of his need. And if the faith
of any one be faint, here let it flourish again by the preaching
of the word ; and if the love of any wax cold, here let it be
warmed by the brotherly love and devotion of the people ;
and if the Lord straiten the worldly condition of any one, let

368 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

the flock help him. " Lift up the hands that hang down, and
confirm the feeble knees ; and make straight paths for your
feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way."

Then while you walk in love, the blessing of the Lord shall
be upon you ; He shall cause you to flourish like the green
bay-tree, and you shall see of the desire of your heart, and be
satisfied. And your children, when they come up to this
place, after your heads are laid in the grave, shall praise God
for His grace shewn unto their fathers ; and they shall raise
again His temple when time hath crumbled it, and future
pastors, perusing the chronicles of this church, shall take
heart from the blessing of God upon our labours ; and thus
shall they be encouraged in the way, and their hearts shall
be edified in the knowledge of Christ. And you shall receive
them — nursed in this temple as their spiritual cradle — you
shall receive them to heaven, gather their children, and their
children's children.

Oh, why may it not be so that this house, and the doctrine
delivered therein, may save many generations, and add a
goodly number to the general assembly of the first-born on
high ! Therefore rejoice for your children's sake no less than
for your own, and teach your children to hallow these courts
and to reverence the threshold of this door ; yea, lay it upon
them as a dying charge, not to depart from its sustenance,
but to be around it for a glory and defence.

And we, brethren, who are witnesses this day of this reli-
gious festivity, when a wandering church hath been brought
to a settled habitation, is it not a goodly work this which the
Lord hath put it into the hearts of our brethren to do .'' Nay,
but is it not a goodly work which these hands have finished .'*
Let us rejoice with them. Arise, let us rejoice ; and let us
not come empty-handed to them; but, seeing much remaineth,
(for in their zeal they have gone beyond their means, liber-
ally depending upon the large providence of God,) let us not
be slow to help them, or scanty of our offerings. Let us
pour into their exhausted treasury what we can aflbrd, that
the Lord may bless our store, and that our brethren may go
on rejoicing, when thus the Lord hath given them a good

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 369

report in Zion, and enabled them to set up their Ebenezer
amidst the congratulations of their friends and countrymen,
and fellow-Christians and brothers in the common faith. And
now may the blessing of God rest upon pastor and people,
and may He set His name here for ever, and may they keep
by the faith of their fathers, and become mighty among
the thousands of Israel. This is our prayer ; this is the
prayer of us all. God hear us, God answer us, for the sake
of His Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth.

VOL. III. 2 A

III.

THANKSGIVING AFTER LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF THE
. NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE*

I Sam. VII. 12.
Hitherto hath the Lord helped ns.

TT is now two years, my dearly-beloved people, since the
Lord joined us together in the sacred and tender relation
of pastor and people, during which period we have had such
constant experience of His goodness, and at length so pros-
perous a beginning of the good work which He hath moved
us to undertake, that I feel it to be required of us, both pub-
licly in the house of God and privately in our own closets, to
look back and consider the tokens of His kindness, and stir
up our hearts with joy and thankfulness to Him who hath
helped us hitherto.

Often have I endeavoured, but never been able, to set
forth to you in language my idea of a Christian church ; and
often have I endeavoured, but never have been able, to mani-
fest by deeds my idea of the pastor of a Christian church ;
which two things if we could by any means understand,
then should it appear, without the help of any demonstra-
tion, that it is more high and honourable in man to acquit
himself aright of the duties of a member or a pastor of a
church, than to sit in senates, or govern provinces and king-
doms ; and that it is a higher aim and more lofty ambition to
bring that little commonwealth of spirits to perfection, than
to perfect the political government of states ; and that the
approaches which from time to time the Lord enables us
to make towards that high spiritual end are more worthy
of thanksgiving, being more real and liberal boons of His
grace, than peace and prosperity, victory and triumph. But
* Preached in July 1824.

DISCOURSES, ETC. 371

while the ideas, the low and vulgar ideas of a church, as a
body of men who profess the faith of Christ and worship in
the same temple, of a pastor as a man who preaches to them
and profits by them, — while these ideas remain, the sentiment
which I have expressed must appear the uttermost extrava-
gance, and the thanksgiving discourse which I propose this
day to hold for certain blessings and certain promises of fur-
ther blessing, must appear the uttermost affectation. There-
fore, that I may have the sympathies of those who hear me,
if possible their consent and approbation, and, by the bless-
ing of God, their conviction, their devout thanksgivings and
acknowledgments, I deem it good to attempt again the
exposition of those ideas which I have so often attempted,
and in which I seem to myself to have as often failed, and
am most likely destined to fail again.

For what man, cradled in the agitation and turmoil of this
world, and perplexed with the inquietude and rebellion of
his own spirit, is able ever to form a comprehension of that
communion of harmony and love which Christ intended that
His Church should be .'' Or what Christian, ever accus-
tomed to the broken and distorted images which the various
sects and parties of Christendom give of the true Church, —
each, like a false mirror, distorting it, or, like a false medium,
colouring it a little, and a little refracting it from its proper
place, — can so disengage from his memory and early associa-
tions these imperfect ideas and false pictures of the Church,
as to be in a condition for admiring the pure simplicity and
unadorned, unaffected form of it which the Lord hath given
in His Word .?

It is a body of men who have constrained themselves to
forget all difference of nation and of tongue, of kindred and
of people, amongst whom there is no more Jew nor Greek,
barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, whose citizenship is in
heaven, whose king is Jesus, whose laws are the gospel, and
who, looking upon one another, respect not the outward man,
his comeliness, his dignity, or his rank, but respect the inner
man of the heart, his piety, his righteousness, and his truth.
It is not to the image of well-formed and comely nature, to
which taste hath respect, — it is not to the image of polite and

372 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

elegant accomplishments, to which fashion hath respect, — it is
not to the image of worldly wisdom, to which policy hath
respect, — nor to the image of learning and science, in their
manifold variety, to which the Muses have respect ; — but it is
to the image of Christ within a man, the well-favoured image
of righteousness and true holiness, to which one member of
the Church hath respect and yieldeth reverence in another.
There is an idea of spiritual perfection, a large and liberal
idea, to which each member of the Church seeketh to be
conformed ; and as he is conformed thereto he endureth
himself, as another is conformed thereto he loveth him and
giveth him honour. By the same principle by which he
desireth it in himself, he loveth it in another. And wherever
he seeth it in clearer manifestation than he beholdeth it in
himself, that man he honoureth more than himself, albeit he
be a prince and the other a peasant, he a master and the
other a slave. For selfishness is destroyed ; that whereof
another man is proud — his proper, distinct, and well-defined
self — of that a Christian is ashamed, abhorring it in dust and
in ashes. His personality, however princely born, however
intellectually endowed, however cast in nature's mould, he
humbleth to the dust and trampleth under foot, he crucifieth
and putteth to death. He nicknameth it in his scorn the old
man with his corruption and lusts, his body of sin and death,
his corruption, his mortality. This naturally-gifted, artifi-
cially-adorned, and worldly-endowed person which he is
casting off, he seeketh another righteousness, another distinc-
tion, and another boast, even the righteousness of Christ and
the glory of His cross, and the distinction of being despised
for the sake of His everlasting testimony. And this doth not
one, but every one who is moved by the gospel of Christ.
All have a common distrust of themselves and this world's
artificial distinctions and unspiritual judgments, and with
equal endeavour, if not with equal steps, they seek not them-
selves but the Lord, into whose faith being baptized, they
wish to be baptized also into His Spirit. And they cry out,
I count all things but loss for Christ ; for Christ I have
suffered the loss of all things. I am become a fool for
Christ. I am become despised for Christ. He is all my

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 373

sufificiency and all my trust, my wisdom, my righteousness,
my sanctification, my redemption. Oh for the fellowship of
His sufferings ! Oh for the fellowship of His resurrection !
Oh that I might be found in the likeness of His death, that
I might be found also in the likeness of His resurrection !

Now inasmuch as men build themselves up in what is pecu-
liar to themselves, admiring and cherishing that which distin-
guisheth them from others, they are divided, proud, selfish,
and full of strife, wrath, quarrelling, and all uncharitableness ;
but inasmuch as they look to something common, — be it the
commonweal, be it universal truth, or the natural image of
virtue, or in a secondary kind of taste, or of science, or of
learning, — they become united, kindly, also civil and generous.
But when a body of men do not in one but in all things — in
the whole form and structure of their character, in the spirit
of their actions, in their faith, in their feelings, in their hopes,
their fears, desires, interests, and ambitions — seek to be con-
formed to one life, one truth, one spirit, one character, one
everything, it must come to pass that the tendency of those
men must be constantly towards sympathy and union, that
the divisive and discordant and distinct must disappear, the
common, the generous, the friendly, and the paternal be cul-
tivated and enlarged, and that state of perfectness approached
which is denominated by the word charity, — a word which
hath no corresponding term in any language but the language
of the Christian, no correlative thing in any state of society
but the Church, whose thorough community I am doing my
feeble endeavour to set forth.

The word church, therefore, denotes a body of men living
together, feeling and acting towards one another, under the
influence of those principles of love and charity under which
Christ acted to the world, which moved Him, though rich, for
our sakes to become poor, though the equal of God, to make
Himself of no reputation, to humble His heavenly state to
come to the condition of the earth, to bow His head as a
man, and endure the ignominious death of the cross, for not
His equals, not His friends, not good men, nor even righteous
men, but for wicked men, for the rebellious, for His enemies,
for those very malefactors who with wicked hearts did

374 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

crucify and slay Him. This spirit which He was of, hitherto
unknown upon the earth, this example, above the imagina-
tion of mortal men, this life of sacrifice beyond price, of
humiliation beyond measure, of beneficence beyond estima-
tion of men or angels, — this spirit, example, and life, is con-
stantly looked upon, studied, besought of God, attempted,
practised by all His followers towards one another, and
towards the world, the wicked and persecuting world. And
in as far as this new spirit and life of Christ gaineth over the
old spirit and life of nature, they become one with Christ
and one with each other, one in heart and soul, and com-
pose the church — and two such men are as much a church as
two hundred or two thousand. For it is not the number of
members, but the condition of being, — this interwoven and
intertwined unity of nature, — which is designated by that
most holy and heavenly name; and the prosperity and
thriving of a church are to be judged of by the progress of
this heavenly harmony and Christian spirit of charity. A
few in such bonds of perfectness will do more for the cause
of the church than multitudes who take the name but study
not the purpose of the society. The name being nothing, as
hath been said, if it be not significant of the purpose ; which
purpose is no less than the glorious one of uniting the broken
and divided earth in heavenly harmony again, bringing human
life to be transacted after Christ's life, and human kind to be
Christ's kind, and peace — outward and inward, private and
public — to prevail over the world, and charity, such as no poet
hath dreamed of in the silver or the golden age, but which
prophets have sung of through the long and troubled vista of
distant ages.

I may take an illustration of this which hath been said
from a subject dear and familiar to us all. Liberty is to a
nation what charity is to a church, — all its strength, all its
activity, and all its greatness ; it denoteth that state of
union in which people are most happy and powerful ; and
where it hath been understood and established, it giveth
to a few united men that energy and might which many
otherwise united cannot have. Whereof ancient Greece is an
example, which, cooped within limits hardly larger than a

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 375

petty province, coped with and overcame as much of the
world as could be numbered in arms against it, and held an
empire of taste and of letters still unrivalled. Whereof we
are as striking an instance, who, by the power of that po-
litical union called liberty, have cantoned the world with
our fortified stations, and held its largest, finest territories
under our sway, not of terror and tyranny, but of law and
government ; and have, by our arts and sciences, subjected the
whole face of nature to ourselves, and brought every produc-
tion of the animal and vegetable kingdom in all parts of the
world to do homage to our power. The ambitious man who
sought the monarchy of Europe established no power like
to this ; he established nothing at all ; he subverted, like
the thunderbolt and lightning, but he established nothing,
because he had no image of liberty in his soul, no reverence
or desire of it in others, but was selfish, and therefore dis-
social. The Autocrat of all the Russias, the Emperor of
China, can lay the foundation of no empire like this ; this
kind of power cometh only to men governed by the principle
of free government. The Lord blighteth all tyranny with
barrenness ; all true government He honoureth with produc-
tiveness and increase. And these rewards are everywhere
awaiting the noble-minded and disinterested, who will be
daring enough to break the yoke of others, and self-governed
enough to guard against their own arbitrariness and mis-
rule.

Now, as liberty, or a state of good and wise government, is
the condition in which a nation is strong and happy, and as
health is the condition in which the body of man is able for
its work, and the mind for its cogitations — that is, in both cases
when each member of the corporation worketh harmonious
with the rest, and so maketh up a united whole ; so, in a higher
kind, charity, harmony, and commonness of spirit is the con-
dition in which a church is efficient and strong to produce
its own wellbeing, to propagate itself, to enlarge, to last and
endure upon the face of the earth, where it hath so much to
encounter and overcome. And the attainment of this Chris-
tian charity, this community of inward goods, I regard as the
whole intention and reward of our religion, so far as this world

376 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

is concerned ; and the church or fellowship of Christians in
which it is realised may consider that they have reached the
mark of the prize of their high calling upon the earth, and
that they have no further object than to seek to diffuse abroad
the enjoyments of their condition to those who have not yet
tasted the Goshen-peace of it, but are afflicted wuth all the
.plagues of the world.

This communion and harmony of our souls with one another,
my beloved brethren, is that for which our Lord prayed in His
intercessory prayer for His Church, the last act which He did
for His disciples before the hour and power of darkness had
dominion over Him. He prayed that they might be one, as He
and the Father were one. Then, embracing a wider circuit of
desire, He looked forward to all who should believe on Him
through their word, and prayed that they might all be one,
" as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent
me. And 'the glory which thou gavest me I have given
them ; that they may be one, even as we are one : I in them,
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and
that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast
loved them, as thou hast loved me."

Now, my beloved brethren, conceiving these ideas of a
church which I have explained above, and perceiving that
there is no other evidence of our sanctification but this com-
munion of saints, and no success of the preached gospel
amongst ourselves, nor dispensation of it abroad, but by the
same all-hallowed and all-sanctified communion, I look with
anxiety and watch with carefulness to discover whether this
blessed condition of things is working out amongst ourselves ;
and I am bound to give thanks according as I see it grow-
ing more and more towards perfection. This is my joy, and
this my boasting, that the love of Christ aboundeth in the
midst of you, that each man is seeking with earnestness the
resemblance of Christ, and that all are becoming partakers of
the one Divine Spirit and the one Divine nature ; that the oil of
united brotherhood is poured into every heart from the same
fountain of love; and that not by constraint, but by sweet and
natural consequence, we are growing into one body, of which

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 377

all the members being fitly framed together, and supplying
their proper use, maketh increase of the whole in love.

And viewed in this Christian sense, we are glad to declare
unto you that our thankfulness aboundeth, and that the
thankfulness of all ought this day to abound. Two years
from this time we were not known to each other even by the
knowledge of the outward sight. And many, very many of
those who now sit under the ministry of word and sacrament
were then altogether unknown to God and to godliness, to
the thoughts of death, judgment, and eternity. Now we are
united as a congregation to offer up one common sacrifice,
and to listen to one common doctrine ; and many of us are
united as a church, as the members of the body of Christ, to
feel to one another the tenderness, and do for one another
the charity, which hath been described above. It would be
thought a matter of thankfulness if a horde of wandering,
idle people were reclaimed to regular and industrious ways
of life, if a barbarous and savage horde were reclaimed by
justice and civilisation ; but what less, nay, how much more,
should it be rejoiced over when the loose, licentious, and
roving affections of the soul are brought to listen to that
counsel which heretofore they heeded not, and so prepared
for the godly discipline and government of the Church }
Therefore ought we to give thanks unto the Lord that so
many from the outfield and wilderness of the spirit have been
brought to haunt, and dwell, and take counsel with those
who have been already won from the power of Satan to serve
the living God. And if we rejoice and give thanks on their
account, how much upon their own account ought they to
give thanks that they have been brought to the congregations
of the righteous, and the assemblies of the godly, and to pray
that the Lord, who hath constrained them to become hearers
of the word, would further constrain them to be doers of the
same ! O brethren, make not of yourselves any longer
strangers to the covenants of promise ; be not any longer
voluntary exiles from the commonwealth of Israel. Never-
theless, rejoice that ye are this day seated under the canopy
of a holy roof, rather than wandering up and down amongst
the dissipated haunts of the city and the country round.

378 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

This is one first cause of thanksgiving as a church, that the
Lord hath brought so many who were afar off to draw nigh
and Hsten to the message of our hps.

In the beginning of our ministry to the souls of this people,
while yet unacquainted with that which they could bear, we
kept rather, in the general doctrine of our commission, the
overtures of salvation unto all, and the arguments by which
they should take hold of the same. We argued the insuffi-
ciency of an intellectual and moral, the degradation of a
sensual, and the necessity of a spiritual life. We recom-
mended to you private meditation of these things, and the
laying of them to heart ; but we were fearful to advance
into the special privileges and prerogatives of the people of
God, being desirous to win the ear and approbation of your
minds before we advanced to debate with your hearts the
strongholds of their idolatry. Now it hath pleased the
Lord to give us such favour and acceptance in the midst of
you, that we feel no occasion for restraint, and, whether in
private or in public, we take full liberty to signify to you all
our mind, and all which we conceive to be the mind of God.
The only thing now which occupies my care is that I may
become more enlightened myself, in order that I may en-
lighten others; that being more fully converted unto the
Lord, I may be a more fit instrument for converting the souls
of others. At this day I feel that I enjoy with you a liberty
of prophesying as large as the heart of a prophet or an apostle
could have desired. It is the most glorious privilege of an
intellectual and spiritual man to have an audience before
whom he may display all his convictions of truth. This the
Lord hath given to me, and sore, sore shall I answer for the
neglect of so great a privilege. For this, therefore, we have
next occasion of thankfulness as a church, — that there sub-
sists between pastor and people that sweet confidence of love
which enables them without offence to speak unto each other
whatever the Lord moveth them to speak. Here are, first,
the people gathered together from all quarters to listen ; and
next, their good disposition to hear the word which is spoken
to them by the minister of Christ.

Thirdly, let us rejoice and give thanks that the Lord hath

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 379

spread over this congregation of His people an increasing spirit
of seriousness and inquiry, and that He hath called not a few to
perceive the sinfulness of their ways and flee from the wrath to
come. If this church hath been instrumental in saving but one
soul, that soul is a most ample reward for all that you have
laboured, and for all that I have spoken ; if it hath been
instrumental in making ten righteous men, it is as good as"an
intercessor unto Heaven for the city where it is placed, see-
ing ten men would have interceded for Sodom with success.
And if, as I have reason to believe, a goodly number more
have been moved to embrace the gospel of Christ and turn
unto righteousness, — if in every family which I have visited
my words concerning life eternal have been heard with ac-
ceptance, and I have been besought to come again, and to
come often and speak to them of the things which concern
their everlasting peace, — if every man in this congregation
to whom I am known, from the youngest to the oldest, gives
ear to the word of my ministry in private, and seeketh not to
shun the subject of his soul's dear concerns, upon which I
feel emboldened in season and out of season to discourse, —
if my long and most tedious discourses from this place are
heard with unwearied patience, and there be no anxieties on
your part save for my own health and well-being, — if, finally,
at every communion, with contrite hearts, warm devotion,
and pious purpose of obedience, many come seeking admis-
sion to the table of the Lord, and if now to my instructions
for that end more assemble and more patiently listen than in
my fondest moments of hope I had anticipated, what ! shall
I not be convinced — shall I refuse to be convinced that the
hand of the Lord is with us, that He hath abundantly blessed
our labours, and that He setteth before us a plentiful and
abundant promise of harvest .'' That you accept sound doc-
trine, that you turn not your ear from reproof, that you suffer
the word of exhortation, that you bear spiritual interpreta-
tions of the truth, and reject them not out of a shallow self-
sufficiency and pride of reason, — these things give me glad-
ness and hope that it will please the Lord, after He hath tried
our patience for a while, to give us still more abundant fruits,
and bestow upon us a still larger effusion of His Holy Spirit.

38o DISCOURSES DELIVERED

And, further, let us be thankful that to all these labours of
love and hopes of future good the Lord hath given a pledge
of permanency, in that which He has permitted us during
the last week to witness. In itself it is a small matter
whether we gather ourselves together into this or into any-
other place ; but it is not a small matter whether we
shall look forward to a settled and a constant ministry
to ourselves and to our children, whether we shall be at
the mercy of others, or possessed of a permanent abode.
It is not a small matter whether we shall, in our narrow
quarters, be pressed upon by every hindrance of rest and of
devotion, or be delivered into the enjoyment of Sabbath rest
and church tranquillity. We can now look forward to the
comfort and quiet of other congregations, to that simple
condition which the simplicity of our worship requireth. We
have had a most difficult way to make, through every misre-
presentation of vanity and ambition. You, as well as I, have
stood in imminent peril from the visits of rank and dignity
which have been made to us. There was much good to be
expected from it ; therefore we willingly paid the price. There
was much reason that they who heard the truth but seldom,
should hear it when they were so disposed ; therefore we
forewent the conveniences, and laid ourselves open to the risk.
But they are bad conditions to our being cemented together
as a church, and operate to withdraw us from ourselves to
those conspicuous characters by whom we are visited. I
have not ceased to warn you of these things ; I have not
ceased to be upon my own guard against them ; but I do
rejoice with all my heart that the Lord, by lengthening our
cords and strengthening our stakes, will give us the power
of taking amongst us those who are worthily moved thereto,
and so enabling us at length to sit down and worship under
our own vine and fig-tree in quietness and peace.

Now therefore, my beloved brethren, let us give thanks
unto the Lord, publicly and privately, that He hath not
removed our candlestick out of its place, but continues to
visit us with the light of the knowledge of His truth. Let us
acknowledge His goodness to us as a people, and prove our-
selves not unworthy of His grace, by walking with truth and

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. ^ 8 1

O'

simplicity after His statutes. Especially let us cultivate the
character and graces of a Christian Church, living with each
other in sweet brotherly communion, and taking loving coun-
sel together, as becometh saints ; and if any one have a quar-
rel with another, let him forgive, even as God for Christ's
sake hath also forgiven us. And if we are not of one mind,
let us distrust our own selves, and esteem each the other better
than himself; and let us seek the common truth in Him who
is the truth, resting assured that where we disagree it is
because there is a nonconformity with the image of Christ
upon the one side or the other. In this way, by gentleness,
forbearance, forgiveness, love, and charity, let us grow towards
one another in the grace of the gospel ; and above all things
let us seek, with constant and fervent prayer, the blessing of
God upon the church, mentioning each other by name in our
private prayers unto the Lord, and seeking for each other
the grace in which each seemeth deficient ; and as it is my
weighty office to instruct all, let all pray for me that I may
be instructed and taught of God, who teacheth savingly and
to profit.

Thus, my dearly-beloved brethren, as the walls of that
house which we have founded arise towards heaven, let the
inward spiritual edification of the church in charity and wis-
dom go on, day by day, towards the perfection of heavenly
communion. As the outward temple is wrought into beauty
and proportion, let the spiritual temple, which is built of
living stones, be beautiful in all the proportions of righteous-
ness, and before the house made with hands hath been com-
pleted may we of this flock have become a house of God,
and may I have been taught how to behave myself in the
house of God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth.

IV.

ON EDUCATION *

Psalm xix. 7-9.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul : the testimony of the Lord is
sure, making wise the simple: the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the
heart : the commandmejtt of the Lord is pure, eiilightening the eyes : the fear
of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever : the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.

' I "*HERE is no subject at present so prominent in the
public eye, or which, in one way or another, engageth
so much of the generous care of pubhc-spirited and religious
men, as the education of the people, which hath, by various
devices, new and old, proceeded within the last half century,
and is now proceeding, to a degree heretofore unexampled, —
insomuch that those who formerly opposed, are fain to be
silent, or to adopt some mitigated form of the innovation ;
and everywhere new inventions are brought out and patron-
ised, whereof, during the last year, two well worthy of obser-
vation— schools for infants and schools for mechanics — have
arisen, as by enchantment, over the face of the island. And,
in foreign parts, a seminary of youth, conducted on enlight-
ened principles, is deemed as worthy of being visited as here-
tofore a court would have been, and is wont to be written of
in public journals, discoursed of in private companies, and
tried by experiment at home. And the zeal of one party for
liberal education hath stirred up the zeal of another for pecu-
liar and more restricted education ; each party perceiving of
what a mighty engine they are either to gain or to lose the
working. And at the same time to carry the invention into

* Preached in Surrey Chapel, for the London Branch of the Society for Promot-
ing Christian Knowledge in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, May 1825.

DISCOURSES, ETC. 3 S3

the deepest and darkest recesses of our cities and towns, a
plan of dividing them into local districts, with each a religious
and benevolent man over it, hath been digested and recom-
mended, and put in practice by one of the most gifted men of
the age ; and is already become universal in the chief cities of
the north, and is making rapid way in these parts. And to
indicate the effect which the spirit of zeal and invention to
educate the people is producing, there hath sprung up like
the summer fruits, and everywhere lie scattered like autumn
leaves, works composed and digested for the infant and the
youthful mind, as introductory to science, and literature, and
history, and general knowledge ; calculated for all conditions
of the mind, from infancy to manhood. And periodical works
which circulate amongst the people arc multiplied a hundred-
fold, and newspapers almost a thousand-fold within the last
half-century. And, in short, every source of information you
can appeal to, seems to testify with one voice, that the capa-
city of the country for knowledge, and its intellectual appe-
tite, hath increased beyond any other change, fulfilling the
prophecy of Daniel concerning the latter days, " that many
should run to and fro, and knowledge should be increased."

The question which naturally ariseth in the mind of every
good man interested in the commonweal is — And what
effect is this new element likely to produce in the midst of
us .'' To the answering of which question every considerate
person is intent ; for he is blind indeed who perceiveth not
that this is a most penetrating and restless power, w'hich even
already hath begun to change the face of many things. It
hath brought the minds of thousands, of tens of thousands,
yea of millions, and tens of millions (for we look also abroad)
into communication with one another, who heretofore dwelt
widely apart ; and it hath put between men who dwell to-
gether, a revealer of thoughts within them, which would have
dwelt unperceived for ever ; and each man it hath lifted from
the condition of an unknown, unfelt individual, to the high
and dangerous pre-eminence of thinking upon the abstrusest
subjects, and judging of the greatest men. It hath multiplied
the power of the press to an unlimited extent, and begotten a
new power, the power of public opinion, capable of controlling

384 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

prince and people, governors and governed, and the press
itself, (for the press is generally at the beck of public opinion,)
to which' it seems to me that almost everything payeth court
and deference. To this new influence I attribute the appar-
ently improved policy of states, and character of men, the
outward civility of manners, the ostentation of liberal opinions,
the prevention of many atrocious actions, and the concealment
of more ; seeing it is in the power of any one who can indite
a letter, or convey a piece of intelligence, to submit the unpo-
pular act in one day to a jury of several thousands; after
which, without any care of his, it will be submitted to a jury
of several millions ; an ordeal of censure which no man liketh
his best, much less his worst, deeds to undergo. This capacity
of reading and writing hath give to common sense a local
habitation and a name, a unity and a strength, which hardly
anything can defy. The common it buildeth up to heaven ;
the personal it streweth upon the earth. It is the appeal to
the multitude, the ostracism of the people. And, if the voice
of the people be the voice of God, it is a most godly power;
but if the voice of the people be against the voice of God,
then every godly thing should look to it and have a care of
itself.

But, however interesting, it would be away from the pur-
pose of our present meeting, and inconsistent with the sacred-
ness of this my office, to enter into the effects which the
universal education of the people is likely to produce upon
the political condition of men ; yet is it my duty, and shall be
my endeavour, to open before you at this time what effect
that kind of education now so rapidly diffusing itself through-
out the land may be expected to produce upon the pros-
perity of vital religion, and what part for or against the
interests of Zion it is likely to accomplish. This I shall do
by treating, first, of education in general — what it should
include, and what it should aim at ; secondly, from the idea
of education thus obtained, endeavour to form an estimate of
that kind of it which is so rapidly diffusing itself ; thirdly,
inquire with whom this great charge of educating the rising
generation should be intrusted ; and, lastly> address myself
to plead the cause of that society for which we are assembled.

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 385

And may God be my instructor, while I do my endeavour to
open the subject of instruction to so many wise and reverend
men as are now before me.

I. In order that we may rightly conduct the education of
youth, whether in families or in schools, in private or in
public; and that we may become good judges of the way in
which it is to be conducted, and so fulfil to God, and to our
country, and to the rising generation, the great trust from
which no man is exempt in one form or another, whether of
duty or of charity; it is most necessary that we should have a
just idea of that which is included under the word Education,
— to which idea all our plans should be shaped, and all the
details of our plans be subservient. Now it seemeth to me
that the true idea of education is contained in the word itself,
which signifies the act of drawing out, or educing ; and being
applied in a general sense to man, must signify the drawing
forth or bringing out those powers which are implanted in
him by the hand of his Maker. This, therefore, we must
adopt as the rudimental idea of education ; that it aims to do
for man that which the agriculturist does for the fruits of the
earth, and the gardener for the more choice and beautiful
productions thereof; what the forester does for the trees of
the forest, and the tamer and breaker-in of animals does for
the several kinds of wild creatures ; this same office in a
higher kind, according to the higher dignity of the subject,
doth education propose to do for the offspring of man, who is
to be the possessor of the earth, and the enjoyer of its beau-
tiful and fragrant fruits, the monarch of all the creatures, the
possessor of knowledge, the subject of laws, and the worshipper
of God. And that system of education alone can be regarded
as liberal and enlarged, as complete and catholic, which takes
into the compass of its view all the powers and capacities
which are given to man, and capable of being educed or
brought forth by good and skilful husbandry.

It is necessary, therefore, to consider and classify those

powers which are given to human nature ; those original

capacities of the soul of man, which all possess, though in

different degrees ; the universal and catholic attributes of

VOL. III. 2 B

o

86 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

humanity, without which men were not to be regarded as
men, nor allowed to carry on in the midst of men the voca-
tions of human life. These capacities seem to be threefold,
rising in the scale of dignity one above another. The first is,
the capacity of knowing and understanding the properties of
those things which we see, and handle, and taste, and in the
midst of which we are to pass our life ; that is, the knowledge
of nature as it is submitted to our five senses, and can be
discovered, examined, and discoursed of by our understanding,
which judgeth by the sense, and taketh means to an end.
The second is, the capacity of knowing and understanding
our ownselves, of judging amongst, and rightly regulating,
those thoughts and emotions of the soul which command the
actions of the body, direct the observations of the senses,
instruct the understanding to labour in this or that province
of outward nature ; the capacity which unites us in families,
in friendships, and in societies, enacts laws and forms of
government, submits to them when they are enacted ; and, in
short, produces all that inward activity of spirit, and outward
condition of life, which distinguishes man from the lower
creatures. The third is, the power of knowing, and worship-
ping, and obeying the true God ; which, though it be a faculty
lost and hidden in man by the Fall, is now renewed in him
by the Word and Spirit of God, whereof assurance is given to
all who believe the gospel, by the blessed sacrament of bap-
tism, which declares, not by words but by signs, that from the
earliest hour of life, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost implant the lost capacity of divine and spiritual life,
which thenceforth education may consider as the third and
noblest province of her kingdom. Now that education is
liberal, catholic, and complete which embraceth this threefold
capacity of human nature, and ordereth itself in such wise as
to give to each its proper place in the scale of dignity ; and
that again is narrow and sectarian, and hurtful, which em-
braceth only a part, or disordereth the relative dignity and
subserviency of the several parts.

Two questions may here be started — whether man hath
these three capacities of physical, moral, and religious educa-
tion, and whether this is the proper order of their dignity

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 387

Nor is it to be expected that we should have a universal con-
sent upon this subject, seeing there be some wretches who
teach that man differeth only from the brutes in having a
better constitution of senses, and who reject all his moral and
religious distinctions, as the imagination of the superstitious,
or the deceptions of the cunning. But, setting these aside,
who are generally of such a degraded type of man, as not
worthy to be heard in any court holden upon man's proper
dignity, we have, for the proof of this second division of man's
capacities, the universal consent of all the wise and virtuous,
who have held self-knowledge far more important than natural
knowledge, and self-command far more excellent than com-
mand over the most hidden secrets of the three kingdoms of
nature. We have also the whole body of civil history, which
is the narrative of the moral being of man : we have the whole
body of law, the many forms of government, the world of his
imagination, the infinitely various records of his feelings, his
discourses skilfully framed to move the feelings of others,
the books of morals and of metaphysics ; and, in short, every
form of literature holds of man's moral being, save books of
natural science and natural history, which, though they have
made a great noise in the world of late, and in a manner
deafened its ear, are to the books which record the pheno-
mena of man's peculiar and moral being, as the small tithe of
poultry and of garden stuffs are to the exuberance of the
whole earth. And, with respect to the reality and dignity of
the third capacity, our capacity of divine knowledge, it is real
and it is dignified only to him who believeth in the revelation
of God ; and to him who believeth not, it is but a shadow,
and an ineffectual doctrine. For the religion that is called
natural, I consider but as a higher form of morals, and not
entitled to any separate consideration ; but the religion which
is called revealed, is so high and noble in its beginnings, so
infinite in its ends, so real in its discoveries, so full of peace
and joy and blessedness, to our moral being, that to one who
knows it, and believes it, it is not necessary to exalt its pre-
eminence over the other two ; and to one who knows it not,
this is not the time to enter into the controversy, and hardly
the place, seeing I understand myself to be discoursing

o

88 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

before the believers and disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ,
who have come hither to be instructed in His faith and
discipline.

But a matter of such vast practical importance as educa-
tion should not be allowed to rest upon any individual's no-
tion of the capacities of the human mind, or to be conducted
according to any private judgment concerning the ends and
objects of human life. And I reckon that the more novel
and original any scheme is, which has education for its object,
the less worthy it is of our regard. For, of a thing so com-
mon, so ancient, so full of anxiety to every one, and so full
likewise of reflection to every one, men must surely by this
time have got to know the first principles, and to practise the
best rules. Therefore, I were willing to renounce both the
classification which hath been given above, of the capacities
of our nature, and the order of their respective dignity, if it
should be found not to have received the common consent of
men, or be not embodied in their practice, and required by
their institutions. But when I see that in every well-ordered
family, the first lesson of a mother to her children is of God
and of conscience, of religion and of duty, and that almost
all schools, academies, and universities of any standing, have
heretofore generally arisen out of religion, and been so ordered
as to cultivate both the knowledge and the practice of religion ;
and that in all well-constituted states, religion hath had the
first place and highest reverence, orders of men being set
apart to teach it as the principle of action, the root and stem
of manly character ; and that, in the forms of our country,
thereon rest the sanction of an oath, the sacredness of a cove-
nant, the forms of law, the very forms of merchandise, the
holy bond of matrimony, the qualification for an office, and
everything, in short, which constitutes the nerve and sinew of
the state ; I must not only keep the place which I have taken
for religion, above every other capacity of man, but call upon
him who disputes it to enter into controversy with the uni-
versal judgment of those chosen men who have stamped the
image of their mind upon the face of law and the constitutions
of civil life. And that the moral duties of man to man come
second in order, and rise far above the knowledge and man-

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 389

agemcnt of the material world, who will dispute that compre-
hendeth ought of his own, of his neighbours, or the common
weal, which are not built up, as they fondly imagine, by
contributions of physical science, and skill in arts, but by
domestic and homely virtues, by female chastity and grace,
by manly wisdom and virtue, by the good and wholesome
administration of laws, by moderation and disinterestedness
in those who govern, by industry, freedom, and loyalty in
those Avho are governed, and by the other forms of moral
character, whereof it would be endless to speak particularly.
We live, indeed, in a time when the physical sciences have
almost stormed the strongholds of morality and religion ; but
I trust in God, though at times I fear, that His blessing upon
the ancient bulwarks of our Church, and our polity, will pre-
serve them against the bravadoes of physical knowledge, and
the rude attacks of physical force. But if any one will ascend
beyond thirty short years of time, and take the judgment of
the centuries and ages which preceded this present generation
of men, he will find, that by universal consent the studies of
nature were far postponed to the studies of man and the study
of God, and the command over nature's secrets rated far
beneath the command over self, and obedience to the holy,
just, and good ordinances of the Most High.

We have therefore the best right to conclude, that if educa-
tion fulfil the rudimental idea which it names, and, indeed, the
only catholic idea of it which can be taken up, it must address
itself to unfold these three various parts of man's nature, in
due subordination to one another, by all the helps and instru-
ments which can be made subservient to that blessed end.
Now all who believe in revealed religion, and have had any
experience of its godly fruits, know well how utterly ineffec-
tual is every other means to quicken religious life within the
soul, save the revelation of His mind and will, which for that
end God himself hath given to the children of men. The
gospel of Christ, as it is unfolded there, in all its various forms
of narration, of doctrine, of precept, and of example, of pro-
mise and reward, and of prophecy and fulfilment, through
four thousand years of time, is the only light which availeth
to dispel the brooding darkness wherein the spirits of all the

390 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

young and old are found involved, and hidden from all know-
ledge which concerneth God and immortality, the invisible
world, and everlasting life. They have written most beauti-
fully concerning the light of nature, and the revelation of God
contained in the material universe ; and very pleasant it were
to believe all which they have beautifully written ; but I have
yet to find the man, either in the records of well-authenticated
history, or in the circles of living society, who hath derived
from that source any abiding consciousness of God's existence
or revelation of His mind, any deliverance from sin or prac-
tical government of life, any well-grounded hope of immor-
tality, any available consolation against affliction and death.
Yet I blot not out of the scheme these the handiworks of
God ; but before they can be rightly perused I exact much
previous knowledge concerning Him whom they do but dimly
represent, and concerning that sad calamity of the world
which hath shifted every one of them from its centre ; and
then with such illumination both human nature and physical
nature may be perused with much theological profit and in-
struction, which without it are a chaos of confusion, a book
of riddles, a chain of paradoxes, and series of contradictions.
That seminary of education, therefore, from which the Scrip-
tures are excluded, wherein the doctrines and the precepts of
the Scriptures are not constantly inculcated, and in Scripture-
wise commended to the heart and conscience of the youth, is
to be accounted a place for neglecting man's best and noblest,
his everlasting capacity ; for crushing to the earth that im-
mortal spirit which should have soared to heaven ; for extin-
guishing and annihilating that divine spark which the Son of
God came to kindle anew in every heart, and which the Spirit
of God abideth for ever to watch over, and to nourish and
preserve for everlasting.

With respect to that second form and degree of our capa-
cities which hath reference to the knowledge of our own in-
tellectual and moral nature, gives us the command of the
various feelings and affections lying in such disarray within
our breast, and prepares us for discharging aright the various
offices and duties we owe to ourselves, our neighbours, our
kindred, and our country, and whereon personal happiness

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 39^

and the common weal chiefly depend ; this faculty we Chris-
tians arc of opinion is best cultivated by the knowledge of
God, whose revelation, by universal consent even of its ene-
mies, contains the best code of moral duties the world hath
ever possessed. And we would have the authority of God
employed to support that which the wisdom of God hath de-
vised ; and therefore we think, that in a well-conducted edu-
cation, the knowledge of ourselves should come out of the
knowledge of God, which is set forth, not in the abstract, but
in relation to human nature ; and morals grow out of religion,
as the branches, and leaves, and flowers, and fruits, grow from
the root and trunk of the tree. And I see not, indeed, how
in a Christian state like Britain, where every moral and po-
litical duty is entwined with religion, in the very texture of
society ; where our poetry, and our literature, and our philo-
sophy, heretofore delighted to graft themselves upon the same
venerable stem, and since they separated have produced no-
thing but sour, bitter, and poisonous grapes ; and where. Sab-
bath after Sabbath, moral duties are inculcated on religious
principles in our churches, and in our universities, and in our
chief schools, and in the great body of our common schools ;
— I see not how in this land, morals can be taught apart
from Christianity, founded upon classical traditions, or mo-
dern infidel doctrines, without distracting the very vitals of
the land, and tearing to pieces that constitution of society
which hath shewn its soundness by weathering the storms
which have strewed the w^orld with the wrecks of other
states. But on whatever founded, a system of moral duties
of some kind ought to be exhibited, and enforced in every
school, else will that second part of human nature which is
the bond and blessing of society be left dormant as well as
the first, and nothing be cultivated of the noble being of man,
save those lowest and meanest powers whereby he converseth
with the properties of matter, or with the brutes that perish.

The common answer which is given to such an analysis of
the powers of man as is given above, and to our definition of
education thence derived, is an impatient and violent asser-
tion that knowledge can at all events do a man no hurt, and
will only bring him so much the nearer to morals and to re-

392 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

ligion. Whence they bhndly conclude, that, give the people
knowledge of any kind whatever, you may leave the issue to
God and a good conscience. To this fallacy, it seemeth to
me that our intellectual divines have given great encourage-
ment, by talking as if religion would come of course from the
knowledge of the Bible. " Give us the Bible, and it will do
its own work," is the watchword of the religious ; as if the
book were God, and to read were the whole function of a soul ;
as if God had concentrated Himself in a book, and left the
field of operation wholly in its hand. This gross error on the
part of the religious hath given such encouragement to the
liberal part of the nation, that they speak of it as a thing
never to be doubted, that knowledge of any kind must be
favourable to religion, must bring the people a step nearer
to God, and make them a degree more apt to the operation
of the Holy Spirit, so much the more trustworthy, so much
the more obedient to law and government. And if you begin
to interpose any conditions concerning the subject of the in-
struction, and the materials of the knowledge, they snuff at it
as the most intolerable bigotry, or the most unaccountable
blindness : against which I solemnly protest, as a most gross
error and dangerous fallacy, and take leave to state my
broad and firm conviction, that the natural mind in a state
of grossest darkness, and the natural mind in a state of
greatest illumination, and in all and every state between
these two extremes, is enmity, bitter enmity, to God's mind
and will, and utterly unable of itself to receive God's word ;
that there doth most frequently attend upon the acquisition
of knowledge, as upon the acquisition of anything else, a
proud consciousness of power, a selfish feeling of distinc-
tion, and the vulgar avarice of possessing more, with vanity,
jealousy, and presumption, and other vicious feelings, holding
of pride and avarice, which cause it to be experienced that
the steps and degrees in the invisible kingdom of mind, like
the steps and degres in the visible kingdom of rank and
worldly state, are often so many removes away from the
humility, sincerity, and child-like simplicity of the spiritual
temple ; into which you enter neither through the stately
porch of the academy, nor through the unfolded portals of

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 393

the palace, but by the narrow way and strait gate of repent-
ance and self-abasement, which there be few of any rank that
find ; but certainly fewest of those who are wise after the wis-
dom of the present world. So that if a palace, the high place
of visible power, be generally the stronghold of falsehood,
intrigue, and sensuality, then a university, the high place of
invisible power, is generally the stronghold of indifference,
hatred, and contempt towards the humbling truths of the
gospel, and all well-grounded morals ; either a focus of most
hot and violent rage against spiritual religion, or an iceberg
of cold indifference, concentrating death within itself, and
radiating chilling cold to the region round about. Having
uttered this our conviction with respect to knowledge of the
nature of things, taken separately from the law of conscience,
which is morality and the obligation of God's revealed will, —
namely, that the carnal mind, with all its works, is enmity
against God, and that knowledge of itself puffeth up, and
cannot build up, but by the addition of the strong band of
charity or Christian love, when the cold moonbeam of know-
ledge is converted into the cherishing sunbeam of wisdom, — I
were content to rest here, but that there hath started up in
this unprincipled and changeable generation, a class of ob-
jectors of a very peculiar kind, who, with much affectation of
good nature, allow all that hath been said, yea, become all at
once very puritanical, and with an earnest countenance ex-
claim, " Oh yes ! there can be no doubt religion is a most
necessary part of instruction ; but it is too important, it is too
sacred, to be left in the hands of any teacher, and must be
remitted to the parents ; for it is so sacred, that people are
jealous of it, and cannot agree to confide it to any single man
or body of men. The best way, therefore, you can take, and
the most respectful, is to exclude it from the public schools
altogether." Now, I have resolved to give this objection a
fair hearing, and try it thoroughly.

First, I must begin by saying, that our mutual jealousies
of one another hath deserved this clever retort of the liberal
party against us : and that it is a most sad and humiliating
proof of the narrow and sectarian spirit which still rules and
reigns beneath the outward garb of charity, that so favourable

394 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

an ear should be given to so wicked a conclusion as that the
principles of revelation are to be excluded from the schools
which have an eye to the great body of the rising generation.
How it hath come to pass that now, for the first time in the
history of nations professing Christianity, it should be deemed
impossible to organise any method of teaching it that shall
be acceptable to all, and be thought better to forego it alto-
gether, is to me utterly unaccountable upon any other prin-
ciple than this : that the love, and reverence, and pertinacious
adherence which we have to our several peculiarities, is become
greater than the love and reverence which we owe to our
community of belief and practice. At the Reformation they
found no difficulty in this matter, but easily coalesced, not-
withstanding their differences upon the subject of religion ;
and, accordingly, all schools then founded had a special eye
to the cultivation of the mind and character by means of re-
ligion. And yet the creeds, and catechisms, and other formu-
laries of the Church have received no material change — in this
country, no change at all — since that time. Either, then, they
were not so well informed on the subject of religion, and less
careful of its purity then than we now are, — which I think no-
body will dare to allege, — or we are become more attached to
particular dogmas and minute distinctions than they were, in
our excessive jealousy of which we are willing to forego the
advantage of any national system of education which shall
contain religion as a constant and essential part. I have oft
protested before the Christian Church, that we are more closely
entrenched in our sectarian peculiarities than ever ; and I give
this as the sufficient proof of it, that though many attempts
have been made to give us an all-embracing system of schools,
which should contain religion as a capital object, it hath always
failed through the unwillingness of one party to trust their chil-
dren to the tutoring of the other. And in the midst of our sec-
tarian contentions, the enemy of our religion hath come in
with his sophistical and poisonous principle : " Oh yes ! reli-
gion is too sacred a matter to be trusted to the public teachers :
therefore, in all our schemes for education, let us agree upon
the reverend and most respectful exclusion of it altogether."
But a great inheritance is not to be lost because the two

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 395

sharers of it cannot agree upon its division ; no more are our
children to be escheated to the prince of darkness because we
are not agreed upon the best way of investing the Prince of
Light in their possession : at least, I for one will lift up my
protest against so gross a fraud committed upon God's right
in them, and their right in the gospel, as this false principle
involves, and that for the gravest reasons.

Because, in a Christian land like ours, all things are ac-
knowledged to be God's : and from the king upon the throne,
unto his meanest subject, all hold their tenement of place and
power, their talents and opportunities, as stewards in Christ's
household. The king supreme being as much Christ's vice-
gerent with respect to government, as the minister of the gos-
pel is His witness with respect to holiness ; all magistracy,
with all authority of law and political institutions, being as
much the responsible institution of God for the administra-
tion of natural justice and the protection of religion, as the
Church is His responsible institution for the maintenance of
the gospel. So that if it be true in law that all property is
held of and under the king, it is true in divinity that the king
and all other constituted authorities hold their power of and
under God. For this is the fundamental principle of the Chris-
tian religion, that the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness
thereof, which Christ hath purchased from under the curse by
the sacrifice of Himself; that He is now become the Prince
of the kings of the earth, sitteth amongst the gods, and doth
with them according to His will. And wherever the Chris-
tian religion is acknowledged, this, which is one of its first
principles, must be acknowledged ; and is acknowledged in
our land, notwithstanding the modern maxim that all power
originates from the people, and is for the people held. But
the true constitutional maxim of a Christian state is, that all
power descends from Christ, and is held for the interests of
His Church and the promotion of the gospel ; as was often
said to the Jews, — " The land is not yours, but the land is
mine, saith the Lord of hosts." Now, if it be true of all
the goods, properties, rights, and possessions of our several
estates, that they are to be held of God, and for His Son's
kingdom to be administered, how much more is it true of that

396 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

possession of possessions, the immortal souls of our children ;
any single one of which is more valuable than the world and
all that it contains : for which souls the world was created to
be their material abode, for the redemption of which Christ
died ; and for their safe conduct through the wilderness, hath
both established civil polity and constituted a Church.

Nay, but that His right in the souls of children might be
established beyond all question and dispute, He hath esta-
blished the sacrament of baptism, whereby at any the most
tender age, might be solemnly signified His redemption of
them from the natural inheritance of death, into the inherit-
ance of life spiritual and eternal, by the power of Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost. So that I do understand, and most surely
believe, that every parent doth in the mystery of baptism, as
it were, forestal the death and burial of his child, signifying
that to be the end of all he can give it ; while Christ doth
foreshew the birth of the child into an eternal life, which shall
come in course of faith : so that there is a virtual transfer of
the little one from a natural birthright of death, into a spi-
ritual birthright of life, and a willing dedication of it to
Christ, from whom it hath this infinite bequest, together with
the renunciation of any further right in it save as Christ's
steward for the due rearing up of the nonage and incompe-
tency of the spirit, which is thus signified to be born. Such
are the parents of children, in the eye of Christ and His
Church, constituted in solemn trust over the spirits for which
Christ died, and which He hath claimed as His own to save
and endow them with everlasting life. And what, again, is
the teacher of children } A sub-agent, if I may so speak,
upon this most excellent trust ; one who is fitted, and pre-
pared, and selected for doing that office which parents by
their much occupation and business do oft disqualify them-
selves from doing. Not that I think any parent can deliver
himself from his Christian obligations, by rolling them upon
one or upon many teachers ; but that it is lawful to take help
in that which they themselves are not qualified to perform.
But still, a school under a schoolmaster, and pupils under a
preceptor, are, in the eye of God and of the Church, which is
the proper guardian of God's children, nothing difi'erent from

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 397

a help and supplement to the families from whom the chil-
dren are drawn. The pupils are still immortal spirits, as
children of Christ to be trained for His kingdom. The father
cannot undo the surrender which he made of his child at bap-
tism, or annul the obligation which he took upon himself to
fulfil the stewardship of its immortality. The teacher cannot
step between the father and God, to take upon himself a part,
or in any way to counteract the tenor, thereof. He can only
offer himself to help in the fulfilment of the covenant ; and,
in all his actings, must conform to the spirit and intention of
the baptismal covenant. He is not a third party, but called in
by one of the two parties to help him in his onerous charge; and
this I conceive to be the true doctrine of the preceptor's office.

Hence it is, that in the primitive Church this office was
given in charge to catechists, who were approved of the
Church, and acted under the careful superintendence of the
bishops and elders of the Church. And hence also, in the
parish schools of Scotland, the teacher is also looked upon
as an ecclesiastical person, being judged of by the Presbytery,
and visited by the Presbytery ; generally also precentor and
session-clerk, and often, when of sufficient experience, an
elder likewise. Hence, moreover, in all the parish schools,
the Scriptures were made the means and the end of instruc-
tion, and catechisms introduced only for teaching, in the way
best suited to the young, the principles of religious know-
ledge. Hence also, all universities in Europe were likewise
ecclesiastical foundations, conducted for the most part by the
doctors of the Church, according to the principle that the
education of Christian children was to be undertaken and
carried on in the spirit of the baptismal covenant, for the end
of training up the spirit to that immortal inheritance which
Christ declared Himself to have purchased for it in the sacra-
ment of baptism.

Now, either 3-ou must annul me the baptismal covenant,
and destroy the fundamental principle of the gospel, that our
life, and all we fondly call our own, are purchased by Christ's
death, and restored to us, not in full possession, but in stew-
ardship ; or you must yield to me, from the above premises,
that everything in the school, as everything in the family,

39 S DISCOURSES DELIVERED

which is taught and done to the children, should be taught
and done under the authority of Christ and the auspices of
His Church, and with a view to immortality. Is it the art of
reading ? then for the end of knowing God's will, as it is
written in His Word, and in the writings of His wise and
worthy servants. Is it the art of writing .■' then for the end
of recording and communicating whatever may be for our
greater weal, or the greater weal of others His creatures. Is
it the art and mystery of any profession .? then for the end of
filling to God's contentment the duties of the same. Is it
the mechanical handicrafts .■' then for the end of winning
honest bread, and being burdensome to none, but helpful to
all. And for whatever other attainment or accomplishment
of body and of mind it is that we go to school, then for the
end of occupying that endowment of God the better in His
service, and the more profitably to His creatures. Now, it is
manifest, that in thus fulfilling the particulars of Christian
education, you proceed at every step in the distinct recogni-
tion of God's propriety in the youth, of His glory as the chief
end of their life, of the Church of Christ as their appointed
station, and of the Word of God as the principle of all doc-
trine and the rule of all life, and eternity as the landing-place
of the voyage ; for which voyage into the haven of eternity,
all the education, whether of the family or of the school, is
but, as it were, the rigging and the outfit of the vessel, and
the consignment of her treasure unto the rightful owner, the
Father of the spirits of all flesh.

This late-sprung idea, therefore, of having any art or science
pertaining to the mind or body of youth taught apart from
and independent of religion, is manifestly not only an un-
christian but an antichristian idea, which gives up the false
principle that there are talents and gifts which are not to be
acknowledged as of God, and may be used without any view
to His service ; and that men may innocently teach depart-
ments of human knowledge without any allusion to the Foun-
tain of light, and our children may, without harm, be taught
the same after that ungodly fashion. Now, I say, if there be
antichristian, if there be atheistical doctrine, it is this ; and if
there be a practice which will beget scepticism and unbelief,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 399

it is this. And to this may be traced that almost universal
scepticism which is entwined with knowledge, and seated in
our schools of knowledge, until it seemeth to be almost in-
separable from them.

Be it observed, therefore, that the point for which we argue
is not whether religion should be taught in the school or in
the family, but whether, in a land professing to be governed
on Christian principles, and to establish the Christian religion
amongst its people, it be not a glaring inconsistency, a gross
solecism in law, and so far forth the entire rejection of reli-
gion, that the schools where the youth are taught should not
recognise the authority of God and advancement of Christ's
kingdom, as constantly and unequivocally as the churches,
chapels, or conventicles where the men are taught. I am not
dividing the matter of religious education between the home
and the school, between the parents and the teachers, but
shewing that it is beyond the power of a Christian parent to
entrust the training of the spirit entrusted to him, to any one
who is unprincipled in Christ's gospel, and uncareful of its
obligations : even as it is likewise beyond the power of a
Christian government to constitute schools which shall not
acknowledge, in the ordering of knowledge and the instruct-
ing of mind, the same authority of Christ, the universal Go-
vernor, which every Christian polity should acknowledge in
all its acts and ordinances. When I say beyond the power
of the Christian parent, I mean inconsistent with the bap-
tismal covenant, by which he bound himself ; and when I say
beyond the power of a Christian government, I mean incon-
sistent with the covenant w^hich it enters into with Christ,
when, for the benefit of His laws and ordinances, and Word and
Spirit, it doth acknowledge Him as Lord of all, and expect
the blessings of His good providence, which are on this con-
dition bestowed upon every state. They may, both parents
and governors, violate the one covenant and the other, yea,
and do so continually ; but they do it at the risk of offending
God, to whom they have devoted their children and their
people, — of calling down His judgments in due time, and, if
they repent not, of being finally cast off as apostates, and
long enduring His wrath and indignation in every form ; as

400 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

at this day you see in the case of the apostate Jews, the
apostate Mohammedans, and the apostate Papacy, which are
every one of them bhghted with the stern and constant east
wind of the wrath of God. Whereas, we who do, amidst
our manifold errors and contradictions daily increasing, main-
tain the national and parental covenant in a certain measure
of force, have been preserved and blessed in a wonderful
manner, yet nothing to what we would have been, had we
kept the covenants of our fathers, and not worshipped the
gods of silver and gold, adored the gods of our own reason,
and paid a certain respect to the gods of the nations ; from
whence have come corrosion in the strong and lusty limbs of
the body politic, corruption near the heart, confusion in the
head, and alarm and dismay throughout the whole, though
no man can tell his neighbour why or wherefore. Oh that
my country would fear God ! Oh that all the people would
agree to praise Him ! Then would the earth yield her in-
crease, and God, even our God, would bless us.

I take it, therefore, to be established upon broad doctrinal
principles, that it is a solecism in a Christian government to
authorise, and in Christian parents to patronise, any school
for youth, be the subject taught in it what it may, when that
subject is not taught with a view to the glory of God, the
eternal salvation of the soul, and the Christian well-being of
the land. Now, if any one say, " Oh, but we cannot trust the
religion of our children to be under the tuition of those whom
the Church and State," or, as it should rather be said, whom
the believing nation, " hath approved for that end ; " the
answer is. No one obligeth thee to delegate thy child's edu-
cation to any one : it is thine own act to do so. Thou art
the guardian of the spirit of thy child : do that which seemeth
unto thee good. But do not thou hinder others from having
the advantage which they may need : neither do thou set up
such an anomaly and solecism in a Christian land as educa-
tion without the acknowledgment of God's propriety in the
bodies and minds of the children, who are His creatures, and
by baptism His redeemed creatures. And if a sectarian spirit
amongst religionists hinder their union in this matter, it is not
to hinder a Christian government from fulfilling its duties

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 40 1

unto the Lord, by providing Christian education for the chil-
dren of the people, take advantage of it who will, and lose
the advantage who will. And that spirit, therefore, which is
said and sung in so many various forms, " Oh, yes ! but
religion is too sacred a thing to be meddled with, — men's
minds are so diverse in it ; therefore leave it to every family
apart," is both a foolish and a wicked speech : foolish as con-
travening all sound doctrine of Christian government and
education, and wicked as encouraging that sectarianism and
schism among the professors of the same faith, which, if it
exist, ought to be blamed, not commended ; discouraged and
wrought out, not encouraged and engrained into the people.
It is certainly an evil ; for our religion is community and love,
and the Church is a brotherhood, not a diversity of parties.
The spirit is, moreover, a poor subterfuge for ignorant indo-
lence in divining good measures, or for malicious dislike to
religion altogether. What would they say if any one were
to retort upon them, " That political economy is so uncertain
a thing, and men are so divided upon it, hardly two agreeing
in any question, — it may be of the currency, or the corn laws,
or the silk trade, — that the government had better leave it
altogether at once, and follow in the course of ancient cus-
toms.?" Or, again, when any bill is presented before the
legislature upon which there are various separate interests
manifested, it ought uniformly to be cast out until they can
all agree. Thou fool ! it is this disagreement in matters
which makes government necessary ; and a good govern-
ment is, as it were, a great mediator of peace to the people,
and therefore every government is properly the handmaiden
of the eternal Mediator and Redeemer.

Now, while I thus argue the utter incongruity of an un-
christian school in a Christian community, and maintain it to
be an anomaly which was never named in the land until the
light of the last thirty years darkened all former knowledge,
and put to shame all former wisdom, I am careful not to ex-
aggerate the influence of the school in teaching religion or
anything else which pertains to the true nobility and excel-
lent character of men ; but do maintain that it is one of the
great prejudices of this day, both in the Church and in the
VOL. III. 2 c

402 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

world, to have infinitely exaggerated the power of abecedarian
knowledge upon the heart, strength, mind, and soul of men.
But this is too great a subject to enter upon at present ; and
I do therefore now proceed to judge by the principle which I
have laid down of education as it ought to be, concerning that
education of the people which of late hath drawn so much
attention, and is really so important an element in the great
question of the world's future prospects.

II. These observations which we have made in general upon
the scope and end of education, do open the way to a prac-
tical judgment concerning that kind of education which now
engageth the universal attention of the people. In handling
this, the second head of our discourse, I have an eye chiefly
to those inventions and practices of education which have
grown up with the last half century, and which profess to fol-
low knowledge on its own account, without respect to any
particular creed of religion, or system of morals. At the head
of which I may place our mechanical schools, and the univer-
sity which it is proposed to found in the metropolis. I con-
fess, however illiberal and irreligious I may be thought, my
observations will apply very largely also to those systems of
education which admit the Bible, but exclude every creed,
and prevent any effective exposition or application of the
truths of the Bible ; which build chiefly upon the acquisitions
of reading, writing, and accounts ; and adopt the Bible and
lessons from the Bible as the least exceptionable class-book
for learning to read upon. And while I include these modern
institutions, of which the basis is knowledge and arts on their
own account, I exclude all the ancient institutions, from the
parish schools of Scotland up to the universities of England,
which have religion for their foundation, and are, as it were,
a porch to the Church.

Our notion of human nature, as explained above, is, that it
is fashioned and furnished for more excellent purposes than
to turn the clod or handle machines, to transport the produce
of the earth from place to place, or work in mines of gold and
silver ; or to eat, drink, and make merry, over the indulgences
which are by these means procured. And, therefore, those

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 403

systems of education whose chief aim it is to teach the nature
of the physical productions of the earth, and the mechanical
arts by which they are to be transported from place to place,
and the chemical arts by which their forms and properties are
changed, and the science of economy, or of turning our handi-
work to the most account, are to me no systems of education
whatever, unless I could persuade myself that man was merely
king of the animals, head labourer and master workman of
the earth. I can see a great use and value in these physical
sciences, to enable a man to maintain himself with less brutal
labour, to the end he may have more leisure upon his hands
for higher and nobler occupations ; and in this respect I greatly
admire them, as having bowed the stubborn neck of the ele-
ments to the spirit of man, and restored him that power over
creation with which he was endowed at first. But if he is to
be taught in his youth no higher occupation than this, no
godlike recreation of his soul, no spiritual sciences ; and, if
what he is taught of intellect be thus bound down, like Pro-
metheus, to the barren earth, then have we an education
which, however splendid in its apparatus, however imposing
in its experiments, however fruitful in riches, and all which
riches can command, is poor and meagre, low, mean, and
earthly, altogether insufficient to satisfy man's estate ; which
doth but harness him for his work, which doth but enslave
and enserf him to the soil, but giveth to him no tokens, no
hint, nor intimation, of his reasonable being, — for I call not that
reason which labours in the clay, — it is but the instinct of the
noble animal, and not the reason of the spiritual being. Such
education will depress a people out of manliness, out of liberty,
out of poetry, and religion, and whatever else hath been the
crown of glory around the brows of mankind.

Yet mark, that even to this the lowest form in the school —
the education of the instincts of man, which teacheth him to
till, and sow, and reap, and gather into barns ; to exchange,
and truck, and traffic, and make gain — I yield its proper value
when I say, it is to the end of making less bodily bondage
and earthly calculation necessary to win our bread, and leave
the better part of our being disengaged for other employ-
ments. But for what employments disengaged } This is the

404 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

question you answer not in your mechanical schools ; which
is their poverty and barrenness. You did not surely mean
that your men should always labour, and sleep, and labour.
That is not your consummation of humanity : is it ? If it be,
you are fit to be the instructors of Russian serfs, or West
Indian slaves ; but not of men who know of old, and have it
written in the chronicles of their fathers, that they were born
for the highest functions of free-born men ; yea, and to aspire
unto the similitude of God, and live wnth God and Christ upon
the earth, and live with them for ever in the world to come.
This is the quintessence of sectarianism, and yet I believe it is
the only notion which nine-tenths of those calling themselves
liberal have concerning education. Nevertheless, there is
every advantage Avhen the time cometh for the youth to go
their several ways, and address themselves to their several
occupations and handicrafts in life, that they should then be
instructed, not in the routine customs and blind precepts of
their trades and professions, but be well grounded in the prin-
ciples thereof, and see them in their elements, that they may
have the pleasure and gratification of understanding what they
are about ; and of doing their part to improve, and simplify, and
perfect the arts of life; nor do I object that they should know
the bearings and relations of one department of human in-
dustry upon another, to the end they may not degenerate
into pieces of mechanism ; and then is the time and place for
schools of mechanics, to connect art with science, and artizans
with scientific men : which institutions being grafted upon the
stock of a well-educated and ingenious people, and kept in
their proper place, would have the same effect in scientific,
manufacturing, and mechanical society which the sympathy
of nobles with gentlemen, of gentlemen with yeomanry, and
of yeomanry with peasantry, hath in political life. These
mechanical instructions are part of a young man's appren-
ticeship, and should come in when he hath left the school and
entered to the shop, and begun to take thought concerning
his future livelihood, and the means of his sustenance. But
the school of education is for a higher and more liberal tuition,
not to educate the craftsman, but to educate the man ; not to
train for this or that office in the commonwealth, but for all

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 405

offices ; not to be taken up with that which is peculiar, but
with that which is universal. It ought, therefore, to contem-
plate the common conditions of men, and to prepare them for
fulfilling these. This is its first care, which having well dis-
charged, if there be time and leisure for particular and indi-
vidual things, then can there be no harm in attending to these
also ; but not by any means at the expense and to the sacri-
fice of the common and catholic.

Now, forasmuch as letters are the great contrivance by
which men have chosen to express their thoughts and feel-
ings, and by which God hath made to man the revelation
of His being and will, it is surely first of all necessary that
reading should be given to all, as the key by which they are
to open to themselves the knowledge of that which is recorded
concerning the past, and revealed concerning the future. And
to the end that this generation may be able to record unto
the generations to come what hath occurred in its days, and
that each man may be able to record the series of his own
impressions and feelings, or communicate them to whom
he pleaseth, so that the intercourse and communion of life
may be preserved, there ought to be added, next to the
faculty of reading the thoughts of others, the faculty also of
recording our own thoughts, — that is, of writing. These are
universals which ought to be taught to every man, because
every man, w^iatever his sphere and occupation be, hath the
like need of them, and will derive from them much guidance
and consolation of his life. And it seems to me, that the
poor have the most need of the consolation and sustenance
which these two arts afford ; inasmuch as their life is more
burdened and pressed with incessant toil, with everything to
depress them to the earth, and little to elevate them above it,
having no facility .of moving to and fro, to catch the gales
and currents of improvement, to behold the various works of
invention, and hear the sentiments which dignify the being of
man. The poor who arc bound to place, and insphered in
the narrow prejudices of place ; who have no story, but a few
traditions ; no wisdom, but a few proverbs ; no hope higher
than a poorhouse in their old age ; no ambition beyond a cot-
tage : these, I say, so far from being excluded, have the best

406 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

right to, by having the greatest need of, reading and writing ;
those two wittiest inventions, and greatest helps of man's con-
dition, whereby the past may be made to pass over again be-
fore them, and the future to rise up in its glory under their
eyes ; the distant may be brought near, the learned made
level to their capacities, the good introduced to their cottage
firesides, the godly made accessible to their souls, and every
admirable and heavenly quality which hath rooted and seeded
on the earth made as free and blessed to the cottage as it is to
the palace, the senate, and the university. If I might apply a
Scripture quotation, less out of place than many Scripture
quotations are, I would have it cried from the northern to the
southern pole, and from the rising of the sun to the going down
thereof, — " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ;
and he that hath no money come buy wine and milk, without
money and without price."

But let it be recognised and fairly stated out, lest our en-
thusiasm carry us too far, that reading is only the key by
which the mind of others is directed to us, and writing the key
by which our mind is discovered to them ; and that the inter-
change of mind with mind, which these inventions enable us
to carry on, may be productive of evil as readily as of good,
unless there be given therewith some criterion to know the
good from the evil. The world of books is wide as the world
of man's thoughts and fancies and feelings, full of poisons
as well as of food and medicine ; whatever hath been felt of
good and ill hath been written, and the evil hath its blazon-
ing to the eye as well as the good, its rich garnish and savoury
odour to the base appetites of the mind, and needeth not to
be sought, but is presented before the face of all the people^
cheapened down to their poverty, and pressed upon them
with all assiduity. There might have been heretofore a good
principle in writing a book, and there might also have been a
good principle in publishing one ; but now clearly and con-
fessedly gain and profit is the principle which moveth the
book mart, as entirely as any other ; — especially the produc-
tion of those leaves which lie on every table, and are offered
to the eye in every ale-house of the land. Wherefore, like
putting a blind man into a wood where poisons grow as plan-

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 407

tifully as fruits, and leaving him there to feed his body, is it
to introduce our people to this chaos of riglit and wrong, of
truth and falsehood, of religion and irreligion, of blessedness
and misery, of heaven and hell, without having cultivated in
them any principles by which to know the evil from the good,
and to distinguish the wholesome from the unwholesome.
For, let men talk of liberality as they please, no one is so
wildly liberal as to say that everything which is written is
right, and everything which is circulated amongst the people
is good. If any man had the folly to say so, I would go to
the place where his children were educated, and see whether
indiscriminateness were the order of his nursery ; I would sit
down at his table, and hear whether indiscriminateness were
the order of his discourse. It is absurd. Why are these
men so fierce for liberality, why so illiberally liberal, so pas-
sionately tolerant, so sarcastically contented with everything 1
But this matter must be handled in a grave and holy tone of
mind: awful interests and awful events depend upon the issue.
We said, that in a school, that which was common to us as
men ought to be first attended to, and that which is peculiar
to us as craftsmen should be left to the term of our appren-
ticeship. And therefore we gave reading and writing the first
place, because to know another's thoughts, and to communi-
cate our own, is the characteristic of man's distinction as man,
the foundation-stone upon which his intellectual and spiritual
character is to be reared. We must, therefore, now attend to
the goodly fabric of character which is to be built up by this
faculty, of which you have given him the ready hold. You
have taught him to speak to a distance, and to hear from a
distance ; now must you teach him what to say, and how to
judge what he heareth. That is, you must cultivate those
principles within his mind by which trust and honesty, and
worth of every kind, are to be distinguished from falsehood
and worthlessness. All men have common functions to dis-
charge to one another, even as members of the same society,
to obey the laws, to reverence the authorities, to be courteous
to one another, and humane to the lower creatures. As
members of a family they have still more important offices to
discharge — to be dutiful and obedient children, affectionate

4o8 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

kinsmen, faithful spouses, tender and watchful parents. As
joined to one another in the relationships of life they have
other duties to discharge, of honest traders, good and faithful
servants, kind masters, confidential friends, wise governors,
and good subjects. Towards ourselves we have a high duty
to discharge, which lies at the root of all the others ; namely,
to separate the good from the evil within our own souls, to
cherish the most excellent, and to foster the most kindly parts
of our nature, to fight against cruelty and malice, and to sub-
due anger and impatience, and to watch over the inward and
hidden man of the heart, out of which are the issues of life.
And towards God Ave have to fulfil the duties of responsible
creatures ; nay, more, of men taught from above, of men re-
deemed from iniquity by the blood of His only-begotten Son,
and regenerated by the Holy Ghost in the image of God, in
righteousness and true holiness. These are not particulars,
but universals, pertaining to us as men, and not as craftsmen,
growing out of the root and stem of human nature, and neces-
sary to its well-being, yea, necessary to its very being. And
therefore if they be not taught in the school, which is the
nursery of the seedlings, where shall they be taught .-' In the
church .'' The church has enough to do with men, though it
should not neglect children. In the house and family .-' If
it were done there, I were content, and would concede the
matter. But rest assured, that if it were attempted at home
or in the church, it would be found so imperfectly done, that
it would be insisted for in the school also. And when it is
best done in any one place, I have found it best done in them
all. But I say, done it must be. And if any one say done it
need not be, I arrest that man of high treason against the
royal function of education, which is to draw out the powers
and faculties that is in man, and fit him for the duties of the
life that now is, and of the life that is to come.

If the faculties of human nature consisted only of five
senses, four lusty limbs, and a voracious body ; and if the
Avealth of man consisted only in houses and lands and visible
goods ; and if the whole functions of men be accomplished in
the writing-ofiice, behind the counter, or in the workshop, or
in the field, or in the manufactory, then I give in and say,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 409

Let no principles be taught in a school but the principles of
Cokcr to number, and the elements of Euclid to measure
withal : but while the old notion lives upon the earth, that
there is a spirit in man, and that the breath of the Almighty-
hath given him life — that there is a world of faith beyond the
world of sight, wherein are things honest and true, and pure
and lovely, and of good report ; and while these old English
notions live, that every man's cottage is his castle, which he
hath to keep with all his wisdom, and purify with all his reli-
gion, and that his children are his quiver of arrows with which
he is strong, and can face his enemy in the gate ; and that he
is a free man to meddle and intermeddle with the governors
of the state, and call them to an account according to the
laws ; and that he is a judge of law and fact, to whom the
twelve judges, clothed in ermine, are but servants, to set the
case out in fair array ; — while these notions live here in the
south, and with us in the north, while the still higher notions
live the bulwark of the land, that every peasant is a brother
of Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, and every father a
priest of Christ over his household, and every head of a family
an elder over the house of Israel, our sons born not to vege-
tate upon the spot of soil which bore them, but to go up and
down the earth and open it with their wisdom, and instruct
it in their holier discipline, and come home to their mother
laden with its treasures, and with what is dearer still to our
mother, the report of a good name, and the glory of an up-
right and righteous man ; — while these ideas live amongst our
people, and in these our people live, shall a (qvj faithless, wit-
less, sectarian speculators in education — philanthropists not
knowing what man is, that they might love him — talk of edu-
cating our people without respect to these the high functions
of our people, educate them merely in truth mechanical and
things visible ; then I say, let these speculators go to the
people to be a little instructed, before they pretend to instruct
the people, who are more wise and noble-minded than they.

Therefore, seeing our people are not regarded as mere serfs
of the soil, or adjuncts of the machinery, but men who are the
nerves and sinews of the State, who choose lawgivers and
judge causes between man and man, between the king and

4IO DISCOURSES DELIVERED

the subjects; spiritual men who have a priesthood appointed
over them, to teach them from Sabbath to Sabbath the prin-
ciples of the doctrine of Christ, and the obligations which, as
Christians, they are under ; seeing we are a nation of Chris-
tians, a believing nation, who, for the sake of God, and God's
righteous cause, have mustered in the field of battle, and
triumphed over the upholders of despotism and superstition,
yea, have torn the sceptre out of the hands of those who
would have ruled us in the spirit of despotism and supersti-
tion ; shall the children of our people be trained in the ignor-
ance of those principles which their fathers wrote upon the
tablets of their hearts, and placed as a frontlet before their
eyes, and in which they became a separate people from the
rest of the nations, and have not been made partakers of their
plagues ? No, this must not be, or else the Lord hath utterly
forsaken us. If we have a Christian priesthood, and a Chris-
tian framework of society, and a Christian statute-book, then
must we also have a Christian education, else our children
will grow up, not to improve and perfect the works of their
fathers, but to fight against and overthrow them ; to root out,
not to prune the vine and the fig-tree, under the shade of
which we have so long sitten without any to make us afraid.
When we become an infidel and paracidal people like France,
we may bethink us of mere scientific education ; but while
we are a believing people, we must have an education of prin-
ciples first, along with our education of knowledge : and if
both cannot go together as heretofore, then, I say, let the
education of principles stand first, as the palladium of the
land, and the education of knowledge learn to bow and reve-
rence that which was before it, and which we prize above it.

They have got the idea into their heads, that if you do but
exclude all creeds and peculiarities of religion from our schools,
you deliver them from being sectarian, and that it is the acm6
of liberality to have no religion taught whatever ; as if there
were no sectarianism anywhere but in religion ; and as if reli-
gion consisted only of disputes. The fools, the ignorant fools !
Religion is the science of obligations. And an education
which should exclude obligations is certainly worse than none ;
inasmuch as an untamed savage creature who is strong is

ON PUBLIC OCCA SIONS. 4 1 1

worse than one who is weak. Exclude religion from the
schools ! then must you exclude celestial aspirations from the
soul, and heaven-born principles from the life of man. And
what have you to harmonise and consociate man with man }
Will self-interest cement a state } Yes, it is their present philo-
sophy, that the perfection of all government is to leave men
to themselves. They are right, so far as his interests go.
There you may leave man to himself But what is to hinder
him from passing beyond the mark of truth } Doth man
naturally love the rights of his neighbour as he loveth his
own ; and having proceeded full march to the outward bound
of his own domain, will he stop there without an impediment ?
But his neighbour will watch that he trespass not. And is
this the Utopia of these philosophers, that every man must
be a watchman upon every other man ; that each is to stand
harnessed against all the rest .'' Yes, truly this is the perfec-
tion of their system, that each man should be on the watch
against every other man. And where then is love, friendship,
fellowship, fraternity .'* where is hospitality, generosity, mag-
nanimity, and disinterestedness .-* where self-denial, self-de-
votedness, and self-sacrifice .-' " Oh," they answer, " these are
fine things to talk about, things that have been written of ;
but whether they ever existed or not, is a different question :
that they exist not at present is a matter certain."

I do admire, and am amazed of what sires we of this
age were begotten, and what mothers nursed us upon their
knees, that we should have lost the ancient temper of these
islanders, who, from the first insight they got into the Chris-
tian faith, have held it dear, and always bore it before them
in the government and legislation of the land ; to adhere to
which was regarded as the mark of a liberal mind, and to
deliver it from thraldom the highest achievement of a gallant
soul ; — whose single bishops in the darkest ages, as old Great-
head, had the boldness to tear a Pope's bull and trample it
under foot ; whose scholars, as Wickliffe, Avould preach their
discourses to the people, and face the issue, whatever it might
be; by the side of whom our chief men of war, as John of
Gaunt, used to stand, ready to defend them to death. I do
admire, that a people, whose chief statesmen, as Burleigh and

412 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

Bacon ; whose chief lawyers, as Sir Matthew Hale ; whose
chief patriots, as Hampden, and Pym, and Harry Vane ;
whose chosen spirits, as Milton, and Newton, and Boyle, and
Locke, did all count it most worthy of them to rest their im-
provements upon the purification and enlargement of religion,
and never sought in any way its overthrow ; well knowing —
being master spirits of the mind, not money-changers — that
Christian religion is reason perfected, and liberty secured, —
that such a people, who by these principles have been made
steadfast as old Rome itself, and now wield an empire wider
than that of Rome, should have come to this pass of dark-
ness and delusion, that its high-spirited and liberal men, with
one voice, should shove Religion to a side, and hold her in
abeyance, and taunt her with scorn, and distinguish not be-
tween her form and beauty, as upheld in those establishments
which our fathers set up, and the grossest superstition which
they fought against, as the very incarnation of the devil's
falsehood and murder, — that instead of crying for reform of
abuses here, as they do in the State, they should rather court
an overthrow : Raze, raze it. O God, why hast Thou blinded
us ? O our God, why hast Thou forsaken us ? Why standest
Thou afar off from the voice of our weeping ? Return unto
us, O God ! Return unto us. Thou who hast been the strength
of our fathers ! Deliver us, O Lord ! for there is none that
fighteth for us but Thou alone.

I thank my God that there is still a remnant amongst us, in
whom is the old leaven of this Reformed nation, and who
know better things than are taught by late-sprung liberality,
(of whom the multitudes are now assembled into this city, to
be refreshed with the tidings of Zion's prosperity, and to know
each other's hearts, and welcome each other's faces with the
smile of brotherhood, and strengthen each other's hands with
the faith of that strength which resideth in the sanctuary of
God ;) to whom I now earnestly call, as to the saviours of
their country, against the invading deluge of unprincipled
knowledge, and strictly charge them, by the authority given
to me in the Church of Christ, that they adopt none of those
notions of our modern politicians and philosophers, but labour
in the old way of instructing the people in the book of God, and

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 413

training the children of the people to love and reverence the
rod of their fathers. Have nothing to do with any seminary of
youth in which the Holy Scriptures are not recognised, are not
honoured, and in which the principles of catholic religion are
not inculcated. Make your stand there, and flinch from it on
no account. There is no fear that the earthly applications of
knowledge will not be attended to by the earthly part of men.
But ye are the only watchmen to watch that the heavenly
and spiritual applications of knowledge should be attended
to, I do not say that you should dissociate the two from
each other ; but that you should insist they be not dissociated,
and see that they be not. And if they cast upon you the
charge of illiberality, retort upon them the charge who are
illiberal to the memory of their fathers, to the hopes of their
children. If they cast upon you the charge of sectarianism,
retort upon them the charge. For it is they who make divi-
sion between the world that is and the world that is to come,
between religion and morals, between morals and knowledge,
between principles and ends. I would not have you divide
from worldly philanthropists ; but in the matter of education
I would have you to stand for the spiritual interests of the chil-
dren. And do not receive the plausible pretext, that they
will be taught religion at home, or in the church, or in a
separate school for that end and that alone. They should be
taught religion when they are taught other things ; or rather
all other things should be taught upon religion and for reli-
gion, in order to educe and lead out of the young mind those
spiritual powers, those divine capacities which else must
slumber, while earthly powers and earthly faculties are get-
ting strength and head, and smothering the seed of spiritual
life ; for religion should be to the soul what the oak is to the
forest, sending its roots deep, deep into the soil, lifting its
noble top in fearless majesty, and extending all abroad its
branching arms to embrace with its shelter everything which
betakes itself thither as a refuge. I pray you, therefore,
Christians, in your several spheres, in town or country, here
or abroad, not to be put out of countenance by late-.sprung
notions and theories concerning education ; neither to seek to
put them out of countenance ; but to resolve that, come what

414 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

will of them, (and let them have the trial) they shall not banish
from the schools in which your children are, or in which you
have an influence, that oldest and solidest foundation of per-
sonal character, of social well-being, of present and eternal
blessedness, the Holy Scriptures. These being preserved, will
act as a test and a touch-stone upon those novelties, which, if
I were to judge by anything I would judge by this criterion,
what influence they have in attracting or withdrawing the
minds of the youth to or from the oracles of God, and the
principles of the doctrine of Christ. They will call this
bigotry in me to set forth ; and in you they will call it bigotry
to carry into effect. Therefore, I go on to justify the doc-
trine, by examining the third question proposed : In what
hands the superintendence of education might best be left, so
as to protect it the most effectually from becoming secta-
rian ; that is, from applying itself only to a fraction of the
human mind, and a department of human well-being.

III. There can be no inconsistency, as hath been shewn
above, between education and religion, provided they be
both free from narrow and sectarian principles, and con-
ducted for the end of opening and directing the faculties of
the soul ; education to open, and religion to direct them. If
I know anything of Christian religion, it is for the learned as
necessary as for the unlearned, the same to barbarians and
Scythians, bond and free, bringing the method of redemp-
tion, and the means of regeneration, which all equally need.
And, inasmuch as education draws out the various powers of
the intellectual and moral being, it enables us to judge, by
the mere tests of that religion which prescribes to them the
rules, of their health and salvation. So that there can be no
doubt, that the evidence of the Divine origin, and the blessed-
ness of the enjoyments of religion, are heightened to the man
of cultivated mind ; — ^just as the face of heaven shews more
intelligent to the astronomer, and the face of nature shews
more beautiful to the poet, and the face of men more ex-
pression to the artist, than to those whose faculties of obser-
vation have not been developed. At the same time, there is
not so much in this as might at first be imagined ; because,

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 4 1 5

as hath been said above, the true face of rehgion is not dis-
cerned by the eye of the intellect, but by a spiritual faculty
which no human teaching can cultivate. Nevertheless, it
must be allowed, that if the intellect have not been sub-
jected to vanity or worldliness in our education, and if
our moral being have not been submitted to sense or
selfishness, that secondary evidence which is brought to
nature must be stronger according to the number of the
points upon which nature comes in contact with religion.
But it is quite possible that education may become sec-
tarian, and thereby fight against religion. It may attend
to the mere giving and receiving of impressions of knowledge
by words or diagrams, or models and moulds of art ; culti-
vating the intellect and the taste alone, without minding the
culture of principles of duty, or the building up of an excel-
lent and manly character. It may aim to prepare man only
for the present life, cultivating in him the prudences and
addresses by which he is to work his way in the community,
without turning his attention to the permanent parts of his
nature, or giving him to know of the life which is to come.
In which cases, by being sectarian, or addressing only a part
of human nature, and that the lowest part, it unfits a man for
religion, whose object is to order man according to the scale
of the true dignity of his faculties, not according to the scale
of their present usefulness. But if education be so conducted
as to fulfil the purpose which its name imports, of educing or
drawing out the powers and faculties which are in human
nature, there can be no doubt that it will qualify us better
for serving every end imposed upon us by the revelation of
God, which speaks not to the foolish but to the under-
standing, whose commandments enlighten the eyes, and
whose testimonies make wise the simple. It is the part of
falsehood and superstition to desire the ignorance and blind-
ness of those whom they delude, to keep their orgies in the
twilights of the soul, and to oppose the progress of know-
ledge amongst the people, for no other reason but because it
makes them think and reason ; and the priests who do so are
the priests of a superstition, and the statesmen who do so are
the statesmen of an oligarchy, which standeth in the well-

4i6 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

being of a few, and the detriment of the many. But, on the
other hand, it is possible for the spirit of education to be
sectarian and narrow-minded, as well as the spirit of religion
and the spirit of policy ; and, instead of educing and deve-
loping all the faculties of human nature, to cultivate only a
part, and to be conducted according to a theory, popular in
the time and place, instead of being conducted by the old,
and constant, and universally admitted principles of our
nature. In which case, it may be the duty both of sound
religion and of enlightened policy to set themselves against
the insufficient and vicious culture of the people ; and to
insist, not that the people should abide in darkness, but that
their minds should be brought wholly and fairly into light.
For, if those who educate the youth be not, or the books
by which they are educated be not, in harmony with
the spirit of religion, and of law, which are established in a
country, and still more if they be opposed to it ; it must
come to pass, sooner or later, that the contrary spirits will
manifest themselves, and strive together for the superiority.
Give me the schools and the school-books, and in time I
shall have both the churches and the courts of law.

Now, as we taught in the opening of the subject, that there
are three distinct capacities in man, which it is the object
of education to unfold, ascending one above another in the
dignity of their object, in their profitableness to the subject
and in their advantage to the commonweal — namely, the
knowledge of nature and its various forms of science and art ;
the knowledge of our own selves, or various powers and rela-
tions to one another ; and the knowledge of our Creator and
His revelation — so now it is to be observed that there are in
a community three several powers, which are, as it were, the
consecrated guardians of these three great interests, and
whose chief office it is to watch over them — namely, private
interest, of which each man is the guardian ; the public
good, of which our governors and lawgivers are the guar-
dians ; and religion, of which the priesthood are the guar-
dians. Not but that private interest is, and ought to be, the
guardian of all the three ; seeing every man is as much inte-
rested in law and religion as he is in his private property and

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS, 4 1 7

peculiar traffic ; but that these two latter departments, being
common to all, have been given over to classes of men sepa-
rated for that end by God, and acknowledged by all people,
in order to be the counterpoise to the selfishness of private
interest. Now, it will be found, upon close inquiry, that
there is the same natural necessity why the superintendence
of the schools should, in some measure, be under these three
guardians, who take the charge of the commonwealth —
namely, private interest, to see that the youth be educated in
the knowledge of outward nature; the representatives of law and
government, to see that they be educated in the knowledge of
their moral and political duties; and the priesthood, above them
all, to see that they be educated in the knowledge of God and
revelation, which is the highest function of our being. And I
will now shew you a little how insufficient any one of these is
to take upon itself the high trust of superintending the schools,
and saving them from becoming narrow and sectarian.

The experiment of leaving it to private interest to attend
to the education of the youth, and giving it no patronage or
superintendence of Church or State, hath been tried among
the peasantry of England for three centuries ; and such is the
apathy of an uneducated people, that, till others interfered,
they continued as ignorant as they were at the Reformation,
And for the last half century it hath been tried in the manu-
facturing towns amongst a people commonly well supplied
not only with the necessaries but with the comforts of life.
But such is the power of present gain, that they rather
choose to convert their children into ministers to their own
extravagance, than part with any of their superfluities to
have them instructed. What education does spring up in a
country upon this spontaneous principle, must always be of
a very inferior kind, just enough to compass the interests
which an unenlightened people can discern. And the
teachers will also be of an inferior kind, such who will qualify
them most readily and most cheaply for those short-sighted
and narrow interests. Being wholly dependent upon the
people, they cannot be expected to face out any popular
prejudice, which they will be the rather disposed to minister
to and perpetuate. There is no fellowship of a class or order
VOL. III. 2 D

41 8 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

to bear their spirit up. They have no standing with the law
or the church, to give them importance. They are but ser-
vants of the public, and ministers to its pride and pleasure ;
and they will be found little elevated above the condition of
the slaves who anciently were entrusted with the care of the
education of the youth. You shall find such masters in the
villages of England, meagre in their knowledge, mean in
their conditions, and wholly depressed out of the dignity
proper to one who is rearing souls for the life that is, and the
life that is to come. In Ireland, the condition of such
schools is still more miserable, and the books usually taught
in them contain superstition and barbarism in their grossest
forms. In America, this experiment is making upon a large
scale ; and although they have central colleges in most of the
States for furnishing teachers, I am informed that the system
is rapidly bringing the condition of schoolmasters into that
of servants, who are hired yearly or half-yearly, and remov-
able at the pleasure of their employers. The principle of
supply and demand, which is the idol of these days, will not
answer for anything beyond the most coarse and common
bodily necessities of man. And being applied to our moral
and spiritual necessities, it never faileth to bring them under
the dominion of profit and loss. It reduceth every relation
to calculations of interest, and makes money, which is but
the medium for exchanging visible things, the medium also
for the exchange of feeling, and affection, and duty. It hath
already gone far to destroy the relation between servant and
master, and the respect due from inferior to superior; as
hath been well exemplified by the abolition of the combina-
tion laws, which hath afforded us an opportunity of seeing
what effect this principle of supply and demand hath had
in abolishing those finer feelings of gratitude and mutual
respect by which society is bound together. If the same
experiments were made on education, as the economists
recommend, the result would be the same — to destroy the
reverence in which the teachers and instructors of youth have
in all countries been held, to estimate them according to the
profit, not the profitableness, of their instruction, and to bring
into an inferior estimation all learning and knowledge which

ON P UBLIC OCCA STONS. 4 1 9

could not be converted into ready money. Those sciences
would be taught which are marketable, and those teachers
who fitted our sons most expeditiously for the market-place,
would be in the highest repute. But, as for sound principles,
enlarged views of duty, true manliness of character, reverence
for the laws, and the king, and the authorities under him ;
piety to God, faithfulness to Christ, and regeneration by the
Holy Spirit, and all the other principles and effects of spi-
ritual life ; these would remain unregarded in the choice of
schoolmasters, untaught in the schools, and consequently un-
practised in the world, and be reputed so many vulgar errors,
which every liberal man must renounce in private, and in
public respect only so long as the public mind is not suffi-
ciently enlightened to despise them.

Let us next see how this important matter of superintend-
ing the schools might be entrusted to the representatives of
law and government. In ancient times, when the governors
of the State and the legislators were also the moralists and
philosophers, who consulted for the well-being of the people,
in the largest sense in which they could conceive it, the care
and superintendence of the youth might well be entrusted to
them. But, in these times, when statesmanship applies itself
exclusively to public concerns, and it is considered an in-
fringement on the part of law to meddle with our familiar
affairs, which are held sacred to every man, it were totally
inconsistent with the division of power that they should take
upon them the superintendence of the schools. The magi-
strates who represent the law in the country parts, and the
deputies of government who watch over the peace, would
conceive it foreign to their vocation to be burdened with
such a charge, and would not be fitted to undertake it. Law
and government, amongst the Gothic nations, include a much
smaller scope of the private well-being of men, than they did
among the classic nations; and there is in the spirit of the
people a decided aversion to their taking more upon them
than the foreign policy and inward peace of the community.
If interest, therefore, be sectarian, and swallow up the higher
and nobler desires of the soul, law is still more sectarian, and
by its very nature confined to our outward and overt acts ;

420 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and therefore is altogether incompetent to take charge of the
practical education of the people, so as to select the proper
persons, watch over the discipline, judge of the instructions,
and give life to the whole interior organisation of the schools.
And yet, while I thus exclude both private interest and law
as being sectarian and narrow-sphered, I do not wholly
exclude either of them. Private interest should have an
insight over everything, to take advantage of the schools or
not ; there should be no compulsion, there should be no
bribe of any kind applied to it ; it should be left wholly at
liberty to make its choice of that which it is not able to
prepare, and perhaps not very well able to judge of, but of
which, nevertheless, the judgment must not be taken out of
its hand, lest evils of a greater magnitude should be intro-
duced. And law should stand to the schools in the same
relation in which it doth to other parts of the common good,
ready to see that every man fulfilleth his covenant, and dis-
chargeth his office, and, if complaint be made, ready to arbi-
trate the matter, and see that justice hath its rights. But
neither of these two powers in a community are sufficiently
enlightened in the character and working of the human spirit,
in the fields which it hath for culture, and the chambers
which it hath for containing stores, to undertake to superin-
tend the operation of cultivating and storing it.

This can pertain only to religion, which is wide and ex-
tensive as the human spirit, and carries its views of human
well-being into the eternal as well as the temporal estate;
which is soft, and applieth itself with no outward terrors, nor
coarse and outward gains, but with the soft appliances of love
and affection to every soul, and seeketh to nourish and
cherish therein a spirit of holiness, and of wisdom, and of the
fear of God, and of the love of men. Our religion hath a
special application unto children, and contemplates them as
the types of what a man should be with all his strength and
understanding about him. Their simplicity, their faith, their
affection, their unworldliness, do all combine to make the
human spirit, in its infancy and childhood, the object of its
beloved care. And when any mother shews a care of her
children, and acquires a power over them, you shall always

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 4 2 1

find that religion is the instrument by which she is working
upon them. Indeed I see not how any education, properly
so called, can proceed without religion ; because, though you
may teach the lesson, how are you to enforce the lesson ?
The fear of school discipline is, to the finer parts of educa-
tion, what the fear of law is to the finer parts of society,
never touching, never reaching them. There must be an un-
noticed discipline, an invisible Master, who is prevailing by
His gracious influences over the unnoticed and invisible
workings of the soul within. Lessons of knowledge you may
teach without the help of this inward Minister, but lessons of
morality, lessons of honour, lessons of truth and piety, lessons
of manly and noble character, you never shall be able to
teach. Do your best, unless you take religion to your aid,
you shall but build the outward walls, and rough-cast your
house, but you shall never get within its threshold to furnish
its interior, or direct the operations, or preserve the peace and
blessedness of the household. Religion is, therefore, by its
very nature the mistress and superintendent of education. It
is wide as its occasions, and profitable to them all ; full of
helpful ministry, gracious encouragement, and assurance of
reward. Therefore it hath come to pass in all the Gothic
nations, and it was so among the ancient Britons, that the
superintendence of education hath been left to the guardians
of religion. In all Christian countries it hath been so, and in
the primitive Church, the rearing up of the catechumens was
as great a care of the priest as the edification of the members
of Christ ; and all the universities of Europe have been con-
ducted by priests, and still the greater part of them are so
conducted ; and we owe the preservation of all our learning
to the priests. And though now the spirit of infidelity is be-
ginning to work strange revolutions in the seminaries of learn-
ing, it is only a recent innovation, whereof no materials for
judging are yet properly before us ; but if we may judge from
what hath passed around us, we will surely conclude, that a
knowledge dissevered from religion, and serving no ends of
religion, will serve no ends of social nor private well-being;
and though it may increase individual power, and bring a
short-lived harvest of individual and national vanity, and

42 2 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

obtain command over the visible universe, and accumulate
riches thence, it worketh not in the spirit, nor upon the spirit;
brings it no redemption, affords to it no consolation, lays over
it no sweet restraints of love, nor strong obligations of duty,
— makes no provision for the sorrows, and troubles, and adver-
sities of the soul, and hath no tendency to dignify and ennoble
the mind in its high places, nor build up society in any of its
strongholds. It is education resting upon religion, and super-
intended by religion, which hath made us what we are; and
let us beware of divorcing these two helpsmeet for one another,
lest we become like other nations where they are divorced.

But what if the ministers of religion themselves become
sectarian, and make religion the handmaiden of ignorance, of
tyranny, and superstition ? Are they to be continued in the
education of our youth ? No, nor yet in the education of our
men. They will spoil our men as much as they will spoil our
youth. What is to be done .-* The remedy is to be found in
the judicious combination of the other two powers to watch,
each one for itself, that the children be not oppressed by
priestly authority, nor spirited away by superstition, from the
right cultivation of the knowledge of the natural and the
moral worlds. The choice of the teacher should not depend
upon them alone, but upon a power made up of all the three
guardian powers, and at all times the liberty of withdrawing
the youth should be in the hands of the parents, and the
examination of the schools should be open to the public eye,
and the neglect of duty should be under the cognizance of
the law. And thus, while the priesthood, as the most sacred
and catholic office, and the proper guardian of that which is
the root of morals, and the check of private selfishness, and
the highest function of humanity, ought to have devolved
upon it the constant and careful superintendence of the
schools, — there ought to be those checks and safeguards
from the others, in the day that it shall become selfish
and sectarian, fanatical or superstitious ; to prevent it from
carrying the schools, which are the nurseries of the State,
along with it into the same fearful alienation from what-
ever is profitable and helpful in natural knowledge to man's
estate, from whatever is prosperous and blessed to his soul,

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 423

in the chaste, and enlightened, and wholesome intercourse of
life.

If a case were wanted to confirm the doctrine of this dis-
course in all its parts, that case would be found in Scotland,
where for three centuries there has been a religious, and
nothing but a religious, education of the people ; for our uni-
versities were but a part of our religious establishment, where
the schools have been wholly under the superintendence of
the clergy, with those checks of private interest and public
good which have been described above ; and the result hath
been, not only to educate, but to unite the country as one
great family. Our love to one another, which they admire,
and sometimes blame, in foreign parts, is only one form of
the union which is made in our souls by the commonness of
our early instruction and early habits. All classes of the
community sit down upon the same forms, undergo the same
tuition, are taught the same principles, and subjected to the
same discipline. Rarely are there any prizes for emulation ;
rarely any rewards of merit, except those inward rewards to
which we are taught to look ; we have no scholarships, hardly
any bursaries, — no fellowships, hardly any foundations, to
whip and spur our education on ; but, instead, we have the
sweet incitements of knowledge, and the strong motives of
duty, and the ever-abiding sentiment of religion. Take away
the religious superintendence of our parish schools, and you
take away the grave parochial importance of our school-
masters ; whose dignity before the people is not from their
wealth, for they are generally very poor, but from their sta-
tion, their trust, their sacred and religious trust, of the educa-
tion of the children. The schoolmaster is a parish dignitary,
not a money-making craftsman. He is looked up to with
respect by the highest in the parishes ; and by the people he is
treated with a reverence, second only to that with which they
treat their minister. Take from him this hold which he hath
upon the spiritual and religious feelings of the people, and
you will not restore him to the same place, though you should
give him thousands by the year; — money is a corrupter; it is
principle that ennobles. Money rusts and tarnishes the
present lustre of a character, but religion makes it shine

424 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

resplendent. That is the true nobihty which springs from
what is not seen and cannot be calculated.

IV. Now you know, my dear brethren, that in the High-
lands and the Islands of Scotland there are parishes extend-
ing over wide mountain tracts, intersected with arms of the
sea, and often divided into separate parts by the ocean, so
that the minister hath to pass by boats from one part of his
parish to another. These parishes have but the provision of
one parish school, like the rest, which being stationary, sheds
its influence only over the place in its neighbourhood. The
Scotch, even of the low countries and the borders, are
not slack to venture far to school, as I know well ; many of
my class-fellows being wont to travel six and seven miles to
the school, and as many to their home, every day, with their
flask of milk upon their shoulder, and their morsel of dry
bread in their pocket. But when parishes are thirty, forty,
and even fifty miles in extent, with no highways nor byways,
across heathy mountains and misty lakes, this is impossible ;
and yet these Celtic people are a gallant people, who have
played their part right well in the struggles of the country;
whose martial dress hath waved triumphant over many a
hard-fought field ; whose quietness and peaceableness at
home cost the country little for justice or police ; whose reli-
gion is their chief wealth and consolation. To the help of
these brave and worthy men their brethren of the south have
resolved to come, and to bring it in that which they prize
most, and most do need — in education. And to that end
this ancient society, incorporated by royal charter, hath
laboured for more than a century, by schoolmasters to teach,
and missionaries to preach, in the remote and unvisited dis-
tricts ; and now, by the happy invention of circulating
schools, which move quarterly from place to place, they hope
to be able to bring in sufficient help. These schools are
under the clergy, like other schools, and are regularly
examined by the presbytery of the bounds, whose reports
are regularly published. Now, my brethren, you know the
advantages of a religious education, or, if haply ye know
them not, ye lament the want of it. Extend your liberality

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 425

to others: they are your countrymen; they are haply your
kinsmen ; they are your fellow-Christians ; forget them not.
Your superfluities are many ; contribute a portion, I entreat
you ; each according to his ability, contribute a portion, and
the Lord will bless the remainder of your store. I pray you
to refresh the cold and barren north with the droppings of
your liberality. They will bless you ; they wall make their
prayers to ascend for you ; and the Lord will reward you.

And here I may speak a word to the co-operators with
this most ancient of our Scottish societies, that if your schools
had contemplated no more than the culture of the intellect,
I should not have been here this day to plead for them,
though they had taught all the science of the Institute of
France, and all the philosophy of a Scottish university. It is
because you diligently apply yourselves to the cultivation of
the spirits of the children by the Word of God, that I have
boldness to solicit this Christian congregation most earnestly
to help you ; — not only reading it in the days of the week,
but on the Sabbath days gathering together both parents and
children under catechists and teachers, or otherwise instruct-
ing them from the lips of the most pious of the congregation
and church. Continue faithful in this, and watch unto prayer,
and you shall reap the blessing abundantly. Make known
unto the children the way of eternal life, as the catechists of
the primitive Church w^ere wont to do to the children of the
Christian Churches ; and let me tell you that these children
with whom you have to do are all members of the Christian
Church by baptism, to be blessed with all the blessings of a
believed gospel, or to be cursed with all the curses of a
rejected gospel. Give unto these little ones cupsful of cold
water, and you shall not lose your reward ; but give unto
them of the bread of life, and the waters of the Spirit, and
you shall be very abundantly blessed. Ye who sow shall be
watered, and that which you sow in faith and tears shall be
watered, and shall bear fruit many days hence. I entreat
you therefore, brethren, to remember that you are giwng to
these children, not to me, not to the managers of the society,
but to the children, to the little ones of Christ's family ; food
to feed the lambs of the flock, and nourishment to make

426 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

their hearts to sing for joy ; and give in faith, give as to the
great Head of the Church, from your several stewardships
for which you are responsible ; bring out of your treasures for
the poor, and the needy, and the orphans. These, if they
live, shall become the active servants of Christ, or of Satan ;
good and honest men and citizens, or turbulent, and factious,
and wdcked. Good men have sought to snatch them from
spiritual ignorance and its fruits of wickedness, unto spiritual
knowledge and its fruits of righteousness. It is for the
community that they have done it, not for themselves. They
have put themselves forward to do you a mighty service, and
will you not be helpful to them in that which they have un-
dertaken .'' Would you not be sorry to see the children
scattered abroad to the snares of Satan, and devoured of his
ravenous lust .'' Nay, if you could see the body even of one
of them hurt and mangled, what sympathy, what comfort,
what help would you not administer } But doth not faith
present unto you their soul all mangled and torn, all com-
fortless, and dejected, and trodden down of Satan's pleasure ?
And will you not, dearly beloved brethren, yield to the sym-
pathies of faith to the bowels of Christ, that which you would
yield to sight } The Lord forbid that the things of sight
should triumph in you over the things of faith. For it is
written, "We walk by faith, not by sight;" "looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." Do so this day,
and we ask no more. We will then receive your offering as
the offering of faith, and we know that it will be blessed ; for
faith is the soul of prayer, and faith is likewise the bond of
the Spirit. And so may the Lord instruct your children, and
bless them when you are gone, with good and faithful guar-
dians, and do for you far beyond what we can ask or think,
for the infinite merits of His dear Son, out of the inexhaustible
fulness of His riches.

Oh, but if I were to give loose to the feelings of a Scotch-
man, which rise within my heart while pleading this the cause
of the children of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, I
could touch some themes which would stir up the fiery spirit
of the North, and warm the generous hearts of the South. I
could speak of the children of these schools as including the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 427

orphans of those gallant men who have fought and conquered
in every land, and were never known to turn their back upon
the enemy of Britain. For from these regions have come
forth the strength of those brave battalions which are the
ornament of peace and the bulwark of war. Preaching in the
heart of this metropolis, I can take little advantage of these
themes, having no emblems around me to bring them vividly
before you ; and yet, in justice to my undertaken task, I must
not omit to mention them. Many of those to whose educa-
tion you will this day contribute, are the children of fathers
whom God in His providence called forth from their peaceful
vales and lonely mountains to stand as watchmen around
the walls of the country, and turn the battle from her gates.
From the inheritance of that richest dowry, a father's right
hand, how many of these children were cut off, when their
fathers, in their country's need, went forth and bled, and died,
or were disabled in their country's defence, or in the bloody
achievement of their country's victory and triumph, I reckon
that our brethren in arms who so bravely gave themselves to
die by sea and land during the wars of the infidel insurrec-
tion, and by their valour bore back for awhile to the abyss
the spirits of turbulence, and have bound them again by
stubborn law and government, did the best office for the
world which these latter ages have beheld ; and that it is
due unto their bloody toils that we sit so quietly, each one
under his own vine and under his own fig-tree, without any
to make us afraid. And shall we forsake their children .^ Shall
we abandon their orphan children to starvation and want .''
God forbid. It were enough to make the Lord cast us off,
and yield us up to the beast from the bottomless pit, when he
shall make his second ascent upon the stage of European
affairs, if we should abandon the widows and the orphans of
those who heretofore defended us. Brethren, it is a debt of
gratitude you owe the children of those whose fathers gave
themselves for you. There be this day soliciting you by my
lips, sons of the men who fought and conquered for you in
every region of the earth. Each notable victory by sea and
land hath her representative pleading in me. Alexandria,
Maida, Salamanca, Vittoria, Waterloo, and whatever other

428 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

place was made famous by the valour of our soldiers ; the
Nile, the Baltic, Trafalgar, and whatever other place was
made famous by the stout valour of our sailors, have a repre-
sentative pleading in me ; children who are the orphans of
rightful war ; whose fathers fell, not in oppressing, but in
liberating the world ; whose fathers were an honour to our
armies, the pride of the fight, the phalanx of the battle. It
is goodly to behold their marshal array, each man clothed in
the wild costume of his native mountains ; for they were
terrible to the enemies of their country, but in peace they
were gentle and beloved : they are well spoken of in all the
world for their fear of God, and their reverence of His holy
Word. The children for whom I plead are of a worthy
stock ; whose fathers were ever ready to serve our country
well ; and when they had no more to give, they gave their
precious lives, leaving their little ones to our care : and if
ever children had-a claim upon the care of their country, it is
the orphans of the soldier and sailor who have died in their
country's cause ; whose support I do therefore commend unto
you, not only at this time, in the collection which we are
about to make, but by subscription, and in whatever way
seemeth best to every one. As every one hath received the
gift, even so let him minister the same, as stewards of the
manifold grace of God, who is the father of the orphan, the
husband of the widow, and the friend of the friendless in their
habitation.

But let me remember, before I close, that I am the minister
■of Christ, and not the advocate of any particular society : and
that I am surrounded with many ministers of the everlasting
gospel, who watch over the flock of Christ both young and
old, whom I do entreat, and those of them specially who are
constituted and established over local boundaries, to watch
over the souls of the children, and to be at charges that they
be instructed as the children of Christ and the heirs of immor-
tal glory. It is a horrid sin that in a land like ours, so well
furnished with ministers of religion, and men of godliness,
any of the people should grow up in ignorance of the legacy
bequeathed unto them by Christ Jesus, or of the offices which
God requireth at their hand. Therefore, let all ministers

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 429

of Christ, and especially the ministers of the Established
Churches, whose opportunities are great above those of others,
take heed to the instruction and the warning which I have
this day lifted up amongst you. Oh, I do affectionately
entreat my brethren of the ministry, whether established by
law or not established, conforming or not conforming, all who
love the Lord Jesus and wait for His appearing, all who
recognise the immortal above the mortal, the invisible above
the visible, the eternal above the temporal, — that you would
wait upon the ministry of all souls, and not less upon the
ministry of children than of men : and in all your ministra-
tions, minister as the ministers, not to the earthly, but to the
heavenly part, which God quickeneth in all who believe.
Amen and Amen.

V.

THE CAUSE AND THE REMEDY OF IRELAND'S EVIL
CONDITION*

Rev. IX. 20, 21.

And ike rest of the men, which wej'e not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of
the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold,
and silver, and brass, attd stone, and of wood ; which neither can see, nor
hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries,
nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

' I^HE present condition of Ireland in every respect, phy-
sical, moral, and religious, is so appalling to every
enlightened mind, and so grievous to every charitable heart,
and withal so full of alarm to the well-being of the whole
civil estate of the empire, as to make it every man's impera-
tive duty, according to his gift, to bring counsel and help to
those who are honestly engaged in the work of ministering
to her relief, and finding out remedies for her diseases. To
which office being now called by the desire of the Hibernian
Society, who have long and zealously laboured in her behalf,
and with all my heart consenting, I pray the Lord in His
great goodness to endow me with understanding of His
divine providence, and wisdom from above, rightly to appre-
hend and truly to express the mind of His Spirit concerning
this matter, which lieth so near to every humane and to every
Christian heart.

I will not occupy the time, which is precious, in the descrip-
tion of that troubled and disordered condition, which it
requireth twenty thousand armed men to repress; nor recount
those excesses and enormities of every kind with which the
public papers for many years have been filled ; nor narrate
* Preached before the Hibernian Society, May 1S25.

DISCOURSES, ETC. 43^

what with my own eyes I have seen, and with my own ears
heard, of their ignorance and superstition, while I pursued my
tract of observation from hamlet to hamlet, and from cabin to
cabin, through the northern and eastern provinces of Ireland,
partaking the hearty and liberal welcome of her people, where-
of the remembrance doth now fill my soul with resolution to say
and do this day for their sake whatever the Lord may enable
me. For it is well known by all who have any knowledge of
the condition of this poor and wretched people, how they are
living, the greater part of them, upon the very edge of want,
necessity barely at the staff's end, famine at the door, epi-
demic disease ever watching and ready to spread its wings
abroad, and devour much people ; their irascible passions
in a continual ferment, and bringing forth crimes hitherto
unheard of; conflagrations of whole famihes ; murders, not
by solitary assassins, but by armed troops ; fratricides and
patricides ; abductions of women for matrimony, after the
manner of New-Holland savages rather than civilised and
religious men ; their superstitions by the margin of holy
wells, by consecrated lakes, in solitary dells, and rocky moun-
tains; their exorcisms of evil spirits, and easy faith in the
miraculous priests, more kindred to the superstition of the
South African nations than of other Catholic lands ; — these
things being but too well known, and on every hand acknow-
ledged, and, I may say, of all lamented, I conceive it were
but a loss of time to dilate upon, and shall therefore address
myself rather to consider the sources of the evil and the
method of its cure.

It is the usual way with men, for a great evil to look for a
conspicuous cause ; and as nothing standeth out so promi-
nently as the administrators of government, they have gener-
ally a large share of the blame laid upon their shoulders.
But if any one would consider for a moment how little the
doings or misdoings of government have affected the character
of his own mind, or changed the events of his life ; and how
little they are able, if they chose, to make an ignorant man
wise, or a vicious man virtuous ; and when they do usurp this
office, as in China and other patriarchal governments, what
helpless children they make of men, — he would soon discover

432 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

that it rests with causes far more near at hand, and constant
in their operation, to undermine the stable and good condi-
tion, or to restore the ruined and evil condition, of a people.
Governments, then, only begin to be felt with fatal conse-
quence, when they undertake more than belongs to them,
and, from preserving peace and levying lawful tribute, would
meddle with the private intercourse of man with man, the
duties of man to himself, and the duties of man to his Maker;
of which personal, social, and religious conditions, the whole-
some or unwholesome state is that which doth determine the
character of a people, yea, and the character of their govern-
ment also : wherefore the Lord hath not left these in the
hands of governors, but reserved them unto Himself; and
though He hath been at great pains to establish the founda-
tions of society upon the basis of obedience to the magistrate,
in that which belongeth to the magistrate's office. He hath
been at still greater pains to teach us that over the conscience
He alone hath the authority: which inward man of the heart
to enlighten, and guide, and overrule. He hath given us the
Law and the Gospel ; the latter to fit and enable us for the
keeping of the former. Wherefore it is not to be doubted,
that when diseases of various kinds shew themselves in the
personal, social, and religious character of a people, so that
from being industrious they are idle ; from peaceable, turbu-
lent ; when from merciful and kind, they are full of revenge ;
from enlightened, they are ignorant ; and from wise, foolish ;
when from religious they are fanatical ; and from being wor-
shipful of His invisible power and Godhead, they are wor-
shippers of things seen and temporal ; — these diseases are
brought about by some disordered state of the inward organs
of spiritual life, and the continual administration of unwhole-
some food to the soul's necessities, rather than by the opera-
tion of any outward cause, however great it may seem or may
really be.

But if any one, from scanty meditation upon, and little
acquaintance with, the secret springs of the well-being of men
and states, still denieth the cause of this evil, and expecteth
its cure from the administration of government, I pray him to
look at the condition of the English Dissenters during the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 433

two centuries of their existence, who have been liable to the
same political disabilities, tried with the same jealousy, as
the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and are now held under the
same restraints ; yet so far from exhibiting any of the same
evil conditions of a disorganised people, they have been, on the
other hand, the most orderly, virtuous, and enlightened part
of the common people of England, and are so unto this day.
But if any one would object to this — which I consider as
decisive proof that the evil lies deeper than political disabili-
ties— that the residence of the higher classes, and the pres-
ence of a middle class, prevent the evil effects of political
distinction from being revealed in England ; then I have to
shew the example of Scotland for the whole century before
the last, oppressed far beyond any oppression which Ireland
ever endured, and during the last century twice the theatre
of civil wars, and now more partially governed, (if I must
speak of these things,) more close and narrow in her political
system ; as corrupt, yea, and more so, in as far as political
influence can go ; her nobility in a great manner non-resident;
her middle class formed, as every middle class must be, by
the industry, skill, and good conduct of the poor ; her soil
more scanty, her climate more rude : and yet none of those
demoralized conditions have been revealed in her, and she
hath overcome those partial evils by that steady course of
improvement which a people well instructed, when left to
themselves, and even against opposition, never fail to pursue.
But at once to expose the exaggeration of this political cause,
to which everything is traced, we have the experimenhmt criicis,
the decisive evidence furnished by Ireland itself, of which the
northern province is confessedly more like to Scotland in
character and condition than to the three sister provinces of
Ireland ; where various branches of industry have taken root,
which in the south have died out ; and where, though there
be a greater diversity of religious faith, the cruelties and
enormities of the south are seldom heard of; and yet this
province labours under the same want of noble residents,
under the same tythe-system, and in all other respects is
under the same conditions of government with the rest.
Which things concerning the political cause I state loosely
VOL. III. 2 E

434 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and generally, in order to shew that this is not all nor the
chief source of the evil, without intending to say that it
hath not had its share along with others in producing the
misery of this miserable land.

These instances, which have been adduced in order to
remove this bugbear of a political cause, to which all evils are
wont to be ascribed, will serve the higher purpose of intro-
ducing us to the true cause of the evil. The northern pro-
vince of Ireland differs from the rest in no natural advantage
or outward condition ; and in respect to non-resident proprie-
tors, it hath the disadvantage, forasmuch as the best parts of
Antrim and Derry are possessed by the corporations of Lon-
don ; but in this it differs, that it has, in addition to the
Church Establishment,, a large body of Presbyterian Dis-
senters, following generally the doctrines and discipline of
the Church of Scotland, who have uniformly maintained our
orthodox doctrine till lately, when the Arian heresy a little
infected them ; from which, thank God, they are becoming
delivered. This also is the true difference between the
Eng-lish Dissenters and the Roman Catholics — who are the
same in respect to political disability — that they differ in
their ecclesiastical conditions ; the former drawing near to
the Scottish Establishment, which is essentially spiritual and
unformal ; the latter belonging to the Church of Rome, essen-
tially formal and unspiritual, and of that Church being, as I
take it, the most sensualized daughter. When to these in-
stances you add those which lie at our hand in this very city,
where no influence of new manners, customs, and society, can
reclaim the Catholics from abiding in their misery and tur-
bulence and ignorance ; and in other cities, as Glasgow, where,
though there was but one in a street, I was wont, in my
pastoral visits, to distinguish the house of a Catholic without
an inquiry, by its squalor and misery ; and in the country
parts, as in Lancashire, where the people are not to be re-
claimed by the sweet influence of rural scenery and country
life, that they should not shew the same symptoms of ignor-
ance, misery, and turbulence ; these causes together give
shrewd reason to suspect that the root of the evil is in their
religion, and would lead a sober and unprejudiced man to

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 435

search that matter to the bottom before proceeding further in
the inquiry; which I shall now do, endeavouring, as far as I
can, to forget what our fathers suffered from it, when they
protested against its errors, and delivered themselves from
its yoke, by the sacrifice of their most precious lives.

Now, it is no matter to this inquiry how that religion is
explained by doctors, and held forth in protestations of the
assembled hierarchy; of which one lately issued now lieth
before me, and speaketh like a lamb; because the inquiry
concerneth its influence upon the people, and therefore it is
requisite that we should study it in the aspect which it bears
to the people, and peruse its face, as from the position in
which they look upon it. For I am not ignorant that every
point of the orthodox Christian faith is contained under a
disguise in the doctrines of the Romish Church, and through
that disguise may be discerned by those whose spiritual per-
ception is quick. Nor am I ignorant, as an eloquent divine
of our own Church, in this very city, and before this very
society, set forth, that there exist in the Protestant com-
munions buddings of the same errors ; nay, that they exist in
the carnal nature of every true believer, and are only held
from bearing fruit unto sense and wickedness by the light
and life of spiritual truth. Nor am I ignorant that the
Catholic doctors are able to make most excellent apologies,
yea, and most able argments, for the better truth which is
hidden under the veil of their outward ceremonies. But
these demonstrations of ingenious men, I am bound wholly
to set aside, when I am considering the effect of the system,
not upon ingenious men, but upon the vulgar, the ignorant,
upon a people in the condition in which the people of Ireland
are found, and in which, to begin with, they are found in all
countries yet unconverted to the faith of Christ. The ques-
tion is, What is the Catholic religion to an Irish peasant .-* and
what effect is it likely to have upon his character } Away
then, ingenuity ; away, then, dogmatism ; come memory,
come truth, come reason to our help in this fair and open-
faced inquiry.

And now, that I may not be accused or blamed of bringing
to this question Protestant prejudices, as they are called, I

436 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

have a desire to keep, as much as is consistent with the
truth, upon the neutral ground of right reason and common
sense, and to shew unto all men what must be the effect of
a system of religion which applies itself to the sense, and
through the sense seeketh access to the spirit ; the which, if
any man deny to be the case of the Roman Catholic religion,
I cannot hold this argument with him, but must refer him
for ocular and auricular demonstration to their worship, from
the entry to the exit of which he will find himself thus, and
I may say in no other way, addressed : Holy water, to signify
the purification of the Spirit ; lighted tapers around the altar,
to denote the enlightening of the Spirit ; fumigated incense,
to denote the sweet odour of a pious soul ; tinklings of silver-
toned bells, to call for the aves and. paternosters of the
people ; statues and pictures, to save the mind the exercises
of abstraction, contemplation, or meditation ; a visible Deity
before which to bow the knee ; penance and bodily mortifica-
tion, to assist the contrition of the soul ; absolution purchased
by pilgrimages, as was the other day issued to all Papal
Christendom by their head ; and the immediate addresses
to God uttered in Latin, which the people understand not ;
and, in short, I hardly know anything which is not disguised
under a coverlet of sense. Now, I am not ignorant of the
pious accommodation, to an ignorant and sensual age, out of
which these types and symbols of spiritual things arose, in
order to retain some knowledge of the mysteries of Divine
truth in the apprehension of the people ; nor of the plausible
construction which can be put upon them by ingenious men
in these times, and the tolerant eye with which they are
regarded by those who should know better. Which pretexts
of necessity, and plausibilities of expediency, do only make
me the more desirous to shew unto your good understanding
that while this culture and honour of the sense remaineth in
the sanctuary, it is impossible to think that you can have
anything but sensuality out of it ; and that it is utterly vain
to think, by laws or by education, or by anything else, to
make that people moral, provident, refined, or spiritual, who
are accustomed in their religion to have the sense taken into
concert with the spirit, yea, preferred before it, as the vehicle

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 437

through which alone the spirit is to act. But it may be said,
is it not the same in ybur Protestant communions, and in-
deed altogether necessary, that every communication to the
spirit should pass through the vestibule of the sense, to which
the Word of God, and the preachers of it, must address
themselves, and through which alone one spirit is able to
hold communication with another ? Certainly it is true, that
the Father of spirits hath addressed His children through the
medium of the sense, writing to them in His Word, and
speaking to them by His ministering servants, and esta-
blishing, by outward sacraments, and an ordained priest-
hood, and other outward means, a visible Church ; and I am
far from denying that there are great and continual occasions
to idolatry among ourselves, and stumbling-blocks in the
way of true spiritual religion, which alone keepeth the sense
under due control. The Word of God, which is a Divine
attempt to awaken the spirit through the natural under-
standing and feeling, by preaching to the natural man the
best and surest knowledge of the past, the highest and most
sublime forms of thought, the most refined sentiments, and
the most pure and holy feelings of the soul ; this very Word
is continually used by Satan to entrap men into self-idolatry
of their natural understanding which apprehendeth, and their
natural heart which acknowledgeth, these revelations ; and so
to beget Unitarianism on the one hand, or sentimentalism on
the other, which are, in respect of outward appearance, only
one degree better than sensual superstition, — while, in respect
of faith, they are worse than Popery, which doth not deny,
but only veil the truth. And from running headlong into
this reason-worship, which is Infidelity, and which, if time
permitted, I could shew to be Atheism — that is, the denial of
a personal God — we of the Protestant churches can only
be preserved by the continual preaching of the personal
and Divine Word, the personal and Divine Spirit, to work
in us the true faith and understanding of that literal word
and natural Spirit which the natural man apprehendeth in
the Holy Scriptures. And forasmuch as I perceive very few
amongst us who are able to handle the various ofiices of the
Persons in the Trinity, and that the admiration and instruc-

438 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

tion of our preachers is generally given to the written Word,
and the intellectual propositions thereof, I have a strong
presentiment that we are destined to prove the bleak and
barren regions of infidelity, and to be deluged with the sore
and bloody plagues of God which dwell there. Also I am
willing to allow, that in the Protestant churches the minister,
by being the organ of communication between God and the
people, is apt to become to the ear and the eye and the
understanding of the people a blind intercepting the light of
the Divine Spirit, instead of being a mirror to reflect it ; and
that at this day, and especially in this city, there is a trust
in the word of a minister, and a fondness for his person, and
an acquiescence in his opinions, which savoureth of secta-
rianism rather than community, — is as unpropitious to strong
and steadfast faith, and as obnoxious to direct error, as the
priest influence and priestcraft so much complained of
amongst the Papists. Which avenue to sensual worship is
not to be shut otherwise than by self-denial on the part of
the preacher, the extinction of all party spirit, by instructing
the people that no one can teach savingly or profitably but
the Holy Spirit, and that the preacher is merely a voice or
personification of the written Word, which cannot of itself
save a soul, otherwise than by the application of the Spirit,
shewing it personified in the Son of God, who was the Word
that became flesh and dwelt among us. In like manner, the
visible sacraments and outward ordinances of religion which
address the sense, have all the like tendency to be substi-
tuted for the religion of the Spirit, of which they do but
present the outward guise, and are ofttimes so substituted
in our Protestant churches, especially in those who have pre-
served most of the form and circumstance, of the pomp and
ceremony and furniture, of the Latin Church, instead of
reaching back to the primitive Church. And this again is
only to be prevented by the continual demonstration of the
emptiness of all forms, and hollowness of all unspiritual acts
of worship, the danger of hypocrisies, and the continual course
of idolatry by - every avenue ; yea, we should trample upon
the very altar, if it is made an idol of, and raze the temple to
the ground, and empty ourselves, as Paul did, and shew the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 439

weakness of the written Word itself, and the unprofitableness
of all creeds, prayers, and confessions, when they become
idols to the people. Instead of which, I think we are all
gone mad with vanity, crying up our standards or no stand-
ards, our forms or no forms, our sects and peculiar differ-
ences ; — disputes which, while others of my profession think
fading away, I for one believe to be increasing amongst the
sects which compose the visible Protestant Church ; though
there be a few, a very few, as it were one of a family and two
of a tribe, who have their spiritual senses exercised to dis-
cern the brethren of the true spiritual Church, by whatever
name named, and in whatever country found.

Forasmuch, then, as the sense is ever awake to take occa-
sion by all means to oppress the Spirit, and useth even the
natural understanding and natural feeling to maintain the
ascendency, yea, and maketh an armoury of the very Word of
God ; and this amongst Protestants, who had their origin,
and have chosen it as their particular province in the Church
universal, to protest against the sensual idolatry which had
crept into the Romish Church ; how can it otherwise be, but
that, in that Church, which hath by our protestation been only
the more forced back upon the strongholds of its superstition
in the sense, and did, in the Council of Trent, sanctify and
perpetuate what before was regarded as abuse, there should
prevail amongst the ignorant people the most debasing ido-
latries, of a more refined kind amongst the more enlightened,
and with almost all, both priests and people, capital and fun-
damental errors upon the nature of that spiritual worship,
and the spring of that willing obedience which God requireth
of man. Nor is it to be doubted by any one who, in Ireland
or in France, or in Spain, hath looked upon the worship of
the common people, that it is one unvaried system of base
and abominable idolatry, unrelieved by taste, undignified by
knowledge ; that the priests are witnesses and promoters of
it ; and that if a priest should see the wickedness of it, he
could not help it, nor stand before it, but must either retire to
some regular order, and hide his pure and spiritual worship in
a cell, or, by declaring his convictions openly in his own
Church, become a martyr to the faith of Christ Jesus, or finally

440 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

protest, as did our fathers, against it, and betake himself to
the bosom of the Protestants, however weak in our faith, and
unspiritual in our lives we have become.

The great fundamental article, and most constantly opera-
tive idea, of the Christian religion is, the idea of God, as the
King eternal, immortal, and invisible, whom no eye hath seen,
neither can see, and to whom alone worship is due, who is in
all creation, but nowhere visible in it, according to the word
of the Lord : — " No man hath seen God at any time ; the
only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he
hath revealed him ;" — who is to be worshipped equally in
every place, though confined to no particular place, according
to that other word of the Lord, " The hour cometh, when ye
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, worship
the Father. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ;
for the Father seeketh such to worship him, • God is a spirit,
and they that worship him must ^yorship him in spirit and in
truth." This great idea of the spiritual worship of a Being
everywhere present to the spirit, and nowhere present to the
sense, hath the effect, when entertained in the spirit, of mak-
ing every act of knowledge concerning Him, every act of faith
upon Him, every act of prayer unto Him, every act of obedi-
ence unto Him, — that is, the whole of religion, to proceed
from the spirit, and to be done in the spirit, and consequently
to redeem the spirit from the flesh, and to quicken it with a
continual life. It also maketh this spirit-quickening worship
convenient to all times, and to all places, and to all com-
panies ; only requiring of the worshippers to sink into the
impervious and undisturbed secrecies of his own spirit, and
worship there in spirit and in truth. Yet doth it not fight
against stated times of private prayer, family devotion, or
public worship, which have their reasonableness and duty in
the laws of our domestic, social, and civil constitution, whereto
God hath accommodated His visible Church, which yet in
themselves have a continual tendency to become local and
circumstantial, sensual, and aesthetical, and cannot be pre-
served spiritual, but by the continual presence of the great
principle of all worship, that " God is a Spirit, and they that

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 44 1

worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Now,
observe how the Romanists, in their endeavour to help the
spirit, by means of the sense, hearing, imagination, and
understanding of the natural man, have wholly changed its
character. They have consecrated churches, as indeed have
others, and made pilgrimages to them to be accounted of
great merit ; they have consecrated times of worship, canoni-
cal times, matins, and vespers, days, and months, and years,
for solemn and more solemn worship ; they have consecrated
numbers, making the times of saying prayer a necessary con-
dition of their value in the sight of God ; they have made
worship an adjunct of time, place, and number : I might also
add, of gesture, and of clothing, and of everything the most
volatile and changeful. But this is not all: they made the
object of their worship visible, not by pictures and by statues
only, but by their doctrine of the sensual presence in the
sacrament ; which, however it be understood by the more
enlightened, is by the multitude, both of priests and people,
and I shrewdly conjecture by almost all, worshipped, and
bowed down to, and implored as the true and very presence
of God. This is the idolatry of idolatries, the stronghold of
the sense, the sanctification of it, the deification of it, the
destruction of the Spirit, and the sealing of its destruction
among all the people by whom it is stedfastly believed.

But that no one may accuse us of overleaping an import-
ant step of this argument, I shall follow out the effect which
this sensualizing of the idea of the Trinity hath upon the
details of religious service among the Roman Catholic
people. If Christ, the Mediator and Intercessor, had been a
distinct and separate substance from the Father, instead of
being a distinct person only and the same substance, then
the orthodox faith would have been liable to all the objec-
tions which the reason- worshippers bring against it, of making
another God, who intercepteth all the worship and reverence,
and homage, of the only living and true God. Which the
Catholics bring about in very deed and truth, by making
intercessors of sanctified men, who are distinct and separate
subsistences, and do intercept not only the honour of Christ,
but the very worship of God. Now no man shall persuade

442 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

me that the common people do not worship the Virgin Mary
and the saints, when I see them paying their devotions at the
shrines, addressing prayers to them by name, bestowing upon
them their gifts, keeping their days with most exact observ-
ance, and exhausting upon the tutelary saint of their village,
or of the house, or of the day, all the acts of their devotion :
and if any one say me nay to this conclusion, then I ask him
at what times, and seasons, and by what acts do the people
bestow their worship upon the one living and true God ? — for
I find the whole visible diligence of their devotion elsewhere
paid. You have, therefore, all the evils of a Polytheism to
begin with, their saints being in truth their very gods ; and to
such an extent hath this prevailed in Spain, that the various
parts of the body are conceived to be under the care of their
several saints, to whom, in all cases of infirmity, prayer is to
be made, and offerings, through the medium of the priest ;
and so it is, I know, also in Ireland with respect to holy
wells, as I myself have witnessed. Now, from idolatry what
evils spring, what judgments are threatened, and have been
executed upon it by God, and how very jealous the Lord is of
His honour, who knoweth not that hath perused the history
of Divine Providence since the world began. And, even with-
out a threat, or execution of a threat, it must be so, that
while this lasts, the minds of the people must remain in beg-
garly wretchedness, their invention asleep, their industry
idle, their knowledge childish, their whole soul slavish. For
what elevation of the soul can there be in addressing our
prayers unto one who was lately a man as we are ! What
idea of a constant, wise, and holy Providence, which is to be
counteracted in its courses by the intercession of a thousand
diverse agents, bribed to our aids with gifts and ornaments !
What redemption from the power of sin, by the help of one
outward to ourselves, who hath no power to enter into the
soul, and set its evil dispositions into a Divine and holy order!
What sorrow for sin, which can be compensated by a piece of
money! What idea of sin doth it presuppose when such a
system is practicable .-• What sense of duty, when the viola-
tion of every duty can be estimated .'' No wonder that the
murderer, who the other day clove his friend to the chine, in

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 443

order to possess the small contents of his till, should say in
the prison, " If I could but see my priest, I know I should
get to heaven."

It is very fine for our sentimentalists to speculate upon the
sublime effect which the pomp of the cathedral service hath
upon the mind, — I would rather say, upon the sense and the
mind acting by the sense : but I have no cathedral to take
my poor Irish people to, and so must dispense with the glory
of St Peter's and Notre Dame. I have but poor cabins of
meeting-houses with which to regale the sense of the people
for whose misery I plead. It is a sensual religion, without
the comforts or entertainments of the sense. There is none
of the witchery of art to hide their wickedness, but bare
blank wickedness. I have seen the poverty and meanness
of it. I have seen the violent passionate actions of the people,
and heard their incoherent mutterings, and witnessed their
prostrations and beatings of the breast, and felt that it was
very fearful to be offered unto God as His holy worship. Now
time would fail me to set forth at one hearing what must be
more patiently discussed, the various forms of evil which flow
in upon a people who give up, first, their ancient well-being to
the sense ; secondly, who allow their natural understanding
to be over-ruled by it ; thirdly, who allow the natural feelings
or sentiments of the heart to be tainted by it ; and, lastly,
who allow the faith of the Spirit also to be subjected thereto.
All this I have written out at length, and would fain declare,
were there somewhat of former latitude allowed to preach-
ing, in order to shew, upon the neutral ground of reason and
common sense, without any Protestant prejudices, what must
be the effect.

The second great idea or doctrine of revelation is, the in-
carnation of the eternal Son of God, in order to make known
to us the love of His Father and our Father, the offering of
Himself as a ransom for our sins, and the work of the Holy
Spirit in our sanctification. The mediatorial offices of the Son
of God, as our Prophet, Priest, and King, have, ever since the
beginning of the world, been believed in by the Church, and
regarded as the pillar and ground of the truth, being neces-
sary to manifest God's holiness, His mercy, and His love ; to

444 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

humble and empty the sinner of security, pride, and self-
righteousness ; to open the flood-gates of the selfish soul for
receiving the common light, common love, and common joy
of the Holy Spirit ; to create and continue a church or com-
munion of saints upon the earth, of which Christ is the only
head ; to offer its prayers, praises, and spiritual sacrifices in
the presence of God, and in the end to raise up from the dead,
and glorify for ever in the sight of all the universe the faithful
subjects of his mediatorial kingdom. Which manifold offices
of the second Person of the Divine Trinity for the redemption
and salvation of sinful men, were realised as facts, by the in-
carnation, brought into the visible for a short season, and again
carried into the invisible, that we might know the affections
towards man which are felt by Him who sitteth at the right
hand of God, and to whom all power in heaven and earth is
given of His Father. Which power He now executeth for
His faithful Church by the Holy Spirit, and shall manifest
when He shall come again in majesty and glory. The incar-
nation is not the sacrifice of Christ which was from eternity
offered up : it is not the power and glory of Christ which is
yet to come, neither is it the dispensation of the Holy
Spirit, which could not be till He had passed within the veil ;
but it is that which realiseth all these, and maketh them
events in the world's knowledge and experience. This is its
exact value, and no more. But to man in his fallen state
how valuable is this, forasmuch as everything must have
remained a mystery without this manifestation. Now, observe
how the Catholics make void this great doctrine in all its
points. First, by the doctrine of the real bodily presence in
the Eucharist, they perpetuate the Incarnation, by presenting
to the people a visible Saviour every time they perform mass,
and by pretending to offer Him up for their sins. We Pro-
testants, indeed, bungle this matter of the sacraments sadly :
and were it not for the writings of a former age, I think we
should, by our eternal discourses of the Lord in flesh, as if
that were the all and in all of Divine love, instead of being
but the revelation of the all in all, be in great danger of sen-
sualising and temporising the faith in which we are planted :
but the Catholics do this with a witness, by presenting, when-

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 445

ever the priest pleaseth, the very body of Christ, keeping their
disciples in that twilight of the Spirit, in which the apostles
were while yet the Man-God was before them, which made it
necessary -and profitable for them that He should go away.
Then they have done away with His office of the Prophet, by
depriving the people of the reading of the Scriptures, and
teaching them the matters thereof very scantily ; and com-
monly by sensible representations of the scenes from His nati-
vity to His crucifixion, making a sort of panorama, or wax-
work representation, of His acts and sufferings. They have
deprived them of His priestly office, by interposing the merits
of saints, and the intercession of saints, and the value of
masses to deliver souls and intercede for transgressors. They
have robbed Him of His kingly office, by constituting the
Pope head of the Church, which is now waiting for her Head
to appear, and setting upon the head of the Pope the triple
crown, to indicate the power he hath in heaven, and earthy
and hell. So that Christ is nothing, and the Pope is every-
thing that Christ should be in the sight of the people. It is
a grand endeavour of man to constitute before the time that
kingdom which Christ is hereafter to set up. Wherever the
idea of power is incorporated with the Church, it leaves nothing
to be hoped for from Messiah's second coming ; and wherever
other intercession and other merit is received as a doctrine of
the Church, it leaves nothing of substantial consolation to be
derived from His first coming. And in that degree in which
any Church or any Christian is denuded of the idea of worldly
powdr, or human merit, in that degree is that Church or
Christian built upon the faith of Christ's first coming, and
the hope of His second coming. For power is the strongest
desire in the soul, and, being voluntarily humbled with Christ
in His humiliation, doth feed itself with satisfaction, in the
hope of His second coming. And the sense of justice or
righteousness, being the health of every soul, that soul which
seeth its own worthlessness, must look to Him who instructeth
it therein, for a fresh fountain of righteousness to be supplied
from, else is it most miserable.

This leads us to observe the third great doctrine of revela-
tion which the Catholics have made void by their traditions

446 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

namely, the office of the Holy Ghost in quickening the spiri-
tual life, and nourishing it from the fountain of wisdom and
righteousness, of light and life, which is in Christ Jesus. For
this our Lord desired to go away, that His disciples might be
taught in the Spirit, by the Holy Spirit which He was to
send unto them. And not until He went away did the Holy
Spirit come in the plenitude of His inspiration to build up
the Church upon the foundation of Christ Jesus ; — which He
did in the beginning, by giving outward visible demonstra-
tions of His power and operations, in the gifts of tongues, in
the gifts of healing, in the gifts of interpretation, in the gifts
of prophesying, and whatever other miraculous endowments
the primitive Church was clothed withal. Now, understand
you that these visible and noticeable acts of the Spirit were
to serve the same end as the incarnation of Christ, were, so to
speak, his incarnation, or those visible and noticeable things
which might make His offices a historical fact in the Church,
which might be reported unto us, in order to strengthen our
faith in the Holy Spirit, and teach us by outward emblems
what His offices were ; by the gift of tongues teaching us that
the Spirit is a mouth and a tongue unto the believing soul,
and the harmonizer of all tongues into one ; by the gift of
healing, that He is a healer and comforter to the soul ; by
the gift of interpretation, that He is the interpreter of the
word of Christ, taking and shewing it unto our souls, by the
gift of prophesying, that He is the Spirit of the Christian
ministry ; — and so forth, through all His spiritual offices,
which, that they might be realised in historical and marvel-
lous manner, took these miraculous forms to begin with, even
as Christ took a body of flesh and blood to begin His media-
torial work withal. Now, observe how they have made void
this doctrine by their sensualities. First, they have made that
manifestation of the Spirit to the sense of man perpetual,
holding miracles of all kinds to be in the Church unto this
day, and so making the Holy Spirit visible, as they have made
the Father and the Son, In the second place, they have
taken away His office of interpreting the Word, and given it to
the visible Church, whose opinion and judgment, though we
are much to revere them, we dare not take as the voice of

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 447

God. Thirdly, they have taken away His office of convincing
the soul of sin, and moving it to prayer, by raising confession
to a sacrament, and making visible catalogues of all sins, and
of their purgations ; whereas confession, and the receiving of
confession, and the absolution of the soul, are all the work of
the Spirit. And as to the working of righteousness by the
Spirit, it is clean avoided, by the doctrine of outward works,
and acts of penance, and acts of supererogation, and whatever
outward forms of things they have substituted for the spiritual
realities. My soul gathers wrath and indignation at the medi-
tation of all these idolatries ; my spirit is vexed within me ;
and I am often moved to dash away this meditation of cool
and temperate reason which I have undertaken, and in
which I have thus far persevered against the temper of my
mind.

Now, whereas I believe that the Christian religion is, in its
true form and perfect influence over the spirit, exactly accord-
ing as the worship and offices of the Three Persons in the
Trinity are preached unto, believed by, and constantly present
to the people, I might stop here and go no further into detail,
in order to shew how in all the wholesome and blessed appli-
cations to the mind, to the heart, and indirectly to the sense,
which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, make to mankind
by the quickening of our spirits, must necessarily be lost, must
necessarily be changed in their character, and made unwhole-
some and mischievous, when these offices of the personal God-
head are rendered out of spiritual language into sensual lan-
guage, brought out of the invisible into the visible, by the ill-
judged accommodations of priests unto an ignorant people, or
rather by the pusillanimous yielding of the true spiritual inter-
pretation to the hunger and thirst of the vulgar and popular
mind, for intellectual, aesthetical, and sensual, rather than
spiritual representations.

And certes it is not against the Roman Catholic Church
that I level these censures, nor for the Hibernian Society that
I make this advocation ; I have another enemy to contend
with, even Satan, enthroned in the citadel of sense, and woo-
ing the beautiful world, wedding the mind and heart of men
to the sensible and visible forms of things ; and I have another

44S DISCOURSES DELIVERED

to plead for, even the poor sin-oppressed, Satan-ridden spirit
of man, whom Christ hath come to redeem and save. And I
do feel, as hath been said, that we Protestants stand in almost
equal peril with these Catholics, which is not the less danger-
ous because it is not so monstrous in appearance ; and I do
wish in my heart, that the Roman Catholic Church Avould
send forth some very spiritual men, who might retaliate upon
us, those acts of love which our very active, but not very
spiritual men, are inflicting upon them. For, I believe, before
God, and in His protection, I dare to utter it, that my own
Church is translating spiritual truth into intellectual forms as
zealously as ever the Papists did translate them into sensual
forms, and that the " dry rot of infidelity" is working as hastily
her destruction, as the fermentation of sensual lust is working
the downfall of the Papacy. And I believe, moreover, that in
the ruling party of the Church of England, there is as much
of formality and Pharisaism, and as much if not more hatred
of spiritual truth than in the Papacy, which hath retreats
where piety pours itself out unseen. And that, take it for all
in all, the Church of England, though pure in doctrine, and
devout in prayer, hath, from total want of discipline, no right
to be considered as a church, but as a mere national institu-
tion where Christian doctrine is preached. And I believe,
moreover, that the Dissenting bodies are becoming generally
so political and sectarian, not to say radical in their spirit,
and so invaded with popular feeling, so commanded and over-
awed by it, that the Spirit of God is very closely confined,
and sorely grieved, and much quenched amongst them. And
to the evangelical body of the Church of England, which I
did once look upon as a star in the gloom, and to the spiritual
of all churches and sects (for it is the work of the Spirit blow-
ing where He listeth), I have this to say, that if they will
preach less a dogmatical, and more a personal gospel ; that
is, present the persons of the Godhead, thus purposing, thus
speaking, and thus acting, for men, rather than the abstract
purpose, word, and action, if they will go about to separate a
Church from the worldly mass by preserving the sacraments,
those bulwarks of the visible Church, full of meaning, and
pure in application, as far as man can preserve them, the Lord

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 449

may be pleased to make them the bearers of His standard ;
but if not, (and faint, faint are my hopes,) if they go about to
court the favour of princes and prelates, and put their trust in
their growing numbers, or in their Shibboleths of shallowest
doctrine, or in their favourite preachers and approved books,
then let them mark that it was spoken and said unto them by
one that loves them much, though Him they have little loved,
that they also shall die away like an untimely birth, and bring
forth no fruit of reformation to the land ; and shall be cast
out with that general casting out of the Gentile Church which
is now at hand, when the Lord, weary with the obstinate and
incurable rebellion of the Gentiles, shall visit them as He here-
tofore visited the Jews ; and bring in the Jews, as He hereto-
fore brought in the Gentiles, of His free grace, and give to
them and the election of the Gentiles according to grace, the
kingdom and glory everlasting, of which He hath spoken by
the mouth of all His prophets since the world began.

Into which appropriation by the sense of all things to itself,
if we were to inquire a little, we shall find it to be at the very
core, and to be the very bane of our fallen nature ; that it is a
law strong and steadfast, which carries with it the natural mind,
and turneth all its faculties from the spiritual Creator and the.
invisible world to the creatures and the visible world ; which
nourisheth the faculties and tastes and appetites, and other
affections of the body, and in a manner deifies them, making
their works, whether mechanical or ingenious, to be admired
and held in reverence, and wholly exalting the visible world,
and the properties thereof, as the fit and proper subject of
man's study, of man's delight and appropriation, and that of
all which the issue is sin and death ; wherefore this evil bias
of fallen man is called the law of sin and death in his mem-
bers ; and the mind with which it serves itself is called the
carnal or fleshly mind ; and the fruits of it are called the
fruits of the flesh, which are these : — "Adultery, fornication, un-
cleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance,
emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, mur-
ders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like." Contrary thereto
is the law of the spirit, which is not able in the fallen creature
to have free course, by reason of the bondage of its will, and
VOL. III. 2 F

450 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

that original propensity to evil, which is the condition of a
fallen creature, but is redeemed and delivered by the power
of the Son of God, the original Creator of the spirit and of all
things, who hath manifested the method thereof in His gospel,
and made known to us the utter incapacity of nature to under-
take the work, and the indispensable necessity of Divine power,
which is therefore called grace, because it is freely offered to
us without money and without price, and wrought in us by
the abiding ministry of the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from
the Father and the Son, and brings with Him into our hearts
the good-will and gracious ministry of all the Persons in the
Godhead, whereby we are created anew after the image of
God in righteousness and true holiness. The spirit, being
thus born again by power from on high, puts forth its proper
energy, in conformity with the will of God, and fights against
the law of the sense, according to the words of the apostle,
" The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of sin and death." As the spirit grows in
strength upon the milk of the Word, and feels its strong refuge
in the divine Persons, and is able to hold communion with
them by prayer, faith, and action, it cometh to pass that it
reclaimeth and recovereth the various faculties of understand-
ing and of feeling from the dominion of the senses, and turneth
them to the discovery of God in every region of the visible
world of providence and of grace, filling the outward forms
and sloughs of things with spiritual substance, and beholding in
the changing appearances and phenomena, the unchanging
realities of the Divine purpose and goodness which they
express, and so redeeming time, place, and circumstance to
spiritual uses, and living a spiritual life in the midst of wicked
visible things ; all which cometh from the original fountain
of Christ's righteousness, and floweth into our souls by the
channel of faith, opened and kept open by the Holy Ghost.
And " the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffer-
ing, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."

Now, forasmuch as this is all my philosophy, all my poli-
tical economy, all my legislation, and, in my opinion, con-
taineth every good fruit which can grow upon the stock of
human nature, I have nothing else to offer for the restoration

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 4 5 1

of the health of Ireland, affected with superstition and all its
debasing fruits of sensuality ; nor for the restoration of the
health of Scotland, fast hastening into the worship of the
understanding, with its various consequences of self-conceit,
hardness of heart, barrenness of spirit, and formality ; nor for
the restoration of the health of England, distracted by a
thousand contending sects, who work together a fermenting
mass of religious and political confusion, out of which no man
knows certainly what good and evil is to come, but that prob-
ably much of both is likely to arise. And therefore it be-
comes me, after having stated, according to my notion, the
source of the evil, to set forth by what means these spiritual
remedies ought to be applied to Ireland, seeing I do believe
that it is only these which will accomplish the work of its
regeneration.

11. With respect to the remedy to be applied to a people
that have been suffered to fall into the low state of super-
stition and sensual degradation to which Ireland hath come,
every man will speculate according to the faith he is of, and
the light whicli God hath given him. Those that have no
faith in a revelation of the will of God, and in a providence
fulfilling the same, or only a nominal and inactive faith
therein, as is the case with all our political economists, and
almost all our statesmen, can of course look only to the
secondary causes with which they are acquainted, and in the
operation of which they have faith ; in which lore of secondary
causes being but indifferently read, it is a poor and beggarly
accoutit they can give of the matter ; but such as it is it must
be mentioned and considered, because of the noise it has
made, and the likelihood that it will in whole or in part be
adopted. Being ignorant of the spiritual world, and most of
them ignorant that they have a spirit, and none of them be-
lieving in its redemption, and regeneration, and mighty power
over the carnal mind and the fleshly lusts, they conceive all
religions to be much about a par with respect to political and
social advantages, and cannot endure that our fathers should
have made a difference, which they regard as the proof of
their ignorance and prejudice, and to do away with which they

452 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

regard as the chief work of pohcy and statesmanship. And
I blame not the men who know no better concerning the his-
tory of their country and of Europe, and of the Papacy and
of the Reformation ; for the mole must not be blamed because
he pierceth not the heavens with his vision, as doth the soaring
eagle ; but I pity that this island should have come to such a
pass as to prefer such ignorant minds of yesterday, such men
of money and accounts, such ungodly and unspiritual men, to
the honourable office of their representatives ; and I pray God
to give them the spirit of discernment, and the spirit of zeal
for their best and dearest prerogatives, as a nation of reformed
Christians. We have deserved it by a century of bickering and
contention concerning paltry party distinctions of Whig and
Tory, and total neglect of the interests of His Church, for
which our fathers were so zealous as not to count their lives
dear unto themselves, so that it might be defended from the
paw of the wolf; so that the Protestant Church of Ireland
was suffered to be managed like a close ministerial burgh,
or something worse, and sheep-shearers, sheep-slayers were,
with exceptions too few to be mentioned, poured upon the
idolatrous people ; whose idolatry was suffered to root and
root itself more firmly ; whose darkness was allowed to engross
the people more and more darkly, because the questions of
Papal idolatry or Protestant worship was not of importance
sufficient enough to take up a thought in a century which was
ushered in by the wits of Queen Anne, and seen out by the
infidelity of Paine and the French Revolution. Ah, my God !
Thou hast been very patient ; Thy long-suffering hath been
very great ; it is time, yes, it is time that Thou shouldst
arise: who can deny that the time is fully come 1 And accord-
ingly, when the time of shaking the idols of the nations, and
giving the sign of their downfal, came, at the close of their
appointed period of time, times and a half, in the French
Revolution, idolatrous Ireland felt the shock, and hath been
shook still; and idolatry-tolerating Britain hath almost had a
third part of her dominion rent away from her. If any man
ask me why insurrection arose among the Catholics of Ire-
land, the most ignorant part of our people, and the least per-
vaded by revolutionary principles ; and why disaffection still

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 453

sheweth its hydra head in those parts ? I answer him, Because
of the idolatry of the one part of the people, and the careless-
ness of the other part to protest against that idolatry, and
above all, because of the indifference of the British Govern-
ment to the question of God's worship within this dominion,
which is the chief and great question of all His controversies,
it came to pass that He sent into the midst of that unhappy
land the scourge of civil war, and keepeth there the mouth of
the volcano still open, and ready to send forth its destructive
fires. But our governors, untaught by experience, unread in
the history of God's providence over the nations, doting and
dreaming on about questions of commerce and trade and
finance, as if mammon were the King of kings and Lord of
lords, are now come to the awful crisis of proposing to legiti-
mitise the idolatry — not only to endure it but to patronize it
— and some go so far as to propose to hire and pay it, I am
not a politician, and do not choose to intermeddle in their
angry quarrels ; but I am a minister of God, consecrated by
authority, and invested with power in this nation to declare
the whole counsel of God, for the instruction of all ranks and
offices of men within this realm ; and being now called, in the
providence-of God, to make known unto this people the ills of
Ireland, I do certainly declare, that the greatest, sorest, and
most hopeless of her evils, is the remedy which by all means
they are endeavouring to force upon her in everyway; namel}',
the making no difference between the sensual idolatry of the
Papacy and the spiritual worship of the living and true God ;
for not only was this the spirit of the debates which were
holden thereupon, and the issue of the measure which was
then contemplated, but it is the spirit of all who take to them-
selves the name of Liberal, and has been embodied with great
dexterity in a scheme of parochial education, which, being
drawn up by a royal commission, now lies before the members
of our Parliament, and through them has come into general
circulation, whereof the motto is this : Hold the scales even
between the Catholic and the Protestant, Be at pains that
the Catholic child imbibes not Protestant opinions, and that
the Protestant child imbibes not Catholic opinions ; it is not
fair that advantage should be given to either party ; that is.

454 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

the question is njade one of party, not of principle, as if there
were no principle involved in the matter, and all our fathers
founded, the State and Church, were a worn-out parchment.
Indifference it is, quintessence of just and impartial indiffer-
ence to all that is at issue between the Protestant and the
Catholic. The plan is, in every parish to set up a school, and
have all the children taught letters and learning together in
one place ; and for that purpose to have two teachers upon
an equal footing in those parishes where Protestant and
Catholics are about equal ; and where the disparity is great,
to have a Catholic or Protestant teacher, with an usher of the
other denomination, according to the preponderance of either
party. That there should be a book of extracts from the
Scriptures read in the school, consisting of such parts as
Catholic and Protestant could agree upon ; but no comment
or enforcement of the teacher or usher permitted thereon, at
whose hand no instruction in religion is to be permitted at
all, but the use of the school is to be left to the Catholic priest
to teach the Catholic doctrines to the children two afternoons
in the week, and the same to the Protestant two other after-
noons. Now this is certainly equity, whatever else it be ; it
is most certainly dealing it with a fair hand between Catholic
and Protestant ; and, if adopted, it will most certainly put it
for ever to rest, whether this country regards the questions of
the Reformation to be more than idle tales. To examine this
scheme of education, I undertake not, leaving it to tell the
tale of its own wisdom or folly ; and I have but introduced it
in passing, to shew that it is no question concerning seats in
Parliament, or offices in the army and navy, that is now at
issue ; but whether the Catholic religion is not, to all intents
and purposes, as good, righteous, and creditable a thing in a
state as the Reformed. Ah, thou wretched Church of Ireland !
to have permitted this to be a question, thou nurse of idle-
ness, thou that hast been an incubus upon the breast of the
people sleeping the sleep of death, thou deservest no better,
and canst hardly expect any better, for thy conduct for a
century, than to be treated as no better, if not worse, than the
idolatry and abomination itself Thou shouldst have made
it apparent to the blindest, as the Church of Scotland hath

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 455

that there is a mighty difference between a superstition and a
reh'gion to the well-being of a state. But so it is with thee ;
our liberal men pecking at thee, and seeking to spoil thee of
thy wealth and possessions, which thou hast too much loved ;
to deprive thee of the children over whom thou wast long ago
established the nursing mother ; and to raise to the level of thy
dignity that base idolatry and superstition, for the extinction of
which thou was established, and hast been so long maintained.
I have little heart to defend thee, thou worthless, fruitless sister;
and were more willing to blame and censure thee, as the most
unworthy of the Protestant family ; but that I perceive in thee
repentance for thy backslidings, and the manifestation of a
great zeal in behalf of those idolaters whom thou hast so long
neglected. But even though thou wert but a leafless, sapless
stump, methinks thou wert a less encumbrance than the upas-
tree of the spiritual world, which these husbandmen of the
state are so fond to praise and to defend from injury, and to
water and to cultivate.

I do consider all these schemes which are brewing in the
minds of our liberal politicians to be engendered partly of
the most gross ignorance with respect to the influence of the
Catholic religion upon the character of its votaries, of the
utmost scepticism with respect to the influence of religion
altogether, and a rooted error that religion hath no right to
intermeddle with, or to be recognised by, political measures ;
measures which are then best when they treat all religions
alike ; that it is an unfair advantage to take of the infant
mind to possess it with any particular inclinations to one or
to another ; and the more it can be avoided from the educa-
tion of children and the government of men, so much the
better. In short, the strong stream of the cultivated mind of
this land is to divide and separate itself from the mind of
God, and to carry with it all over which it hath an influence.
And it is too late in the day to resist it with effect ; it will
have, and it will obtain its way. It will force all the barriers
of the constitution, which are every one of them builded on a
religious basis, and it will carry things with one general deluge
of loose liberality and licentiousness. For it cannot be ex-
pected but that God will give it way : He will not always

456 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

resist : few are those of His servants who do now resist.
The most steadfast of His servants are a Httle slack at the
work ; and the greater part of them are sapped at the foun-
dations. It is not known how all the barriers of faith are
even now corrupted, and how near to giving way and breaking
up they are. God, I say, will give us up to their violence :
He will help them ; He will turn and help them ; because we
are a worldly, money-worshipping people, and a self-magnify-
ing Church ; have Christ in our mouth, but our own wondrous
exploits in our heart. And God is not acknowledged in the
counsels of our nation ; and the name of His saints hath
become a byword of scorn : and we are grown to be a poor,
ignorant, sin-laden, self-sufficient people. The Lord will give
occasion, and the enemy will serve himself of it; and the
saints shall be tried as silver is tried. I judge, therefore, the
time of remedy by counsel to be past, and the time of remedy
by judgment to be at hand ; and, therefore, what I now speak
is rather a voice of warning to those who are in like manner
disposed to stand forth and war. For we are not now dallying
in the pleasure-grounds of ease, or in the highway of safety; but
we are come near unto the brink, and alarm is the feeling proper
to him who would himself be saved, or who would save others.
No remedy can have any effect which doth not at once
address itself to the evil of the sensual religion which cultivates
and sanctifies the sense, and oppresses the spirit ; but those
remedies of education and policy which they propose, go upon
the principle that there is no evil in a sensual religion, but
rather a good, forasmuch as they desire to promote it to some
new point of advantage and dignity. The remedy is to attack
the evil at once, and to contend with it face to face, and drive
it out. Suffer not the idolatry to be ; for so long as it is, and
where it is, God will send a blight and barrenness of all grace
and goodness ; and not to them only, but to all who patronise
it. Suffer it not to be : fight against it as more terrible than
the pestilence or famine, or the sword of the invader ; because
it is that which bringeth all these instruments and executioners
of the Lord's anger upon a people. Give it no toleration in
your spirit : no, none ; unless you would tolerate Satan's host,
whose standard is idolatry. Tolerate it, indeed, if you would

ON PUBLIC OCCA SIGNS. 45 7

tolerate ignorance, darkness, brutality, insurrection, civil war ;
which if you hate and hinder, then also hate and hinder
idolatry and superstition.

But how fight against it ? Not with sword nor fire. No,
but with that which is proper to its destruction and abolition.
Sword will not slay it, nor torture make an end of it. I
would not retaliate upon the idolaters their treatment of our
fathers. Neither do I exhort to or recommend pains and
penalties as an instrument of the destruction of superstition.
I will ofo as far as the Liberals in this kind of toleration.
Nevertheless, I would destroy it, utterly destroy it, by that
which is effectual to destroy it. And if I were a statesman,
or representative of this land, I would meditate by night and
by day — I would utter whatever seemed to me most likely to
root it out. Now, of these means which have been found
effectual to the destruction of this abomination, the first is
the preaching of the Word, for the end of which our fathers
planted a Protestant Church in Ireland, which our political
reformers regard with evil eye, now when its services are
mainly called for. Let the ministers of that Church, who
know their calling of shepherds, and are not wolves in sheep's
clothing, be stirred up to discharge it, not only for their scanty
flocks, but for the population of their bounds, testifying in
all ways and in all places against the idol-shepherds ; not
giving place to them for a moment, not compromising the
truth for any sake, but rather exaggerating it, after the man-
ner of an ancient prophet ; for the days are cloudy, and the
times are evil. You may as well think to charm the ocean
with a song, as to dissolve Popish errors without strife, a strife
of argument ; and wherever they have had the upper hand, it
hath soon been made a strife of blood. Therefore, who saith
by peace you shall prevail, speaketh a lie : whoso saith by
gentle compromises you shall take them, and by the manly and
steadfast declaration of truth you shall lose them, doth utter
a lie. They have possessed strongholds of error, which the
armoury of truth alone can capture ; truth set in array, truth
set in battle-array. If truth was ever called upon to be a
champion, and a champion-errant, it is in Ireland at this time,
where error hath engrossed the great multitude of souls, and

458 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

is bringing forth deeds of darkness, and is extending his
dominion of darkness more and more wildly. For every
armed man now kept to rein in these fierce passions which
their superstition hath begotten, give me an armed minister
of truth, and there shall soon be peace and quietness; give me
one for every hundred ; give me but one for every thousand, who
shall be at liberty to go forth, and with sufficient knowledge fur-
nished, and with ready skill accomplished, and after a few years
of hard fighting, you shall see the troops of the alien discomfited.
If these views of human nature and of religion be just, and
these illustrations drawn from the observation and history of
the world be correct, and God knows we have sought to de-
clare nothing but the simple truth, it follows most clearly,
that whatever doth tend to take these veils of sense from the
spirit of the people, will best deliver them from the sensual
and brutal condition in which they are found. To which end
I know nothing so efiectual as the preaching of the Word of
God, which is given on express purpose, and by God's Spirit
endowed with power, to redeem the spirit from the dominion
of the flesh and of the carnal mind ; which spirit being
redeemed, gives rise to another law opposite to the law of sin
and death, which is in our members. The evil of the present
system is, that it is a compensation in sensible merits for sen-
sible offences ; so that the sense is honoured to atone for the
sense, to enlighten the sense, to remedy the sense ; and the
more wicked it is in the guilt contracted, the more it is honoured
in the guilt removed. While this system exists, you legislate,
you educate, you civilise the customs, you improve the arts,
and propagate the sciences in vain ; of which the good fruit
must first be realised in sapping the sensual religion. They
will profit just as far as they emancipate the people from that
basest of servitudes, which they may do, yea, and will do, but
will plant no other religion in its stead, so that you will have
the bitter edge of infidelity laid against the throat of supersti-
tion, and religion will perish in the conflict ; which might have
been preserved, had you, by the ministry of God's precious
Word, strengthened the spirit to cast off the foul and de-
formed leprosy with which the beauty of religion hath been
deformed.

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 459

And I perceive that this is to be the issue, if the same
spirit be shewn by another House of Commons which was
shewn by the present ; to maintain the superstition, and in
some sort to legalise it, yea, and to reward its services, or hire
its loyalty — (Of the plan proposed by the Commissioners for
Education, I say nothing now, as I recently had an oppor-
tunity of bringing it into contrast with the scheme of paro-
chial education employed by our Church over my native
land) ; — I make no doubt that the present evil condition of
Ireland will work on until a crisis comes which nothing but
preaching and teaching the truth will avert. Had the Pro-
testant Church of Ireland done its duty, as the Presbyterian
Church of Scotland heretofore did, there would have been as
few Catholics in Ireland, and those of as harmless a kind, as
there are in Scotland at this day. If there was anything to
put in its stead, I would say that Church has deserved excom-
munication as much as ever the Church of Rome did. And
our governors who have used it for their wicked policies have
amply paid the penalty in a troubled and rebellious people.
But, notwithstanding all their venal acts, the Lord hath looked
graciously upon the Church, and quickened in it some seed
which is beginning to refresh the wilderness. To such faithful
ministers of the gospel of all denominations, but especially of
the Established Church, I look as to the hopes of Ireland. If
they will go into the highways and byways, and amongst
the hamlets, and into the cabins of the people, teaching and
preaching unto them the gospel of Christ for their salvation ;
and nothing scrupling, through fear or false delicacy, to expose
to the uttermost the errors of the Romish superstition ; there
can be no doubt that a divine blessing will be poured out
upon them, and upon the people of Ireland, for the sake of
the gospel which they preach. I have far less hopes of schools
than of the ministry — far less of reading than of preaching.
The schools are neutralised by the fear of being thought to
proselytise. They are supported by a multitude ; and there
is no multitude in these days, of which the greater part are
not liberal, that is, patient of Roman Catholic errors. And,
therefore, I have the less hope from schools. These Hiber-
nian schools are certainly the best of them all, because they

46o DISCOURSES DELIVERED

have been the least timorous of giving offence to the Hberal
spirit of the times, and maintain readers among the people.
But they also must be more decided before they can receive
the full horn of the divine blessing. The wounds are too dan-
gerous to be tampered with. Nothing but a bold hand is of
any service ; and I have ceased to expect any boldness or
determination from any of our societies. They do all that
such unwieldy and heterogeneous machines can do. But it is
to individuals that I look, acting under the authority of God's
Word, and Spirit, and Church ; men who, being rightly quali-
fied and regularly ordained to the ministerial office, will go
forth as prophets amongst the people, and denounce the pro-
phets of lies, and the idol shepherds, which the constituted
authorities are disposed to patronise.

The effect of such an uncompromising and unaccommo-
dating ministry of the gospel, would be to set up in arms all
the guardians of the superstition, who would come forth to
defend their ways and works of darkness ; and between the
two contending parties, the people would want a mediator
and intercessor, to whose tribunal they might carry the
appeal. And what so proper for this end as the words of the
great Mediator recorded in the Holy Scriptures, which must
therefore be one of the confederates in this warfare against
idolatry .-• Not that the Scriptures by themselves will do the
work of converting men, and building up churches, which is
the great prejudice of Protestants in these days, whereby
they give the Catholics a great handle of advantage ; but
that, according to the great principle of the Reformers, when
anything concerning faith is in controversy, they are the last
and only appeal. It never was intended that a book should
of itself convert the world, else no more than a book would
have been given ; and it never hath happened that the Bible
of itself hath wrought any great reformation in the Church.
It is the spirit of man, quickened by the Spirit of God,
through means of the Bible, and with the same means going
forth to quicken other men, that every good work hath been
wrought in the Church by God. And, for my part, I shall
never allow it to be said, uncontradicted in my presence, that
the reading of the Word, without the preaching of the Word,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 461

is likely to accomplish anything good or great in the Church
of Christ. It is after this idolatry of the book, the Bible, that
the ignorance of Protestants runneth, whence there never was
such zeal for the letters and leaves of the book, nor such
plenty of them diffused abroad ; and I believe in my heart,
there never was less zeal for the spiritual treasures which it
containeth, never a more insecure faith, never a more scanty
knowledge of them. Oh that I saw some of that zeal which
hath overspread the world for the written Word, transferred
to the living Word ; and some of that diligence about the
verbal propositions and natural applications of the former,
turned to the spiritual communion and living presence of the
latter. The book, the Bible, is fast hastening to work on us
Protestants similar effects to those which have been wrought
upon the Catholics by the wafer-god. For our God is rather
become a number of orthodox doctrines, or evangelical pro-
positions, than the personal Creator, and Preserver, and Re-
deemer of all things, who hath, by the written Word, sent us,
as it were, a gracious invitation and welcome to come and
spend our spiritual being with Him, and rich offers of every
blessing, if we will yield our consent. But it is no more. It
is not God, it is not man, it is but the gracious invitation of
God to man, and, therefore, it must not be exaggerated into
everything. Nevertheless it is most necessary in the present
condition of Ireland, and wherever a controversy hath been
excited, or must be excited, which is the case at present, and
must be more the case before any real and substantial im-
provement in their condition is eftected. Where false coin is
circulating with good, you must have a touchstone, as well
for the honour of the good as for the detection of the evil,
because there is doubt of all. The Romish priests, by in-
stinct aware of the opinions which would thus be put out
of circulation, have already resisted the diffusion of the
Scriptures, and with many arguments to which our Protestant
idolatry of the book giveth plausibility. But when they
argue the inability of the people to draw thence a sound code
of faith, and the tendency of the unlettered and uneducated
to bring in their own narrow and partial interpretations,
instead of the orthodox interpretations of the Church, our

462 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

answer should be, We admit it ; and therefore we intend to
accompany or to follow them as we can, with faithful
preachers, who shall lead them into the right interpretation
of the Church, from those mazes of error with which you have
perplexed every doctrine, and every precept of the Divine
Word. Oh for a few preachers who, possessing in their
heart the written Word, quickened by the Holy Spirit, would
go forth upon this errand, and, casting down the gauntlet of
defiance to all the priests of Baal, would offer themselves to
every proof that is possible of understanding, of devotion,
of personal suffering, of the written Word, of the history of
the Church, of the div'erse characters of the worshippers, then
would I have hope that the Bible would be sought, would be
read, would be quickened ; but without such preachers, I do
not believe that it will work there, or elsewhere, the fruits
that are looked for from it. The proof of what I say is to
be found in the effect produced by the public controversies of
the last year in quickening the demand for scriptural know-
ledge, although these controversies were only upon the out-
works of divinity, and not upon the great questions which
stir and agitate the soul. Once bring transubstantiation, and
image worship, and works of supererogation, and priestly
absolution, and purgatory, and such questions into issue, and
call them by their proper names of falsehood, superstition,
and idolatry, and you shall witness a ferment of soul, and a
calling out for knowledge, which I defy the chains of Satan,
or the world, to bind or restrain. They will cry out, Com-
motion, civil war, and bloodshed ! and I answer. Come what
will, men's souls must be saved ; and under the present sys-
tem of idolatry, men's souls can hardly be saved : though
Satan should bring pestilence, famine, and sword, and threaten
all their terrors in the train of the gospel, still the gospel
must be preached ; though the world should be shaken, and
the earth be removed, the gospel must be preached. And
why? because it is the ark of the salvation of men against
all these judgments of the Lord, which come upon the earth,
not by the gospel, but by that wickedness which the gospel
alone can destroy. Who are those seducers that talk con-
tinually against the bold voice of truth, because of the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 463

troubles that it may engender ? They arc the men who for-
merly said of Christ and His apostles, " Csesar will come, and
take away our state and nation." One greater than Caesar
came, and took away that state and nation for which they
were afraid ; even He whom they did silence and persecute
with these intriguing speeches, which savoured of mercy, but
were full of spitefulness; which were outwardly for mildness,
but the covert of the blackest cruelty. And I will tell you
this one word, that if the mediation of faithful ministers of
truth interfere not between God and idolatrous Ireland, He
will bring famine, and pestilence, and civil war again, as He
hath already brought them ; and they shall reach unto thy
land also, O England, who hath power over that idolatry, and
hast basely used it for thy political conveniency, instead of
peopling every parish with a Boanerges, a son of thunder,
who might make known the terrors of the Lord, and the
coming doom upon all who adhere to the mother of harlots,
and have traffic in her merchandise.

To the manly instruction of the ripened mind by preach-
ing that royal ordinance of the kingdom, and satisfaction of
their doubts, by appeal unto Scripture, that end of all con-
troversy, I add, as my last means of relieving Ireland, the
active and persevering education of the rising generation.
God forbid that I should slide into the weak and helpless
measure of these times, that the present generation must be
given up, to whom we are sent ; for this generation of the
Church is God's minister to this generation of the world, and
the next to the next ; we are made to be the witnesses against
those with whom we live and move and have our being,
whom we shoulder and jostle in the arena of the present life.
And another sign of our poverty and pusillanimity it is, this
other measure of the times ; we must give up the present
generation, and work with the children. As if Paul should
become a schoolmaster, and Peter an usher. Fy upon it,
thus to have pulled your missionaries from their high estate,
and made them school-keepers. Is Christ become feeble
against men } Is Satan to have the men, and Christ the
children } This comes of your low and paltry views of the
missionary calling, into the right apprehension of which ye

464 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

will not be enlarged : ye cannot cope with wickedness in high
places, and have crouched to stealthy methods of catching
children, and insinuating truth into their early minds. But
Schwartz was a missionary for men, and Elliot was ; ay, and
Martin was, and Xavier, and multitudes; but the nobility,
the peerless nobility, and topping sovereignty of their office
hath been lost, and our missionaries must turn their hands to
every job of translating, corresponding, lecturing in colleges,
and teaching in schools, yea, to mechanical arts, and profes-
sional occupations, instead of going forth in this day of
second preparation, as did the Baptist, singing to the wil-
derness and waste of heathen peoples, " Every valley be
exalted, every mountain be laid low, the crooked, places
straight, and the rough places plain, and let a highway in
the desert be prepared for our God." And therefore I have
put the preacher's office foremost in thus treating of means,
and the education of children last ; because it is my part,
and your part as men, to be instant for this generation, and
not to forget the generation that is to arise. For which
innocent rising generation they will prepare such fetters as
will bind them fast in error and darkness, if you interpose
not your prompt and immediate help. That scheme of
schemes for its utter folly, {whose only hopeful feature is its
impracticability,) which I touched upon when shewing the
range that this question had in the politician's mind, doth
bespeak, in the quarters where such a commission was
appointed — high quarters, I presume, though I know not,
being utterly ignorant of the wheels of policy — such a feeling
towards the youth of Ireland as utterly unmans me to think
of it. And is it possible that the British Government, which
hath seen the blessings upon a Protestant people, and the
curses upon every Catholic and idolatrous nation of Europe,
can propose, or entertain the proposal, that the Catholic
children shall be sanctioned, yea, brought up, trained, and
confirmed in the monstrous ignorance of their fathers } Make
all your members of Parliament Catholics, and all your
generals, and all your admirals ; but, for the sake of God, do
not appoint that the teachers of the children shall be Catho-
lics : do not by public authority and holy law command

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 4^5

that the children of five millions of people shall be made
inaccessible to light and knowledge. O Son of God, who
loved little children, and desired them to come unto Thee,
prevent that such a crime should be perpetrated by the law-
givers of this land ; or if at length the law and constitution
of this land are to separate from the Church, or to set them-
selves against the Church, oh, forbid that any of Thy faithful
and true servants should consort with or give countenance to
it ; but rather oppose and withstand it unto the end, and seek
by all lawful means to counteract the scandal and shame of so
heinous an act as this, of committing into the hands of the
deceivers and the deceived the sole education of the youth
of Catholic Ireland. Then are we resolved that they shall
continue Catholic, and are taking measures that they shall
continue so for ever. The chartered schools contained in
them a good purpose and principle, though unwisely applied :
that it was a thing to be desired and by all means sought
after, that the children of the Catholics should be enlightened
in the truth, and converted unto the Lord. The principle of
the Kildare Street school, and those which have followed in
its tract, was a much lower one — that only neutral ground
should be occupied in the instruction of youth ; which they
carried into such rigorous eftect, that I remember about the
time that I was last in Ireland, the Catholic part of the com-
mittee rejected a book because it stated that the churches
in Rome were resorted to as sanctuaries by those Avho had
committed violent crimes. But the principle of this scheme,
while it holds out the pretence of making peace by educat-
ing Protestants and Catholics in one school, doth truly pre-
vent peace by making wider the breach, and marking more
distinctly the features of distinction subsiding between Pro-
testant and Catholic ; yea, more, it will secure a great pre-
ponderance of Catholic masters and Catholic influence, in
proportion to the preponderance of Catholic population. And
this is what they propose to legalise, to make universal, to
sanctify with the name of parochial education, and thereby
to pull down the institutions already in operation for the
instruction of the Irish people.
VOL. III. 2 G

466 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

I do most fondly trust there is still left enough of vigour
in our Protestant institutions to withstand the progress of
such a measure, and to expose both the baseness of its prin-
ciple, and the rudeness of its machinery ; and I further trust
it will be so much the more inducement to those who have the
conversion of the blinded Catholics of Ireland at heart, to go
to their object with no disguise; and with open face to confess
what they have at heart, and not to conceal it for any reason ;
as I have said, I think there is too much of this policy, even
in the conduct of those schools for which I plead. There is
no spiritual man who can hope for the salvation of those who
are depending upon the merit of their own works for salva-
tion, and sanctifying in their heart all the sensualities of the
Catholic superstition, and calling them holy. My office is
null and void, if men can have salvation by their own works.
The world are then all in the right, and need not be sum-
moned and warned as those who are in a state of death and
misery. If ye, then, have left the worldly city of Destruction
on account of this error, how can ye look upon a people who
have sanctified the error, and covered it with all idolatrous
glory, and not wish them and their children delivered from
the same .-• And how can ye undertake the education of their
children, and not avow this to be your main object .'' If they
ask you, whether your object is to proselytise from the Catho-
lic faith, say, Yes, it is. For what avails the subterfuge, that
the Catholic faith contains beneath it the true faith, seeing
that the people see it not .'' The visible world contains under
it all the truths of the invisible world — the knowledge of the
true God ; but men see it not. So the Catholic faith contains
under it the true gospel ; but the people see it not. If you
say they do, I say. Come and see. Do they receive absolu-
tion from a priest .'' Do they penance 1 Worship they a
wafer-god .'' Trust they in the intercession of saints } Yes,
so they do in simplicity and sincerity; not with plausible
explanations, but with unsophisticated faith. What, then,
do you not wish them converted.'' If you do not, you are not
worthy to be philanthropists to their cattle, much less teachers
to their children. And if you wish them and their children
converted, avow it ; avow it before the world, and stand by

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 467

the issues. Though your income should fall ten in the hun-
dred, or fifty in the hundred, what of that ? the Lord will
bless the remainder, and give it sevenfold fruit. Men must
at length be plain and declare themselves : expediency will
serve the turn no longer. They that are for Christ and His
truth must be for nothing else ; and they that are for Him
and something else, must fall with that broken reed on
which they have leaned their trust.

Therefore I offered myself to the office of advocating the
cause of this Society, because I saw that of all the others the
best spirit was found in this; and that before the Parlia-
mentary Commission their witnesses did not fear to declare
their conviction and their purpose to be the turning of the
people from darkness to light. They have, therefore,
become the great butt of the Liberal party; and it is their
capital object to drive them to the wall. They are maligned,
they are misrepresented ; and as I stood forth for the Conti-
nental Society last year, bearing the reproach of the Christian
world in respect of missions, so do I now stand forth for this
Society, bearing the reproach of Christ, in respect of Irish
education. It is honourable for them to have that reproach
to bear. I feel it to be honourable to have the cause of the
reproached to advocate, seeing it is for my Lord's cause they
are reproached. And now it is to be determined, by this
year's transactions, whether you will support these men that
have stood, and are standing in the breach ; whether there be
still living amongst us enough of principle, enough of Pro-
testant principle, to maintain this truly Protestant Society ;
or whether, even in the Church, these political wranglings
about emancipation have undermined so the foundations of
all that is peculiar to the faith of our churches, as to have
made indifference the rallying word of the people of God
also : then are they no longer the people of God, or they are
come to the condition of the Laodicean Church, which was
nigh unto rejection. But I firmly believe it will be made
appear, by the firm support which this Society is destined to
receive from all true spiritual men, and true Protestants,
against Catholic errors and usurpations, that we are yet a
people, that we are yet a nation, a holy nation, and a peculiar

468 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

people, to shew forth the glory of Him who hath called us
out of darkness into His marvellous light.

These three remedies I commend unto every one who hath
a tender heart to the condition of Ireland, natural and
spiritual, temporal and eternal : First, the labours of the
ministry in preaching the living Word ; second, the labour of
all in circulating the written Word ; and, lastly, the most
strenuous exertion of all, especially the laymen, and those of
weight and influence, in resisting the present measures con-
templated for education, and maintaining those presently in
operation, valuing them, not by their indifference to, but their
enlightened zeal against, the mortal errors with which the
people and their children are oppressed. These threefold
labours of love I commend unto you in the Lord, with all
prayer and diligence and perseverance, to be endured against
misconstruction, ridicule, persecution, and contempt ; and I
trust this Society will continue to shew itself the most forward
in maintaining the unequivocal principle, that it is religious
ignorance and religious error which they fight against, and
that they hope no reformation to be of any value which doth
not acknowledge God as its beginning, and the salvation of
the souls of men as its end. And now, with one word of
apology for myself, and encouragement to my fellow-labourers
in this ministry, I close my labours, consigning them to the
blessing of Almighty God.

I am not ashamed nor afraid to speak those things : not
ashamed, because they consent with the Word of God and
sound reason, as I have shewn you at large in the body of
this discourse ; not afraid, because I am a minister of God's
Word, appointed of the Church to declare the whole truth
thereof And, therefore, now that we are entering upon our
spiritual feast, as it were the Pentecost of the Church, when
all the tribes do gather up to this city of our Zion, I do
exhort every minister who now heareth me, to be in like
manner faithful and bold, and to assert the freedom of his
office to declare unto all manner of societies, and in all man-
ner of congregations, the whole mind of the Lord concerning
that which is for the good of His Church. Let the mouth ot
the prophet be unmuzzled, let his tongue be unshackled ; let

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 469

his heart know in what he has believed, and let his mouth
declare it. Wait not for the smiles of approving dignitaries,
nor the applause of approving people; but wait for the Spirit,
and expect that Spirit, whom Christ hath pronounced to be
with us, and to be unto us for a mouth and wisdom. The
time is short, the visible Church is fast falling into apostasy
of one kind or another. The dry-rot of infidelity, the rage of
sectarianism, the decay of faith, the palsy of expediency, the
vile leprosy of a religious world, are all in active operation
under Satan's ministry ; and what is there to oppose her
withal but the incorruptible Word of truth from Christ's
ministers. It doth not become you to float with the stream:
yours is to stand upon the rock, and observe how the currents
of the people set, and to give them warning. You are not
faithful to the people when you go as they bid. They ought
to go as you bid ; and if they do not, either you are not
Christ's priests, or they are not Christ's people. Sound the
channel, consider the courses, calculate the known sailing of
the Church, and guide the fervent bustle into which at this
season she is thrown. This is the office of the shepherds of
the people, of the watchmen of the city.

VI.

THE SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF SCOTLAND*

TV /TED IT ATI NG how I might best address myself to the
duty to which I am now called, of preaching to a
congregation chiefly composed of my countrymen gathered
from the metropolis to patronise and support the Scottish
Hospital for the relief of the poor and distressed of our
nation, two subjects of discourse presented themselves to my
mind, between which I remained long suspended in doubt.
Whether I should make it the occasion of expounding to
my countrymen the temptations to which they are liable
in this metropolis from their peculiar character and circum-
stances, by the power and influence of which they have been
scattered abroad, at Satan's will, like sheep without a shep-
herd, the great multitude of them lost to the gospel of grace
and hope of everlasting life, through the fond pursuit of riches
and of power, — those who have prospered, for the most part
serving vanity and ambition, — those who have not prospered,
soured with disappointment and envy, and oft turning their
fine talents and excellent education against the truth as it is
in Jesus, — all but a handful lost to the knowledge of their
proper spiritual teacher, or any spiritual teacher, in their
much business with money-making and courtesy. This is a
topic which I have revolved in my mind these four years,
and which, I trust, God will yet furnish me with an opportu-
nity of handling in the full audience of my nation, but which
at present I relinquish for one of a more large and compre-
hensive character, and which should be, if anything, still more
near and dear to a Scotchman's heart, and to which I was led

• Preached on behalf of the London Scottish Hospital, April 1826.

DISCOURSES, ETC. 471

by this consideration chiefly, that before you can understand
the growth of a plant which hath been transplanted to an-
other climate and soil, you must know the conditions from
which it was taken, and the conditions into the midst of which
it hath been removed. So, before we shall rightly compre-
hend the forms which the Scottish character assumes in this
metropolis, and the diseases and derangements to which it is
liable, we must study first the peculiarities of its condition in
its own land, which I think are in general little understood
and very imperfectly explained.

There prevails at this time a very high idea concerning the
moral and intellectual and religious condition of our native land,
which is the subject of boast everywhere amongst ourselves, and
of compliment from our fellow-countrymen in the senate, in the
pulpit, and in every other place, — as if we had till now pur-
sued, without one backsliding step, a course of national im-
provement, and were pursuing it without anything to retard
us or to make us afraid. Which proud confidence to redeem
I have contended very much in private, by pointing out the
sad declension of spiritual religion in the Church, and the
formality of religious worship and knowledge which hath
overspread large portions of the once fruitful and well-watered
vineyard of the Lord, and the poverty or entire destitution
of godly spirit which prevails in the ecclesiastical assemblies
of our national Church, and the general or entire deadness of
those who heretofore were the Lords of the Congregation, —
the nobles, and dignitaries, and representatives of the land, —
the almost universal scepticism of the intellect of the coun-
try naturalised in our university and ruling the literature of
our once godly capital, now ambitious only of heathen hon-
ours ; and when my countrymen would give no ear to these
things, regarding them as idle tales, uncharitable, and unpa-
triotic censures, and have shewed me the eloquent and able
men of which the Church could boast, I have not hesitated to
declare that in them, the noblest timbers of the ship, the
work of decay was fast manifesting itself, and that our
preaching, take it at the best, hath hardly, for its spiritual
character, a title to be compared with our former preaching,
taken at the worst, — having declined away from an authorita-

472 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

tive declaration of the divine and spiritual word of God unto
the faith of the people, into an intellectual demonstration of
the literal word to the natural good sense and good feeling of
the people, and tending to strengthen the conceit and suffi-
ciency of that selfish nature to which it continually maketh
the appeal, and calculated to raise up the intellect and sen-
timent and feeling of the natural man into a sufficient subject
of the Divine good pleasure, instead of begetting a new life,
and rearing up a new man, created after the image of God,
which, nourished by the word of God's grace, and strength-
ened by the immediate presence and help of the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, should withstand the natural man in all his
natural courses, and overcome him, and bind him as a sacri-
fice to the horns of the altar, until death shall destroy his
ineradicable sinfulness, and the resurrection shall raise him
•up again, a meet humanity for that divinity of nature which
abideth in all the renewed children of God.

But all this argument, which in a thousand ways I have
maintained in private with my countrymen, hath been against
a steep and stiff mountain of opposition ; and unto this day I
have made no progress in convincing almost any one. But
nevertheless, being fully convinced myself, I have resolved to
take my proper weapons in my hand at the present, and to
undertake this great controversy, wherein the judgment of
a whole nation concerning its true condition is concerned,
whether it shall be of a stout and joyful heart before the
Lord, or address itself to mourning and weeping, to confession
and supplication and fasting ; and I do it the more cheer-
fully, because I know that I am surrounded with men whom
God hath made eminent for honour and influence in my
native land, committing to their hands thereby a great and
valuable trust, for which they shall be called to give account
at the great day.

Now, though I disagree with the almost universal notion
that the principles of the wellbeing of our country stand as
strong as ever, — being convinced, on the other hand, that they
have been in a state of close siege for more than half a cen-
tury, and are now in imminent peril of falling, — I do not
refuse to acknowledge, but do greatly rejoice to declare, that

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. \ 473

the character of our people for understanding, morality, in-
dustry, and economy is far before that of any people on the
face of the earth ; and that we are, at this moment, scientific,
inventive, ingenious, refined, and that beyond all former
example, yea, and orderly and peaceable, — a nation without
a mob, a people without a pauper class ; while, at the same
time, I assert that these are the harvests of a former sowing
time, and that, as I perceive neither seed nor preparations for
sowing again, this harvest will soon fail us. Or rather, a
little to change my figure, these I perceive to be the fruits of
a soil which was prepared and watered by spiritual workmen,
who wrought in God's behalf and with God's instruments of
husbandry ; and, according to that means of divine and true
wisdom, one generation hath sowed and another reapeth ; but
that the soil is well-nigh wrought out, and the seed exhausted,
and the race of the spiritual workers all but died out ; so
that it will soon be seen, and is presently visible to the com-
prehensive eye, that the land is faint, and, like land long
cropped without tending, and fallowing, and turning up a vir-
gin soil to the cherishing sun, the very character of the plants
and productions are changing, even though it be laboured as
diligently, and to outward appearance be kept as clean, and
as carefully sowed as before.

Now, perceiving that this is a great controversy for the
wellbeing of a land, and that our native land, and such a
native land as exalteth her peasantry to the level of freemen,
I shall treat it carefully, and with my utmost ability, praying
all help of the Lord ; and forasmuch as city congregations
are, both by physical and moral causes, incapable of any
great strain of thought or attention, I shall divide it into
several discourses, which I shall from time to time, as I shall
be required, preach before my countrymen for their many
public charities ; to which I shall not be loath, as loving the
poor of my country well, and ye, knowing the same, can come
and hear, if so it please you, and if not, not, according as God
moveth every man. And so I shall have fulfilled the little
which I can do for that country to which under God I owe
all, and the most of you who hear me owe all your honour
and distinction, your wealth and power. And in this dis-

474 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

course I shall confine myself to the one object of opening up
that culture of our people to which this distinction is due,
and by which any people may be raised to the same moral
and intellectual and social dignity — what I call the spiritual
economy of Scotland, which continued from the Reformation
till the middle of the last century, when the political economy
began to supplant it, and our intellectual character to be re-
garded as the procreative principle of the nation; whereas, I
assert, it was the spiritual cultivation that brought forth the
intellectual, moral, social, and political character, and every
other thing by which we are distinguished from other peoples
of the earth.

The vulgar mind, by which I mean not the mind of the
common and unlettered people, but of all the people who are
not established in the faith and knowledge of things unseen
and eternal, into the denial and neglect of which our scholars
and wits, and economists and statesmen, have proceeded much
further than the common people, — the mind of all such as are
accustomed to judge by the sense or the understanding, act-
ing by the sense, doth always look for the cause of any char-
acteristic difference among nations to something outwardly
visible and conspicuous; and because there is no apparent
difference between Scotland and other countries but in her
parochial system of education, it hath become the fashion and
the philosophy and the political economy of the day to refer
all that distinguishes our people from other peoples to the
custom of parochial schools ; which, as might be expected, is
a very insufficient account of the matter. The parish school
is a part in a great system of moral and spiritual economy
which hath for two centuries pervaded that land, and must be
allowed its share as one of the parts of the system, but alone
and separate from the rest it would have very small influence
indeed. The universities also are a part of the same system
of ecclesiastical economy which was established in Scotland
by the Reformers, and one of them has by its reputation and
talent established a partial separation from the rest of the
spiritual economy, and stood on the independent footing of
learning and science for the last half century ; and so little
have the mere letters and learning of our schools to do with

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 475

the exalted character of our people, and so much to do with
the sapping and undermining thereof, that if I were called
upon to bear witness to the causes which have spoiled the
glory of our national character, and mouldered the excellency
of our spiritual and moral institutions, I would give by far
the most conspicuous place in that bad pre-eminency to the
infidel science, and vain philosophy, and meagre criticism,
and French vanity which that school of letters and learning
hath scattered over the land. And I am persuaded that if
the other universities could attain the same emancipation
from the ecclesiastical and spiritual system, low as that hath
now fallen, and could communicate a kindred spirit to the
lower academies and parish schools, it would come to pass
that for the patient, pious, moral, and solid character that
Scotland hath been distinguished for producing, you would
have a race of proud, conceited, self-sufficient, ignorant
talkers about words, without wisdom, despisers of spiritual
religion, hateful of those that are honest, sincere, and godly,
and enemies of one another ; which features, indeed, I begin
to perceive already developing themselves in the character
of the Scottish nation, through the formality of our ancient
spiritual institutions.

I say then, and shall by God's blessing make it good, that
our Scottish character, so far famed for piety and principle,
for patience and prudence, was produced, and is partially
maintained by a system of spiritual economy which pervades
the people of the lower class, and from which the higher class
could hardly escape, whereof the character was to consider
the souls of the people, the spirits of men, as the all in all,
and the outward things — the conveniences of life, the wages of
labour, the price of commodities, the political privileges, and
the bodily accommodations — as mere circumstantials, which
would fall into their proper place if only the spirit could be
quickened to a sense of its dignity and its duties. That, you
will observe, is the very reverse of the present system of poli-
tical economy, which considers things as the all in all, and
the spirits of men as not to be cared for, but sure to provide
for their own dignity and duty, if only you will feed, clothe,
lodge, and recreate the body sufficiently.

47^ DISCOURSES DELIVERED

This spiritual economy, which existed and doth still par-
tially exist in Scotland, had many provisions and arrange-
ments which wrought together to the one end of quickening
the souls of men by the seed of the Word of God, which
liveth and abideth for ever. The first and chiefest of which
was its preaching of the gospel, which, I may surely say,
was in Scotland, within the last half century, altogether
another thing from what is known by that name in any
other country that I have heard or read of It came to
pass through the hard and rough usage which the Scottish
Church met with, — first from James VL, then from Charles I.,
then from Cromwell, then from Charles II., then from James
II., and occupying a complete century of cruel torture and
bloodshed, — that the clergy of the Presbyterian Scottish
Church were driven upon the people, as a refuge from the
storm and a hiding-place from the tempest of the terrible
ocean; while the people, by this fourfold storm of principalities
and powers which fell in upon their dearly-beloved Church,
and the many questions and subtle arguments with which
their rooted affection thereto was sought to be undermined in
the hands of a Leighton and a Burnet, were so long kept the
umpires of every great religious question, that their wits were
sharpened, their intellect strengthened, and their faculty of
observance cultivated in a way wonderful to those two very
learned and pious prelates. And here I must observe, against
the Episcopalian writers and novelists who have sought to cast
the scorn of vulgar ridicule, or to fasten the censure of malignant
humours upon these stout resistances and masterful arguments
of the Scottish people during the seventeenth century, that
they do not well by holy truth or the memory of the sainted
dead, so lightly and so partially to treat a contest which was
not waged merely for the Episcopal or the Presbyterial govern-
ment, but whether a spiritual system or a merely political
system should govern the nation. And so much do I feel
convinced that this question is worthy of all controversy and
sacrifice, that I am here free to declare that, if again it should
come into question whether we should retain our spiritual
system, meagre as it is now grown, or be wholly under a sys-
tem of infidel or indifferent policy, I would deem that a better

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS, 477

cause for resistance and sternest controversy than are the
Greek insurrections, and Spanish and Piedmontese and Nea-
politan revolutions, with the French Revolution, their mother,
to boot, which we have seen these thirty years, and which the
enlightened and liberal of the nineteenth century have hailed
as such glorious occasions of resistance and war.

Mark ye well, then, how this spiritual system of Scotland,
by which I set such store, grew out of the like nourishing root
of popular preachings. The preachings in those times were not
the heady and fiery effusions of hot-brained firebrands, but
the able discourses of learned and pious and ingenious and
well-tried men, who had not much time, it is true, for writing
or publishing their writings save to the ear of the clearest
minds, and writing them in the book of the Lord's everlasting
testimony and in the character of a people which, not in the
third or fourth, but in the sixth and eighth generation, defies
you to find its parallel — I say not amongst the same class
of peasants, cotters, and farmers, for that is impossible, but
■among the middle and higher classes of other lands. For we
who in this city, and over the wide world, sit in council with
statesmen and princes, and are of the chief merchants, and in
the assemblies of the notable and the learned, are for the most
part come of the peasantry and of the farmers, who in other
countries are esteemed to be chiefly born to till the soil or to
conserve its fruits. I say these preachers, by what we have
of their writings preserved, and by all that hath been lately
made to appear of their biographies by M'Crie and others
were men of a deep and enlarged soul, conversant with the
original languages of Scripture and with the history of the
Church in all ages, and who have left a seed of divinity be-
hind them in their writings, but above all in the living souls
of their people, which giveth them a high degree in the Church
of Christ. I am not old, and was born in the twilight of
gospel light in Scotland ; but I can bear testimony, and have
borne it before learned divines and prelates of this Church,
which hath a title to be esteemed both learned and devout,
that the prayers which I have heard in the Scottish cottages,
extempore from their inflamed hearts, passed far beyond any-
thing that I had heard from any priest, and rivalled oft the pathos

478 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and sublimity of the Scriptures themselves. And for their large
comprehension and logical accuracy in Christian doctrine, no
one who hath conversed with the gray-headed fathers of the
land can have a doubt. And hear them examine their house-
holds and their children, and hear them discourse by the even-
ing fire, or in their goings forth on the Sabbath morn over
hill and dale to the parish church, — hear them hand down the
traditions of former piety and suffering, and sharpen one
another in their Christian warfare by the many examples
with which every part of the country is sanctified, confirmed
by the mossy graves and the gray stones and the inaccessible
retreats of the martyrs, and the family legends dear to memory,
— and hear them, as they come home at evening, enter at large
into the discourse which they have heard, and improve its
various passages, and recount a thousand recollections to which
it gave rise of like discourses heard in other times and places ;
— oh, how dear those scenes are to my memory ! When yet
a child, or little more than a child, I walked many miles to
hear the discoursing of a most reverend father, whose hoary
image is now before me ; and as we went, another and
another came dropping in, till we formed a sweet society un-
der the smiling eye of the Sabbath morn, talking words of
grace and consolation and power over the soul, which God
did bless with an especial blessing. And on their return,
ere they parted on their several ways, and scattered over
the moor to their solitary dwellings, to see them assemble in
the hollow of a woody dell, and there call upon the most
aged and revered of the company to conduct their worship, —
the melody of their voices mingling with the tempest-like
rushing of the winds in the tops of the pine-trees, its swelling
upon the wind and cheerful echo amongst the solitary places
which it blessed, the solemn utterance of prayer amidst the
stillest silence of the earth, and under the open eye and ear
of Heaven ; — the man that can make a jest of these things is a
fiend and no man ; the man that can hold them of little value
in a state, and opposeth them as hurtful and dangerous, will
soon bring the state to the brink of ruin. And I would con-
sider myself no less wicked than such a wit, no less wicked
than such a statesman, if I were to teach these holy things

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 479

after a political and sentimental manner, which I do mention
as having been witnessed by me in that twilight of Scottish
religion and character, whereof the strength and glory gave
occasion to that spiritual system of husbandry concerning
which I discourse, as opposite to the political system which
now governs everything, and will demolish everything, if it
hath not already demolished everything that in this state was
built for God, and for eternity, and for the bulwark of men.

The groundwork of the spiritual economy of Scotland now
breaking up lay in the spiritual doctrines diffused abroad by
the earnest and copious preaching of the spiritual word of
God. The preachers were to that system what the political
economists now at work are to the system of political eco-
nomy which is supplanting the spiritual economy ; — the Adam
Smiths of the last age bear to that system of sense which
is developing itself in our national counsels and everywhere
exactly the same relation which the Reformers of Scotland
bore to the system of faith ; and our reviewers, magazine-
men, and newsmongers — gentlemen of the press, as they de-
signate themselves — stand in the place of the persecuted
ministers who were driven in upon the people by five reigns
of persecution and distress, and translated to the spiritual
understanding of the people, and applied to their spiritual
condition, those great truths of reformation which here in
England were stayed in that process of dispensation by the
prelatical and arbitrary Stuarts, yea, by high-handed and
jealous Elizabeth, and which, being hindered from their
natural field, the world, were cultivated in the universities,
and produced those mighty confutations of the Papal super-
stition which are to be found in the writings of Hooker, Jewell,
Mede, Moore, and other divines, who would many of them
have become Latimers and Luthers if the spirit of prelacy
and power had not hindered. From that diffusion it is per-
fectly amazing to what a pitch of spirituality the faith of
the Scottish people arose. They were able to use, and did
thoroughly appropriate to their daily use, the whole scope of
the Calvinistic ideas, interpreting them spiritually, which I
hold to be the highest attainment of a divine. To apprehend
the love of God from all eternity, and Christ's dedicating Him-

48o DISCOURSES DELIVERED

self to our salvation from all eternity, — to follow the revelation
of the promise, and the various dresses which it put on, — of
traditionary revelation, of a natural institution, of an incarna-
tion of Divinity, of a pure spiritual economy, naked of all
clothing, and waiting for a glorious clothing of power and
majesty when He shall come again, — and see them only as the
buds and leaves, and flowers and fruits of that heavenly
vine whose root and principle of life is in God's eternal pur-
pose and the Son's eternal covenant, whose divine appear-
ances and various modes alone are in love, — in order, through
our temporary faculties of a fallen nature, to come at the im-
mortal spirit which is within us, and cherish it into divinity of
life by communion with the eternal spiritual springs of life
which the gospel reveals ; — verily, verily I say unto you, this
is the highest and most uplifted theme of human knowledge
and feeling, which produceth the noblest, most enlarged, and
holy form of human character which this present evil world
can entertain. For from the bosom of such a superterrestrial
faith, and such heavenly knowledge, doth spring within the
soul the continual consciousness of being chosen from the
worldly multitude, and raised above the slime and mud, and
smoke and dusty turmoil of the earth, to be a servant of
God and faithful witness of Jesus Christ, and a dwelling-place
of the Holy Spirit, to offer continual sacrifices of prayer and
praise and new obedience. While Christian professors are
lingering in the region of the natural understanding, doting
about questions of evidence, and arguments of outward ad-
vantage and expediency, and controversies of doctrine, having
their origin and their end in the schools, — or while they are
lingering in the region of the natural feeling, presenting
certain fine pictures of the morality of the gospel, of Christ's
personal character, of His perfect and finished manhood, of
sentimental religion, and beautiful pictures of the fancy and
imagination ; and while thus the natural aspect of Christi-
anity is the theme of preaching with the minister, and the ob-
ject of attention with the people, oh, it is a poor, poor church
they keep together ! — a sad intermixture of hay, wood, and
stubble with precious stones, silver, and gold, even as at this
day is manifested in all communions of the Christian Church,

OlS PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 481

both in England and in Scotland. But I tell you, when those
doctrines of the Spirit — those Calvinistic ideas against which
our prelates take arms as little better than atheism, and which
our northern divines are vainly attempting to render to the
crude natural understanding, and to the unsanctified natural
heart — have the hold and mastery of the preaching of the
Christian ministry, and the sway over the spirits of the people,
being received by faith, and beloved for the sake of their re-
demption and regeneration and consolation, and victory over
flesh and blood which they have given unto the spirit ; —
then I say unto you that this people are fledged for ethereal
flights of the soul, and able to hold converse with the in-
visible and incomprehensible God, and they are armed with
endurance of all adversity and affliction, and they are in-
spired wnth the love of all excellence, and furnished with the
fulfilment of all duty ; and such a chosen generation, and such
a holy nation, and such a royal priesthood, and such a pas-
tored people cannot die ; they cannot yield up the ghost
under any damp or exhalations of a putrid world, whereof
they are the salt ; and a handful of them is like the fire of
heaven, which descendeth and setteth the wild forests in one
perpetual blaze. And Scotland heretofore was full of such a
seed ; and I trust there is still a seed of such men in the
ground of my dear mother-country and fatherland. How press-
ing, penetrating, and far-shining, and very mighty are such a
people, let me tell you by one story, which hath no lower au-
thority than the President De Thou, The Albigenses, against
whom the crusade was preached in the time of our Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, were cut off and scattered and peeled by the
chivalry of Europe, until, being cooped up in one of the fort-
resses of Languedoc, engirdled with steel and murderous
men, the bread and the water having failed, they betook
themselves in the dead of night to explore a subterraneous
passage, which carried them, their wives, and little ones full
beyond the lines of the enemy, whereby, seeing occasion, they
fled and dispersed themselves over the earth. A handful in
all, they wandered abroad : some to the valleys of Piedmont,
and formed or fed the Vaudois churches ; others to Picardy,
where they became the famous Picards, the seed of the
VOL. III. 2 H

482 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

Huguenots ; others to Bohemia, where they became the seed
of the protomartyrs, and of Ziska, mighty and holy warriors ;
others to Saxony, where they waited for Luther's appearing ;
and three brethren to Scotland, where they abode in the west,
maintaining the faith of the Lollards, and affording a refuge
to Wickliffe's followers, when they were dispersed by the per-
secution that arose in the time of the fourth Edward. Such
forests grew in all Europe out of that handful of incorruptible
seed, when it had been winnowed by the storm of Papal wrath
from all its chaff. Now I tell you that your prelatical perse-
cutions of Scotland made our forefathers such a set of men ;
and because they were not allowed to disperse themselves
abroad, — for ye cooped them up in prisons, and sent them
into the inhospitable plantations, — therefore the seed, being
confined, did fertilise Scotland, and take such a hold of her
people as to raise them into that spiritual temper of know-
ledge and feeling in theological truth which formed the sub-
stratum and soil in which the spiritual system took root, and
by which it was nourished to that grandeur of which the sear
and wintry growth doth still astonish political and worldly
men ; though it be no marvel to such as know the power
of the gospel to make those who were not a people to be-
come the people of God, and a holy nation, and a chosen
generation, and a royal priesthood, to shew forth the virtues
of Him who hath called them out of darkness into His mar-
vellous light.

The first-fruit of this large diffusion and rooted faith in
spiritual truth was to furnish from the body of the people,
for the purposes of ecclesiastical discipline in each parish, a
goodly number of elders, who, with the minister, took in hand
the charge of the people, dividing each parish into small con-
venient portions, over which one of these men had the spiri-
tual superintendence ; so that when the eldership was as-
sembled, they had under their knowledge the character and
behaviour of every family and every individual within the
land. To political men this looks a dangerous and fearful
system of espionage ; and I am sorry to see that some of our
vile, self-seeking, renegade countrymen, who in this metro-
polis handle the pen against the honour of their mother

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 483

Church, have addressed themselves of late to rake from the
dust of other times the records of the Scottish kirk-sessions,
that should have been sacred from such profanation, in order
to demonstrate the tyrannical authority, as the witlings call
it, which they took over the consciences and conduct of
the people. But these men make out a very poor case for
their profanation, and the very best case for the Scottish ses-
sional discipline, by shewing the sadly debauched and disso-
lute state of manners upon which this system came into oper-
ation, and which in the course of a few years it utterly
abolished, as all historians testify, spreading during the Com-
monwealth such a fear of God and awe of godliness that
there was one universal cry of misery amongst the publicans
and alehouse-keepers, and others who minister to the riotous
and luxurious inclinations of men, until, at the Restoration,
iniquity setting in like a flood, by royal permission and
courtly patronage, drove virtue and holiness to the wilds, to
herd with the beasts of the earth and with the fowls of
heaven. The kirk-session of Scotland, next to the preaching
of the word, hath been its greatest blessing, and, beyond all
courts of law and statutes of justice, hath abolished vice and
wickedness and profanity ; insomuch that even the blackguard
ribaldry of our northern wits is overawed by the character of
the Scottish elder, to which they have paid some of the finest
tributes that mere sentimentalism can bring forth. If your
select vestries in England, which take cognisance merely of
the temporalities of the poor, be esteemed of you so highly,
what esteem doth not Scotland owe to her kirk-sessions,
which have abolished poor-rates altogether — yea, and almost
abolished the order of the poor, which we are promised to
have always, — and which were comforters to the people, and
the reporters of their temporal and spiritual distresses unto
the pastor, the guardian of their delicacy and honour, their
counsellor and adviser, the composer of their quarrels, the
terror of evil-doers, and the praise of them that do well .-' Of
which office you have no parallel in England, as I may say
you have no such men as, being farmers or cottagers, shall
have, in their spiritual capacity, the reverence of the gentry,
yea, and of the nobility, and be free to fulfil in their families

484 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

all their spiritual functions. Yet so sweet doth the odour of
that office still live in the unpropitious atmosphere of this
metropolis, that it is with the utmost difficulty we can get
most to take that office upon them, all conceiving themselves
unworthy of its honour and unequal to its duties. I have
heard my mother tell that her grandfather — who was minister
of a burgh on the Border, now discriminated by Burns our
poet for its intemperance — used, with one of his elders, to
take evening walks through the little town, in order to hear
whether the voice of worship was lifted up in every dwelling ;
and if not, they would enter and deal with the people con-
cerning the danger of a prayerless family. I have heard my
father tell that, in the early mornings of harvest, while he
and his brothers still lingered in bed, weary with the labour
of reaping their father's fields, his father and mother would
rise an hour before the earliest, granting mercy to their weak-
lier children, while, like Job, they offered the morning sacri-
fice for themselves and their family. And time would fail me
to tell you what I have gathered from sure tradition, and seen
surviving amongst the elders and heads of families of our
blessed Church ; for the elders were not rare or difficult to
be had, but every head of a family was an elder. And what
shall I say now, but that they bear the stamp of it to this day,
in their wise and reverend aspect, in their devout and most
respectful carriage unto all, in their well-ordered homes and
well-thriven families, in their far-famed children, than whom
a worthier, or a hardier, or a braver, or a more heroic race
neither Greece nor Rome have ever known, although the
whole character of these peoples went to adventure and war ;
whereas it was but as it were the accompaniments and lovely
ornaments and earthly fruits of that pious character which
the spiritual institutions of our fathers did cultivate.

The eldership taking upon them the office of counsellors
and judges, of censors and comforters in this spiritual system,
and fulfilling, without corporal or capital punishment, or any
painful rigours of law, all the offices which your justices of the
peace and magistrates, yea, and judges, do in these days, and
almost making their offices a sinecure, the next part of our
spiritual system was in the duties of the head of a family,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 48 5

whom our Church regarded as the priest of his household,
taking them for the only sponsors of their children, and re-
quiring at their hands the proficiency of their children in the
knowledge of things spiritual and divine ; so that not the
schoolmaster, but the father and mother, were responsible for
their children to the pastor and to the church, who had ad-
mitted them thereto by the sacrament of baptism. Till lately
a Sabbath school was not needed, and was not known in
Scotland, and even now an English Sunday school is un-
known within the bounds of our Church. To secure in
heads of families a sufficiency of knowledge for the fulfilment
of these imperative duties, it was the pastor's constant custom
to examine every soul within his bounds once every year, or
to examine the one year and visit the other, on which occa-
sions I can assure you there was a more frequent desire on the
part of the people to plunge into the depths of divinity than
to skim the surface, as may be seen by the Larger Catechism
which was the text-book in these witenagemotes of the parish.
And the head of a family, besides morning and evening wor-
ship, in which I have never, even in these times, known a form
to be used, took it upon him on the Sabbath evening to ex-
amine all his children, men-servants, and maid-servants, as I
have oft proved, in the subject which the minister had handled;
and what a freshness have I seen of memory and of judgment
around the evening fire of the Scottish cottage ! And let me
tell you that such a ponderous book as Henry's Comment-
ary is no stranger amongst them for the settlement of dis-
putes and the illustration of texts. And oh, their prayers ! —
the real sublimity of their prayers, their use of prophetic lan-
guage, their spiritual application of the Psalms, their range of
scriptural quotation, not by rote or by sound, like your un-
educated minister, but by the spirit seeing and appropriating
its right and proper language in the written word ! Now, let
your political economists learn the reason why the population
of Scotland kept always much within the mark of comfort, —
it was because of the high duties which were felt to belong to
the head of a family, and the holy feeling which was spread
abroad thereof, and the constant restraint of appetite in which
the people were trained up from their very youth. This post-

486 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

dated marriage, on the side of the men, I should think, upon
an average ten years, and on the part of women six or seven
years, beyond what is common both in England and Ireland*
by which the very mould of men hath a certain fulness and
strength in the north, and unsensual character about it, which
is seldom to be found elsewhere.

And now, before leaving the effects of this system upon
the men, I have to add a remarkable fact upon a large
scale, to shew you the proof of what I have said concerning
the spiritual dignity and character of the people. About the
middle of the last century the prejudice which always sub-
sists in the natural man and his institution against the
spiritual man and his institution began to develop itself
among the higher classes in Scotland, into whose hands the
patronage of the churches was cast by an extreme violation
of the Union, so that they desired to promote men whose
theology was after the pattern of Tillotson and the Arminian
divines, and savoured little of the spiritual doctrines from
which the spiritual system of our economy arose. And while
this unspiritual temper was engendering amongst the patrons
of the Scottish churches, there was spreading in the univer-
sities, especially of Edinburgh, a great admiration of the puny
literature and meagre morals of the essayists of Queen Anne's
time, to which the doctrines of the fathers and the regenera-
tive morality of the Scriptures were postponed as enthusiasm ;
and fostered by Drs Blair and Robertson, and such other
clerical literati as were then thought the constellation of the
north, and by many are still regarded so, but most of all
fostered by the spirit of the country, which was wretched and
ungodly in all respects, there was engendered a school of
preachers, for I cannot call them divines, and they are en-
titled to " preachers" chiefly because they wrote " Reverend"
before their names, for preachers of Christ's gospel they surely
were not ; — which pulpit gentlemen, being very courteous and
polite, and current with the times, became great favourites
with the gentry and nobility, and were promoted with great
expedition to the vacant churches. Now mark what I am
to say in proof of the high character of our peasantry : that I
never knew an instance, and I believe an instance was never

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 48 7

known, in which these gentle preachers found favour with our
people. In England the appointment of a minister is little
thought of or cared for by the people ; but in Scotland it was
as their all in all. He was their guide to heaven, he was their
comforter on earth, he was the ruling elder of the parish, he
was the patriarch of the families, the breaker of the bread
of life ; and these things to a spiritual people are the chief
ends of their being. Whence it came to pass that the people
were in wild dismay and great horror when they began to be
invaded with witlings for divines, and squires of stately dames
for servants of the living God, and companions of the one or
two great men of the neighbourhood for companions of the
household of faith and the fellowship of the saints. In no one
instance, I say, could this moderate divinity be made palat-
able to them. The godlessness of it disgusted them. And the
ignorance of these children offended the gray-headed wisdom
of the fathers. Oh, what silent and solitary grief have I
witnessed, what mourning and lamentation, over the declined
condition of the pastorate and ministerial office ! With what
pangs they were forced to rend themselves away from that
Church for which their fathers had shed their blood ! The
persecution of the sword and famine seemed nothing com-
pared with this famine of the bread of life which they had
to endure. Now indeed the wolf had attained his object, and
was devouring the sheep within the fold, under the disguise
of a good shepherd. This came of the violation of our holy
covenant of Union. Oh, ye wicked rulers ! we had pur-
chased the abolition of patronage by a sea of blood, and in
solemn union we had it ratified, not only as an article, but as
the basis of a union, and in five short years ye bereft the
house of God of her godly order, whence all confusions
have sprung, and whence, amongst other things, Scotland
hath been the nurse of that infidelity which will yet lay
the axe to the root of your darling constitution ! Ye got
men appointed over the patriarchal race of Scottish peas-
ants who had not the hundredth part of the intelligence
of one of them. And their intelligence continued to grow
wild for want of spiritual pruning, and see to what it hath
come, giving birth to the leaders and abettors of this present

488 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

race of infidel writers and infidel opinions, which will yet rifle
every sanctuary and abolish every security. But this hath been
a long time of efi"ecting. For at the first the people separated
themselves from the Church, and constituted secessions, upon
no ground but the grievance of this patronage of fashionable
striplings for grave, spiritual men. And it was not till near a
century had elapsed that the intelligence which is native to
a spiritual soil, and I may say is the after-crop of wild oats
which ariseth where the spiritual husbandry is neglected,
grew up and spread far and wide, and penetrated to the
very corners of our beloved land ; whence arose these shoals
of infidel scribblers who minister garbage to the thousand
tastes of this metropolis.

And thus the Scottish Church having provided for her
men began to provide for her children also, and pressed upon
Parliament, without ceasing, the institution of parish schools,
the liberal scheme of which was one of Knox's many noble
devices for his country's weal, which she, always ungrateful
to her spiritual worthies, hath ill repaid. But the needy and
avaricious noblemen of those times stripped both Church
and people of their undisposable property, and sent both
priests and people a-begging for anything they cared about
them. And when they had, without their help, in so far
accomplished their liberal device, these same nobles broke us
upon the wheel of persecution ; and but that we got a breath-
ing-time between the Revolution and the cursed Act of the
1 0th of Queen Anne, restoring patronage, both Church and
parish schools might, for any interest the higher classes did
take in them, have been as they are at this day in Ireland — a
political abuse and desolation, not a spiritual husbandry. By
all which spoliation of the rights of the Church, methinks,
our nobles have not enriched themselves, but, so far as I
know, are in general poorer than the nobility of this land;
from which I think our liberal economists might take a
lesson, not to meddle with the revenues of another Church,
after which their fingers itch so sadly. There is a Noli Die
tmigere, a Nemo me impime lacesset, written around the
property of the Church which they had better not defy.

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 489

And if the Church hath used her property unbecomingly, she
hath incurred no debt, and accumulated no burdens upon her
children ; so that the state hath, it seems to me, little reason
to find fault with her. But to return. By the grace of God,
through poverty and persecution, the Church wrought out
this boon for the children, that they should have a sufficient
education at their door, not by charity, but at a moderate
charge. And the heritors to that effect endowed the parish
with a school and schoolhouse, a small garden, and a moder-
ate salary of about £"20 a year. And the presbytery
examined the character and learning of the man whom the
heritors elected, which election the presbytery confirmed.
And the schoolmaster became vested in the dignity of his
office, looked up to as the second man of the parish, gener-
ally clerk to the kirk-session, and precentor in the church,
and when weight of years and experience qualified him, ad-
vanced to the eldership. His school was visited once a year
by the presbytery, and by the minister of the parish whenever
he pleased ; the books taught being the Catechism, the Pro-
verbs, the New Testament, and the Bible, and, latterly, a Col-
lection from the most approved English authors ; writing also
to all, and arithmetic and bookkeeping to those who wished
them ; so also Latin, and in some cases Greek. But our
Reformers contemplated, besides the parish schools, grammar
schools in the towns, where. the youth intended for the learned
professions might be initiated into classical learning, logic,
and other branches, before going up to the universities. And
many of these schools became so famous that professors
were wont to prefer them to the university chairs. In which
grammar schools the sons of the nobility and gentry were
educated, as well as those of most pregnant parts from
amongst the lower orders of society. And if time permitted
me, I could say a deal upon this link which our Reformers
interposed between the parish schools and the university.
There were commonly two teachers, the one the master and
the other the doctor, and both of them were generally con-
nected with the Church. The four universities, again, were
chiefly for the learned professions, and taught all the learning

490 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and literature of the time, being nothing short of the most
learned in Europe, as may be seen from M'Crie's " Life of
Melvil."

Oh, it is a very beautiful thing in the eye of a philosopher to
contemplate the condition into which that motherly Church of
Scotland hath brought the education of the children of her
people, that the poorest of them shall, in respect to spiritual
and Divine knowledge, and almost in respect to universal
knowledge, through the means of parish libraries, be brought
upon a level with the highest. And to the sentimental moralist
it is the sweetest sight in nature to behold the children of a
nation going forth under the opening day to the school of a
well-principled and well-educated instructor, and at eventide
returning to their father's roof and mother's careful tender-
ness. And to the Christian it is a thing to boast his soul in,
to know that the youth of a nation are trained to know the
doctrines and statutes of the gospel, as they are unfolded in
that Catechism of our Church which, compared with those of
these parts, is as the oak to the sapling. And all this without
almsgiving or needy help of others, but by the savings of the
industrious and honest people. No clothing societies, no
charitable foundations, no free schools, no badges of poverty,
nor regimental suits of charity, — all the offspring of the
good husbandry of a spiritual people. And such a feeling
spread over the country concerning education that, to give
an instance, in my native parish, where there was but one
man who could not read, his nam^ passed into a byword,
mothers saying to their idle children, " If ye be not diligent,
ye will be such as he."

But it makes me angry and sad to hear our Radical politi-
cians draw praise from this beautiful plant of piety, and set
forth at their vain feasts that the excellence of it consisted in
the sons of all ranks being educated together, so that every
one felt himself upon a level, — the son of the peasant and
the son of the gentleman, I am glad, indeed, to see all the
youth of the parish educated together, because it begets that
early sympathy of kindness which may make them love and
respect each other in their various places and relations ; but
their republican and levelling notion I utterly abjure for

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 491

the system of Scottish education, and deny that it hath such
effects. It may humble the pride of the embryo squire, and
make the son of the master forget his superiority to the son
of the servant. And so far forth it is well. But, combined
as it is with religious duty, and forming part of a spiritual
system, it hath altogether an opposite effect from that which
these subvertcrs argue, and doth sweeten the necessary dis-
tinctions of human society, not embitter them with vain emu-
lations, as every one doth know who hath had any expe-
rience therein. The claim of an old schoolfellow is recognised
by Scotsmen in every region of the earth, not as engendering
strife of equality, but as engendering claim of help and
assistance from one to another. And through the channel of
the good associations thus formed, many are the sons of
humble station who have ascended to the highest and most
honourable places in the state.

But to return from this digression of my heart, much pained
and wounded by the ignoble use which this generation hath
made of our most holy men. If in the seventeenth century
our universities fell off, how, before Heaven, could letters
have thriven in the midst of the fire and sword with which
you destroyed the bowels of our land .'' It was not ten years
of usurpation, as in England, but ten times ten years did
you trample under foot the piety and the learning of our
Church. And do ye wonder, O vain men, that the tender
and delicate and elegant flower of learning would not grow
under such rude blasts, in such a blood-boltered soil, and
under such rough pruning .-• When it was the maxim of our
kings that there was no hope of Scotland till all between
the Borders and the two firths was a forest again, oh, do
ye wonder, ye men of England, that our fathers, having built
up a more stately building of holiness than the sun of heaven
shone upon, should forsake all for its defence, and gird
themselves with rude weapons to beat back the chivalry of
kings who came to assail it .-' The crusade against the
Albigenses was a crusade of gallant knights and courtly
squires, but the crusade against my fathers was a crusade of
wicked renegade priests, of greedy despotic nobles, of red-
handed cavaliers, and the savage Highland host — such a four-

492 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

fold combination as never before laid waste the vineyard of
the Lord. And, ye men of England, who admire and glory
that the ancient aborigines of this land did rise as one man,
when the Roman emperor in his haughty state did say that
there would be no peace in Britain till the inhabitants thereof
were transported to other climes, can ye not admire that our
fathers did make such strenuous efforts to maintain that
spiritual city and community which these perjured kings
sought to deprive them of? Ye do not well to take amuse-
ment at expense of such noble-mindedness, ye whose fathers
would not draw their weapons against the troops of the
Covenant, but obliged their king to make peace with them
on honourable conditions. There hath been no event in this
realm, no, not one, which acted so powerfully upon its future
fortunes as that very Covenant, which was the religious
Magna Charta of England. The Magna Charta was the
deed and instrument of the noble spirit of England against
the arbitrary temper of royalty; and the Solemn League
and Covenant was the deed and instrument of the pious
spirit of Scotland and England against the papal temper of
royalty. Let them stand together, the work of the barons
at Runimede and the work of the General Assembly of
Glasgow, as the only two events worthy to be compared
with one another since the Conquest.

But, further, it is necessary that you regard the whole
provision for youth as the scheme and the care of the
Church. The scholastic economy of Scotland is the child
of the spiritual economy ; and the turn for reading and
thought, the speculation of the mind, and adventure of the
person, which our youth have got, is not so much the pro-
duct of the parish school as of the whole system. I know
what is to be found in the parish school and in the town
academy, having been reared in both, and having been
charged with the care of both for many years ; but all that is
to be had there is a poor and beggarly account of what a
spirit is heir to which is born within the realm of Scotland,
and with the rank of a farmer in that realm. It is the circu-
lating medium of knowledge, and the atmosphere of moral
worth, which breeds and nourishes the young spirit. The

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 493

school is, at best, an irksome task, and the lessons that are
read there are oft not much remembered ; and the school-
master is too wearied with his labours to have leisure for
beautiful moral arrangements, or for impressive moral instruc-
tions, and from one another's company boys will acquire any-
thing but good lessons, if there be not some strong restrain-
ing and powerfully-moulding influence over them when they
are out of school. O my brethren, it is under our father's
roof, and by the strongly-marked characters of our fathers
and mothers, and by the companies and conversations which
we are accustomed to hear around our firesides at home, and
the firesides of our acquaintances abroad, that our character
is formed. Who knows not the copious discourse, the well-
sustained argument, the sharp wit, and caustic humour which
circulates around the firesides of the Scottish peasantry .-' It
is as much a characteristic of the people of Scotland to go
through the burn, or down the glen to their neighbour's house,
in order to enjoy the " crack" by the fireside, as for the English
peasantry to adjourn to the alehouse, or the Irish peasantry
to their sparring or quilting camps. And if you would wish
to know what a state of innocent intercourse there is between
the sexes, read our songs ; and if you would wish to know
what sharp intellect there is amongst our men, read our dia-
logues; and if you would wish to know what a body of tra-
dition there is in every family, read our tales, which are
but a gleaning of the fields ; so that, out of my own recollec-
tion, I shall engage to supply many volumes to any one who
will be at the pains to take them down ; and I have been no
collector, and a poor retainer of what I have heard. But
wait ; why wander I from my spiritual text } If you would
know the moral atmosphere under which our children grow,
go and witness their silence, their thirsty ears and mute
tongues, in the presence of their elders, and their reverend
carriage in the presence of their superiors ; their fine feeling
towards their parents ; their deathless affection for one an-
other ; their fond esteem of their kindred to the remotest
degree ; their worship of God by night and morning ; their
regularity at school ; their reading of all manner of books,
and repeating of all manner of traditions ; their visits to

494 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

ruined towers and ivy-mantled castles of the days of yore ;
their help reached forth, the while, to their father and their
mother, in their morning and evening labours ; their roamings
up and down amongst the mountains and by the streams ;
their superstitious dread of haunted places, and sense for ever
of spiritual presences ; the number of adventurers returned
home, every one able and willing to recount his toils by flood
and field ; the number of kinsmen in foreign parts who are
ever wishing tidings and sending help to their friends, and
keeping awake the curiosity and knowledge and adventure
of the youth ; the multitude who have risen to eminence
and wealth and renow^n, whose names are not suffered to
slumber on the shelf; the great number of ingenious and
inventive men spread around ; the songs of love and satire
which every village will furnish you, when occasion ofifereth ; —
these, and a thousand other things, which I call the floating
capital and circulating medium of principles and talent, which
are necessary to serve the daily purposes of intercourse under
such a spiritual system of economy as I have discoursed of,
do draw forth the minds of young men and young women to
that wisdom and sagacity, and impress upon their character
that dutifulness, prudence, and trustworthiness, which your
philosophers of the visible, your wase men who have eyes in
their heads to look at outward objects, but no eyes in their
souls to perceive spiritual causes, attribute to the parish
school, — whereas, I say, the parish school, good as it is in its
place, hath a very secondary influence, which all admire in
our country, and which is nothing but the efflorescence of that
spiritual system whereof I have discoursed. To such a
degree do these spiritual and invisible causes operate, that it
really is of almost no importance, in respect to intelligence, in
what class of the people a man be born, so that you do not rise
above the rank of a farmer ; for beyond that I say not, but
with that, whether you be of the tradesman, or the mechanic,
or the farmer, or the cotter, or the pauper, who are hardly to
be classed, it maketh no difference. They are all intelligent,
not to say intellectual men, cultivated according to the talents
which God hath given them, and using their talents well,
according to the occasions furnished them, not in actual life

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 495

but in the subjects that come under the consideration of their
minds, — capable of accommodating themselves to new man-
ners and new places and new occupations, and to discharge
any office of trust or superintendence. And I will conclude
this part of my discourse with what may seem to some
extreme, but which doth no more than represent the force
and strength of my conviction, that if I were called upon,
with my present knowledge and feeling, to fix upon the con-
dition, in the moral map of the world, from the royal estate
of the King of England downwards, where I would prefer to
be born, for the intellectual, moral, and spiritual advantages
thereof, I would say, Let me be born in Scotland, with the
rank of the farmer, and take my place with the multitude and
my chance with the multitude ; for I am convinced that, with
the general temptations, I shall there enjoy the greatest advan-
tages to help me to a sound understanding, dutiful disposi-
tion, and manly character, devout spirit, and godly conversa-
tion. For I should find there industry and economy, patience
under privations, a greater desire of helping than being helped,
the fear of God, and the reverence of His ordinances ; a well-
ordered household, afi"ectionate and faithful parents, and
strongly-cemented brotherhood, — which things I hold to be
as milk to the infant spirit. And I should find schooling
enough for my wants as a member of Christ's Church and the
world's community. And if I had genius for anything higher,
I should find in the minister, and other worthy men, sufficient
patronage, and, without them, in my own character I should
find resources to find my way to 'the means of cultivating my
gifts, and turning them to the best account for my own and
human wellbeing. All this, and much more that time would
fail me to tell of, would I find within the degree of a Scottish
farmer in any parish of Scotland ; which advantages I should
have small chance of in this country of England, or amongst
the nobles of any land, or amongst its gentlemen, or amongst
its scholars, or amongst its merchants, where, though there be
some peculiar blessing to them all that they may be com-
forted, yet, brethren, as you well do know, there are such
excitements to intemperance, vanity, and ambition, — such an
atmosphere of hollow forms, — such authority, and oft so little

496 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

affection and truth and godliness, that, before the Lord, I
would rather shrink away from the wealth and splendour of
them to see the light of heaven and feel its freshness, and
behold the fruits of mother earth, and be trained in the know-
ledge of my God and of His Christ, and a patient sufferer of
this transient life, under the canopy of some humble Scottish
cottage, and grow to be a man worthy of the name of man,
under the spiritual conditions of that blessed economy, which
whoso that hath known it as I have known it, will bless its
memory, and weep over its mouldering decay, and curse those
abominations of Satan which are endeavouring to rear them-
selves in its stead.

I trust that what I have said and am about to say con-
cerning the spiritual economy which alone formed the char-
acter of the Scottish people to that intelligence and worth
which are best known and most admired by those who have
observed them the most closely, will not be attributed to the
motive of national vanity ; for though I am preaching before
the representatives and in behalf of our National Scots Charity,
I feel too much honour for the land which hath afforded to so
many of us so warm a welcome and comfortable home, to say
anything out of a spirit of envious comparison ; neither would
I presume, strange as I am to the institutions of the south,
and yet but imperfectly acquainted with that social and
charitable economy which hath made them so great over all
the earth, to undertake any comparison between the two :
but I am moved by the fast-hasting progress of a system of
political economy which counts men nothing and things
everything, to hold up the contrary system which heretofore
obtained in Scotland, counting men everything and things
nothing ; for I feel persuaded in my own mind, and have it
much upon my heart, that this same system, which they are
endeavouring to lay as the groundwork of a nation's weal,
and which occupies I may say nine-tenths of the thought
and public debates of this empire, hath its origin in a poor,
worldly, corporeal view of man, and will bring in the train of
its progress the corruption of all duties, the exaltation of all
moneyed interests, the abolition of all venerable relations, and

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 497

the reducing of all things in civil policy to the calculations
and chances of fortune, as the great revolutionary emperor
whose sun is set reduced all things in military affairs to the
calculations and chances of war, alike regardless of mercy to
the conquered and inconsiderate of the lives of the con-
querors. Infidelity hath shewed its character in the wars of
France for the last thirty years, and I think is about to de-
velop the same character in the policy and statesmanship of
England, which seems Avholly directed by the movement of
the great current of wealth, as the former was directed by the
movement of great masses of armed strength. Therefore I
am in good earnest, and of a strong resolution to do my
endeavour further to demonstrate the eff'ects of the old sys-
tem under which Scotland lay, leaving it to the spiritual and
patriotic men of England to do the same by their country,
before they take their fatal leap from the rock of principle
and religion into the troubled waves of worldly chances.

When I look back upon all these things, and make men-
tion of them in the hearing of my countrymen in this metro-
polis of Great Britain and rendezvous of nations, my heart is
exceeding sad and sorrowful to behold how unmindful of the
best gift of God unto their nation, and the best nurse of godly
and prosperous men, — how unmindful of the Church of Scot-
land the sons of Scotland have been in this city, where more
than anywhere else her good counsel and sure defence were
needed. Because she taught you true liberality and un-
feigned charity towards all who loved the Lord and called
upon His name,-^-because she taught you to call the Church
of England sister, though her proud prelates could loosen
and let slip the dogs of war upon our peaceable fathers, — be-
cause she teacheth you to call the Nonconformists brethren,
though now they have taken up the argument against any
and every established church, — because she taught you to sit
loose to little distinctions and free from formal bonds, was
that a reason, is that a reason, for disavowing her, and throw-
ing off your reverence for her at the suggestion of ambition,
or the mere plea of convenience .-' Because a mother is good
and gracious, and breedeth generous and open-hearted sons,
is that a reason why she should be slighted, set at naught,
VOL. III. 2 I

498 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and shuffled off for any other woman who may please to
adopt you ? Can you so easily repudiate or neglect such a
gifted, downed Church as I have this day a little described —
gifted with the wisdom of God, and endowed with the bless-
ing of God ? Can you cast off the inheritance of the faith and
prayers of three centuries of such a Church, and disperse your-
selves from the place of the treasure which is laid up on high,
when it shall please God to arise to favour Zion ? Can you so
sit loose and feel indifferent to that which the twenty genera-
tions of your mothers loved, and as many generations of your
fathers defended ? Is that Christian, — is it manly ? May
we do so and remain trustworthy with God and man ? I fear
this is a step which betrays us to* be sore, sore fallen into the
arms of ambition, or vanity, or worldliness ; dead to piety,
duty, and gratitude ; fallen from the stock of our fathers to
become the grafts of an inferior stock. Again I say that I
am ashamed of the indifference and supineness of Scotchmen
in these and other cities to the blessings which are to be de-
rived from adhering to the lot and distinction of the Church
of Scotland, which was planted such a close vine, and which
shall revive again in the days of refreshing from the presence
of the Lord.

This I say in general; and I know that the pious and right-
hearted men with whom I am connected feel the sympathy,
and share with us ministers the burden, of this doleful case of
our many countrymen; who also, having the means of second-
ing the words and prayers of their ministers by the wisdom
and charm of their acts, have begun, and are going on to give,
an example of their great esteem of the Church, and their
devotion unto the only Head of the Church. I have good
reason to bear this testimony in the midst of my brethren ;
and now mark my words, and see if after many years they
come not to pass : that these men, many of the youths who
have so given an example to their elders, and followed the
example of their fathers, will flourish in the favour and pro-
sperity of the Lord. They will grow up no place-hunters,
nor money-gatherers, but righteous and godly men, looked
up to by their nation, and delighted in by their nation ; they
will be enriched with wisdom and filled with the grace of

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 499

God, because they have not been ashamed of His daughter;
men spared to bestow wherewith she might be decently and
comely adorned. They will rear children, not for mammon
and for Belial, but for God and for Christ ; and the blessing
of God will go down unto their latest children, if they con-
tinue carefully to walk in His covenant and to observe His
commandments to do them.

VII.

LAST SERMON IN THE CALEDONIAN CHURCH*

Gen. XXVIII. 10-22.

And Jacob went out from Beers heba, and zvent ioiuard Haran, ^c.

"P\EARLY-Beloved Brethren, — Though the worship of
God be no longer confined to any set places or times,
and there be given to us a noble liberty to worship Him,
not in this nor in that mountain, but everywhere and any-
where, so that it be in spirit and in truth, seeing it is written,
that in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh right-
eousness is accepted of Him ; yet are we not ashamed to
confess this night that from the trials, and deliverances, and
manifold blessings, spiritual and temporal, with which the
Lord hath tried and proved and comforted and blessed His
church and congregation in this place, there hath grown
amongst us an attachment to the very walls which gave us
shelter, and its roof which canopied our head, to the dead
and inanimate things which have been silent witnesses of the
sweet communion in which we have joined with one another,
and with our God ; which should we ever forget, then might
the prophet also threaten against us that the stones shall cry
out of the wall against us, and the beam out of the timber
shall answer it. When the patriarch Jacob, upon his going
forth from his father's house with his staff in his hand, a
solitary sojourner to a distant country, was visited, in a cer-
tain place on which he lighted and made his pillow for the
night, by a vision of the Lord in a dream, he was not ashamed
when he awaked in the morning to exclaim, " Surely the
Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. How dreadful is
* Preached April 29, 1827.

DISCOURSES, ETC. 501

this place ! this is none other than the house of God, and this
is the gate of heaven." Now, surely many of us here wor-
shipping have experienced in this place the very thing which
Jacob saw in his vision. He dreamed, and behold a ladder
set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven :
and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on
it. Of which symbol I judge that our Lord giveth us the
interpretation in the first chapter of John's Gospel, where it is
written, " Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man."
If indeed we have not seen the very thing here promised and
then symbolised, but do wait for it against the day of the
Lord, we have had more than a vision of it in this place,
having received upon our faith of the Son of man many visits
of heavenly messengers, whereby our soul hath been duly
waited on and cared for ; yea, having received the first-fruits
of the Holy Spirit, by which w© are sealed until the day of
redemption. I well remember that the first sermon I preached
in this place concerning the divinity of Christ, I did shew
Him under the type of this ladder, by His humanity resting
upon the earth, by His divinity reaching into the heavens,
the great medium of communication and way of intercourse
between God and our souls. Since that time, many, very
many are the ministries and services of heavenly help and
nourishment which we have received by this channel. And
if Jacob, upon the remembrance of the emblem which he but
dimly understood, was so carried into a holy zeal and rapture
in the morning, we may well, upon the memory of the spirit-
ual realities which we have experienced, and are now en-
riched withal, take up the same word, and in the same spirit
exclaim, " This hath been to me a house of God, and a gate
of heaven ! "

Now, God was not offended with what the patriarch did
and said ; neither regarded it as superstition that the patri-
arch rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that
he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured
oil upon the top of it, and vowed over it a solemn vow, say-
ing, " If God will be with me, and will keep me in the way
that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put

502 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace : then
shall the Lord be my God ;" and having thus vowed, dedi-
cated the stone for a temple, saying, " And this stone, which
I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house, and of all that
thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee."
All this action of devout worship the Lord did not reject,
because it connected itself with a particular plan, but did
graciously allow and greatly honour it, in accommodation to
the constitution of man's being, which cannot, neither, I take
it, shall be ever able, to disengage itself from the conditions of
space and time. For the next time He appeared unto the
patriarch, who had now grown to be the head of families, and
the owner of much substance, He spake unto him in these
words, saying, " Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and
make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee, when
thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother." And unto
Bethel he came, and was there a second time visited of the
Lord, and there the second time testified his gratitude and
worship by erecting a pillar of stone, and pouring a drink-
offering thereon. Now this all happened under the liberty
of the patriarchal dispensation, and not under the bondage
of the legal dispensation, — under the promise, into the inheri-
tance of which promise we have by faith been introduced, —
and therefore we may well appropriate it both as a permission
and an example for that act of acknowledgment and devo-
tion which we this night purpose, by the grace of God, to
offer up in the remembrance of all the goodness which in this
place He hath made to pass before us. And in considering
this holy action of the patriarch's, I perceive it to consist of
three parts : — First, an acknowledgment of the presence and
the grace and the goodness of God, which he had unexpect-
edly partaken of in that place ; secondly, a commemoration
thereof by an act of worship and testimony ; and, thirdly, a
solemn vow vowed to the Lord, or covenant entered into
with Him over the same. After the like manner, seeing it
did please the Lord that we should take up our rest in this
place, where we have now abidden these five years, let us on
this night, when we leave it, it is likely, for ever, take a review
of the Lord's goodness to this congregation and church ; and,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 503

secondly, let us consider of that stone of witness, that Bethel,
or house of God, which He hath enabled us to set up,
though not on this spot, yet not far distant, and certainly in
consequence of the Divine blessing which we partook of in
this spot ; and lastly, let us vow some vow, or enter into some
covenant with the Lord, as a church and congregation, con-
cerning our prosperity in the time which is to come. And
may the Lord so move our hearts with devout and grateful
thoughts, that they may overflow with all grace and truth of
utterance, to the praise of His Holy Spirit and the honour of
His dear Son ; and let us, dear brethren, be of a very serious
and solemn spirit, as those who look back upon the mercies
of the Lord, and forward with good hope to His future
blessings.

When we look back, dearly-beloved brethren, upon the
mutual weakness and ignorance in which we met one another,
about five years from this time, and consider the variety of
trials with which the Lord hath proved us, and the condition
to which we have this day been brought by His almighty
grace, and how, though the archers have sorely grieved us,
and shot at us, and hated us, yet our bow hath abidden in
strength, and the arms of our hands have been made strong
by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, we cannot but
open our lips and utter the memory of all His goodness. For
myself, I can say with the Psalmist, that I was foolish and
ignorant, and as a beast before the Lord, untaught in any
discipline and unenlightened in any mystery, yet conceiving
that I knew all knowledge, and could make all mysteries
plain, (and, indeed, I was learned in all the learning of our
schools and colleges, which I have learned to be but foolish-
ness, and I understood the popular phraseology, and had
searched out the plain truth used in the churches under the
name of the gospel, which now I perceive to be but as the
last echo of a gospel dying out of the Church, or the far
distant rumour of the gospel about to return into the Church:)
and I know the same to have been the state and condition of
most of you, my dear brethren and companions in the pil-
grimage upon which we have thus far proceeded together:
that ye also were in the same twilight knowledge with my-

504 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

self, and many in utter and entire darkness. We were as raw
soldiers hastily gathered and mustered together for a cam-
paign, unskilled in our weapons, untempered to the extremes
of a warrior's life, and knowing little of the wiles and might
of the enemy. I cannot look back upon that beginning
without admiring the goodness and graciousness of our Cap-
tain, who hath a vigilant eye over every company of His
great army, yea, and extendeth His care to every single
soldier in the ranks of the Church militant, strengthening the
weak, comforting the downcast, instructing the ignorant,
hardening the effeminate, and preparing every man for the
day of fierce and terrible battle. For when we set out toge-
ther in a company under the banner of the cross, we were, I
may say, fit for no post in the field, and the Lord called us to
no one, but allowed us to gather knowledge and strength
and resolution in peace and quietness, giving us for a season
calmness and security. In those days were we wont, in the
morning, to open unto you Peter's discourse to the devout
Cornelius and his kind company, being thereto attracted by
the similar apostolical simplicity with which we had come
together, so unlike the worldly prudence and temporising
expediency of these times ; and in the evenings we opened
the gospel of the preparation and nativity of Jesus ; the Lord
for more than a year being pleased to feed us with the milk
of babes, and practise us in the first principles of the doctrine
of Christ, which are, repentance towards God and faith
towards the Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead
and eternal judgment. God be praised that in reflecting upon
this the beginning of our church, I sowed no error, nor
planted any schism or heresy, though I was only conversant
with the rudiments of the truth, of which, however I kept
nothing back, but freely communicated that which had been
given to me. In this season of initiation to the knowledge
of one another and the knowledge of Christ, which was as
it were the infancy and babyhood of the divine life, the Lord
led us into the temptation into which children do first fall, of
being spoiled by foolish fondling and giddy admiration. We
were just in that state of bloom and freshness when the
loveliness of the child is shooting into the fruitfulness of the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 505

man : at which time of Hfe Satan is wont to entwine around
parents' hearts the proudest hopes, and to play around the
youthful fancy with the gayest prospects. And, verily, our
trial in this way was of no ordinary kind, as ye know, dear
brethren, and ye likewise know how the Lord did not suffer
us to be spoiled by the unstable applause of men. Nor,
upon the other hand, did He permit the many storms of envy
and malice and hatred which were cast at us to break our
teeth or smite us to the earth. Nay, but let us give unto the
Lord the glory which is His due, and look with reverence at
the work which He wrought in this humble house, where He
did oblige the most mighty, the most wise, and the most
learned men of all this nation to sit and hear the truth. And
what truth } The truth which it most concerned them to know
— the vanity of all knowledge and travail of the intellect which
had not Christ for its object, the glory of God for its end, and
the Holy Spirit in us for its subject; the passing fleetness,
unprofitableness, and degradation of all indulgences and
gratifications of the sense except v/hen under the same con-
trol ; likewise the utter worthlessness before God, and
wickedness in His sight, of all decencies, moralities, charities,
devotions, and good works which come not of the root of
faith, and grow not out of a renewed soul. On these subjects
it pleased the Lord to furnish our childhood with various
discourse to these multitudes of our notable men, who came
hither to delight, and entertain, and perhaps to amuse them-
selves with the novelty of our appearance. And I believe in
my heart that the Lord was well pleased with our faithful-
ness during that trying season, and that we have since entered
into the fruits and enjoyed the profits of His goodness, be-
cause we did not refuse to declare His counsel, according to
our present knowledge, to the greatest and most mighty of
this land. One fruit of it we possess in that stately house
into which we are about to enter ; for certainly, had it not
been for the excitation of spirit which Avas then given to us,
we had never had courage to undertake what the Lord, I
trust, will give us constancy to complete and surrender up to
His glory. When we consider ourselves as a church and a
congregation set for the testimony of the truths of the gospel

5o6 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

of Christ, I cannot help looking upon that notoriety which the
Lord gave to our ministry at that time as intended by Him
for the purpose of giving a more wide circulation to the word
which He was afterwards to speak by our lips. And blessed
be the Lord, that in advancing us to speak His truth before
princes and nobles, and even wise and learned men, He did
not suffer us to fall into the snare of vanity, or of liberality,
or of flattery, or of folly in any kind. This trial being past,
dear brethren, which I can never look back upon without
fervent gratitude, it pleased the Lord to begin to open unto
us the deeper things of His counsel, and especially the mys-
tery of the Church concerning which we have often discoursed,
and are even now discoursing. In that text, " But ye are a
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a pecu-
liar people, that ye should shew forth the praises of him who
hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light,"
we began to perceive the doctrine of election in its mani-
festation of the separate people ; though in its mystery of
the eternal purpose of God we are but now beginning to be
able to discourse it thereof, and you to hear it discoursed.
By means of this doctrine, the Lord wrought a twofold effect :
first, causing those to fall away from us Avho had no desire to
prove the power of divine doctrine, and wanted only the
entertainment of human discourse ; secondly, uniting in more
close communion those who loved His truth, and opened
their ear to hear it. And it is well known to those most
intimately acquainted with the growth of this church, how
in our meetings the glee and mirth of social friendship began
to pass away for the gravity and grace of Christian brother-
hood, even as the unsteady buoyancy of youth passeth
into the steadfast constancy of manhood, — how a spirit of
prayer and waiting for God's blessing began by degrees to
come over our spirit, with the conviction that unless He
should take us by the hand and help us we should utterly
come to nought. True, through our boldness in declaring
the mind and will of God concerning the missionary work,
in denouncing the spirit of expediency which was eating the
substance out of all things spiritual and temporal, those com-
monly reported of as the servants of the gospel became the

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 507

bitterest of our enemies, and have continued so until this day.
But the Lord helped us, and continued to open more and
more of His counsel, and to gather into the garner more and
more of the fruits of righteousness. Especially doth this
church and congregation owe her thanks for enabling us to
declare and to receive the mystery of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Ghost, one God; which doctrine, next to that
of the glorious advent of the Lord, was made most fruitful in
Avinning souls unto Christ. After almost six months spent
in holding up the great doctrine of the Trinity, and the
necessity of idolatry in worshipping God otherwise than as
Trinity in Unity, the harvest was truly great, and there were
added to this church many souls which continue to adorn the
doctrine of God our Saviour unto this day. From the womb
of this mother of doctrines came our knowledge of the Roman
apostasy, which, I do well remember, we were very timorous
to declare, and you were very loath to hear ; but you see how
the Lord hath delivered us from the snare of liberalism, and
toleration of that which He hateth, and honoured this church
to make perhaps the most constant and determined stand
which in these latter days hath been made against the papal
apostasy and its even more abandoned sister, Protestant
liberality. Oh, dear brethren, if time permitted me, I could
say much, and offer the incense of much praise unto the Lord
who hath cleansed us from this leprosy of the Protestant
Church. May the Lord make us clear-eyed watchmen to
discern the distant danger, and penetrate the disguises of
Satan, with which he is lying in wait to subvert us ! These
were great gifts of God to our souls, doctrines most true
and comfortable, and full of all holiness and love, and the
Lord was gracious above all measure to deem us worthy the
spiritual knowledge thereof; but they were well known unto
our fathers, the basis and ground-work of the Protestant
churches, though now the rope of strength be untwisted
almost to a very thread. But in what terms shall we speak
of the great goodness of the Lord, that when He was seeking
here and there a church amongst whom to plant the testi-
mony of His second advent, which was not opened to the
preachers of the Reformation, as it hath been to some

5o8 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

preachers of these days, He should choose us for that great
honour, and open to us that doctrine in all its fulness, and
along with it the prophetic character of all Scripture and of
all providence. Now, brethren, I may say, for the first time,
I began to perceive the true character of Divine revelation,
before the opening power of which all sceptical doubts which
might have lingered about the corners of the house were
banished, and I trust are banished for ever. And now, from
the manifestation, the Lord enabled our comprehension to
ascend unto the mystery of His purpose, where only the
Father is honoured, and unto the essential divinity of the
Word ; while by the same manifestation the humanity of the
Son and the work of the Spirit were honoured. And, dear
brethren, I can well testify, and do now testify, in the hearing
of all you present, that no doctrine which hath been preached
to this congregation hath been more profitable to bring souls
unto God than this of the second advent, under the nourish-
ment of which, while all have been fed, a very great number
have been savingly convinced, and joined to the Church.

Thus, brethren, have we thought it good to shew forth the
revelations which have been made known to us in this place,
where we took up our rest and habitation, and from which we
are now called by the providence of God to remove ourselves
away. How like it hath been to that of the patriarch, consist-
ing in pure discoursing and knowledge, and particularly in the
discoursing of that glorious coming age hereafter, when we
shall see the angels descending and ascending upon the Son
of man ! We have seen the same ; the Lord hath taught it to
us ; and while others mock, and say. It is but a dream of the
fancy, a wicked invention of darkness. He hath enabled us to
say. Surely it is the truth of the Lord, the Lord's most gracious,
most comfortable, most glorious manifestation of His truth
to His unworthy servants ! I desire to give thanks this night
that you have not mocked, that you have not scoffed, that you
have not derided, the great revelation of the approaching
advent of the Lord. I give God thanks that it hath found a
seat and a settlement in this church; and I pray you now, as
many as have been enabled to receive it, to give unto God the
glory, and to stand fast in the integrity of the faith, and bring

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 509

forth the abundant fruits thereof But the Lord calleth us to
depart from this place, where we have partaken such sweet
rest and been enriched with such delightful visions. We
must change our habitation ; and what memorial shall we
make, what monument shall we set up of the goodness and
grace of our God ?

This is the second subject to which we are called by the
example of Jacob in the text, who, while yet the lively im-
pression of the Divine goodness and condescension remained
upon his spirit, with the earliest opening of his eyes to look
round upon the scene of such a wonderful vision, did say,
" Surely God is in this place, and I knew it not : this is none
other than the house of God and the gate of heaven ;" devoutly
acknowledging the holy presence with which he had been
enshrined during the dark watches of the night. And so, many
of us also, far removed from our fathers' house, being brought
to this city with staff and scrip to pursue our lonely way
towards honour and preferment, have in this very place found
God to be present unto their souls, even the God of our fathers,
the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, and can say,
" Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." I knew
it not. I came seeking my own entertainment, haply my own
pleasure, the good opinion of men ; or I did but set me down
to pass the Sabbath, which decency requireth to be somewhere
passed in a religious house ; and lo ! I have found God, whom
I sought not for ; God hath found me. He hath visited me, He
hath made revelations of His blessed truth unto me, He hath
taken me into the inheritance of the promise made unto my
fathers, He hath confirmed the covenant with my own soul
which He made with my father. This hath surely been the
house of God to me, it hath proved the very gate of heaven.
I think there be a goodly number within my own knowledge
who can appropriate the language of the patriarch unto them-
selves. Nor doth it make the work less honourable, that it
hath been done in this humble and unadorned house, and not
under the starry vault of heaven ; though to the eye of taste,
the wayfaring and lonely patriarch, sleeping with the earth
for his bed, and the stones of the earth for his pillow, and the
vault of heaven for his canopy, may seem much in keeping

5IO DISCOURSES DELIVERED

with such a splendid vision of the opened way from heaven to
earth, and the angehc travellers thereon ; and we here, the
artisans and craftsmen, and tradesmen and merchants of a
laborious city, crowded and pent together in the nooks and
corners of an obscure house in an unfrequented and unfashion-
able quarter of the city, may seem to the eye of taste very
much out of keeping with any such revelation as we have
laid claim to ; yet to the spiritual eye it is one and the same
manifestation of divine truth, whether made in the solitudes
of Bethel, or on the way to Haran, or in the alleys of the
city of London, upon the fathers of the twelve patriarchs
of Israel, or one of the obscurest craftsmen of this city ; nay,
the least who are called by the preaching of the kingdom
of heaven is greater than the greatest of all the prophets. In
the former case it is emblematical, in the other spiritual, but
in both waiting for that outward reality of most worthy and
fit imagery, which it yet shall have when the Lord shall come
again with ten thousand of His saints, and the way of com-
munication between heaven and earth shall be revealed, and
the thronging passengers on the way of the Son of man made
manifest, whom now we behold not, though we know they
are ever passing and repassing on their various ministries to
the saints.

The patriarch having thus expressed the burden of his soul
in so strong and earnest language, did straightway proceed to
set up a monument of his thankfulness unto the Lord ; and
being possessed of nothing but his staff, (" With this staff went
I over Jordan,") he took the stones on which his head had
rested when he beheld that glorious vision and received that
gracious promise, purposing if he prospered to make it God's
house, and to devote to the Lord's service a tenth part of all
his increase, saying, " And this stone which I have set up for a
pillar shall be God's house ; and of all that thou shalt give
me I will surely give a tenth unto thee." In what way the
patriarch would fulfil this vow, and dispose of that tenth which
he dedicated to the Lord, it is not to our present purpose to
inquire, seeing we are not using it as a pattern to copy from
in the letter, but only in the spirit. The patriarch had a sense
of God's grace, and his soul longed for some method of

ON PUBLIC OCCA SIONS. 5 1 1

expressing it, and he vowed and pledged himself to the Lord
to do it out of the first of his substance, if the Lord should
preserve and prosper him, and restore him to his father's house
in peace. In like manner the Lord, so soon as He had delivered
the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, gave them an
opportunity of contributing to the tabernacle of their sub-
stance. And when He had enriched David and Solomon, He
accepted the magnificent temple at their hands. He even
straitened and cut the people short when they lingered about
the works of the second temple, as you may read in the pro-
phecies of Haggai. And under the dispensation of the Holy
Ghost at Pentecost, the spirit of devoting of their substance to
His service, so far from relaxing, was increased to the utmost
possible bound. And wherever Christianity hath made pro-
gress, the same effects have been uniformly produced ; taking
advantage of which, as well as the other natural tendencies
of true religion, the Papacy built up its superstitious devices
and offerings at shrines, and sin-indulgences, and death-
penances, and purgatorial-redemptions, unto this day. From
which I would stand the farthest possible apart, when I argue,
nevertheless, that it is both wise and gracious in God to per-
mit and accept such offerings of the pious soul as this which
Jacob freely pledged, though it is one of Satan's chief and
earnest arts to convert them into costly passports to heaven,
against which the ministers of religion should stand always
upon the alert. For how otherwise should we be able to shew
our sense of God's good providence towards us, than by
devoting some part of it to His special service, whatever that
may consist in, whether in supporting the ministry of the
Church, or in caring for the poor of His flock, or helping the
calamities of the suffering world, or in some other way ap-
pointed in His Word .'* To debar this avenue of the renewed
soul would be to deprive it of one of its most agreeable and
profitable exercises, and to exclude devotion from one of the
quarters of our worldly condition. And so little is this to be
imagined as about to cease in the millennial times, that it is
continually given as a feature of them, that the princes of the
earth shall offer gifts unto Christ, that kings and queens shall
bring the riches of the earth into the city of His habitation,

5 1 2 DISCO UR SES DELIVERED ^

and that kings' daughters with their treasures shall do attend-
ance upon His bridal Church.

Forasmuch, then, as the godly Jacob, and the Israelites un-
der Moses, and under David, and under Ezra, and the wise
men of the East in the stable of Bethlehem, and the wealthy
saints who were converted after Pentecost, and the Christian
Church in all ages, have constantly been glad of every occasion
to testify their sense of God's goodness by the devotion of a
part of their substance, which in the millennial age is to be still
more eagerly pursued ; it doth seem to me a most meet and
righteous thing for any church or congregation, which hath
been favoured as we have been with revelations of Divine truth,
with the pure administration of ordinances and sacraments,
with the communion of saints, and all the other unspeakable
benefits of a Christian Church, to express and embody our
sense of the same in the erection of a house, and that no mean
one, to the preaching of the same pure doctrine, and the
administration of the same wholesome discipline which we
have found so profitable to our souls. I speak not of the
blessing thereby certain to ourselves, and to our children,
and to our children's children, if they will avail themselves of
them ; I speak not of the blessings to the scattered wilderness-
population of this city ; I speak not of the comfort to the
Church of Christ in general, to behold their brethren afTected
with zeal to the gospel of Christ, nor of the profit to the
whole land from having another house of praise and prayer
and sound doctrine erected within its borders ; — all these things
I mention not, as being of inferior consideration, and coming
in the train of that high act of making a solemn devotion of
substance unto God because of the blessings, spiritual and
temporal, which He hath bestowed upon us as a church. It is
to Him I would have that house to be devoted, and offered
with as much purity as Abraham did offer the tenth part of
the spoils to Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God. I
would have you to look upon it when we shall enter it together,
with the same solemnity with which Jacob looked upon the
stony pillar of Luz ; and I would have you to pour over it
the solemn unction of your votal prayer, with what reverence
and sanctity he poured upon that pillar the oil of dedication

ON PUBLIC OCCA SIONS. 5 1 3

And, my brethren, I shall count our offering incomplete while
any man can lay his finger upon a stone or upon a splinter of it,
and say. It is mine ; or while any man beneath the dignity of
the chief magistrate of the state can come and say, The door
of it must be shut. Let us offer it, dear brethren, a whole
offering, without let or hindrance, unto the Lord for His holy
worship, according to the soundest and strictest method of our
fathers ; and rest you assured, dear brethren, that being so
offered the Lord will accept it in good part, and honour it as
His own, and as His own receive it, so long as He shall see
the land worthy of the preaching of the gospel, and the
Church of Scotland worthy to be the depositary of sound
doctrine. And if we would wish the last ray of the departing
light to linger lovingly about the memorials of that house which
we devote, then, my beloved, let us devote it most willingly,
most freely, most fully unto the Lord. That is the best
charter, that is the best deed of settlement, — believe me, that
is the best trust.

Those stones which had been the pillow of his head did
but mark upon the lonely wild unto the pious Jacob that
spot where the Lord had shewn unto him the emblem of his
future glory, and promised unto him the inheritance of the
land of promise. It marked the solemn spot, that, should
it please God to direct again his footsteps thither, he might
make it for himself into a house of God, and dedicate upon
the altar there the tenth part of all his increase. And for long
and long did the Lord honour this same Bethel to be a chief
abode of His holiness, even until the time of the rebellion of
the ten tribes of Israel, when, in the days of Rchoboam the
son of Solomon, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which caused
Israel to sin, set up there a calf after the abomination of Egypt.
Whereby it is signified unto us that no piety or zeal of those
who found a house can protect or preserve it from the in-
vasion of the enemy, who continually perverteth the ways of
God ; yet, as the Lord hath promised that His righteousness
shall be unto children's children, to such as keep His cove-
nant, and remember His commandments to do them, — which
also He shewed unto Jacob, by planting His true worship in
this same Bethel for almost a thousand years, — 0 brethren,
VOL. III. 2 K

514 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

let us seek, by some very powerful and pure act of devotion
unto God, to conciliate His favour unto this place which we
have now erected to be a monument of our piety unto the
generations which are to come after. Who knows but the
Lord may look down, and behold and accept the homage
of His servants, and be pleased to receive from our hands that
which we offer unto Him, and to call it His own, and say, Here
will I plant the honour and glory of my name ; and here shall
many sons and many daughters be born into my Church ?
For it is most certain that under the gospel, as under the law,
and under the promise, and in all His dispensations, the Lord
blesseth the children for the fathers' sake, and is very loath to re-
move His presence away from any place or church upon which
He hath already bestowed it, as lately we did read together
in His expostulation with the churches of Sardis and Thyatira,
whom He entreateth with all His might, and to whom He
sendeth special epistles of exhortation. Now surely, brethren,
the Lord hath not manifested Himself to any church with
more love than to us in these latter days, whom, from igno-
rance and blindness and darkness. He hath brought to the
manifestation and belief of His truth ; whom, from wandering
and straying after our own imaginations, He hath brought to
a united heart to love, serve, and obey Him ; of whom, though
we were not a people. He hath made to be a people of God,
a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, to shew forth the
glory of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His
marvellous light. Wherefore we may assuredly believe He
meaneth us well, and will perfect u.s, and that which concerneth
us, if we abide in holiness and in love, patient and faithful
unto the end. Therefore, my dearly beloved, let us gird up
the loins of our mind, and be of good courage, while we stand
before the Lord, and in His presence enter into a solemn act
of devotion, saying with the patriarch Jacob, " If God will be
with us, and will keep us in this way that we go ; and will
give us bread to eat and raiment to put on ; if He will bring
us through this wilderness unto our Father's house, then shall
the Lord be our God ; and this house which we have set up
for a stone of help shall be God's house unto us, and we shall
out of our substance provide plentifully for His worship there-

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIGNS. 5 1 5

in." In a word, we Avill do it willingly, and we will do it cheer-
fully,— out of our substance we will bring Him gifts, and lay
them plentifully before Him ; esteeming it an honour to have
our offering accepted of His hand. Dear brethren, unto whom
should the Lord intrust His substance in keeping but unto
them who are faithful to the trust } If we are not faithful over
the least, we shall not be intrusted with the greatest ; if we
have not been faithful over the unrighteous mammon, who will
commit unto us the true riches ? Therefore, dear brethren,
resolve every one to devote your all unto God, soul and body
and estate, and go about daily to do it ; withdrawing from the
service of vanity, and of pride, and of avarice, and of ambition,
and of all unrighteousness, and devoting yourselves to the ser-
vice of honesty, of charity, of religion, and of all righteousness ;
and behold what gainers ye will be, how the Lord will send
His blessing, fill your barns, increase your stores, and make
your presses to burst out with new wine ! God knows, my dear
brethren, that I am advocating no base grovelling interest, no
low earthly ambition, but endeavouring to rouse your spirit up
to the pitch of the aged and pious patriarch, that you may go
forth this night out of this place, in the same devoted spirit in
which he went with his pilgrim's staff from Bethel towards the
fords of Jordan. You know well I want no gift — you know
well I never sought any — nor now do seek or desire anything
for me and mine beyond the poorest of the people ; you know
I cared not for the stateliness or size or splendour of the house
in which I ministered, having oft told you that I am content,
when the Lord willeth, to take my fare with my fathers, who
dined in caves of the rock, and preached under the noble
canopy of heaven. And I will be your apologist also, and
say, that besides the honour of God's worship, and the com-
mon weal of our people, nothing moved or stirred your minds
to the great work which you have undertaken.

And therefore with the more confidence do I call upon
you now to walk in the same footsteps, and now, by a solemn
act, to devote unto the Lord, without grudging, all that you
have done, and all that you may yet be required to do, to
complete the work. Say unto Him, " What we have given to
Thee hath been but a pittance of all which Thou hast given

5 1 6 DISCO UR SES DELIVERED

unto us ; we have not known ourselves poorer for it, but
rather richer until this day. What we have given to Thee
out of our time hath been sweetly spent ; the sweetest of our
hours have been in the service of Thy Church ; and Thou
didst make Thy Spirit to prevail in the midst of us over all
our wicked dispositions and indispositions. And Thy Sab-
bath hath been very sweet unto us ; we have enjoyed much
of Thy goodness, whereat our heart this day is glad. Blessed
be Thou who hast called upon us to lengthen our cords and
strengthen our stakes. Blessed be Thou who hast given us
a place to rest in for a possession to Thy congregation for
ever. Go Thou up with us with that fulness of joy with
which Thou w^entest up with thine ark to Jerusalem ; and
fill the house with the glory of Thy presence, as Thou didst
the temple which was dedicated unto Thee by Solomon the
king of Israel." My dear brethren, be of good courage ; be
of a stout and courageous heart. The enemies who have
sought our subversion have themselves been subverted ; and
if we walk in Zion's courts, no weapon formed against us
shall ever prosper. Many of you can join me and say, We
came up hither with our staff, as Jacob went up to Padan-
aram ; the Lord hath increased us ; He hath given us wives
and children, and ceiled houses to dwell in ; He hath given
us bread to eat and raiment to put on ; He hath indeed led
us in a good and quiet way, delivering us from the hands
of many enemies. Therefore He shall be our God for ever,
and we will be to Him for a people. Oh that the Lord
would accept us ! Oh that the Lord would accept of our
children ! Oh that the Lord w^ould accept also of our sub-
stance which we have embodied in this house which we have
offered unto Him ! And blessed be all those who have helped
us in this work out of their substance, though they partake
not with us of the same spiritual pastures. We bless the Lord
for their countenance, and we will continue to pray for them,
as in times past we have done. And we will honour the king,
whose brothers and sisters have worshipped along with us ;
and we will give due respect to dignities, of whom every
order has worshipped amongst us ; and we will know no
party in the state, but be good and loyal subjects, seeing the

ON PUBLIC OCCA SIONS. 5 1 7

heads of every party have worshipped with us in peace. And
while we adhere to the ordinances and observances of our
mother Church, we will stretch out the hand of true brother-
hood to all who honour Christ Jesus, our honoured Head.
We will know no distinction of nation, while we seek with
peculiar earnestness the outcast and strayed children of our
Church, for whom we are ordained watchmen in this great
city. So, dear brethren, we resolve in the strength of the
Lord, and so may the Lord enable us to fulfil.

While I thus stir up your spirit and my own with words
of strength and encouragement, let us guard against rashness
and over-boldness. Satan lieth ever in wait, seeking to entrap
us, and pride and confidence are the pinnacle of the temple
from which he would fain cast us down to destroy us. There-
fore, very dear brethren, let us continue of the same humble
moods, and walk in all our ways with the same soft step which
the Lord hath prospered hitherto ; hasting nothing, precipi-
tating nothing, but gathering in the harvest of prosperity as the
Lord may be pleased to ripen it, and bestowing upon Him the
first-fruits of it all. I do pray you, especially, not to be up-
lifted by the wonderful grace of the Lord in bringing, by such
a wonderful and unexpected providence, perhaps the two
most honoured ministers of our Church to preach the gospel
unto us upon this occasion. Oh, be guarded against trusting
in the arm of flesh ! — of honouring man, whose breath is in his
nostrils, for what is he to be accounted of.'' But be prepared
with all meekness to hear the word from their lips which the
Lord may be pleased to send ; for be assured He will not
bring two such from so far a distance without some purpose
of His grace to be served thereby. They have some message,
rest assured, from the Lord. Be ye prepared to receive it.
But, oh, give God praise that the five years' labour which
we have laboured together under this roof, with little help
and with much opposition of man, hath the promise of being
at the last so honoured beyond example ; and the foolish jest-
ings and ignorant speculations of those who rail at us and our
doctrines will be put to shame by the countenance and ap-
proval of men who have been tried and found faithful. Re-
gard it as a token for good to us and also to our countrymen ;

5i8 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

and let us hope that the Lord will yet make the Scottish
Church to be honoured in this metropolis of Britain, as a
faithful witness in these last days, and that by her means He
will gather a people to the glory of His name.

O brethren ! I know not how to conclude. My heart faints
at the thought of saying the Amen to the ministry which I
have ministered from this pulpit. To me it hath been a
very profitable ministry, and I know it hath been so likewise
to very many of you ; I would hope to all. The Lord hath
acknowledged me as a minister of His gospel by tokens of
which the number is known only to myself Worthless,
worthless man that I am to be so acknowledged of my
Master. O ye ministers of truth ! be of courage, for the most
unworthy of you all has been accepted in His service. Ye
members of Christ, honour your ministers, for Christ hath
honoured in this place, to this flock, one who was totally
unworthy, and is totally unworthy, to keep a flock. And ye
who know any portion of the truth, present it boldly, and
the Lord will increase you mightily ; for to one who knew
but a small, small portion of it. He hath taught much, blessed
be His holy name ! And you, my own people, and the "sheep
of my pasture, be instant in prayer ; be desirous of the best
food, and covet the best gifts and largest graces, and haply
for your sakes the Lord will honour me with more discoveries
of the Spirit. And ye who are my children in the gospel,
remember that the Lord spake the word which hath saved
you by these lips of mine, and honour me by the constant
mention of me in your prayers. O dear brethren ! regard
not these things as words of course. I value the prayer
of a brother too highly to mete it unto a ceremonious, cour-
teous request. I ask it as one that loveth and honoureth
the prayer of the righteous in the last degree. I beseech it
as one who is burdened daily with the growing weight and
increasing cares of the churches. Therefore, believe me,
I am in the deepest earnest in this, as well as in all that I
have this night uttered.

And now, O Lord God ! who hath watched for Thy poor
congregation in this place, continue to watch for us whither
we go, and to keep us under our great Shepherd. Increase

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 5 1 9

our numbers, increase our health and strength, increase our
substance, increase our honour in the Church. Make us able
and valiant to maintain Thy truth unto the death, and cheer-
fully to offer, ourselves upon the service of the faith. Remember
this place for God, when we are gone forth from it, and let the
blessing of those who went before rest upon them who are to
come after. And, oh, prepare our way before us ! Go up
with us together into Thy house, and let our feet stand to-
gether in the courts of Thy house, and bring us to the place
where Thy tabernacles are found ; and hide us in Thy pa-
vilion until the evil days be overpast ; and gather us with the
Church of the first-born in heaven. Oh, hear this prayer, and
answer it in fulness, our God and King, in whom is our trust
and our confidence, and by whom our footsteps have hitherto
been led ! Amen and amen.

VIII.

FIRST SERMON IN THE NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH *

M

Psalm cxxvi. 3.
The Lord hath done great things for its, whereo^ive are glad'

Y Dearly-Beloved Brethren, — Though I have the
greatest desire to resume the discourse of the glory
which the Son of man bringeth unto His Father by the
Church, and to open the whole mystery of the Church, and
of her oppressions under the world, yet do I feel constrained
by the strongest sense of obligation to devote this Avhole day
to another service, which you will agree with me in thinking
is most due unto the Lord our God, who with so much good-
ness and bounty, and, I may say, with so much honour, hath
planted our feet in this tabernacle of peace, welcomed us
hither with so much of His good countenance, holpen us with
the services of His most honourable ministers, and strength-
ened us with the offerings and congratulations of all men.
The events and experiences of the last two weeks, — the spirit
of love and harmony which hath abidden over our unworthy
heads, — the rich and varied feast of instruction which the
Lord hath served forth to strengthen and refresh us in the
way of His commandments, are not to pass unacknowledged
unto the great Giver of all good : nor are the ends of His
own glory and of His Church's good, for which He hath so
graciously entreated and so bountifully loaded the least
worthy of all His congregations, to lie hidden from our re-
search or removed from our request ; nor are our hearts to be
withholden from breaking forth into laughter and singing upon
the memory of His goodness ; nor are our minds to be re-
* Preached May 28, 1827,

DISCOURSES, ETC. 521

strained this day from meditating by what means we shall
best advance the cause of the gospel of Christ, and shew
forth the sense which we entertain of His grace and mercy to
us, the most unworthy of all His creatures. Wherefore, per-
ceiving that it is not possible to gather the church and con-
gregation together upon a week-day, which our Church rather
afifecteth for such services, I do propose, upon this the first
Sabbath of my ministry in this house, to offer up unto the
Lord an offering of thanksgiving for myself and for all the
people, and at the same time to search and inquire diligently
how we may walk together in His presence with all comeli-
ness and grace, as those who have been so highly favoured
and signally honoured of the Lord.

To which end I have made choice, as you perceive, for the
subject of discourse, of a psalm composed, no doubt, by some
one of the children of the captivity in Babylon, when Cyrus
issued his proclamation giving them leave to return to their
own land, and rebuild their city and their temple. For
seventy years had they sat down by the rivers of Babylon
and wept, hanging their unstrung and idle harps upon the
willows of the stream, rather than use them in the service of
their cruel oppressors. For the true-hearted captives said^
" How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land .'' If I
forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cun-
ning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to
the roof of my mouth ; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my
chief joy." And after having thus with breakings of heart
long sowed in tears the seed of faith and hope, they were per-
mitted to reap in joy the harvest of enjoyment with laughter
and singing, when the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion.
And they said, " We were like them that dream ; then was
our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing."
For now, so remarkable was the dealing of the Lord by His
captives, and so remarkable the stretching out of His arm for
their sake, that even the people among the heathen were con-
strained to observe it and to exclaim, " The Lord hath done
great things for them." To which the daughter of Zion, taking
her harp from oft" the willows where it had so long hung, re-
sponded thus thankfully and wisely, — " The Lord hath done

522 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again our cap-
tivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in
tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth,
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with re-
joicing, bringing his sheaves with him." Such, dear brethren,
was the occasion, and such is the sentiment of the psalm from
which we have this day chosen to discourse unto you some
word of a similar strain, according to the experiences of the
Lord's goodness which we also have partaken, after our souls
had wellnigh fainted and our faith almost misgave under the
delay of our desire and expectation. And to the end of
bringing out the whole work of this day in proper order —

First, Let us consider the great things which the Lord
hath done for us, and endeavour to rejoice and shew forth our
gladness upon all the memory thereof; and —

Secondly, The ends for which He hath done such great
things for us ; and what He expecteth from us towards the
complete and perfect attainment of those ends, for the sake of
which He hath so blessed us.

Such is the method according to which we propose this day
to lead forth your meditations and thanksgivings and holy
purposes before the Lord your God. And may the Holy
Spirit help our infirmities, and enable us to offer together
such an offering as will be well-pleasing in His sight !

I am, then, in the first place to endeavour to make a true
estimate in the hearing of you all of the great things that God
hath done for us ; which you will take as a supplement to
that historical rehearsal which we made on the evening when
we separated from the former dwelling-place of our praise
and testimony. Now, in attempting such a statement of the
Lord's goodness and grace, it will be necessary, first, to pre-
sent those things in which all of us have an equal and com-
mon interest, and afterwards those things which concern us
more particularly as the children of the Scottish Church, who
are specially beholden unto God, and have this day, as it
were, a double debt of gratitude to pay. The things which
we have to acknowledge in common are, first, the great good-
ness of God in providing for us this day the goodly prospect
of sitting together in peace under the glad sound of the

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 5 2 3

gospel, which the Psalmist prized so highly in these words : — ■
" Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound; they shall
walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance. In thy name
shall they rejoice all the day, and in thy righteousness shall
they be exalted. For thou art the glory^ of their strength,
and in thy favour shall our horn be exalted." Nor doth Paul
set this means of grace at a lower mark when with a climax
he ascendeth unto the preaching of the word as the great
ordinance of God for awakening the souls of men, and stirring
them up to call upon His name unto salvation : " Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How
then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed ?
and how shall they believe on him of whom they have not
heard .■' and how shall they hear without a preacher.'"' And
if you will consult your own experience, or more largely in-
quire into the history of the Church of Christ, you will find
that to the preaching of the gospel by the mouth of faithful
ministers, the conversion of sinners and the edification of
saints is chiefly due. For, dear brethren, you are not ignorant,
though many be ignorant, that the written word, by making
a continual appeal to the natural understanding and the
natural feelings, hath a tendency to beget a natural religion
of the mind and of the heart, consisting in intellectual and
intelligible dogmas, whether orthodox or heterodox, (for inas-
much as they are merely intellectual, it maketh little differ-
ence of what creed they are, being at the best lifeless opin-
ions,) and consisting in moral duties, cases of conscience, and
outward formal observances, which the apostle calleth dead
works. This natural religion, I say, to which the simple and
unaided reading of the word ever tendeth, and must tend, it
doth continually require the office of the preacher to correct ;
who, standing equally between the written word and the Holy
Spirit, being of neither but of both, may embody in his discourse
all the truth of the one, and exemplify in his discourse all de-
pendence upon the power of the other. And herein consisteth
the beauty and the blessedness of the visible Church, that it
doth for the Holy Spirit the same good service which the
written word doth for the Son, the former being the Spirit's
especial abode, as the latter is Messiah's especial abode, and

524 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

both together most profitable and most necessary to manifest
and to establish the election of the Father. Now, of the visible
Church, which is the pillar and the ground of the truth, by
far the most powerful and precious ordinance of the Holy
Spirit, which He inhabiteth as between the cherubim, is the
ministry, the true and faithful ministry of the word of God,
wherein as from the oracle He giveth forth the truth in the
hearing of the Church. This royal ordinance Satan casteth
down in the apostate papacy, or keepeth far in the back-
ground, occupying the ears of the people with his mystery of
iniquity, and their eye with his mummery of superstition ; the
same artifice he carried into effect here in England during the
evil days of Laud ; and though he could not entirely succeed,
he hedged it in to a mere pinfold of space and time, by
casting three services into one long service before the sermon
should commence, which he so straitened as to leave it almost
helpless in the struggle against the wearied and worn-out
attention of the people. And in Scotland he hunted preach-
ing out of house and hall, of church and habitable places,
with the utmost ferocity, well knowing that it is his most
terrible enemy, which while it lived and lasted would keep
the Church against his seductions. And observe, brethren,
that even in our small experience, the only thing against
which he hath raged is the liberty which I take to myself in
preaching beyond my fellows, at which he is exceeding wroth,
and would, if he could, overthrow it. Now, there is no way
by which you shall better estimate the value of any gift of
the Church than by the temper and tooth which Satan
sheweth against it. And well I do know that in this our
Protestant Church, the cruelties which, under various pre-
tences, he hath wreaked upon the faithful preaching of the
gospel do exceed a hundred, yea, a thousand fold all the
rest; and well, therefore, am I justified this day in putting
it first in the file of our debts unto our most gracious God,
that we are now gathered together for the first time under a
roof, which is by express charter and deed of settlement de-
voted to the preaching of that sound doctrine upon which the
churches of the Reformation are founded.

Turn your eyes and look around you and consider well at

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 525

this time of day the condition of Christendom. Behold the
larger portion of it under tlie apostasy of the Man of Sin ; be-
hold another portion of it under the Greek Church, which I
cannot but conceive as worse still, by how much it addeth to
almost the corruption of the former a rooted heresy upon the
procession of the Holy Ghost ; then consider, what I conceive to
be worst of all, the infidel condition of the Reformed Churches,
though they possess both the Scriptures and the orthodox
creed ; consider also how these two Reformed Churches of Bri-
tain, which so mightily flourished under the preaching of the
word, have declined under the decay and disrepute of that
royal ordinance ; and, finally, look at the various classes of
Dissenters, and observe how exactly they take their tone and
temper from the character of the doctrine which is preached
to them from Sabbath to Sabbath. Do this, I entreat you, and
be at pains to give God the praise and the glory, if you think
that you have now His oracles fully and clearly preached
unto you ; or, if you think otherwise, earnestly and constantly
pray that He would trim your lamp, and set it on a candle-
stick, that it may give light to all that are in the house. And
oh ! give heed unto the word preached to you, which, if it be
the word of God, must either prove the savour of life unto
life, or of death unto death. It cannot return unto him void.
It must either kill or it must make alive. Beware lest it
should be the sentence of condemnation unto any one, instead
of being the word of salvation unto all. Furthermore, look
around you in this city, and behold from how many pulpits
this doctrine of justification by works is preached to many
deluded congregations. From how many more the doctrine
of our Lord's divine name, whereby alone we can be saved, is
denied ; and from how many the peculiarities of a sect, and
the prejudices of a party, are magnified into the importance
of faith, and holiness, and hope, and charity, and peace. Be-
hold how Satan, through this ordinance of preaching, soweth
tares in the field of the world, and distributeth poison amongst
the children of the kingdom ! and if you feel that the Lord
hath defended you from his subtle artifices, and given you not
a false but a true doctrine, not a partial but a full gospel,
give Him thanksgiving and praise, such as the husbandman

526 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

doth offer when the dews of spring and the gentle rains of
summer begin to fall upon the sown fields, making the tender
blade to spring, and shoot into the ear, and ripen into the fruit-
fulness of harvest. And oh ! dear brethren, as the earth, receiv-
ing the former and the latter rains, doth teem forth from her
fruitful bosom all flowers and plants, and juicy fruits for man
and beast, so do your souls, whereon the dews of God's word
plentifully fall, yield forth the fruits of all righteousness, and
the odour of sweet and grateful incense, which is the prayers
of saints. Think what price your fathers set upon the preach-
ing of the word, who preferred to be wet with the dews of
heaven, and beat upon by every storm of the wild mountain,
rather than be deprived of the hearing of the word, rather
than listen to an adulterated gospel, or be defrauded of the
pure ordinances of Christ. The thirsty caravan which hath
passed a day and a night without a drop of water, doth not rush
forward with more eagerness to the waters, or plunge them-
selves with more delight in the rushing stream, and bless the
Lord who hath relieved their anguish, and delivered them from
the pangs of death, than did our fathers hasten to the sound of
the voice of the faithful preacher Avhenever it was uplifted, and
sat under it with delight, and could not weary themselves with
its enjoyment but loved it to the death, and willingly gave up
the ghost in testifying to the blessedness of the people who hear
the joyful sound, and the misery of the people who hear it not.
The second ground of thanksgiving which I feel called upon
this day to set before you is consequent upon the former,
and though of a less general application, is of a higher kind
— viz., that by the preaching of the word it hath pleased the
Lord to call out a church from amongst us, and order it accord-
ing to the true and primitive discipline of the apostles and
the fathers. It were to me a small matter of joy this day to
enter into the possession of this pulpit and of this goodly house,
with all the powers and rights of a minister of the venerable
Church of Scotland, did I not at the same time feel that I
was the minister of a church composed of lively stones, built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus
Christ himself being the head of the corner. And this, I well
know and believe, is the rejoicing of all who hear me, that we

ON P UDL IC OCCA SIONS. 527

have amongst us a church of those hidden ones whose names
are written in heaven, of that election for whose sake the rest
are beloved, of that number whereof two or three do bring
along with them the presence of the great Master of assem-
blies, of those righteous men whereof five will preserve the
most wicked city. How honoured is this house to hold within
its walls the persons of any of the adopted sons of God, who
are chosen for kings and priests, and ordained to reign with
Christ upon the earth. If the person of our king, or of the
son of our king, were hailed and welcomed here, how much
more the persons of those who are the sons of the King of
kings, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His
kingdom without end. To think, to believe, to have the best
grounds for being assured, that many of these heirs of glory
are now present with us, are of us, arc continually praying and
praising the Lord along with us, is indeed cause of unspeakable
thanksgiving, and ought with all thankfulness to be remem-
bered in the presence of our God. And we do now render
unto the Lord all blessing and praise that He hath not hidden
Himself from our mixed congregation, nor disowned our
feeble ministry, but gathered together those who were scat-
tered and called those who were not called, and made us
who were not a people to be the people of God, a holy nation,
a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, to shew forth the
praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His
marvellous light. Oh, ye servants of the Lord, who have the
witness of the Spirit within you that ye are the children of
God, abound in all thanksgiving and praise unto the Father,
w4io hath chosen you in Christ Jesus from the foundation of
the world, and sanctified you with the Spirit of holiness for a
witness and a testimony to the mighty power which hath called
you out of darkness into His marvellous light. Remember
wherefore ye have been called, not from anything in you but
for the glory of God and for the praise of Christ ; and remem-
ber whereto ye are called, — to watch and to pray for the Church
of Christ, to offer the sacrifices of righteousness for the sake
of your brethren, — not to refrain your lips in the congregation,
but to speak of mercy and of judgment, and to sing for ever
of faithfulness and truth, to record the memory of the good-

528 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

ness of the Lord, and to tell of all His great and wonderful
acts, and to magnify Him who is glorious in His holiness,
fearful in His praises, doing wonders. It is yours to abide in
this city where ye were called, it is yours to honour these
ordinances by which ye were called, and to love unto the death
those brethren in the midst of whom ye were called, unto life
everlasting. And be ye assured that your effectual fervent
prayers, your wrestlings with God, your pains and sufferings,
will much avail for the sake of those of us who have not yet
tasted that the Lord is gracious. Ye are for us as Joshua and
Caleb, to refresh with and hold up before us goodly tokens
of the fruitfulness of the land into which the Lord would lead
and guide us all. We give thanks for your sake that we have
such true men amongst us. And oh ! do ye pray the Lord
for our sakes that we also may be accepted in that day.
Dearly-beloved brethren, I count it no mean matter of thanks-
giving to the Lord that He hath given such manifest tokens
of His favour to our doctrine and discipline and worship, as
by means thereof to call so many sons and daughters unto
Himself, who walk together in the simplicity of the faith unto
this day. And I do entreat you to cherish and honour that
brotherhood amongst us who have set to their seals that God
is true ; wherever you behold any one more holy than your-
selves, I pray you to give unto God the praise, and to yield
reverence to the vessel which He hath chosen ; and so it will
come to pass that the Lord will acknowledge your kindness
and respect unto His little children, and compass us with His
favour as with a shield. And while we thus with all submis-
sion acknowledge the sovereignty of God to choose whom it
pleaseth Him to choose into the Church of the Beloved, we
bless and praise His gracious name not the less for the ordi-
nances of the visible Church by which the election are called
out from the world ; we bless His name for the possession of
that sound faith for which our fathers contended against
Arminian errors ; we bless His name for that primitive dis-
cipline for which our fathers laid down their lives rather than
resign it to the will even of kings ; we bless His name for these
simple forms of worship, praying fervently that we might be
able to fill them with the Holy Spirit through the mighty

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 529

vv^orking of God within our souls ; we bless His name for the
uncorrupted sacraments of the gospel, through which His
Church may be enlarged and edified amongst us. Dearly-
beloved brethren, what a treasure we this day possess, what
unsearchable riches of the goodness and love of God — the
knowledge of God and Christ Jesus whom He hath sent, as it
is contained in the Holy Scriptures ; the complete temple of
the Church wherein the Holy Spirit abideth ! The former the
word of the knowledge of eternal life, the latter the constitution
of love and liberty, and all spiritual blessings, through which
the saints of God are reared up for heaven. How precious do
we hold our civil rights and immunities ! how valuable in our
sight, and in the sight of the world, is the constitution of our
state, whereby these rights are all chartered and secured unto
us ! But oh, what are these compared with the statutes of
the gospel of peace, and the ordinances of the Church of
Christ, within which the soul walketh as in a sanctuary, pure
and blessed, and is preserved as in a fortress from the fiery
darts of the adversary ; where she is hid as in a pavilion from
the evil days, and covered with the skirt of her Saviour's love!
" Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy
endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom
he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and gathered
them out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from
the north and from the south. Remember us, O Lord, with
the favour that thou bearest unto thy people : oh, visit us with
thy salvation, that we may see the good of thy chosen, that
we may rejoice in the gladness of this nation, that we may
glory with thine inheritance."

The third and last ground of thanksgiving which we ought
this day to remember before the Lord is, that these blessings
of a preached gospel and a true Church He hath, so far as can
be done, secured to us and to our children in perpetuity. We
were like wanderers without a home until this day, when the
Lord hath given us a secure abiding-place. We were tenants
at the will of others until this day, when the Lord hath pre-
sented us with a house of our own wherein to dwell ; whose
security, brethren, though we place not in deeds, charters, or
endowments, but in God's good and gracious providence ex-
VOL. III. 2 L

530 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

tended over a faithful and holy people, yet do we not the less
desire to bless and praise Him, that the ordinary means whereby
a people are preserved together from the changes and fluctu-
ations and accidents of this passing scene, He hath bestowed
upon this house, under whose stately roof we now worship
with one accord. The ground on which it stands is sacred
unto God — the property of no man, but the commonty of the
Church. The four walls which enclose it, with all its ap-
propriate and beautiful furniture, no man hath power over ;
and its trust-deed is sacred as the archives of the kingdom.
This pulpit can be occupied only by a preacher of pure and
undefiled doctrine according to the severest form of the
Church ; and while the words only of eternal life are preached
under the canopy of this roof unto the living, there will slum-
ber beneath the feet of the worshippers the hallowed dust of
their fathers and their mothers, and their brothers and their
sisters, until the morning of the resurrection, when they that
sleep in Jesus shall, at His voice, awake from the slumbers of
the tomb. Therefore, dear brethren, make this place the
home of your souls, and say, "Here will I remain while I live,
and here also shall my flesh rest in hope." Bind yourselves
to this house with a strong and holy bond ; be not ready for
convenience to forsake it ; be not disposed on slight grounds
to abandon it ; join your hearts to it, and let your souls de-
light to abide in it ; be it the place of your meeting with the
Church of Christ, and with Christ the Head of the Church ;
the sacred place of the covenant of God's faithfulness ; the
holy place of the presence of the Most High ; where your souls
found comfort, and abode in peace. Thus abide and taber-
nacle here ; and when it shall please the Lord to remove you
to a distance from our fellowship, you will look back to the
place with sweet remembrance, and from far-distant lands
your spirit will assemble along with us on the Sabbath morn ;
and you will say, " For I went up with the congregation into
the house of God, and we kept our holy days with mirth and
gladness." O brethren, it is not that I would bring back
any part of the bondage of the Old Testament, much less is
it that I would wreathe around your necks any of the supersti-
tions of the Papacy, or consecrate with any episcopal form

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 531

these material walls, and this local residence — which things I
dare not do as a minister of the New Testament, and a pres-
byter of the Church of Scotland ; but I may do that which I
earnestly desire to do — afifiancc your affections to God's holy
worship which here proceedeth, wed your hearts to God's
holy word which is here preached, gather your souls to the
communion of saints which is to be here holden, and do my
endeavour to fix around this habitation of the praise of God
all the holiest and most steadfast affections of your souls ;
that ye may come up hither in no every-day mood — that ye
may assemble with no irreverent heedlessness, but with grav-
est thoughts and deepest exercises of hope and desire and
love — that ye may sit with grave composure of soul, and with
undivided heart may worship, with undistracted mind listen
to the worship of God. And why do I so labour this day to
stir up our souls with high and solemn thoughts concerning
this place ? Because I well know that its prosperity, as a
church of Christ and house of the Most High God, doth
wholly depend upon the worthiness of that service which is
herein offered unto His holiness. I know that nothing will
preserve the light of His countenance upon this place but the
prayers and praises of His people ascending from this place.
Because I would add to all the provisions of human wisdom
and foresight, that which can alone make them effectual, —
the blessing of our God, who slumbereth not nor sleepeth,
and the watchful care of Him who hath the angels of the
churches in His right hand, and walketh among the candle-
sticks thereof, — I would not have a day to pass over your
heads without calling to your remembrance, and, if possible,
fixing it in your hearts, that the prosperity of the gospel in
this house, for many generations, resteth chiefly upon us.
Whether it shall remain a habitation of the oracle of truth,
or be converted into a den of the spirit of error ; whether it
shall abide for a shelter and covert to the Church of Christ,
or be converted into a rendezvous for the synagogue of Satan ; •
whether it shall be honoured to be a bulwark of the Holy
Catholic Church, or be mastered by the seductions of heresy
and schism, and turned to the service of some one or other of
the apostasies from the faith ; — these things, dear brethren,

00^

DISCOURSES DELIVERED

these high and holy issues, depend upon us, the founders of
this church ; upon my faithful and full ministry ; upon the
elders' exercise of righteous and loving discipline ; upon the
deacons' care of the liberality of the rich for the necessities
of the poor ; upon the brotherly love and sweet communion
of the brethren one with another ; upon the fervent and con-
tinual prayers of all the congregation directed towards this
one great end — that the Lord would not suffer His light to go
down over this house for many generations — that it might be
found a house well ordered and prepared at the coming of the
Lord — that it might be preserved in the tossings and heav-
ings of the womb of time, against the ruthless waves of the sea
of wickedness, against the antichristian combinations which
are forming in all parts of the earth, against the attempts of
Satan to overthrow or to pervert it, against all the violence
and delusion and subtlety of the enemies — that it might be
preserved by the mighty power of our God. And, oh ! if,
like the ark of God, it should at times, from the wrath of our
God, fall into the hands of the enemy, may the enemy not
prosper by means of it, but rather suffer all manner of igno-
miny and distress. And when the Lord shall have enough
tried this city and this place, may the first rays of His re-
turning favour be felt here, and His trodden-down standard
be raised here, and the host of valiant men assemble here to
preserve the standard of the Lord and carry it against all
His and our enemies.

Brethren, it hath been so ordered of the Lord, that for the
last week or two I should employ my leisure moments in read-
ing the "Scottish Worthies," a book well known in every parish,
and I may say in every cottage of our native land ; from which
I have gathered much encouragement and much confirmation
to all this discourse. For when I perceive, first, what desola-
tion was brought upon our land, as well as upon this land of
England, by the ejection of more than one half of the ministers
and their flocks, — what scattering of the sheep, what slaughter-
ing of these harmless lives, what spoliation of their wives and
children, ay, and which is far worse, what distractings of the
faith and love of the saints, insomuch that they had not leave
to think a thought, nor to speak a word, but were as it were un-

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 533

der the torture of the soul, wherefore hard words and unguarded
sentiments would at times escape their throbbing hearts and
grieved spirits ; — oh ! when I think of all these soul-harrowing
scenes which this Church of Scotland endured for half a cen-
tury from tyrannical power, proud prelacy, and usurping in-
dependency, it made mc full of thankfulness this day that we
were permitted by God's providence to gather ourselves to-
gether into this house without any one to make us afraid. And
we are thankful, we are very thankful, unto our God, who,
taking pity upon His persecuted saints, and being attentive
to their prayers, hath permitted us, the children of the much-
despised Presbyterians and much-persecuted Covenanters, to
assemble here, with no mean state, in the capital of this em-
pire, in this the chief residence of our kings, in the bosom of
the Episcopalian Church, with the countenance of many of their
ministers, and with the brotherhood of many of their people. I
desire to thank God exceedingly who hath so exalted our
horn, and made it to bud forth pleasantly. It is His doing,
and wondrous in our eyes. Secondly, dear brethren, I had
occasion to observe in reading this record of the sufferings of
our Church, drawn up by one of my own kinsmen, that the
parts of Scotland in which unto this day there liveth most of
the ancient leaven of faith and godliness, were in general those
Avhich were most favoured with the ministry of the word, and
the prayers and sufferings and martyrdom of many saints ;
while St Andrews and Aberdeen, and other places, which
were most cold and cruel-hearted towards the people of the
Lord, are in general those which seem still to be sown with
barrenness, and with the stones of emptiness, and measured
with the line of confusion. It is in the wilds, and moors, and
mountains of the west and south which were bedewed with
the tears and besprinkled with the blood of God's people,
which were the chief scenes of field preachings and field sacra-
ments, the hiding-places of unhoused ministers and unchurched
people ; there it is that the seed of the godly hath best with-
stood the withering blast of formality which blew over all the
Protestant Churches during the last century ; and there also
it is that the Lord hath begun to visit His people again with
ministers brought up in a better school, and prepared with a

534 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

higher doctrine, and a more holy discipline. Perceiving this,
I am the more strongly moved to impress the souls of all
this congregation, if they would have this house to stand for
a beacon through the storm which we believe will yet arise,
that they should set their faces to seek the Lord, and entreat
Him most earnestly for the sake of this house, that there may
ever worship in it a remnant of faithful people, and be born in
it many sons unto glory, that if need be many plants may be
reared up here which no storm shall be able to overthrow, and
many witnesses whose testimony no fires shall be able to put
to silence. I feel that everything dependeth upon you, your
faith, your fervent prayers, your loving communion, your godly
conversation, your love unto all the saints, your charity unto
the poor members of Christ ; above all, your pure and holy
worship, your reverence of God's ordinances, your welcome
hearing of His truth, and your gladness, your joy, and your
thanksgiving over all His goodness to us and to His
Church.

We have good reason, — oh, have we not good and sufficient
reason ! — to bless the Lord, and to rejoice before Him this day,
who within these few weeks hath so changed our condition,
who hath owned our work and labour of love, who hath
brought us up hither, I may say, with music and with dancing,
who hath instructed us from the lips of His most famous min-
isters, who hath not brought us in empty-handed, but given
us goodly gifts. I bless the Lord with all my heart for your
sakes that He hath united you together in the bonds of love ;
I bless the Lord with all my heart for my own sake, that He
hath taught me somewhat of His precious truth for your fur-
ther instruction in the mystery of His love. Blessed be the
Lord that I feel no poverty, and know no want, but am made
to abound in the knowledge of His holy word ! Many, many
are the stores of precious truth which He openeth to my medi-
tations in answer to your prayers, not for me but for you, be-
cause He hath a love unto you, and would build you up in
righteousness and in true holiness. And seeing the Lord hath
enlarged our tents this day, and lighted up the narrow limits
of our borders, we ought to apply to the Lord with renovated
zeal, and occupy ourselves with renewed diligence, in order to

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 535

cultivate and people the new land which He hath yielded unto
us. It is matter of great joyfulness that we are called to
labour more diligently in His service. I rejoice in it exceed-
ingly ; I desire to rejoice in it with all my heart and soul and
strength and mind. Blessed be the Lord who hath preserved
the lives of those who reared this house, and that it hath not
been stained with any man's blood ; blessed be the Lord who,
without any injury to any one, hath permitted the crowds to
worship these three days in it in peace ; blessed be the Lord
who this day hath been with us hitherto ; blessed be the Lord
for all the goodness of which we have this day sought to make
mention ; the Lord this day add unto the Church of those
which shall be saved ! O brethren, ye who have not yet
closed with Christ, accept Him this day for your Saviour.
When you hear our testimony how good a master He hath
been to us, come unto Him who is able to save your souls;
come and know the Lord our God, who is merciful and gra-
cious ; come and worship Him along with us. Cast in your
lot with us, for our lot hath fallen to us in pleasant places, and
we have got a goodly heritage. Oh that the Lord, by His
mighty Spirit, would convince some sinner by this record of
His goodness which we have made ! Oh that He would edify
every saint ! Oh that He would fill our hearts with gladness,
and accept the offering which we now make of praise and
thanksgiving to the memory of all His goodness!

PART IL

Having shewn you, under the former head of discourse, the
great things which God hath done for us, whereof we are glad,
and haying endeavoured to render the thanksgivings which
are due unto His faithful name, I do now, without preface or
introduction, as having a large space to travel over, proceed to
search into and set forth in order the ends for which God hath
loaded us with His benefits, and given us to possess a house
of worship and a tabernacle of testimony.

536 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

No one of you can be so ignorant of the divine economy,
or dead to the sense of your own sinfulness, as to suppose
that it is for any good thing in us that the Lord hath thus
drawn us out from the vanities and folHes and wickedness of
the world, to sit with delight under the glad sound of the
gospel, and join ourselves together as a church of the living
and true God. Neither, we are assured, is it owing to any
wisdom in our plans, or ability in our executing of them,
that we have come to this measure of strength and prosperity
wherein we now stand. For it is well known to the minister,
and the session, and the communicants, and the congregation
of this church, that we were an ignorant, and have been a
rebellious people unto this day, whose wilfulness and wicked-
ness hath been wholly overruled of God, and moulded into
some measure of harmony and unity and obedience by the
work of the Holy Spirit. And, therefore, it doth well be-
come us to seek and to inquire into the end of such disinter-
ested love and undeserved goodness anywhere but in ourselves;
for surely we are but instruments whom God hath been pleased
to employ for carrying forward the good pleasure of His will.
Instruments, I say, and nothing more. Yea, and most unfit
instruments, foolish instruments, weak instruments, and in-
struments which, until He took us up, were nothing and worse
than nothing, being turned unto His dishonour and disservice,
but withal instruments whose proper character is intelligence
and will and affection ; not mechanical tools or blind instincts,
but high-born and nobly-descended, though deeply-fallen and
incurably-diseased children of the reason of the Most High
God. And forasmuch as God is light, with whom is no dark-
ness at all, and who doth enlighten with the true light, and
with a right spirit doth guide all through means of whom He
would carry on His good and gracious purposes, it is at all
times most dutiful — and then especially when He hath sig-
nally favoured us — to inquire with pains what may be the
purpose which He hath in view therein ; and, having ascer-
tained the good end and purpose of the grace, to travail
therein with all our powers and faculties, depending evermore
upon the mighty working of His Spirit, and guided evermore
by the wisdom and example of our Lord, and of the prophets

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 537

and holy apostles of the Church. Now, dear brethren, I have
no doubt that as the great and highest subject of our thanks-
giving appeared to be in our having the word of the gospel
preached in our hearing, so I judge the first great end of
God in erecting this other place of worship in this city, and
occupying it with a church of faithful people, is —

That we might lift up and maintain a constant testimony
for the sound doctrine of the gospel of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. This is the first great end of the Church in all
times, to be an ark of testimony for the truth of the acts and
promises of God. Nay, more ; this is the true definition of
the Church : that it is a body of men chosen of God to pre-
serve and keep alive, and shew forth in word and in act — in
blessing and in suffering — through good and through bad re-
port— the promise and the hope of the coming of the blessed
Saviour, the Lord from heaven, the Head of the Church, the
stable rock and immovable foundation of the universe of God,
which is but like a rocking billow and a troubled sea, until
He shall be brought in with great power and glory, and be-
come the stability of all elect creatures, and the death of all
rebel and reprobate creatures. Therefore, be assured that
this, which is the living principle of the Church, informeth and
moveth all the members thereof; that this end of faithful tes-
timony unto His Son — which is t\\Q piHviitin mobile of the sys-
tem of God's providence over His Church — is also the .spring
of every particular acting and impulse in all its harmonious
parts. And, being assured of this, that the Spirit which
governs all governs every part of the administration of God,
let us be at charges to carry the good purpose of the Lord
into effect, by setting up here, and holding forth in all our
quarters, a full and true memorial of the doings of the Lord
in time past, and of His purposes in the time to come, for
the honour and the glory of His own name declared by Christ
Jesus, and realised by the operation of the eternal and ever-
blessed Spirit. That the Lord hath begun to revive the good
old Kirk of Scotland in this city, and to separate her some-
what from her entanglements, and give her room and scope
for action, be assured is a token of favour and an omen of
good for this the capital of the realm ; an omen of good to the

538 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

commonweal of the Church ; of evil to no Church, nor sect,
nor party which holdeth the true faith, and desireth to live in
the bonds of charity. That He hath given us this larger house
and these goodlier appointments, is a call upon us to stand
forth somewhat more boldly and prominently in the defence
of the faith, against all the enemies thereof. There is that
difference in the constitution of the Church of England and
the Church of Scotland, that while the former is preserved by
her formal liturgy and more exact ceremonies from declining
so far away from the truth as the latter might do, she is hin-
dered by her many traditions, by her authorised discipline,
and her overbearing hierarchy, from ascending into the same
region of liberty, and exalted height of devotion, and purity
of discipline, which our Church may attain unto. We pres-
byters of the Kirk have a liberty of preaching, and an un-
shackled freedom of prayer, a power of accommodation to the
wants of the times, of importunity according to the urgency
of the case, an openness to the approach of the Spirit, and a
faculty of reaching farther and wider into the treasures of the
word, which all acknowledge, and which may, without offence,
be stated as one of the good and great ends for which, we doubt
not, God in His providence hath called so many young men
to serve Him here, and given us a somewhat more prominent
standing in the presence of His Church. God forbid that we
should ever be caught with ambition, or possessed with envy
of that Church which we honour as our sister in birth and
tribulation, and in established honour; our sister also in doc-
trine and in testimony against the apostasy. But while thus
we solemnly recognise the community of our origin and of
our faith, and avouch our honest desire of sisterly fellowship,
we are not, brethren, to be hindered from declaring the truth,
which is obvious to all, that the doctrine of works is held
forth by the dominant party of the Church ; and that in
the others, who are oppressed and borne down, there is a
low and base leaning to Arminianism — an indecision as to
the election of the Father — an unwillingness to preach and
publish it — a stigmatising it with the name of Calvinism and
Antinomianism, which is not for a moment to be endured,
seeing it is to hesitate about the very essence of the gospel,

ON P UBL IC OCCA SIONS. 539

whereof Christ was but the great Prophet, but the will of the
Father the end ; and to substitute for the absolute will of the
Father, and freedom of the children who are reclaimed by the
Spirit to the obedience thereof, a base expediency and har-
mony with the world, which is the very death of Christ within
the soul, and leavcth us hardly the life of slaves or of child-
ren, instead of the mightiness of men, and liberty and honour
of adopted sons. Now, brethren, I do believe that, seeing
our Church offered up hecatombs of martyrs — yea, I may
say not hundreds, but thousands and tens of thousands — in
solemn protestation against that detested form of the gospel,
and will not, until this day, endure that the name of Armini-
anism should be even named with toleration in her borders, it
hath pleased the Lord at this time to call into this city able
ministers of her communion, and to call into public observa-
tion one of the least worthy of them, for the very end of
maintaining the uncurtailed and uncompromising truth of His
testimony upon which both Churches are founded ; to help
the Church of England against those who flatly contradict
or lamely represent her standards ; and to defend the true
Church of Christ in her communion, and in all communions,
from that measure of liberality upon vital questions and in-
difference to essential truth which must ever creep in upon
the Church which doth not acknowledge the will of the
Father as sovereign in her election, and in her preservation,
and in her perseverance unto the end. And, dear brethren,
though it be my office to lead the way in this testimony for
the whole truth, it is yours to follow it up and support it both
by word and act ; mine it is to bear the standard, but yours
to fight around it. It is the Church that hath the keeping of
the ark ; you are the Church, we are but the ministers or ser-
vants of the Church ; but with you is the truth of the testi-
mony deposited. There is yet another and a higher object
of testimony, as I conceive, for which God hath bestowed
upon us the grace wherein we now rejoice. I mean the testi-
mony of a coming Lord to take possession of all power, and
fill the earth with His glory; to be honoured in all them
which believe, and avenged upon all those who obey not God
and keep not the testimony of the gospel. The rankest

540 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

errors, the deepest darkness, the most culpable indifference
subsisteth upon this point in the Churches, which are no longer
looking forward with hope and with desire towards the glo-
rious advent of the Lord, and the regeneration of the world,
and the resurrection of the saints, but are yielding to every
vain expedient, and pleasing themselves with every vain ima-
gination of bringing about by natural means that millennium
which is indeed Christ's kingdom in its beginning, its middle,
and its end. And as the Jewish Church, when it began to
lose sight of the Messiah, and was giving itself up to idol-
atry, was punished with the yoke of the universal monar-
chies, under which it still lieth bound ; and as the Christian
Church, when it began to hold loosely the desire and expec-
tation of the Lord's second advent, was given into the hand
of the usurper of Christ's Melchizedek reign, that is, the Pope ;
so I perceive that the Protestant Churches, from the same
cause of not perceiving the testimony of hope, have been
most of them given into the hands of infidelity, into which
we also are fast passing, under the softer name of expediency.
But I thank God upon every remembrance of the escape
which He hath made for us out of this blind fantasy and
wicked error, and of the readiness wherewith you searched
the Scriptures and embraced the truth of this great doctrine
of the gospel. And I believe this day, that these walls have
been erected by the providence of the great Head of the
Church, and this spacious house adorned, and that He will
yet fill it with His people, for the end of unfolding more
largely, and defending more completely, the great judgments,
and deliverances, and hopes, and promises, which are freely
given to the Church, in order that those whom it may please
Him to deliver may indeed be delivered from the snare of
liberality and expediency and vainglory, in which their feet
have been snared, and that the Church may be made observ-
ant of the great and fearful providences which are about to
be revealed in the world. Now, dear brethren, if, as I believe,
we be a Church set and planted in this city for this great tes-
timony of the way of salvation, by the election of the Father,
the mediation of the Son, and the operation of the Holy
Ghost — as set and planted for the testimony of the things

ON P UBLIC OCCA SIONS. 541

which arc about to come ; then remember, oh, remember !
that we arc like a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid ;
that we are as watchmen upon the walls of Zion which must ■
not be silent ; that we are like a band and troop of soldiers
who have left the main army in order to get tidings of the
coming enemy, and a little check his progress until the main
camp be somewhat advertised of his approach. It is a peril-
ous part of the campaign which, I judge, the Lord hath as-
signed to us ; and it doth require good soldiership, much
vigilance, constant sobriety, patient service, and diligence in
prayer and expectation of the Spirit, who revealeth unto His
people things to come ; with constant perusal of those signs
of the times which are written in the order-book of our great
Captain, and left to us for guidance till He should come again
to our head. Now, let not any one think that these words are
spoken out of silly vanity, which are truly spoken forth with
much fear and trembling — not in vanity with foolish boasting ;
for, in so presenting to you, dear brethren, the purpose of God
in thus favouring us, I have done no more than I would do
to any other church and congregation which I believe to be
favoured for the same end of faithful witness, for which, as I
said, I do believe the Church itself to be maintained in being ;
and when it faileth or faltereth in this testimony, then is it
given over to some scourge of brutal oppression, or papal
usurpation, or infidel destruction, in order that she may be
chastised into duty. But if God hath signalled us out for the
perilous work of leading the way in this bold and uncompro-
mising testimony, then I believe it is because of the faithful-
ness of our fathers, who, as ye know, during the reigns of the
second Charles and the second James, did die by hundreds
and thousands in exile, at the stake, on the mountains, and on
the battle-field, for this very testimony of Christ's royal office
in His Church. They understood it not altogether, and were
betrayed into some mistakes. Nevertheless, I will justify
them before all men as true martyrs for the kingly office of
Christ. -The Reformers and their army were martyrs for the
prophetic and priestly office of Christ, upholding the word
of God as the only prophet, and the death of Christ as the
only sacrifice ; but the Restoration martyrs of the Scottish

542 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

Church, amounting in all to about eighteen thousand, were
martyrs for the great doctrine of Christ the only Head of the
Church, which, I take it, is an honour not conferred upon any
other of the Protestant Churches. If the Lord, therefore, in
consideration of the labours and sufferings and death of our
fathers, should be pleased, now that He is awakening the
Church to this glorious note of the gospel trumpet, and
blowing another mighty blast, to make choice of a congrega-
tion of the Scottish Church to listen most eagerly to it, and
retain its echoes, and sound it forth abroad, — is it to be won-
dered at, in His dispensations of grace, which extend to the
children and the children's children of those that fear Him ?
In this city He hath given us a station, because in this city
the battle of the faith will have to be fought, and the banner
preserved, if it be preserved anywhere in the Gentile Church ;
for everywhere else, except in this island, it seemeth to be
trampled and trodden under foot. Brethren, look to it, then,
that He hath gathered us together to war a good warfare for
that same hope for which our fathers poured out their blood
like water.

Next to this first great end of all God's favours to His
Church, to enable and encourage her to maintain the testi-
mony of Jesus Christ, is that other of offering a continual
worship in the congregation. For this end the Lord hath
given us this house, that it may be a house of prayer as well
as a house of preaching, and a house of praise likewise, where
we may offer the weekly sacrifice of our devotion unto God,
with whatever other free-will offerings any one may be minded
to present. Whatever thanksgivings any one of the congre-
gation hath to render unto the Lord ; whatever petitions to
request ; whatever blessings to acknowledge, or bereavements
to deplore ; if any one have sinned any sin, or committed any
transgression against the house of the Lord, which is the
Church and body of Christ, — here it behoveth him, humbly
and devoutly, with all grace and meekness, to make mention
of the same. And thus the house becometh a common home
to all families, when all families present their praise and pay
their vows therein ; and a refuge to all hearts, when all hearts
unburden their load therein. And so it groweth dear and

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 543

holy in our sight, and gathereth around it a multitude of the
most tender and the most sublime of man's associations, and
becometh a house of God and a gate of heaven. And here
also we present the offering of the whole Christian Church,
praying diligently for all souls, and making supplication for
the soldiers of Christ against all their enemies. And here
also prayers and humiliations and thanksgivings are to be
made for our nation ; for the king as supreme, for all governors
and magistrates, and for the whole body of the people ; for our
soldiers and sailors when they go out to war, and for all the
servants and subjects of this great empire. And here we wor-
ship without a form, and without an image, the glorious Je-
hovah ; pouring out to Him all the praises and adorations, and
offering unto Him all the hosannas and hallelujahs which the
Holy Spirit moveth within our hearts. O brethren, for what
hicrh ends this house is builded ! to what most exalted exer-
cises of the soul we are to devote ourselves herein ! What
knowledge, what faith, what ravishment of love, what joy of
spirit ! Again, what humiliations of soul, what confessions of
sin, what deep grief and anguish of suffering for all saints, ought
we not to experience in this place .-* Now, dearly-beloved bre-
thren, how can these mighty energies of the soul proceed with-
out much secret and family exercise of soul — without much
observance of daily discipline, and constant watchfulness over
the outgoings of the spirit .'' I assure you. it is impossible that
the Sabbath service can be anything more than a form, a
formal solemnity, and a grave, comely custom, unless the soul
be all the week striving after communion with the Father
and the Holy Ghost. How shall the soul wing its way to the
heights of Zion, and mingle itself with the worshippers of the
upper sanctuary — rise, and soar, and lose itself in the subli-
mities of devotion and worship, if it hath not walked with
God in secret, and by His strength surmounted the obstacles
which are upon the surface of the ground .'' Think you the
Spirit of God will come at the call of the minister, if ye have
been refusing Him all the week } or that the mighty Spirit of
God will all at once impart to you that strongest sustenance
which should bear up the soul to the high pitch of worship-
ping in the assembly of the saints, and enjoying the ordin-

544 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

ances and sacraments of the gospel ? As when men go up to
the palace to pay their court unto the king, they attire them-
selves in costly and splendid array, and bear themselves in the
most graceful fashion, and have their words well ordered ; so
we, coming up hither to worship before the King of kings, and
to stand in His holy presence, ought to be furnished with
extraordinary supplies of the Spirit of holiness, and to be
clothed with the whitest and purest raiment which Christ be-
stoweth upon His Church. Now, brethren, forasmuch as I
set public worship at so high a mark, and require so much
preparation of the spirit for its right performance, I do pro-
portionably value its outward ceremonial, and require that
everything be done decently and in order, as becometh the
house of God and the service of the great King. Therefore,
I do exhort you all to set unto the stranger a good example
of every decent and comely grace — of regularity, of solem-
nity, of attention, of reverence, of kindness and love. And if
the stranger will not take the example, but will break down
the rules of God's service, and the decorum of His house,
then ought ye, without hesitation, and with a high authority
— especially ye who preside over the house of God — to oblige
conformity to the order thereof, and neither to suffer nor to
permit any man, of whatever rank or station, to travel across
the fences with which the Church hath fenced her ordinances
around. I press this the more earnestly, knowing the evil
days in which we are fallen, and, I may add, the licentiousness
of the place, and the bravado-like boldness of that monster,
called the public, which would press the Church and all its
comely graces under its brutal feet. But they cannot, they
dare not. We have a law and a statute over which they dare
not pass. To interrupt and hinder the worship of God is
justly accounted a high offence against the laws of the realm.
God has given protection to His holy worship ; and it is ours
with all gentleness, yet with all firmness, to see it proceed and
flourish under the protection of power which for the present
He hath given us. So much, brethren, have I to say upon
the second great end for which God hath shewn us the favour
over which we this day rejoice — the end of worshipping Him
in spirit and in truth, with all the heart, and soul, and strength,

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. ' 545

and mind. And, oh ! I pray you, dearly beloved in the Lord,
to come up to this house as to a great undertaking of the
Spirit, with all earnestness and solemnity of soul. I pray you
to wash you and make you clean in the blood of atonement,
and so to enter the courts of the Lord's house to offer incense
in His holy place. And bring up with you your children and
your servants, and sit down as families together to acknow-
ledge your common Master in heaven. And come up in per-
fect love to all the congregation, that there may be no heart
out of tuneful harmony, no spirit vexed with any grudge or
grievance, no soul sick of malice or envy or pride. And I
pray you to put away all ostentation and vanity even in the
outward appearance, and come clothed, not in costly array,
nor adorned with gold and pearls, but, as becometh saints, with
good works outwardly, and inwardly with a meek and quiet
spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. Thus
gather yourselves into this house, and thus occupy your
spirits while present here ; and be assured the love of God
will rest upon us abundantly, and He will greatly enlarge our
souls, and magnify Himself in our salvation. No root of bit-
terness shall spring up in the midst of us, and no weapon
formed against our prosperity shall prosper. For God loveth
His own honour and glory, and He cannot withhold Himself
from those who serve Him with an upright heart. He cannot
deny His countenance unto them, nor refuse His ear to the
voice of their prayer.

The third end of His glory, for which God hath done unto
us these great things, whereof we are glad, is, that we might
preserve amongst us the pure discipline of His Church, which
being omitted brings along with it the desecration of the
worship of God and the decay of the testimony of Christ,
and many other evils of an inferior kind. As a sound creed
of doctrine is the economy of the truth presented unto the faith
of the people of God, so is a wholesome discipline the eco-
nomy of charity and love presented to the communion of the
people. Love is the ground of all discipline, and the economy
of love is the ground of all discipline in the Church of Christ.
To regulate and guide the love of the catholic Church to the
most profitable ends is the use of all its ministries. The
VOL. III. 2 M

546 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

younger submit to the elder, the weaker desire the support of
the stronger, the poorer are holpen of the richer, the wiser dis-
cern the truth, the more eloquent teach it, the more prudent
govern, and all love and are obedient for the sake of the
Lord, and for the good of the whole. If any one go astray,
then all desire his recovery; if any one be afflicted, then all
are afflicted, and have a desire to pray for him ; if any one is
offended, then all are offended ; if any one need help, then
all are ready to help him. Every one honoureth every other
in his place, as being placed there by the great Head of the
Church for His own honour and glory. Is it an inferior place ?
Then he honoureth him the more that he should fill it with
the same contentment, and do its lower duties with the same
alacrity as himself, who is honoured with a higher station.
Is it a superior place .'' Then we admire the diligence with
which he giveth himself to the occupation of his many talents,
and the constancy with which he resists the manifold tempta-
tions of Satan. This is the discipline of the Church, dear
brethren, when the whole body is thus edified in love, by
every member gladly filling his proper place, and doing his
proper office for the good of the whole. It is the economy
and system of love, as the belief is the economy and system
of truth ; and we whom you have placed over you in the
eldership are burdened with the observation and direction,
with the husbandry and dispensation, of this your love and
dutifulness toward one another. And we whom you have
placed over you in the deaconship are burdened with the
knowledge of the poor and the needy, and with the care of
the outward order and furniture of the church, and with the
receiving and laying out of your charitable offerings presented
unto us for that end. I say burdened, because a burden truly
it is, but one cheerfully undertaken in love to the Lord Jesus
and to the church of His children, and for which we shall be
responsible if anything should fall out here to the dishonour
of Him that bought us, and to the offence of His precious
members. Now, for any one to kick against discipline in the
Church of Christ, or to make light of it, is truly to under-
value the Church altogether, and to despise the communion
of saints, out of which discipline groweth, For if there be

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 547

any pleasure or any profit in the brotherhood of the saints
then it is worthy to be guarded from offence, its rule and
order arc to be held sacred, and those who transgress against
it are not to be slightly passed over, otherwise the visible
Church becomes no outward similitude or presentation of
the spiritual Church, but a contradiction and hindrance
thereto, and a deception and a delusion to the world. If the
sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper be desecrated
to common and indiscriminate use, their value will be lost
sight of, and their very meaning in time forgotten, or, which
is worse, they will be converted into the engines of priestcraft
and the instruments of superstition. And if government
amongst the members of the Church be undervalued or set
at nought, and those who are over us in the Lord be slighted
or despised, then rest assured, as I shewed at length, that all
government, whether of the family or of the state, will soon
come to be despised, or degenerate into the strife of rights,
instead of being the sweet circulation of love. I say it, that
the Church of Christ is the mother of all righteous govern-
ment, and that her discipline is the parent of all order and
dutifulness in the ranks of life. The Church casteth her
silken net over the fierce beast of prey, and lulleth the savage
into stillness; she then nurseth him with the milk of human
kindness, and tameth him to works of well-doing, and so the
forest of wild beasts becometh a field of human-hearted crea-
tures, and the den of lions becometh harmless while the
prophet of the Lord is in the midst of them. Being firmly
persuaded of all this, and able at any time to demonstrate it
from the reason of the thing, and from the word of God, and
from the experience of the world, and the history of the
Church ; and being at the same time firmly persuaded that
there is such a tide of radicalism and insubordination setting
in upon this land as nothing can resist ; and perceiving fur-
ther that it hath won the ascendancy over the popularly
governed churches, and that there is no discipline in the
Established Church to resist it, — I am the more moved to press
upon you my people, and upon you the rulers of this church,
the necessity, the urgent necessity of modelling everything
according to the standards of our Church, the Books of Dis-

548 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

cipline drawn up by our fathers. For I well do know from
sad experience, that when the radical principle gets a footing
the Holy Spirit departs ; the croaking raven and the cooing
dove, the ravenous eagle and the innocent lamb, not being
more opposite in spirit than are the radical or liberal spirit
and the spirit of love and holiness which prompt the Church
of Christ. Therefore I exhort you, dearly beloved brethren,
to the end that there may be the substance and ground of
discipline, that you love one another in the Lord, and abound
in honour one towards another, and that ye know one another,
that you honour those who are over you in the Lord, that
you guard against all insubordination, that you follow peace
with all men, and holiness, w'ithout which no one shall see the
Lord. I commend first of all to you the churches of our
Presbytery, that you may pray for them, and aftectionately
desire their prosperity in faith and in righteousness. Next, I
commend unto you the churches of our sister Establishment,
that you may love them as sisters in the Lord, and join with
them in sweet fellowship as Abraham did with Eshcol and Aner
when he went to do battle against Chedorlaomer, who had
spoiled Lot. Then I commend to you all the churches not
established which hold Christ the head, and entreat you to be
patient with their infirmities and their misguided zeal against
the established churches. For, brethren, I most solemnly
protest before all men this day, and before God the searcher
of hearts, that I love all who are joined unto Christ Jesus by
the Holy Spirit, of whatever name; and I entreat you to do
the same. Possessing the convictions which have been given
unto me concerning the backslidings of all the churches, it is
not to be wondered at that I should have freely declared unto
them what I have set forth ; but God knows that it hath
been in integrity of heart and in the spirit of love. Yea,
before God 1 declare, that I love all who love the Lord Jesus
Christ, and that I esteem all who confess Him to be born of
God, and all who confess Him not, to be of the apostasy. I
will not call brother any one who denieth the Lord Jesus,
though he were my own father; and everyone who confesseth
Him I will call brother, though he were my sw^orn enemy. But
I am sure w^e cannot long be enemies, for all that are in

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 549

Christ Jesus are brethren. This is discipline, dearly beloved
in the Lord, to have a tender love unto the Lord who re-
deemed us, and for His sake to hate father, mother, brother,
and sister. Oh, establish such a fund of true charity in
this church as may overflow in prayer, in benedictions, in
holy deeds unto all the saints. I say, establish such a fund,
and we, the elders of the church, shall be glad to dispense
the same. When we come to the sick, we will say, Behold
we bring with us the love and the faith and the prayers of
the whole church. When we come to the Presbytery, we will
say, Behold we bring with us the duty and the reverence
and the subjection of the whole church. When we come to the
throne of grace, we will say. Behold, O Lord, we present unto
Thee the ofterings of all Thy Church, who are united with
us in presenting the offering of their heart and soul and
strength and mind. And should any one offend, we will say,
Behold, brother, all are troubled for thee, and desire to restore
thee in the spirit of meekness. And should he be contu-
macious, we w^ill say. Ah, brother, bring not upon thee the
offence of all the church ; behold, if it were better for thee not
to have been born than to be an offence unto the least of
these little ones, how much more all the flock and mem-
bers of Christ .'' O brethren, I feel utterly unable to con-
vey to you my idea of the discipline of the Church ; it is so
large, so varied, and so tender in all its applications ; but
it is all embodied in those two articles of the Creed, " I
believe in the holy catholic Church, and in the communion
of saints." Would that this communion of the saints were
felt and understood! It would make all political confedera-
cies and social delights to hide their head and bow to the
perfection of love.

To these three great ends of divine grace, for which this
and every other congregation of the Christian Church is built
up and favoured of the Lord, I have now to add one of a
more particular kind, applicable especially to our countrymen,
the children of our Church scattered abroad in these parts.
I consider that God hath vouchsafed a special blessing to our
nation in London, by bestowing upon them this house of
worship. While I trust all will look upon it as a benefit, they

550 DISCOURSES DELIVERED

may look upon it as more especially a benefit for which they
are doubly indebted to God. Now ye know, dear brethren,
how regardless of the worship of the Lord their God are the
multitudes of our people become ; how they wander like
sheep without a shepherd ; how they lay themselves open to
every temptation of the enemy, and are taken in his wiles.
You know how neglected are the poor of our nation in the
lanes and courts and miserable hovels of this city. Let
me tell you, with pain and sorrow, that of the multitudes who
have sought help at my door, I have not found one, no not
one, in communion with any church, or regularly waiting
upon the ordinances of any church ; and my brethren of the
Presbytery give me the same fearful accounts of their expe-
rience. How it is with the multitude of the ingenious me-
chanics, whose very ingenuity often proves their ruin, ye know
as well as I do ; how it is with the multitude of educated
men who feed the press and write for bread, — how it is with
the young clerks of merchant houses, and the servants of our
large companies and establishments, ye likewise do well
know. Now, dear brethren, that the Lord hath given us
enlargement of our quarters, let us go about like the good
Shepherd to seek those strayed sheep, — let us entreat these
frequenters of the streets and the highways, — let us press
them to come in, that the house may be filled to overflowing
with the desolate and forsaken children of our people. O
brethren, I hope to see the day when hundreds of our lost and
unknown, and unnoticed, and unvisited, and uncomforted
poor countrymen, not able to provide themselves with sittings
in this house, will have seats appropriated to them, and be
helped out of the abundance of this church, and comforted
with all its spiritual consolations. Now let us go in quest of
them, let us search them out, and bring them to the house of
God. Every one exhort his brother, let them not alone, give
them no rest, bring them to sit under the ministry of the
word, and to listen to the glad tidings of salvation. By so
doing you are more serviceable towards their temporal wel-
fare by restoring their lost character and reputation, than if
you were to feed them and clothe them out of your bounty.
Make it a rule to inquire at every poor Scotchman who comes

ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 551

seeking help at your door, if he sits under the ministry of the
word ; and if not, say unto him, " Therefore hath God visited
thee and brought thee low ; and I am sure thou wilt not
stand in His favour again until thou hast acknowledged this
error in the sight of His Church, and addressed thyself to the
correction of it." Do this, brethren, and I will call you lovers
of your nation. Do this, and the Lord will shine with His
countenance upon us, and bless us, and give peace to many
souls in this place.

Is it that I love not the poor of the city where we are
settled that I thus speak .-* Oh, no; the poor are of no
nation, charity is of no nation : and so far from any feeling
of this kind, I am about to propose that we should imme-
diately proceed to take into consideration the wants of this
neighbourhood where God hath planted us, and see whether
it standeth in need of our help, and in how far, by schools
and otherwise, we may be helpful to it. Already, by the
blessing of God, we have been enabled to help the children
of the poor, and comfort many a distressed family, and visit
with the knowledge of the gospel many a distressed family in
the quarter from which we have come forth. That labour
of love we will not cease from, while we trust, if God in-
creaseth our strength, that we shall be enabled to add thereto
some work of charity and labour of love for the populous
neighbourhood around us. Oh that the Lord would enable
us to do some service for His Church, for the poor and the
needy, the ignorant and the heedless ! Oh that the Lord
would enable us to lift again the religious character of our
nation ! Mine it is, dear brethren, to shew the way : but
without you nothing will be effected. I do therefore pray
every one who is not at present engaged in some work and
labour of love for the Church, to meditate with himself before
another Sabbath whether he might not undertake something,
or help in some undertaking for the sake of the Lord and
His Church, for the sake of this city and its unreclaimed
myriads of immortal souls. "Who is a wise man among you }
let him out of a good conversation shew forth his works with
meekness of wisdom." " The poor have ye always." " It is
more blessed to give than to receive." " Blessed is he that

552 DISCOURSES, ETC.

considereth the poor ; the Lord will reward him in the time
of need."

Thus, brethren, have I instructed you in the great and
good ends for which the Lord hath so exceedingly blessed
us, for which He hath done such great things for us. And I
have no time to add anything to what hath been said ; only
entreating you to remember for your encouragement that
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good
works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk
in them. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of
His good pleasure. The Lord sendeth no one a warfare on
his own charges. We are not alone, but God is with us. God
who hath begun a good work in us will perfect it unto the
end. These things consider, these things take to heart, and
let your profiting appear unto all men. Amen! Amen !

END OF VOL. III.

Ballantyne &' Company, Printers, Edinburgh.

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