Forty-six sermons

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BOOK 252.B391F v. 1 c. 1
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SERMONS

BY

HENRY WARD BEECHER,

PLYMOUTH CHURCH, BROOKLYN.

Selected from Published and Unpiihlished Discourses, and Revised
by their Author.

i

VOL. I

LONDON:
R. D. DICKINSON, 89, FARRINGDON STREET, E.G.

1885.

PRINTED BY R. FOLKARD AND SON,

22, DEVONSHIRE STREET, QUEEN SQUARE, DLOOMSEURY,

LONDON, W.C.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE,

The friends of Mr. Beecher have long desired some
collection of his sermons, such as would present an
authoritative statement of the views which he has main-
tained, and the methods which he has employed for their
presentation. Yielding to this desire, often and urgently
repeated, Mr. Beecher has placed in my hands over five
hundred sermons, published and unpublished, from which,
after careful examination, and in constant consultation
with him and some personal friends to whom he referred
me, the sermons comprising this volume have been selected.
To take so little from so much that is every way worthy
of permanent preservation has been a task of rare difficulty.
If any reader, therefore, is inclined to complain of the
omission of special sermons which were deserving of in-
sertion, I shall heartily concur in his regrets. The limits
of space have compelled me to omit more that ought to
be preserved than it was possible to insert.

There is, perhaps, no man of ancient or modern times
whose preaching is so diverse in manner as that of Mr.
Beecher — a fact which partly accounts for his perpetual
freshness and his permanent success. The diversity of
method and unity of truth, which he combines in a rare
degree, I have endeavoured to illustrate in these volumes.
The reader will here find, therefore, not only a'presenta-
tion of his theological system, as in the sermon on The
Importance of Correct Belief, and his doctrinal views on
special subjects, as in the sermons on the Incarnation
and the Divinity of Christ, but also sermons addressed
to modern scepticism, as The Decadence of Christianity;

IV. INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

sermons of practical ethics, as Love the Essence of ReH-
gion : of personal appeal, as What will you do with Christ ?
of description, as Spring-time in Nature and in Experience ;
of personal experience, as The Walk to Emmaus ; sermons
addressed to the Church and the clergy, as Fishers of
Men, and the two on "Jesus Christ and Him Crucified;"
and sermons that are poems in prose, as The Sepulchre in
the Garden. In short, the sermons have been selected in
the spirit in which they were preached, with reference not
so much to the demands of theological scholarship as to
the wants of the popular heart.

The w^hole selection has been made under the super-
vision of Mr. Beecher. Each sermon has been carefully
revised by him, and several have been re-written in whole
or in part. The collection may be accepted, therefore, as
an authoritative' presentation of his views and teachings,
so far as its compass permits, — the only one before the
public which really is so.

These pages "afford' no 'fitting place for an analysis or a
eulogy of Mr. Beecher, his tenets, or his pulpit methods-
But these discourses of his have been thus collected by
one who, personally grateful to him, under God, for much
in his own spiritual experience, believes that Mr. Beecher
needs no other defence from his assailants, no other com-
mendation to the sincere and unbiassed friends of Christian
truth, than a faithful portraiture of his customary teachings
for the past quarter of a century.

Lyman Abbott.

New England Church,
New York City,

January, 1868.

PREFACE,

For nearly ten years past one or both of the sermons
deHvered every Sunday in Plymouth Church have been
published, week by week, in the religious and secular
newspapers, until now many hundreds have been given to
the pubhc. From this great number the Rev. Lyman
Abbott, at my request, and acting in connection with me,
has selected the sermons contained in this volume, and
undertaken the editorial care of them through the press.

Besides those which have already been printed, a number
have been taken down specially for this volume which have
not been printed before in any authorized manner.

These sermons were prepared, week by week, for the
wants of my congregation. They are, therefore, not only
in theory practical sermons, but they have been drafted
from the actual field of work. Had they been originally
prepared for the press, I know not what difference that
would have made in form and style. But, in fact, they
are so many arrows shot in the day of battle, and every
one of them with a real and definite aim.

I have never read one of my sermons after it was
printed, that I did not burn to reconstruct and improve
it. I have never attempted to re-write one of them, that
I did not find that it would lose in freedom and directness
more than it gained in Hterary excellence. In preparing
them for this volume, therefore, with one or two excep-
tions, I abandoned all idea of reconstruction, and have
removed only the more obvious faults where they did not
inhere in the very structure of the discourse, and have, in
the main, left them as they were originally delivered.

VI. PREFACE.

It has been my habit to prepare the matter of my dis-
courses, to arrange carefully the plan in copious written
notes, but beyond that to rely wholly on the inspiration
of their delivery for their literary clothing and for moSt of
the illustrations.

In making a selection among so many, those discourses
have been chosen which would, as far as possible, give a
correct view of the range of subjects which I am accus-
tomed to employ in my ministry. An important exception
is made in regard to the application of Christian truth to
public questions of the day. These it has been thought
best to reserve, and, should they ever be republished, to
place them in a volume by themselves.

I am indebted for the reports of my sermons for many
years to the skill and fidelity of T. J. Ellinwood.

I have always been glad that I chose the ministry of
the gospel of Christ as the business of my life. My work
has been a joy to me all the way. I cannot conceive of
another profession in which the noble enjoyments are so
many and the drawbacks so few. If, when I am too old
to labour, these sermons shall still be read, it will complete
my satisfaction, and extend my joy and reward down to
the very end of my life.

Henry Ward Beecher.

Brooklyn,

January, 1868.

CONTENTS.

SERMON PAGE

I.— Thirteen Years in the Gospel Ministry : a Sermon

OF Ministerial Experience (i Cor. ii. 2 — 5) . i

II.— The Love OF God (i John iv. 9— II) . . . .17

ni.— The Sepulchre in the Garden (John xix. 41, 42 ;

Matt, xxvii. 61) 31

IV.— The Divinity of Christ maintained in a Consider-
ation OF His Relations to the Soul of Man (Eph,
i. 15-23) 44

V, — The Gentleness of God (2 Cor. x. i) . . . .54

VI.— The Life of Christ :— Without (John i. 4, 5) . . 74

VII — The Life of Christ :— Within (John xii. 24, 25) . 90

VIII. — Crowned Suffering (Mark xv. 15-20) . . .104

IX. — The Lilies of the Field : a Study of Spring for

the Careworn (Matt. vi. 26, 28, 29) . . . .120

X.— The Hidden Manna and the White STONE(Rev,ii. 17) 134

XI. — The Storm AND ITS Lessons (Isa. Iv. 10, 11) . . 149

XII.— Faithfulness IN Little Things (Luke xvi. 10) . . 160

XIII.— The Blind restored to Sight (Mark x. 46—52) . .172

XIV.— Martha and Mary; or, Christian Workers and

Thinkers (Luke x. 38—42) 184

Vlll. CONTENTS.

SERMON I'AGE

XV.— Moth-eaten Garments (James v. 2) . . . . 194

XVI.— Spring-time IN Nature and in Experience (Solomon's

Song ii. II— 13) 204

XVir.— Three Eras in Life: God— Love— Grief ; as Exem-
plified IN the Experience of Jacob (Genesis xlviii.

1—7) 217

XVIIL— What will you do with Christ ? (Matt, xxvii. 22) . 233

XIX.— Life: its Shadows and its Substance (i Cor. vii.

29—32) 244

XX.— On the Decadence of Christianity (i Cor. i. 22—24) 261

XXI. — The Fatherhood of God (Romans viii. 14, 15) . . 280

XXIL— The Sympathy of Christ (Ileb. iv. 14—16) . . 294

XXIII.— Fishers of Men (Matt. iv. 18, 19) ^ . . . 312

SERMONS

I.

THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY:

A SERMON OF MINISTERIAL EXPERIENCE.*

^'For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ,
and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and
in much trembhng. And my speech and my preaching was not with
enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power ; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God." — i COR. ii. 2 — 5.

From this passage we are perpetually worried with false inter-
pretations of duty. A minister's business is said to be to
preach nothing but Christ ; that is, to preach upon no other
topic. But if we were looking for a text from which to advo-
cate a wider range of preaching, and one more in sympathy
with the every-day wants and experiences of men, we should
select this, in connection with the rest of the Epistle ; for
there seems to have been scarcely a subject in civil society, or
in social life, which had any direct or indirect influence upon
man, that is not handled in the Corinthian letters of the
apostle.

For in this passage the apostle discloses the nature of that
poiver by which he hoped to affect men in his journey to
Corinth ; not at all the topics which he meant to speak about.
The topics upon which he meant to speak were in the minds
and lives of men. The power which he meant to exert upon
men in the discussion of these topics was Christ — Christ
crucified — the life, and death, and teaching of Christ. No
matter what topic he spoke about, he intended to discuss it
from a heart perfectly inspired by Christ ; from the standpoint
of the truths revealed by Christ. He determined that every
topic which he touched upon should be Christianly discussed.

* Preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Sunday evening, January
8th, i860, at the commencement of the thirteenth year of Mr. Beecher's
settlement over the Church as its Pastor.

2 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

Corinth was a city, I need not say, that for splendour,
wealth, pleasure, intelligence, luxury, and the utmost license,
stood second to none in the age in which Paul lived. It was a
grand thoroughfare. It was the central point between Greece
and Asia on the east, and Rome, and Italy, and the whole
Western world in the other direction. Streams of men, actuated
by motives of pleasure, or business, or curiosity, were con-
stantly passing both ways, tarrying for a time at this central
point, which may therefore be said to have been cosmopolitan.
The entrance into Corinth of one more Jew, alone, without
any personal appearance of distinction; without any circum-
stances of attraction ; without heralds ; without the sympathy
of even his own countrymen— for he had receded from the
Jewish faith, or rather, had fulfilled it in Christ, and acceded
to it in his spiritual teaching ; wholly opposed to the reigning
religion of Corinth ; without wealth ; without any one element
of human power ; a poor foreigner, and a mechanic at that —
for he sustained himself by manufacturing tent-cloth and
fashioning tents; neither eloquent, nor, as we should judge
from many circumstances recited in his own epistles, even
fluent — the entrance of such a man into Corinth was seemingly
a matter of very little consequence. How insignificant that
history to this old magnificent city— the incoming of one small
man, dusty from travel on foot, putting up at the house of a
poor man, and beginning to teach doctrines entirely at variance
with all the religions of Jews and Gentiles ! And yet Paul's
entrance proved to be the most memorable event that ever
occurred in the history of Corinth !

Entering thus, and proposing to himself the revolution of
Corinth, how should he produce any impression ? He must
neetis have thought of that as he neared the city. He doubt-
less said to himself, How shall I gain the ear and heart, how
shall I influence the lives of this great people ? Many ways,
it may be presumed, presented themselves to his mind. He
could not but have perceived— for he had already travelled in
Grecian cities— that there was an element of influence very
much in vogue, by which men gathered to themselves a great
train of followers, great personal influence, great wealth, and
great consideration. It was this element that he called " excel-
lency of speech"— the attractions and persuasions of an orator
who wins men's admiration by his exquisite periods and dainty
devices of language, who makes thought, and feeling, and
utterance but a varied strain of music. But such an influence
as this, although normal in certain relations, would not strike

GOSPEL MINISTRY. j

deep enough to do the work which he desired to accomplish ;
for it was not admiration for himself, but character in his
hearers, that he sought. Eloquence had no power to produce
that. It might dazzle, it might for the moment excite and give
pleasure, but it would produce no lasting effect ; for mere
eloquence is like the light of shavings, which burn with a
sudden flash, blazing for an instant, and then going out, with-
out leaving either coals or heat behind.

There were thousands every day, in the various schools of
philosophy, who yielded themselves to the attractive displays of
the Sophists. The higher thinkers, such as Socrates and Plato,
and their schools, had died out, and there was a degenerate set
called Sophists, who had substituted ingenious casuistries and
fine word-reasoning for moral thinking. But, although these
philosophies had some power, and these teachers had in their
schools many disciples, and exercised a certain public influence,
they could not do what Paul desired to do — namely, reform the
life and save the souls of men. He alludes to them in the
most explicit terms in the first chapter of this epistle : " After
that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God,
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
beheve. For the Jews require a sign " — the intervention of the
Divine power in such a way as to be manifest to the senses —
'* and the Greeks seek after wisdom" — philosophy. " But we
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and
unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the
wisdom of God."

That was the thing that he was seeking — the salvation of
men; and he was asking himself: ''Where shall there be found
a power that is adequate to cope with men's dispositions ; that
shall reach down to the very centre of feeling ; that shall take
hold of men's wills ; that shall permanently change the currents
of men's feelings ; that shall be more to men than the sight of
their eyes or the solicitation of their senses ? Here are men
thralled in wealth, and perilled by ten thousand potent in-
fluences ; where shall I find a power that can be successfully
brought into antagonism with these things that are binding men
in the bundles of destruction ? " He declares that it shall be
found in Christ crucified, in Christ as the manifestation of God.

This, therefore, must be the source and secret of all power
for the regeneration of men as individuals, and of human
society. It is Christ faithfully preached and rightly understood
that has power to do for this world what it needs to have done,

B — 2

4 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

I desire, then, to affirm this grand fact, that the truths re-
vealed in the life and teachings of Christ are of sovereign
power, and are the most influential upon the motives and the
conduct of human life. They go to the very root of moral con-
sciousness. They reveal human character by applying to it a
standard higher than any that was ever before applied to it.
They define and mark the nature of sin in human conduct.
They establish obligations upon immutable grounds, leaving
them not to the shifting ingenuity of human reason, but im-
posing them according to Divine principles. They reveal the
infinite reach of moral conduct and its eternal consequences.
Thus they reveal to man the nature of himself, the nature of
the government under which he lives, the nature of God, and
the nature of immortality.

These truths of Christ carry with them, in signal and eminent
degree, the Spirit of God, which gives them an energy and an
efficacy that does not belong to any ordinary and natural truths.
There is a power in all truth, because of the natural adaptation
between a thing believed and the faculty which receives it.
But the truths of Christ carry with them a special Divine illu-
mination and Divine power, which no other truths do.

The secret of all real advance in this world, since the days
of Christ, has been the truths of Christ preached in their sim-
plicity, and set home by the Spirit of God upon the conscience
and upon the heart. Organisations, and systems, and forms
of faith and modes of reasoning — these, and various other
collateral influences, have done something ; but, after all, the
real advance in this world during the last eighteen hundred
years has been wrought by the blessing of God's Spirit upon
the preaching of Christ, the manifestation of God, and the
Saviour of mankind.

Nor has the truth of Christ yet lost its power. The eternal
youth of God belongs to this most precious truth. It can
never grow old ; it can never grow feeble. And to-day, just as
much as at the Pentecost, it has a direct and efficacious relation
to the conscience, the character, and the life of man. To-day,
Christ, when faithfully preached, will be the wisdom of God
and the power of God, and will be for the salvation of every
man that believes. And to-day, after all the civilisation that
has issued from the bosom of Christianity, after all the advances
that have been made in social life and civil affairs, to-day, just
as much as when Christ came, men need a Saviour, an illumi-
nator, a guide, a God revealed and manifested in the flesh.

All mere efforts of religious worship, appealing to the

GOSPEL ^IINISTRY. 5

sentiment of veneration; all mere philosophic teaching, appeal-
ing to the instructed reason ; all mere philanthropism, however
good, if it has no other strength than that of the natural senti-
ment of benevolence ; all mere justice, however excellent, if it
stands only in human ideas, will be found to grow dull and to
wane in force. They never can carry that electric, enthusiastic
impulse which is necessary to the propagation and permanence
of any influence in the community and the world. Nothing,
indeed, will endure, nothing will have endless power equal to
the emergencies of human life, but that which brings the very
God before the soul, and sets it home with the power of God
upon the understanding, and the conscience, and the heart of
men.

And the pulpit in our day will be powerful in the degree in
which Christ is the power of its ministrations. There is no
power to arouse men, no power to instruct them, no power to
correct their lives, no power to sanctify their hearts, in any
eminent degree, except the power that is in Christ Jesus. In-
stead of losing confidence in Christ as the wisdom of God and
the power of God for salvation, by the side of pretentious
systems and revelations, the more I look into these new dis-
coveries the more do I feel the indispensable need there is of
this wisdom and power for human society and for individuals.
As much as ever it is needed to inspire men to lives of
heroism ; to console them under their troubles and afflictions ;
to give them strength to carry their burdens ; to give them
power, in the midst of all the complications of human life —
right and wrong, good and evil, expectations and disappoint-
ments, hopes and fears — to lift themselves up superior to their
circumstances, so that they will be neither puffed up by pros-
perity nor cast down by adversity, and so that they will be
content with either extreme. I know of no other influence
that can do this beside the living truth of the living Christ, the
Redeemer of men from their sins.

I am now labouring among you, my dear people, in the
thirteenth year of my ministry. I have endeavoured to make
Christ both the theme and the secret of power in my preaching
to you. And I desire to-night, with your permission, to speak
somewhat of myself and my own preaching. It would seem
proper, at the beginning of another year, that one should make
a declaration of faith. If there is any time when one may
be indulged, without an imputation of vanity, in speaking_ of
himself, it is when a pastor, for purposes of future co-operation
and good understanding among the people of his charge, tellSj

6 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

as Paul told in writing to the Corinthians, what have been the
secret thoughts that have animated his procedure among them.

Let me say, then, that I have looked upon men as, invariably
and without any exception, so spiritually dead, so sinful and
carnal, as to need a change of heart wrought by Divine power.
I believe that men universally, just as much where the gospel
is preached as where it never has been heard, are in a state
which, if they are not redeemed from it by God's Spirit, will be
fatal to them. I believe there is a character to be built up by
the truths of Christ, and by the influence of God's Spirit, in
men. The conversion of men from their sins, and their edifi-
cation in the Christian life, therefore, I have proposed to
myself as the very aim of my ministry. To that I have given
the burden of my life among you. Although, that I might not
weary you with endless repetitions, that I might draw the
attention of the young, that I might adapt my teaching to the
ever-varying disposition of this great congregation, I have sought
to come at these substantial things from many different sides —
from the side of fact, of sympathy, of reason, of imagination —
yet the target at which I have aimed has been the redemption
of men from their sins, and their salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ.

Now there is more in this than the mere general statement.
When I say that I have proposed to myself the salvation of
men, I mean that I have had — as I do still have — a living and
distinct thought, in my preaching, of men, not merely in masses,
but as individuals. There is a remote way of affecting men. A
minister may say, *' I propose to preach a system of theology,
which, although no one sermon may seem to have any parti-
cular relation to any one, and although I may think of no one
while speaking, will influence men little by little, and so do
them good." I hope such preaching will do those good who
sit under it. And some good may result from that remote way
of presenting the truth ; but it is a way which has not been
consistent with my ideas of preaching, and which I have not
therefore adopted. I have felt as though preaching was a direct
work, bringing living thought and soul immediately in con-
nection with men's thoughts and souls.

My aim among you, then, has been to preach directly to
men, rousing them to a sense of their sinful state, and bringing
them into Christian dispositions. And to this end it has been
a part of my purpose to study you, as well as my Pnble ; to
make myself accjuainted with your wants, your habits, your
occupations, and your feelings ; to bring myself into commerce

GOSPEL MINISTRY. 7

with human nature, and into sympathy with every possible
phase of men's lives, that I might understand you, and know
how to preach a truth that would reach the case of every
individual. I have sought, as far as I knew how, to go
around and touch human nature on every single side, and
always with one object in view, namely, the redemption of
men and their justification before God.

I have attempted to gain this by the presentation of Christ
in all His Hfe and all His teachings. I have sought first — I
would that I had met with better success — to be myself under
the full power of Christ, that I might speak with the unction
that belongs to experience. Brethren, I count this the weakest
place in my ministry. I should have been a better minister if
I had been a better man. I have never attempted to preach
God that I have not felt the leanness of my own soul. I have
never attempted to set before you the glory of Christ that I
have not felt how little of Christ there was in me ; for no man
can preach any more of Christ than he has in him. And there
has been my conscious weakness. I have felt that I was not
enough like my Master to preach Him successfully. But I
can say, that I never attempted to preach anything which I did
not believe as I do my own existence. I have most scrupu-
lously let alone everything that did not seem to me to be true.
I have never sought to mislead you in any degree, that I might
stand well with my own brethren. I have sought you, and the
glory of God in you, by the most faithful teaching of Christ
that I knew how to utter. And I have sought to have the
spirit of Christ as a preparation for this work.

I have set this end before me with a determination to use
any and all proper means that experience has shown would
affect the human soul, and with a determination to reject, at
all hazards, whatever things seemed to me to stand in the way
of man's good. I have studiously avoided entering into any
such affiliations with ecclesiastical organisations as should make
me a preacher in sympathy with them rather than in sympathy
with you, I have zealously watched the things which threatened
to take away from me the power of Christ as my instrument,
and the salvation of men as my end, in the ministry.

It has pleased God to give us many powerful revivals of
religion, and hundreds have been converted, and the Word of
God in your midst has been a living Word. Blessed be His
name, the Spirit of God has not forsaken the old appointed
channels, and the truth of God as in Christ Jesus has been in
your midst. What a work has the power of God wrought

8 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

among you ! How many that now would have been dead, and
going down to perdition, have been saved by the truth of
Christ I How many that, blindfold, were getting further and
further into the mazes of infidelity, have been brought in faith
to the Lord Jesus Christ ! Oh that I could read the histories
which I see, and express the thoughts of my soul, as I stand
looking, sometimes, in those moments of inspiration that God
gives men, when they see all things at a glance ! There is
here a history. How voluminous it is, running back through
many years ! Before me lies a mighty volume, every page of
which is covered with strange histories. I look into this Book
of living salvation, and see what the Gospel has been to you
through the instrumentality of my ministry in your midst. But
you are not all. We have great singings in heaven. And if
God needs angels to convert you, and minister to you, to make
you heirs of salvation, they that have gone up are enough,
methinks, to take care of you. We have our double in heaven,
each one of us.

In the thirteen years of our tarrying together, what a history
has been developed for our eternity, when we have time to
look back, and when we are able to trace all the secret affilia-
tions, and causes, and influences which have had to do with
our destiny ! And, brethren, you and I, of all others, should
not forget to bear witness, day by day, and with emphasis, that
God has not forgotten to be gracious to us, that He has not
left His word without a witness in our midst, and that He has
made the preaching of the truth of Christ here the means of
salvation and the means of sanctification.

I have allied my life, as I have said, to the welfare of living
men, and I have continually endeavoured to make the work of
my ministry the production of both remote and immediate
effects upon the life and character of men. Leaving to others
the liberty of employing such means as were rational and
proper to them, I have adopted such as belong to me. No
man can preach the truth in a perfect form, for there is no man
that is more than a fragment of a man. The largest, and
richest, and roundest, are all fragmentary. And I think that
no person who is deeply imbued with the spirit of Christ can
help sympathising with the Apostle when he says, in substance,
'' Now, we see partially, and teach partially. When that which
is perfect is come, in heaven, then that which is in part shall
be done away; and not till then." No man, however wise he
may think himself, is wise, for no man is more than a partialist.
And the wisdom of every man is to accept himself as he is,

GOSPEL MINISTRY. 9

and say, " I cannot do everything. God did not mean me to
be a universal machine to make universal products, but a
limited machine to do particular things."

It seems to me that I have understood what God meant in
respect to myself; that he has given me strength, and courage,
and hopefulness, that I might affect men at once. I have pro-
posed to myself nothing higher than that. I have accepted my
own disposition and my own power. I know they are not to
be compared with that which I can think of, or that which I
see in other men, or that which I read of in the history of other
days ; but when I see others who are broader, and stronger,
and wider than I am, I comfort myself with this thought : " It
is all the same in heaven. I will not work for the sake of being
a large man ; I will work for Christ, and for the love I have of
ray work ; and as to the reward, I will take that when I get
through — I will take that in heaven."

I think that if anybody wants to find saintship, he had better
look somewhere else than in the church. It will do for children
to worship father and mother, but any other man-worship I do
not believe in. Many of you have lived a better life than I
have ; but I can say that I have in sincerity and truthfulness
endeavoured to inspire you with the highest thoughts and the
most ennobling aspirations, and to bring your souls under the
direct influence of the Lord Jesus Christ, for His glory and
your salvation. So far I have been faithful. I have been weak
and imperfect, but to this great purpose of my life I have
adhered.

If at any tim.e I have seemed to you or to others to speak
with undue severity of men, or churches, or orders of men, of
institutions, it has never been from any personal bitterness.
I do not think I feel personal bitterness toward any man.

Nor has it ever been from any partisan zeal. I have refused
to ally myself to any party any further than to take sides with
all good men. But my zeal for the welfare of men, as being so
dear to Christ that his love for them is represented only in the
extreme act of dying, my earnestness that nothing should inter-
pose between God's purposes and men's good, my opposition
to anything that tends to separate mankind from Christ, have
led me to indulge in denunciations at times.

I think I would give my own life, if called to do so, for the
cause of Christ and the welfare of men. Why, then, should I
hesitate to denounce anything that is opposed to the cause of
Christ. Why should I hesitate to inveigh against anything,
however sacred it may be to others, which is injurious to the

lO THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

welfare of men ? I will not fear to condemn any organization,
or any institution, that seems to me to stand in the way of
God's glory or man's redemption. It is not, as I said, personal
bitterness that leads me to use severity. It i^for men, and not
against men, that I am inflamed and aroused. And my indig-
nation is strong just in proportion as those for whom it is called
out are weak and unable to defend themselves.

I cannot forget the answer which Christ, who had been
rejected by all the organizations of his day, and who was
labouring among the poor, made to the disciples of John that
were sent to ask him if he was the Messiah. He said, " Go
your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard ;
how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised " — then one step beyond
that — "to the poor the gospel is preached," as if this were the
most significant and the most unquestionable indication, in the
view of that age, that he was God upon earth.

And just in proportion as men are ignorant, and outcast,
and despised, and oppressed, my soul goes out for them, with-
out regard to colour, or nationality, or anything, except the fact
that they are children of God and heirs of immortality.

Bear me witness whether this is not the right side for a
Christian minister to take. Would you want a gospel that made
ministers to be only friends and parasites of those in power ?
Would you respect a teacher who was always seeing which way the
currents of respectabiUty went, and avoiding all doctrines except
those which ran safely along in those currents ? Are they not
true ministers of the gospel who count not their life dear, who
fear not to advocate what is right, though it be unpopular, and
who speak in behalf of the weak, the ignorant, and the sinful ?

In this work, then, of the salvation of men, and their edifi-
cation in the Christian life, I have sought the utmost liberty of
this pulpit in your midst. I revere the Sabbath-day ; I love the
Church ; I have no objection to church organizations, and
believe they must exist for unknown centuries yet. But, on
the other hand, I have counted everything in this world as a
mere instrument to be used for the benefit of the human soul.
There is not a thing, therefore, that I can make influential on
the understanding, the affections, and the conscience, that is
not good enough to use on Sunday. The use sanctifies the
instrument under such circumstances.

Many men seem to feel — and I am not bound to ridicule
their convictions — that the Sabbath-day is so sacred, in and of
itself, that there are topics which, though they may properly be

GOSPEL MINISTRY. II

discussed in the newspapers, and talked of on week-days, ought
not to be preached about on Sunday in the church and from the
pulpit. But I say that the soul is of more value than the
Sabbath, the church, the pulpit, or anything else on earth.
"The Sabbath was made for man/' — that is, to be his servant,
— " and not man for the Sabbath." The Bible was made for
man, the church was made for man, the pulpit was made for
man ; and I have a right to bring, on the Sabbath-day, into
this church, and on this platform, any instrument that God
may place within my reach which I can make contribute to
the awakening of men and their salvation.

Some persons think it is a great sin to speak of secular
events in the pulpit on Sunday. What if secular events can be
so treated of on the Sabbath as to touch men's hearts, and
bring them under the power of Christ's gospel ! Is the day too
sacred to be employed in doing good? Is not this notion
about the sanctity of the Sabbath a superstition ? Is it not the
very thing which Christ rebuked when He said — " You will pull
an ox or an ass out of a pit on the Sabbath-day, and yet you find
fault with Me for making a man whole on the Sabbath-day."

In the matter of preaching on the Sabbath-day, I have taken
the liberty to touch the human soul without any care whatever,
except to see to it that the touch has been efficient. There is
not a faculty of the human soul that I have not a right to ply
with the great truths of the Gospel for the redemption of that
soul. I have as much right to touch your imagination as your
reason, or any other faculty of your mind. The minister of
God has carte hlanche liberty to touch men's mirthfulness even,
so far as by so doing he can help them toward the right and
away from the wrong. I regard this superstitious, unsmiling
Christianity as a relic of the old Vandal times.

I have never sought to make you laugh for the sake of merri-
ment. I should have a loathing contempt of myself if I had
made it a part of my business to peddle witticisms from the
pulpit. But when, in the eager rush of thought, an opportunity
for making a bright stroke has presented itself, I have struck,
and struck boldly, without any care as to whether mirth would
be excited in my hearers or not. There is no part of man's
nature that is not an open, fair mark.

To those, therefore, who have no sort of objection to the pro-
found sleep of the sanctuary, I must stand as an enigma. As
for me, I have no sympathy with sleeping in the sanctuary,
whether it be orthodox sleeping or heterodox sleeping. I
abhor everything that looks like apathy or indifference under

12 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

the preaching of the Gospel. I abhor that state of a man in
which he is dead in trespasses and sins ; for I am called to be
a minister ^life and to life — a minister of feeling and emotion,
that shall wake you from evil, and give you an impulse toward
good in every part of your nature.

In respect to doctrines and forms of truth, I have also used
my liberty to do God's work upon men in that way in which it
seemed to me best that it should be done. I have sought to
build up no philosophical system, not because I think there
may not be such work done, but because I do not feel called
to do it. Whether or not I have erred in judgment, and have
sought immediate effects at the expense of remote ones, time
will show. I have not sought to cast aspersions upon doc-
trines ; but when I have found doctrines so covered up with
rubbish as to work mischief among men, I have not hesitated
to tear off the rubbish and reveal their true nature. To me
there is no sacredness in forms. To me two things are sacred,
and only two : one is the living soul of man, and the other is
the living soul of God. To everything besides I am indifferent,
except so far as it may be used with reference to the good of
the one and the glory of the other.

I have, I need scarcely say, used the widest liberty in the
choice of topics, for I have felt that he who cares for men
must regard all the things that influence men. I could not,
with my views, have been a faithful preacher, if I had forborne
to speak upon any subject which had a material bearing upon
your welfare. A minister, to be successful, must adapt himself
to the wants of the age in which he lives. The work to be
done in different ages varies, not in kind, but in specialities,
and God raises up men and qualifies them for the work to be
done in their own age.

The work of summer is one ; but March, and April, and
May, and June, and July, and August, each have their separate
part in the one great harvest of the year. So each age has its
particular work in God's harvesting, and every man must adapt
himself to the nature and needs of the age in which he lives, or
else he cannot successfully apply himself to that work.

And in the times in which I have lived, I have not only
sought to preach Christ to you in respect to your personal
relations to God and God's claims upon you, but, having read
in the New Testament, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatso-
ever ye do, do all to the glory of God," I have attempted to
tell you how to obey this command in the family, in society,
in your business, in your social relationships, in your civil

GOSPEL ?.IINISTRY.

13

duties, in all the emergencies that come upon you in life. And
I do not apologise for it. I only wish I had done it more
faithfully. I have not regarded it as a thing to be excused,
or even explained. I have spoken about the organisation of
society ; about your social pleasures and amusen>ents ; about
your relations and duties in the family and in the community.
I have brought physiological questions into my preaching when-
ever I thought they would enable me to throw the least light
upon the training of your children and your own training ; and
I have dealt with those subjects of slavery and liberty which
have agitated the whole American community, and attempted
to tell you what was the law of the gospel respecting them.

When I hear men say that they are ordained to preach the
Gospel, and that they are consequently not to meddle with
pubHc questions which disturb the peace, I always ask myself
what Gospel it is that man is ordained to preach, which forbids
him to meddle with public questions that disturb peace ; for it
is explicitly declared that the Gospel of Christ should cause
disturbance. It is true that the angel foresaw a time when
peace and good-will toward men should reign upon the earth,
but that is to be the harvest-period of the world. Christ says,
*' I came, not to bring first peace, but to bring first the sword.
I shall set at variance every man that stands for a moral prin-
ciple with every man that will not stand for it. Every man
that is for purity I shall set at variance with every man that is
for impurity. Every man that is for truth I shall set at variance
with every man that is against truth. Every man that is for
God I shall set at variance with every man that is against God."
And if there was anything plainly taught by Christ, it was that
His Gospel should cause disturbances and revolutions among
men. Peace is to come by-and-bye. We are to look for
peace after victory, but not before battle.

Therefore, when I hear men say that it is the business of a
minister of the Gospel to preach truisms and platitudes and to
read old psalms and old epistles, reading them so as not to
disturb anybody — so as to send his hearers away in a peaceful
state of mind— meaning somnolency by peace — when I hear
men say this, I say, " Those may. be your views, but they do
not accord with my conception of the Gospel." If I am true
to my convictions, I can never measure my duty as a minister
by such views. I am bound, however, to respect the man who
holds them, if he is consistent. When a man believes that the
preaching of the Gospel should be a simple enunciation of
moral truth, and confines himself to that, I respect liim^ but

14 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE

not his judgment. If he holds that he has no right to preach
anything but the genealogy of Christ, His life and His doctrines,
and never wanders in his preaching upon any collateral ques-
tions, I say, " That man is consistent, and is to be respected,
although he is in an error." But when a minister professes to
hold that he has no right to preach anything but the Gospel,
and yet steps aside and preaches historical sermons, geogra-
phical sermons, sermons on travel, and the like, till it comes to
some critical question, the discussion of which would produce
excitement, and then throws himself back, and says he is
ordained to preach nothing but the Gospel of Peace, I both
dissent from the man and his doctrines. I do not say that he
is a wilful deceiver, but I do say that he is under a delusion.

I hold that it is a Christian minister's duty not only to
preach the Gospel of the New Testament without reservation,
but to apply its truths to every question which relates to the
welfare of men ; and, as far as I am concerned, I am willing
to do this and take the consequences, whatever they may be.
Moreover, I hold that in preaching concerning secular things
for the good of men, I am preaching the Gospel.

Do you not know that a man may be preached to litur-
gically, and doctrinally, and never be touched by the truth, or
understand that to which he listens ? Suppose I were to preach
to you in Hebrew, how much would you understand ?

Now, when I preach so that a banker, who has all along
been sitting under doctrinal preaching, but has never felt its
application to his particular business, feels the next day, when
counting his coin, a twinge of conscience, and says, " I wish I
could either practise that sermon or forget it," I have preached
the Gospel to him in such a way that he has understood it, I
have apphed it to the sphere of life in which he lives. When
the Gospel is preached so that a man feels that it is applied to
his own life, he has it translated to him. And it needs to be
translated to merchants and lawyers, and mechanics, and every
other class in society, in order that all may receive their portion
in due season.

This I have not attempted to do in a spirit of wantonness.
In my ministrations among you, I have in all things guided
myself by this one thought, " What is best for men, and what
is most to the honour of Christ? "

In doing this, I have had to a very great extent, I believe,
the sympathy, the prayers, and the co-operation of the people
of my charge. I could almost say that I know that every
Sabbath you watch in prayer for mc, that I may be able to

GOSPEL MINISTRY,

15

Utter the truth of Christ with power and with success. I have
not been wont to ask much in that regard. I have scarcely
felt that anything was left me to ask. I have felt as though
I had beforehand whatever I needed of sympathy and prayer-
ful help.

My Christian brethren, I have just entered upon another
year. The results of my teaching may vary, but the principle
upon which I teach will be the same. I shall exercise the
same liberty of speech. I shall exercise the same liberty of
discoursing upon any topics, the discussion of which seems to
me to be demanded by the times, or the welfare of men. I
shall exercise the same zeal. I shall pour out my feelings with
just as much freedom. I shall play upon the different faculties
of your soul according as I feel moved. By the help of God I
shall labour for the awakening of your children and of your-
selves. I shall attempt to make you more just, more honest,
more simple, more humble, more conscientious, more affec-
tionate; in every respect more like Christ Jesus. I have already
learned that my fidelity to you will not provoke your anger.

God has been gracious to you, and He has been gracious to
me in you. It is not often, I think, that, in the history of a
Church, twelve years roll around with so few discrepancies and
with no breaks. There never has one single question arisen
between my people and myself. In this great Church, which,
twelve years ago, began with but twenty-five members, which
now has not far from fifteen hundred members, and in which
the temperance question, the anti-slavery questions, questions
of policy, and various other questions, have been freely
discussed, no rupture has occurred. You have dissented from
me, and have passed upon me wholesome criticism; but no
question has for a single moment divided between you and
me. This a great comfort to me. I thank God for it. May
God give us the same mutual confidence, the same peace
founded on fidelity, in time to come.

And now, Christian brethren, you are dear to my soul. Your
households are dear to me. I cannot visit you as a pastor. I
am sufficiently advanced to know, if anything can be indicated
by Providence, that I am a preacher, not a pastor. It would
be exceedingly pleasant to me to do that other much-needed
labour. I wish I could, but I cannot. I am to be your
teacher, and I am to do my work among you, and in this
community, by the power of Christ and Him crucified. I bear
you in my thoughts and in my prayers, day by day. Your
children — those that I know, and those that I do not know,

1 6 THIRTEEN YEARS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY.

except in the general and remote sense of knowledge — are
very dear to me, and I preach with them in my mind. I am
endeavouring to do that by you which I shall not be afraid to
face when, before long, you and I shall stand in the presence
of Christ. I would rather have one smile from Christ than to
have the acclamation of a world. I would rather that He,
pointing to you, should say to me, " Well done, good, and
faithful servant," than to have anything of which my imagina-
tion can conceive. And that is what I am trying to labour for.

I am a man of passions like your own. I am a man proud
and fiery, and were it not for the grace of God I should be
more so. I am sensitive, quick, full of feeling, and strong in
will and purpose, or I never could have done what I was set
to do. I shall labour among you hereafter with bodily and
mental imperfections, and with limitations — those limitations
which come from the want of grace and the want of sufficient
piety. I know my own estate and my own weaknesses. I
shall labour among you with these weaknesses in time to come.
But that grace which has hitherto appointed may yet appoint,
so that weaknesses shall be mighty through God to the pulling
down of strongholds.

Bear then with me. co-operate with me, strive in prayer
with me. Let this one thing be before us all— the glory of
God in the salvation of men. Perform your part in the family,
and help me by your prayers to do my part in the congrega-
tion ; and all of us will do our parts in the great community in
which we dwell. And before long, when that empurpled sun,
which for most of us has gone past the meridian, and is
slanting its light upon us, shall sink in the west, we shall have
permission, in its flood of glory, to go forth and take hold of
the morning of that eternal day which awaits us. And then
how sweet will be the recounting of the labours we have per-
formed, and the trials we have borne ! In the hope of that
day, let us begin the year, working for God and for man.

II.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

" In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent
His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved
us, we ought also to love one another. — i John iv. 9 — 11.

Ix every part of the New Testament the distinction is noted
between disinterested love, springing from the goodness of the
Divine nature, and a love which is excited and developed by
moral quality in the object of it. It is taught abundantly that
God's nature is such that He overflows with love from a Divine
fulness and richness of heart, and that out of this fulness and
richness, without regard to the quality of a man's being, there is a
form of love developed from God toward him. " He maketh His
sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust." It is not meant that there is no
difference before God between men whose characters are
altogether evil and those whose characters are beginning to be
good, but only this, that God does not love, as it were, upon
an agreement — He does not love simply upon the perception
of a cause or of an occasion. There is a fulness of His love which
is spontaneous. There is such richness, and depth, and treasure,
and abundance of Divine feeling, that it tends to flow over im-
measurably, unless there is something which absolutely stops
it. This is the pulse that beats out from the heart of God
through creation. This is the nature and first tendency of
the Divine disposition.

We perceive among men the difference between natures
whose activities may be excited by outward occasion and those
who excite themselves and produce occasion. One man thinks
when his mind is played upon so that it is excited to think ;
but another man finds his mind for ever rising into thought,
in solitude, in society, in darkness, in light, when he sees, or
when he sees not. From his mind there is a perpetual shooting
out of these flame-jets of thought. One man has kindness
latent within him, but he needs some excitement to kindle it.
Such a man's heart, too long clouded, like a sun in a storm-
muffled day, shoots through some opening rift, and glows for

c

l8 THE LOVE OF GOD.

a period in glory. But there are other natures that are always
cloudless. With them a cloud is the exception ; shining is the
rule. They rise radiant over the horizon ; they fill the whole
heavens with growing brightness, and all day long they over-
hang life, pouring down an undiminished flood of brightness
and warmth. Some men have a taste and an imagination
susceptible of being carried up, by constant stimulus, almost
to the very creative point; but there are other men that neither
need nor wait for provocation. It seems as though imagina-
tion was beforehand in them, without special inducements or
incitements, and as though it wrought and created from an
automatic nature.

Now, these are not merely curious shades of difterence in
men's natures : they are characteristic. It is upon this
equatorial line that men are divided into different hemispheres ;
one hemisphere including geniuses, and the other common
men. A man whose nature can be brought into action only
by external influences may be a very good man in his way,
but never a great man ; whereas a man whose nature is for ever
working of its own accord is destined to be great. He has a
creative nature, and is therefore a genius. Those who need
plying, rousing, and special outward incitement, are never
reckoned as of a higher nature. They may be good, virtuous,
refined, honourable, and most estimable ; they may be indis-
pensable to the filling up of society ; but never will they be
reckoned great, nor typical of the highest manhood. Those,
on the other hand, who have spontaneous activity, we put in
the rank of genius ; for the term genius, so much used, and so
little understood, is that word by which men signify a mind
whose constitution is such that it acts automatically, and out of
its own fulness, rather than from any stimulus outside of itself.

Genius is applied to the intellectual part, and not to the
disposition. When this high nature is found in the moral
sentiments and the affections, we say that men are mag-
nanimous, heroic, saintly, according to the shades of conduct
designated. But these last terms point to precisely the same
constitution of moral sentiment that the word genius does in
regard to the intellect.

This view becomes yet more important when we inquire from
which side we shall take our ideas of God — for our ideas of
God must be learned through ourselves. There is nothing
else in the world but ourselves that can teach us what God is.
We are made in His image, and it is only so far as that image
is developed in and recognisable by us that we can think of or

THE LOVE OF GOD.

19

understand Him. Is the Divine nature one that overflows with
thought, feeling, and power, from a need that it has in itself, by
reason of its infinite richness, vitality, and activity ? or does it
act upon special inducement.

There are two notions of God that have more or less pre-
valence among men. One represents Him as a vast organ
located in the very centre of heaven, and giving forth majestic
sounds when touched, and silent when not. The other repre-
sents Him as a Being that is never silent, never still, never
unheard ; one that has such a nature that if there were not
an angel in heaven, if there were not a man on earth, if there
were nothing in all creation from side to side, there is that in
Himself that would make Him for ever overflow with taste,
and feeling, and love. The one ascribes to Him a nature that
is merely susceptible of being called out upon the application
of the motive. The other ascribes to Him a nature that pours
itself abroad in the earth by reason of its own fulness and
richness. It is the latter of these two ideas that I hold, and
suppose the Scriptures to teach.

Of all applications of this inquiry, none is more transcendent
than this : Does the Divine nature imply spontaneous and
universal love ? Upon this subject Scripture is emphatic. It
affirms it not only directly, but by negation. Great wisdom
may be required to state this so that men shall not take advan-
tage of it, but more wisdom is required to so state it as not to
obscure the charity and magnificence of the moral view which
inheres in this idea of the central nature of God.

Love is God's nature. Not that no other feeling exists in
Him ; not that justice and abhorrence of evil are not co-
ordinated with it ; not that these do not take part in the Divine
administration among men ; but that the central and peculiarly
Divine element is love, in which all other feelings live, within
whose bounds they all act, to which they are servants, and for
which they are messengers and helpers.

The passage selected is one that marks this truth. The love
which God has for us did not, does not, spring from moral excel-
lence in us ; and still less does its depth and breadth answer to
the lovableness of our dispositions. No man can ponder for a
moment the facts in our case without being obliged to say that
God loves men, not so much from the adaptation of human
nature and disposition to produce love, as from a Divine nature
that overflows from the necessity of its own richness and fulness.
The reasons must needs be in God, and not in us.

In our text God's love for us is not affirmed to exist because

c— 2

20 THE LOVE OF GOD.

God perceived a spark kindled in us, gradually flaming forth
and reaching up toward Him. It is not affirmed to exist because
our hearts, feebly beating, seemed to knock at the door of His
heart, rousing, by their very spent and weak sounds, the com-
passion of the hospitable Divinity.

Do the roots, and grass, and early flowers, break forth from
winter and send messengers for the sun to come back ? Or
does the sun come from its far voyaging to overhang the sleep-
ing-places of flowers until they feel his presence, and, drawn by
his warm hands, wake and come forth into a warmth and a
light that waited above them while they were dead, and that
would have bathed them yet, and all summer long, though they
had still lain torpid ?

The declaration of the Bible is not this, that God, looking
upon us, and beholding us imperilled, and overwhelmed, and
vexed with evil passions, and seeing that, notwithstanding our
condition, some germs of love were beginning to develop and
blossom in us toward Him, felt kindly drawn toward us,
and began to love us because we loved Him ; but this, that He
began to love us when we began to be ; that at the beginning
of our existence He began to pour out His efl"ulgent nature
upon us, and that it was the sunlight of His being that deve-
loped affection in us, and caused us to love Him. God did
not love man because man had prepared himself and made
himself lovely, nor did Divine love spring forth from any deed
of God's by which He, for purposes of government, aroused
and incited Himself to strong emotion. Love springs not from
an act, not from a fact of redemptive sacrifice. There is an
impression among some that God loved the world after He had
sent His Son to die for it; but the scriptural view is, that His
love for the world was the cause of His sending His Son to die
for it. The love of God for the world was manifested in that
act, instead of being created by it.

The plough prepares the field, deeply furrowed, to receive
the benefit of the summer sun, but the plough does not make
the sun shine. God did not, then, begin to love when Christ
died. His death prepared the human family to perceive,
to understand, to be moved by that wondrous love that
had gone on glowing through infinite ages, and kindling
throughout the universal domain the glorious summer of
Divine goodness. Before creation, and the cause of it, was
God's benevolence. Before the development of the human
race, and as the prolific cause of it, was Divine love. Before
the advent of Jesus Christ, and as the cause of it, was God's

THE LOVE OF GOD. 21

love. And, in each individual case, in each Christian's history,
before his own volition, and as the very moving influence and
cause of it, is this love of God, which precedes being, and
precedes volition, and precedes comfort, and which is the
cause of all that is good in man or in races.

With this fact before us, I wish to employ it for our quickening
and our enlargement in Divine knowledge and virtuous life.

I. God's love does not depend upon our character, but
upon His own. I do not mean to say that it makes no dif-
ference whether a man has a good or a bad character. I do
not mean to affirm that there do not spring up, between the
Divine nature and ourselves, by reason of our relations to that
nature, certain deeper intimacies, and more wonderful affec-
tions. But I do mean to affirm this, that there is a great
overshadowing of love of God to us, that exists, not on
account of our character, but on account of His. We have it
distinctly stated, in respect to the sinful, that God loves them,
and sends all the ordinary gifts of nature upon them, although
He knows they are evil. And it is made the ground and
motive of conduct for us. We are taught by Christ on this
very point. *' If ye love them which love you, what reward
have ye ? Do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye
salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? Do
not even the publicans so ? Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect." And what is God's
perfection? It is boundless benevolence. It is the perfection
of a Being who sends all providential blessings upon men,
whether they are good or bad, deserving or undeserving. AVe
must be perfect as He is. There is to be a comprehensive
beneficence in us. We are to be in a state of feeling that
shall lead us to do good to men without regard to the
mere question of desert. Our conduct towards men is to
proceed, not upon the kindness springing from justice, but
upon the justice which springs from love. The teaching of
Christ is that we should serve men, not because they are deserv-
ing, but because there ought to be such a fulness and richness
of nature in us that we cannot refrain from doing it.

It is very certain that when God looks upon men, whether
Christian or otherwise. He cannot love them because He sees
that they are lovely, for when measured by that rule which God
must needs employ — His own perfectness and His own purity
— I suppose there never has been a human character that could
not look otherwise than wretchedly sinful and distorted.
Calling men Christians does not make them symmetrical, nor

2 2 THE LOVE OF GOD.

beautiful, nor lovely. ]\Ien are good and noble in relation to
their fellow-men : but when they are considered in relation to
God, how difierent does the case become !

Let a man be brought up in a hospital, and let him draw his
ideas of beauty from it, and then bring before him a hand-
some man, and how homely do the men that he has regarded
as handsome appear in the contrast ! Take the best man in
this life, and lift him up and measure him, not by his fellow-
men, weak and imperfect, but by those higher conceptions
which men have of the Divine Being, and how they are dwarfed
and humbled by the comparison ! There is no standpoint
from which a man, when measured by the Divine character,
appears beautiful ; and if God loves men, it must be because
there is a nature in Him that can love what is not beautiful,
not symmetrical, not perfect, not lovable.

If with a microscope you examine the sting of a bee, mag-
nifying it a million times, you will find that still it is so smooth
that the eye can detect no variations upon its surface. But if
you take the finest needle that is manufactured, and look at it
through a powerful microscope, it will appear rough in the
proportion in which it is magnified. This figure illustrates
the difference between the Divine nature and the nature of
man. The more you magnify a true conception of God's
nature, the more beautiful does He appear ; whereas, the more
you magnify the nature of man, the more imperfect does it
appear. And it is evident that if God loves man it is because
He has something in Himself that moves Him to love, and not
because there is anything in man that calls forth His love.

II. The Divine love exists and works upon us, not alone
when we are conscious, but evermore. iMen mount up under
flashes of glorious realisation, and it seems as if God then began
to love them, because they then first become sensitive to His
love. When a man has passed through religious changes from
darkness to light ; when he has put off his wordly character,
and taken on the character of Christ ; when, coming out of
despondency, the compassionate Saviour rises before his imagi-
nation, and he says, ''Christ has begun to love me" — his
impression is that the Divine love for him began when the
burden which had weighed down his soul was rolled off.

This is as if a blind man, who had never seen the heavens, nor
the earth, nor the sweet faces of those who loved him, should
have a surgical operation performed upon his eyes, resulting in
the restoration of his sight, and he should think to himself, on
going out of doors, " Oh I how things are blossoming ! The

THE LOVE OF GOD. 23

earth is beginning to be beautiful ! Mountains and hills are
springing up in every direction ! The forms of loving friends
are being raised up to meet my gaze ! And the sun has just
begun to shine forth from the heavens ! " But have not these
things existed since the creation, although the man's eyes have
not before been in a condition to enable him to see them ?

When we are brought into the consciousness of what God's
love is to our poor sinful natures, we oftentimes have the
feeling that God is beginning to be reconciled to us. We
take it for granted that as we were at enmity with Him, so He,
in the same sense, was at enmity with us. We have an idea
that He was just as hard toward us as we were persistent in
violating His will, and that it was when we began to love Him
that He began to love us. It was then that we began to
realise His love, but His love for us had existed from the time
we came into being, and had ever continued with us. All the
experiencies of our mward and outward lives had been baptised,
although unconsciously to us, in His tender thoughts. Those
thoughts run after us more than a mother's for her child that
has gone recklessly away from home.

Do you suppose that a child, absent from his parents, is con-
scious of one in a million of the thoughts that follow him?
There is love enough in one human heart to deluge the whole
earth ; and if man is capable of such love, what must be the
love of which God is capable ?

This conception of God's love does not always dawn upon
the Christian at the beginning of his experience. God rises
upon the sight of some Christians as the sun comes right up
against a clear sky, and over a sharp-cut horizon, and upon
others as the sun comes up behind clouds, which it is his first
work to wear out and disperse with his bright beams. I have
seen men that never realised God till they were dying. Some
never see Him till the mid-day of their life. Others see Him
early in the morning. Some see Him during sickness; some
after sickness ; some on the occurrence of some special provi-
dence. Sometimes Christians are lifted up through the suscep-
tibility of their imagination, their affections, and their reason,
all conjoined, into such an extraordinary sense of God's glory
that it seems as though their soul could not abide in the body,
and they think, " Praise God ! At last He has had mercy on
me, and revealed Himself to me," — supposing that He had not
before cast the light of His countenance upon them.

A man has lived in a cellar, where he has been a poor, dun-
geoned creature, striving to live a life which was but like a pro-

24 THE LOVE OF GOD.

longed death. At last he is permitted to go up one storey, and
then one storey higher, and then yet another storey. Thus he
keeps on exploring and going up, until finally he reaches the
roof. There he beholds the heavens over his head, and the sun
in the east, and he is tranced with amazement by the glory of
the things which surround him. And yet, every single day
during his existence, and for countless ages, the heavens have
hung above the earth, the sun has shone forth in splendour, and
the creations which astonish his vision have been beheld by
men. For forty years he has been in the cellar, and now he has
come up where he can see, it seems to him that objects now
appear for the first time, because he sees them for the first time.

So it is with the disclosures of the love of God in Christ
Jesus to Christians. They think that the time at which they
first realise God's love is the time when it is first shed upon them.
But as God pours abroad infinite breadths of His being without
an eye except His own to behold, so He spreads over our heads
an unknown, an unmeasured, and an immeasurable love,
waiting for our recognition, but in no wise depending upon it.
I know of nothing that is calculated to give more hope to the
Christian in the midst of his discouragements than this feeling
— namely, " I am not to be saved because I am so good, but
because God is so good."

I know that you can abuse this for your own destruction. A
man may say, " I can live as I have a mind to, and yet God will
love me," and relax his own eff"orts, and work his own ruin.
Nevertheless, there is nothing so comforting and inspiring to
the Christianas this : the belief that our hope and safety do not
stand in the fact that we are good, but in the fact that God has
undertaken to take care of us and save us.

Some men have asked me, *' How is it that a Christain can
sin every day,, and still have hope that he will be forgiven by a
God that abhors iniquity?" Do not I know the way in which
God forgives those who sin thus ? Do not I feel it myself in a
small measure ? Tell me if, in your own experience, there is
not something that interprets it to you ? Is there not a wife,
a husband, a child, a friend, a ward, some human being on
whom you have set your aftections, but whom you see to be
imperfect ? And do you not find that the more you love them
the more sensitive you are to their faults, and yet the more able
you are to endure their imperfections and unsymmetries ?
When they do wrong, violate generosity and magnanimity, act
selfishly, and show themselves proud, you grieve, but forbear ;
you resent their evil by seeking to correct it. What do you do

THE LOVE OF GOD. 25

when a loved one does wrong ? Do you sit in judgment on
him, and cut him off from your affections? On the contrary,
does not your heart go out after him all the more? One whom
you soundly and deeply love, you love in spite of his faults not
only, but you are conscious that you love to cure. A certain
yearning to help him shows that true love is the true physician.

Now, as it is with us, so it is with God ; and I am more
ashamed to sin against God on this very account. If I were
greatly in want of money, and I went for aid to an old usurious,
miserly man, who hated to give, and only gave for a con-
sideration, and scolded when he gave, I do not know but I
should take a little comfort in pestering him. I suppose there
is a little relish of torment which everyone feels in dealing with
such a man. But if I went for aid to a man of a kind and
generous nature, the case would be different. I am in trouble;
he meets me with a face bright with smiles, and says: "You
have come again to give me the pleasure of assisting you." I
say : " I have liabilities to the amount of five hundred dollars,
which I am unable to meet." " What ! is that all ? " he
exclaims, and gives me a thousand. As I start to go away, he
says : " I shall see you again ; I shall get another chance at
you; I shall have more pleasure out of you? " By-and-bye I
go to him again, hanging my head, when his first words to me
are : " Ah ! your pocket is empty, and your head is down.
Come in ! come in ! You cannot get away so easily." And
again he gives me the money I need. Again I get into deeper
trouble. Sickness enters my family, and my means give out.
In my distress I go to him once more. The moment he sees
me he says : " What ! spent your money so soon ? I declare,
I do not know but I shall have to make you my son. I must
look after your affairs. I see you cannot attend to them
yourself" He sweeps away my debts, supplies my present
wants, and urges me to come whenever I find myself pressed
for means. Now suppose I say, when I get by myself : "This
old man is so kind and good that I can practise on him, and I
will take advantage of his kindness and goodness;" what ought
I to be called ? Would any name of contempt be too severe ?

It is argued by some that men will take advantage of this
love of God of which I am speaking. No, not iiieri. You
must get some other name for those creatures that are capable
of doing that. The apostle, when the expediency of preaching
the grace of God in Christ Jesus was questioned, argued that
the very nature of love estopped a disposition to take mean
advantage of it. If a man loves Christ enough to secure the

2 0 THE LOVE OF GOD.

benefit of His grace, it is inconsistent with the very nature of the
experience to suppose that he can take base advantage of it.

III. There is something unspeakably affecting to me in this
thought of — what may I call it ? — the solicitude of Divine love
for men, and its patient continuance in God without con-
sciousness on our part. There is something sweet in inter-
preting the nature of God from the family. Now who can
tell the sum of the thoughts which the mother bestows on
the child? All through his infancy he is scarcely out of
her mind. She watches him as he sleeps in the cradle. She
wakes at night to go and see if all is safe in the room where he
is. All day long, as he plays, her eyes are upon him, to see
that no harm comes to him. And all through his boyhood her
love and care surround him. And yet he is unconscious of
most of her solicitude concerning him. He knows that she
loves him, but he only feels the pulsations of her love once in
awhile. I think we never know the love of the parent for the
child till we become parents. When we first bend over our
own cradle God throws back the temple door, and reveals to
us the sacredness and mystery of a father's and a mother's
love to us. And I think that in later years, when they have
gone from us, there is always a certain sorrow because we
cannot tell our parents that we have found out their love. One
of the deepest experiences of a noble nature in reference to
loved ones that have passed beyond this world, is the thought
of what he might have been to them, and what he might have
done for them, if he had known, while they were living, w^hat
he has learned since they died.

Now when I think how the love of Christ, and the love of
God in Christ, has overhung my life ; when I think of the long
period during which I had no conception of that love, of the
long period during which I resisted it, and struggled against it;
when I think that during these long periods God, unchanged
and unchangeable, brooded over me, and yearned for me
without my knowing it, I am inexpressibly affected.

Not only does God think of us constantly, and love us
steadfastly, but there is a healing, curative nature, for ever
outworking from the Divine mind upon ours, even although
we may not co-operate voluntarily with His will. All those
moral tendencies which we feel, all those yearnings which we
have for good, are the crying out of the soul for God, under
the influence and ministration of His love to us. Every throb
of our spirits that answers to spiritual things is caused by the
influence of God. We are attracted by Him, though we may

THE LOVE OF GOD. 27

not be conscious of it. As the child that is sent away from
home to school grows home-sick, and sobs, and cries for
brothers and sisters, and father and mother, so there are many
home-sick men who feel in themselves strange yearnings for
they know not what. It is their soul crying out for God,
because He is working upon them by the power of His thought
and love — only they do not know the language.

And that is not all. We have testimony in the workings of
the providence of God in the experiences of our daily life, that
God's love is sUll shed upon us, although we may be un-
conscious of it. I recollect to have read the case of a man in
a city of Southern Europe, who spent his life in getting
property, and became unpopular among his fellow-citizens on
account of what seemed to them his miserly spirit. When his
will was read after his death, it stated that he had been poor,
and had suffered from a lack of water ; that he had seen the
poor of the city also suffering from the same want, and that he
had devoted his life to the accumulation of means sufficient
to build an aqueduct to bring water to the city, so that for
ever afterward the poor should be supplied with it. It turned
out that the man whom the poor had cursed till his death, had
been labouring to provide water for the refreshment of them-
selves and their children. Oh ! how God has been building
an aqueduct to bring the water of life to us, He not interpret-
ing His acts, and we not understanding them !

IV. God's love is not, as too often ours is, the collateral and
incidental element of His life and being. It is His abiding state.
All time and all eternity are filled with it. All plans are con-
ceived and directed by it. All histories and all administrations
are transfused with, and carried forward in it. All triumphs are
to end in it, while all that cannot be made to harmonise, and
blend, and co-operate with it shall be utterly swept away.

With this interpretation, let me give a few words of application.

I. Can any other truth so justify and enforce an earnest,
instant, manly search, to see if these things be so ? There are
a great many persons that will resist an appeal made from the
pulpit, if that which is meant is ecclesiasticism. I mean no
such thing. I do not ask you to join a church. Men will
resist an appeal to become Christians if a doctrinal basis is
implied. I now and here imply no such thing. But I make
this appeal to every fair-minded, thoughtful, honest, and
morally-susceptible man : if there is such a Divine nature as I
have described, can any man justify himself a moment in
leaving it unappreciated and unknown ? We are commanded

28 THE LOVE OF GOD.

to search for God as for hid treasures. Ought you not to search
for Him as you do for hid treasures ? Is there such a Being ?
Is He your father ? Are His thoughts toward you those of
paternal love -, and is that love infinite, exquisite, and over-
flowing ? Are you living unconscious, ungrateful, unrequiting ?
Are you cared for and sustained through the love of God ? And
is it consistent with manhood that you should be unthankful?

We are grateful toward the bountiful Benefactor of all men,
as that man would be grateful who should show his gratitude
for a whole life's service by merely making a New Year's call
on his benefactor. You are perpetual recipients of God's
mercies. In the round year there is not one moment in which
He does not brood over you with His thoughts. His love
and tenderness are to you what the sun and dew are to the
plant. During the long experience of forty or fifty years He
has not left you nor forsaken you. And has there been
manifested on your part any love, or gratitude, or recognition,
that answered to the noble affection which He has displayed
toward you ? I do not ask whether you believe in this church
or that, or whether you hold to this doctrine or that. I present
to you this love of God that has upheld you all the days of your
life, and ask you this question : Can you with reason, with
honour, with gratitude, with any sentiment that a man ought
to cherish, be indifferent to it ? There are many in this con-
gregation who are exemplary men, who do nothing in violation
of a decent respect for the customs of society, but who are
living so as not to fulfil the first condition of their life — a
recognition of the love of God toward them. Need they seek
further for evidence of their great sinfulness and urgent danger?
Are they not wearing out or burying their moral natures ?

2. If what I have said is true, can any honourable man
justify himself for not coming into a living faith in, and
communion with God ? Can such excellence as His be near
you, and you care nothing for it, without degradation ? We
judge men not merely by the acts which they positively
perform, but by the sensibility which they display. If we see
a man indifferent when in an assembly where most weighty
matters are being discussed, we pity him. We say, " That
circumstance shows what his nature is." I have sometimes
had the misfortune to sit in concerts where persons would
chatter and giggle and laugh during the performance of the
profoundest passages of the symphonies of the great artists,
and I never fail to think, at such times, "• I ask not 7C'ho you
are ; I know w/iaf you are by the way you conduct yourself

THE LOVE OF GOD. 29

here — by the want of sympathy and appreciation which you
evince in what is passing around you.'' Who could restrain his
contempt for a man who should stand looking upon Niagara
Falls without exhibiting emotions of awe and admiration?

I ask you to pass upon yourselves the same judgment. What
do you suppose angels, that have trembled and thrilled with
ecstatic joy in the presence of God, think when they see how
indifferent you are to the Divine love and goodness in which
you are perpetually bathed, and by which you are blessed and
sustained every moment of your lives ? How can they do
otherwise than accuse you of monstrous ingratitude and moral
insensibility, which betoken guilt as well as danger.

3. Will not the realisation of such a nature, brought home
to us personally, account for all the sometimes discredited
Christian experiences ? When men are convicted of sin, they
are sometimes subjects of ridicule, because it is supposed that
they are merely acting under the influence of an excited imagi-
nation. There may be cases in which this is so. I do not
afhrm that all terror-quaking for sin is normal and rational.
But, let me ask, if there is such a Being as God is supposed to
be, is it strange that a man, when he comes to the conscious-
ness that that Being is his Father, should be so wrought upon as
to even lose control of himself? A conviction of sin may be
spurious, or it may be overlaid by misteaching, but the consti-
tution of man is such that if he undergoes genuine conviction
of sin, he is apt to experience strong feelings of fear, shame,
and remorse. When one brings himself before God, and
falls down in His presence, comprehending the mystery of His
love, and understanding the redemptive manifestations of it, is
it strange that he finds himself swallowed up in it, and that,
having joy unspeakable and full of glory, he expresses it ?

Suppose I sit musing on the Acropolis, and my whole being
is carried into the days that have gone by, so that 1 can
scarcely eat or sleep, does anyone say that I am unduly ex-
cited ? Is not my susceptibility to the things that occupy my
mind a mark of manhood ? If I stand and look with wonder
and admiration upon those magnificent cathedrals of mediaeval
times, does anyone say that I exhibit signs of madness ? Do
I not, rather, exhibit signs of taste and refinement ? If I read
with pleasure and satisfaction the thought penned by the pro-
foundest thinkers of the past, does anyone say that I degrade
myself? Do I not, on the contrary, honour myself? And is
not this the natural and spontaneous utterance of a noble
heart, when it is lifted up into the conscious presence of God :

30 THE LOVE OF GOD.

•' We thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead ;
and that He died for all, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died
for them, and rose again ? "

I have in my house a little sheet of paper on which there is
a faint, pale, and not particularly skilful representation of a
hyacinth. It is not half as beautiful as many other pictures
that I have, but I regard it as the most exquisite of them all.
My mother painted it, and I never see it that I do not think
that her hand rested on it, and that her thought was concerned
in its execution.

Now suppose you had such a conception of God that you
never saw a flower, a tree, a cloud, or any natural object, that
you did not instantly think, *'My Father made it," what a
world this would become to you ! How beautiful would it
seem to you ! How would you find that nature was a revela-
tion of God, speaking as plainly as His written Word, though
not so deeply or variously. If you are alone, desolate in your
circumstances, it is because you have not that inner sense of
the Divine love and care which it is your privilege to have, and
v;hich you ought to have.

Throughout the Bible it is declared that the things that we
are permitted to see in this life are but intimations, glimpses
of what we shall see hereafter. " It doth not yet appear what
we shall be." There are times when it seems as though our
circumstances, our nature, all the processes of our being, con-
spired to make us joyful here ; yet the apostle says we now see
through a glass darkly. What then must be the vision which
we shall behold Vv'hen we go to that abode where we shall see
face to face ? Into what a land of glory have you sent your
babes ! Into what a land of delight have you sent your
children and companions ! To what a land of blessedness
are you yourselves coming by-and-bye ! Men talk about
dying as though it was going toward a desolate place. All
the past in a man's life is down hill, and toward gloom, and all
the future in a man's life is up hill, and toward glorious sun-
rising. There is but one luminous point, and that is the home
towards which we are tending, above all storms, above all sin
and peril. Dying is glorious crowning ; living is yet toiling.
If God be yours, all things are yours. If Christ be yours, all
heaven is yours. Live while you must, but yearn for the day
of consummation, when the door shall be thrown o])en, that the
bird may fly out of his netted cage, and be heard singing in
hisher spheres and diviner realms.

III.

THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN :
A SERMON TO THE SORROWING.

" Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the
garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid
they Jesus.'' — ^John xix. 41, 42.

" And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other INIary, sitting over
against the sepulchre." — Matt, xxvii. 61.

How Strange a watch was that ! but how oftentimes repeated
since ! How strange a combination of circumstances, that the
cross should have been lifted up so near to a garden ; that the
garden of all places should have held, amid its treasures, such
a thing as a sepulchre hewn in a rock ; that thus a cold grave
should have been embosomed among flowers, and waited, for
weeks, and months, and years, the coming of its sacred Guest !
And now, how striking the picture ! A few words, and the
whole stands open to the imagination as to the very sight !
The two women, side by side, silent, and yet knowing each
other's thoughts, with one grief — with one yearning— with one
suffering! Home was forgotten, and nature itself was un-
heeded. The odorous vines, the generous blossoms, the world
of sights around them, were as if they were not. There was
the rock, and only that to them. There was neither daylight,
nor summer, nor balm, nor perfume. There were no lilies by
their feet, nor roses around them : for though there were ten
thousand of them, there was to them only that cold, grey,
sepulchral rock.

See what a life theirs had been ! First was their own birth.
It is strange that one should be grown in years before being
able to recognise his own birth; but so it is. We are not born
when the body is — we are born afterward— sometimes through
silent influences developing, and oftentimes rudely born by the
stroke of some over-mastering sorrow, or led forth by some
exceeding joy. So it was with them. They had lived years
without fulfilling one year. They had loved without really loving.
They had known without really knowing. Their nature and

32 THE SEPULCHRE IX THE GARDEN.

full power lay in them, but as buds lie in branches, and there
had been no summer to bring them forth. Only when Christ
came did they find themselves ; for men never can find them-
selves of themselves, but always in the touch of some other
and higher one. And only then, when these women saw a
nature full of strength, full of purity, with a heart that went like
summer through the land, did they know what it was to live.
Before, they had been as they are who, neither asleep nor
awake, hover between dreams and realities, fully possessed by
neither. But in the fall presence of Christ these Marys received
their own life. They loved, and loved worthily and upwardly.
And then they knew what hidden life the soul possesess.

Now life blossomed at every step to them. There can be no
barrenness in full summer. The very sand will yield something.
Rocks will have mosses, and every rift will have its wind-
fiower, and every crevice a leaf, while from the fertile soil will
be reared a gorgeous group of growths that will carry their life
in ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it
is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its weak-
ness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and makes its
very desert to bud and blossom as the rose. And these two
Marys had in the presence of Christ waked into life. They
were not born until He gave them their life. They followed,
therefore, reverently, all His goings. They waited for Him
when absent as they that wait for the morning. Now there was
a future to them. Everyday increased their conscious treasure.
Each day, however, they knew that they had come to the end
and bound of their capacity, were full, and could hold no more
love, nor joy of loving. And yet every next day they smiled at
the barrenness of the past, and wondered how that could have
seemed enough which was so much less than the present.

The future glowed brighter and brighter to them. Not that
they were not mortal, and did not expect troubles. But storms,
even, are radiant when the sun shines upon them, and troubles
upon an orb of hope and love are sunlit clouds, whose gorgeous
hues take all terror from the bolt and the stroke.

And so these loving souls, I suppose, followed Christ, and
found a daily heaven. His serene nature; His beneficence;
His all-encompassing sympathy; His disinterestedness, that
gave everything, but asked nothing ; His supernal wisdom ;
His power over life ; His regency over nature ; His lordship
over the winds, that flew to His hand as a dove to its nest ;
His mastery over darkness and death itself, calling back the
departed spirit from its far-oft" wandering to life again ; His

THE SEPULCHRE IX THE GARDEX. 33

effluent glory, as He hung in mid-air, sustained by white
clouds, or as He walked the night-sea, carpeted with darkness ;
but, above all, that inspiration, that heavenly purity, that
spiritual life that touched their life, and aroused them as never
before were they aroused — in short, the presence of their
God ! — all these things, abiding with them, travelling from day
to day with them, measuring out their golden year, gave them
their first full knowledge of life as the soul recognises it ! And
these were, to their fond hope, doubtless, a perpetual gift.

Nothing seems ever to have awakened the disciples to such
instant fear, even to chiding and rebuke, as the intimation of
their Master that He would leave them ! It seemed like a
threat of destruction to them. They were the more amazed
and confounded, therefore, when the treacherous disciple
betrayed Him, when He yielded Himself to authority, when
injustice condemned Him, smote Him, tortured Him, crucified
Him. Life was to them, now, no longer a waking bliss, but
the torment of a wild and hideous dream. A horrible insanity
it seemed. Yet it was constantly before them. They followed
Him to the city ; they followed Him out of the city ; they
followed Him till the procession stopped upon the hill. They
saw ; they heard ; they agonized. And when the earthquake
shook the ground, not another thing did it jar so heedless and
so grief-ful as those wondering, amazed, and disappointed
women. They stood in a very darkness, and their life was
like a grave. All the past was a garden, and this present hour
stood up in the midst of it like a sepulchre.

At first grief was too great. They were winter- stricken. The
very rigour of their sorrow would let nothing flow. But as
warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the
ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and
life of its grief only when it begins to melt and pass away.

There, then, sat these watchers. The night came, and the
night went, "and there was Mary Magdalene, and the other
Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre." What to them was
that sepulchre ? It was the end and sum of life. It was the
evidence and fact of vanity and sorrow. It was an exposition
of their infatuation. It proved to them the folly of love and
the weakness of purity. The noblest experience of the purest
souls had ended in such bitter disappointment that they now
know that they only are wise who can say, " Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die." Could such a one be stricken
and die? Could such a one be gathered into the shapeless
rock ? Could such a light go out, and such a soul be over-

D

34 THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN.

whelmed ? What star, then, was there for hope in human life ?
What was safe ? What use in love, in trust, in honour, in purity,
since the Head and Glory of them all was not saved by them ?

This rebuke of life, of soul, of their heart-love, at length
drove them away. There was no garden to them where such
a sepulchre stood. They returned ; but oh, what a return !
There was no more life when they went away from Him that
had awakened by love true life in them. The night was not
half so dark as were their souls. In a great affliction there is
no light either in the stars or in the sun. For when the
inner light is fed with fragrant oil, there can be no darkness
though the sun should go out ; but when, like a sacred lamp
in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light
outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the
heavens. To them life was all darkness.

And yet, while that garden held the sepulchre, and the
women sat watching it, and saw only darkness and desolation,
how blind they were ! How little, after all, did they know !
When first all was a bright certainty, how little then did they
know ! And when, afterward, all was dark woe, how little yet
did they know ! The darkness and the light were both alike
to them, for they were ignorant alike of both. How little did
they expect or suspect ! Of all the garden, only the rock itself
was a true soil, for in it lay the " root of David." Forth from
that unlikely spot should come a flower whose blossom would
restore Eden to the world ; for if a garden saw man's fall, forth
from the garden came his life again. But their eyes were
holden that they should not see. Their hearts were burdened
that they should not know. They saw only the sepulchre, and
the stone rolled against the door. They saw, they felt, they
despaired !

And yet, against sight, against sense, against hope, they
lingered. If they departed, they could not abide away; they
must needs come again ; for " in the end of the Sabbath, as it
began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary
Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. And
behold, there was a great earthquake ; for the angel of the
Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the
stone from the door, and " (like them that triumph) *' sat upon
it." And now their sad musings, the utter despair of the
reason and of the senses, the anxiety, the vigilance of the
heart — these were the only things that were left to them. And
yet, as in many cases, their hearts proved surer and better
guides than their reason or their thoughts ; for as a root

THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN. 35

scents moisture in a dry place, or a plant even in darkness
aims always at the light, so the heart for ever aims at hope
and at immortality. And it was a woman's heart here that
hung as the morning star of that bright rising of the Sun of
Righteousness. In the end of the Sabbath Christ came forth,
and they were the ones whose upturned faces took His first

Such is this brief history ; and if we were to carry it out in all
its analogies, if we were to stretch forth its light so as to en-
compass all those who have had a like experience with these
two women, how wide would be its reaches ! how long would
be the rehearsal 1

I. There is a sepulchre in every garden. We are all of us in
this life seeking for beauty and seeking for joy, following the
blind instincts of our nature, every one of which was made to
point up to something higher than that which the present
realises. We are often, almost without aim, without any true
guidance, seeking to plant this life so that it shall be to us
what a garden is. And we seek out the fairest flowers, and
will have none but the best fruits. Striving against the
noxious weed, striving against the stingy soil, striving against
the inequalities of the season, still these are our hope. What-
ever may be our way of life, whatever may be the instrumen-
talities which we employ, that which we mean is Eden. It is
this that they mean who seek the structure of power, and follow
the leadings of ambition. This they mean who dig for golden
treasures, not to see the shining of the gold, but to use it as a
power for fashioning happiness. They who build a home and
surround themselves with all the sweet enjoyments of social
life are but planting a garden. The scholar has his garden.
The statesman, too, has a fancied Eden, with fruit and flower.
The humble, and those that stand high, are all of them seek-
ing to clothe the barren experiences of this world with buds
that blossom, blossoms that shall bear fruit. No man sees the
sepulchre among his flowers. There shall be no lurking
corner for the tempter, overleaping the wall of their happiness,
to hover around their fair paradise ! There shall be nothing
there that shall represent time, and decay, and wickedness, and
sorrow ! Man's uninstructed idea of happiness in this life is
that of a serene heaven without a cloud — a smooth earth without
a furrow — a fair sward without a rock. It is the hope and ex-
pectation of men, the world over (and it makes no difference
what their civilisation is, v/hat their culture, or what their
teaching), that they shall plant their garden, and have flowers

D — 2

36 THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN.

without thorns, summer without a winter, a garden without a
rock, a rock without a sepulchre.

It makes very Httle difference that we see other men's delu-
sions. Nay, we stand upon the wall of our particular expe-
rience, as upon the walls of a garden, to moralise upon the
follies of other men. And when they have their hands pierced
in plucking their best fruits, when disappointments come to
their plantings, we wonder that they should be so blind as to
expect that this world could have joys without sorrows, or
sunshine without storms. We carry instructions to them, and
comfort them with the talk that this life is short and full of
affliction ; we speak to them of the wreaths to be worn by
those who bear sorrows ; and yet we go as fondly and ex-
pectantly to our dream of hope as ever. Ah ! it was the cradle
of your neighbour that was left empty, and not your own !
That fair blossom that was picked was plucked from the next
household ! You turn with even more than your wonted in-
fatuation to your own cradle, to rejoice in its security. It
shall never be desolate.

The experience of every fresh mourner is, " I knew that
Death was in the world, but I never thought that my beloved
could die." Every one that comes to the grave says, coming,
*' I never thought that I should bury my heart here." Though
from the beginning of the world it hath been so ; though the
ocean itself would be oveiflowed if the drops of sorrow unex-
pected that have flowed should be gathered together and
rolled into its deep places \ though the life of man, without an
exception, has been taken away in the midst of his expec-
tations, and dashed with sorrow, yet no man learns the lesson
taught by these facts, and every man lays out his paradise
afresh, and runs the furrow of execution round about it, and
marks out its alleys and beds, and plants flowers and fruits,
and cultures them with a love that sees no change and expects
no sorrow !

No man means to have anything in his paradise but flowers
and fruits. If there is a rock in it, it is only a rock for shadow
and coolness, or a rock for decoration and beauty. No man
will have a garden with a sepulchre in it. Your garden has no
sepulchre in it. If you are young and fresh, if you are begin-
ning life, you will hear this sermon as a poetic descant, as a
tender, musing homily. In the opening out of your expectant
wealth and life it is all garden-like, but no sepulchre is there !
There is no open mouth of consuming bankruptcies ; there are
no disappointments, miscalculations, and blunders that bring

THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN. 37

you to the earth ; there is no dismaying of ambition — no
thwarting or turning back of all encompassing desires. There
is fresh dew on the leaf, and rain at the root, and in your mind
a full expectation that your garden shall blossom as the rose.

And thus men live as they have lived, every man making his
life a garden planted ; every man saying, '' Flowers ! flowers !
flowers !" and when they come, every man saying, *' They shall
abide ; they shall blossom in an endless summer." And we go
round and round the secret place, the central place — we go
round and round the point where in every man's experience
there is a sepulchre — and we heed it not, and will not know it.

2. But in spite of all this care and painstaking there is no
garden in the world, let it be as beautiful as it may, that has not
in the midst of it a sepulchre. When we sit over against it
with untaught hearts, we find out what we would not permit
ourselves to know in all the earlier stages, though it was there
all the time. Every one of us is travelling right toward the
grave. I mean not the extreme of life; I mean not that
common truth that every man is born to die : I include that ;
but I mean that every man has a sphere of life where there is
a sepulchre in which all that makes his life valuable to him
while he yet lives in this world is liable to be buried and hidden
from his sight. There is no man that is sure of anything except
of dying and living again. We see on every side such revela-
tions, such changes, such surprises, such unexpected happen-
ings and events, that it is not mere poetical moralising to say
that no man is certain of anything except death, to be succeeded
by life.

A plough is coming from the far end of a long field, and a
daisy stands nodding, and full of dew-dimples. That furrow
is sure to strike the daisy. It casts its shadow as gaily, and
exhales its gentle breath as freely, and stands as simple, and
radiant, and expectant as ever; and yet that crushing furrow
which is turning and turning others in its course, is drawing
near, and in a moment it whirls the heedless flower with sudden
reversal under the sod !

And as is the daisy, with no power of thought, so are ten
thousand thinking, sentient flowers of life, blossoming in places
of peril, and yet thinking that no furrow of disaster is running
in toward them — that no iron plough of trouble is about to
overturn them. Sometimes it dimly dawns upon us, when we
see other men's mischiefs and wrongs, that we are in the same
category with them, and that perhaps the storms which have
overtaken them will overtake ns also. But it is only for a

38 THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN.

moment, for we are artful to cover the ear and not listen to
the voice that warns us of our danger.

And so, although every man's garden is planted without a
sepulchre, yet every man's garden has a sepulchre, and he stands
near it, and oftentimes lays his hand upon it, and is utterly
ignorant of it. But it will open. No man will ever walk
through this life and reverse the experience, " Man that is born
of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." It comes to us
all; not to make us sad, as we shall see by and bye, but to make
us sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to
make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us, as the
night refreshes the day ; not to impoverish us, but to enrich us,
as the plough enriches the field — to multiply our joy, as the seed
is multiplied a hundred-fold by planting. Our conception of
life is not divine, and our thought of garden-making is not
inspired. Our earthly flowers are quickly planted, and they
quickly bloom, and then they are gone ; while God would
plant those flowers which, by transplantation, shall live for
ever.

3. When, then, our sorrow comes, when we are in the unin-
structed surprise of our trouble, when we first discover this
sepulchre in our garden, we sit, as these women sat, over against
the sepulchre, seeing, in our grief, nothing else but that. How
strangely stupid is grief! How it neither learns nor knows, nor
wishes to learn nor know ! Grief is like the stamping of invisible
ink. Great and glorious things are written with it, but they do
not come out till they are brought out. It is not until heat has
been applied to it, or until some chemical substance has been
laid upon it, that that which was invisible begins to come forth
in letter, and sentence, and meaning. In the first instance we
see in life only death — we see in change destruction. When
the sisters sat over against the door of the sepulchre, did they
see the two thousand years that have passed triumphing away.-*
Did they see anything but this : *' Our Christ is gone? " And
yet your Christ and my Christ came from their loss ; myriad,
myriad mourning hearts, have had resurrection in the midst of
///^/> grief; and yet the sorrowful watchers looked at the seed-
form of this result and saw nothing. What they regarded as
the end of life was the very preparation for coronation ; for
Christ was silent that He might live again in tenfold power.
They saw it not. They looked on the rock, and it was rock.
They looked upon the stone door, and it was the stone door
that estopped all their hope and expectation. They mourned,
and wept, and went away, and came again, drawn by their

THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN. 39

hearts to the sepulchre. Still it was a sepulchre, unprophetic,
voiceless, lustreless.

So with us. Every man sits over against the sepulchre in his
garden, in the first instance, and says, *'It is grief; it is woe;
it is immedicable trouble. I see no benefit in it. I will take
no comfort from it." And yet, right in our deepest and worst
mishaps, often and often, our Christ is lying, waiting for resur-
rection. Where our death seems to be, there our Saviour is.
Where the end of hope is, there is the brightest beginning of
fruition. Where the darkness is thickest, there the bright
beaming light that never is to set is about to emerge.

When the whole experience is consummated, then we find
that a garden is not disfigured by a sepulchre. Oar joys are
made better if there be a sorrow in the midst of them, and our
sorrows are made bright by the joys that God has planted
round about them. The flowers may not be pleasing to us,
they may not be such as we are fond of plucking, but they are
heart-flowers. Love, hope, faith, joy, peace — these are flowers
which are planted round about every grave that is sunk in a
Christian heart. For the present it is "not joyous, but grievous;
nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness."

In so great a congregation as this, where there are so many
thousands that by invisible threads are connected with this
vital teaching-point, sorrow becomes almost a literature, and
grief almost a lore ; and we are in danger of walking over the
road of consolation so frequently, that at last it becomes to us
a road hard and dusty. We are accustomed to take certain
phrases, as men take medicinal herbs, and apply them to bruised,
and wounded, and suffering hearts, until we come to have a
kind of rituahstic formality. It is good, therefore, that every one
of us, now and then, should be brought back to the reality of
the living truth of the Gospel by some heart-quake — by some
sorrow, by some suffering. Flowers mislead us, beguile us,
enervate us, and make us earthly, even if they assume the most
beautiful forms of loveliness ; while troubles translate us,
develop us, win us from things that are too low to be worthy
of us, and bring us into the presence and under the conscious
power of God.

4. But it is Christ in the sepulchre that is to give us all our
joy and all our hope in the midst of disappointments and re-
versals. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. Blessed
are they that sleep in Jesus. Blessed are they that have heard
the Bridegroom's voice, and have gone out to meet Him.

40 THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN.

Blessed are they that can see in their troubles such a resur-
rection of Christ that, in the joy they experience from the
realisation of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness upon them,
they shall quite forget the troubles themselves.

When once the sisters that watched had been permitted to
gaze upon the risen Christ, to clasp His hand, to worship Him,
\vhere was the memory of their past trouble ? What was their
thought of the arrest, of the shameful trial — which was no trial —
of the crucifixion, and death, and burial? These were all gone
from their minds. As when the morning comes we are apt to
forget the night out of which it came ; so when out of trouble
comes new happiness, when out of affliction comes new joy,
when out of the crucifixion of the lower passions comes purifi-
cation, we are apt to forget the process through which this
happiness, this joy, this purification, came. As there can be
no sepulchre which can afford consolation that hath not a
Christ ready to be revealed in it, so there can be no sorrow
from which we can be well delivered that hath not in it a Christ
leady to be revealed.

As, then, these Marys, in their very weakness, were stronger
than when they thought themselves strong, as in the days of
their sorrow they were nearer joy than when they were joyful,
as when their expectations were cut off they were nearer a
glorious realisation than at any other period of their life : so,
when we are weakest we may be strongest, when we are most
cast down we may be nearest the moment of being lifted
up, when we are most oppressed we are nearest deliverance,
when we are most cut off we are nearest being joined for ever
and ever to Him who is life indeed and joy indeed.

My Christian friends, we are very apt, in the regularity of
teaching, to carry forward our faith of Christ to the dying hour,
and to think of a Christ that can rise upon us in that mortal
strife with heaHng in His beams. We are not apt to have
Christ with us every day in its vicissitudes and disappointments;
we are not apt to take Christ into that which belongs to
universal life; we are not apt to take Christ into the checks, and
frets, and hindrances, and misdirections of this world, into our
bereavements and misfortunes. We are apt to regard Christ
as remote from us, and to put Him forward to the time of our
final dismission from this world.

He that knows how to die in his passions every day, he that
knows how to die in his pride from hour to hour, he that has
Christ in each particular thwarting and event of life, he that
knows how, from the varied experiences of life, to bring forth,

THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN. 41

day by day, a Christian character, need not fear the grand and
final experience of earth to which he is coming. There is no death
to those that know how to die beforehand. Those who know
how to lay themselves upon Christ, and take the experiences
of every-day life in the faith of Christ ; those who see the will
of God in everything that abounds, whether wounding or
healing — they have nothing left at the end of life except peace,
translation, and the beginning of immortality.

It is this Saviour that has so sweetened life, if we would but
know it, who is our Master ; and He stands in our midst to-
day, saying to us, " In the world ye shall have tribulation."
I am sent to say it to every one in this congregation. Tribula-
tion may not come to you in the way in which you expect it,
or in the way in which you see it developed in other persons.
It may come unheralded. But the voice of the Lord hath
spoken to every one of you, and said, " In the world ye shall
have tribulation."

More than that. It pleased God to comfort you beforehand
by the assurance that affliction is the token of paternal love.
Nay, God puts it so strongly that one almost shrinks : " If ye
be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye
bastards, and not sons." Christ says, again and again, that if
you belong to His family you shall have trouble. Is it worth
your while, then, to go on making your Eden without a
sepulchre ? Is it worth your while to go on making your
picture all lights and no shadows ? Is it worth your while to
go on building and rebuilding the structure of life without
considering that it is a part of human necessity, and a part of
God's plan of mercy, that every man should have trouble, not
once, not twice, but often ; as he has his food — as he has his
very being itself?

This is one side of Christ's message to every one of you to-
day. How many of you have I seen in your troubles ! How
many of you have I walked with in your hour of anguish for
sin ! I look upon a congregation with one in every six of
whom, it seems to me, I have gone down to the baptismal
water, or sprinkled, and walked with through all the stages of
their heart-distress. For how many of you have I spoken
words of consolation at funerals ? Where are the children,
where are the brothers and sisters, where are the parents, where
are the kindred of this church ? Where are our old friends and
co-workers ? Where are those that were in the height of
personal expectation ten years ago ? We have lived ten years
together, most of us — some of us longer than that — and have

42 THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN.

we not tracked God at every step, verifying His declaration,
" Ye shall have tribulation ? " And are we to look forward to
•the time to come with less expectation of tribulation ? Look
upon your household. Who shall be unclothed next? I
desire to take this to myself. I desire to look at my plans and
expectations in the light of this inquiry. For I, too, have made
a garden, and have forgotten to put a sepulchre in it. I desire
to commence a new survey. Let me go up to that central
mound covered with flowers, and let me see if underneath
those flowers there is not an opening mouth — the darkness of
the grave. And if there is, then let me rejoice, for I am sure
that that is an unwatered garden which has no sepulchre. May
God grant that I shall have no garden in which there is no
sepulchre with a Christ about to emerge from a fruitful death.
Will you look into your gardens — your money-garden, your
pleasure-garden, your love-garden, your household-garden,
your taste-garden ? All the plants of your various gardens —
will you look at them, and see if in the midst of them there is
a place for a sepulchre ? Will you see that there is a sepulchre
in your gardens ? And will you make that the centre of all
your plantings ?

I am sent by Christ to say to you another thing. First, " In
the world ye shall have tribulation ; but," next, '* be of good
cheer ; I have overcome the world," and ye shall overcome it
also. " Because I live, ye shall live also." That is the end of
trouble. Now sorrow is crowned with hope. Now the gate is
thrown open ! Now the angel sits upon the stone ! Now the
emergent Christ walks forth light and glorious as the sun in the
heavens ! Now the lost is found ! Now all the stars hang like
gems, and jewels, and treasures for us ! Now, since Christ says
that out of all these experiences He shall bring forth life, even
as His own life was brought forth out of the tomb, what is
there that we need trouble ourselves about ?

Christian brethren, do you know how to be glad, and to
make others glad, in the midst of your trouble ? Do you know
how to stand in the midst of your losses and disappointments
so that men shall say, " After all, it is not troublesome to be
afflicted? " Do you know how to be peaceful in the midst of
deepest bereavements ? Do you know how to seek Christ in
the very tomb ? Do you know how to employ the tomb as the
astronomer employs the lens, which in the darkness reveals to
him vast depths and infinite stretches of created tilings in the
space beyond ? Do you know how to look through the grave
and see what there is on the other side — the glory and power

THE SEPULCHRE IN THE GARDEN. 43

of God ? Blessed are they to whom Christ hath revealed the
meaning of the sepulchre.

And when, after a very little time, we go away from our
sorrows and our sepulchral burying-places, we shall, as did
these faithful watching women, meet our Christ victorious from
the grave, glorified, exalted. And whatever we lose here that
is worth weeping for, we shall find again. When man reaps
there is something for the gleaner's hands behind him. He
shakes out many kernels for the soil, and drops many heads of
wheat for the gleaner. But when God reaps He loses not one
kernel, and drops not one single heavy head of grain. And
whatever that is good has been taken from you — every straw,
and every kernel, and every head— shall be garnered. Only
that will remain in the earth which you would fain give to the
earth, while that which the heart claims, and must have if it
live, awaits you. Great are the joys that are before you, but
they do not lie level with the earth. Great are the joys to
which we are to come ; we are traveUing up to them.

Let us, then, to-day, renew, in the presence of our Master,
our consecration to Christ, the Deliverer.-' Let us accept Him
once more as our life. Let our life be hid in Him. And when
He shall appear, then we also, at last, shall be made known to
each other. We shall see Him as He is, and v/e shall be like
Him.

After the blessing is pronounced, we will remain, Christian
brethren, a short time at this joyful hour, not to mourn over a
broken Christ symbolised — for we know better — but to rejoice
that the broken Saviour is now the ever-living Prince, risen and
clothed with immortal victory. We meet around these memo-
rials. We take them for a starting-point. But we may go
beyond them, and rest and rejoice in the bosom of ever-living
love.

If there be present any that mourn for their sins, that despair
of help in themselves, that feel their need of Christ, that yearn
toward Him, that long for Him, and that are willing to accept
Him, them also I bid come home. This is your Father's house,
and this is your Father's table. If you will be children of
Christ, come and partake with us of these emblems. May
God grant that every one of us who sit together in these earthly
places in Christ Jesus may have the unspeakable joy, by-and-
bye, of sitting together in heavenly places.

'•■ The Lord's Supper was administered at the close of the sermon.

IV.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST MAINTAINED

IN A CONSIDERATION OF HIS RELATIONS TO THE SOUL
OF MAN."

"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and
love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making
mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and reve-
lation in the knowledge of Him : the eyes of your understanding being
enlightened ; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and
what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what
is the exceeding greatness of His power to us- ward who believe, accor-
ding to the workhig of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ,
when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right
hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and
might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under
His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the Church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." —
Eph. i. 15—23.

The Divinity of Christ is the one central truth of the New
Testament. What Christ said and what He did are profoundly-
important, but what He luas is transcendently more important.
Christianity is not a system of ethics, of worship, of belief.
Christianity is Christ. Personal influence, not intellectual in-
structions, is its peculiarity. The New Testament, as a record,
presents a person who drew about Him a band of disciples,
and exerted upon them an influence which transformed their
characters, and led them to bestow upon Him that affection,
reverence, and worship, which men are at liberty to render only
to God. They worshipped Christ rather because they felt the
power of His Divine nature than from an intellectual conviction
that He was God.

One source of the conflicts in modern arguments for and
against the Divinity of Christ arises from the fact that a great
truth presented to the mind of one age is tested by intellectual
conceptions which have grown up since. We bring an abstract

■'• This Sermon, joreachcd in Plymouth Cliurch, Brooklyn, Sabbath
morning, May 6th, i860, has been entirely rewritten for this volume.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 45

philosophy to bear upon simple, practical truths. We attempt
to deal with feelings, sentiments, enthusiasms, as if they were
ideas. A few illustrations will make this manifest.

The old Hebrews taught the unity of God as opposed to
Polytheism. It was not a discussion of abstract attributes, but
of concrete facts, Jehovah was God— not Baal, Ashtaroth,
idols, and enthroned powers of nature. But idols have perished,
and all the famed gods of antiquity are but as dreams at day-
break.

In Christendom, for ages, men have gone on discussing the
unity of God, but now it is an idea of unity unborn when
Moses lived ; it is modern, abstract— the child of philosophy.
This is proper enough. But is it right to lay this modern view
back upon the ancient, as if they were one and identical, and
to employ the words of the archaic to clinch the ideas of the
recent arguments ?

The New Testament records the presentation to men of a
person who differed from His fellow men by such transcendent
excellence that His disciples worshipped Him, and after His
death paid Divine honours to Him — exalted to the heavenly
sphere. Was this Person privy to such results in the minds of
His disciples ? Did He employ language which naturally
favoured the impression, not that He was an uncommon man,
but really Divine. Did He present Himself to them in such
aspects and relations as must inevitably have fascinated their
imaginations, thralled their aftections, and drawn from them that
hom.age and devotion which men should render only to God ?

To argue the Divinity of Christ from His creative acts, from
His participation in moral government, from implied or direct
claims made by Him to Divinity, will not be without a Scrip-
ture warrant. But while it will be a scriptural method, it will
not be the scriptural method— peculiar, simple, and original —
by which Christ's Godship is presented in the New Testament,

An argument for the Divinity of Christ derived from His rela-
tions, now and hereafter^ to the hujtian soul, will approach ?iearest
to the genius of t/ie Gospels.

May the soul yield itself without reserve to the guidance of
Christ? May it bestow upon Him its affection without
measure? May its love kindle the imagination till His
pictured greatness and excellence draw forth a profound
reverence and a rapturous homage ? May man call upon his
soul, and all that is within him, to laud and magnify the name
of Christ, until it is set above every other name, and not below
the very name of God .'*

46 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

This will be an argument for the Divinity of Christ drawn
from the human soul, and which will be new in every age, and
which will never change with progressing philosophies or new
civilisations. And it will have this pre-eminent advantage over
all other methods, that it will not be more an argument than an
experience ; that it will carry practice with reasoning ; that it
will convince from moral experience more than from a mere
championship of ideas. As there can be no argument of
chemistry in proof of odours like a present perfume itself; as
the shining of the stars is a better proof of their existence than
the figures of an astronomer ; as the restored health of his
patients is a better argument of skill in a physician than
laboured examinations and certificates ; as the testimony of
the almanac that summer comes with June is not so convincing
as is the coming of summer itself in the sky, in the air,
in the fields, on hill and mountain : so the power of
Christ upon the human soul is to the soul evidence of His
Divinity, based upon a living experience, and transcending in
conclusiveness any convictions of the intellect alone, founded
upon a contemplation of mere ideas, however just and sound.

If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the
experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no
further argument of His Divinity. The whole interest of the
question centres and exhausts itself in the question of man's sal-
vation. Curiosity, and even philosophy, may task itself with
insoluble questions, with the quantitative argument, with the
argument from Divine relations to nations and to governments,
but the one question with every earnest, thoughtful mind will
be, Alay I love and luorship Christ with all my heart, and mind,
and soul ?

In this spirit I shall present some considerations adapted to
settle and comfort those who desire to believe in the Divinity
of Christ, but are moved with fear lest they shall derogate from
the honour due to God by according to a creature that worship
which belongs to God alone.

I. We have said that Christianity is Christ. We do not
mean that it is the history of His life, the record of His deeds,
and the statement of the truths which He left to the world.
Christianity has its ethical system, its didactic truths, its history,
and place in time. But these are only the body, the members,
through which its soul acts. A living person stands in the
midst of these truths, himself the grandest truth, the grandest
fact. While Christ excelled all teachers in the breadth and
richness of His moral instructions, the most striking difference

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 47

between Him and all other teachers was \hQ personal allegiance
which He demanded to Himsdf. He urged Himself upon
men as the embodiment of truth, and demanded of His
followers not simply an assent to His doctrines, but the inter-
weaving of their lives with His. Plato and Socrates have been
often mentioned as the greatest teachers of men. Imagine
Socrates standing in Athens, even when men were most affected
by him, and, amid influences the most propitious, saying to his
followers, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me : for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall
find rest unto your souls." Or imagine Plato, when, in some
favoured day, he had carried up his disciples with great enthu-
siasm by his discourse, saying, "I am the light of the world.
He that foUoweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life." These are not sentences flashing from the
extreme excitement of some rapturous moment. They are
specimens of Christ's manner. They run through all His dis-
courses. As His end drew nigh, and the minds of His disciples
were more open, the frequency and boldness with which He
presented Himself as the epitome of truth, as the source of
spiritual life in heaven, as the object of supreme trust, as the only
authentic conception of God, as the exclusive way and door,
rnust have struck every attentive reader. Listen to His conver-
sation with Philip. " Philip saith unto Him, Lord, shov/ us the
Father, and it sufflceth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been
so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ?
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; and how sayest
thou, then. Show us the Father ? " The passage is remarkable,
not only for the grandeur with which He claimed to stand for
God, but it is conclusive that this personal presentation of Him-
self was habitual from the beginning of His ministry, or why that
question of rebuke and surprise, *' Have I been so long time with
you, . . . and yet how sayest thou, then, Shoiv us tJie Father ? "

The apostles afterward entered fully into this view. They
never presented Christianity, but always Christ. They never
assumed or implied that the truths which Christ taught were
enough for salvation. The whole tenor and spirit of their in-
struction was, '^Believe on the Lord yesus Christ, ^^ They did
not seek for disciples to a school of morality, or of religion, or
of philosophy; it was a personal allegiance which they every-
where demanded. Every knee shall bow, and every tongue con-
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord ! — that was their purpose.

To accept Christ was, of course, to accept His teachings.

48 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

But no man could accept His teachings, and yet reject a personal
Saviour. By every form of identification was this personal rela-
tion manifested. Men took on the name of their Prince.
They were baptized, not in their own name, but into Christ's
name, as if they had passed into a new family relation. The
whole record of the feelings of the apostles is in the spirit of a
Divine hero-worship. Let Paul's language stand for all : " None
of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For
whether w^e live, we live unto the Lord ; and, whether we die,
we die unto the Lord ; whether we live, therefore, or die, we
are the Lord's."

It is incontrovertible that the New Testament idea of
piety is not simply a good life, with sound belief, but that it is
a personal u?iion with the Lord Jesus Christ. From such a
vital sympathy and unity will flow the whole train and sequence
of moral and religious experiences. But Christ is the First ;
Christ is the Last ; Christ is the Author and Finisher of faith.
Not a single step has been taken in Christianity until men have
come into personal allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ.

2. If now we examine the aspects in which this Person is
presented, the claims which He makes, the natural effects which
must inevitably flow from the performance of what He commands,
it will become plain that, if it be wrong to worship Christ, the
whole Gospel scheme is exquisitely adapted to mislead every
susceptible and worshipping nature, and to entrap them into
idolatry.

The child Jesus was surrounded with such portents as
brought upon Him the expectant eyes of all who knew Him.
His manhood did not discredit the expectations of men. His
intelhgence placed Him at once at the head of teachers. After
a few trials of debate, the wisest men of His nation, skilled in
debate, relinquished all further attempts to measure words with
Him. His reputation for purity and goodness equalled His
wisdom. He manifested extraordinary insight of the human
heart, and singular power in reading it. Wherever He went the
whole community was moved. Such was the popular excite-
ment which followed His steps, that it became necessary for
Him to hide from men, and to enjoin silence upon the recipients of
His beneficence. Men of deeply religious and earnest natures,
like Nicodemus, sought Him with reverence ; the common
people sought Him with curiosity ; and the wicked and wretched
sought Him with hope. More stricking than His wonders or
His wisdom was this power of exciting among the vile a pro-
found yearning for purity. Parents ran to Him with their sick ;

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 49

men came as to a natural judge with their disputes in business.
Women of a foreign tongue brought their daughters tormented
with evil spirits for exorcism, and Roman officers bowed rever-
ently to this remarkable Person, although they heartily des-
pised the enslaved nation from which He sprang.

These impressions of the multitude were heightened by an
extraordinary control of nature. The winds, at His command,
were still ; the boisterous sea sank down to quiet. When He
spoke, new powers were developed in natural causes : clay
healed bhndness ; water cured leprosy. Diseases of every kind,
and in uncountable numbers, were healed at His word. A few
loaves of bread fed thousands of hungry people, still increasing
as it was broken and distributed. The dead were restored to
life again. There was no doubt whatever as to the reality of
these acts. That miracles were wrought was never disputed,
not even by shrewd enemies, lying in wait to destroy Him.
The power was admitted ; the origin and source of the power
alone were questioned. He said that it was Divine, and an
evidence of His superior mission. His enemies said that
it was infernal, and a token that He was leagued with the
devil.

This extraordinary power could not but raise in the minds of
His disciples the most exalted opinion of their Master. And
when, on one occasion, upon Mount Tabor, they saw Him
transfigured, hanging in the air before them like a star, and
surrounded with glorious light, in converse with celestial spirits,
is it strange that they fully believed Him to be Divine? and that
there was every probability that they w^ould, unless cautioned
and restrained, worship Him ?

Consider, then, the language and conduct towards His dis-
ciples of One so eminent in wisdom, so extraordinary in power,
and so fascinating in manner and influence. He is not known
€ven once to have cautioned them against an idolatrous affec-
tion. But He did continuously exert upon them influences,
and address to them language, which could have but one ten-
dency, and that to kindle enthusiastic affection, and boundless
reverence and worship. He declared that He came from God;
that He and the Divine Father were one ; that the surest
method of knowing and worshipping the Father, was to know
and love Him, His Son. He declared Himself empowered to
forgive sin, and to inspire a new life in all who would love Him.
He depicted His own aftection for them in language whose
tenderness and dignity have never been equalled. Such was
His love for them that it had driven Him from above; that it

E

50 THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

had animated His earthly career ; that it was leading Him to a
shameful and dreadful death, which He would not shun.

But He declared that death itself was to be but a short
absence from them, while He was gone to prepare a place in
Paradise, " that where I am there ye may be also."

No literal language could enough convey His idea of the
intensity and entireness of that love which He gave and sought
in return. He therefore employed figures. He declared that
their life depended upon Him; that He was the light; that
He was the bread of life, the water of life ; that His very flesh
was their food, and His blood their drink. He declared that
He was their Master, and yet their servant. So wholly were
they dependent upon Him, that He was their way, along which
their feet came to walk as upon a road, and He stood between
them and life eternal, as the door or gate in a city between
strangers without and citizens within. He declared that He
watched over, tended, guarded, and led them as a shepherd
does his flock.

And then, in describing the eflects which He desired their
love to produce in them — the intimacy and entireness of it —
He declared that they were to grow out of Him as a branch
out of a vine; while, on the other hand, He would enter into
them, as one does into his house, and dwell with them; and
that this intimacy between them should be of the same kind as
that which existed between Himself and the Father, and that
it should be constant and perpetual — a secret inspiration, a
pure joy, an unfailing strength on earth, and the earnest and
presage of endless fehcity in the world to come !

With all these ecstatic words in their hearts, the disciples
beheld this Singular Being arrested, tried with circumstances of
indignity, and condemned unjustly, while the compromising
magistrate declared that he '* found no fault in Him." They saw
His calmness. His fortitude, and His disinterestedness in these
scenes of excitement and peril. They beheld Him toiling under
His own cross ; they heard the muflled strokes of the hammer as
He was nailed to it ; they saw the cross lifted up, and their Master
with it, while, to add every indignity to the cruelty, two thieves
were crucified with Him — an unconscious symbol of His work —
the highest dying for and with the lowest — God united to man
in weakness, that man might be lifted up to God by His
strength ! When the agony was over, and the three days of
burial, He canie again to them, bearing about with Him a
certain unworldly aspect. But no change was there in the
demands for their love and service. He commanded them to

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 5 1

dedicate their lives to His Name, to make that universal which
he had addressed to them personally, to go forth to every
nation and declare to all mankind those truths of God's love
and mercy, through Jesus Christ. And then, while He yet
spoke, He rose up slowly before them and disappeared, as a
star goes out in the growing light of morning !

"And they worshipped Hlm, and returned to Jerusalem
with great joy."* Did they sin in woj^shipping the Lord Jesus
Christ ? After their long career of intimacy, did love to such
a Being, who had exhausted the symbolism of life to express
His life-giving relations to them ; with every conceivable in-
citement to reverence and worship; with love, wonder, joy,
and gratitude kindling their imaginations toward Him ; without
a solitary word of caution lest they should be snared by their
enthusiasm, and bestow upon Him the worship which belonged
only to God, did they sin in worshipping Christ? If they did,
was not Christ Himself the tempter ? If they did not, may not
every loving soul worship Him? Is there any other question of
Divinity that man need be troubled about but a Divinity which
the soul may worship, and on which it may rely for salvation ?

Let me place another case before you for judgment. A
maiden, the daughter of a prince, has wandered from her father's
house, and has lapsed from virtue, seeking pleasure in ways every
year more degrading. A noble youth appears among her gross
companions, not to partake in their orgies, but with a gentle
grace and eloquent persuasion to inspire an ambition of better
things. To her he brings her father's importunity. Drawn to
him by all that is attractive in pure manhood, she is met with
more than encouragement — with sympathy, with tenderness,
with expressions of love so exquisite, so new, so eloquent, that
her soul dies in her with a sense of unworthiness. But he
comforts and encourages her. "Because I live thou shalt live
also." And when she fears to weary him, and seeks alone to
find her upward way, he whispers, "Not without me, for without
me you can do nothing." When the returning power of habits,
conquered but not subdued, drives her to despair, he re-illumines
hope, saying, " Be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world,
and you shall also." And then, amid blushing flowers, he
pours the tide of love in strange words that thrill the heart and
fascinate the imagination. " I will never leave thee nor forsake
thee. Come to me in every hour of trial, and I will give thee
rest. Grow to me, and mingle my life with your own, as the
branch derives its life from the vine. Thy heart is my home ; I
* Luke xxiv. 52.

E — 2

52

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

will dwell there. Not God and his dearest ones are more united
than I and thou."

By all these words, by all this love, by all these hopes, by the
ineffable joy of his presence, by his noble example and his un-
wearied teachings, by the inspiration of his Hfe, and the lifting
power of his soul put beneath hers, she comes back to virtue
and womanhood, and with sacred ardour turns to him who has
saved her, to love him with a love that leaves nothing unmingled
in it, that carries up with it the dew from every flower that
blossoms in her heart ! What if he sternly shuts her opening
heart, and puts away the reverence of her love and the devotion
of her soul, saying, "Give these to your father. It is wicked
to bestow them upon me !" If it be wicked to love, what is it
to have deliberately inspired such love, and then to refuse it ?

And shall I follow Christ through all my life ; behold His
beauty ; twine about Him every aftection ; lean upon Him for
strength; behold Him as my leader, my teacher; feed upon
Him as my bread, my wine, my water of life ; see all things in
this world in that light which he declares Himself to be — in His
strength vanquish sin, draw from Him my hope and inspiration,
wear His name and love His work, and, through my whole life,
at His command, twine about Him every affection, die in His
arms, and awake with eager upspring to find Him whom my
soul loveth, only to be put away with the announcement that
He is not the recipient of worship ? Well might I cry out in
the anguish of Mary in the garden, " They have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him."

It is impossible to fulfil the commands of Christ and not be
carried into worship. Not texts and arguments, but the laws
of mind and the nature of the soul rise up to argue Him Divine.

If I may rest my being on Him ; If I may feel that He has
suffered for my sins, that He has borne my sorrows, and that
my life is grafted into His ; and if I may pour out everything in
me of thought, and zeal, and worship toward Him — then,
blessed be God for Christ ! But if it is wicked for me to do
these things, then I cannot thank God for Him. God should
not have added to the misery of our condition by giving us
such a Being, and then make it wicked for us to worship Him.

But I am not afraid to worship Christ ! I will trust myself
to worship Him. I will trust those dearest to me to worship
Him. In the arms of Christ's love nothing shall hurt you.
Love on, trust on, worship fearlessly ! Let go your most ardent
devotions toward Him. There is no Divine jealousy. The
anxieties that afflict the sons of earth in their ideas of God

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

S3

never exist in heaven. Christ is the soul's bread— eat, ye that
hunger ! He is the water of life — drinl^, ye that thirst ! He
is the soul's end — aim at Him ! He is the soul's supreme
glory — yield to every outgush of joy, of enthusiasm, of worship
that springs up in your heart toward Him ! Those that are in
heaven bow down before Him, and ascribe "blessing, and
honour, and glory, and power unto Him that sitteth upon the
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." Let us not
fear to do the same.

*' Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peri], or sword ? " " Nay, in all these things we are more
than conquerors, through Him that loved us. For I am
persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princi-
palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord."

When two souls come together, and unite with each other,
no one has a right to meddle with them, to know their most
blessed intercourse, or to interpret their thoughts to each other.
They are to be let alone. And when a soul goes up in the
enthusiasm of its affianced love to unite itself to Jesus Christ,
shall not its trust be respected ? Shall anything separate it from
Him ? No ; nothing. It is God that surrounds us ; it is the
eternal Father that rejoices in us ; and at no time does He
rejoice in us more than when we are giving our life and our
being to Jesus Christ our Saviour.

This morning, then, dear Christian brethren, let us renew the
testimonies of our love and confidence toward this ascended
One. If there be those present who, though they do not bear
the same ecclesiastical name and relationship which we do, by
faith bear the same relationship to Christ which we bear, hoping
in Him, trusting Him, loving Him, taking Him to be their soul's
Saviour, and who desire to unite with us to-day in the celebra-
tion of the Last Supper of Christ, we cordially invite them to
remain after the blessing is pronounced, and participate in this
joyous festival.

V.
THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

"Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of
Christ."— 2 Cor. x. i.

Among all the motives which (in turn) are addressed to men,
in dissuasion from evil and persuasion to good, none seems
more impressive and touching than that of God's generosity.
Authority, command, sublime threatening, sentence, and
judicial penalty — all these seem natural to supremacy. But
personal kindness, tenderness of feeling, gentleness, and
benignity, as motives to obedience, are not possible under
constitutional governments, which are not governments by
arbitrary monarchs, but of laws and constitutions — abstract and
without feeling. The Divine government, on the contrary, is
personal. In human governments men represent institutions
and laws. Exactly the reverse is true in the Divine government :
laws and institutions represent a person — God.

In an argument designed to authenticate his apostolic claims
as an authoritative teacher of the gospel of Christ, Paul employs
the Divine feelings as a powerful motive. He lays g-reat stress
upon tJie meekness and gentleness of Christ. And this is the
theme of my discourse this morning — the gentleness of Christ.

Gentleness is not a separate and distinct faculty. It is the
method by which strength manifests itself. Softness and tender-
ness, from want of strength, constitute weakness, not gentleness.

Nothing can be less influential than kindness springing from
imbecility. That kind of gentleness which springs from weak-
ness increases as things approach zero.

Gentleness is not, then, the mere absence of rude vigour. It
is the softness and tenderness of vigour and great power. It is
sweet in the degree in which it is the attribute or the fruit of
power, and in the degree in which it springs from authority and
dignity. The greater the power of the being, the greater will
be the marvel and the delicacy of gentleness. In a woman we
expect gentleness. We are shocked by its absence rather than
surprised l)y its presence. But in a warrior we scarcely expect
it, and therefore it creates an admiration that it does not in
woman.

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 55

It is wonderful, too, in proportion to the provocation to con-
trary feelings. That beauty should beget admiration, that
goodness should attract benignity, that purity should find the
face of God reflected from its tranquil surface, as the sun from
still and silent lakes, does not surprise us. But that all rude,
and vulgar, and hateful things, should find themselves, at one
time or another, the subjects of a true and Divine gentleness,
this is surprising.

Gentleness, likewise, is wonderful in proportion to the moral
sensibility and discriminating purity of the mind which exercises
it. Divine moral indifference would extract all merit and efficacy
from goodness and gentleness. If God were gentle to sinful
men, simply because He cared nothing for moral character, and
because indifference were easier to Himself, gentleness would
then be an inflection of indolence and selfishness, and ^vould
neither produce surprise nor admiration. Gentleness, springing
from easy good-nature, which will not take the trouble to vin-
dicate justice and right, will not command even respect.

That goodness which worldly men ascribe to God, that they
may presume upon it and abuse it, is simply the absence of
moral sensibility, and not voluntary and intelligent kindness. It
is much more an indifference to sin than a positive, painstaking
love. But a Divine kindness and a Divine goodness, springing
from indifference to evil, and fi"om an easy good-nature which
makes it, on the whole, rather pleasanter to shine on in un-
observant indolence than to frown upon evil, would take the
tone out of all government, and respect from the hearts of all
subjects.

Consider, then, with these qualifying and interpreting remarks,
what must be the nature of gentleness in God. He dwells alone
from eternity to eternity, because there is none other that can
be of His proportion, and of His grandeur of being. Supreme
by His nature, supreme by the acclamation of heaven, but also
supreme simply because He is more than all else, being the
cause of everything ! There is none with whom He can take
counsel. All powers of nature are but the commonest servants
of God. Tornadoes and earthquakes, and fire, and air, and
water, are but His servants that do His errands. Nor is there
an angel in heaven, or human being on earth, nor are there
spirits of just men made perfect above, to whom He does not
stoop down, through infinite degrees, when He communicates
His thoughts. And who among them can advise and counsel
with God, since their light is but His own reflected light? They
throw back to the sun only that which they take from it? Self-

56 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

sustained, and pouring out from the fountain of His own life
into the souls of all created intelligences, as oil is poured into
lamps. How wonderful is His greatness ! How vast is He, and
how superior to all others ! His vast movements are along the
circuits of eternity. The whole earth is said to be but a drop
of the bucket before Him. What must that ocean-universe be,
of which this earth is but a single drop ?

Did you ever, in a summer's day, when you had drawn from
the bottom of the well the cool water to slack your thirst, stand,
and dream, and gaze at a drop orbed and hanging at the
bucket's edge, and reflecting the light of the sun ? What the
rounded form and size of that drop is, in comparison with the
whole earth itself, that the round earth itself is in comparison
with God's majesty and immensity of being ! And that such
a One, living in such a wise — so far above the earth, so far
above its inhabitants, so far above the noblest spirit that stands
in the unlost purity of heaven — that such a One should deal
with His erring children with a gentleness and patience such as
characterises the administration of God toward man, is won-
derful and sublime !

Consider, not alone the greatness of God's absolute being,
and His gentleness as a Being of infinite strength, but also His
moral purity and His love of purity. His goodness and His
love of goodness, and His abhorrence of evil. But how shall
we measure these things ?

God has left the impress of His genius upon the natural
world in such a way, that if we know how to read it aright, this
globe contains indications of the truths that Scripture itself
develops. These truths, however, are not to be first learned
from nature ; they are to be recognised in nature after Scripture
has unfolded them to us.

Now all over the world the repugnance of nature to the
violation of her appointed laws is patent and familiar. I do
not like to think that the arrangements of nature are the result
of a cold calculation on the part of God, or of a deliberate con-
clusion on His part that they are needful. I think, rather,
that certain things in nature express the very elements of God's
mind, as it were, without design. Nature is saturated, so to speak,
with God. She bears in her structure the feelings and disposition
of the Divine Creator, as a picture bears in its parts the feelings
and disposition of the man who painted it, or as Christ's face ex-
pressed His feelings of love, pity, and authority. Nature is full
of indications of Divine attributes. Natural law, through all
time, and round the world, conveys hints and germs of heaven,

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 57

of hell, of vicarious suffering, and of remedial mercy. It
teaches these four things. Disobey and suffer, obey and
enjoy ; these are its first and fundamental lessons, which are
the rude seed-forms of those higher truths : purity and heaven,
impurity and hell. Then throughout the world we see illustra-
tions of the fact that one man can suffer for another. In the
mother's suffering, and in the father's watch and care, the child
grows out of impurity and rudeness into purity and gentleness.
Vicarious suffering is a law of the household and of society. It
is one of the eternal truths of God's nature. Remedial mercy
is also a truth which nature hints. In the natural world, within
certain bounds, a man's wrong-doing may be repaired, if he turn
from his transgression and repent. There is provision for every
bone to knit together again when fractured, for every muscle to
heal when lacerated, and for every nerve, when shattered and
diseased, to return again to health. Thus in nature we see pre-
figured the great scheme of redemption. Purity gives heaven;
impurity eternal wail and woe. But there is vicarious suffering
to bring men from the one to the other. If through Christ
there be repentance and turning from evil, there is also health
and restoration. And these things are indicated in nature —
when we know how to see them there — but are authoritatively
taught only in the New Testament. In nature they are as twi-
light, while in the Gospel they glow with noonday brightness.

Now this I understand to be an infusion into nature of a
testimony to God's moral sensibiHty. He is not a Being to
whom all things are alike. He is not a Being to whom all
conduct is but the manifestation of so many instincts, or but the
inevitable working out of laws that necessitate human action.
God has given, through the natural world, indications that He
regards some things as right and beautiful, and some things as
wrong and hateful ; some things as worthy to be crowned, and
some things as deserving to be punished.

Now what is the interpretation of these indications of God's
disposition in nature ? If you would understand them, you must
go to the Scriptures. Listen, then, to the words of God through
His servant j\Ioses, as recorded in the thirty-fourth chapter of
Exodus, beginning with the fifth verse : " And the Lord de-
scended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed
the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him^
and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and
gracious, long-suftering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgres-
sion, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ;

58 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon
the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth genera-
tion."

Again, listen to the words of God which He spake, under
circumstances scarcely less momentous, by the mouth of the
same servant, -as recorded in the thirty-second chapter of
Deuteronomy, beginning with the thirty-ninth verse : " See
now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with Me : I kill,
and I make alike ; I wound, and I heal : neither is there any
that can deliver out of My hand. For I lift up My hand to
heaven, and say, I live for ever. If I whet my glittering sword,
and Mine hand take hold on judgment, I will render ven-
geance to Mine enemies, and will reward them that hate Me.
1 will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall
devour flesh ; and that with the blood of the slain, and of the
captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.
Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people ; for He will avenge the
blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adver-
saries, and will be merciful unto His land, and to His people."

Do these words interpret a God of moral indifference ? Do
they not, rather, reveal a God sensitive to every pulsation of
right or wrong — a God affected with admiration and gladness
by everything that looks toward virtue, and truth, and holiness ;
and aroused to a moral repugnance and judicial abhorrence by
everything that looks toward corruption, and selfishness, and
wickedness? God stands between the right and the wrong,
not looking pleasantly on the one, and equally pleasantly on the
other — not looking, as the sun looks, with a benignant face on
the evil and on the good, and not as man looks — with only a
less benignant face upon the evil. He stands with all the
fervour of His infinite love, and all the majesty of His un-
limited power, approving good, and legislating for it ; disap-
proving evil and abhorring it, legislating against it and bringing
it into infamy and under eternal penalty. If there be one
truth that speaks throughout the Bible like the voice of God,
and resounds through all nature with all the grandeur of
Divine intonation, it is the truth that God does not look with
an equal eye upon the evil and the good ; that He is a discrimi-
nator of character, a lover of that which is right, and a hater of
that which is wrong.

God's sensibility is exceedingly acute. We are accustomed
to connect fineness and acuteness of feeling with delicacy and
subtleness of organisation; and we are apt to think that as Ciod
is a Being so vast that His latitude is infinity, and His longitude

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 59

is eternity, He must be comparatively insensitive — less sensitive
than men are. But He is more sensitive than men can possibly
be. Sensitiveness is a peculiarity of His nature. Because He
is vaster than men there is no reason why He should not be
more sensitive than they. Divinity does not consist in bulk,
but in quality. He is exquisitely sensitive to the finest shades
of character. He has an infinite relish for, and sensibility to that
which is good in the soul, and He has a corresponding hatred
for, and abhorrence toward, that which is evil in the soul.

That a Being such as this, who is independent of all other
beings; who has made them all; who by the mere act of His
will can obliterate them ; who can rub them out easier than I
can rub out the colours from the butterfly's wings; who is full
of infinite creative resources, with the power alike to crush this
earth to atoms, and make it over again easier than the potter
can mould again an unburnt earthen vessel after he has dashed
it in pieces — that such a Being who is in no wise obliged to
study economies; who is unbounded in thought, unbounded in
skill, unbounded in wisdom, and unbounded in power ; who
has all eternity in which to mark out His pictures and build
His architectures, and who, with all His vastness, is extremely
sensitive to moral qualities, so that He cherishes the most
ardent love for that which is good, and the intensest hatred for
that which is evil — that such a Being should carry Himself with
care, with quiet, with softness, with delicacy, with gentleness
toward men, and toward those, too, who have by their conduct
forfeited all claim to mercy and gentleness — this is wonderful !
That the eternal Father, who forbids us to look upon the sun
and say, " Thou art my god," or to look upon the moon and
stars and say, *' Ye are my gods," and who disdains with infinite
scorn to be represented by the chisel of the sculptor or by the
pencil of the painter — that He should carry Himself with ex-
ceeding tenderness and patience toward us erring creatures, and
say, " A bruised reed I will not break, and smoking flax I will
not quench, till I send forth judgment unto victory" — this is a
miracle surpassing all wonders.

" A bruised reed shaU He not break." Is there anything
that grows so high, carrying up so little strength of stem, as the
reed, that rises twenty or thirty feet in the air, and has a stalk
not larger than my finger? Now a beast, breaking through the
thicket, eager, with his unquenched thirst, for the cooling
draught, strikes against the slender reed, shattering it, so that it
has but just strength to sustain its own weight. So weak is it
that if there be so much wind as to lift one of its leaves, or to

6o THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

bend it in the least degree in either direction, it must surely
break. But God says, " My gentleness is such that when I go
down among men whose condition is like that of a bruised
reed, I will do nothing to complete their overthrow, but will
deal with them in such a way that they shall gather strength^
till I have sent forth judgment unto victory."

*' And smoking flax shall He not quench." If the flame is
just dying out in a lamp, it is not in danger of being suddenly
extinguished, for the old warmth in the wick serves for a time
to nourish and sustain it. But immediately after the wick is
lighted, and before any warmth is communicated to it, the least
movement is sufficient to extinguish it. God says, " Wherever
there is a spark of grace lighted in the soul, if it flickers so that
the breath of the person who carries it, or the least motion of
his hand, is in danger of putting it out, I will deal so gently
with him as not to quench that spark. I will treat it with such
infinite tenderness that it shall grow into a flame which will
burn on for ever." And these are the symbols by which God
measures His wonderful gentleness.

Now with a conception before your mind of what God is in
His moral aptitudes and discriminations, as well as what He is
in His infinity, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence,
consider what tax He has had on His patience and His for-
bearance, and what His gentleness must be in the light of
human provocations.

The life of every individual is a long period of moral delin-
quency. No one who has not had the experience of a parent
can have any adequate conception of the patience and gentle-
ness exercised even by a mother in rearing her child, from the
cradle to the door of the world, when, at twenty-one years of age,
he goes forth from her care. It is only after-experience that can
give the child a true idea of how much the mother bore with him,
and how much kindness, and love, and forbearance, and gene-
rosity, and delicacy, and gentleness she showed toward him
during his passage from infancy to manhood. True mothers are
God's miniatures in this world ; and we see portrayed in them,
on a small scale, the very traits and delineations of that character
which makes God the eternal Father of sinful men.

How great will be the disclosure which shall be made when,
in the great day, Christ shall enrol from the archives of eternity
the history of each individual soul, and make known what not
even the watching mother saw, nor the wide-thinking father,
and what not even the subject himself dreamed of! How great
will be the disclosure which shall be made when Christ shall

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 6 1

expose to view all the secret throbbings of every soul ; all the
jutting motives of his heart ; all the thoughts and intents of his
mind that never took form in action ; all the acts that he has
performed and forgotten ; and all the impulses of his interior
life, upon which God has hung with close inspection, and which
he has felt with all the sensibility of a heavenly Father's heart.

The history of any individual soul will appear far different
when it is unrolled in the light of God's countenance, from what
it does when unrolled in the light of earthly considerations. If
we could see a man as he is when developed and wrought upon
by the whole mingled influence of human life, what a view
should we behold ! If we look upon a human being from below,
and measure him by our own selfishness, and the notions that
obtain in human society, we form what we consider to be a
charitable judgment of him ; that is, we do not scan his motives
closely, and judge him according to them, but we call him good
without stopping to inquire what his real character is. God has
no such charity as this. He sees everything, and sees it just as
it is, and measures it by immutable principles. Nothing per-
taining to human conduct or character can escape His notice.
When measured thus, what must be the character of that man
who has passed through all the sinuous ways of life ; who has
been wrought upon by all the temptations of the world ; who
has been subjected to the multitudinous influences of society;
and in whom have been at work during the twenty, or fifty, or
eighty years of his earthly existence, the various conflicting
passions of his nature? When human life is looked at and
judged through the eyes of God, how wonderful does it become,
and how much patience must be exercised by the Divine Being
in rearing a single one of his creatures !

Now consider, not individual life, great as that is, but national
life. Consider that men perish at the rate of thirty millions a
year ; that in any one day ten hundred millions of men live on
the face of the earth ; that every man has a history, complex,
continuous, and almost infinite in detail ; that these ten
hundred millions of human souls are walking toward the door
of darkness from life to death, or rather from life to life —
consider these things, and then that, which is marvellous as
exercised toward an individual man, becomes transcendent and
amazing when exercised toward the whole race and extended
through all time ! Consider that this has been taking place for
six thousand recorded years, and in regard to this one globe ;
and that the Divine administration toward mankind has been
one not devoid, indeed, of the sword and flashing spear — not

62 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

devoid of terrific justice ; but that by nothing has it been more
characterised than by God's forbearance, and long-suffering,
and patience, and gentleness, and how wondrous do the
qualities of the Divine mind seem !

Consider what turmoil of nations there has been. Consider
what have been the many and long-continued oppressions and
wrongs that have been practised by man upon man. Consider
how God hates tyrants ; and yet how almost every man that
ever lived has been a petty tyrant. Consider how God hates
under-minings ; and yet how men, the world over, are striving
to undermine each other. Consider the jealousies, the hatred,
the feculent vices, the hideous crimes, the degrading selfishness
of national life.

Did you ever, of a hot afternoon, witness the contest of
innumerable worms over a carrion carcase ? Did you ever
notice the greediness, and selfishness, and quarrelsomeness
displayed by the actors in a scene like that ? And yet such a
contest is decent compared with the gigantic contest that has
been carried on for thousands of years by the vermicular
human race, and God has looked upon it, dwelt and pondered
over it, and carried it in His heart ; and all this time He has
not ceased to pour out upon the world, in rich abundance, the
blessings of His never-failing love !

Think how poor has been the best part of human life ; how
slow has been the growth of the moral element ; how rudely
developed it is even now; how, the moment that any great
element of power in human society has been well developed, it
has almost invariably turned around and served the lower
nature of man ; how wealth, when acquired, has dominated for
the passions ; how learning, when it came to be, in some
measure, free from the husk and shuck in which it grew, became
the ready servant of ambition and selfishness ; how, when art
began to shine, it was employed for the embellishment of vice,
and as the instrument of untold wrongs, and how imperfect the
world is, notwithstanding all its advancement, whether viewed
in its individual or national character ! Remember that God
has, with infinite patience, night and day, watched over and
nourished this groaning world through all the thousands of
years that it has been travailing in pain.

Consider the events which have marked the long line of
history ; reflect upon the number, and succession, and cruelty
of wars. For I believe that from the beginning of the world
one war has not gone out before some fiendish hand has seized
the brand from its smouldering heap and kindled a new one, so

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 63

that war has touched and kindled war in an unbroken succes-
sion through all time. There is nothing else that begins to
compare in cruelty with the human race. Sharks are merciful
and lions and serpents are angelic compared with men. Man
is the chief monster that the earth ever bred.

Consider what despotisms have inflicted their dominations,
their outward violence and injury, their inward cruelty, and
their corrupting influences upon the world. Consider what
slavery has done, what barbaric savagery it has brought upon a
large portion of the human race.

These things are done before God, who looks upon every
part of the human family as His own. How should you feel if
you were to enter the room where your child is sleeping, and
find upon it a stealthy cat, stationed at the portal of life, and
stopping its very breath ? How should you feel were you to find
upon your child a vampire that had fastened into his flesh his
blood-sucking bill, and was fast consuming its vitality ? How
do you feel when one of your children tramples upon another ?
or when your neighbour's children crush yours ? or when ruflian
violence strikes against those whose hearts for ever carry the core
of your heart ?

Judge from your own feelings how God, with His infinite
sensibility, must feel when He sees men rising up against their
fellow-men ; performing gross deeds of cruelty on every hand ;
waging wars that cause blood to flow like rivers throughout the
globe ; when, in short. He sees them devastating society by
every infernal mischief that their ingenuity can invent.

The Bible says that God is past finding out. But it does not
merely mean that His physical power is past finding out. It is
His disposition — his moral nature, that are peculiarly beyond
research and measurement. The unsearchableness of the love
of God in Christ Jesus ; the greatness, the grandeur, and the
glory of the heart that, hating iniquity with an intense hatred,
can love the doer of it, and that, abhorring sin with an infinite
abhorrence, can give itself to save the sinner — these are the
things that are past finding out. The marvel of meekness, and
sweetness, and love, in the arch-thunder of eternity — this it is
that is past finding out !

If God cared for the misconduct of men no more than we
do for the fiery strifes of an ant-hiU, there would be no foun-
dation for such a conception of Divine gentleness and Divine
goodness. There are some who seem to think that God, when
He created men and placed them in the world, set on foot an
experiment ; that He does not care what they do, but that He

64 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

is satisfied to let them act as they choose, and see what they
will come to. Let them have such an idea of God ! I will
have none of it ! If God in moral elements were a sun shining
on the good and on the evil just alike, as He does in His
physical administration, we could not have the view of Him
which I have been presenting; but He is the righteous judge
of all the earth. He is the eternal author and lover of equity.
Listen to what He Himself says in the fiftieth Psalm : —
" Unto the wicked God saith. What hast thou to do to declare
My statutes, or that thou shouldst take My covenant in thy
mouth ? seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest ]My words
behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst
with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thougivest
thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest
and speakest against thy brother ; thou slanderest thine own
mother's son. These things hast tliou done, and I kept silence ;
ihoii tJwiightest that I was altogether such aji one as thyself; but
I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces,
and there be none to deliver."

Is this the language of one that does not care what men do?
If God regarded human conduct as a mere matter of present
good or evil, and was content to let things work out their own
w^ay, fixing His eye mainly on the great future, the attributes
of gentleness and goodness, as belonging to His nature, would
not shine forth with that unspeakable grandeur which they now
have; but He "so loved the world that He gave His only-
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life."

Evil is eternal in the sight of God, unless it be checked and
cured. Sin, like a poisonous weed, re-sows itself, and becomes
eternal by reproduction. Now God looks upon the human race
in the light of these truths. And tell me what other attribute
of God, what other inflection of His character, is so sublime as
this — His gentleness ? How wonderful has been its duration ;
how deep its nature; how exquisite its touches; how rich its
fruit ! What assurance does it bring to our hope ! How
boundless is the scope it opens to our eye I How wonderful is
the combination of traits in His disposition ! It was because
the lion and the lamb first lay down together in the heart of Crod
that the prophet declared that they shall yet do it on earth.

Now, while these statements are fresh in your mind, and your
imagination glows, and your affections are warm, I desire to
present to you a clear conception of God as your /^rj-w/r?/ God.

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 6$

They who are accustomed to present God almost entirely through
the ideas of law, as an official, gubernatorial personage, have
produced upon the minds of multitudes the disastrous effect
of substituting a mere abstraction for a living, glowing person-
ality. Much as I may esteem theologians, and much as I
believe in and admire a great deal that they say or write, yet
against such a mode of presenting God my soul kindles in the
proportion in which I myself do love the Saviour, and in the
measure of the desire that I have to lead men to Him. If
sometimes I have seemed to tread down, rudely, opinions that
have hitherto been reverently held, it has not been so much
from disrespect, as from an eagerness to brush away and to de-
stroy everything that lifts itself up between the soul of man and
a living Saviour.

From all the human passions there have risen up vapours
densely concealing the face of God as clouds hide the sun.
All the active world, too, by its unhallowed forms of pleasure,
by its ambitions, by its mighty whirl of business, by its swel-
tering strifes, has joined to exclude from men any heart-saving
conception of God ; and it has always seemed to me too much
that religious men should inadvertently increase this very mis-
chief, and so present God as to make a conception of him by
ordinary men impossible, or possible only in a way that shall
take all influence from the thought of Him.

Not long ago there was a researcher of art in Italy, who,
reading in some book that there was a portrait of Dante painted
by Giotto, was led to suspect that he had found where it had
been placed. There was an apartment used as an out-house
for the storage of wood, hay, and the like. He sought and ob-
tained permission to examine it. Clearing out the rubbish, and
experimenting upon the whitewashed wall, he soon detected
the signs of the long-hidden portrait. Little by litde, with
loving skill, he opened up the sad, thoughtful, stern face of the
old Tuscan poet.

Sometimes it seems to me that thus the very sanctuary of God
has been filled with wood, hay, and stubble, and the Divine
lineaments of Christ have been swept over and covered by
human plastering, and I am seized with an invincible desire to
draw forth from its hiding-place, and reveal to men the glory
of God as it shines in the face of Christ Jesus ! It matters
little to me what school of theology rises or what falls, so only
that Christ may rise and appear in all His Father's glory, full-
orbed, upon the darkness of this world ! It matters little to me
what Church comes forth strong or what becomes weak, so only

F

66 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

that the poor, the sinful, the neglected, the lost among men, may
have presented to them, in the Church, a Saviour accessible and
available in every hour of temptation, of remorse, or of want !

It is this Christ that I would make personal to you to-day.
He is not a Being that dwells in the inner recesses of the eternal
■world, inaccessible, incomprehensible. He is not the stern king,
unbending, upon a throne of justice, lifted up above the reach
of sighs and soul-wants. He is not as one fortified behind the
bulwarks of law, so that we must cannonade, and breach the
walls with prayers, and then rush in to take him captive. Men
never find Christ, but are always found of Him. He goes forth
to seek and to save the lost. It is not the out-reaching of our
thought, it is not the abstraction of our heart, it is not the strong
drawing of our sympathy and yearning that brings him to us.
It is the abounding love of His heart that draws us up toward
Him. His love precedes ours. " We love Him, because He
first loved us." We kindle our hearts at His. As the sun is up
before the sluggard, so the twilight and dawn of His love is upon
the hills when we wake; and when we sleep, even, His thoughts
burn above us as the stars burn through the night.

It is this willing, winning, pleading Christ, who wields all the
grandeur of justice and all the authority of universal empire
with such sweet gentleness that in all the earth there is none
like unto Him, that I set before you as your personal friend.
He knows each of you better than your mother knew you. He
has called you by name. In your households you are not so
familiar to your most cherished friend as you are to the heart
of Christ. Not so indelibly is your name recorded in your
father's memory, or in the baptismal register of the sanctuary,
or in the Family Bible, where the tabular leaf for births holds
your infant name, as upon the ever-remembering heart of the
Lord Jesus Christ.

He does not set His holiness and His hatred of sin like
mountains over which you may not climb. He does not hedge
himself about by the dignities and superiorities of Divinity. All
the way from his throne to your heart is sloped ; and hope, and
love, and patience, and meekness, and long-suffering, and kind-
ness, and wonderful mercies, and gentleness, as so many banded
helping angels, wait to take you by the hand and lead you up
to God. And I beseech you by His gentleness, too, that you
fear Him no longer; that you be no longer indifferent to Him;
that you wound Him by your unbelief no more, but that, now
and henceforth, you follow Him — " for there is none other
name under heaven among men whereby we must be saved."

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 67

But can any be saved except those who voluntarily and intel-
ligently believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ? Most assuredly they
can. One half the human race die in infancy, before the child
knows its right hand from its left, and is the blessed truth of
their salvation to be annihilated? or, falling like sparks through
the lurid air of hell, shall we beUeve that they burn for ever?
Does not universal Christendom believe that they go straight,
in the bosom of angels, to their Father's kingdom? So do I
believe. So would I believe if there were not another man on
the face of the earth that thought so !

Yet they are too young to understand the name of Christ, or
to believe in Him. Their ear has never been formed to hear
the very sound of His name. Yet blessed be God, the salva-
tion of Christ Jesus, that they could not understand on earth,
shall greet them and glorify them in heaven ! It is settled,
then, that Christ saves men who have never heard of Him, and
who cannot hear. But has this salvation a wider scope than
infant children ? Are there any others who will experience the
grace of Him whom they never knew? Let those answer that
seem to know so much, who have searched out God's whole
government, and know all about it. I say again, I do not
know. I yearn, and hope, and long ; but I do not know. As
in the case of infants the benefit of Christ's atonement is
applied to their unknowing souls, so I hope that there are
earnest and conscientious men, to whom no Gospel ever came,
who will yet be made subjects of redemptive love. ]\Iay we
not hope that that which came to us through Jesus Christ, clear
and disclosed as the noonday sun, may have fallen with reflex
beams upon others before His day and since ? And as we are
led by the Morning Star, or the Sun of Righteousness, may
they not, at least, have had some twilight leading?

But forjw/:, to whom the Gospel is preached ; for you, upon
whose cradle rested the dew of grace, and whose earliest years
were made acquainted with the sacred name of Jesus — the
children of pious parents, reared within sound of the sanc-
tuary, never beyond the sound of a Sabbath bell ; surrounded
and hedged in by ten thousand influences of religion, persuading
the understanding, importunate upon the conscience — for such
^-s, you, if Christ be rejected, there is no salvation ! For those
who never heard Him; to whom no sweet sound of the Gospel
ever came; whose week was one long rolling surge, unbroken
by the tranquil shore of any Sabbath, and who, in this darkness
and neglect, yet always groped upward, endeavouring to live a
life better than their times, yearning and longing to know a

F — 2

68 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

a better way — may we not hope, in the inscrutable mystery of
Divine wisdom, that there was some mode of applying to such
the benefit of the death of Christ ? that the vision rose, at last,
upon their eye, cleansed from the films of flesh ? and that
among the myriad voices of heaven there are some from the
heathen world, who, though on earth they could give no name
to that after which their souls yearned and searched, no sooner
beheld the Divine glory of the Saviour than they cried out :
'•'This is He for whom we have waited?" Yes, I firmly believe
that it is by the power of Christ that every man is saved who
shall touch the shore of heaven ; but I am not authorised to
say that God cannot, in the sovereignty of His love, conduct
men who are in darkness to that salvation which we reject, and
give them a reflected light, at least, of that glory which shines
full on us.

But for all those who have been clearly taught, who have been
moved by their wicked passions deliberately to set aside Him of
whom the prophets spake, whom the Apostles more clearly
taught, whom the Holy Spirit, by the Divine power, now makes
known to the world through the Gospel — for them, if they reject
their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, there remaineth no more
sacrifice for sin. If they deliberately neglect, set aside, or reject
their Saviour, He will as deliberately, in the end, reject them.

Sometimes, in dark caves, men have gone to the edge of un-
speaking precipices, and, wondering what was the depth, have
cast down fragments of rock, and listened for the report of
their fall, that they might judge how deep that blackness was ;
and listening — still listening — no sound returns ; no sudden
plash, no cUnking stroke as of rock against rock — nothing but
silence, utter silence ! And so I stand upon the precipice of
life. I sound the depths of the other world with curious
inquiries. But from it comes no echo and no answer to my
questions. No analogies can grapple and bring up from the
depths of the darkness of the lost world the probable truths.
No philosophy has line and plummet long enough to sound the
depths. There remains for us only the few authoritative and
solemn words of God. These declare that the bliss of the
righteous is everlasting ; and with equal directness and
simplicity they declare that the doom of the wicked is ever-
lastmg.

And therefore it is that I make haste, with an inconceivable
ardour, to persuade you to be reconciled to your God. 1 hold
up before you that God who loves the sinner and abhors sin ;
who loves goodness with infinite fervour, and breathes it upon

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 69

those who put their trust in Him ; who makes all the elements
His ministering servants : who sends years, and weeks, and
days, and hours, all radiant with benefaction, and, if we could but
hear their voice, all jDleading the goodness of God as an argument
of repentance and of obedience. And remember that it is this
God who yet declares that He will at last by no means clear
the guilty ! Make your peace with Him now, or abandon all
hopes of peace.

Be not discouraged because you are sinful. It is the very
office of his love to heal your sins. Not, then, only when you
have overcome them yourself is He prepared to receive you ;
it is His delight to give you help while in the very bitterness of
wrestling with your sins. He is your pilot to lead you out of
trouble. No pilot would he be who only then would take my
ship when I had gone through the narrows, and could see the
city, and was quite free of all danger. Who would need a
physician if he might not come to his bedside until after the
sickness was healed ? What use of schoolmaster if one may
not go to school till his education be complete ? What hope
of salvation if God would give us no help till the whole work of
subduing the natural heart were completed ? And our Saviour
is one who begins and completes in us the work of grace. He
is the author of our faith, and the finisher of it. It is His power
that works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. He
comes to you when you are morally dead, and by his touch
brings you to life. When you are weak he inspires you with
strength. When you are tempted He opens the door of escape.
When you are vanquished He appears to lift you up and bind
your wounds. Yea, bending under all your burdens, and loaded
down with our own sins, behold that Christ of whom it is said,
"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for
our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ;
and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have
gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ; and
the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

A great many of you have heard of the "terrors of the law;"
you have heard of the Divine threatenings, of the penalties to
be visited upon the wicked ; and as a man in a gale of wind
draws his garments tighter about him, so you have drawn your
pride more closely about you, and said, " I will not be driven
by fear ; I will not be flailed into heaven ; I am too much of a
man for that."

Now what are you going to do ? When I come to you and
preach gentleness, do you not say, **I will not be cozened

70 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

either. It is of no use for you to try to play upon my feelings."
How can I persuade you, then ? If all the motives that touch
your conscience, your fear, your reason, and your affections,
will not bring you to God, what motive can I present to you
that will? Or do you count yourself unworthy of eternal life?
Have you made up your mind that in no way shall God find
you out ? If all the motives that have been thrown round about
you have failed to bring you to Christ, what is there that can
bring you to Him ?

Perhaps you have not long to live. The nail is forged and
the screw is made that shall hold down the lid of your coffin.
The loom is built, and the thread is spun, and the shroud is
woven that is to wrap some of your lifeless forms, and you
almost feel the coolness of the air of the grave. You ought,
without delay, to make your peace with God, and secure a
hope of immortaUty. You have no time to lose ! Death, that
is always busy, is no less so now than it has been at any period
in the past.

I know what your lives have been. I know what worm it is
that makes those leaves yellow at the surface. I know the rock
on which you are stumbling. I know the rod that is being
lifted higher and higher to break you in pieces.

Dear friend, I must be faithful to your soul. You and I will
meet before long at the judgment-seat of God. You shall not
be left in doubt as to whether I think sin is damnable. I stand
here to speak the word of God to you. I stand here to declare
to every one of you that, whatever hope there may have been
for men who lived before the Gospel was known upon earth,
and whatever hope there may be for the heathen to whom the
Gospel has not been carried, there is in the Gospel of Christ no
hope and reversion for you to whom Christ has been preached,
and to whom all the avenues of salvation have been opened, if,
having counted the blood of the atonement an unholy thing,
and having trampled it under your feet, you die unbelieving !

I surround you with the generosity of God. I take the radiant
robe of Christ's love, more glorious than the sun, and throw it
about you. I surround you with Divine gentleness, and meek-
ness, and mercy. Why should you be naked ? Why should
you be defiled ? Why should you impotently strive to cover
yourself with your own poor devices, when Divine love would
clothe you with light and glory ? Will ye be eternally beg-
gared in the presence of an infinite supply ? Will ye wander
eternally, homeless and lost, when your Father's house stands
open, and all heaven cries to you, *' Come ! "

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. Jl

PRAYER.

We draw near to Thee, eternal Father. There is none to
whom we can go but unto Thee for such wants as we have.
There is none that is wise enough for us if we seek each other's
counsel. All men alike are ignorant. We understand but
little of the world in which we live, and less of our own selves.
We cannot interpret the great courses of Thy providence with
which Thou art administering human affairs. All before us is
best but twilight, and mostly darkness ; but Thou seest the end
from the beginning, and are unerringly wise. We rejoice that
Thou dost think for us, that all our paths are laid by Thee, and
that all Thy influences are with us and around us. Blessed are
They that put their trust in the wisdom of God ! We rejoice that
we may draw near to Thee, for of sympathy with men there is
but little. We are drawn to our own way and work. We under-
stand but little, and only that part of life which is cast up before
us. Hidden thoughts; wrestlings of the inward man; hopes
and fears ; the bitterness of grief and disappointment — these
we cannot perceive, nor bear for one another. And we rejoice
that Thou, O God, art a High Priest that can be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities. We may draw near to the throne
of grace to obtain mercy and help in time of need, for our in-
most thoughts are open before Thee, and in Thy gentleness,
and loving kindness, and grace Thou art concerned with each
one of us. There are none so remote, there are none so igno-
rant, there are none so humble or insignificant, as to be beyond
Thy care and thought. Thou dost delight to descend to the
humble and the contrite, and to dwell with such as are of a
broken spirit. AVe rejoice that in our conflicts we are not left
to our own power and will. Thou dost work mightily in us and
upon us. We cannot understand all the truth that there is in
Thy moral administration. We know that we have liberty ; we
know that we are responsible for the misuse of the power of
choosing ; and yet we know and feel that Thou Thyself dost
love us through all laws and in the midst of all human liberties,
and that Thou dost, by the greatness and the fulness of Thine
own power, help our infirmities and feebleness of thought and
volition, and overrule even things that we purpose and desire.
We come to Thee because Thou art the source of supply for
our understandings ; for our religious life ; for our affections ;
for our weakness ; for our strength ; for our joy ; for our
sorrow ; for our troubles ; for our f:ets and vexations ; for all
our moods and dispositions. Thou art a God that hast help,

72 THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.

patience, and forgiveness. Thou hast succour and reHef.
Where can we find such a schoolmaster or such a parent as
Thou art? We rejoice in the manifestations of Thy goodness
that have made us what we are. We rejoice that Thy ven-
geance has been so slow, and that Thou hast been long-
suffering, and so unwilling that any should perish. It has
been our salvation. There are some among us that have sinned
so much, and so clearly and unmistakably, against our own
education and convictions, and have covered our sins with so
many other transgressions, and walked in so many ways that
wereforbiddenof Thee, and so disallowed our own judgment, that
if Thou hadst been strict with us we should have been cut off
and swept away. Thy patience has saved us. Many of us
have ignorantly lived in ways that led down toward destruction,
and Thou, O God, has turned away from them, hiding them, or
blocking them up, that we might go no further. And with tears,
and wonder, we perceive that it is Thy wisdom that has been
our salvation, and that we should have ruined ourselves hadst
Thou not interfered in our behalf. O God, on every side that
we look we see how hasty we are, how we thrust forth our inex-
perience, how we trust our own strength and wisdom, that are
but weakness and folly, and how we carry with ourselves, day
by day, all the elements of self-destruction. And we recognise
Thy Divine power. We look back to behold many instances of
Thy signal interposition. But we have beheld only a small
portion of Thee. It is only now and then that one of Thy at-
tributes is so obvious to us that we can see it. Every day is
laden with God's forgiveness and forbearance. And how won-
derful is Thine administration ! Thou art jealous for holiness ;
Thou dost abhor iniquity; Thou dost yearn for our love ;
Thou dost desire our obedience; and yet Thou art most
patient and most gentle. We desire to be led by Thy good-
ness to repentance. We would fain have that wicked heart
taken away from us by which we have sinned. We ^vould
repent heartily of our transgressions, and turn away from
them, and cast them far from us, and turn our face toward
the New Jerusalem. We desire, O Lord, that we may have
Thy Spirit to help us, to guide us, to encourage us, to lift
us up, and, when we fail, to strengthen us, till we appear in
Zion and before God.

Accept our thanks that there are, from time to time, so many
that are called of God, and that hear Thy call and come to
Thee. Accept our thanks that there are so many that have
begun the Christian life, and that day by day are overcoming

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. 73

evil habits and are establishing habits that are good. We thank
Thee that Thou art inspiring faith and hope so strongly in many
and many a bosom, that Thou art making them very powerful,
and that more and more are being educated for the kingdom
of Thy glory.

Even so, O Lord Jesus, cease not Thy work of love and
compassion in our midst. Teach Thy people how to pray and
how to live, so that their life shall be a Gospel preached per-
petually. And we pray that out of our families, out of our
Sabbath-schools, out of our Bible-classes, out of all the circles
wherein we live and labour, there may be continually gathered
those that are being prepared for immortality. We thank Thee
that this people have been called to labour for Thee not un-
successfully. Prepare them for greater labours. And grant
that we may sow abundantly, in order that we may reap
abundantly.

Prepare us for the services of the evening — for the speaking
of Thy truth, and for the hearing of it. Grant that as we meet
from Sabbath to Sabbath, we may mark how we are coming
nearer and nearer to that blessed Sabbath which shall never
end, when the sanctified shall be gathered together, when we
shall find our loved and lost ones, when they shall be given to
us with immortality of love, and when, above all, we shall meet
Thee, O Lord God of our salvation ! and w^e will give the praise
to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

VI.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
IX TWO SERMONS.

I. — CHRIST WITHOUT.

" In Him was life ; and the life was the light of men. And the light
shineth in darkness; ard the darkness comprehended it not." —
John i. 4, 5.

We have all read of princes walking among their subjects in
disguise ; and there is a certain suggestion of contrast between
the seeming and the real, under such circumstances, that
touches the imagination of all people. The ignorant and un-
cultured are just as much delighted and excited by such a
scene as the most wise and cultured.

A disguise does not necessarily depend upon external
raiment, or any material or physical change. A man may be
incognito simply from his superior quality, if he differs wholly
in his moral character from those among whom he walks. For,
although they that are superior can understand the inferior, the
inferior cannot understand the superior, except so far as they
have in themselves some seeds and beginnings of that which
the superior nature possesses. A fine artist, among rude lumber-
men, may work with them, eat with them, sleep with them, and
not seem to any of them to be anything else than just one of
them ; whereas he is utterly disguised to them, and has a life
within which they suspect not ; he is as effectually disguised as
a prince would be who should exchange his robes for beggar's
garments. Many a woman of fine organisation and delicate
nature has been reared to the coarsest offices of labour, and has
carried a hidden life which no one besides her understood, and
which she herself scarcely understood; and, though she was
superior, her superiority was hidden, and she walked unknown
to those who knew her best. Moral disguise is the most im-
penetrable of all disguises.

Christ was a king in disguise ; and no being ever walked less
known than He. And now, although some eighteen hundred

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT. 75

years have been turned in scrutiny upon Him, He is still but
little known.

It is a matter of profound interest and of profit to look at
Christ from the stand-point of the intelligent Jew, and from his
own stand-point, and to ask the question, why was He not
known among His own kindred, in His own age, and among
His owh countiymen? There are lessons to be derived from
such a question. It is also a matter of profound interest and
of profit to inquire what, judged from his own stand-point, was
the history of Christ's life. Was it a success, or was it a failure?

I propose to do two things, in two discourses : to look at
Christ's life from the external point of view, and to look at it
from the internal point of view.

Who, then, was Christ, the anointed? A being that came
down from heaven into this world to shed the light of moral
truths upon it ! The globe and human society contain in them-
selves the causes of development in everything except higher
moral truths and the facts of our future life. This highest point
requires some added help above that which is stored in the pro-
visions of nature. And to this Christ's mission was confined —
namely, bringing that higher moral light which could not be de-
veloped except by some Divine inspiration. We shall find,
therefore, that Christ did not touch one in ten thousand of the
questions that belong to ordinary life, and that are proper in it,
but that He left them to be solved as all other questions are,
by the process of consecutive evolution. He confined His
teaching to the one department of higher moral conditions and
higher moral relations. He came not to disturb, nor to super-
impose anything upon the true course of nature, or of things
physical, secular, civil, and social. He brought to light God's
nature, man's immortality, and the highest elements of moral
character.

The facts of his career are very few. He was born of humble
parentage. He became from childhood an exile, returning after
some years, inconspicuously and unknown, to His native land.
Until He was thirty years old He lived in such obscurity that,
with the exception of one single fact, we are without a hint of
knowledge concerning Him. At the age of twelve He held a
memorable dispute with the Jews in the temple, causing them
to marvel at His superiority. That momentary glimpse we are
permitted to catch between the cradle and the cross ; but, aside
from that, it may be said that literally, from his childhood until
he was thirty years of age, he lived in perfect obscurity.
, When He reached the age appointed for the priesthood — the

76 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT.

age of thirty— He entered upon a career of public teaching.
He did not put Himself under the care of official teachers.
There is no evidence that He was appoinied to teach by any
regular authority. By the right of the individual He began to
be a public teacher ; not officially or ecclesiastically, but morally
and substantially, He was a teacher among the Jews during the
three years that He pursued that work which we have in part
recorded in the New Testament. Then He was cut off as a
malefactor, suffering the indignity of the most ignominious
execution. But the things which He taught in this brief period,
caught up and only in part reported as they were, have since
that time been the radical, revolutionary forces of the world.
A man came into the world obscurely and ignobly; he was
unknown for thirty years ; then for three years he taught ; and
his teachings, not reduced by himself to writing, and only in
part by his disciples, have from that time to this been the marrow
of thought, and the source and fountain of moral influence on
the globe, and have revolutionised it.

Contrast this fact, for one single moment, with the influence
of other men upon the world — for there have been other teach-
ers whose influence has not died, and never will die. Socrates
was a man of great mental endowment, of great common sense,
and of great moral courage. He wrote nothing ; but his dis-
ciples recorded his teachings, and they became a moral force in
the world. Plato, his disciple, was second to no human teacher;
he wrote copiously and elaborately ; he never will be surpassed
in the art of thinking and writing ; his works have never died.
Though they were once buried in mediaeval superstitions, they
have risen and come forth again ; and never were they so do-
minant as to-day. The force of that Greek mind that lived
thousands of years ago not only is not spent, but does not seem
to be weakened. After him came Aristotle, who was as great
as Plato, only his mind was turned toward material and scien-
tific truths, while Plato's mind was turned toward social and
metaphysical truths.

All of these masters were morally and intellectually great ;
but, undeniable as their influence has been and is, no man will
pretend for one single moment that their power would at any
time, or will now, at all compare with the power of that Jew
who only lived three years as a teacher, who wrote not a word,
and who spoke his wisdom, not to scholars that would make
accurate registry of it, but to ignorant fishermen that remem-
bered only a part of it, so that it was declared by one of them
that the part that was left unrecorded was so great that, if it

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT. 77

should be written, the world would not hold the books that
would be required. If you take the combined moral influence
of Aristotle, of Plato, and of Socrates, and put it beside the
moral influence of Christ, it will be found that the light of the
Jew is greater than all the illumination of the Greeks.

As to the Romans, they were repeaters and organisers, and
not original teachers, and it is not worth while to compare Christ
with them.

What was the source of this marvellous power of Christ ?

It was not the result of any mere intellectual attainments.
It was not His genius of thought that made Him what He was.
The literary works which hold their way from generation to gen-
eration are almost invariably finely and artistically finished. It
is not enough for a man to think wisely and well. It is neces-
sary that his thoughts should take such shape in literature that
men shall be fascinated with their form as well as their substance.
And the doctrines of the Greeks were clothed in such a manner
as to be attractive. But in Christ's teachings there was Httle
that appealed merely to the imagination or the taste. And,
although we are conscious that the teachings of Christ are ex-
quisite in one way of looking at them, yet they are without
those qualities which usually give continuity of influence to any
literary fruit of the human mind. The power of Christ's
teachings has arisen from the mere superiority of their moral
characteristics.

The secret of the power of Christ did not lie in any subtle
poetic or philosophic views. His teachings were fragmentary.
They may be said, as literary results, to have been mere crumbs.
Yet there was in them an inherent power which gave them im-
mortality upon the earth. In the progress of years, all that
was resplendent in literature, all that was stately in organised
religion, and all that was august in political power, paled and
went down before this rude, homely Gospel.

Here, then, is a being that comes down from heaven, and for
three years, after having attained the age of thirty, walks among
His countrymen, teaching them not in science, literature, or
politics, but with regard to moral relations and moral truth.

Now look at the other elements in the picture. Among the
ruling Jews there were two sects — the Sadducees and the Phari-
sees. Who were the Sadducees? They were men who were
sceptics in religion. They were men who disbelieved, therefore,
in penal moral government and moral restraint. They were
men who were lenient toward human feelings ; who sought to
make life agreeable ; who amiably took the side of their fellow

78 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT.

men, and, assailing the ruling religious faith and observances,
broke down also the superstitions of their day. They laboured
with those about them, not for the sake of lifting them higher,
but of making them happier.

There are many Sadducees in our day. All that seek to
content men with merely a secular life ; all that seek to make
the conscience quiet ; all that attempt to break the power of
Divine government upon the conscience, are Sadducees.

And who were the Pharisees ? They were those who sought
to lift men above their ordinary condition, and bring them
under moral restraints, and impose upon them spiritual duties.
They were ignorant of the right methods of doing those things,
as we shall see ; but they were the men of their day who
sought to maintain that which was right, to enlighten that
which was dark, and to reform that which was abusive. They
were men that sought to introduce religion, such as it was, and
morality in the temple, in the state, and in the household.
They were not all to be despised. The severe denunciations
of Christ reveal the corruptions of those who were the leaders
of the party at Jerusalem. But it is often true that the leaders
are corrupt while the body of the party is well-meaning. They
were men that we might perhaps pity and blame ; but among
the Pharisees of the time of Christ were some of the noblest
specimens of men who were at that time living in the world.
The Pharisee has been called the Puritan of the Jews. He
was. If you contrast the Pharisee with the Greek and the
Roman, he seems transcendently nobler than they in moral
aspirations and endeavours. If you contrast the Pharisees
with the heathen, they shine like stars in the firmament. It is
only when you contrast them with life immeasurably higher
than theirs, and with moral character transcendently purer
than theirs, that they suffer. The reason that the Pharisee has
come to be regarded with such contempt is that we have
been accustomed to judge him in contrast, not with his times,
not with his fellows, but with the Master whom he misunder-
stood and crucified, and with the moral law as that Master
interpreted it. Relatively to other men, the Pharisees were
superior. Relatively to Christ, they were low, and even
despicable. Their chief sins were selfishness, bigotry, and
narrowness in religious duties and views. It was not charged
against them that they were not religious or ethical. They were
denounced for rigour in the externals of religion, and for the
absence of its merciful elements. Their fault was on the side
of excessive zeal. It was a zeal that scorned compassion and

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT. 79

kindness. It was a zeal that sprang from a selfish and bigoted
adhesion to religious views. They had no true pity and
humanity in their religion. And there are thousands of reli-
gionists yet that have no humanity in them. They have wor-
shipping qualities, they have sentimentality, but they are
divested of the humane ethical emotions. A religion that does
not take hold of the life that now is, is like a cloud that does
not rain. A cloud may roll in grandeur, and be an object of
admiration ; but if it does not rain, it is of little account so far
as utility is concerned. And a religion that consists in the
observance of magnificent ceremonies, but that does not touch
the duties of daily life, is a religion of show and sham.

The religion of the Pharisees was a religion of ecclesiastics.
They confounded religion itself with the instruments or institu-
tions by which the religious spirit or feeling acts. They learned
to regard religious forms and religious ordinances as sacred, for-
getting that these are the mere vehicle of feeling, and that, there-
fore, they cannot be sacred, since nothing that is material can
be sacred. Sacredness belongs to moral qualities, and not to
physical; to spirit, and not to matter. There is no such thing
as a sacred foundation-stone, or a sacred wall, or a sicred place,
except in poetic or popular language. That which is sacred
must inhere in the living thing. It is mind-quality, soul-quality,
that is sacred. They have drifted far from the spirit of religion
who believe that the instruments of religion are sacred, instead
of religion itself. They who look upon days, and ecclesiatical
ceremonies, and garments, and ordinances as holy, in the modern
sense of that word, and worship them, are idolaters. They have
set up, right in the threshold of God's church, the worship of
forms and ceremonies, instead of the service of true religion.

If it was the nature of the Pharisee to be selfish, to leave
humanity out of his religion, and to worship the instruments of
religion, and not the thing itself, you may be sure that Phari-
saism is not dead. You do not need to go to the New Testa-
ment to see where Pharisees are. They sit in our churches ;
they are in all sects. Pharisaism is a quality of human nature.
It is the way by which the mind of a man with inferior illumi-
nation develops itself. It is one of those methods in which the
imperfections of human nature manifest themselves when it is
acting in the direction of religion.

If this is a fair description of the Pharisees, they were stern,
earnest men, seeking to reform and exalt human society, in the
main, by a rigorous use of secular and ecclesiastical forces.
They were not without many good qualities; they were not

8o THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT.

without much that was praiseworthy; but they failed in the
essential points of spirituality and love. And as these were the
foundation qualities of God's nature and government, they
failed at the very pivotal point. It was in the presence of these
rulers that Christ enacted the scenes that are recorded as having
passed during the three official years of His life.

The question which I propose briefly to answer is, How
must such a being as Christ have appeared to these men, such
as they were ? First, taking his origin, how must Christ have
appeared to the Pharisees ?

The Jews were probably the most democratic people that
ever lived. We ourselves owe many of our democratic forms
to the law^giver of the desert. Moses was the democrat of the
Jewish nation. And though the Jews afterward had a monarch,
and ran through various forms of absolute rule, yet there was
among them a strong element of democracy. They brought
up their children to work ; and work is one of the most trans-
forming of influences. They that respect work may not be
religious, but they are apt to be virtuous ; and they that despise
it may not be, in a technical sense, irreligious, but they are
tending in that direction. The Jews believed in the funda-
mental idea of work. They believed in the common people.
They believed that every man had a right to disclose and
to use any gift that he might possess. They did not hesitate
to follow a woman with a timbrel, and permit her to rule
them in their rejoicings. A woman judged the nation ! And
the fact that a prophet sprang up from among herdsmen did
not deter them from acknowledging him. They were ready
to accept a gift that was a real gift, though it showed itself among
the common people. Nevertheless, they had a feeling that the
presumptions were that God would manifest Himself through
the upper rather than through the lower classes. There was a
double element among the Jews. There was a feeling, not that
God would necessarily manifest Himself through the aristocratic
portion of the community or through political organizations, or
by a throne, but as there is such a thing as a higher class in
morality, as an aristocracy of virtue, or supposed virtue (and
there is no aristocracy that is more imperious, more domi-
neering, more tyrannical, than ecclesiastical aristocracy), so the
Jew supposed that the Messiah would spring from this class.

Now, among the good Jews, although they were democratic
in their feelings, and had regard for the common people, the
first question, when Christ came among them with His new^
doctrines, \Yas, "Is He going to do anything for us?" They

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT. 8 1

felt as you feel, when a moral principle that is inconvenient
thrusts itself for the first time between you and your customs.
They said to themselves, " If God meant to do anything for the
world in this age, do you suppose that He would pass by the
Church, and do it through some other channel?" The Jews
felt about Christ as many now do about any reformation when
it springs up in our midst — that if it is not in the Church it is
not good, no matter what it is.

Therefore, the mere fact that Christ was born in obscurity,
though it was not a final bar to his being accepted of the Jews,
was an occasion of prejudice against him. Yet, having been lea-
vened with true democratic ideas, they perhaps suspended their
judgment concerning him, and watched him to see what he would
do. And Christ, in his ministering years, passed through a pro-
bation. His miracles filled the whole land with wonder. His
popular discourses drew the common people, they knew not why,
to him, and swept them in his train. As a ship in passing sweeps
the moveable objects that are near it, and sets them following
in its wake, so Christ, wherever he went, drew men to him.

Now this was something for the ruling class to look at. They
said, " There is a man of great power, and we must see whether
we can bring him to our side and use him." The question in their
mind was not this : " Is he truer than we are ? Is he better than
we are? Will his truth make mankind better, and the world
happier ?" Their thought was this — and it is not very different
from the thoughts of men now-a-days : " If this man is with us,
we are for him ; if not, we are against him." The syllogism was,
" God has made us the instruments of enlightening this people ;
therefore it is essential that we should be kept in authority and
power. And if this man goes with us, he goes with religion, and
we accept him. If he goes against us, he goes against religion,
and we reject him."

The president of a theological seminary says, *' This seminary
was endowed for the purpose of teaching the true doctrine. If
this seminary is taken out of the way, the true doctrine falls.
Therefore, whatever opposes this seminary opposes the true
doctrine." The president of a tract society says, " This society
is to diftuse a pure gospel ; and anything that breaks up this
society is an obstacle in the way of the diffusion of a pure
gospel." If men do not say these things in so many words,
this is the syllogism which they employ practically. The same
is true in respect to churches. I\Ien say, '•' The Church is the
grand pillar of religion : and if you destroy the Church, religion
will be destroyed, for then it will have no means of propagating

G

82 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT.

itself." They therefore contend for what? Religion? No;
for the Church, the instrument of religion. There is the same
difference between the Church and religion that there is between
the hand and the soul. The hand is important, and I do not
propose to cut it off; but if it is a choice between the hand and
the soul, I know which I should choose. Now, churches, and
seminaries, and Christian institutions of all kinds, are feet with
which religion walks. They are hands with which it helps it-
self. They are instruments which God employs in carrying it
forward. But when a comparison is made between institutions
or ordinances, and the things which they serve, there is no
question w^hich is superior.

But the Pharisees said of Christ, " If he goes with our insti-
tutions, if he goes with Jewry, he is right ; if he does not, he
is wrong." And because He did not go with them, they turned
against Him.

There is some evidences that there was a disposition to
secure Him, even by appointing Him king; and on one occa-
sion the enthusiasm ran so high that the people were about to
rise and make Him king, and He had Himself to interfere to
prevent such a foolish enterprise. No doubt this would have
taken place with the tacit consent of the Pharisees, who che-
rished the hope that they might be a power behind the throne,
and that they might manage Him. When that hope was effect-
ually destroyed, all favour on their part towards Christ was also
destroyed. And it is not strange that they turned against Him.
They were totally ignorant of His real nature and mission.
They did not and could not see what He saw, or know what
He knew. And that, you will observe, was the point which
was made between Him and them over, and over, and over again.
The light came upon them in vain. They did not understand
it. God was presented to them as a spirit, and they did not
accept Him. He came to them incarnated in Christ, and they
rejected the Son and the Father at the same time. Often and
often He attempted to show them why they should accept Hiniy
urging as reasons that His spiritual elevation, His purity, and
His moral nobleness made Him divine; that divinity consisted
in spiritual influence, and not chiefly in physical power ; and
that He had in His character all the signs and tokens of being
divine. He charged them with blindness — and rightly, too —
because they could not see these things.

But they did see and feel what to them was more to the point
— that Christ's influence was against them ; that He stood in
their path ; that if He increased, they would decrease ; and thatz

THE LIFE OF CHRIST WITHOUT. 83

if the people were to be taught by Him, they could no longer
teach them. In other words, they were partisans. Here was
an individual that refused to join their party, and did things
which had a tendency to disintegrate and destroy that party,
and they turned against Him.

How do men act under such circumstances now? Is it
strange to see a party turn against a man because he does not
go with them, without any consideration of his character, or of
what the result of his teachings will be ? The Pharisees were a
party in religion ; and when they found that Christ would not
sustain them, they eschewed him.

Let us see, then, how, in some points, Christ's independent
spiritual career traversed party considerations, and how He went
to His crucifixion.

In the first place, if you look at Christ's manners and social
traits, you will observe that, while He was never less than the
greatest, the serene and transcendent light which His words and
deeds shed was never so pure and white as when He was in
conversation with the most eminent and cultured men of His
time. When, however, He was left to Himself, it was not their
society that He sought. He liked to go among the common
people. And notice the effects which resulted. First, it is
declared that it was a cause of offence. The charge against
Him was that He ate with publicans and sinners, and that He
sat down with them. There is a great difference, you know,
between preaching to people and govagzuith people. He might
ha»ye preached to publicans at appointed times and places, and
He would^have had small audiences; but He went where the
publicans and sinners were ; He sat down with them, ate with
them, and they found Him an agreeable companion. He was
pure enough and noble enough to bear the test to which He
was subjected in so doing. When he was charged with it as an
oftence contrary to the Jewish customs. He declared, " I go as
a physician goes among the sick. They need me, and I go to
them because they need Me, not because I need them. But
this was very offensive to the purest of the Pharisees.

More than that, He taught the common people, not in rab-
binical phrase, but in the vernacular. You will take notice
that a minister that joins himself to a sect, and avows that it is
his purpose to exalt that sect, is permitted by them to speak in
any way he pleases, so that all the benefit inures to his party.
But let a man refuse to belong to any sect, let him claim brother-
hood with all sects so far as they are Christ's, let him preach
the great truths of religion so that the common people shall

G— 2

84 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT.

hear him gladly, and what is the impression produced but this ;
that the man is an innovator ; that he is leaving the old paths ;
that he is seeking novelties ; that he sets his sail to the popular
breeze?

Now Christ would not use rabbinical language in His teaching.
He did not speak as the Jews did. When He taught the com-
mon people, all said, *' This man speaks with authority." What
does that mean ? Weight. He spoke right home to their con-
sciences, and that is always speaking with weight. He brought
the gospel into their houses, into their business, into their dis-
positions, into their very superstitions. He brought it into their
religion. That was a strange place to bring it, it is true ; but
He brought it there. It was His habit to preach the gospel,
not professionally, but personally, so as to make it a gospel to
the common people. And this was offensive to the Pharisees.
More than that, the practical superiority which He gave to
truth, or principle, over usages and institutions, was offensive to
them. It was an indirect assault upon them ; for the Pharisees
were men that believed in regularity and order, and subordina-
tion and discipline. The Pharisees were superlatively the
model conservatives of the world. They did not disdain
growth : but after all, their sympathies and feelings, first and
mainly, inclined them to the pohcy of taking care of what was
already obtained. They did not ignore advancement, but the
key-note of their life was conservation. Therefore, when they
saw a man of great power and extraordinary gifts disseminating
principles which did not belong to their theological system, and
raising moral tides which could not but work mischief to them,
they felt that He was making not only a personal, but an eccle-
siastical attack upon them ; and, as conservative religious men,
they thought they were bound to oppose Him.

For example, was there anything more sacred to them than
sacrifice ? The idea of sacrifice was to them what the idea of
atonement is to orthodox men now, who hold it to be the centre
of the Christian arch. Sacrifice was never despised by Christ,
but relatively he undervalued it. The idea of sacrifice among
the Jews had taken precedence of humanity, justice, and right.
Christ said, "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave
there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way ; first be recon-
ciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." What
does it mean but this, Do not think that sacrifice to God is the
highest rehgious duty. Sacrifice depends for its value on pre-
ceding moral qualities. A principle is higher than the ordi-

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT. 85

nance which you take to exhibit that principle. The life of
religion in the soul is first in importance ; the instruments by
which you develop that life are of secondary consideration.

Which is the most important, your boy or the arithmetic
which he studies ? If there should arise in your mind a super-
stitious worship of the slate, and pencil, and book, and a for-
getfulness of the boy, you would be in the same position that
the Pharisees were in of reverencing the instruments of religion
instead of religion itself, which these instruments were meant
to develop and elevate. Christ selects the element of true
religion — namely, love — and says to men, " If you bring your
sacrificial gift before God in the temple, in the sight of God, it
is condemned and despised unless it is brought with a loving
heart behind it."

The same is true of His teaching concerning the Sabbath-
day. It is remarkable that almost every mention of the Sab-
bath-day in which Christ expresses any opinion respecting it
was seemingly adverse to its sacredness. Some have supposed
that Christ was opposed to the Sabbath-day ; but He was not.
The Sabbath-day had become an oppressive day to the common
people. It had lost its peculiar fragrance and sweetness ; and
Christ, meeting it at its oppressive point, put the duty of love
in religion higher than any ordinance. He only undervalued
the Sabbath as contrasted with the object for which it was
ordained. It was the outside ordinance as contrasted with the
inside spirit that led Christ to denounce the Pharisaic observ-
ance of the Sabbath.

These are instances of Christ's customary teaching, that the
truth is higher than the ordinance or usage by which that truth
is expressed. The result was, that those who felt themselves
condemned, those who felt their methods of religious teaching
set aside, those who felt that there was a tendency to unsettle
the minds of the Jewish hearers, did not hesitate to declare
that He was an infidel. And thus we see how ecclesiastical
party-men, blinded by their selfishness, came to regard Christ,
first as an invader, then as an aggressor, and finally as a
criminal, upturning the foundations of religion.

The whole course of Christ was so influential, that the
Pharisees could not let Him alone. Such was the power of
His life and teaching, that they were in the condition of many
men of our day, who have said of reformers that were labour-
ing to correct the evils of society, '^ Why will not these men
let these things alone? Why are they always agitating the
people ? " Christ made Jerusalem too hot for the Pharisees.

S6 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — V\^ITHOUT.

The public mind had become filled with these new-fangled
notions of morality and religion which he promulgated, and the
Pharisees wondered why, if He was a minister of the true
rehgion, He would so stir up the people.

That is not all. Christ was the most impracticable man
that ever lived, and yet the most practical. He could not be
used by the Pharisees for their purposes. He could not live
simply for the present, as they did. They were living for
immediate results. He lived for results universal and remote.
They were a party. He was the Saviour of the world. They
were Jews. He belonged to the human kind. They sought
immediate success. He was establishing the foundations of
that kingdom in which dwelleth righteousness. They were for
the present and the transient. He was for the future and the
stable. How could they use such a man ? He was larger than
they were ; He saw something more than their plans contem-
plated ; He was for ever labouring for a more resplendent end
than they had conceived of; they could not use Him.

Christ was, lastly, a sublime radical. *' How dare you," one
will say to me, "apply such a term to Christ ? " Because my
glorious Master is one that has got used to wearing ignominious
terms, and any term of ignominy that is made such by contempt
of the higher classes against the lower I put upon the brow of
Christ. Another thorn it may be, but it is one that brings blood
for salvation. And I declare that Christ was the first and the
sublime radical " Now also," says the New Testament, speak-
ing of the coming of Christ, " the axe is laid unto the root of
the trees."* What is radical but a word derived from radix^
which means root ? He was a root man. He came right at
the worm at the root of the trees. A physician that, instead of
attempting to palliate a difficulty, deals sharply with the organic
lesion, is a radical. In morals the man that does not attempt
to smooth over the surface, but asks what is the fundamental
cause of wrong, and then attacks that cause, is a radical.
Christ, then, was declared to be a radical. The axe was laid at
the root of things. And from the days of Christ to this, the men
that have been the most known and felt, and the longest felt in
the world, have been men that, passing over compromises and
petty ways of settling difificulties, have struck the foundation

* It is immaterial whether this is interpreted to signify striking at the
root, or, as is the more accurate interpi-etation, lying at the root in readiness
for use. In either case it indicates the radical cliaracter of Christ's work.
He cut up fruitless growths, as we say. "root and branch.'' Compare also
Matt. xii. 33, a proverbial saying, ai)])arcnt]y a favourite with Christ.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT 87

causes of things, and insisted upon having health and right, and
refused partnership with men that were in favour of letting
matters take their own course. They have been, like their Master,
radicals, and therefore reformers ; cursed while they lived, and
worshipped when they were dead ; thorns in the side of parties,
and crucified by them ; but held up as the martyrs and heroes
of their age by the next generation, who none the less crucify
the men of their age that are just like them. So it is, and so I
suppose it will be as long as human nature is what it is.

Is it possible, then, when you consider the foregoing facts, to
suppose that the Pharisees and Christ should have been recon-
ciled to each other? They could not understand Him, though
He could understand them. They knew half as much as He
did, for He declared to His disciples that the wisdom of life was
to be cunning as serpents and harmless as doves. They had
learned the first half, but they had never learned the second.
And can one who is only cunning as a serpent understand Him
as gentle as a dove? Is it strange that men under the inspira-
tion of worldly ambitions ; men in sympathy with parties ;
men actuated by the feelings which are most influential in the
age in which they live ; men not taught in the sanctuary, or en-
lightened on the subject of their moral duty ; men that were
living for the time being, — is it strange that they should not
understand the pure spirit that refused to identify itself with
anything that was merely secular or transient ? Is it strange
that they who despised the poor should have despised Him who
was the friend of the poor, and who preached the Gospel to the
poor ? Is it strange that a man who consorted with publicans
and sinners should have been despised by men who would not
touch a sinner without afterward washing their hands, lest they
might be defiled ? It does not show that they were to an extra-
ordinary degree depraved. They were fair specimens of average
human nature. You can hew out such men from the timber
that we have to-day. They acted exactly as you and I act ; as
this nation has been acting ; as every nation acts. The men
that prove to be regenerators of mankind begin as Christ did,
despised and subjected to obloquy. All men that hold in their
hands the supposed authorities of religion turn against these
on-coming men of power, who, though they are uncomely, shape
the foundations of the New Jerusalem, which are to be laid, not
as the foundations of human institutions, of hay, wood, clay,
and stubble, but of precious stones — which are immortal princi-
ples of truth, never to pass away. But as long as there is a
God, and a providence in this world, you never shall lay the

S8 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT.

foundations of any party or sect in anything less than absolute
justice and right, and have them stand. Build your house on a
rock, and it will not be shaken to pieces ; build it on the sand,
and the first tide that flows and ebbs carries it down. They that
build on purity and rectitude are steadfast and safe, but they
that build on arrangements, on nice and cunning devices, on
compromises, are liable at any moment to be overthrown and
destroyed.

We have been living for years in a period in which men have
sacrificed principle for the sake of quieting the community, for
the sake of gaining peace, for the sake of settling in an easy
manner questions which God Almighty was determined should
not be settled till they were settled right. We have been living
for years in a period in which men have exhausted all their in-
genuity to suppress those Christian influences which have been
at work in the world. For a time the religion of the churches
was arrayed against the Christ of Providence. We have had
the law against Christ. Government and commerce have been
against Christ. And they have all joined in the cry, " Crucify
Him ! crucify Him ! " When justice was demanded, men cried
out, " Not justice, but peace; give us peace I " But did they
get it ? Did peace come either to the Church or the State ?
God threw wide open the doors of hell, and out came the flames
of w^ar ! They burned up peace like chaff. Why? Because
for so many years men absolutely refused to come up to the
grounds of moral truth and moral principle, and stand on them,
and say, " Here will we abide, and we will for ever seek that
which is just and good. I summon the great leaders of our
past and crumbling parties, one by one, laden with sin and bur-
dened with iniquity, to rise and come to judgment, that they may
bear witness that when truth and right are persecuted, there' is
no peace !

Now, having gone through five bloody years, we come again
to great questions which stand petitioning at our doors, and
God says, *' Settle them on principles of justice and rectitude,
and you shall have peace." But the whole nation are asking,
" Ought we not, after so long a time, so to arrange as to have
peace ? " And men are saying, '' Why insist upon such radical
ideas? Why not accept more temperate views?" Those views
which they call temperate, and which they are urging us to
adopt, are views that have lies in them. I stand here again to
say, Truth has no revolution in it. Right has no change in it.
Justice is always safe and sure. If you must crucify Christ
because He will not join your party, your faction, your church,

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHOUT. 89

your religion, then crucify Him ; but remember the eighteen
hundred years of darkness, and revolution, and turmoil that
followed His first crucifixion. The great battle of God Almighty
is not fought out yet, and you will have more of it in your day.
If you want peace, do right. If you will not do right, remember
that God is the incendiary of the universe, and that He will burn
your plans, and will by and bye burn you with unquenchable
fire.

I would point you this morning to Him who, when on earth,
was mocked and despised. See Him, going from the city
where the prophets had been persecuted. Behold with Him
that very mob hooting at Him and deriding Him, that but
the day before crowned Him and followed as He rode into
Jerusalem, shouting, " Hosanna I Hosanna ! " See Him on
the cross when His disciples, afraid, had deserted Him, and
there were only women to stand near Him. Behold how He
died, and the earth lost its light ! And see how He came to
life, and went up on high again, to carry out those truths in
which is the life of nations, and in which is the health of
man's soul.

By that Christ, crucified but victorious, I bring you the truths
of righteousness, and of justice to the poorest; and I say to
you, Will you do right ? If you crucify Christ in His poor
and despised ones, be assured there is blood yet; there is
revolution yet ; there is war again ! If ten years ago I had told
you that there would be war, you would have laughed ; but,
sobered by experience, you may not now scorn the idea, and
think it to be wild. In rectitude there is safety, and in un-
righteousness there is always the fire of hell.

Young men, take your ideal of what is right not from the
great of this world. Go not to presidents, or secretaries, or
generals, or merchants, or ministers, nor to any man, for your
ideal. Even the highest and best men are so sympathetic with
their age, and nation, and time, that they are not fit to be
models. Take your measure of character and duty from Him
that was despised. Imitate Him that was crowned with thorns.
Follow Him that bore the cross. Bear Christ's cross, and you
shall be an heir of Christ's throne.

VII.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST, WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
IN TWO SERMONS.

II. — CHRIST WITHIN.

*' Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the
jrround and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much
fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that hateth his life
in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." — JoiiM xii. 24, 25.

These words — "he that loveth his life shall lose it; and he
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life
eternal " — are, in substance the same, though in form varied,
frequently repeated. They are several times recorded in the
evangelical histories,* showing that they made a deep im-
pression upon the disciples' minds ; and showing, also, that the
Saviour, after the manner of his countrymen in the East,
reduced His teachings to proverbial forms. This epigrammatic
method favoured the retention of truth in the memory.

A seed carries with it the preparation for a new structure.
The greatest part of a seed is mere bulk, whose office is to
wrap up and protect the vital principle or germ. It also is food
for the earliest life of that germ. So the body carries a vital
principle which is hereafter to be developed : and the body is
a mere vehicle and protection of this vital principle. The seed
cannot give forth the new plant within it except by undergoing
a chemical decomposition and absorption. Our Saviour teaches
that this is the law of the evolution of spiritual life in man.
Our physical life must expend itself, not necessarily in the
immediate act of death, but by ministering to the spiritual
element in us.

Of this doctrine of the subordination of the outward to the
inward, of the material to the spiritual, Christ's own life was the
most illustrious exemplification. He threw away His life. And
yet no other life of which we have any knowledge was ever so
successful, so powerful, and so glorious.

* Matt. X. 39 ; xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24 ; xvii. 33.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN. 9T

I propose to illustrate both of these facts — that Christ utterly-
lost His life, and that in so doing He saved and augmented it.

In one point of view, then, Christ's life was an entire failure.
Remarkable it was in its failure, whether you measure it by the
objects which men ordinarily seek as the chief good of life, or
by the gratification of those faculties which carry in them among
men the principal motives of human life, or by the productive-
ness of those powers which He gave evidence of possessing. In
each of these three respects He lost the ends of life. He did not
get the things which men think to be most valuable ; neither
did He derive much gratification in those faculties which men
live to gratify; nor, though endowed with a wondrous versa-
tility of powers, did He employ those powers in such a pro-
ductive manner as to make it appear that he gained the object
of life. You cannot conceive of one endowed with such oppor-
tunities who, measured by the temporal and earthly standards,
so utterly squandered them, and was so completely bankrupt
of results.

This is the outside view. Let us look at it a little.

Regarding our Saviour in His general relations, it would seem
as though He could scarcely have entered life at a worse door
than at the portal of Jewish nationality. For in that age of the
world it was a misfortune to be born a Jew in the estimation
of everybody except a Jew. That is not wonderful; for every-
body thinks it unfortunate to be born anything but what he is.
Every nation thinks all other nations are to be pitied, if not
hated. And in that age every nation despised all other nations.
But the Jew had a special measure of contempt meted out to
him. However nations differed in their likes and dislikes, they
all agreed in a common hatred of the Jew. Nor can you
imagine what this would be in the history of the life of one
like Christ, unless you take some parallel experience.

Suppose, for instance, you had been born an African; what
would have been your opportunities of life, of social intercourse,
of entrance into the great professions, of gaining poHtical dis-
tinction, of amassing wealth, or of securing those enjoyments
which are within your reach now ? Measure your present
chances in life with what they would have been if you had
been born black instead of white.

Now, it was very much that, in Christ's time, to have been
born a Jew. And Christ was born a Jew. So far as worldly
opportunity was concerned, He might better have been born a
heathen or a barbarian. Although of noble lineage, yet, re-
garding Him in His relations to His own nation. He scarcely was

92 THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIX.

better off than He otherwise would have been ; for His parents
were not in influential position, and they could not give Him
the privileges of education. He had but few opportunities in
youth; and He was dependent for His training almost entirely
npon the natural evolution of His own faculties. You recollect
how He was reproached as being illiterate, or, rather, how
people marvelled that one who was illiterate should know so
much. '• How knoweth this man letters, havinsj never learned?"
said His adversaries and the spectators. He had inherited
neither name, place, nor influence. ^Many men are dependent
for their standing upon the fact that they began with the capital
of those who went before them. Christ had nothing of the kind.

He never strove, either, to repair these conditions of fortune.
He was born of parents both poor and low in life, inconspicuous
and uninfluential, and He does not seem ever to have felt the
sting of the deprivations which He suffered, as many a man
does who is conscious all his life long that the impulse and
spur to exertion is the narrow and pinched estate of His youth.

Let us exclude the pleasure and the vicious practices that
were disallowed by the morals of all nations, and contemplate
only those ends which are laudable, and by which society is
built up and civilisation advanced. It may be said that Christ's
life, in connection with these laudable ends, externally viewed,
was a failure.

He secured no wealth — not even enough to redeem Himself
from dependence. The food which He ate was ministered to
Him by the hands of those who loved Him. He had not where
to lay His head. Only love redeemed Him from pauperism.
This is the more remarkable in one who had power, either by
miracles, or by an easy use of His sagacity, to create wealth.
He did not deride it in others. No word of His, justly con-
strued, will be found to conflict with the Divine law of political
economy. He seemed like a scholar in an artificer's shop, all
about whom are tools, good and useful to the artificer, but of
no use to the scholar. He does not despise them, but He
never touches them. Wealth was a minor good to some, and
was to have its power and history in the world's elevation ; but
Christ walked in the midst of it almost unconscious of its pre-
sence, or of the want of it.

Though He had great power of exciting enthusiasm, atten-
tion, and momentary feeling, there is no evidence that Christ
ever gained or kept a steady influence over the common
people — not even over those among whom He came, and with
whom He consorted. By discourse, by personal bearing, and

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN. 93

by His miracles, He attained great power over the imagination
and the enthusiasm of the people with whom He associated.
But never did He seem to gain any particular influence over
their habits. He never controlled their radical ideas, nor
changed the secret springs of their life. In regard to the most
of men, it was effervescent enthusiasm, transient admiration,
that they felt in His presence. A striking illustration of this will
be found in the history of His own disciples. For three years
they were His intimate and private companions, and had the
benefit not only of His conversations, but of His instructions,
based upon their ignorance and mistakes ; and yet, at His death,
they had not entered in any appreciable degree into His ideas
or into His career. They seem to have been almost untouched
except by a vague, blind, attraction toward Him. They had
not become the partners of His intellectual or His moral life.
They saw, when He was coming toward suffering and death,
only confusion and dismay. And after He died, all hope for-
sook them. They thought the errand of His life had utterly
failed. Long after the very Pentecost, long after the inspiration
of the Holy Ghost had begun its work upon them, it was only
spring, not summer, of knowledge with them, for they still felt
that Jesus was the Jew's God ; and it was years before it ceased
to be a matter of amazement to them that Christ was the
Saviour of the whole World.

Now, if these men that were selected by Christ could dwell
with Him. and talk with Him every day for three years, with
so little effect of His ministry upon them, what must have been
the effect of His ministry upon those men that never saw Him
except occasionally, and never sustained any intimate relations
to Him ? If we measure the power of Christ's life by His im-
mediate influence upon the common people, it was a failure.

It scarcely needs to be said that He failed even more, if it
were possible, to secure any personal or professional influence
on the minds that ruled His age. There were political rulers
of great sagacity whom He seems never to have fallen in with,
except to stand before them to be judged and condemned.
There is no evidence that Christ ever turned His thoughts or
His instructions to political questions, except so far as they tra-
versed humanity and morality. If He found them in His way
as He travelled the great road to morality and humanity, He
trod them under foot or expounded them. Otherwise He
never seemed to touch the dynastic questions of the day.

Neither did He secure any influence over the literary and
philosophical minds of His own time— not in His own nation,

94 THE LIFE OF CHRIST— WITHIN.

and certainly not in any other. Though He was sent to be
the Saviour of the world, His influence did not extend beyond
His own country. With the exception of a journey to Egypt in
His infancy, He never was outside his own native land. He
never had a place among men of letters, nor was He a power in
any philosophical circle.

But even more remarkable is it that He did not produce any
immediate impression upon the religious opinions and feelings
of His age. And after His resurrection there could be discerned
no change which He had wrought in the religious ideas of the
Jews.

If you measure Christ's influence, therefore, upon the mass of
His countrymen, it was null and void. If you measure His in-
fluence upon the higher minds that controlled the governments,
the philosophies, and the literature of His day, there is no evi-
dence that when He died He had produced any impression
whatever upon them. He had not. " The light," it is declared,
" shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it
not." The light of Christ's presence shone into the darkness of
this world, but the darkness did not comprehend it, and it was
just as dark during His life on earth as it had been before.

Neither did He found a family. Men are born to love and
marriage by a decree broad as humanity ; and while each man
has his own Uberty, and exercises his own choice of selection,
yet underneath that voluntary power of choice is a necessity of
selecting which, in relation to the race, is as irresistible as fate
itself. Bat Christ, though He belonged to mankind, was not
carried in any such stream to any such destiny. Upon no one
did He ever bestow His heart's treasured affection. He never
knew the sweet relationship of husband and father in the house-
hold. Among the useful ambitions which men have, none is
more amiable than the wish to found a family, to pour it full of
noble influences, and to rear in it a troop of children that shall
carry forward the fomily name, adorned with all the priceless
qualities of virtue and services worthily performed, down with
honour and power to remote times. But no such ambition
entered the mind of Christ, or, if it did, there was no result that
answered to any such thought or purpose.

Having then passed through life, not concerned with wealth,
and therefore not connected with business ; without any im-
portant apparent relations to the common people among whom
He moved ; failing to make any impression upon the dominant
minds of His times in politics, literature, and religion ; and not
having, in any way whatever, entered into the relationships of

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN. 95

the family, what could His life produce that should remain?
Nohing, apparently. What an arrow is, that shoots quickly
through the air, and drops far off in the thicket, and is lost, that
Christ's life seemed to have been. The air which is parted by
the passage of the arrow instantly rushes together again, and
nothing is left to mark the course of the flying missile. And
Christ seemed to have been hurtled through His time, and to
have fallen in death, without leaving the slightest trace, after
a few weeks, of His having been alive.

His arrest, trial, and condemnation were more than ordina-
rily ignominous, and apparently more than ordinarily fruitless.
There are men the most glorious event of whose history is their
trial and condemnation. When, for instance, some noble nature
makes his last hours the occasion of defending a great principle
of right, and thus sows the seed for blessed results in the future,
his sunset into death is more illustrious than any common life
could be. But no principle was set forth in the death of Christ.
It was the occasion of advancing no great argument in favour
of the right. It brought to light no important truth. There
was nothing remarkable about His trial. It was an ordinary
criminal sacrifice of justice on the part of His judge. He was
crucified as a criminal, ignominiously. He died, and all seemed
utterly lost. There was no prophecy in His cross. Theie was
no background of light on which that cross lifted itself. Dark-
ness fell upon the earth, and the earth trembled. Not even His
mother, nor the women that were with her, nor the disciples,
saw anything but eclipse, disaster, and final confusion in His
death. He died, having left no trace behind. Neither in the
act of His dying was there any conspicuous power, or the
promise of power. Nor afterward, when His resurrection came,
was there much alleviation, except in the case of a few, for
Christ never appeared publicly again. He never appeared to
any, subsequent to that time, except His disciples, to whom He
appeared as to witnesses. And when He had done this, He
went up on high. And that closes the career of the Saviour.

Now, was there ever a life, when you come to look at it in its
details, that seemed to be thrown away more than Christ's ?
Considering what men live for, judging from the great ends of
human life that you see accomplishing around you, if you were
to ask, "Did Christ gain anything by living?" would not the
irresistible answer of every man be, " He threw His life away ! "
He lost it. It was worth nothing for common wealth. It
earned nothing of popular influence. It did not change a law.
It did not estabUsh a new principle. It did not make a dis-

gG THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN.

covery. It did not put up or put down one ruler. It did not
overturn one altar. It was irradiated by not one single victory
over outward circumstances ; and, unless there is some mys-
terious inward thing that took place, something beyond the
reach of the ordinary historic senses, then the life of Christ
was one prolonged suffering unto disaster and unto death.

Bat what are the facts on the other side ? It is declared that
he that will save his life shall lose it, and that he that will lose
his life shall save it, and save it unto eternal life. Did Christ
lose His life? Did He not save it by the losing?

Born a Jew, He belonged to the most accursed and detested
of nations ; and yet is it not a great fact that no man ever
thinks of Christ as a Jew? So totally is this all changed, that
it never occurs to any man, except it comes to us by historical
research, that He was of that scattered, despised people. All
nations on the globe are now followers of this Jew, whom they
never suspect of being a Jew. There is victory in the fact
that that which hung about him as a cloud of gloom in the
early parts of His life has been utterly dissipated.

He was born without opportunity in His social relations; He
had a parentage that made Him familiar with the lowest cha-
racteristics of life; He was without education or privilege; and
yet, do you not know, to-day, that in Christendom there is not
a household, not a potent body, not a church, not a community,
that is not proud to call itself C//m/-ian ? He had no family
to fall back upon; He received no important help from any
source ; and yet, after the lapse of a thousand years, there is
scarce a household that does not claim to be Christ's, and that
does not call its children His. The very kings of the earth
bring their glory and baptize it with His name ; and all the
world are inheriting something that He earned.

Having no opportunities for learning, He had to rely upon
the use of His unaided faculties. But where has there been,
for a thousand years, a school, a university, or a system of
ethical philosophy that has not been conscious that it derived
Its germ from this same Christ, who was never a scholar, was
never a man of literature, who wrote not a line, and left not a
volume ?

He seemed to be quite indifferent to ordinary sources of
wealth, and to its power. And yet do not you know that to-
day wealth is more and more known to have moral relations?
Has there not been growing an influence interpenetrating all
business and secular pursuits, so that men recognise an ethical
principle that reigns and governs in the great realms of mammon?

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIX. 97

From out of the life of Christ has there not issued an influence
that is to have control in wealth making ? All over the world
is there not more of the Christian spirit in the use of wealth ?
And though the world is not regenerated, and is not Christian,
•except in a limited degree, yet is not this work begun in it, and
is not the kingdom of wealth yet to own the name of Christ ?

He never gained much influence with the common people —
His own people. And yet now, is there any name named under
heaven which arouses so much enthusiasm among the common
people as Christ's ? If you take Christendom through, is it not
understood more and more that, if there is a name to live by,
if there is any influence which can defend the weaker classes
from the injustice of the stronger who are leagued against them,
it is the name and influence of the Lord Jesus Christ ?

He made little impression in his lifetime upon the rulers of
■His own people and those who were versed in learning and
philosophy. But is there now anything that is more influential
than Christ ? If I were to be asked, What is the characteristic
of the literature of our time ? I should say that it was a searching
after natural justice, and the expression of every form of
humanity ; and humaftiiy is only another word for love toward
the necessitous. Indeed, justice and love were the two especial
attributes of Christ's spiritual life, though they made Httle
impression on the time in which He lived. But He has now
filled the channels of thought and poetic sentiment with His
peculiar nature; and more and more, since Christ's day, do
you find, even in treatises of law, the principles of Christian
justice.

His life was thrown away ; but it was thrown away just as I
throw away my handful of grain when I cast it into the soil. I
iose it. It dies. But it dies that it may give growth to another
life. He took His life and buried it, and there was nothing of
it. It was disintegrated. But it was given to another life that
was coming forward slowly and gradually through long periods,
'but that at length was to fill the world. A handful of corn in
the earth shall grow, and shall wave like Lebanon, and like the
forest that covers the hills and mountains, in the end.

In the body Christ was planted and lost ; but as soon as He
had died He began to bring forth fruit. Like some plants, like
young trees. He bore fruit in a small measure at first ; but, like
•those same plants and trees, He has grown and grown until
now he bears fruit in abundance. And Christ, that lost every-
thing, has gained everything. He has filled the world with His
influence \ He has revolutionized its affairs ; old political laws

H

9S THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN.

have been taken away, and new political laws have come into-
the ascendant ; new religious ideas have taken the place of old
and effete religious systems ; old philosophies have been laid
aside as antiquarian relics, and new philosophies have sprung
up in their stead. And all these new laws, and ideas, and philo-
sophies have sucked at the bosom of Gospel truth. The world
is full, in every vein and channel, of the power of that Man
who went down in darkness, and was lost, apparently, in
eclipse and final disaster.

Did not He throw His life away? and did not He get it
again ? Was he not sacrificed ? and was He not saved ? Was
He not utterly given up to ruin ? but out of that ruin has there
not been the building of a new heaven and a new earth, in
which dwelleth righteousness ?

Looked at from an exterior point of view, Christ's life was
an utter failure ; but looked at from the interior, it was a most
illustrious victory.

You are to take notice, too, that the gain which comes to a
moral or spiritual life is one which involves in it time, and
therefore faith. And the fruit of Christ's life has shown itself
gradually. There was but little at first. Then there was more.
It has increased ever since. The life of Christ became con-
structive and organic. It w^as not an influence from without
imposed on the ordinary lav.'s of nature. It was part and parcel
of that economy of God which was established at the creation
of the world. He was as much a part of the organic law of the
human family and of history as any other element. And, taking
the natural course of its evolution, the life of Christ has been a
life of ages. There never was conceivable a life that, being
thrown away, so re-asserted itself, and so munificently re-
developed itself.

In view of this enunciation of facts, I ask you, first, to see
how the same thing is going on, in a small way, in our time.
Christ walked like a shadow in His day; and if you had asked
at that time, "Where are the secrets of power in the world ?"
any Jew would have pointed to the old temple, and said,
*' There are the secrets of the world's power." Jf, as he said
it, you had seen some Greek smiling, and you had asked him,
*' Where is the secret of power in the world? " he would have
said, " Have you been in Athens ? Have you seen her temples
and statues ? Have you seen the Parthenon ? Have you seen
her art and read lier literature ? Have you entered into the
depths of the learning of her Plato and Aristotle? The world's
history is wrapped up in Athenian art and literature." And if.

THE LIFE OF CHRIST— WITHIN. 99

while he yet spoke, a disdaining Roman had passed by, and
you had followed him and said, " Wherefore that smile ? " he
would have said, " The Jews and the Greeks are filled with
superstitions, and are blinded as to the true source of the
world's power. That power is centred in Rome, whose great-
ness is unequalled by that of any other nation on the globe."
And how would Jew, and Greek, and Roman have joined in
mirthful derision if you had pointed to that person, Jesus
Christ, who was to be crucified, and said: " In that man is the
secret of the whole world's power." But the Jews, the Greeks,
the Romans, with their philosophies, their governments, and
their power, have gone down, while this shadow has risen into
greater and greater power, until it fills the world.

This leads me to speak, next, of the greatest truth that Christ
enunciated — namely, the superiority of the moral over every-
thing else. All the world beheved in the power of force. The
patrons of force are the passions and desires of the human
heart. The Greek had learned to believe that the secret of
power was in the understanding. But the apostle Paul, re-
peating what the Master had taught, declared that it was the
spiritual kingdom of righteousness in Christ Jesus that was the
dominant power. Our Saviour, when He said : " Seek ye first
the kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things shall
be added unto you," propounded the most original and the
most revolutionary principle of human life that ever was made
known. The man that lives under the supreme influence of
moral elements is the man that is victorious over all the
elements that are represented by those faculties which are
lower than the moral. So that, if any one would be great in
wealth, literature, learning, or any dynastic quality, the secret
of strength is not in money, or knowledge, or understanding, or
political influence, but in the supremacy of the moral elements.

We are still repeating that at which we smile, in reading of
the ambitious mother who brother her two sons to Christ, and
said: "Grant that these my two sons may sit, one on Thy right
hand, and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom." We are
every one of us seeking greatness by outside measures ; and
Christ is perpetually saying to us : '* Can ye drink of the cup
that I shall drink of? and be baptised with the baptism that I
am baptised with ? Can you throw away your life ? Can you
mortify your pride ? Can you subdue your selfishness ? Can
you lay aside the old man ? Can you die that you may life? "
We are running eagerly, one after wealth, another after praise,
another after honour. One feels himself secure because the

H— 2

TOO THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN.

golden foundations of his wealth are so deep and broad; another
because his ideas are built into systems and sciences. And we
still are making our manhood to lie in these external elements,
in which Christ had no life, and in which He desired to have
none. We are seeking to be Christians by achieving worldly
eminence and power. We have not yet learned that it is not
by the outward and physical, but by the inward and spiritual,
that men become true men, and that manhood is to be
measured.

Now, may we not learn from the example of Christ and His
history, the inevitable weakness of any course or career that is
founded in externals merely? And may we not learn, also, that
there is immortality and victory in any course that is founded
on the Divinely spiritual? We are living in an age in which we
are in danger of having our senses overshadowed. We are being
impressed so much by physical things, that we are in danger of
forming our judgments of what is right, and safe, and perma-
nent from the fleshly side, and not from the spiritual. There
never was a time when it was more needful for us to recur to
the reason of Christ's power in the world than now ; never a
time when we were more in danger of throwing away true per-
manence for barren change ; never a time when we were more
in danger of missing the secret of inevitable success. That man
who has the truth with him ; who has a principle higher than
any that has gone before ; that man whose policy, whose
statesmanship, whose legislation, whose faith involves the highest
reach possible of the human understanding in the spiritual
direction — that man will endure, and is bound to immortality.
How many there are who are throwing the corn away, and
running after the husk and cob, because these are more bulky !
There are many who are not only doing this, but despising
those who count the exterior to be comparatively worthless,
and uho insist upon a higher standard. Just as soon as men
are willing to accept the truth in its higher relationships, just so
soon they begin to grow strong. If they despise it, and crucify
it, and cast it out utterly unto death, nevertheless it cannot be
destroyed. It will come up again, and again, and again ; for the
life of God is in every particle of truth and justice in this world.

Men may crucify their Christ again in this law or that policy;
may hustle Him out of Jerusalem to His Calvary, and may
shake their garments as the Sanhedrim did, and say, "We
have got rid of the disturber ; " may lift Him on the cross to
ignominy, and say, "He shall never again touch this law or
that policy ; " may bury Him in the rock, and put a stone there,

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN. lOE

and seal it with official seals, confident that no man can ever
bring Him out again ; and, after all, when three days have gone
by, Christ will break open the tomb, and men, on going to the
spot, shall find there angels of prophecy, bright and radiant.
Out of the tomb of many and many a buried Christ-truth have
come angels of benefaction and mercy.

Our times are full of struggling Christs — Christ in laws, in
humanities, in poHcies ; and you are passing them by, or cast-
ing them out, or treading them under foot. But immmortality
is with every one of them. You will perish, wealth will change,
laws will explode, policies will be scattered like chaff from the
summer's threshing-floor ; but that which is eternally right and
true, and just and good, cannot be pierced by sword or buried
by the ballot, since it has the decrees of God behind it. And
blessed be they that have the wit and wisdom to know that it
is best to do right, to do it at once, and so to abbreviate the
labours of society.

To that army of ignominious and profitless sufferers that
work out by the imagination fantastic troubles, to be repeated
over, and over, and over again, I have nothing to say. But to
those who suffer for a good reason ; to those who are bearing
their Gethsemane ; and to those who are carrying their cross,
and living as Christ lived — and there are thousands of them —
I wish to address a word. Are there not in this audience
hundreds that, when they turn their thoughts inward and back-
ward, think that if they could have consented to have done
such and such things they would have been better off? Some
persons are said to stand in their own light. Are there not
some of you that apparently have stood in your own ]i2;ht ?
Are there not men whom you have known from their youth up
who were not over scrupulous in business affairs, who went into
craft and deceits, who became millionaires, and rose to
eminence and power, and who now stand high, and are
prospered ? and do you not say, " If I could have got over
some prejudices that I had, so as not to have been afraid of
departing a hair's-breadth from the line of rectitude, I might
have been better off than I am now ; but I stood in my own
light, and I have been struggling against the current ever since,
beaten back at every step ? " You have maintained your
conscience, though, have you not ? " Oh, yes, what there was
of it." And you have maintained your love of truth ? " Yes ;
I have that yet." You have maintained also your aspiration
after higher manhood ? " Yes ; that I have still ; but, then, I
have no funds ; I have no homestead ,; I have nothing before

102 THE LIFE OF CHRIST— WITHIN.

me." Nothing before you I You have the kingdom of God
Almighty before you. You have all glory before you. If you
have saved truth, and conscience, and love, and manhood, and
faith, do not envy anyone. The wealth of the world will pass
away very soon, but what bankruptcy can come over the
exchequer of God ? And you are heirs of God. You did not
stand in your own light when you refused to yield to temptation.

Are there any young men here who think it is not profitable
to serve God? Which will you take, the prosperous Jew, or
the despised Christ ? See what each of them was in his own
time — the one clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptu-
ously every day, flattered, feasted ; the other poor, neglected,
cast out, persecuted. But which would you rather be to-day ?
In the long fight, which had the strongest arm ? Where is the
Jew to-day ? and where is Christ ? Look up for the Prince and
Saviour ! Look down for his enemies !

Take heart, then. Do not think that a man has thrown his
life away because he has not silver and gold. You will get,
perhaps, more of these than you expect ; but whether you get
a penny or not, you will get transcendently more in that life
which is near at the door. For you that life is nearer than you
think. Many of you will go before another year rolls round,
and will put to proof my words in the kingdom of your Father.

But others still suffer. Are there none here that suffer for
their children ? I stood in the public burning-place at Oxford,
where the old reformers were burned, and with inexpressible
feelings I went back in thought and history to their time ; but
I have seen cases of martyrs that were burned at the stake
which were much more piteous than these. I have seen many
a woman who, because she would not betray fealty, and because
she could not yield love, was day and night burned at the stake
of an intemperate husband, bound to him, suft'ering more than
he suffered, covering his shame, hiding his faults, repairing his
mistakes, studying his welfare, pouring out her life for his
worthless life. And if there are such martyrs here to-day, I say
to them, Do not be discouraged. You are following in the
steps of the great Victor, who by defeat was victorious.
Remember that Christ gained His victory by patient waitinj^
in suffering. Remember that by His servant He said, *' Xo
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous ;
nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

Is there not here many a heart that is sorrowing in family
matters ? Are there not many of you who are conscious that you

THE LIFE OF CHRIST — WITHIN. 103

are bound with bonds and cords from which you could only re-
lease yourself by rending what are called the decencies and pro-
prieties of life ? Are there not those here who are bearing
the yoke and suffering for a parent, a brother, a sister, an
orphan, some helpless or dependent one ? You who are yield-
ing your opportunities, and joys, and life for another, patiently,
are carrying the cross of Christ. Yes, and it is Christ in you
that is inspiring you to do that, and saying to you, '* Child, a
little while longer lose your life. Do not be afraid to be lavish of
it. Pour it out. Do not be economical. Lose it, lose it, and
you shall save it unto life eternal."

Who are they that I see triumphing in the heavenly host ? They
that lived in ceiled houses ? They that walked the earth with
crowns upon their heads ? They that knew no sorrow ? No ;
"These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the
Lamb ;" they that cried from under the altar, " How long, O Lord,
how long ? " — these are they that stand highest in the kingdom
of God. Heaven is just before you. And many of you that
^eem to have a long and weary path of suftering will soon be
done with your period of trial, and will rise to honour and glory-
in Christ Jesus.

Oh that I could pour in upon the young the majesty and the
sanctity of living for the invisible ; that is to say for honour, and
truth, and fidelity 1 Oh that I could make you feel how essen-
tially brittle, how friable, how perishable are all material sources
of strength ! God is the centre of life, and spiritual realities
are the only things that will endure. Stone and iron, and silver
and gold, and timber, and cities, and nations, and outward
things, are but pictures, painted soon to fade away ; while truth
and love, and fidelity and purity, shall last for ever and for ever.

May it please God, then, when we rise in the morning of the
resurrection, to let shine upon us the hope of our coming glory,
that, when we enter heaven, our faces may be as the stars on the
horizon, bright, and still rising into greater beauty, so that we
may evermore shine as the brightness of the firmament.

VIII.
CROWNED SUFFERING.

*'And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas untO'
them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to be crucified.
And the soldiers led Him away into the hall, called Praetorium ; and'
they call together the whole band. And they clothed Him with purple,
and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about His head, and began
to salute Him, Hail, King of the Jews ! And they smote Him on the
head with a reed, and did spit upon Plim, and bowing their knees, wor-
shipped Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took off the
purple from Him, and put His own clothes on Him, and led Him out
to crucify Him." — Mark xv. 15 — 20.

These events followed the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim.
He had gone through the suftering of Gethsemane. He had
been arrested through the treason of one of His own disciples.
He had been examined by His countrymen and tried. Then^
having suffered buffetings and abuse, He was taken to Pilate.
There He was questioned without answering. To please the
people at last, though he publicly declared that he found no
fault with Him, Pilate gave Jesus to the soldiers.

The Roman ferocity that looked upon suffering as a luxury,,
that made its joy in beholding gladiators and wild beasts in
hideous conflict, here showed itself in characteristic exhibition.
The whole band was called together, that not one of them might
lose the sport. Then the Saviour was arrayed in purple, a
wreath of briers, or small thorns, was " platted," and with this
He was crowned. Then they jeered Him, and put a reed or
cane in His hand for a sceptre : and they began, with laughter
ill suppressed, to bow, and to worship this ]\Ian. With a
double-edged derision they called him " King," for it was a
mockery of Him, surely, and to call such a one " King of the
Jews " was also an exquisite satire on the nation. It cut both
ways.

He had already been spit upon and severely smitten before
the Sanhedrim. He spake nothing. His silence was so re-
markable, that it attracted attention. Pilate even noticed it.
There was great dignity in it. There was a moral meaning in
it that meny^//, even if they could not understand it. It was

CROWNED SUFFERING. I05

not the silence of nothing, but of something too mighty for
words. All that a man hath ivill he give for his life ; but Christ
would not give even a word for His. He now stood among
the ribald soldiery. They renew the indignities of the Jews.
They empurple Him. They nod and beck, and laugh and
roar, as the most lithe and mountebank soldier assumes with
greatest success the airs of a courtier, and with mock reverence
and adroit humility acknowledges the kingship of the silent,
thorn-crowned sufferer.

Consider this scene in its external relations. He was a Jew
before Romans that despised Jews. He was a Jew rejected of
His own rulers and people, and therefore lower than a Jew.
Abandoned by His disciples. He was alone. All the laws of
His country had profited Him nothing. Those whom He had
saved v.-ere not there. Those whom He had healed, and fed,
and taught, were far away. He was doomed and deserted.
Before Him was the cross looming up. Solitary He stood, and
silent, in utter helplessness. Can anything be more hopeless ?
Was ever such a life so wasted ? And thus it appeared to the
Jewish priests, and thus to the soldiers, and thus to His own
disciples. They saw nothing but what their eyes could minister,
and that seemed the extremity of woe, the very depth of dis-
aster and degradation.

But pierce this external appearance, and what is it ? A body
weakened, disgraced, suffering, and just coming to more awful
agony. Was this all ? Within that unspeaking form was the
home of a great and suffering love. A nature which Time shall
never be able fully to interpret was now at its point of greatest
grandeur — the full of love. It was not that love which gives and
takes, but that love which is the highest ecstasy of mortal life —
that love which suffers for another. To say that suffering for
another's good is the highest element of Deity would be to
venture beyond knowledge; but we may say that it is the
highest element yet unfolded to us, and that all other concep-
tions of character are far behind this. A love without self-
assertion, without self-thought, with a spirit that takes upon
itself another's woe; a love that purposely, consciously, calmly,
and long, suffers rather than that another should sufter — this is
the very and peculiar revelation of God in Christ Jesus. To
be sure it had been true from the beginning; but it was needful
in some way to disclose it to this world. It was needful, there-
fore, that some one should suffer, that in the example men
might have concrete teaching of that love which, by mere
words, could never be made understandable. The secret, the

IC6 CROWNED SUFFERING.

fount, the hidden reason of that influence which the cross lias
exerted, and the pledge of its perpetual power, is in this love-
-suffering for others. There is no other power in heaven, and
there shall be no power on earth, that, for majesty and pro-
ductiveness of effects, shall equal or match, or shall be men-
tioned in common with this, when it shall be well understood.
Love-suffering for others is the highest justice, the highest
purity, the highest truth, the noblest government.

If, then, you look within, and see the soul of Christ standing
solitary, and suffering silently, and know that He meekly stood
bearing a love which, for others' sake, suffered, and suffered
patiently, you will find that your heart is kindled as before an
unveiled divinity ; and behold, you will see beneath these
mockings really a king ! for, though in derision they crowned
Him, He luas crowned ; and the thorns are typical of the
crown that love wears upon its heart !

He was, the greatest of all His contemporaries. King of
the world, of time, and of eternity, just because He was crowned
Sutferer. Other kings there were, but He was the greatest.
Other crowns flashed splendour from stones beyond price, but
no stone ever yet was to be valued with these spines of thorns
for glorious beauty. What is a stone, a diamond, an emerald,
an opal, but mere cold, physical beauty? But every thorn in
that crown is a symbol of Divine love. Every thorn stood in
a drop of blood, as every sorrow stood deep in the heart of the
Saviour. And the great anguish, the shame, the indignity, the
abandonment, the injustice, and that other unknown anguish
which a God may feel, but a man may not understand — all
these were accepted in gentleness, in quietness, without repel-
ling, without protest, without exclamation, without surprise,
without anger, without even regret. He was to teach the world
a new life. He was to teach the heart a new ideal of character.
He was to teach a new power in the administration of justice.
A Divine lesson was needed— that love is the essence of
Divinity; that love, suffering for another, is the highest form of
love ; that that love, when administered, carries with it every-
thing that there is of love, and purity, and justice; and not only
that love is the fulfilling of the law, but that God Himself
is love.

This was the hour, then, of Christ's grandeur. He was Kins:
then, and was indeed crowned. No throne was like the stej^s
on which He stood. No imperial person was so august as this
derided and martyred Jew. If He had, by a resort to violence,
relieved Himself, He would have been discrowned. To suftjr

CROWNED SUFFERING. 107

'in sweet willingness ; to have the suffering roll to unknown
depths, and not to murmur— this was to be a king far beyond
the ordinary conception of kingship.

Oh, could some prophet's prayer have touched the eyes of
•those that stood about him, that for a moment they might have
seen behind and within the flesh, how strange would have been
their gazing ! How would the spiritual beauty and power have
risen up before them ! Once, when they would have arrested
him, he said, '' I am he whom ye seek, " and they fell as if
struck to the ground ; and now, had there been a spiritual un-
lolding that should have disclosed his real character and, as it
were, declared " I am he, " methinks it would have thrown the
soldiers to the ground, or sent them flying everywhither.

Stand by him now, and look down through the times to come.
From this point of view interpret the passage, " Who for the
joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the
shame. " Ages are to roll by ; nations are to die, and na-
tions are to rise and take their places ; laws are to grow old,
and from new germs laws are to unfold ; old civilizations are to
crumble, and new eras are to dawn with higher culture ; but to
the end of time it will be seen that this figure stands high above
every other in the history of man ! " A name which is above
every name " was given lo him — not for the sake of fame, but
in a wholly different sense : a name of power ; a name of moral
influence ; a name that shall teach men how to live, and what
it is to be men in Christ Jesus. The crown of thorns is the
world's crown of redemption. The power of suftering love,
which has already wrought such changes in the world, is to
work on with nobler disclosures, and in wider spheres ; it is to
teach men how lo resist evil ; how to overcome sin ; how to
raise the wicked and degraded ; how to reform the race ; how,
in short, to create a new heaven and a new earth, in which is to
dwell righteousness.

It is this crowned sorrow in Christ which proved him to be
King of redemption. It is the very focus of the redemptive
element, that one was found with love enough to suffer reme-
dially for the world. We often contrast law and love; and in
our inferior being, perhaps, it is necessary to analyse and take
them apart, and contrast them, although in the divine mind and
administration they are doubtless inseparably mingled. As
presented to us in the human condition, law may be considered
rather as a preventive— seldom as a curative. Love is both.
It prevents, but, still more, it heals transgression. Law punishes
for the sake of society. Human penal laws are devices of

108 CROWNED SUFFERING.

human weakness, needful for our state, simply because other
and better ways are scarcely within our reach. But, while law
makes transgressors suffer, love suffers for transgressors. Both
carry justice ; both vindicate purity, truth, mercy; but law, in
the whole sphere of human administration, puts the burden, the
woe, the deep damnation on the transgressor. Love, yet juster,
higher, purer, takes the suffering and the woe upon itself, and
releases the transgressor. Which carries the sublimest justice,
law or love ? Which rules highest, reaches deepest, spreads
widest, and best meets the want of man's whole being — the
penal justice that says, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die, " or
the disclosed justice of love, which says, *' I have found a
ransom ; I bear the stripes; I carry the guilt and the penalty ;
I suffer, that the world may go free " ?

Laws are for merely human conditions. As such, they are
needful ; but they are never to be considered as being perfect ;
nor, indeed, as being the truest symbols of the perfect admini-
stration of Divine government. It is folly for us to expect to
understand all that is within us and round about us ; but of the
things that are round about us. we are to take heed which of
them are symbols of Divine character and Divine adminis-
tration. If there is anything in this world that is weak, it is a
human government or human law administered by human beings.
Law attempts to supply what it never can — a rule of perfect fair-
ness, perfect justice. Therefore, in a system of law, a thousand
things are necessary, simply because you are attempting to do,
by external framework, that which God does, with absolute
certainty, by knowledge, and equity, and righteousness of spirit.

To reason that God must administer justice with such equiva-
lents as men do, is to reason from weakness to strength, from
imperfection toward perfection. As men exist on earth, laws
are indispensable ; but they are devices to maintain society.
There is, however, a view of individual value that sinks all laws
and governments on earth into relative insignificance. I can
conceive that to the mind of God, looking upon a single soul,
and unrolling it as it shall be disclosed through the cycles of
eternity, there may come in the far perspective such a thought
of the magnitude of a single soul, as that in the view of God
that soul shall outweigh in importance the sum total of the
governments and populations of the globe at any particular
period of time. I can understand that God may sound a soul
to a depth greater than earth ever had a measure to penetrate,
and find reasons enough of sympathy to over-measure all the
temporal and earthly interests of mankind. And I can con-

CROWNED SUFFERING.

109

ceive that God should assume to himself the right to execute his
government of love by suffering for a single soul in such a way
as quite to set aside the ordinary courses of the secular and
human idea of justice.

This is to my mind the redemptive idea. I do not believe it
is a play between an abstract system of law and a right of mercy.
I think that nowhere in the world is there so much law as in
redemption, or so much justice as in love.

The redemption of Christ is a revelation to men, not that love
has triumphed over justice, or government, or law, but that there
was a higher way of justice. There was a conception of justice
in love that, when unfolded, would be a power for cleansing, and
restraining, and building up such as belonged to no other period
before. And, as I conceive of the redemptive idea, it was a
spectacle of love suffering for others in such a way as shall
redeem them from the power of sin. This is a higher justice
and a nobler assertion of purity than any mode of punishing can
be. Punishing may be the final alternative, but it is not the
divinest method. Penal laws are secondary adjuncts ; whereas,
towering up, central, and radiant as the New Jerusalem, is dis-
closed in Christ Jesus the one great Divine motive-power — that
heart-love which is pure, and just, and true, suffering for those
that are impure, and unjust, and untrue, cleansing them, and
justifying justice. Love is fatherhood, justice is kingship, and
Christ was the Kingly Father.

Christ did not come to teach the world the guilt of sin, and
its desert of penalty. These the whole world knew before He
came : it was the knowledge of these things that was pressing
noble spirits down. He did not come to secure punishment.
Men thought Him to be a judge, like the stern old prophets that
came to revolutionise society on account of wickedness ; but
He says, " I did not come to condemn ; I come to say." He
emphasises and repeats that thought. He did not come to
teach the fact of guilt, or to punish guilt. There was no need
of His coming for either of these. The whole framework of
the universe is appointed to secure penalty. There is no man
that can hide sin so that God's officers shall not overtake him.
There is no need of attempting to secure punishment, for the
natural course of things, first or last, would overwhelm every
sinner with condign punishment. Rescue, not penalty, was
that which needed a Divine revelation. Christ came to save,
to rescue, and by this vicarious suffering to redeem them from
the penalties of their wrong-doing. And when I see men busy
about the method of atonement, 1 marvel at them. It is as if a

no CROWNED SUFFERING.

man that was starving to death should insist upon going into a
laboratory to ascertain in what way dirt germinated wheat. It
is as if a man that was perishing from hunger should insist upon
having a chemical analysis of bread. How many books have
been written, and how many sermons have been preached, to
show ho7v God could be just, and yet justify a sinner ; how He
had a right to do it ; and what were the relations of forgiving
mercy to law I These questions are not immaterial, but the
spirit of atonement is far more important than its method. The
secret truth is this : crowned suffering ; love bearing the penalty
away from the transgressor, and securing his re-creation. Love
bearing love ; love teaching love ; love inspiring love ; love re-
creating love — this is the atonement. It is the opening up of
elements which bear in them cleansing power, inspiration, aspi-
ration, salvation, immortality. It is the interior working force
of atonement that we are most concerned in, though we are apt
the least to concern ourselves with it.

Our practice, and knowledge, and intuition of love, and its
constitutional elements and personal and administrative power,
are very low. But, after all, love is the blood of the universe.
It carries life, and repair, and healing everywhere, just as our
food carries life, and repair, and healing throughout the whole
body physical. And unless we understand the force of that
love in character, in conduct, in our administration over our-
selves, in the family, and in our affairs and estate, we fail to
appreciate the peculiar characteristics, the internal and distin-
guishing elements of Christ's atoning love.

I. Hitherto religion, considered comprehensively and syste-
matically, has not extended its force enough in the right direc-
tion. It has been a matter of educating the conscience. Good
men have been under the dominion chiefly of conscience since
the world began ; and although religion has in it, unquestion-
ably, an element of education for the conscience, yet that is not
the distinguishing element. Religion has been a code of rules
for conduct ; it has been a system of ethics or morality; it has been
introduced into external laws, and institutions, and functions ; and
it is to-day, to a limited extent, an instrumentality for external
recreation ; but this is only the lower and earlier development of
religion. Religion, as a Love, taking precedence of all the
other elements of the soul, asserting its authority, and compel-
ling everything else to bow to it, and to take law from it, has
hardly been known except in single individuals. It has been
but little Icnown as an idea, and still less as a practical matter.
We have had sporadic cases, but it has never been to any con-

CROWNED SUFFERING. Ill

siderable degree wrought into the public sentiment of any age.
The active force of the world has never been this great motive-
power of the Divine government. Religion has spent itself in
marking out right paths for conduct, or securing penalties, or
building churches and ecclesiastical institutions ; religion has
spent itself in worship, in minor charities, in refinements, in a
thousand beneficent ways ; but it has not thus fulfilled its whole
mission. The day, however, is coming when the Church, when
religion itself, is to take on the form of suffering love. Men
seek to shield their love from suffering ; or, if it must suffer,
they seek to reap the field for themselves. A love that suffers
for others, not once, and by a heroic struggle, but always, and
easily and naturally, is almost unknown. But there is to be a
new disclosure in this matter. Much light has dawned ; more
is yet to dawn. And it is to come, not by dry mathematical
problems ; it is to come, not by the text ; it is to come by
putting on this suffering love of Christ Jesus ! The full light is
to come by development. Out of a nobler conception of love is
to come nobler life — out of the experience of the full, tropical
summer of sacrificing, suffering Love ! And then the earth will
put forth fruits such as were never suspected or dreamed of.

2. The great struggles that are going on in human life, the
world over, are for the most part struggles after the manner of
this world. We do not see far down the path of time. Two
thousand years, almost, have rolled along, and we have not
learned, in our efforts to reconstruct the world and regenerate
it, to employ the peculiar elements of the Gospel, and we are
working yet after the old natural methods. We are struggling
as men of the world struggle. We are using force against force.
There are conflicts of justice with injustice. There is the
dashing of governments more or less right against governments
more or less wrong. It is the era of legislation and convulsion.
Industries are rising up at the bottom of society, and demanding
that they shall have other rights. The poor and the ignorant
in every land are beginning to demand recognition. Nations
are demanding that their nationality shall be respected. A
thousand questions are seeking adjustment, and, for the most
part, these questions are seeking to adjust themselves by the
application of physical force or by mere intellectual power.
The world is making some progress, but only by hard working,
accompanied by reaction, opposition, and conflict. God accepts
these partial developments, for they belong to the lower and
undeveloped conditions of human life and society; but they
are on a plane below the gospel.

112 CROWNED SUFFERING.

I believe in war. I believe there are times when it must be
taken. I believe in it as a medicine. Medicine is not good to
eat, but when you are sick it is good to take. War is not a
part of the Gospel, but while men and the world are travelling
on a plane where they are not capable of comprehending the
Gospel, a rude form of justice is indispensable, though it is
very low down. If you go to a plane still higher, w^ar seems
to be a very poor instrumentality. And if you go yet higher,
and higher, till you reach that sphere where the crowned
Sufferer stands, how hateful and hideous war seems ! In the
earlier periods of society it is recognised as having a certain
value; but its value is the very lowest, and at every step
upward, till you come to this central. Divine exhibition, it loses
in value. Always it is a rude and uncertain police of nations.
It is never good. It is simply better than something worse.
Physical force is the alternative of moral influence ; if you have
not one, you must have the other.

The day is coming, I think, when the Quaker idea shall have a
new interpretation, a larger sphere ; when men shall love their
enemies, bless those that curse them, do good to those that hate
them, and pray for those that despitefully use them and persecute
them ; v.'hen they shall receive injury and not resent it ; when
they shall requite wrong with love. To one who sees the re-
vengeful, vindictive feelings of men ; the volcanic heavings
which are so common in the most harmonious families ; how
business is carried on regardless of rectitude ; how governments
in their course will hardly stop for justice; how in all depart-
ments of life the law of might is made the law of right — to such
a one it seems almost absurd to hear a minister say that a day
is coming when, the world over, the law of love shall be the
reigning law. But that day is coming, or else prophecies are
false, and Christ came in vain. That which we need, and that
which we are yet to have, is the exemplification of this highest
force — suffering love. That is the highest form of justice, and
the highest form of administration. There is not, either this
side of the throne of God or beyond it, anything else yet revealed
or known so supreme and effective as suffering, love-sufiering for
others, rather than the making them suffer.
- 3. Men that mean to be Christ's reconstructors of the
world must learn the secret of His power over the world. We
are not to reform it by carnal logic. We are not to do it by
the mere exposition of evil. I may lay a diseased man on the
surgeon's table, and demonstrate morbid anatomy all day long ;
but it does not cure a man to demonstrate his disease. To

CROWNED SUFFERING. IIJ

reveal evil is not necessarily the way to cure it. They are not
the men that are doing the world the most good who, as with
a surgeon's knife in their mouth, go into society cutting and
slashing, and making the blood flow in every side. Surgery is
good in its place, but a man's head ought not to be a case of
surgeon's tools. There are men who have an intense hatred
of evil, and who make it their business to expose it, expound
it, dissect it; they ridicule it, they condemn it, and denounce
it; but such cormorants are employed of God only as He
employs all mordant things. They are not His beloved instru-
ments; for this world's need is not condemnation, nor denuncia-
tion, nor exposition. What it needs is somebody to suffer for it.
What men need is somebody to suffer for them. Inexperience
wants experience that is willing to bear with it till it learns.
Hardness of heart wants softness of heart to teach it the quality
of softness. Stumbling imperfection wants perfection to take
it by the hand, and lead it in the right way. We have had
thunder enough, and sword enough, and dungeons enough,
to reform the world a thousand times, if mere justice or mere
force would do it; but these are not sufficient. The spirit
which Christ manifested when, crowned with thorns, He suffered
for others, is what we need. The mother-heart keeps alive in.
the world this secret of Divinity; but kings, judges, magis-
trates, warriors, fierce with justice, fill the world with the suffer-
ings of punishment. Some quail, some resent, and many grow
desperate. Still justice is proclaimed. Justice, justice, justice!
As if justice itself was anything but the birth of passions until
it is the child of love I As if the rude justice of the earlier
developments of society was 'to be exalted above love, to limit
it, define it, subordinate it, and thus a mere leaf and stem
arrogate superiority over that blossom and fruit for whose
coming they were created !

We are not to expect to reform the world in which we dwell,
either by attempting merely to repair and mend its systems^
That we shall do, but we must do moj'e. " These things ought
ye to have done, but not to have left the other undone." Why,
my brethren, there is a way of forging justice that is better
than picking up broken fragments of justice and putting them
together.

When Cromwell's soldiers were in Winchester, they dashed
out the cathedral windows, and the people were at a loss how
to replace the saintly figures that lay scattered and broken on
the pavement. Suppose some glazier had undertaken to put
together again and cement the ten thousand fragments ? He

I

114 CROWNED SUFFERING.

would have resembled those men who are going about and
trying to find the fragments of justice, and to put them together.
It is not patched justice that we want. What we want is an
atmospheric power of development, like summer on a continent,
to inspire growth away from passion, and toward love. Love
is the mother of all things. Justice and truth will spring from
this Divine weather in regal beauty and with hitherto unknown
sweetness. We do not want glaziers, but inspiration. We
need something higher than mending. We need soul-power.
We need the power of God. We want God's creative power
in Christ Jesus; and that is the power of a pure and great
nature to suffer for impure and little natures.

Where shall we find that? Men that grow wise are apt to
grow proud, and spend their time looking after their reputations.
instead of standing as lighthouses in society, they carry them-
selves as closed lanterns. With their wisdom comes selfishness.
And where shall we find men, that, as they become wise,
become thoughtful in regard to others, and willing to suffer for
their sakes ?

There are men that seek refinement all the world through ;
that seek grace of manner, and posture, and gesture ; that seek
whatever makes life elegant; but they seek them for themselves
and their families, and call themselves " select," and will only
associate with those that delight them as natural friends, and
are ashamed to affiliate with those that do not belong to their
set. Men are taking the powers of their being, both natural
and acquired, and forming themselves into classes by themselves,
studiously excluding the uncongenial, instead of employing their
gifts to elevate and save those that are less fortunate than they.
They withdraw themselves from the world as they become strong
in the higher elements of their being. A man instructed in
virtue, oh, how he abhors wickedness ! A good man would
not break Sunday, how he hates Sabbath-breakers ! He breaks
a higher law in hating the Sabbath-breaker than he keeps in
keeping the Sabbath. The man who loves the truth is apt not
to be satisfied with hating lies, but hates liars. We are to hate
wickedness, but not wicked men. Are you good ? You owe
it to that man who is not good to give your life for his life.
He needs some one that is willing to sufter for him, and if you
are to be his saviour, you must be to him what Christ was to
those that He saved. I never saw the time when my heart
rose up against men (and my heart carries tempests in it) that
I was not rebuked by the thought, *' How has Cluist to bear
with you ?" I know my nature, and I know what a lime Christ

CROWNED SUFFERING. II5

'lias had with me ; and if He can afford to be patient with me,
is there a man that I cannot afford to be patient with ?

My brethren, if we could have this nearer view of Christ, and
bring it home, it would make us patient and forbearing with
wicked men. By applying those precepts which Christ taught,
and by cultivating^: those traits which He manifested, we shall
come nearer to Him than by mere prayer or ecstatic vision.
We shall be like Christ in proportion as we are willing to suffer
for others. It is the spirit of suffering love that brings men
near to Christ Jesus and makes them like Him.

Who, then, are the world's regenerators? I do not call my-
self one of them. I know men in society whose shoes' latchet
I am not worthy to unloose. It pleased God to put me in
circumstances of ease ; and though you contrive to give me
some thorns, they are not half enough to make a crown of
Your kindnesses far outnumber them. And, so far as I am
concerned, I do not suffer. I cannot. I have to go out of my
way to do it. But there is many a minister that works with his
hands on week-days to earn his bread, and preaches every
Sunday, and toils through obloquy from week to week, laying
down his life for others. And nobody understands him, or
praises him. He stands almost alone, suffering for his people.
And I honour him, and look far up to him. Nobody may know
him here, but he will be known there /

There is many a woman who has consecrated her virginity to
those that have no mother \ who seeks neither place nor praise ;
and who, by her example and instruction, is nourishing into
refinement the excellence the children of others about her. She
is a sufferer for others. She is one of those saints of the house-
hold that far surpass the saints of the church calendar.

There are many teachers that have taken their life in their
hands, and abandoned wealth and luxury, and have gone to
dwell with the poor freedman in his hovel, who has not learned
enough to understand them ; and they are despised j and by-
and-bye they will be pelted, it maybe ; and very likely they will
shed their blood in attempting to give knowledge to those igno-
rant people.

These are the ones that are regenerating the world. These
are the ones that are obeying the j^recepts and following the
example of Christ. These are our exemplars. Their example
is the best theology of our days.

It is a great thing to know how in love to suffer patiently, and
give up one's life in suffering, for the sake of saving men from
ignorance, and vice, and crime, and want. We shall never save

I — 2

Il6 CROWNED SUFFERING.

any people, or any part of our states and nation, unless we can-
find those that are willing to do for them what Christ did for us
— suffer for them, instead of making them suffer. And there
must be this suffering of love all the world over, everywhere, or
there will not be regeneration and peace.

Let me, in closing, bring this matter home as a test of per-
sonal piety.

Have you not been attempting to live a Christian life ? And
yet, when you have examined your interior consciousness, what
have you found to be the drift of your life ? Have you not
sought to get rid of care, and been impatient under suffering ?
Have you not been inclined to get away from people because
they vexed you ? Have you been patient with men ? Have
you borne with their faults as Christ bears with yours ? Have
you carried their burdens as Christ carried yours ? Have you
ever coveted the privilege, as a part of your religious duty, of
silently suffering for them ? It seems to me that Christ has
brought us a crown, and men have desired, as it were, with a
pair of pincers, to pull out every thorn, and then they have put
it on, and said, " Am I not like Christ ? " But Christ's crown-
had thorns in it ; has yours ? When you are pierced by the
thorns of trouble, do you not almost impute injustice to Provi-
dence ? Do you not ask, '' Why should I suffer?" Do you
not say, " What have I done that God should so afflict me ? "

Consider Paul's view of suffering. He comes to us saying,
" To you it is given " — this is the language of one who confers
a reward ; thus a monarch honours a well-beloved subject —
" To you it is given " what ? an order ? an office ? an estate ? no
— ^^ to suffer with Christ /^^ If we suffer with Him, we shall
reign with Him. He shall reign who has worn the crown of
thorns !

Are you not trying to build your nests high, and to feather
them with down ? Are you not trying to provide for the future,
so that you shall escape trouble and care ? Has the idea
entered into your mind that sufiering is the baptism of holiness ?
that it brings you into the likeness of Christ, and that it is to be,
not suffering for your own sake, but suffering that other men
may be wiser and purer, and truer and juster ? Is this the foun-
dation upon which you are building your activity. Can we be
saviours of the world, and none of us be willing to suffer, and
all of us be fierce for vengeance. Can we be saviours of the
world, and all of us carry the whip of justice, and none of us
carry the sweet incense and perfume of love ? Shall all pulpits,
all papers, all churches, all Christians of every name, clamour

CROWNED SUFFERING. II7

for ]\ist\cef justice, justice, and not one speak of that crowned
Sufferer who stood silent and meek, though the world thundered
-about Him and rolled in upon Him, and overwhelmed Him
even unto death ? Go ! go ! ye sons of Zebedee, that want to
stand high, but do not want to take the cup or the baptism !
But if any man would follow Christ, let him be silent in the
presence of that most august spectacle of time — the Saviour
.crowned with thorns !

PRAYER.

Thou hast entered into Thy rest, Man of Sorrows, and
•acquainted with grief. No more shall men pursue nor way lay
Thee. Never again shalt Thou stand before the judgment of
an earthly tribunal, nor bear the cross that crashed Thee in
bearing, nor suffer. For Thou hast past through Gethsemane,
and endured Calvary once and for ever.

And now, lifted into eternal glory, with all power in Thine
liand. Thou art not conscious of Thine own pleasure and joy
alone. Thou still dost behold the great race of man, that toils,
and struggles, and sins, and suffers, and groans for redemption,
and is without the knowledge of a Redeemer. Thou art bearing
the world in the arms of love. Having finished Thine earthly
exibition and atonement. Thou art in Thine own peace working
out peace for ages to come, and art out of Thine own love
pourmg forth ceaseless tides of love that yet shall roll in the
human soul as in thine. And though tears are yet in the world
for numbers as the rain-drops ; though sorrows are as the
storms ; though darkness yet rests upon the earth as a swad-
dling band, yet thou art the Deliverer. Into Thine ear come
the cries of the oppressed and the groans of the prisoner.
Before Thee, and beheld of Thee, are all the ways of men.
And their follies, their mistakes, their sins— Thou seest
these as they are portrayed in the ever-changing and ever-the-
same panorama of experience. Unrolled as a scroll before
Thee is time, that comes and goes, and is for ever present,
bearing the same turbulent race, that know not what they are ;
that have not learned of God ; that sometimes blindly seek
Thee, but that seldom find Thee. And Thou, O God, in Thine
infinite patience, in Thy wonderful love, art still bearing the
succession of generations of wounded, and weak, and wicked
>men. Even as " a father pitieth his children, so the Lord

Il8 CROWNED SUFFERING.

pitielh thein that fear him. " And as a father chastiseth, so art
Thou chastising. We rejoice to beheve that it shall not be al-
ways so. By and bye shall come that glorious day when men
shall know the Lord, when to know shall be to love, and when
out of love shall spring obedience and joy. Even so, Lord
Jesus, come quickly.

Come to us that severally, in our own spheres, have our ex-
perience of sin, and temptation, and sorrow, and disappointment^
our wrestlings and our griefs. Come, we beseech of Thee, to
every wounded conscience, with the balm of forgiveness. Come
to every benighted soul with that light which, once arisen, shall
never set, but be the dawn of eternal life. Come with Divine
motives to them that are pulseless, and know not how to stir.
Rescue those that are tempest-tossed, and bring them safely to
the shore again.

Be pleased, we beseech Thee, to comfort those that mourn^
and to cheer the despondent. Breathe upon every soul in thy
presence a sense of Immanuel — God wiih us. ]\[ay we have
this morning the sweet liberty of saying, in the fulness and reali-
sation of its blessedness, "Thy will be done. " May w^e open
our hearts, our understandings, our ambitions, our joys and
pleasures, our plans and anticipations, all of them, to Thy
cleansing. And we beseech of Thee that it may seem, as it is,
that nothing on earth — no delight, no honour, no power, no
joy — can be compared with those things which are to be found
in the palace of the soul. AVe pray Thee, lift up the gates,
that the King of Glory may come into every heart here to-day.
Come in to cleanse and cast out ; me in, as into a tabernacle,
to build there thine own seat ; come m to say, " Peace be unto
you ! " come into break the bread of life to every longing soul !

]\Iay there be those this morning that, having known Thee^
and gone away from Thee, and become strangers to Thee, shall
hear again, afar oft', those accents that they once heard with joy
unspeakable. May there be many that, having backslidden*
shall review their life, and turn and come again to Thee. May
there be those that, having hngered in the precincts of the sanc-
tuary, having at times almost resolved to be Christians, yea
having even tried and failed, shall to-day hear God calling
to their soul in a voice not to be mistaken.

We beseech of Thee, O Lord, that Thou wilt grant to eveiy
one that is seeking to live a Christian life, greater light, more
power of the Spirit of God, clearer views, ampler experiences in
Christ Jesus. Be with those that are giving their testimony for
Christ, bearing His cross, and upholding His cause. i\Lay they

CROWNED SUFFERING. II9

not be discouraged, and yet may they feel humbled on account
of their unfaithfulness. And may they look with gentleness
upon the shortcomings of others. May there be that same
compassion in their souls toward their fellow-men which there
was in the soul of Christ toward them. And may they, forgiven,
not go out to take any by the throat and drag them to justice.
IMay they evermore love, as Christ loves. May they have that
love of Christ, as the principle of their life, which shall cleanse
them while they cleanse others.

We pray that Thon wilt be pleased to revive thy work in this
church, and in all the churches of this city and of our whole
land. And as Thou hast wrought with a wonderful hand, in
Thy providence, leading this people as a fiock, so now, by a
more wonderful grace, lead them, and lift up their hearts and
souls into such communion with God, into such a sense of
justice, and of that love which attempers it, that they may be
able to meet all exigencies — to frame laws, to establish institu-
tions of learning, and to send everywhere the preached Gospel —
until this whole land shall know the Lord, and yield obedience
to that which is right and true.'"'

]\Iay Thy kingdom come in every land. Bless those that are
preaching among the heathen. i\Iay they see of the travail of
their souls, and be satisfied.

Bless all those that stand in desolate places, well-nigh dis-
couraged. Lift upon them the light of Thy countenance, and
draw near to them with the blessings of Thy salvation.

Bless all for whom we should pray. Look into Thine own
soul, O God, and take the measure of Thy benefaction, not
from our feeble petitions, but from the greatness of Thine own
desires. For Thy Name's sake, bless, forgive, and save. And
to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, shall be praises ever,
lasting. Amen.

■•■ The civil war was ended and peace re-established at this time.

IX.

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD:*

A STUDY OF SPRING FOR THE CAREWORN.

'* Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor
gather into bai-ns : yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye
not much better than they? . . . Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin : and yet I say
unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one
of these." — Matt. vi. 26, 28, 29.

I KNOW he never was ! nor has anybody else ever been ; nor
will anybody ever be. I can show you one apple tree that puts
to shame all the men and women that have attempted to dress
since the world began.

*' Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? "

Have you ever fulfilled this command ? Have you, as a part
of your obedience to Christ, taken time to sit down and think
what birds and flowers mean? You have taken flowers, and
you have enjoyed them— their forms, their colours, their
odours — simply as objects which had a relation to a certain
sense of beauty in yourself. That is very well, although it is
the merest superficial treatment of that profound subject, and
does not fulfil the command of God. The command of prayer,
of meekness, of humility, may rank higher in the moral scale,
but they are not one whit more commands than is this passage
a command in relation to birds and flowers ; and they do not
address you one whit more than this does. " Consider." It is
not smell, it is not admire, it is not enjoy, it is not even look at ;
it is CONSIDER. And to consider is to ponder ; it is to take a
thing up into your mind, and turn it over and over, that you
may know what it means.

Do you observe how our Saviour turned from revelation to

* Delivered as a familiar Wednesday evening lecture, in the lecture-
3 com of Plymouth Church. Mr. Beecher has a farm near Peekskill, on the
North River, where he usually spends a portion of the summer. This
lecture was delivered at the close of a spring day spent on the farm, [May
i6th, i860.

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. 121

revelation ? Do you observe how, while He taught men by-
quoting to them the words of the inspired Testament which
they had — for the New Testament was not then written; it was
being Hved, and it had not yet come to the period of record :
so their only Testament was the Old Testament — do you
observe how, while He taught men by quoting to them the
words of the Old Testament, He also taught them by referring
them to that other revelation, which is just as much God's, and
has as universal a moral purpose, although it is not, perhaps,
as easily comprehended ?

This is the season of the year when, if ever, one must needs
have his senses attracted. It is a peculiar year. More than
any that I remember of my life is it a year of blossoms. I
never saw anything like it. I always knew that Nature was
prodigal, because she was attempting to express God's thoughts;
but I never knew before what she could do. I do not believe
she ever knew herself! It seems to me as though the prodi-
gality she displays is almost extravagant. Every twig is doubled
and quadrupled with blossoms. The apple-trees stand almost
like white clouds in the air, from the multitudes of their blossoms.
Such is their profusion, that you can scarcely see leaf or twig.
All through the country it is so. The peach-trees are holding
up their silent lessons in pink ; the cherry-trees and the pear-
trees are holding up their silent lessons in white ; the apple-
trees are holding up their silent lessons in both colours ; all the
grass is full of germinant flowers ; and, since it pleased God to
give us the rains of a day or two past, the grass is lifting up its
hands, and clapping them for joy. Already the common birds
are here— the several sparrows, the robins, the bluebirds, and
the goldfinches or yellow-birds. The wanderers, also, are
coming back. Last night I heard geese flying, and to-day the
bobolinks were in the field ; and almost every other bird that
we shall have through the summer is present with us.

All day long I have been thinking — sometimes birds, some-
times Bible, sometimes flowers, sometimes Saviour. It is difiiicult
to tell where the transition is from one to the other. I have
been sitting and looking at the meadows and at the trees, and
thinking of the expressions in the Old Testament of the
Psalmist, who spoke of the multitude of God's thoughts toward
him. Innumerable, unaccountable, are God's thoughts, and
unspeakable is the tenderness of them.

In the human mind there are two tendencies in connection
with the study of spiritual and ])hysical things. One is to take
•the spiritual, and bring it down into physical forms. That is a

122 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

process of degeneration. The attempt to understand spiritual
things by bringing them down into physical forms, although it
may be indulged in occasionally, and for special purposes, is,
as a tendency, one of degeneration. The other tendency is to go
from the material to the spiritual, thus spiritualising the material.
This is a process always of elevation. And as I sat and looked
to-day at the meadows and at the trees, I thought within my-
self, " What message have they for me of my God, and from
my God ? " And all day long I have felt that never was there
such an interpretation of munificence ; that never was there
anything that so indicated what it was to give without money
and without price— to give out of a nature whose spontaneity
is generous, profuse, magnificent.

As, in wandering from one thing to another, I looked at the
freshness of nature, and at the multitude of her children — those
hidden in coverts, those under dark, cool rocks, those laid in
where mosses are, those growing in the broad fields, those
springing up under the shadow of forest-trees, and those sus-
pended upon their boughs in the air — as I looked at all these
things, I found I could scarcely estimate in one square yard
where I sat, how many notes God had rung, how many thoughts
He had bestowed, how much care He had lavished, how much
power He had exerted, and how much wisdom He had displayed.
And there came to my mind such a sense of God's overruling
Providence and presence as has made the whole day one of
unexampled sweetness to me. There was not a single bird
that I had time to hear — (for you must wake earl}^ or you
cannot hear the birds sing in chorus ; from four to five o'clock
is the time for their family prayers, and they always have con-
gregational singing then ; if you miss that you will not hear
anything like it during the whole day, although during the
whole day there is not an hour in which they are silent) — there
was not a single bird that I heard that did not direct my
thoughts to Go(i. And all through the day, in the singing of
the birds, in the blossoming of the trees, on the broad green
sward, along the sides of the walls, skirting the edges of the
woodlands, through the glades, in the air, on the earth, every-
where, it seemed as though God were almost so near that I
should hear Him, and see Him, as certainly I felt Him.

And what a joy there is in knowing that the earth is not
merely something that God thought of when He made it, and,
as it were, spun out of His hand, saying, " Go, take care of
thyself;" but that it is God's daily care, that it is His estate,
that He works it as I work my garden, and that He watches

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. 123.

all things in it with that same interest ^vith wliich I watcli one
plant after another that I mean to see blossom, and that I mean
to help blossom ! To me nothing makes the world so precious,
nothing makes it so profitable, nothing makes it so little barren
and so much rich, nothing so takes away its sordid ness, as the
knowledge of God's solicitude concerning it, and his care over it.

I do not believe that any one can fully read the natural world
who does not read the Bible ; and I am satisfied that no one can
read the Bible to the best advantage who does not read the
natural world a good deal. These things are very much to each
other what blossom is to fruit, or what germ is to blossom. One,
if not the cause of the other, helps to produce it. And so these
two revelations — the external and the internal — work together,
and both work to the same purpose.

But aside from these general thoughts of the significance of
natural things, as made and preserved by the Divine Being,
Christ teaches us not merely to look upon them, but to consider
that they have a significance in our daily life. The general
principle is this : that God cares so much for you that it is a
shame for you to be uneasy and over-anxious about yourself.

There is nothing in the teachings of the Bible that tends to
remove the stimulus to industry, or to take away the necessity of
enterprise. It is neither industry nor enterprise that ever hurts
anybody. They are pleasurable and wholesome, and we shall
not wish the motive which inspires them taken away. It is with
men as it is with machinery. P2verybody that knows anything
about machinery knows that it wastes faster when it is allowed
to stand still llian when it is worked, if it is worked aright. If
a watch stands still a year, it wears out as much as it would in
running properly two years. But where machinery runs without
oil, and squeaks and grinds, it get hot, and wears out speedily.
Now anxiety is in human life just what squeaking and grinding
are in machinery that is not oiled. In human life, trust is
the oil. Confidence in God is that which lubricates life, so
that industry and enterprise develop the things we ought to
liave, and do it in such a way that they bring pleasure with
them.

How many are there, however, who know how to apply this
principle to their life, and who, being industrious and enter-
prising, are always cheerful, and cheerful on this basis : God
takes care of me when I take care of myself? It is, after all,
only God working in me when I work. What am I but a bundle
of causes which God is making work ? What are my wisdom,
and thought, and skill, but an outgrowth of Divine wisdom, and

124 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

thought, and skill ? And those myriad conjunctions of which
ray life is being woven — who puts them into the loom ? and who
throws the shuttle ? Not I, surely. All the events of my ex-
perience stand materially connected with thought, with applica-
tions of thought, and with results of thought, with which I have
nothing to do. Whatever I do, God opens the way for me to
do. If I work figures, those figures were prepared by the fore-
thought and pre-arrangement of my God. Although in what I
do I work, God works more ; and the very fidelity of my work
is that I work in Him, and that He works through me.

The teaching of Christ, then, is this : There is a providence
not a fataHty, not a coercive necessity, but a broad, beneficent
system of Divine love, which has such a relation to you and to
this world that you have no occasion to be uneasy. You can
afford, when you have done your best, to be easy and enjoy
yourself. Think, if you want to think, as long as it is pleasant
to think ; plan where you ought to plan ; labour where you
ought to labour ; achieve where you ought to achieve ; but
thinking, planning, labouring, achieving, let all be done in a
spirit of confiding trust. As little children will frolic and play,
and talk to themselves, and sing, and be happy, if every time
they look up they can see their mother's form or shadow, or
hear her voice, so we are, in God's greater household, to have
such a consciousness of our Father's presence as shall make us
happy, cheerful, contented in our sports and duties. We are
dear to God. He will not forget us, nor cease to take care of
us. We are so much more precious than many things which
He never forgets, that we stultify ourselves if we refuse to be
serene, as they are serene. Did you ever know a spring forget
to come ? Did you ever know a spring in which the dandelions
forgot to mock the sun with their little sparkling faces in the
grass? Did you ever know a spring in which the ten thousand
vines that creep along the breast of the earth, and send out their
little flowers, in which the grass, or in which the mosses forget
their turn, and time, and function? God never yet let these
things oversleep. He always calls them, and they always come.
And He has been calling them, and they have been responding
to His call, for six thousand years.

Now Christ says, "Are ye not much better than they?"
Yes, I hope so, though now and then I feel mean enough to
say *' No," to this question. Now and then I have such a sense
of the poverty and the miserableness of human life, that I am
tempted to say that a man is no better than birds. When I
consider what a man has had committed to him, and then con-

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. I 25

sider what an unthrifty creature he is, how he has traded on the
capital which God has given him, how he has diminished
instead of increasing it, it seems to me as though birds were
better than he. When I consider what inspiration we have had,
what hope, what Divine touch, what overpowering influence in
the hfe and teachings of Jesus Christ, and then consider what a
poor account we make of these things, I say " No " to the ques-
tion, " Are we not much better than birds ? " A bird fulfils all
that it was sent to do, and men do not. If I am asked, " Are
you not much better than flowers ? " I reply that if there is
nothing in me better than I have thus far developed, then I
can hardly be said to be better than even flowers ; that is con-
sidering that flowers answer the end of their constitution, and
that I do not.

It is only when you come to consider, not merely our rela-
tions to this w^orld, but our relations to the future ; when, in
contrast with our imperfections and ungrowth here, you consider
our immortality in the world to come, that we seem better than
birds or flowers. When you take in the root, and the stem, and
the everlasting growth, and the fruit of human life, then are we
not much better than birds and flowers. And if God takes
care of birds and flowers, will He not take care of us ? May
we not at least have such an assurance of God's watchfulness
over us that we can shake hands with care, and say, " I never
will know you again " ? May we not have such a trust in God
that we can bid good-by to anxiety, and say, '' I never will
again bear your despotic burden " ? Was it not for the very
purpose of giving us such an assurance and such a trust that
Christ gave us the passage of which I am speaking ? Did He
not design that we should rid ourselves of the harrassing solici-
tudes and troubles of life? Did not Christ mean that every-
day, when we Ufted up our eyes and beheld the flowers and
birds, we should recognise a remembrancer, saying to us, " Are
ye not much better than they ? And if I love them, and care
for them, do I not love you, and care for you ? "

Did God ever die for birds ? Did He ever lay down His life
for flowers, for the grass, or for the trees ? But for us He did.
And, rising, will He forget that for our sakes He himself was
forgotten and laid in a sepulchre ? By how many direct afflr-
niations, by how many commands, by how many of these
glancing and suggestive images, is this lesson brought home to
us .'' And yet is there one other thing so little heeded ? Chris-
tian brethren, how many of you can say that you fulfil the
wish of the apostle, when he says, "I would have you without

126 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

carefulness ? " How many of you are leading an unfretting,
unanxious, a hopeful, cheerful life?

Let us for a moment, then, consider what are some of the
reasons when we have such teaching as this, when we know
the mind and will of God, that we are so little free from care
and anxiety.

One reason, I suppose, is the inordinate desire which we
have to attain certain objects of life — such, for instance, as
wealth or honour. We are greedy, and we measure oar
prosperity by the relation which exists between our present
condition and that which we desire to attain. If we are proud
as well as greedy, we are always thinking ourselves to be ill-
used. We are not content to accept, for the time being, that
lot to which we have come, and say, ''This is a providential
indication. Here I am, and here it was meant that I should
be. I accept my lot as the hand of God laid it upon me.''
We over-estimate our own importance. There is an undue
sovereignty which we mean to assert. We are determined to
augment our resources. And we are perpetually measuring
what we are by what we wish to be, and what we mean to be.
We take away the satisfaction of the present by comparing it
with the glowing and longed-for results of the future.

Another reason why we are not trustful and cheerful is that
we believe that there will be fulfilments of the promises of God
only in so far as we are able to understand His methods of
fulfilling them. I have had a great many persons say to me,
when I have propounded this faith to them, in view of their
adversities and extremities, " I cannot understand how there
should be a special providence of God. I cannot reconcile
the theory of special providences with my ideas of general law,
and of God's agency in nature." That is to say, when God
lays down an unquestionable command, of the most explicit
kind, unless you can go behind that command, and can find
out the philosophy of it, you will not accept it at His hands !
Simply as a thing commanded by your Father, you will not,
with the faith of a child, accept it. If you can spin it on
your wheel, and then weave it in your loom, and make it
conform to your pattern, you will accept it; but as simply
from the hand of God, you will not accept it.

Now, I like to reason ; I like to search out results from
causes; but it is sweet, also, in the midst of the turmoils and
troubles of life, to rest in faith in God. It is sweet to be able
to say, " I do not care for to-morrow. I do not fear what shall
befall me. I will trust in God." To understand the philosophy

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. I 27

of a Divine command, where I can, affords me satisfaction ;
but where a command comes from such authority, and with such
variety of illustration in nature, as this one, I do not care
whether I understand the philosophy of it or not. My soul is
hungry for it, and I accept it because my God has given it. I
trust and rest in God simply because He has said, " You may
and you must." That is ground enough.

Another reason why we are so borne down by care and
anxiety is that we have not been trained.

We have been taught, but not trained. To teach is to convey
ideas to the mind. To train is to bring the individual into the
habit of putting those ideas in practice. No doubt w^e have
been taught that we ought not to worry, and that we ought to
have a reliance upon God so supreme that it shall bring cheer-
fulness, and confidence, and rest to the soul ; but we have not
been so trained that we have formed the habit of putting that
teaching into practice. One of those good, kind nurses, in
whom the radiant fires of life have burned out ; one of those
round, sun-setting mothers, that glow without scorching heat ;
one of those rich, ripe, cheerful, sweet-speaking persons, that
seem to carry blessings wherever they go — one such person,
bringing up a child to take the individual events of life without
fretting, or worrying, or feeling anxious, is worth more to him
than all the preaching he could hear in his whole lifetime. To
bring up a child in that way is to train him, for training is that
which puts us in possession of the best gifts of God's teaching.
Therefore it is said, not " TeacJi up a child in the way he should
go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," but '■ Train
up a child in the way he should go, and when he his old he will
not depart from it." Habits do not easily slip, but teaching
does. If we would have rest and quiet in the midst of the
trials and perplexities of life, w^e must not be for ever looking
out of the window of expectation, and scanning the horizon, to
know what the w^eather is to be — we must not be for ever search-
ing for arguments of trouble in the possibilities of the future.
Let this principle be taught to your children in such a way that
to act upon it becomes a fixed habit with them, and it will be
invaluable to them through life. No princely fortune could be
such a boon to any man as a disposition or grace which should
lead him to say, " God is my father ; I am heir with Christ of
an eternal inheritance ; and I cannot be poor, I cannot be
forsaken." How valiant a man is who can say that !

I adopted this principle as much as twenty years ago as a
rule of my life. I can almost remember the day when it

128 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

became fixed upon my mind. I was living in tlie West, and
was in straightened circumstances. I think that for a period
of four years there had not been a time when some member of
my family was not sick from the malaria which prevailed in that
part of the country. I did not expect or desire to be anything
except a missionary. I was poor, so far as money was con-
cerned, but quite contented. But there came a time when it
seemed to me that I should be ousted from even the humble
berth I occupied, and I made up my mind that if I was, I
would go to some smaller place where my services would be
acceptable. The reason why I expected to be ousted was that
I had attempted to stand up against the leading men of the
vicinity where I was on the slavery question, at a time when the
people of Indiana did not dare to say that their souls were
their own, or that the negro's soul was his own. It seemed to
me that my church would be shut up, and that I should be de-
prived of the means on which I depended for the support of
my family. And I recollect that on a certain day, while reflect-
ing upon the unhappy state of my affairs, I read this passage :
" Let your conversation be without covetousness," — that is. Do
not borrow trouble about where your salary is coming from, —
" and be content with such things as ye have." '* Why, yes,"
I thought, " I have not many things, but I will be content with
them." And now for the royalty of the reason for content-
ment : " For He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake
thee." These words, as I read them, seemed as really a
message from God to me, as if the white form of an angel had
spoken to me, saying : " Henry, I am sent to tell thee, from
your God, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." And the
rest of the passage is this : " So that we may boldly say, the
Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto
me." I then thought, '^ Now, Mr. Elders, shut up the church
if you have a mind to. I am not afraid of any man that lives^
since I have this message from my God." It sank like a seed
into my soul, and it has never been rooted out. If there is any
text of the Bible that has been an anchor to me, it is that one.
I have held fast by it through many a storm. It has held me a
thousand times if it has once. I never think of it that it is not
to my soul like a touch on the keys of a piano. There is always
music in it to me. "Let your conversation be without covetous-
ness." Do not fidget, and worry, and vex yourself about how
the ends are going to meet. You may be sure that they always
will meet, though you may not always see how they can meet.
If they do not meet in this life, a man dies, and then they meet.

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. I2C

I used often to think, " If they do their worst, they can only
kill me, and I shall thank them for that." When to shove a
man through a door is to shove him into heaven, you cannot
do him any great indignity.

They that travel in pioneer countries have little axes slung
across their shoulder, with which they can easily cut a path
through a cane-brake, or make their way in the midst of the
tangled undergrowth of a forest. One good text is enough for
a man to cut his way through life with. One text like the one
I have quoted to you, which will not break down, you may ride
as a steed through the desert, through the populous city, through
the world. One text that binds a man to God, and that makes
him feel that in Him he has a Father who wheels the bright
army of the stars, who carries the globe in its revolutions, who
is the controller of time and of eternity, who is the Creator and
sustainer of all mankind — one such text, oh, how it takes away
care, and anxiety, and sorrow ! How much food there is in
your Father's house that you never tasted ! In that house there
is bread enough and to spare; and yet you go fretting and
worrying through Hfe, borrowing trouble about the future, with
which you have no concern, and making yourself miserable in
the present, with which you have all concern.

Now, when you go to your home to-night, will you try to
make it brighter ? It is not necessary that you should have
more candles burning ; or that you should make the floor
cleaner — though that would do no harm ; or that you should
rub up your furniture ; but, when you go to your home, will
you carry the thought of God with you, caring for you, loving
you, providing for you ? In every night God is making a path
by His hand for the morning and for you, and in every day
God is making a bed of darkness for the night and for you.
From day to day the speech of God is uttered, and from night
to night Divine knowledge is shown. And since you are
guided by such a one ; since all your paths are laid down by
Him ; since He has made provision for you ; since He has
cherished you and nourished you ; since He has comforted you
with the assurances of His word ; since, looking at the birds
and flowers, He has said to you, "I will remember you, and I
will do more for you than I do for these, because you are worth
more;" since you are kept from year to year because God
made you and cares for you — since these things are so, need
you have any fears that you will not be divinely cared for in the
future? Oh, what beautiful messengers those are that sit on
two legs, fly with two wings, and send out of one little throat a

K

130 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

whole breastful of texts, each one of which is a song of God to
the believing soul ! I heartily thank God for them !

I promised myself to-day that I would come down and say
some of these things to you from the hill-side where my family
are stopping, but I have not expressed one in ten of the thoughts
that I meant to when I was among the things that inspired them.
If I had you on the lawn I think I could have preached to you,
but to night it is dry work. However, you must do your own
preaching. To-morrow, even in the city, you cannot but see
the amazing bounty of God ; and if you will step out toward
the suburbs of the town — and you can, if you will but rise
early enough, without any prejudice to your ordinary work or to
your health — you will gain some idea of the boundlessness and
profusion of that bounty, as exhibited by the flowers in the
country. And whenever you see flowers, understand that there
is a meaning in them, and remember that Christ has said, with
reference to them, *' Consider." You have no right to pass by
the smaflest, the tiniest, the most inconspicuous flower, and say,
" Oh, it is a little common flower." A common flower ? It is
God-opened, and God-built, and Christ has said respecting it,
•• Consider." Yes, there is a meaning in flowers. It is a
precious meaning — one that you need, and one that will kindle
up your life, and make your soul glow with radiance. Take it,
and profit by it.

"Behold the fowls of the air : they sow not, neither do they
reap, nor gather into barns."

I thought of that to-day ; for when I was very busy sowing
some seed, a bobolink flew over my head with a wild, sarcastic
descant, as much as to say, " Go on, old clod-crusher ! you sow,
and I will rejoice." He flew past, and I understood him.

" They sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ;
yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better
than they ? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one
cubit unto his stature ? And why take ye thought for raiment ?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon,
in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore,
if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-
morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith?"

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. 131

PRAYER.

We rejoice, O Lord our God, that Thou hast endowed us
with reason, and with some of Thine own attributes, so that we
are inspired to speak or chant Thy praises blindly. We rejoice
that we are taken up into communion with Thee ; and though
yet we are in the shadowy land, and all things are compara-
tively vague, we know that there is right, and justice, and love,
and purity, and sympathy, with thee. We know the royalty of
that nature of love which spends itself, and for evermore
renders service to the needy; and though by searching we
cannot find thee out unto perfection, we find out enough for
joy and consolation, enough for inspiration and imitation; and
all our Hfe long Thou art stimulating us by the bright concep-
tion of Thine own nature, and drawing us toward thee, that we
may become more and more like Thee. Accept our thanks,
O Lord our God, for this revelation of Thy parentage, and for
that spirit of adoption which Thou dost breathe into our hearts.
Every day, now, our souls call Thee '* Father." Every day
we walk with growing confidence and hope. Every day Thou
art ripening in us, that love that casts out fear — servile fear,
ignoble and selfish fear — and art planting in us that higher fear
which love breeds — the fear of grieving or wounding the one we
love. Thus Thou art ministering to the sources of our inward
life, and making more powerful the shadowy realm of thoughts
and feelings, of heart resolves and aspirations, than is the
measured life of things without, so that the things that seem-
ingly are not, are mightier than the things which are. Thou
art, by the glorious power of weakness, destroying strength.
Thou art filling our emptiness with Thyself, so that our very
infirmities and our very wants are becoming our blessings.
We thank Thee for that wondrous way in which Thou hast led
us, and for all the unfilled and spoken promises that yet await
us. We rejoice that there can be no fulfilling of Thy promises
— that they are, as they empty themselves, filled again, and are
inexhaustible.

So, O Lord, Thou art leading us day by day, not wearied
with Thy work. Thou art not weary of giving, nor weary of
watching, nor weary of forgiving. Thou art not weary of bear-
ing us. Thou dost carry us in the arms of Thy love, an ever-
lasting tax and burden unfelt. We rejoice in this wonder of
Divine and all-merciful love and care.

And now grant that the time past may be sufficient in which
we have disregarded Thy authority. May we begin with more

K — 2

132 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

implicit confidence to lean upon Thy bosom, to trust Thee in
present troubles, and to rely upon Thee in the future. May
we be delivered from those fears that populate the future, and
that rise to threaten us. We have seen hov/ they vanish as-
they draw near. We have seen that they are but mists and
shadows that disappear of themselves. Grant that we may
learn wisdom at length, and hear Thee saying, "Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof." May we rest on those
promises of Thy providence and care, those assurances of Thy
fidehty and watchful love. And whatever may be the ills that
threaten or betide us, that touch us or reach toward us, may
we have that quieting faith in Thee that shall hush our appre-
hension, and give us that peace which they have that love and
trust Thee. We bear Thee witness that Thou hast sustained
us in all our troubles. We bear Thee witness that Thou hast
done abundantly more than we asked or thought in days past.
O that we might at last have faith given us to trust Thee I
Thou that art infinitely more than the noblest among men —
infinitely more just, more noble, more faithful, more tender,
more generous ; thou that art the fountain whence spring all
our conceptions of magnanimity, grant that we may treat Thee
at least as well as we treat each other. We take each other's
promises — forbid that we should only fail when it is God that
promises.

We beseech of Thee that Thou wilt draw near to every one
in Thy presence. Minister to them according to the abun-
dance of Thy goodness. We ask blindly. We know not what
to ask for as we ought. We frequently would minister to our
own evil. We beseech of Thee, O God, that Thou wilt grant
the wisdom of Thine answer as a supplement to the folly of
our asking. Do for us the things that we need, and withhold
from us the things that are harmful. We pray Thee, whatever
Thou takest away from us, that Thou wilt not take away the
certainty of Thy favour, and the assurance of immortal life ;
and whatever Thou dost put upon us of trouble, we beseech
of Thee that thou wilt not forbear burdening us with cross
upon cross. Grant that we may have so much as is necessary
for our soul's salvation. When we arc chastened by the Lord,
may we remember the hand ; may we remember the heart ;
may we remember the covenant of love ; may we bear our
chastisement and drink the cup.

We pray that Thou wilt grant that any that sit in darkness
may see a light arise upon their path. May any that are
care-worn and burdened begin to find that under a crown of

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. 1 33

thorns there may be royalty. Are there any in Thy presence
that are pursued by fears and threatenings ? Thou, O Lord,
canst dehver Thy darUng ones from the lion and the bear. We
beseech of Thee, pluck those out of the snares and toils of
temptation that are thralled therein. Are there those that are
perplexed as to duty, that know not the way of right ? Wilt
Thou give them disclosures of duty and of right? Are there
any that see the right way, and fain would walk therein? Wilt
Thou grant, O God, that they may be able more and more to
approach the true path, and to be established therein? Appoint
Thou their goings for evermore.

We pray that Thou wilt bless all whom we love. Gather
underneath Thy ordainings of blessing all whom our hearts
gather in fond remembrance to-night; and wherever they are —
afar off in distant lands, or upon the sea, or in the wilderness,
or in places of peril — God grant that they may receive to-day,
and this hour, the blessing of the sanctuary. Grant unto them,
we beseech of Thee, faith, fidelity, firmness unto the end.

Bless our land in this time of our darkness.* May we have
faith that there yet shall be the bright dawning of the morning
of hope in this day of sorrow and distress. O may we have
assurance that, though there be weeping in the night, joy shall
come with the morning. And we pray, O God, that Thou wilt
grant that slavery may cease, and that all the evil plans that
are built for it may be utterly destroyed. Thou God of justice
and truth, who hast inspired in the human breast the hope of
a glorious future, who hast been stirring up the nations of the
earth through centuries to rise to nobler and nobler tasks and
attainments, be Thou on the side now of those that seek to
carry forth Thine own blessed truths, and to realise Thine own
inspired ideas. And we pray that Thou wilt not give Thy
cause to contempt. Let not Thine adversaries laugh. And
we beseech of Thee, O God, that Thou wilt so appear for the
oppressed, that all shall stand in awe of Thee, and, beholding
the work of righteousness that Thou hast done in this nation,
admire, revere, and praise. Let Thy kingdom come, and Thy
will be done in all the earth, as it is done in heaven, and to
Thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.

* The civil war was in progress at that time, 1864. The emancipation
proclamation had been issued.

X.

THE HIDDEN MANNA AND THE WHITE STONE:
A SERMON OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

*' To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will
give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which
no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." — Rev. ii. 17.

This text is a solemn call to victorious perseverance in Chris-
tian life. As a motive, two promises are made — one of hidden
manna^ and the other of aji unknown 7ta?ne upon a white stone.
One refers to the past, the other to the future. The one is
founded upon fact, the other is mystical. Let us elucidate a
little each of the figures, and derive from them such spiritual
profit as is appropriate to them respectively.

The Israelites, who were God's typical people — not His only
people, but the people by which pre-eminently He developed
and made known the moral side of truth — had been cruelly
oppressed and held in bondage in Egypt. We are not left to
our own fancy when we say that this is, spiritually, the expe-
rience of all men, for the New Testament appropriates that
historic condition. We, too, are represented as being in bondage,
or as having been in bondage. Whom a man serves, to him he
is in bondage ; and we have been under the dominion of the
world, under the power of our appetites, under the control of
our own propensities, and so we have been in Egypt.

God appeared in a special and glorious manner, and set His
people free, and brought them forth with a high hand and an
outstretched arm from Egypt ; and so, vrith a continuous
parallel, it is represented in the New Testament that the Chris-
tian is brought from the house of bondage into light and
liberty; for in the New Testament, tliough religion is sometimes
represented as a service, at other times, and more comprehen-
sively, it is represented as an enfranchisement, as an act of
emancipation, as freedom conferred, as liberty achieved.

When the Israelites had been delivered from their pursuers,
and had crossed the sea, instead of making straight for the

THE HIDDEN MANNA AND THE WHITE STONE. 1 35

promised land, they took counsel of their fear and their love
of ease, and were obliged, in consequence, for forty years to
wander up and down through the great desert land. But at
length, after a generation had perished, after those that first
set out had, as a punishment of their cowardice, died in the
wilderness, the people came into the promised land, where long
ago they might have been settled. And so those that have
been brought out from under the dominion of their sins into
newness of life, through Christ Jesus, instead of aiming at once
at the highest Christian states, attempt to avoid, as much as
they may, labours and self-denial, and, in consequence, impose
upon themselves the very things which they seek to avoid,
and make their life a life of wanderings in the desert. They
may well be compared to the children of Israel, who wandered
in the wilderness of Arabia. In old age, often, God's people
only at last, as the sum of all the conflicts of their life, reach
that which they should have stepped into almost at the very
beginning of their Christian course. If men had Christian
enterprise, Christian courage. Christian fidelity, they might
begin at the very beginning of their Christian experience,
where, in the ordinary course of things, they end after scores
of years.

During this long pilgrimage of the Israelites it was impossible
for them to sow and to gather harvests. They were dwellers
in tents. They had been shepherds and husbandmen; but
they could not pursue for a livelihood their old avocations. It
was needful, therefore, that there should be a supply granted
to them miraculously; and by Divine command manna fell
daily from heaven. They gathered it each day for the day's
use, and on the day preceding the Sabbath for two days, that
the Sabbath might be unbroken.

And the revelator says : " I will feed conquering Christians
with manna." As we are like the Israelites in bondage, in
deliverance, and in wandering in the wilderness, " so," saith the
revelator, " the parallel shall continue ; and as God fed His
people, not through their own skill and industry, but by a
direct power, so God promises that those who are victoriously
faithful in the Christian life in all their wanderings and vicissi-
tudes shall have Divinely-bestowed manna."

But, lest it should seem as though it was to be a repetition
of the old miracle, it is declared that it is not to be substantial
and visible manna, such as the Israelites plucked from the
ground, but "hidden," or secret manna; that is, invisible,
spiritual manna, in distinction from that which is visible and

136 THE HIDDEN MANNA AND

material. Heavenly cheer, spiritual comfort, the soul's bread —
that is the manna which is here promised.

Let us then see, for one single moment, what is the scope of
this promise. To theju that overcome 1 zuill give hidden inafina.
The implication is that Christians are in great conflict and
peril, and that, in consequence of the strifes and dangers of
Christian life, they need something more than they can minister
to themselves. They need food that is better than the daily
bread for which we are taught to pray. And the promise is,
that if they are faithful in their Christian life, God will give
them this other food that they need.

It is only a mystic and poetic expression of the same thought
that our Saviour indulged in when He declared, ''Take no
thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, what shall we drink ?
or, wherewithal shall we be clothed ? " " but seek ye first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you." Here the same truth is set forth in
another mode of expression— namely. Fight the battle of
temptation, wage the conflict of Christian life, be bold, be
faithful, and God will feed your souls. As in the one case God
will take care of the body according to the literal promise of
Christ, so here we have included something higher and better.
Be faithful to all your Christian duties and affections, and God
will feed and strengthen every power of the soul.

We are incessantly tempted, in this life, to conform our
ethical conduct either to our direct or implied physical con-
dition. There is a natural, but not too good tendency to make
the metes and bounds of ethical truth and duty conform to
natural law, and then to interpret natural law on the side of
selfishness. We are perpetually tempted by compliances, by
customs, by seeming physical necessities, by social sympathies,
and even by moral biases, to depart from propriety and rectitude.
In all the relations of life — in the family, in the neighbourhood,
in business, in their whole estate — men are strongly inclined, if
not to give up right and duty, yet to moderate their ideas of
what is right ; to take on milder conceptions of duty ; to see if
the cross cannot be evaded or avoided, or to make it as incon-
spicuous as possible. That tendency is natural, using the word
natural in its lowest acceptation.

There is always present, more or less obtrusively, the
economic argument in the soul, and we find ourselves resort-
ing to it to excuse ourselves from adhering to that which is
incumbent upon us. When we are irradiated with conceptions
of Christian life, when we have heroic ideals, we mean to be

THE WHITE STONE.

137

absolutely trae men; we mean to have unadulterated faith in God;
we mean to have the utmost sincerity of life ; we mean to burn
with a courage that shall never know a decline; we mean to be
enterprising, abounding in work. And yet, when we come out
of the inspired hours that come to us, and enter upon the daily
duties of life, we come into the economic and argumentative
mood, and the question arises, whether it is proper in our
circumstances — which are always peculiar — for us to do so and
so. And in this mood we are tempted as much as possible to
avoid the cogency and urgency of the reasons which incHne us
to fulfil our duties, and to argue whether it is best for us, for
ours, and for the world about us, to press forward in the path
of duty which is opened before us.

Now, I do not undertake to say that these casuistical ques-
tions are not a part of our necessity; but I do say that the
application of truths and principles requires right judgment
and the continuous exercise thereof. It is not half so much
trouble what the truth is in general, as it is to know what the
truth is at any particular time, and in its applications to parti-
cular phases of experience. And it is at this point, not that
we are necessarily deceived, but that we are extremely liable
to lean toward a compliance with worldly ways and customs,
for the sake of getting along easier, for the sake of having
more certain, solid, assured success.

" Man shall not live by bread alone," said the Saviour, when
He was Himself tempted. And the promise of our text is, Do
not comply with evil under any circumstances ; do not give
way to worldly counsels where they are distinctly opposite to
spiritual counsels ; do not consume yourselves with anxieties ;
do not use your strength needlessly; do not expend it on this
thing or that, when it might be better spent on something else;
do not judge your prosperity by outward signs alone ; and you
shall have your reward. I will give to every man that is a true
soldier — to every man that holds the faith of Christ, and that
means to maintain a godly and pure life — to every such man,
whatever may be his trials, his perils, and his inducements, if
he will only overcome his temptations, I will give a hidden
support. I will feed him inwardly. As the Israelite had visible
manna, so he shall have manna that is invisible, hidden,
mystic.

I would to God that in some adequate way the experience of
this truth might be gathered out of that army of suffering ones
that the world has seen, and framed into a history, and poured
forth upon men, that the world might know how God does do

138 THE HIDDEN MANNA AND

exceeding abundantly more than we ask or think for those that
are willing for Christ's sake to cut off the right hand, or pluck
out the right eye, or forego any temptation or any inducement
of pleasure.

There is nothing that seems more foolish to men of the world
than for a man to stand, as it is said, in his own light ; for a
man to give up positive, and in many respects, it may be, inno-
cent, good for the sake of some notion, some ism, some moral
scruple. But yet it has been the experience and the testimony
of more than one can count of blessed saints in heaven, and of
multitudes that still dwell upon earth, and are engaged in its
conflicts, that, no matter how rugged or steep the path may
have been, they have been best fed and best sustained when
they have followed Christ the nearest. I will not say that those
who follow Christ at all hazards will be best sustained out-
wardly (though they will have enough for their outward wants,
or, when they do not have this, what is better, they will die),
but they will have, in spite of their circumstances, more of
those ends for which men strive, than they could have attained
if they had conformed to the world.

Why do men strive ? There is a pleasure in the use of our
faculties that makes men industrious and enterprising, that leads
them to become engineers, mechanics, labouring men, or scholars.
There is pleasure in a life of activity. But mainly men are
living for the sake of supplying themselves with a multitude of
worldly benefits ; that they may have a broader foundation for
their family; that they may, if possible, derive more enjoyment
from leisure ; that they may multiply the sources of their im-
provement. In other words, various joy, that shall develop the
mind, and fill up the heart, and the evading of evil, which
is a reflex seeking for possible joy — these are the springs, the
grand motives of human action ; and when you take away from
a man the fear of evil and the hope of joy, your paralyze him.
No man would be more than a leaf on a stream that had not
this fear or this hope.

Now it is the experience of men — and one of those experiences
which we come to slowly and reluctantly, and which dawn upon
us only after we have gone through a long course of struggle —
that, after all, we find more happiness in the faithful perform-
ance of Christian duty at every hazard and sacrifice, than we
would have found wuth unobstructed freedoQi along the course
of prosperity.

Let me take the case, for instance, of a man that pursues the
most innocent course of life. It is thought of industry that it is

THE WHITE STOXE. 1 39

good, right, praiseworthy. It is. But, little by little, a man,
in the course of duty, perils himself for others' sake, and begins
to undermine his health and strength. He would draw back,
but there is an obligation imposed upon him. He is a soldier,
in time of war, and he is called to do duty in places of danger,
and to sacrifice his bodily health. And, ere long, by maims
and wounds, or by rheumatic twistings and contortions, or by
organic weaknesses, the man is laid aside from labour. And
men say, " It is a pity that this man should not have avoided
this excessive taxation upon his physical system. There is
moderation in all things." But I have taken notice that, when
it is moral things, moderation is known to all men ; but when
it is physical things, moderation is known to nobody. There
is a general public sentiment that zeal and fervour for the
animal system is all right enough, but that for the moral nature
there should be great moderation and self-restraint. And so
men look with pity upon a man that has been laid aside from
activity by reason of over-exertion in the discharge of the most
solemn duties that can be known in the providence of God.

It is hard to stand still enforcedly. It is hard to see the
thunderous processes of industry go past your skilled hand and
willing feet, and you not be called to take part and lot in them.
And yet many a man has learned, after the first days of bitter-
ness, that he could reap more joy bed-ridden than he could on
his feet. In many a case, helpless hands, that could not be
lifted even in prayer, have reaped better harvests, if you
measure by the soul's satisfaction, than they could under any
other circumstances. Many a man that has been laid aside
early in life, and for long and useless years, has realized, with-
out knowing it, the promise of God, " I will give you hidden
manna." And I call, from thousands and thousands of
cottages, and prisons, and poorhouses, witnesses to rise up,
among the most ghastly to the eyes of men, but the brightest
and purest to the eyes of God and angels, to testify, '' Of all
that live on earth we have been the most favoured, and we
have the most peace, the most joy, the most deep meditation
of good, the most hope, the most certainty of eternal reward."

It is the royal road to learn of love. Is there anything
better than that a man should love his wife, or that a woman
should love her husband ? Is there anything nobler than the
love which they give to their children ? Is there anything that
is a more fit emblem of heaven than a Christian family, where
conscience and knowledge, and pure and true love unite all
the members of it ? And may not a man say, with some

140 THE HIDDEN MANNA AND

reason, " Let us build here three tabernacles, and abide in this
paradise of God"? But in the providence of God one child
dies, and another child is prostrated with sickness, and aliena-
tions come in to disturb the peace of the family circle, and the
household is divided and scattered, and the paradise is invaded,
and thorns and thistles come up where were blossoms and
fruit. Under such circumstances a man is tempted to charge
God falsely. And where there has been such temptation, and
waste, and sickness, and desolation, and the heart has been
burdened with sorrow, and the head has been bowed down
with grief, and suffering has written its lines on the face, at
last, though for the present these things are not joyous, they
begin to bring hunger for that which the earth cannot supply,
and to cause the soul to cry out, " O God, feed me, and give
me the hidden manna out of the cloud and darkness," and in
answer, come divinely-supplied patience, and peace, and
inward joy. How many persons have at last borne witness,
*• I have learned what I could not have learned if I had been
spared from sorrow."

There is nothing that is better, seen from a purely economic
point of view, than to build up society by material productions
and external wealth. Far be it from me to say a word that
undervalues these things ; but you know very well that we are
dwelling in communities where everything is as uncertain as a
a shepherd's tent. You build up your fortune, and God takes
it down almost as often as the patriarchs did their tents. You
are feeding from pasture to pasture. You are finding that here
and there God meets you with overthrow and reverse. And
you feel, "To what profit is it that I have served God? What
is there for me, whose whole life seems cross-ploughed and
harrowed?" You are tempted to complain of the allotments
of Providence. But do you suppose a man's life consists in
the abundance of the things that he possesses ? Is this your
estimate of man, that he is merely a thing to put raiment on ?
Is it your idea of life to build a treasure-house and put gold in
it ? Have you never had a conception of the royalty of son-
ship, and learned to love God and your fellow-men ? And,
though all your worldly possessions have been scattered, is
there nothing left for you ? Are you bankrupt because you
have neither silver nor gold ? Why, you have come to that
state in which all the holy men on earth were ! Prophets,
patriarchs, apostles, ministering teachers of God, and the best
men that have dwelt upon the face of the earth, had not where
to lay their heads. Silver and gold had they none, but they

THE WHITE STONE. 141.

had manhood: they had courage; they had the power to sing
and pray Uke Paul and Silas in the midnight prison ; they had
that which enabled them to influence men for good. There are
many such now-a-days. To them I say, bear this witness among
your fellow-men : " God comforts me ; He makes my life
better than any power on the globe could make it ; food which
no man can give gives He me — hidden food, soul-manna.
And so I am sustained in going through persecutions for
righteousness' sake."

Who is there that does not know that there is a joy higher
and more stately than is known to our ordinary experience?
There are some natures that only tempests can bring out. I
recollect being strongly impressed on reading the account of an
old castle in Germany with two towers that stood up mighty
and far apart, between which an old baron stretched large wires,
thus making a huge yEolian harp. There were the wires
suspended, and the summer breezes played through them, but
there was no vibration. Common winds, not having power
enough to move them, split, and went through them without a
whistle. But when there came along great tempest-winds, and
the heaven was black, and the air resounded, then these winds,
with giant touch, swept through the wires, which began to ring,
and roar, and pour out sublime melodies.

So God stretches the chords in the human soul which
ordinary influences do not vibrate; but now and then great
tempests sweep through them, and men are conscious that
tones are produced in them which could not have been pro-
duced except by some such storm-handling.

Are there not those that can bear witness here to-day that
a man may lose all things, in the common acceptation of the
term, and yet be exceeding happy and blest of God ? A man
may be stripped of property, may be bereft of friends, may lose
his health, may have the way of usefulness blocked up to him,
and yet he may experience a happiness that is indescribable if
he only has left this thought : " Heaven cannot be touched.
On earth I am tossed about and rolled over, and am like a
vessel borne down before a tempest, and swept hither and
thither ; but ah ! there is a rest that remaineth : God keeps it
for me, and ere long I shall reach it ! I am sure that I am a
better and happier man by reason of the things which I have
been made to suffer, since they have rendered my soul
susceptible to the mysterious touches of God's hand." It is the
fulfilment of the promise, '* To him that overcometh will I give
to eat of the hidden manna." The man that is willing to stand

142 THE HIDDEN MANNA AND

up wherever, in the providence of God, his lot may be cast,
and that stands victoriously, God will feed, not outwardly
alone, but inwardly.

Now comes the other mystic promise of something nobler
yet. The explanation that I shall give of the 7uhite sto?ie, with
the name luhich no man knoweth saving he that rcceiveth it, will
seem fanciful to you, unless you think of the difference which
there is on this subject between modern Occidental thought and
ancient Oriental thinking. But no one who is acquainted with
the sentiment of antiquity will think this explanation fanciful,
for precious stones were almost the very form of literature for
the expression of the idea of precious truths — so much so that
God, when He wished to describe how heaven itself was built,
instead of saying that it was a building whose tower was justice,
and whose foundations -were mercy, and love, and sympathy,
described it as built of sapphire, and ruby, and other precious
stones.'"' Precious stones were identified with great moral
truths and qualities. Just as we say ernmie in referring to the
office of a judge or niagistrate, just as we speak of white fur as
signifying purity ; so to the ancient, the Oriental, a precious
stone was associated with moral truths and moral qualities.
And God speaks in conformity to this use of precious stones in
representing such truths and qualities. They were largely
employed in the description of heaven, whose walls, it was
said, were of jasper, and whose pavements were likened to a
sea of glass.

But, more significantly, though less poetically, perhaps,
precious stones were set, and worn as breast-stones. All the
Jewish priests wore them. On the ephod they were placed.
And kings wore them. Now, in modern times, they are worn
merely for show ; but then they were worn to signify moral and
regal qualities. Crowns carried them symbolically, much as in
coronets they still flame.

But more frequently than in any other way precious stones
were made into signet rings, and, as such, they carried authority,
because they suggested the personal identity of the wearer.
Where precious stones were set as signet rings, they were worn,
probably, in part, on account of their brilliancy, and for mere
private and personal pleasure ; or else they were presents given
as tokens of ordinary regard by neighbour to neighbour or
friend ; or else they were bestowed as honours. Where a prince
or a monarch desired to confer the highest testimony of his

* Revelation xxi. iS— 21.

THE WHITE STONE.

143

appreciation of one that had served him or the kingdom, he
gave them a precious stone, with his name cut on it.

But a more precious use of these stones was as love-tokens,
and in this case they were cut with mystic symbols. As two
lovers agree upon names the meaning of which is known only
to themselves, or as they speak to each other in endearing terms
which belong to them severally, not in baptism, not in common
parlance, but by the agreement of the heart, so it was cus-
tomary to cut in stone names or initials which no one could
understand but the one who gave it and the one to whom it
was given.

Now these last two uses of precious stones — that by which
monarchs conferred honour upon their favourites, and that by
which lovers gave token of their affection for each other, with
names inscribed, and known only to love — are blended. And
this, I apprehend, is the origin of the figure of our text, "To
him that overcometh will I give a white stone, and in the stone
a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that
receiveth it." God says, "I am the eternal King, and I am
the eternal Lover, and to him that is faithful to Me, and that
overcometh, I will give, as a token of My love and honouring,
a white stone." What is meant by a white stone I do not know,
but I prefer to think that it was an opal — the most human of all
stones. The diamond is the more spiritual — there is less of
colour and more of suggestion in it; but the opal has in it
more sympathy, more feeling, more wondrous beauty, more of
those moods that belong to the human heart ; and of all the
stones that are worn to signify human affection, none is to be
compared to the opal. And methinks, when God makes this
promise of the white stone, it is as if He said, ^' I will cut your
love-name in an opal, and as your King and Lover I will give
it to you, and no man shall know the meaning of that name
but you yourself."

That which love and power bestow on their favourites, and
which fills men with joy and rejoicing, God says he will bestow
on every soul that overcometh, and is true to itself and to God.
To all those that are faithful in His cause He promises the
name, engraved, by which He Himself will call them — a new
name ; that is, etched, cut, ground.

I am fond of thinking, in this matter of writing that new name,
that it will grow out of circumstances. Two, walking together
and discoursing of love, meet, perhaps, some experience like
this : a bird, hawk-chased, flies down, and with wondrous con-
fidence, seeks the bosom of the fair one as a protection. She

144 "THE HIDDEN MANNA AND

rescues it. It is in the moment of high discourse, and both are
strangely struck and thrilled by this incident, and it is agreed
that it shall be significant of their aftection ; and this sparrow
or thrush becomes associated with their personal history.

Or, it may be, lovers walk the field. It is the hour of the
disclosure of their highest and purest feelings one toward the
other. And as they sit and talk of love, they are unconscious
that lilies are blooming about them on every hand ; but by and
bye rising, they perceive that the lilies have been the witnesses
of their vows and joy, and from that moment they never can
dissever the thought of the lily from the memory of that
hour.

Now I think that the letters that are to constitute the name
of Love are to grow out of some such circumstances. God puts
His disciples through one experience of life, and one of the
letters which are to spell that name is ground into stone ; in
another experience another letter is ground in ; and in another,
another is ground in, until by and bye, with the attritions and
discipline of life, God, by the cunning and skilful hand of
providence, has cut out, on this white and precious stone, the
whole name of Love, and thenceforth it is worn as a testimonial
of God, and of the joy and delight of the soul.

Are there, then, those that suffer in their faithfulness, and are
conquering in their sufferings, or rising above them ? Are there
others that in the performance of duty know how not only to
labour, but the harder task of patience when labour is for-
bidden ? Are there others that know how to gather and admi-
nister property, but who can bear witness, " I know, also, how
to do more than that : I know how to walk unclothed, and lose
not one particle of my joy, and peace, and manhood, and to be
stronger, more hopeful, and more songful than I ever was
before " ? Are there others that know how to walk in unhealth
and pain, and yet to be so penetrated with faith, and prayer,
and love, that their life is more radiant in sickness than the life
of ordinary men is in health ? Are there those that know how
to administer in the common realm of affection, hut that, by
bereavements and infelicities of life, have learned also how to
dismiss love, to go widowed and solitary, and how to do it with
such a sweet and noble temper, that all men shall see that they
are more lovely without love than they ever were when they
were enthroned in its midst ? Are there those in the battle of
life who are tempted. and who overcome the temptation? Are
there men that are bankrupt, and that are walking in obscure
places, and that remember the promises of God }

THE \VHITE STONE. 1 45

Be faithful to Christ ; be faithful to the truth ; be faithful to
■your honour and integrity ; be faithful to heaven, that is nearer
than when you believed ; be faithful to all right things that you
have been taught ; be faithful in the discharge of every duty,
and then rejoice ! And when you cannot rejoice in anything
else, rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in wealth ; rejoice in health ;
rejoice in pleasure; rejoice in love: rejoice in activity; but,
above all, rejoice in the Lord; and then, when reverses come,
and troubles press upon you, and these other things fade away,
your joy in the Lord shall stand like Mount Zion, that never
sh^U be moved.

If we had nothing to show but a well-ordered life, that would
not be much ; but a joy that never proceeds from the ordinary
provocatives of joy is better testimony to our children and to
the world of the power of grace than anything else. If you
are serene, and are surrounded by the comforts of life, people
say, " Oh yes, I do not wonder that he is happy. I should be
happy if I were in his place. Fill my cellar with wine, and my
gallery with pictures, and my library with books ; fill my house
with welcoming friends, and with many tokens of neighbourly
respect, and see if I will not be happy." " Ah !" men say, "it
is not much for one that has health, and wealth, and strength to
be cheerful and happy." But when a man stands in darkness,
and poverty, and contempt ; when he sees the whole community
swept like a tide away from him ; when he sees his friends turn
their backs on him and leave him, and yet he never loses his
courage or temper, and is as sweet-minded as ever, and says,
*' I am as happy as ever I was, and as hopeful and cheerful ;
for God is my support. He is my lover ; He fulfils his promises
to me, and he gives me the hidden manna, and also the white
stone, on which my well-understood love-name is written '* —
there is a testimony that the world cannot mistake; there is
something mysterious and awful in this ! There is something
in the idea of the soul's communion with the other life that
carries a kind of terror to those that are strangers to it ; but
there is in it a wonderful depth and power to those with whom
it is a familiar experience.

Ah ! my Christian friends, give up the outside, if need be,
-that you may get at the inside. Let your life be hid with Christ
in God. Its disclosure here is but premonitory ; not without
its value, and not to be undervalued, but of little account as
compared with its appearing in heaven. Take hold of the other
life, believe in it, dwell in it, and God shall ere long bring you
to it.

L

146 THE HIDDEN MANNA AND

PRAYER.

We bless Thy name, Thou all-giving Father, that Thy mercies
have come to us in a stream that ceases not, and that will flow-
on for ever. Giving doth not impoverish Thee, and withholding
doth not make Thee rich. Thou art bountiful, and knowest of
Thine own self that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
And this is our hope — the unfailing mercy of our God ! Thy
thoughts will never cease to us-ward. Thy providential care
shall never remit its charge, and all Thy purposes of grace shall
stand. Thou hast decrees, and no one shall disannul them.
We rejoice that with Thee is plentiful power ; that with Thee
is wisdom to direct ; that with Thee is all goodness ; that every-
thing w^hich we lack Thou hast in abundance. And we rejoice
that it is Thine office and Thy delight to minister unto men ;
for the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister. Thou art serving us ; Thou art our server. We are
as children whom parents care for and serve in all the humblest
offices of necessity \ and Thou as Father art bearing us in
Thine eternal arms of care and love. And herein is our
stability, herein our hope, for we trust Thee for what Thou art.
It is impossible that Thou shouldst forget us till Thine heart
forgets to love. We bless Thy name that Thou hast made
known to us Thy nature. We thank Thee that Thou hast dis-
closed it to us in the life of Jesus Christ our Saviour. We bless
Thee that Thou hast made it known by the communications of
the Holy Ghost, and hast given us personal experiences so many
of the love of Jesus to our souls. We have known what it was
to stand in darkness unfriended. We have known what it was
to mourn in bitterness of spirit and in obduracy of will. We
have known what it was to be cast down and broken, to be
found of God, to have our wounds bound up, and to hear
peaceable words of comfort. We have known what it was to
find a Saviour, and to rejoice in Him. And since the day that
Thou didst make Thyself known to us. Thou hast never
departed from us. We often have hid ourselves from Thee,
but, wandering, have never gone beyond the sound of Thy
voice or the touch of Thy reclaiming power. And thou hast,
by Thy grace, made our life one continuous memorial of good-
ness. Thou hast been with us in sickness, and Thou hast been
with us in dangers ; Thou hast been with us in bereavements
and sorrows ; Thou hast been with us when troubles have
pressed down, and our burdens have seemed more than we
could bear. Thon hast put beneath us the arms of Thine own

THE WHITE STONE. 1 47

Strength. We have been carried through strange vicissitudes.
Thou hast ploughed our way, and turned it upside down, and
filled it with confusion, but hast not forsaken us. In all our afflic-
tions, Thou too hast been afflicted ! Thou hast gone with us into
our temptation, and striven for us. We have been beset before
and behind, and Thou hast rescued us. Yea, when we have been
carried away captive ; when, by outspringing sin and temptation,
we have gone away from Thee and from ourselves, Thou hast
not suffered us to be utterly cast away, and hast followed after
to reclaim the wanderer and bring back the lost. O Lord
Jesus, we thank Thee that Thou hast revealed Thyself as the
eternal Rescuer, and that Thou hast given us a sense of Thine
own nature.

Now we turn with thanksgiving to Thee. We rejoice over
Thy mercies. We praise Thee for being what Thou art. Shall
anything separate us from Thee ? What shall be a gift to us
except that which Thou givest ? What is life except that which
Thou breathest ? What are treasures except those which Thou
bestowest? What is joy, what is friendship, what is love, what
is hope, or what is honour, disconnected from Thee? We
desire that Thou shouldst enter into us, and sanctify all the
avenues and all the springs of life, and make our hearts a
temple for Thine indwelling. We are weak, and blind, and
stumbling, and the hand that lifted us up must sustain us. Thou
that hast been the Author of our faith must be its Finisher.
We cling to the promises of our God. Leave us not, nor for-
sake us. We know the disastrous end and issue if we are given
up of Thee. But Thou wilt not forsake us. We are Thine,
and for Thine own heart's sake Thou wilt be faithful unto
the end, for, loving Thine own, Thou dost love them unto
the end.

And now, we beseech of Thee, draw near to Thy dear people,
and, according to their several needs, bless them. Thou seest
those that mourn; Thou knowest the children of sorrow. Deliver
those that are in perplexity. Give wisdom to those that lack it,
light to those that are in darkness, and confirmation to those
that are unstable. We beseech of Thee, O Lord our God, that
Thou wilt revive Thy work in the midst of Thy people. Bring
them nearer to God. Renew their covenant vows. May there
be searchings of heart. May Thy people cast out their evil
doings, and return unto God, that He may return unto them.
Awake in their hearts a growing desire for the salvation of men
round about them. The time is short, and it is growing day
by day less. Night comes, in which no man can work. O

L— 2

148 THE HIDDEN MANNA AND THE WHITE STONE.

Lord God, arouse us all to greater diligence, to a more earnest
enterprise for the kingdom of our God.

We beseech of Thee that Thou wilt grant a blessing to all
those now gathered together who are not Thine; who have
chosen another way ; who are without God, prayerless and
hopeless; to whom is no heaven assured, and no promise that
is a girdle about them. We pray that Thou wilt arouse those
that feel secure, and disclose to them their dangers. But, above
all, reveal to them the wickedness of ingratitude and of an
unloving disposition. And we pray that Thou wilt bring them
to Thee, disclosing Thyself to them, that they may see Thy
charms, and begin to love and serve the Saviour. And may
there be many added to this Church of such as shall be saved.

Bless, we pray Thee, all people. Let the light of the Gospel
shine as the daylight. May all kingdoms see Thy salvation.
May all iniquity be purged out, and the glory of the Lord stand
as an unsetting sun above this earth. We ask these things in
the name of Jesus, to whom, with the Father and the Spirit,
shall be praises for ever. Amen.

XI.

THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS.

" For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth
not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud,
that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater ; so shall
My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth : it shall not return unto
me void ; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." — Isa. Ix. lo, ii.

The figures of the Bible are not mere graceful ornaments-
arabesques to grace a border, or fairy frescoes, that give mere
beauty to a chamber or saloon. They are language.

Human speech articulate is marvellous beyond all our
thought, and a literature of words is more strange and important
than a miracle. The occasional interjected facts in nature
which we call miracles are not half so surprising or marvellous
as the regular courses of cause and effect.

But human words are not sufficient even for human thoughts
and feelings. All high and grand emotions scorn the tongue,
that lies as helpless in the mouth as would be artillery to
express the sound and grandeur of mountain thunders in
tropical storms. All deep griefs, and, for the most part, tender
and exquisite affections, are voiceless.

Then it is, if any speech is attempted, that nature yields
another language, and figures, word-pictures, and illustrations,
if they do not express, at least vividly suggest, truths far beyond
the reach of words or the compass of sentences such as men
frame for the common uses of life. The Bible stands far
beyond all other books in this use of the language of nature.
The great globe is but an alphabet, and every object upon it is
a letter ; and, from beginning to end of the Bible, these sublime
letters are used to set forth in hieroglyphic the truths of im-
mortality. And there is this nobility in the use of natural
objects for moral teaching, that to the end of time, and to all
people, of how different soever language, the symbol used is the
same. Artificial hieroglyphics differ with age and nation. The
Oriental cities had their special characters — the Egyptian his —
the Aztec his ; and they differ one from another, so that one

150 THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS.

could not have read the written signs of the other. But the
sun, the mountain, the ocean, the storm, the rain, the snow, the
winds, lions and eagles, the sparrow and the dove, the lily and
the rose, grass, earth, stones, and dirt, are the same in all ages,
in all latitudes, to all people. And those truths that are ex-
pressed in the figures drawn from the natural world have re-
lationships, and they are the most universal of any in the Bible,
and the most frequent.

The passage before us is a teaching by picture. It gives
prodigious stir to the imagination. As we read it, we cannot
help feeling the truth opening, spreading, and shooting up stems
and blossoms in every direction.

We shall not attempt to extract the truth in this case, and
present it to you separated from its peculiar receptacle, as honey
is served separated from the flower that produced it, but shall
take up, in the same spirit and way, several of the truths
included in this sublime teaching, for your consideration.

I. God works both by death and by life — by rain and by
snow. Snow and rain seem so utterly unlike, that no sense
would, at first experience, report them to be the same. Snow-
is conservative rain. It is good to keep, and it is good for little
else until it stops being snow and comes to be rain. Except
its beauty, it has only mechanical benefits. Before it can inspire
life, it must change its nature.

How wonderful is the touch of nature ! The air calls to the
seas, and to the moist lands, and instantly invisible particles
fly upward j and at length, touched by the authority of cold,
they obey its word, and marshal themselves in clouds, and
range through the heavens ! Clouds drop, and sweep their
skirts along the mountains, or bank up the sun, and hide the
stars from wishful eyes. Again, at a word, every drop changes,
brilliant lines of frost shooting from its tiny centre until flakes
of snow seem like the glorified forms of these rain-drops. No
artist soul ever thought such variety ; no artist finger ever was
skilled to touch and produce such exquisite things as are the
smallest snow-flakes.

There they hang, far up, in grey clouds, a suspended winter,
a fleece unshorn. But when, ejected from their eyrie, they come
down upon the earth, each little spickle mute and soft, waving
like a feather, what can be thought of more harmless, less
powerful than they ! A child is mightier than any one of them.
A litde palm is stretched forth, and the flake dissolves upon it
before it can be drawn back. A breath dissolves it. The lightest
puff of wind changes its course, and whirls it withersoever it

THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS. 151

will. The bird directs his own flight ; the tiniest insect that
whirls in gauzy maze along the evening sunset aims at some-
thing in its flight, and touches what it seeks for rest. But these
wandering flakes of snow aim at nothing, seek nothing, but fall
in unconscious weakness, it may be upon rock, or upon open-
faced pools, or into the forge and chimney ; or, caught by
some side wind, they are whirled in a white obscurity, and
made crazy with haste, and pitched into dark gorges, or lifted
into eaves of houses, or let fall upon the boughs and quivering
fingers of the pine, pluming again with white its green tufts,
that sigh all summer, and mourn all winter.

Surely, of all things that are, snow is the most beautiful and
the most feeble ! Born of air-drops, less than the fallen dew,
disorganised by a puff of warmth, driven everywhither by the
least motion of the winds, each particle light and soft, and fall-
ing to the earth with such noiseless gentleness that the wings
of ten minion times ten million make no sound in the air, and
the footfall of thrice as many makes no noise upon the ground,
what can be more helpless, powerless, harmless !

But not the thunder itself speaks God's power more than
this very snow. It bears His omnipotence, soft and beautiful
as it seems ! While it is yet in the air, it is lord of the ocean
and the prairies. Ships are blinded by it. It is a white dark-
ness. All harbours are silent under this plushy embargo. The
traveller hides. The prairies are given up to its behest; and woe
to him that dares to venture against the omnipotence of soft-
falling snow upon those trackless wastes ! In one night it hides
the engineering of a hundred years. It covers down roads,
hides bridges, fills up valleys. It forbids the flocks to return
to the fields. The plough cannot find its furrows. Towns and
villages yield up the earth, and obey this white diffusive despot !

Then, when it has given the earth a new surface, and
changed all vehicles, it submits itself again to the uses of man,
and becomes his servant, in its age, whom it ruled and defied
in the hour of its birth. But, when flake is joined to flake, and
the frosts within the soil join their forces to the frosts
descended from the clouds, who shall unlock their clasped
hands ? Who shall disannul their agreement ? or who shall
dispossess them of their place ? Gathered in the mountains,
banked and piled till they touch the very clouds again in which
once they were born and rocked, how terrible is their cold, and
more terrible their stroke, when, slipping, some avalanche
comes down the mountain side, the roar and the snow-stroke
loud as thunder, and terrible as lightning ! God gives to the

152 THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS.

silent snow a voice, and clothes its innocence and weakness
with a power like His own.

But, behold again ! That august might that buried the fields,,
that shut up husbandry, and drove back fi-om the field its
herds, that wound the very wilderness with a burial-sheet, and
from the tops of mountains sat watchful over all its work, defy-
ing men and storms even ; which, when it was once enthroned,
could not move nor change its mighty power — that very might,
when God pleases, shall go, as quick and as silent as it came.
When God remembers the earth from the south, and his breath
returns again, warm and life-giving, in an instant the snow goes
back to its former state. Its flakes die to drops of dew, and
the field drinks up the drifts and banks that hid its face ; and
the ice and snow, that sat silent on the hills, now sing down,
the brooks and rills, prophets of the coming flowers !

Behold ! The buried earth is yet alive ! It was not dead ;
it only slept. The great population of roots beneath the soil
is yet there. The wheat is ready, the early-springing weeds
are ready, the flowers are ready. At the voice of God, from
the brown heath shall come living greenness, from the empty
stick shall nod and wave tufts of leaves, and ten thousand
flowers shall unfurl their banners, and begin the royal march of
the year, to the music of heaven full of birds and small singing
insects ! Nothing has been lost — nothing has been harmed.

Nothing lost? Then where are the leaves of last summer?
Where are the roses of last June, the grass of August, the
rushes and reeds, the orchards and their fruit, the golden-rod
of September, and the asters and chrysanthemums of October ?
They have changed, not perished. They have fallen down to
the earth, and lie at the root, and yield themselves to the uses
of the new summer, and new life is springing from the old.
The old nurses the new. Life is feeding at the breast of death.
Dying is but a new start for life.

So the very death of the year is not harmful. God
watches the snow, and all that is beneath it. The very winter
is his stern messenger of good — a rugged benefactor, every one
of whose strokes are kind, whose very chains arc the prophecies
of unloosing, and whose destructions are but preparations for
resurrection.

Under all our winters lie flowers. Yea, beneath death itself,
heaven is waiting ; and immortality sings but just beyond the
sigh of desolation and the touch of weakness.

But we must not spend our time in this only view, though
much more might be reaped in this harvest-field of snow.

THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS. 1 5 3,

II. This whole representation strikes, in the very centre, a
feeling, almost universal, of unfaith in moral power in com-
parison with physical power. It was this that called forth
some of the siiblimest teachings of the Old Testament. Men
have become used to judge by their senses, and to estimate
causes by physical tests.

We are obliged to transfer language and illustration from the
physical to the moral realm. But the laws of the two are so
very diverse, that no error is more sure to follow false reasoning
than that which follows the application of the rules of judgment
in the one realm to the other. It was because of this that
Christ said : " The kingdom of heaven cometh not with obser-
vation " — that is, it does not address itself to the senses, the
eye, the ear, the hand. The kingdom of heaven is a silent and
hidden thing, like leaven hidden in three measures of meal.
The kingdom of heaven begins a great way off from its end,
dawning Hke the faintest star, and shining brighter and brighter
unto the perfect day.

And so is the reverse true ; namely, that the existence and
prevalence of powers apparently adverse to moral progress is
no token of decadence of good, and no cause of fear.

If we had had no experience, I cannot imagine anything more
shocking than a summer storm. It is because we have outlived
so many that we do not fear them. We have seen both ends,
and measure now the terrible brow of the coming storm by our
memory of its retreating glory. But what if one who had never
known any such experience could be placed in summer so as
to witness the coming, the power, and the end of a thunder-
shower !

The whole heaven is calm and blue. The tallest-stemmed
flowers stand quiet in the windless air, except when a bee rocks
them — not the topmost leaf stirs. Children are all a-frolic.
Beasts roam at leisure through the pastures. The brooks gurgle,
and flash the colour of their pebbles through their changing
waters. Birds sing, or sit in cozy corners to plume their feathers.
Still the furrow follows the plough, and the shout of the driver
to his oxen comes back from the hill-side in soft mockery.

But suddenly, straight out of the west come clouds, that
gather w^ithout call of trumpet, and make haste, and spread,
rushingsilent, but swifter than the swiftest steed. The sun is
gone out. Strange colours, awfully contrasted, sully the blue.
Puffs of wind whirl dust along the road. Men drop their work,
unyoke the uneasy oxen, and run for the nearest shelter. Crows
and gulls are making their way through the air. Children run

154 THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS.

home. The traveller lays on the whip, with eye askance at the
coming clouds. The cliffs of darkness are mounting higher.
Already the distant haze shuts out the horizon and the remote
fields from sight. Uncertain winds, like aides-de-camp on the
eve of battle, rush with might, or suddenly lull and stand
utterly still. A few drops come down.

All at once the heaven crashes with outspeaking thunders.
The skies have suddenly fallen down. Trees writhe, and bend,
and groan. Chimneys sound hoarse diapason. The founda-
tions are broken up. The roar of rain, and the wrench and
rock of winds, the settled gloom of cloud and water, em-
broidered with lines of lightning, and the mingling of all things
above and beneath in a wild fury of commotion — tell me !
would it be strange if an unaccustomed man, seeing this without
previous experience, should deem the end of the world itself to
have come ?

But what has happened? After a due course, the rain
grows lighter ; the winds now drive away what first they drove
on ; they dash upon the grey wreaths grown thin by raining.
The blue was never so blue, never so pale, never so all-hued ;
but grey-blue or indigo-blue, it was never so pure to our thinking.
The fields come to sight again. Yonder is an oak that the
lightning struck and split. A few twisted branches lie by the
trees. Besides this, nothing has suffered harm. The furrow
has not yet swallowed its water. The roads and fields have a
thousand mirrors, in which grass and flowers may arrange their
dishevelled tresses. Birds were never so unwet, and chant
down the storm that silently moves away in the distance, with
God's banner of victory lifted up in rainbow upon it. And
men, regaining their liberty, laugh and gratulate each other at
the blessings of the storm. Nothing is hurt ; everything is safe,
everything is fed, and everything rejoices.

III. But one other point I will make before passing to some
applications, still following out this figure.

Can any man imagine a greater difference between cause and
effect than that to which we are accustomed in the survey of
nature ? Who can imagine a greater difference than exists
between the rain-drop when it tails, and the rain-drop when
it re-appears speedily in vegetable growths — in the grass, the
flower, the stalwart tree ? It comes from the cloud, and rests
upon the earth; but speedily it is caught up, and set to work
in the strange enginery of nature. It finds its way into life,
and in that life it makes acquaintance, through the leaves, with
the sun. How different is it from the rain-drop that fell in

THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS. 1 55

the late shower, when it shakes itself in the leaf, rustles in the
grass, or forms a part of those luscious juices of the fruit that
tempt the eye and the palate ! It fell rain ; it comes forth a
leaf. It fell a liquid, transparent drop : it rises in varied forms
of beauty and use. Who, looking upon the leaves of to-day,
would dream that they are those drops that fell last week in
that grey storm ? And yet they are. You cannot tell by the
way a cause strikes the earth what is the form of the effect it
shall produce when it enters the laboratory where God is the
chemist and the worker.

Having sufficiently followed out, in the spirit of the figure
itself, these images in nature, let me now pass, in closing, to
speak of one or two points of application^, which I shall treat
purely in their moral forms.

I. The power of goodness, even in its least forms, in this
world is never lost. And it was with reference to this very
thing that this whole passage was spoken : — " Seek ye the
Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is
near : let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man
his thoughts : and let him return unto the Lord, and He will
have mercy upon him ; and to our God, for He will abun-
dantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than
your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the
rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth
not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth
and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the
eater; so shall My word be that goeth forth out of my mouth : it
shall not return unto me void ; but it shall accomplish that which
I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

It is the continuity, the certain preservation, and the final
efficiency of every moral influence for good that issues from
the heart of God that is here taught, and guarded against
scepticism. We, divinely instructed, borrow these same
influences from God, who broods over us. And as there shall
not be one single influence for good let forth from the mind of
God that shall dare to report itself an empty-handed servant —
as every such influence shall do the errand whereto it is sent,
so likewise every single influence for good that we borrow
from God, in the lowest as well as the highest spheres, shall
not return unto us void. Like the rain, it maybe hidden;
like the snow, it may dissolve out of our sight, but it shall not
fail to accomplish its legitimate result.

156 THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS.

There has not been one single genuine cause of good; there
has not been one single good enthusiasm that has set on fire
some heart ; there has not been one single breath of love that
has touched the higher feelings of some soul ; there has not
been one single volition or power that has been followed by
appropriate action, in all the periods of time, that has failed to
do its appointed work. Seeds perish by the thousand; ten
thousand things in the vegetable world seem to be cut short
in the initial stage of their growth ; but there has not been one
influence for good, for purity, for justice, for mercy, for
integrity, for spirituality in the world, that has come to nothing.
Such influences have in every case accomplished the thing
whereto they were sent, and prospered in their errand, though
we may not have been able to trace them to their final issues.
However much good you may do, you may be sure that none
of it will be done in vain, although the effects which it
produces may be hidden from your view. You are not to
know by the registering of the eye, or the measuring of the
senses, all the results of the good you accomplished.

Some men seem to themselves to be useful only when they
can measure_ the effects of their conduct; but these things
have been hidden from the eye of men. Heroic men, who
lived before the days of Christ— noble old prophet souls-
longed to behold the sight of coming glory to hasten which
their deeds had contributed, but they died without that sight.
They could not trace those deeds to their consequences. But
all the stripes and persecutions that men have borne for the
sake of goodness ; all the sympathy that they have treasured
up in their hearts for their fellow-men ; all the blood that they
have poured out for the cause of truth and righteousness— all
this has been garnered and placed to their account, not in the
books of men— God has taken care of it ; and He stands say-
ing, for the encouragement of His fainting children, "As the
rain and the snow which come down about you to-day shall
not return without accomplishing that whereto it is sent, so not
the slightest thing put forth for goodness, and usefulness, and
purity shall perish. Though it disappear, though it be hidden,
it is that it may do its oftice-work."

Do not work when you are in the sunshine alone. Do not
count only those things useful the effects of which you can see.
The results of usefulness are often covered up. It is well that
it is so, for man's pride and vanity easily get drunk on the wine
of success. From those, therefore, that do the most is hidden
much that they do. It is not best that they should know it all.

THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS. 1 57

But God knows it; and there comes a registering day, a
reaping day, an exhibition day, a day of welcoming and
gratulation, when good men go home to heaven to be surprised
with the harvest of which they only sowed the seed — the much
that has come from the little.

A farmer goes to market to purchase grain. He puts the
bags containing it into his waggon, and drives slowly home.
As the waggon jolts over the stony road, one of the bags
becomes untied, and the grain is scattered along the way.
The birds catch some, fly off with it, and drop it in distant
places. Some is blown in different directions by the winds.
Thus the farmer goes on for leagues w^ithout knowing what he
is doing. But the next summer finds the scattered seed; it
starts, and grows, and when he sees his own grain he does not
know it. He did not even know that he lost it. And so with
good deeds. Men often perform them unconsciously, and they
bear fruit ; and when they see that fruit they do not know that
it is the result of anything they have done.

2. The advance of this world in goodness is not to be
judged by the outward sight. It is not to be judged by the
opinions of men — not by the opinions of even good men.
We cannot tell the power of moral influences by any external
signs. One thing we know, and that is, that there is nothing
so powerful in nature as there is in the moral influences which
God exerts on the world. Napoleon used to say that the
moral influence of his army was worth forty thousand soldiers.
The invisible moral influence which he carried with him then
was another vast army ! And men are finding out in these
later days that there is no other power so strong as influence —
and by influence we mean the power received by one mind from
other minds, in distinction from physical power. You are not to
form your estimate of the power of civilisation in the world from
what you see of civilising processes, nor of the power of love
from the exponents which you see of this power. You cannot
see what has been the power of Christianity in the world for
the last eighteen hundred years. Men speak of the long
delay of the fruits of Christianity. They say, " It began more
than eighteen hundred years ago, and yet the things that it
was promised should be wrought by it have not yet been
wrought." But who can tell how much has been wrought by
it ? You might as well undertake to tell how many seeds have
grown since the flood, as to tell what has been wrought by
Christianity in the world ! What data have you from which to
reckon respecting ?uch things? The subtle, hidden, recondite,

158 THE STORM AND ITS LESSONS.

unknown, mysterious influences that are working in the nursery,
in the school, in all forms of business, in the mechanic arts, in
commerce, in politics, in literature, in the ten thousand
departments and organisations of society — who can estimate
them ? The root or the stem w^e can see, but it is only by and
bye that we shall see the blossom ; and those who live in the
harvest periods of the world will say, " How fast the world
grew when men thought it stood still ! "

3. The seeming disasters which come upon the cause of
rehgion, and upon the various virtues which it is sending forth
among men, need not give us any concern. You can kill a
seed, and that which has sprouted from it, in the vegetable
kingdom ; but not so in the moral kingdom. When a seed is
dropped from the hand of God you cannot kill the seed, and
you cannot kill that which has sprouted from it ; neither can
you crowd that which has sprouted back into the seed. You
may be sure that when any moral influence for good has begun
to grow, it will continue to grow. It may be hidden in one
age, but it will be revealed in another. It may be eclipsed in
one hemisphere, but it wall shine forth in another. It may
change in its manner of working, but it will never go backward.
The world has never lost any of its influences for good. It
has been steadily adding to those influences. Winter broods and
preserves under its protecting snow the very roots whose leaves
it slew, and gives them a new lease of summer. Reactions
and reverses are but leaf-stripping, not root-killing powers !

In 1848 all Europe stood on tiptoe to see liberty, which
they thought was very near. Then a reaction came on, and all
Europe mourned because tyranny had reasserted its strength.
But tyranny had gained nothing, and liberty had lost nothing.
Liberty, like leaven, has been working there all the time, in
channels where men have failed to discern it, so that there is
more liberty in Europe now than there was in 1848. Italy
could not have maintained such liberty in 1848 as she has in
1859 ; and what she is achieving by moral power she is
prepared to sustain with physical courage. There was never
before so much liberty in the world as there is to-day.

It is said that such terrible disasters as that which has just
taken place in a sister state put back the cause of emanci-
pation.* Put back the cause of emancipation ! You might as

* In October, 1859, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, was invaded by a band
of twenty-two men, under the lead of John Brown, for the purpose of
instigating a general slave insurrection. The attempt failed. John Brown
was captured, tried on a charge of treason and. murder, and executed on
the 2nd of December, 1859, two days before the preaching of this sermon.

THE STORM AND ITS LESSOXS. 1 59

well talk of reversing the decrees of God ! It was said that
the insurrection of 1830 put back the liberty of the slave ; yet
ever since that time a spirit of liberty has been at work among
us, which was unknown even in revolutionary periods, and it
has accomplished for human rights that which it would ordi-
narily have taken hundred of years to accomplish.

A man takes a seed, and says: "You want to grow; you shall
not; I will put you where you cannot;" and he stamps it into
the ground. It is gone ! There is not a thing to be seen of it !
But the rains will find it, and the sun will come and whisper
hope to it, and the root will not ask permission to grow the
downward way, and the stalk will take permission to grow the
upward way, and that which was supposed to be stamped into its
grave shall find itself alive, and shall multiply a hundred-fold.

Now all the efforts that are being made to put back the cause
of liberty will prove to be but so many means for hastening the
day of its consummation. I like the tyrant's flail. I like to see
him plough. I like to see him make himself asinine for breaking
up the ground. I like to see him do a yeoman's duty in the
field. He is sowing the seed for the harvest of liberty. For
God, and not man, reigns in the earth. Men think they are
directing their own course, but God is steering them into His
own harbours.

God presides over all things, and over all men. He shapes
our courses. He loves the world, and bears it in His arms as
a mother carries her child in her bosom. He watches over it.
He smiles at the fantasies of tyranny, and mocks the heirs of
oppressors. He knows in his heart that the day is coming
when every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, and
none shall make him afraid.

There is to me promise in the rain-drops of to-day, now that
I have learned to read them. I hear the voice of God saying
to my heart: "As the rain cometh down from heaven, and
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it
bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and
bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goeth forth out of
My mouth ; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accom-
plish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it." Even so: Thy word is for religion, for love,
for liberty, for justice ; and Thy word shall abide for ever !

XII.
FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS.

" Hf. that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much : and
he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much." — Luke xvi. lo.

The teaching of our Lord may be characterised as instinct with
a direct formative power upon the disposition and character.
The instruments He employed were the great moral truths of
nature and of grace. He spent no time in teaching us the
relations of one truth to another, and the coherence of the whole
into a system. This was a point in which He differed from,
and contrasted with, philosophic teachers. He mainly taught
the relation of grand moral truths to our moral sense, to our
feelings, and to our conduct. The record of Christ's teachings
is peculiarly full of ethical matter. It is rich beyond all other
teaching in sentiment, in spiritual truth, in food for the highest
reflection, and for the profoundest mystical experience. But
its front, its most noticeable aspect, is that of a scheme of
education, designed immediately as well as remotely to act
upon men's lives and upon their characters, to fashion them for
immortality and glory.

As we might suppose, the very root of moral character is
represented in Christ's teachings to be Truth. The term
righteousness covers the whole product of the faculty of con-
science. It is justice, truth, equity, fairness, uprightness,
integrity, purity, frankness, and whatever other word we employ
to signify truth in its ramification, and in its application to
human disposition and life. Even love, that is the highest
attainment of the human soul, cannot be developed indepen-
dently of conscience. Truth is the golden sandal in which
love must walk. Without the sandals of truth, love is like a
fair virgin wandering in a wilderness full of thorns and nettles,
with naked feet, which soon are torn and poisoned so that she
cannot move. There is not one of the moral sentiments that
can unfold from any other basis than that of conscience, or, in
its large sense, truth. Truth and justice, therefore, are the soil

FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS. l6l

out of which all moral faculties may be said to grow. It is,
consequently, either commanded, exhorted, or, yet more
emphatically, implied, in every part of the Lord's teachings.

In our text the Master declares that fidelity, which is an
element of conscience, must be thorough. It must not be
an optional thing, chosen when we see that it will be better
than any other instrument to secure a desired end. It must
belong to every part of life, pervading it. It must belong to
the least things as much as to the highest. It is not a declara-
tion that little things are as important as great things. It is
not a declaration that the conscience is to regard all duties as
of one magnitude and of one importance. It is a declaration
that the habit of violating conscience, even in the least things,
produces mischiefs that at last invalidate it for the greatest,
and that is a truth that scarcely can have contradiction.

Every man is bound to love the truth; not simply
the great truths of religion, of poUtical society, of philosophy
in its wide range — but every man is bound to love the
truth of things in personal affairs ; in minute matters ; in
daily thoughts ; in feelings ; in taste ; in trifles, as well as in
things of magnitude ; in matters of praise or blame ; in
raillery and wit ; in that immense microscopic realm of
human life down below human law, and even below the
•reach of public sentiment, where men are themselves the
sole spectators of themselves ; yea, lower than that, in that
unconscious region where unperceived influences well up, and
automatic impulses and spontaneous thoughts fly out from the
soul, as sparks snap from the burning brand, and yet carry
wiih them, in their minute atomic form, the whole nature of
that brand from which they shot. Down in that very realm of
germs and beginnings of thought, God requires truth. He
fequires tn^f/i in the intvard parts.

Our Lord declares that infidelity to the conscience in small
things is intimately connected with a like dereliction in larger
ones. Little lies are seeds of great ones. Litde cruelties are
germs of great ones. Little treacheries are, like small holes in
raiment, the beginnings of large ones. Little dishonesties are
like the drops that work through the banks of the levee ; a
drop is an engineer : it tunnels a way for its fellows, and they,
■rushing, prepare for all behind them. A worm in a ship's
•plank proves, in time, worse than a cannon ball.

The whole truth comes to this : human life cannot be sound
without the presence of a sober and robust conscience in all its
parts. A series of minute derelictions, long continued, though

1 62 FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS.

of comparatively little consequence in the result of each upon
the apparent life, are of incalculable influence upon the interior
life, in their sum and final result. They deteriorate conscience
itself. They injure its tone and sensibilityc Human conduct
works in two ways. As the cannon that sends the missile far
across the field, to damage the enemy, also springs back, and
by recoil violently strains the gun carriage, and even injures
those that stand heedlessly near, so to our actions there is not
only a spring outward, but a rebound back. A great many
men attempt to judge whether a thing is right or wrong simply
by what they see that it does. Now the least part of a man's
action is that which he can see in its immediate consequences.
There be many courses of conduct in which the results before
a man's face are indifferent, or perhaps partially good, but in
which the reactive influence, the recoil upon the man's own
constitution and nature, is morally fatal. And in estimating
what is right and what is wrong, and how right and how wrong,
we are to take into account this double action — the effect
which a man's thoughts, and feelings, and judgments, and
conditions have upon his own moral nature, as well as upon
his fellows and upon the state of society. The little transgres-
sions in which men indulge, though they have no power upon
the setded course of human sflairs, even if they are swept out
into a current of public sentiment that carries them down, as
leaves are carried by the Amazon, are not harmless nor indiffer-
ent, because, aside from the influence of minor delinquencies
upon the sum of affairs outwardly, there is another history and
record, namely, their influence upon the actor. I repeat that
they deteriorate conscience. You can by a blow crush and
destroy the conscience, or you can nibble and gnaw it to
pieces. There is one way in which a lion strikes down his
prey, and there is another way in which a rat comes at its prey ;
and in time the gnawing of vermin is as fatal to beauty and life
itself as the stroke of the lion's paw. These little infidelities
to duty, truth, rectitude, lower the moral tone, limit its range,
destroy it sensibility. In short, they put out its light. It is
recorded of a lighthouse erected on a tropical shore, that it was
like to have failed for the most unlooked-for reason. When
first kindled, the brilliant light drew about it such clouds of
insects which populate the evening and night of equatorial
lands, that they covered and fairly darkened the glass. There
was a noble light that shone out into the darkness and van-
(juished night, that all the winds could not disturb, nor all the
clouds and storms hide ; but the soft wings and gauzy bodies

FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS. 1 63

of myriads of insects, each one of which was insignificant,
efFectuaJly veiled the light, and came near defeating the pro-
posed gift to mariners. And so it is in respect to the
conscience. There may be a power in it to resist great
assault, to overcome strong temptations, and to avoid fearful
dangers, but there may be a million little venomous insect
habits, unimportant in themselves taken individually, but
fearful in their results collectively.

I propose to illustrate this truth in some of its relations to
life.

In the first place, I shall speak of the heedlessness and
unconscientiousness with which men take up opinions and
form judgments, on every side and of every kind, in daily life.
In regard to events, men seldom make it a matter of conscience
to see things as they are, and hear things as they really report
themselves. They follow their curiosity, their sense of wonder,
their temper, their interests, or their prejudices, instead of
their judgment and their conscience. There are few men who
make it a point to know just what things do happen of which
they are called to speak, and just how they happen. How
many men were there round the corner ? " Twenty," says the
man, quickly. There were seven. How long did you have to
wait? *'Two hours, at least." It was just three-quarters of
an hour by the watch. So, in a thousand things that happen
every day, one man repeats what his imagination reported to
him, and another man what his impatient, irritable feelings
said to him. There are very few men that make it a matter of
deliberate conscience to see things as they are, and report
them as they happen.

The impressions that pass through men's minds of current
events, if they were taken out, measured, and analysed, would
be found not simply partial and crude — for partialness and
crudity belong to our uneducated and undeveloped state — but
without much proper moral effort to secure correctness.

Did you ever look at a camera-obscura without the double
glass by which objects are reversed ? If you take simply the
glass of the camera, everything is reflected upside down, and
inside of your room you shall see men going like flies on the
ceiling, with their feet up and their heads down, and trees
hanging with their roots up and their tops down. And if you
were to turn men's minds inside out, you would find that their
impressions of the events of life and current things are all in a
jumble, and you would see trees upside down, and men
walking unnaturally.

M — 2

164 FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS.

This becomes a great hindrance to business, clogs it, keeps
men under the necessity of revising their false impressions ;
expends time and work ; puts men on false tracks and in
wrong directions ; multiplies the burdens of life. As men that
walk in northern climates find that their own breath, rising in
a; cloud before their eyes, and freezing on their eyelashes and
upon their beard, hinders their vision, so the thoughts, and
feelings, and prejudices that rise up before the minds of men
Nind their judgments of the common things of life. More
than half of the burdensomeness of men's daily lives consists
in this — that they are obliged to turn out and trundle away
their misconceptions, and false imaginations, and wrong
measurements, and hasty judgments, and unconscientious
experiences. We are all like Penelope, except in purpose.
We knit one day, and the next unravel what we have knit.
Our life consists of zigzags instead of perpetual onward
movements, and for this reason we have a very imperfect
moral sense. We are for ever ciphering the sum over again.
Most men, I think, in respect to questions in life, are as I am
in counting money. I count only for confusion. The first
time going over the amount is a hundred dollars ; and, to
make it sure, I count again, when it is a hundred and ten ; and
as there must be an error somewhere, I count again, and it is
ninety-five ; and the longer I count the more utterly uncertain
I am what the sum is. So it is with men in reference to their
moral judgments of afi"airs. They go over, and over, and
over them, because there is a fundamental want of moral
accuracy, arising from a want of training and right habit in
that regard.

But its worse effect is seen in the judgments and prejudices
which men are Hable to entertain about their fellow-men, and
the false sentences which they are accustomed to issue, either
by word of mouth or by thoughts and feelings. In thousands
of men, the mind, if unveiled, would be found to be a Star-
chamber filled with false witnesses and cruel judgments. If
you were to go back into the old Star-chamber of England, and
read the records made of testimony given and sentences
passed by men of partial information, what a literature of hell
would those records be ! But worse than these are the cruel,
rash, hateful judgments which men form of each other in the
silence of the mind, simply because they follow their interests,
their feelings, their ]Drejudices, and not their conscience, in
ascertaining facts and coming to conclusions. Tnerefore it is
that the Word of God says, "Judge righteous judgment;"

FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS. 1 65

that is, according to conscience and equity, and not according
to passion or carelessness.

Few men would dare, if they were sworn upon a jury, to
give a heedless or a false verdict. Still fewer, if they sat as
judge, to determine law and promote justice, would consent to
employ their high position for the subversion of law and justice.
But every man is juror and judge both, sworn by God's law to
just judgments about his fellow-men. Human actions are
passing before the mind, and if conscience is in the judgment-
seat, men are apt to form right judgments of character and
conduct; but if pride, or arrogance, or selfishness, or heed-
lessness, or any of the rebel crew are sitting in that seat, then
men are accustomed to form about their fellow-men such judg-
ments as, if made in court, would outrage every principle of
justice. It only needs that a judge should once deliberately
pervert justice to blast his reputation. But there is not a single
day in which you do not, in your silent thoughts, if not in
words, asperse the character, and motives, and conduct of your
fellow-men. Although you may not do men harm by pub-
lishing your thoughts, you injure yourself by entertaining them.
It does any man harm to have wrong judgments proceed from
a biassed moral sense.

The effect in each case may be small, but if you consider the
sum-totals of a man's life, and the grand amount of the endless
scenes of false impressions, of wicked judgments, of causeless
prejudices, they will be found to be enormous.

This, however, is the least evil. It is the entire untrust-
worthiness of a moral sense which has been so dealt with that
is most to be deplored. The conscience ought to be like a
perfect mirror. It ought to reflect exactly the image that falls
upon it. A man's judgment that is kept clear by commerce
with conscience ought to reveal things as they are, facts as
tbey exist, and conduct as it occurs.

Now it is not necessary to break a mirror to pieces in
order to make it worthless. Let one go behind it with a
pencil, or with a needle of the finest point, and, with delicate
touch, make the smallest line through the silver coating of
the back; the next day let him make another line at right
angles to that; and the third day let him make still
another line parallel to the first one; and the next day let
him make another line parallel to the second, and so con-
tinue to do day by day, and one year shall not have passed
away before that mirror will be so scratched that it will
be good for nothing. It is not necessary to deal it a hard

l66 FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS.

blow to destroy its power; these delicate touches will do
it, little by little.

It is not necessary to be a murderer or a burglar in order to
destroy the moral sense; but ah ! these million little infelicities,
as they are called, these scratchings and raspings, take the
silver off from the back of the conscience — take the tone and
temper out of the moral sense.

Nay, we do not need even such mechanical force as this;
just let the apartment be uncleansed in which the mirror stands ;
let particles of dust, and the little flocculent parts of smoke,
settle, film by fihn, flake by flake, speck by speck, upon the
surface of the mirror, and its function is destroyed, so that it
will reflect neither the image of yourself nor of anything else.
Its function is as much destroyed as if it were dashed to pieces.

Not even is this needed ; only let one come so near to it
that his warm breath falling on its cold face is condensed to
vapour, and then it can make no report.

Now there are comparatively few men who destroy their
moral sense by a dash and a blow, but there is many a man
whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron. There are but
few men of whom it cannot be said that the warm breath of
passion covers their moral sense with vapour ; that the dust
and smoke of neglect settle on it and hide its face ; or that the
gentle touches of their own thoughts, and feelings, and actions
destroy its reflecting power. It is these little things, working
day by day, for weeks, and months, and years, that destroy the
purity, and so the trustworthiness, of conscience.

And so it has come to pass that men are so unreliable and
untrustworthy that, in fact, we do not trust their reports.
Children do. We trust a few men whom we have proved and
known. But it is a sad fact that as we grow older, we do not
trust men in general ; but are on our guard, and cautious whom
we trust. There is something charming in that innocence of
children which leads them to run to every one that smiles, and
something sad in that reserved, cautioning look with which the
mother draws the child back, as much as to say, " My darling,
you know nothing about him." The child is right. It follows
the impulse of its better nature. Its conduct is an index of
what this life should be, and what the heavenly life will be. But
the mother's caution is not unwise, because she has learned
that the consciences of men have little to do with their character
and conduct, and that men are not to be trusted until more
known than we ordinarily know them.

How is it with yourselves ? How many men do you trust ?

FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS. 1 67

How many men do you know that you would trust ? Could
you not count them on your hand, and then have at least four
lingers to use for something else ? I do not mean that if they
were to be waked up, and put upon their honour, and fortified
and hedged about, they could not be in some measure trusted;
but, taking affairs as they are, do you not think it necessary to
look on each side of a man, and ask, " What is his interest ?
where did he come from? what does he represent?" before
you will trust him? Is not that the process in life of men
among men ? Not bad men among bad men merely — is it not
the spontaneous action of men? Do you not find that instinc-
tively you deal with one man differently from another ? And
does not the difference turn on this — that one man goes by
obstinacy in a certain direction ; that imagination in another
leads him to exaggerate ; and that yet another is cautious,
reserved, and suspicious ? Are you not persuaded that all men
have to be taken according to their dispositions ? Do you not
know that before you take a man's testimony there is an
instantaneous sifting, like the questioning by lawyers of
witnesses on the stand, who are like shuttlecocks between
battledores, thrown back and forth, both ways, in order that
you may know whether to trust him or not, and whether what
he says is true or false ?

Look at the way in which men of the world treat other men
of the world. Look at the degree of trustworthiness which has
impressed itself upon your mind as belonging to men, and
which comes out in your involuntary daily business. Are those
men only to be characterised as equitable that have truth in
the inward parts ; that form righteous judgments ; that are
faithful in little things in order that they may be faithful in
large ? Do you find such men ? Blessed be God, I do ; just
enough to make it sure that such men can exist in this world ;
just enough to make me feel that I shall not give up humanity;
just enough to make me sure that there are ideals and models
to which I can point the young. And yet the prevaiUng experi-
ence is one that humbles us, and saddens the heart, as an
evidence of our moral deterioration.

We must know the man, and make allowance for his pecu-
liarities. We have to bring together concurrent testimonies,
and make an average, and so arrive at conclusions respecting
probabilities. The judgment and conscience are rarely, if ever,
presumed to give a true report. We have to go into a calcu-
lation to find out what is true.

This is revealed in all our courts. Men's senses are known

l68 FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS.

to lie, not merely on purpose, but through heedlessness. It is a
very common thing for men not to see what they look at, and
not to hear what sounds in their ears. It is supposed that a
man's eyesight is the most reliable testimony. You will often
hear a man say, " Do you not believe me ? I saw it myself."
That is the very reason why I do not believe most men,
because there is nothing wath reference to which men are so
often mistaken as the things that they look at ; for having eyes
they see not.

I stayed last Friday night at the Continental Hotel in Phila-
delphia, where they have a sliding chamber that runs up from
a lower floor to the fifth storey, following an immense column
of iron, cut like a screw, which is stationary, in the centre. If
you stand below the chamber, no person can persuade you
that that column does not rise and fall, such is the effect
produced on the eye by the spiral motion. You cannot make
yourself feel that that column is not ascending and descending,
carrying with it a fixed chamber. Your eye lies. The column,
turns round, but it does not ascend or descend a particle.
Now get into the chamber. There is an iron column extend-
ing from top to bottom of the building. In that chamber yoU'
are carried up and down, and the column stands still ; and yet
I defy you to make it seem as though anything moved but the
column. If you went by your sense of seeing, you would
declare that the chamber did not move. Under such circum-
stances, one would be apt to say, "The chamber is stationary,
and the column moves, or there is no truth in eyesight."' That
is it— there is no absolute or infallible truth in cyeright. The
column is the only thing that is stationary. Men say, " I saw
it," as though that settled the controversy. Ah ! if you saw it,
then I do not believe you. And cur courts have pronounced
an implied judgment upon the fallibleness of men's senses. It
is not till you have put one eyesight with another, and one ear
with another, and made a sort of equation of errors, that you
can come to anything like a certainty of judgment.

The effect of this is not merely to teach us the moral lesson
that man is fallible: it is to diminish the trust of man in man.
And what is the effect of diminishing that? It is to introduce
an element which dissevers society, which drives men away
^rom one another, and takes away our strength. Faith in man,
trust in man, is the great law of cohesion in human society.
Anything that makes men distrust or waver in their confidence,
anything that wakes up their suspicions, really lends to disin-
tegrate and separate them. By as much as you lack faith, you

FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS. 1 69

lose unity, and with it power and helpfulness, and lay the
foundation for mischiefs.

And so this infidelity in little things and little duties works
both inwardly as well as outwardly. It deteriorates the moral
sense ; it makes men unreliable ; it makes man stand in doubt
of man ; it loosens the ties that bind society together, and
make it strong; it is the very counteracting agent of that
divine love which was meant to bring men together in power.

The same truth, yet more apparently, and with more melan-
choly results, is seen in the untrustworthiness and infidelity of
men in matters of honesty and dishonesty. The man that
steals one penny is — ^just as great a transgressor as if he stole
a thousand dollars? No, not that. The man that steals one
single penny is — as great a transgressor against the laws of
society as if he stole a thousand dollars ? No, not exactly
that. The man that steals one penny is — just as great a
transgressor against the commercial interests of men as if he
stole a thosand dollars? No, not that. The man that steals
a penny is just as great a transgressor against the pimiy of liis
own conscience as if he stole a million of dollars. When a man
makes up his mind that he will be a thorough-paced villain,
and steal like a cashier, he does not do himself any more
damage in his moral sense than when he says, " I will filch a
])enny." To steal large sums damages the firm, damages the
bank, damages the commercial interests of the community;
but, so far as moral deterioration is concerned, the moment a
man says, '* I will do wrong," the damage is done ; the glass is
broken; the mirror is defaced ; the conscience is soiled. He
cannot do more if he says, "I will do a double wrong, or a
triple wrong." And there is the great mischief of it. There
is an impression that the culpability of things bears some
proportion to their magnitude. To steal an apple is not much.
In steahng it you do not get much ; but you get all the damage
that you would if it was a golden apple. To betray a small
trust has the same moral effect as to betray a large one.

Do you stand at a bank counter, and present a check for a
thousand dollars? and does the man behind the counter, in
his haste, hand you eleven hundred dollars? and do you walk
away, saying, ''It is his business to take care of his own aftairs :
I will take care of mine?" You are a thief! The law of
honesty is that no man shall take a thing without rendering an
equivalent, and that law you have violated. If that man
blunders in finance, it is no reason why you should steal. And
yet how many men are there, that, if they were to take a

lyo FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS.

thousand, a hundred, or ten, or five dollars too much, would
think of returning it? You say that corporations have no
souls. Vou will not have any that is worth anything long if
you pursue such a course.

How many men are there that, when looking over the
money that they have received during the day, and, seeing a
bill that appears like a counterfeit bill, do not like to look at
it again, and thrust it into the drawer? You have taken a
circuitous way to make yourself a scoundrel. You saw it
sufficiently to produce the conviction on your mind that it was
counterfeit ; and the moral effect of passing it is the same as
though you knew it to be counterfeit. Or do you take it up
and say, " Well, somebody has passed it on me, and I have a
right to shove it along ? " Why, you are a counterfeiter ! I
tell you, my friend, it only requires the opportunity to lead you
to forge bills and put them on other men ! Do you protest
and say, " Do you expect that I am going to lose that
money? " It is a choice between losing the money and losing
your conscience. I do not know what a person would not do
who is willing to throw his manhood away for the sake of a
little money. And if you are going to sell yourself, do not
sell yourself for a dollar bill, or a five-dollar bill— though I
think such a man would get enough for himself even at such a
price.

I do not know of any buyer that pays such high prices as
the devil pays when he buys men. Here is a man that sells
himself for about one-eighth of a pound of chicory in a pound
of coffee. He sells himself to every customer that comes in.
He adidterates. He prepares his commodity v.dth a lie, and
retails it with another lie. Every time a man commits a known
dishonesty, he sells his soul ; and thousands of men are selling
themselves by little driblets. A man who sells himself thus —
cheats himself? No, he cheats the devil. The devil pays too
much for him !

How many men are there who, if, through carelessness, the
conductor neglected to punch their railroad ticket, and they
found it in their pocket the next day, would not take it out,
and look at it, and say, " I think I will use that again ? " You
paid for that ticket a dollar ? Yes. You have had service to
the amount of a dollar? Yes. If, then, you ride with that
ticket again, you steal one dollar from the railroad company
as much as if you went to the till and took a dollar. And yet,
how many men would not ride twice with a ticket under such
circumstances — yes, forty times ?

FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS. 171

I am informed that before the commutation system was
abandoned by the ferry company, men of property and good
standing in society would boldly declare that they had a
commutation ticket in their pocket when they had none, for
the sake of going through without paying; They did this
when the ferryage was but one penny. They lied for one cent !

I pity the devil. I do not know what he does with such
men. It is awful to be chief magistrate of a parcel of men like
these, I cannot understand how these exiguous, thrice-
squeezed men can be managed.

I have given you but one or two instances of this kind ; bat
if you comb society you will find it to be full of just such little
meannesses — things that men do with the cock of the eye, or
with dexterity of finger ; misunderstandings ; overreachings ;
underplottings ', all sorts of trickery — which pivot on essential
dishonesty.

And these rebound. They destroy the moral sense. If you
go to-night to a bank, and break through the door and rob the
safe, or work above it, and spUt the granite over it, you are not
more dishonest than you would be if you only ran away with a
sixpence that did not belong to you.

The danger of these little things is veiled under a false im-
pression. You will hear a man say of his boy, " Though he
may tell a little lie, he would not tell a big one ; though he may
practise a little deceit, he would not practise a big one ; though
he may commit a little dishonesty, he would not commit a big
one." But these Httle things are the ones that destroy the
honour, and the moral sense, and throw down the fence, and
let a whole herd of bufi'aloes of temptation drive right through
you. Criminals that die on the gallows ; miserable creatures
that end their days in poorhouses ; wretched beings that hide
themselves in loathsome places in cities ; men that are driven
as exiles across the sea and over the world — these are the ends
of little things, the beginnings of which were thought to be safe.
It is these little things that constitute your peculiar temptation
and your worst danger.

Take heed, parents — you that are training your children —
take heed what God says to you ; ye that are young, take heed
what God says ; and let us all take heed. *' He that is faithful
in that which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that is
unjust in the least is unjust also in much."

xni.

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

*' And they came to Jericho : and as Jesus went out of Jericho with His
disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimseus, the son of
Timseus, sat by the highway-side begging. And when he heard that
it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son
of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should
hold his peace : but he cried the more a great deal, thou son of David,
have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be
called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, be of good
comfort, rise ; He calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment,
rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What
wilt thou that 1 should do unto thee? The blind man said unto Him,
Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy
way ; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received
his sight, and followed Jesus in the way." — Mark x. 46 — 52.

The place was near Jericho, a city about eighteen miles north
of Jerusalem, and seven west of the Jordan. The scene was
one of wondrous interest.

Emerging from Jericho came the more nimble and excitable
part of the people, for the narrative shows that there were some
who came up to the blind man in advance of the Saviour. Then
following were women leading their little children, and old men
making their way as best they could. There was a mixed multi-
tude, doubtless, surging around the Saviour, and in turn coming
up, or dropping back to let others come ; while He came,
patient, collected, clear-faced, large-eyed — eyes that looked full
upon you ; not jjiercing, or searching, as if seeking to know, but
with a comprehending gaze, as if He included, and understood
fully, every one that He looked upon, and needed not that any
should tell Him what was in man ; talking to those about Him,
never with outward excitement, but with that deep inward feeling
which causes one's words to rebound from your heart, fluttering
it with strange excitement and mysterious feelings.

By turns He listened to (juestions, and replied ; or he heard
with a gentle attentiveness the interchange of words in the crowd,
one with another, answering matters only when referred to Him.
Now and then some event would be seized, or some object pointed
out, by which He would illustrate a truth so vividly that no
man ever saw the fig-lrce, the stone, the flower, the sparrow,

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. 1 73

the city or building again, without recalling the truth for which
it had served as a text. When the noon grew torrid, the crowd
would scatter and shelter themselves. At evening, gathering
again, they would move on. In this, to us, strange way our
Saviour accomplished the greater part of His teaching. He ivenf
about doing good. And along the path of such wanderings it was
that He met the occasions for His most remarkable miracles.

It was such a progress as this that had now just begun.

The contrast to this picture could not have been thrown in
more artistically, by opposition of circumstances, had the scene
been arranged merely for effect, for, in truth, nature and life
are the true artists.

A blind man there was, sitting by the wayside. Oh, to be
blind ! To see no face ; to read no book ; to behold no field,
or tree, or flower ; to have no morning and no evening, but
unbroken night for ever ; to see no coming spring, no changes
in the purpling bark of yet unleaved trees, no sprouting grass,
no coming birds ; to see neither father nor mother, neither
friend nor companion ; and oh ! to lose the ineffable bounty
of God in little children, that fill the eyes with such delight
that one might for hours ask only to wander and gaze upon
them ; to be among those that see, and you not to see ; to be
unable to look when one cries, '' Lo here— lo there ! " to
almost forget that you do not see, and accept darkness as if it
were light, timid steps and groping for manly walking — this is
indeed a bitter thing !

Yet there are many consolations to the blind who have
kindred, and maintenance, and home. But to be blind and
be a beggar ; to make your misfortune the capital of your trade ;
to parade your sightless eyes ; to sit with professional expec-
tancy till the face fixes itself to the piteous look of mendicancy;
to solicit and gather nothing ; to become used to rebuff and
neglect; to sit all day by the street or road, as a fisher by a
stream; to cast your angle for a dole, as he his bait for a
hungry fish— this is bitter; bitterer yet if the victim -feels his
degradation, and still worse if he does not, for then the man is
blind inwardly : he has lost two pairs of eyes, the outward and
the inner.

It was such a one that sat begging by the wayside. It was
near, I have said, to Jericho. Past him there would flow the
double stream. He had chosen his place skilfully. It was
where two streams met — the coming in and the going out of
the people, to and from the city ; those whose journey was
almost done, and who felt good-natured at the prospect of

174 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

soon reaching home ; and those who were just going away, and
were lithe and fresh upon the outset of their travel. No step
could fall and his ear not detect it. Rendered acute by
serving for two senses, the ear discriminated whether it was an
old man, by the heavy and unspringing tread; or mid-manhood,
by its energy and haste ; or youth, by its nimbleness and
waywardness; whether the soft step was a maiden's, or the
heavy tramp a soldier's.

To such an ear there came a sound which it could not miss.
What was it? Many feet, and the murmuring sound of voices.
An army? Was there an insurrection, then? It was not a
measured tread — it was no array. Was is some procession of
people for religious observance ? No festival day was this.
Such days were too good harvests for the blind man to miss
the calender of charity. It was a strange' sound coming on —
drawing nearer. He turned to it. Now came the clearer
sounds of those that led the crowd. Their voices grew near,
and he cried out as they came, asking what it meant. The
more affable of them told him, " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by."

What thing has happened to him? His face grows pale.
He trembles all over. His hands begin to learn a new art of
supplication. What was there in this name, Jesus of Nazareth,
that should work such an excitement as fills the poor beggar?
Ah ! he had heard of him. Who had not ? It was he who
had raised the dying from death. It was he who had restored
cripples innumerable. He had touched with coolness those
that were parched with fevers. Wherever He went, somebody
got well. Whoever had ailments, and came to Jesus, was
healed of whatsoever plague he had. The news was not
sluggish. Everybody had heard of it. The very air was full
of it. He had heard and pondered it. He had doubtless
known that Christ had put clay on the eyes of a blind man — a
man blind from birth — and restored him to sight. Know who
it was ? Indeed he did ! He had promised himself, I doubt
not^ often, that if ever he had a chance, there should be an
opportunity for a new miracle. And now, oh, unlooked-for
happiness ! oh, joyful chance ! here came that very being who
filled the land with tumult, the priests with rage, and the
people with joy.

Our troubles are not at all times alike troublesome to us.
Even the sea ceases its motion at times, and its surf forgets to
murmur. Griefs -and cares, bitter memories, and heavy troubles
intermit their tyranny, and come again with redoubled oppres-
sion. Like tides, sorrows seem sometimes to flow out, and

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

175

leave the sands bare. But again they sometimes rush in upon
us like tides, as if they feared that something should have
snatched from them their lawful prey.

And just so, I trow, came over this begging blind man, at this
moment, an unutterable pang at the consciousness of his blind-
ness. A moment before he could have laughed, and shot back
a merry quip at some thoughtless jest that touched his eyes.
But now that the Healer has come, now that he might be
restored, he was in a serious and earnest mood. Why, to open
a blind man's eyes is to give him the whole world ! And oh,
to be so near a cure, to be within the sound of that voice that
commanded life and death, that awoke the grave, that drove
diseases from the body and sins from the soul, and yet to lose
the chance 1 Such a piercing sense there must have been of
his deprivation, such an unutterable desire for sight, such eager
hope that his deliverance was at hand, and such trembling fear
lest it might fail, that it is no wonder that he lost all sense of
propriety, and did so cry and demean himself as to strike sur-
prise and offence to the nearest men around about him.

And what did he cry? "Jesus, thou son of David, have
mercy on me."

It is given in Luke's Gospel with some variations, and with
some additional circumstances, though the account is substan-
tially like that in Mark.

" Hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant.
And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And
he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me."

It is a little interesting to notice how differently a man's
troubles strike him and those that are only spectators.

While he thus cried out, and the irresistible necessity of im-
ploration was upon him, while his heart was like a rushing
river, and was seeking the flow out from his mouth, his eyes
being stopped, those about him naturally had a sense of the
violation of propriety : for it was out of place for a beggar to
make such a clamour as the royal procession with the Master
of life and death was going by.

And so they said to him, " Hush ! be still ! be decent ! be
quiet ! " They " charged him that he should hold his peace."
But what did he care for their advice ? He walked over it as
lordly as ever a king walked among peasants. Nay, " he cried
the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me."
The attempt to stop him only excited him, and made more
impetuous that which was sufficiently earnest before.

Now the scene changes : the crowd surge, and stop, and

176 THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

gather around the centre; for the jNIaster has heard and seen,
and He knows all. "Jesus stood still, and commanded him
to be called." And now all were curious, and with that fitful
change which is so characteristic of the ignorant, they who
before had been clamorous to keep him still, ran good-naturedly
to say to him : " Be of good comfort; rise, He calleth thee."
And the blind man, " casting away his garment," throwing
everything away from him that encumbered him, sprang toward
the sound, and wondered from whence it came. He "rose,
and came to Jesus." He could not see Him. He could only
know of His presence by the sound of His voice. "And Jesus
answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do
unto thee?" He knew what he wanted to have done, but
Christ always loved to be asked. " The blind man said unto
Him, Lord, that I might receive my sight." There was not in
all the world another thing that he would have Christ to give
him. He might have offered him wealth, honour, all bounty
of life ; but the intense desire of his soul was wrapped up in
that one thing — "Cure me of my ailment; give me light; make
me as other men that see the sun and all the fair things of
earth; heal me." Then Christ spake, and it was done. He
that brought forth the light in the morning of creation, by a
word brought dawn upon this blind man's eyes. He said to
him, "Go thy way; thy faith hatli made the whole." No man
ever put trust in Christ that did not find Him more than He has
promised. And what was the way that He went ? "' Imme-
diately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way."

Luke, in narrating the same scene, says, " Jesus said unto
him. Receive thy sight : thy faith hath saved thee. And imme-
diately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God;
and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God."

Here was another of those marvels. The crowd, no longer
indifferent, now, doubtless, gather about to participate in won-
drous joy, and praise God, when the man began to give utter-
ance to his pious feeling. It seems that he saw twice : he saw
with the outward man and with the inward man : and he was
healed more than he himself meant to be.

Was he only the blind man ? Was his blindness the only
misfortune? Since the days of Christ, to this hour, has the
Saviour, in His Providence or His grace, passed by in any
v;ay when there have not sat blind men heedless, ignorant of
His coming? I am not speaking alone of those who are blind
so that they cannot see the sun, the moon, the stars, and all
the endless objects that God has created. There is another

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. 177

realm besides the physical. There are other things besides
those that can be discerned with the material eye. There is a
spiritual realm. And that man who cannot perceive God in
nature is blind. The heavens declare His glory, and the firma-
ment showeth His handiwork. The world is full of the
evidences of His being and presence. And yet there are many
that gaze minutely upon all these letters written upon sky and
ground, and never discern the secret of the literature. They
admire nature, but never God. They admire the treasures of
nature, but never the Hand that created them.

There be many that do not see the providence of God as it
is displayed in them, and through them, and about them, in the
order of things, and in the accomplishment of divine purposes.
In the complex affairs of men, in all the concerns of life and
society, there is a living God, divining, deciding, ordering, and
yet there be many that set their faces against this procession of
things, and neither discern it nor understand it.

Nay, there be those that understand neither the things that
are outside of them, nor the things that are in them ; men that
do not know what they are themselves, and that do not see
what is their miserable condition. The blind man knew that
he was blind ; but in the case of those of whom I speak, there
is added to their blindness the curse of not knowing that they
are blind. Like those mentioned in the Apocalypse, they are
naked, and hungry, and sick, and miserable, though they are
where there is an abundance of everything that they need.

There are those who see nothing in spiritual life ; nothing in
their own sinful condition and its misery ; nothing in the
Christian's life — no joy, no triumph, no argument of courage
and hope.

There are those who see no beauty in the source of Christian
life, in the revelation of God. Especially they are enlightened
in all the elements of the character of Christ— in all the
processes of His official work. In all His promises or truths
there is to them nothing that has form or comeliness. They
look upon these things, they hear them described, and they
follow the disquisition, and yet they are blind to them.

Are there no such blind persons here ? Are there none that
have looked wisfully upon the offices of the Church, and longed
that they might see ? None that have often and often in mind,
turned toward God and wished that they might discern ? None
upon whom spiritual darkness rests like a pall ? None that have
sought by various ways to lift the veil and curtain, and have
obtained no benefit, but grown rather worse by much helping?

N

lyS THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

It is to such that Jesus comes to-night. Ke passes by when-
ever His name or word is proclaimed. As along the road from
Jericho He passed within sound of the blind man, so to-night,
by His spirit and by His truth, He passes not far from every
one that is here. And if there were the same sense of misfor-
tune, the same intense yearning for relief, the same impetuous
outcry, and the same irresistible faith with which Bartimseus,
the son of Timceus, came to Christ, there should be no blind
man among you unsuccoured or unhealed.

But there are special cases of blindness. There are those w^ho
seem to have lost, almost entirely, the sense of their condition,
so as no longer to be able to gauge, in any wise, their progress.

Men grow worse and worse — harder and harder ; and they
go further and further from God and from hope, and yet do
not see nor appreciate their danger. There are those who are
fast preparing to leave these earthly scenes, who have upon
them all the signs and tokens that they are departing, and yet
they are blind to these marks of decay, which all others note.
You only do not notice the frosts upon your own head. The
teeth drop from their places, the eye grows dim, the hearing
is a little less acute, there is a hea\ier tiead as you walk, there
are various infirmities that are beginning to touch you, and
that are paying their visits to you more and more frequently.
Others see that you are past the climax of life ; but you are
blind, and you see nothing of it.

Old age comes as autumn and winter come. There is a
colour to the leaf in the tree ; one and another tree begins to
glow with yellow and red ; for when death comes in nature, it
comes not with signs of black, but with all glowing colours and
elements of attractive beauty.

Then the trees grow thin and bald at the top, as men do,
and, one by one, all things retreat to the root; the fields
become bare ; the hill-sides take on a russet colour ; all nature
strips herself. As one casts aside his raiment for sleep, so all
things token the advance of autumn and the coming of winter.
We know these things in respect to the year and the things
beneath us; we do not recognise them as true in respect to
ourselves. But they are as true of us as of the year. We are
tending toward the root ; we are drawing near the final sleep.
Others see it and know it. We only are blind, and do not
understand it.

There are those whose joys are passing or past. There are
those who have gone far along in the world toward that point
Irom which they shall leave it, and all the signs and tokens are

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. 1 79

that they are marked for death. Is there anything more
miserable in this world than to see how men cling to life when
it has lost its savour and all its benefits ? The old who are
decrepit, who are without taste or sight, or much activity, or
function, for whose places the young are waiting, and who
should be garnered, and who should long to be gathered in —
that they should be serene and patient so long as it is God's
will that they should abide here, is wondrously beautiful ; but
that they should cling with trembling hands to the things of
this world, and long to live, and find to-morrow empty, and
yet long for another empty day, and find that empty, and yet
beseechingly petition that God would lengthen out their days —
this is piteous in the extreme. Oh, to be gone when a man
can do no more here ! Oh, to fly when summer is over, as birds
fly to other lands and other skies ! But how many there are
that clasp the bough, and fain would sit upon the tree without
a leaf through all the shivering snows of winter ! To see men
who are infirm, who are worn out though they have not wasted
half their years, and who are marked for misery, the least
willing to go, the most reluctant to give up life, the most eager
for it ; to see men who are poor, who are trodden down, who
know that their prospects are in the main destroyed, whose
faces are seared with sadness and dissatisfaction, who do not
know that life is misfortune and death is emancipation, and who
yet long for more of life — to see such men is painful without
measure. Wretched, miserable, blind are they.

And how many are there of such ! How many are there
that have tasted the ways of wickedness ; that have sought, in
various ways, pleasure, so called ; that have entered upon the
foul career of intoxication, and experienced the insanity and
delirium of it ; that have looked for happiness in the ways of
illicit pleasure, and that have only grasped hideous shadows,
and tears, and bitter pangs of body and soul ! How many are
there that have learned the deceitful ways of craft, and cunning,
and deception, and know it, and do not know it ; that have
parted from virtue, and know that, and do not know it ; that
have been embraced in the sorcerer's arms, and know that, and
do not know it I They know that they are struck through with
wickedness, and that in the main it does not make them happy.
They know that running out of the present to seek some
promised good is always illusive and delusive, and yet how
blindly they go on in the same way, and seek the same things !
How many are there that are blind in a thousand ways that I
cannot stop now to describe !

X — 2

l8o THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

All that live without a thought or sight of immortality: all
that live without a vision of the eternal blessedness of that land
which awaits God's children ; all that live without seeing those
dear ones that have gone out from among us ; all that have no
consciousness of God, of Jesus, not far from them ; all that live
as though the opaque terraqueous globe were all that there is
of substance, and as though this miserable life were all that
there is of experience ; all that live without perceiving the
wonder of the spiritual realm which is constantly passing before
them — all these are blind.

Ah ! that there were some touch that could be applied to
their eyes, that their eyes might be opened, and that they mi.yht
behold God, and heaven, and the judgment-seat, and the
coming doom or the coming reward !

Are there none here to-night whose convictions follow my
words, and who say to themselves, " I am blind ? " Are there
none that have drifted so faraway from their earlier instructions
and faith that their memories of them seem almost like the
memories of a foreign shore ? Are there none who remember
the days when their mother took them on her knee, and folded
their hands to prayer? Are there none who remember the
village church and the Sabbath day ? Do you not hear, with-
your memory, that far-off" swinging bell? It rings in the valley
where you were brought up. It rings over the home where
your father and mother, and your broihers and sisters dwelt.
It rings of all your early associations. Are there not those
that walk with the air of the scoffer, and in the ways of vice
and crime, who are the children of Christian parents ? Have
you not had many and many a struggle with your own con-
science as you have been going from bad to worse ? Have you
not gone far toward, not darkness only, but blackness for ever ?
Are there not those that feel burdened by their sins? I think
that there are sometimes raised up lights that strike through
this spiritual blindness, and enable rr.en to catch a glimpse of
their unfortunate condition. I think that in the history of the
worst men there are luminous days, revelatory days, days of
memory, in which they are made to feel their present misery,
and long and yearn for deliverance.

To every such a one I proclaim that Jesus, who walks up
and down the ways of life ; who passes everywhither, who in all
his passage is going about to relieve, to release, to restore ;
whose mission it is to give sight to the blind, to give hearing to
the deaf, to give to dead hearts life, and to bring out of the
sepulchres ol men's wicked ratures, in blessed resurrection^

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. iSl

iheir spiritual selves. I preach that Jesus to you who is ten
•thousand times more earnest, and instant, and present, and
willing to give you spiritual sight than ever He was to give
'Bariimceus physical sight.

Rise. Call for help, if you feel that you need it. Call, not
■once, nor twice, but until your cry is heard. If checked, if
hindered, if seemingly drawn away, call again, and put your
heart and soul into the supplication. And there shall come to
you the voice, the influence of one that says, "Bid him come
>to Me." Go to Jesus, and if He says : '•' What wilt thou that I
should do unto thee?" — and He says it to every needy sup-
]-)licant — say with him of old, " Lord, that I might receive my
sight."

Oh yes, to see — to see what you are, what your nature is,
what your character, what your course, what your destiny ; to
•see what is the glory reserved by God for those that serve and
follow Him ; to see the sweet face of Jesus reconciling your souls
•to God; to see all the blessed joys that await those who through
faith and patience are to inherit the promises — this is vision,
indeed ! this is seeing, truly !

Oh, ye blind, let me call for you. Jesus is not far from many
that are here. Perhaps He calls you who will not call to Him.
Are there not in this house those that feel the need of Christ ;
that feel themselves lost without the Saviour ; that are willing to
take the Divine and recreative touch ? Come, gather with me
>iound about the feet of Him who ever liveth to do merciful
works. Let me plead for you, and may you ratify every word
<of imploration that I shall utter in your behalf.

PRAYER.

Blessed Saviour, art Thou passing? Pass not by. Here
are those that need Thee. We know Thy wondrous power. We
are those that Thou aforetime didst heal, and shall we forget
that darkness which was in our souls? What cheerless years
were those in which the earth meant nothing, and life was
worth nothing ! What years were those in which we sought,
.and found not ; in which we went chained, and could not loose
our shackles ! What wondrous joy was that of the morning
when Thou didst come, O Jesus, to our heart; when out of
Thy Word Thou didst seem to us to rise statelier than any
vision that ever came before the mind of prophet, or seer, or

l82 THE ELIND RESTORED TO SIGHT.

any other one! Jesus, the helpful, the patient, the healing;
Jesus, come to nurse, to nourish, to teach; Jesus, come to take
a sinner in his sins, Thou knowest, and we remember, the
blessedness of the revelation that sank down into our souls and
transformed them. Thou knowest the unutterable joy, the
strange and wild delight, with which we hailed Thee, filling
heaven and earth with praises of Thee. All things did praise
Thee, and we more than all.

Lord Jesus, many days have passed since then, and many
things have we forgotten, and many found out, but this we have
never forgotten — Thy wondrous power to bring light to the
dark and distressed soul. And nothing hath ever been revealed
to us comparable to the joy of Jesus formed in us a hope of
glory. It has been our comfort when we were desponding. It
has been our strength when we were wearied and exhausted.
It has been our courage. We have dared, and cared not for
men. We have ventured on new and untried ways. We have
cast anchor, amid the darkness of night, in turbulent waters,
and without fear have awaited the calmness and brightness of
the morning. We have gone trusting in Thee, and have never
been betrayed, and now we are ready to walk through the very
valley and shadow of death. We fear no evil. Thy rod and
Thy staff, they comfort us. Give what Thou wilt. Thou canst
not trouble us ; and take away what Thou wilt, we shall bear
it. There shall be clear skies above, for Thou art there. There
shall be treasure in reserve. Our throne awaits us, and our
sceptre. Thou canst not destroy whom Thou lovest. Our
hope is in Thee, our trust is in Thee, Lord Jesus. We were
blind, but now we see.

And are there not in Thy presence those that are as blessed
as we were? Are there not such here to-night, who, like our-
selves, were taught by Christian parents, and who, like ourselves,
were instructed in the Word of God, and in the duties and
ordinances of religion? O Lord Jesus, wilt Thou not pass this
way, and wilt Thou not call for them ? We beseech of Thee
that they may see ; that they may have this wondrous miracle
of grace wrought upon them ; that their inward sight may be
opened; that they may fall down before the majesty of God,
and with ineffable joy seek the unexampled favour of Christ,
and accept and understand those holy glowing words which
make known to men what is the inspiration of the Divine Spirit.

These are many that are now coniing toward the end of their
years. Let not their sun go down in darkness, but rescue them.
There are those upon whom rest heavily the burdens of life,

THE BLIND RESTORED TO SIGHT. 183

which gall the back, so that they cannnot bear them. We
beseech of Thee that they may not be crushed by care and
trouble.

We pray for all that need comfort. Wilt thou comfort
them? Enlighten the dark, raise the faint, cheer the dis-
consolate, heal the sick.

Grant, we beseech of thee, mercy to all in thy presence.
Though they are not worthy, yet do it for Thine own majesty's
sake, and for the glory of Thine own name.

Teach us better to pray for men. Teach us the Divine love
of impleading, not because Thou art hard, and doth with-
stand any earnest supplication, but because Thou art moved,
as we are, with importunity. It pleases Thee to give, but it
pleases Thee better to give things that are earnestly sought.
And we beseech of Thee that Thou wilt teach us how to pray.
And may we pray much one for another ; for the glory of Thy
kingdom; for the welfare of men; for our own household;
for our dear children ; for all that have shown us any kindness
in life ; for our enemies and Thy enemies ; for all that are
making with us the perilous pass of this stormy sea. We pray
for all, and as long as we live we will pray, and when we can
pray no more we can rise to glory to shout Thy praise in
heaven to the Father, to the Son, and to the Spirit. Amen.

XIV.

MARTHA AND MARY.

"Now it came to pass, as they went, that He entered into a certahi village ;
and a certain woman, named Martha, received Him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and
heard His word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and
came to Him and said, Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath
left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And
Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful
and troubled about many things ; but one thing is needful ; and
Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from
her." — Luke x. 38 — 42.

This is one of those windows through which, being open,
we look in and see something of the interior of Christ's life.
This took place, as we learn from other passages, at Bethany,
not a great way from Jerusalem,'-' It was at the house, as we
should say, of Lazarus, since the house is usually designated by
the male rather than by the female members of the household.

These two sisters, Martha and Mary, and this brother
Lazarus, probably constituted the whole family. It was a
family of wealth and distinction. That they were wealthy is
indicated by the entertainments which they seem to have given,
and the facility with which one of their number could purchase
a costly ointment as a gift of affection. That they were
distinguished is indicated, not by the fact that the Saviour
was their guest so often, but that when Lazarus died, there
poured forth from the city not a few to mingle their tears with
the sufferers. This is not the history of poverty. The family
that is in straitened circumstances, or that is without note,
have but few neighbours for joy or sorrow ; and the fact that
this family had numerous sympathisers in their bereavement
implies that they were a family of at least local influence.

One of the remarkable things stated in respect to this house-
hold is not only that Christ was accustomed frequently to be
with them, but that he /oc'ed them. It is true that God loves
all ; and in so far as Christ was setting forth the Divine nature,
He undoubtedly had love to all ; but there is something

* The other principal passages relating to this family ar- the following: —
Matt. xxvi. 6 — 13 ; Mark xiv. 3 — 9 ; John xii. i — 9 ; John xi.

MARTHA AND MARY. 1 85

different from that meant. There were those among the
disciples of Christ that attracted His special liking. In other
words, Christ had personal likings, personal affections, indi-
vidual preferences, as we have, founded on the beauty and
attractiveness of certain dispositional and moral elements.
And here is a family that stood out in His history ; for, at one
time and another, it is mentioned, in respect to each of them,
that He loved them. The sisters sent to Him, saying, " He
whom Thou lovest is sick." It is understood, therefore, that
Christ was much attached to Lazarus. Then the evangelist
speaks of Mary as one that Christ loved. And Martha is
spoken of as the Martha that Christ loved.

So we have evidence of one kind and another that this was
a good and wholesome family. Without doubt they were of a
good stock and a good disposition. They maintained in the
household, evidently, such a carriage. There was so much
character, there was so much duty fulfilled, that even such a
one as Christ, amid all the jarrings and discomforts of human
imperfection, repaired from Jerusalem to their abode to find
rest. He gave them His confidence and His heart. He did
not hesitate to say that He loved them. Nor was He ashamed
to have it said of them, " These are the ones that the Master
loves."

I am glad that Christ was such a one; for that view of God
is cheerless that represents Him as so serene, and tranquil, and
self-contained, and remote and unsympathizing, that He does not
need, nor often accept, the individuality or specialty of personal
love. There is something frigid about such a view. It repels.

I should like to behold icebergs, but I should not like to
sleep under them or near them, i should like to look at them
as marvels of beauty, but it is not where they are that I should
choose to have my home. And there may be lifted up a con-
ception of God so massive, so grand, and so remote from
human sympathy, that, though we may admire it, we cannot
love it. What we need is a God that, while we admire, we shall
love, since we are commanded to love Him with all the mind,
and heart, and soul, and strength. Where Christ is represented,
therefore, as having great depth of feeling, as endearing Himself
to those whom He loved, and as being beloved by them, just
as you are by those to whom you make yourself pleasing, it
indicates an element in His character which is a thousand
times more attractive and winning than any that could be
shown by a mere abstract delineation of the perfectness of the
Divine attributes. You will perceive how strong was the

1 86 MARTHA AND MARY.

feeling which He excited in the bosom of this family, which
\ve may perhaps call a Christian family— d, Jewish Christian
family.

Mary and Martha represent the two types of piety which
have always existed — the outward and the inward. One was
busy with ads^ the other with dispositions and 7'eflections. One
was doings the other was being and p07idering. Yet both of
them, though in different ways, were strongly drawn in con-
fidence and love to Christ. IMartha added double alacrity to
every step and motion. And when Christ was in the house,
she was always, if possible, more than ordinarily active. Too
much could not be done for Him ; nothing was too good for
Him ; and those who did not join in her zeal to minister to
His comfort, seemed to her to be dishonouring the one that
her soul loved. She chid them. She spoke even frowardly
of her sister Mary.

Mary loved Him with a love that had no expression. It
was pent up within. It had its heights and depths, but it had
neither word nor gestures. Only once was there an exhibition
of it — when, seized with an ecstasy, when love mounted into
adoration, she broke the alabaster box of precious ointment
on the head of Christ ! That was the symbol of her love.
While Martha made the house ring with quick, flying foot-
steps ; while every room, with things removed or brought in,
was a witness of her love, shown by ten thousand serviceable
deeds, Mary loved not only as much as Martha, but more,
because she was more capable of loving. But neither by deed
nor word did she show her love as ]\Iarlha" showed hers. It is
said of her, " She sat at Jesus' feet." As a child, that by a
thousand troubles is pursued to tears, betakes itself at last to
its mother's lap, and, surrounded by her arms, forgets them
every one, and is as still as if it were a flower and could not
speak, so Mary found that simply to sit and look upon Christ
was enough. Or, if it was not, there was no expression more.

And as it was with the sisters, so it is still. We have in
every church Marthas— faithful Christians, laborious with an
outward development of activity ; and Marys, not efficient in
outward activity, but chiefly deep in the inward life and rich
in the soul's aff"ections.

The brother appears only as an object upon whom Christ
performed a miracle. I read in your hearing, in the opening
services, an account of the scenes that were transacted during
His sickness, at His death, and after His burial.

Let us draw from this little picture, as it were by the wayside,

ilARTHA AND MARY. 187

and Christ's connection with it, some lessons of practical
moment.

Let us first look at workers and thinkers — using the word
think in the largest sense, so that it shall include the whole
action of the mind ; or, that piety which works upon visible
materials, and that which works upon the invisible; that piety
which is developed toward this world, and that piety which is
developed toward the other world. I have said that these two
classes will always be found co-ordinated in the Church. They
spring from certain organic tendencies. They are true to nature.
Oh that it might be in the Church as it was in this household,
that they that ponder and they that do, that they that think
and they that act, should be sisters ! for, although there were
little jars, slight disagreements, there was not more of discord
than in any good piece of music.

Martha was not peevish or fretful — certainly not in our ordi-
nary acceptation of that term. She and Mary loved one
another, and they both loved Christ. But Martha did not
understand Mary, although Mary understood ?^Iartha. And so
it still is. Those that are genuine Christians, that are sincere
workers, though they work outwardly, and work on, multi-
plying their tasks, never growing weary of them, or becoming
easily rested, are well understood by the deeper but more quiet
natures. These last know their own superior life. They under-
stand also the others. Bat the former do not understand the
latter. Mary always understands both herself and her sister
Martha ; but IMartha, though she understands herself, does not
understand Mary.

Still there are persons that, deeply loving and faithfully serving
Christ, do not show it, and are chid by those that, with their
bustling activities and with their instant industries, fill up the
hours, and wish that there were more hours in every day that
they might fill. How often they turn upon those that never
appear in the street, or in the committee, with the feeling that,
because they do not serve Christ as they serve Him, they are
not serving Him at all ! As though there were not more ways
than one of serving Christ ! As though there were no piety
except that which works outwardly ! Nay, as Mary helped
Martha in the household, and Martha Mary, so it should be
in this world. Those that work for piety in external ways
should lean upon those that turn more toward the other life.
And those that live inwardly should help themselves by the
practicalness of those that abound in outward Christian life.

We find in Martha the faults, or tendencies to faults, to which

1 88 MARTHA AND MARY.

the outward life of piety, where it is exclusive, is liable. Her
activity evidently was excessive. There are those that wear
themselves out with incessant activity. And usually, in propor-
tion as we are indolent, we find excuses for our inactivity, while,
in proportion as we are intense in our activity, we condemn
ourselves for not doing more. Men that are conscientious
condemn themselves on the side where they are strongest. They
are conscious of duty in the direction of their strong faculties,
and they always condemn themselves where relatively they are
best developed. Doubtless Martha condemned herself for
indolence, who scarcely took a moment of rest the whole day
long. Her activity broke out into anxiety. The carefulness
here spoken of is not attention to duty. The apostle says: " I
would have you without carefulness." I would not have my
children without carefulness. They never start on any errand
that I do not say to them, "Now, be careful!" We enjoin
upon men in the affairs of life the duty of being careful ; for
^arefidness means, with us, attention to what one is doing. It
used to mean being full of cares. It was csiXQ-fulL It was hi7ig
^.nxious. When it is said that Martha was careful, it meant
that she was one of those slender, nervous persons, of over-
wrought sensibility, that labour incessantly under pressure of
anxiety from youth to age. She suffered because she never felt
that she was enough active. Full was never full with her. There
was always that state of mind in her experience which we call
anxiety. Did you never see persons that are kind-hearted and
good-natured, but that are continually anxious? Not that they
are peevish ; not thaf they are cross ; but they are filled with
anxiety. Did you never see a boiler that carried just enough
steam, so that there was no sound in the machinery? And
have you never seen a boiler that carried a little too much
steam, so that it hissed at every rivet, making a disagreeable
•sound day and night ? There are persons that carry a little
more steam than they can work, and that sing and hiss all the
time ; and Martha was one of those.

Where this anxiety is brought suddenly in collision with those
that are associated with us, and expresses itself with sharpness,
it is called chidi7ig if you are charitable, and fretfuliicss or
peevishness if you are a little cross yourself. And so it seemed
to be in Martha's case. When Christ came, nothing must be
left undone ilia^ could be done for Him. Every room must be
set aright. Bountiful provision must be n)ade. The servants
flew on wings of zeal by her direction. When she had for
hours bubiled about the house, till weariness had come upon

MARTHA AND IMARY. 1 89

her, suddenly she came upon ]\Iary, and found her sitting at
the feet of Christ, taking matters very calmly; and she could
not but fret at that. She says : " Bid her that she help me."
You will see that this amounted to censoriousness. A great
many who would be ashamed to make a comparison between
their own virtues and those of another openly, do it covertly;
and if the Saviour had expressed His own feeling to Martha
concerning herself, He probably would have said, " Martha,
you know you are active and vigilant, and when you rebuke
Mary for being indolent, you call My attention to the fact that
you glow wath zeal, and that she does nothing; and your con-
demnation of her is self-praise."

Are there any Marthas here? Are there here any good
women, that really want to do good, that love their friends,
and that rejoice in hospitalities toward them, but that carry
their life with such sensitiveness that they turn on those very
friends with criticism or ill-timed severities ? Is there not such
ii thing as loving outwardly, and having that nervous industry
which, carried too far, becomes querulousness or censoriousness?

]\Iartha's fault was not her outward activity, but that it led
to wrong judgments, and depreciating comparisons, and to the
lowest form of Christian life. Yet Martha was good, true,
honest, trustworthy, or else it never would have been said that
Jesus loved her. And it will do you good, when you are vexed
with people's faults, to remember that a person may be loved
of God though he has many faults. You have many faults,
and it will do your soul good to know that God can get along
with faulty people. And it may help you to get along with
them to know that God has to get along with them and with
you too. I beg you to notice, too, how sweetly Christ chided.
I can conceive that one might have power to raise the dead,
as in the case of Lazarus, or of the widow's son at Nain; but
the contemplation of this power in God does not bring before
me such a vision of His moral character as the thought of the
sweetness with which Christ looked on those in whom were
hateful things ; His very rebuke was balm, and His admonition
healing. When the disciples quarrelled in His presence as to
who should be first in the coming kingdom, Christ took a little
child, and held him up before them, and said, " Whosoever
shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in
the kingdom of heaven." How gently He said to them,
'' Whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be the servant of
all." It wys not anger ; it was not rebuke ; it was instruction.

With this household Christ was accustomed to dwell, and

190

MARTHA AND MARY.

He loved them in spite of their faults. If God loved only the
faultless, who of us could ever stand ?

Look next at the true meaning of Christ's preference as
represented in this scene. It must not be interpreted as a
depreciation of work and enterprise. His own example showed
that He was not averse to activity. He went about doing good.
Three times He traversed the whole length of His country on
His mission. The activity of Christ was astonishing. He is
said to have laboured day and night, violating the laws of
prudence in relation to the body. He actually fell asleep on
the sea from over-fatigue. Often He had not time to eat.
Such a one would not find fault with a true and zealous per-
formance of household duties, since the household is the
highest church on earth, and those that serve in it are God's
s'.veetest messengers.

It was not, then, because Martha was so active that she was
in fault. Nor is it to be assumed that Mary was not, in her
own way and at her own times, an actor. Mary unquestionably
performed active duties. But a nature whose activity springs
from fulness and richness of soul, and whose deeds carry
breadth and depth of life, is higher than a nature that merely
acts without deep feeling. Soul-feeling stands higher in the
ranking of God and Christ than action. Action is valuable
from two elements. It is valuable, first, from the changes
which it works in affairs. One of the values of activity is what
it does. The amount of mind and soul which it introduces
into things is its other value. It is what you bring down and
incarnate that measures the value of acdon. A fly is more
active than a bee. It is amazing how active the fly is. To
look at him, you would think him' a master mechanic. He
buzzes all summer long. And yet he is not worth his keeping.
The bee buzzes too, but his buzzing means something. He
produces much and eats little. The fly produces nothing and
eats much. There may be an activity which, though it has
few results, is more effective than an activity that has many.
And a nature may work out few effects, and yet each one of
these may be so clothed with high moral feelings as to exceed
in value more numerous results that are not thus clothed.

Take the action of weeping. It is not always the same. A
child weeps, and what does it mean ? Nothing at all. Some
children cry as easily as flowers spill their dew in the morning,
and their crying means no more than that a flower has shaken
itself. But when the child has grovvn to be a man, and has
long been fortified against declarative grief, and something

MARTHA AND MARY. I9I

happens which brings tears from his eyes, his weeping means
more than it meant when the child cried.

Take another instance. In the passage that I read to you
this morning, it is declared that Christ came to the grave, and
stood, and, seeing the sorrow of the sisters, and sympathizing
with their trouble, wept. That means a great deal ; but there
was another occasion on which Christ wept when His weeping
meant even more. He stood and looked over Jerusalem, con-
templating her future and her past, and wept over her. When
He wept at the grave of Lazarus it was touching; when He
wept over Jerusalem it was sublime.

Take the fact of Judas's betrayal of Christ. He kissed Him —
for that was the sign. On another occasion, one who had been
a sinner approached Christ, anointed His head, washed His
feet with her tears, and Vv'iped them with the hair of her head,
and kissed them. How much more was there in the penitence
of that woman, which expressed itself in those humble tasks of
love, than there was in the betraying kiss of Judas !

A look is not always the same. When Christ looked upon
men transiently, as I look upon you, one and another, His
look was of but little meaning; but when, after three years of
deprivation and suffering, greater trouble came, His disciples
forsook Him, and He was arraigned in the judgment-hall, and
Peter, who stood not far from Him, being accused of being
His friend, denied it, not only once, but the second and the
third time, and He turned and looked at Peter, and Peter went
out and wept bitterly, how much more there was in the look of
Christ than when He was with His disciples, and simply looked
upon them as upon friends ! It is what an act has in it that
determines what is its power of usefulness.

Now a person may for many weeks multiply activities and do
special things which do not mean much morally ; but a nature
that is full of deep thought, of deep fervour, or sacred ecstasy,
of faith, and hope, and love, may perform one single act which
shall amount to more in moral value, as God rates it, than a
ceaseless, buzzing activity of a lower nature. And it was this
ranking of natures that took place when Christ preferred ^Mary's
comparative stillness to Martha's bustling ways.

One step further, now, in this history, may be taken under-
standingly, namely, that of considering the sublimity and beauty
of iNlary's outward activity when it was developed. We are to
suppose that she ordinarily performed her part of the house-
hold duties. In so far as Christ was concerned, she was one of
those that loved to cherish her. thoughts and feelings in silence,

192 MARTHA AXD ^lARY.

rather than to manifest them in outward service. But when
she did come to that state in which she could no longer seclude
her thoughts and feelings, how beautiful was her manifestation
of them, as described by Matthew : — " Now, when Jesus was
in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto
Him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious oint-
ment, and poured it on His head as He sat at meat. But when
His disciples saw it they had indignation, saying, To what pur-
pose is this waste ? For this ointment might have been sold
for much, and given to the poor. When Jesus understood it,
He said unto them. Why trouble ve the woman ? for she has
■wrought a good work upon Me. For ye have the poor always
with you, but Me ye have not always. For in that she has
poured this ointment on My body she did it for My burial.
Verily I say unto you. Wheresoever this Gospel shall be
preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this
woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her " (Matt. xxvi.).

The evening fire and the light have gone out. What raiment
Martha provided no man knows ; what food, what comfort,
what luxury, no man knows. The endless and repetitious
activities of Martha have passed away without a record and
without remembrance. But it has been as Christ declared it
should be, and it shall be to the end, that this solitary act which
Mary performed, though it was small, shall be mentioned to
her honour and praise as long as the Gospel shall be preached.
The fragrance of this ointment is in the world yet. This noble
soul, by silent thoughts wrought up to an enthusiasm and
ecstasy, expressed her love and affection for Christ in this
mute symbol of anointing Him, and thus joined herself to her
Master in death as she was joined to Him in life; and Christ
said, "It shall be made known as long as the Gospel shall be
preached." And when the last spicy breeze shall have died
away from Araby the Blest, when the last garden shall have
been planted and shall have withered, and when the last rose,
and honeysuckle, and violet, dying, shall have given out their
perfume, the fragrance of this deed shall rise Iresh upon the
air, and sweet smell before God.

In closing, let me say, first, that there is a place in Christ's
kingdom for all dispositions. Bring what you have. Though
your gifts are of the lowest, and your activities are of the least
importance, bring them. It does not need that you should be
first in order to be accepted. It may be that you are like
Martha, who brought to Christ's service much activity, and but
little depth of thought and feeling. It maybe that your duiies

MARTHA AND MARY. 1 93

are mostly of a physical nature. If so, let them be consecrated,
and Christ will accept them at your hands. It may be that an
outward life of activity and usefulness, such as you see in
others, seems to be withheld from you ; but remember that
there is such a thing as an externally inactive life that means
more than one externally active.

There be many that sit in the silence of the household, when
all others are asleep, pondering over the leanness of their
service, their inactivity. They grieve in their souls, and wish
that they could do more for Christ. They wander oft' in
silent thoughts and secret fancies, and are much with Him ;
but they return to chide themselves often, because their life is
so poor, so barren. To such let me say, holy thoughts are
acceptable to God. Deep meditations and reverend states of
mind God regards as outward acts, and accepts them.

There be many who envy those that have gifts of external
service. There be many that say, " Oh, if I had access to
men ; if it were permitted to me to persuade them ; if I had
the tongue of an orator or the pen of a poet; if I could go
about doing good in this world, how grateful I would be to
God 1 " Well, it is not that which makes the most impression
on men that makes the most impression on God. It is that
which is deepest in your conscience, and love, and faith, that
is the noblest offering.

There are those that by sickness are prematurely laid aside
from usefulness, that are bed-ridden, and that feel that, in
being denied the opportunity of engaging in the active duties
of life, they have lost life itself. But it will be found that it is
not the sunflower, garish and possessed of power to lift itself up,
that is most esteemed; but the hidden flower that blossoms in
the shadow of the hedge, that in every adversity is fragrant still.
Christ will do as you do that never wear the sunflower, but often
the violet. God will take the humble ones, and make them
into that precious knot which he will wear on His very heart.

If God has called you to an inactive sphere. He has called
you there that, by holy thought and affection, you may wreathe
for Him offerings of silent love, and hope, and desire, which
are more precious in His sight than mere outward activities.

Let us, then, have this love that jNIary had, and be content,
like her, not to walk in the high and eminent places of the
earth, but to sit at the feet of Jesus. And He who, sitting
there, knows how to love, looking into the Divine face to find
out heaven, is not, be assured, far from the heart of Christ.

XV.

MOTH-EATEN GARJvIENTS.

*' Your garments are moth-eaten." — ^James v. 2.

In the earlier ages of the world riches assumed but few forms.
Houses and land could scarcely be much to a Bedouin Arab
who pastured his flocks wherever he could find sustenance,
and carried his house and all his property with him. Bonds,
notes, mortgages, bills, are the wealth-signs of a highly com-
mercial people. In early days, besides silver and gold, which
always and everywhere have been considered wealth, garments
were stored up, and were regarded as an evidence of riches.
It is so in a narrow sphere even yet. Many a thrifty house-
keeper deems herself rich in the fulness of her wardrobe ; in
stores of linen ; in materials laid up for household uses ; in
beds and bedding; in napkins and towelling; in silk, and
cotton, and linen, and wool, and feathers. These are house-
hold wealth.

Against all these things time has a grudge. They wear out
if you use them, and waste more if you do not. If you store
them away, mildew and damp searches for them to rot them.
If you too incautiously expose them to the cleansing air, you
give knowledge of your treasure, excite cupidity, and draw the
thief to your dwelling. And while men covet, and the elements
enviously consume your garments and your fabrics, there are
insects created, it would seem, expressly to feed upon them.
Why not ? It is the order of nature. To eat and be eaten are
the two terms of life. To destroy and to be destroyed is the
history of animated creation. The moth would appear to be
peculiarly adapted to take property in that condition in which
a vigilance against all other enemies leaves it. We mark
aggressors ; we take account of violence, and of the various
inroads of the elements ; and, having put our property out of
all danger of them, there is yet appointed a further enemy.

First is the moth miller. It is harmless. Small, silken, and of
pearly white, it hovers without sound at twilieht, or in our dark
rooms. It is not impertinent, like the robust flies of summer. It
carries no sting, like vexatious insects that pester your skin. It

MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS. 1 95

does not sound in your ear the shrill notes of the cricket, or the
stridulous scrapings of the locust, or the fine, shuddering hum
of the mosquito. It does not nibble and gnaw with the mouse
and rat; nor, as roaches do, indecently overrun your food. It
is most fair, silent, harmless. Not a sunbeam could do less
harm in moving through the air. And yet every housewife
springs after it with electric haste. It is a dreaded pest — not
for what it is, but for what it becomes. It is the mother of
moths.

And there are ten thousand moral moths just like them —
soft, satiny, silent, harmless in themselves ; but they lay eggs,
and the eggs are not as harmless as the insects. There are
sins that have teeth, and there are sins that have children
with teeth.

In great dweUings there are many apartments. There are
long dusky halls. There are closets and storing rooms that are
not often visited. There are spare-rooms, attics, lumber-rooms.
While the faithful housekeeper watches in the living-rooms
against dirt and insect foes, the insidious enemy has silently
retreated to these remoter camps, ' where broom and brush
seldom come. There they rear their undisturbed families. They
nest in corners. They brood in old garments. They make
cities of refuge out of rolls of cloth. These children of the
moth wake to raven and fatten upon juiceless thread. Dust and
sweepings are good enough for their ordinary food, but woollen
is a high living, while feathers and fur are a banquet and a
royal luxury to them. The old man dozes below, and dreams
his battles over again, while the silent moth up-stairs is eating
his feathers, piercing his hat, and wasting the threads of his
uniform. So while men doze and dream, their honours fade
away, and their glory is consumed. And when, on some
anniversary day, the garments are brought forth, the feathers
fall to powder, the coat is cut with a sharper tool than the
sword, and the whole suit is perished for ever. Sharp is the
needle, but sharper the invisible tooth of the moth, and no
needle-skill can repair its cunning desolations.

So it comes to pass, often, that enemies individually weak
are more dangerous on that account. We can watch against a
thief — scarcely against the miller. We suspect the sounding
elements. Sun and air are our friends against mould and must.
But these soft-winged motes, that hover between daylight and
dark, that bring lorth unseen, that hide by the process of
eating, and build burrows by the masonry of their teeth — these
are most fatal to our hidden possessions. How many carpets

0—2

196 MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS.

are cut and scissored that still look fair to the eye, and reveal
no mischief ! How many apparellings of reserved rooms hang
in all their folds with seeming soundness, that need only to be
shaken to show all the mischief done 1

Alas ! the waste is revealed only when no help can avail.
The muffs and tippets come forth in November, but they are
fleeced and shorn, and they can be mended no more. The
coarse raiment that was to have turned the frosty wind is
creased, and pierced, and cut, and destroyed. Too late you
learn that your garments are moth-eaten.

A2;ainst all these enemies there are endless nostrums tried —
pungent odour, caustic powders, incasing linen ; but, after all,.
vigilance, light, and continuous using are the truest remedies.
Moths do not eat things in use. They are pests of silence and
darkness. Things of day and things of life are guarded by the
powers of activity. And this is true of moral moths as well, and
more eminently.

Could there, then, have been selected a figure more perti-
nent more striking in its analogies, than this ? Could anything
more clearly show to us the power of the sins of neglect? of the
sins of indolence and of carelessness? of sins of a soft and
gentle presence, that in themselves are not very harmful, but
that are the breeders of others that are? of the silent mischiefs
of the unused faculties or rooms of the soul, that are not ven-
tilated, nor searched with the broom and the brush ? Men do
well to watch and fight against obvious and sounding sins.
They are numerous. They exist on every hand. They are
armed and are desperate. They swarm the ways of life. Not
one vice, not one crime, not one temptation, not one sin of
which the Word of God warns us, is to be lightly esteemed.
They are to be watched, and in armour, too ; we are to be
proof against them.

But these are not our only dangers. Tens of thousands of
men perish, not by the lion-like stroke of temptation, but by
the insidious bite of the hidden serpent; not with roar and
strength, but with subtle poison. More men are moth-eaten
than lion-eaten in this life ; and it behoves us in time to give
heed to these dangers of invisible and insidious little enemies.

The real strength of man is in his character. Popular estimate
makes it consist in his circumstances. A man's strength is
measured by the number of his friends, by his wealth, by his
social position ; and his inliuence is in proportion to his repu-
tation in the world's esteem. But, in truth, a man is strong
only in his manhood. How much there is in a man you must

MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS. 1 97

ascertain by measuring his character ; for one may be the
possessor of houses and lands, of stocks and bonds, of gold
and silver, of ingots and chests filled and re-filled therewith ;
one's possessions may be vast, and, after all, the wealth may
have a fool for an owner. A man is not strong by what he
tias, but what he is ; and in measuring v/hat a man is, we are
to measure his character.

Now character is not a massive unit ; it is a fabric, rather.
It is an artificial whole made up by the interply of ten thousand
threads. Every faculty is a spinner, spinning every day its
threads, and almost every day threads of a different colour.
Myriads and myriads of webbed products proceed from the
many active faculties of the human soul, and character is made
up by the weaving together of all these innumerable threads of
daily life. Its strength is not merely in the strength of some
simple unit, but in the strength of numerous elements.

There are crimes that, like frost on flowers, in one single
night accomplish their work of destruction. There are vices
that, like freshets, sweep everything before them. Men may
be destroyed in character and reputation, utterly and suddenly.
But there are other instruments of destruction besides these.
We do well to mark them, and to watch against them ; but we
also do well to remember that a man may be preserved from
•crimes and from great vices, and yet have his character moth-
eaten. We do well to remember that a little tooth, which is
almost too small for the microscope, may nevertheless be large
■enough to cut one thread, and another thread, and another
thread ; and when you have begun to cut threads, you have
begun to make holes ; and when you have begun to make
holes, the destruction of the garment is at hand ; and a
character that is moth-eaten, that has begun to be pierced by
petty sins and vices, is weakened, and is being prepared for
destruction.

I therefore, in the spirit of the text, bid you beware, search,
and see whether your garments are moth-eaten. We are told
in the Apocalypse to take care of our garments, that no man
may take them from us. Beware lest men steal your garments ;
beware lest the elements consume them ; but, most of all,
beware lest they become moth-eaten. Watch against little
sins and little faults.

First, aside from great vices and crimes, there are the moths
of indolence. Indolence may be supposed to be morally
wrong ; but it is thought to be wrong rather in a negative way
than otherwise. No, no ! The mischief of water is not that

198 MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS.

it does not run, but that, not running, it corrupts, and corrupt-
ing, breeds poisonous miasma, so that they who live in the
neighbourhood inhale disease at every breath. The mischief
of indolence is, not that it neglects the use of powers and the
improvement of the opportunities of life, but that it breeds
morbid conditions in every part of the soul. An indolent man
is like an unoccupied dwelling. Scoundrels sometimes burrow
in it. Thieves and evil characters make it their haunt ; or, if
they do not, it is full of vermin. A house that is used does
not breed moths half as fast as a house that, having the
beginnings of them, stands empty. Woe be to them who take
an old house, and carry their goods into it ! A lazy man is an
old house full of moths in every part.

And yet there are very many who seem to suppose that the
very end in life to be chiefly sought is a blissful indolence.
They make this fool's paradise the aim of their ambition, and
say within themselves, *' I will give my youth and my earlier
manhood to indefatigable enterprise, that in my later years I
may retire." Retire ? When the worms retire they have some-
thing worth retiring on. They have at least a silk cocoon to
live in while passing through their dormant state. But for a
man to retire with nothing but indolence, with no higher end
of life than self-indulgence, ease, and leisure, is ignominiouSc
For a man in the midst of health and strength to abandon the
active pursuits of life, and enter upon a round of uselessness,
is to adopt a course that is sin-breeding, moth-eating. The
very conditions of manhood, honour, integrity, and piety,
require that every man not only should make his life cease-
lessly active, but should jealously and vigilantly scrutinize every
part of himself, to see that no hall, no chamber, no upper room,
no attic, no basement, no part of his whole soul-house, is un-
ventilated, unswept, and uncared for. Look out for indolence
even in little things. There is health in activity, but there is
disease in indolence.

There are moths also in things unsuspected. All men agree
that a glutton and a drunkard are opprobrious and ignominious.
All men join in decrying them and inveighing against them ;
and we are perhaps not in danger of becoming drunkards and
gluttons. But there are excesses from over-eating on this side
of gluttony, and excesses from over-drinking this side of
drunkenness. There are moths of appetite. There are many
men who eat beyond the necessities of nature. They obscure
their minds. You must take your choice between your brain
and your stomach. If you fill the one, you must relieve the

MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS. 1 99

Other. If you will work your head, you must carry temperance
into your diet. Full-feeding and full-thinking never go hand
in hand. There are hundreds of men, who, being of a vigorous
physical frame, and of an active appetite, unconsciously eat to
repletion, and then, through feverishness, and indigestions,
and the disturbed functions of their whole system, they labour
through the day to discharge their duties, toiling, fretting, and
troubled, and do not know that the cause of the mischief is
simply an excess in eating. There are many men who, by this
simple act of taking too much food, twice or thrice a day re-
peated, keep all their feelings upon an edge, so that they are
quick and irritable, or stupid and slow. There are many per-
sons who, by mere over-eating, take from sleep its refreshment,
and from their waking hours their peace, by the gnawing of the
worm of appetite.

This is a little thing. Your physician does not not say much
about it. Your parents hardly ever speak of it. It is a thing
for every man to consider for himself. But it is a serious fact
that two-thirds of the men who live a sedentary life impair
their strength by the simple act of injudicious feeding — over-
eating.

And that which is true of food is still more true of stimuli :
not alone of spirituous liquors, with regard to which you are
warned abundantly, but also of domestic stimuli. The world
is full of such great sins that it seems as though a minister
might find better business than talking about such petty evils.
There are some people who think, or seem to think, that in the
pulpit a man ought to preach about great and glaring vices
only, and that for a minister to speak of tea, and coffee, and
tobacco is a very small business. I know it is a very small
business ; and I never should trouble you with one word on
this subject if it were not for the fact that these little moths
cut the very threads of health and life. I know a great many
young men who will be good for nothing. What is the matter ?
They are moth-eaten. The eagle will not eat them. They
are not in danger of buzzards or serpents. Still less are they
in danger of lions. They will not die from an ass's kick. They
will be eaten of worms, and perchance by moths — little insigni-
ficant faults, so small that they are ashamed of a minister that
will spend his time and breath in talking about them.

If there was but one, or if there were many but once, it would
be difterent ; but the habit of tampering with your nerves is one
that cannot be indulged in with impunity. The nerve is the
seat of life itself — soul-life. It is in the' nerve and brain that

200 MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS.

man is, if anywhere ; and he that touches these, touches home
to the very quick of himself. It is the peculiar nature of every
kind of stimulus to reach beyond the muscle, and affect the
very centre of sentiment and emotive existence. And the
habit of using narcotics or stimuli of any kind is a habit of
moth-eating.

I do not mean to be understood as saying that every man
who employs tobacco is moth-eaten; that every man who
indulges himself moderately in the use of tea and coffee is
injured thereby. I do not mean to go so far as to say that
every man who uses, unfrequently and in small quantities, wines
and Hquors, is himself physically injured by them. But I do
mean to say, comprehensively — and you know it is true — that
in this sphere lie a multitude of mischiefs and of temptations,
each of which is minute, but the sum of which is exceedingly
dangerous. And it is a part of my business, as a pastor and
teacher, to warn you of the swarm of silent-winged, apparently
harmless, and yet deadly mischiefs, that gnaw and consume
men in these regards.

There are two mischiefs of the mouth. One is the mischief
of the tongue — that untamable wild beast against which we are
warned. A terrible thing it is. That is the outward mischief
of the mouth. But there is this other one of eating and drink-
ing. Whichever way the tide goes, it may carry life or death.
And there are innumerable mischiefs of the mouth which men
should be put on their guard against, since that is the great
feeding-part of the soul.

The carriage of our affections also develops a class of ten-
dencies which are fitly included in this subject. There are
many men who never give way to wrath on a great and sound-
ing scale. It is wholesome to be mad thoroughly. It does a
man good to subsoil him by stirring him up down to the
bottom. A man that does not know how to be angry, does not
know how to be good. A man that does not know how to be
shaken to his heart's core with indignation over things evil, is
either a fungus or a wicked man. " Abhor that which is evil,"
is the Divine command, just as much as "Cleave to that which
is good." High and gusty passions that sweep through the soul
are sometimes like fierce summer storms that cleanse the air,
and give the earth refreshment by strong winds and down-pelting
rains. Men are better for knowing how to be angry, provided
the sun does not go down on their wrath, and provided it is
justified by the occasions of it. If a man hates meanness and
dishonour, he may be angry at them ; if it is men's sins,

MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS. 201

and not their faults, not their foibles, not their unintentional
offences, not their piques of his pride and vanity that made him
angry. Soul-destroying wickedness among men — these should
excite your anger. I would that men were fretful less and angry
more. For it is these little petty moths of perpetual fretfulness,
moroseness, sourness ; these little fribbles of temper that cut
the thread of life, — it is these that destroy men, inside and out.
Nothing is nobler than the beauty of that face on which fair
dispositions and generous sentiments blossom. The face is the
garden of the soul. What you raise within, you show without.
And there is nothing that shows so quick, so homely, and so
irreparably, in the countenance, as a sour temper, and petty,
frivolous, irritable, moth-eating dispositions. Beware of them.
The garment of the soul is eaten by them.

We read about some of the passions of which we see traces,
but of the nature, and progress, and power of which we scarcely
ever form an adequate conviction, either in others or in our-
selves. Some of them are such as these : greediness, envy,
jealousy. Youth is seldom afflicted with them. They are like
asters and the golden-rod in blossoming late. They are unlike
them in being homely, early or late. There are some faults that
are spring-faults, and that are found in children, such as lying,
deceit, and equivocation. These are the instruments of con-
scious helplessness. The child has not courage to lift itself up
against authority, and it leaks where it dare not boil over. For
faults like these, old age gives us correctives. But there are
some faults which never come in early youth, which are of later
growth. Among these is greediness of gain. Children may be
greedy for the mouth, but they are seldom greedy for property,
for honour, or for position. A desire for these things comes little
by little. Very few men set out in life intending to be greedy.
This disposition grows silently and gradually, so that one can
scarcely distinguish the progress of it from year to year.

The same is true of envying and jealousy, that, with health
and prosperity, scarcely show themselves, but that, with a
deranged physical system, and with trouble, are like weeds that
spring up suddenly and of their own accord. Envies and
jealousies, that are but small mischiefs at first, and that often
take on the form of wit, and serve simply as the salt with which
to season social life, are apt, with waning health and declining
years, to assume a more malignant form, with a cutting tendency
which grows more and more sharp as age advances. These
things, which at first are minor faults, become, after a little
time, corruptions of the mind, that score it and threaten its

202 MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS.

destruction. Under such circumstances the soul is moth-eaten.
And there is a great deal more of jealousy, a great deal more
of envy, and a great deal more of greediness among men than
any of us suspect. They are latent. They lurk. They lie
concealed.

There is a sphere in men's lives into which they are accus-
tomed to sweep a whole multitude of petty faults without
judging them, without condemning them, and without attempt-
ing to correct them. There is a realm of moral moths for almost
all of us. We all hold ourselves accountable for major morals,
but there is a realm of minor morals where we scarcely suppose
ethics to enter. There are thousands and thousands of little
untruths, that hum, and buzz, and sting in society, which are
too small to be brushed or driven away. They are in the
looks; they are in the inflections and tones of the voice; they
are in the actions ; they are in reflections rather than in direct
images that are presented. They are methods of producing
impressions that are false, though every means by which they
are produced is strictly true. There is a way of serving that
which is wrong while you are prepared to show that everything
that you say or do is right. There are little unfairnesses
between man and man, and companion and companion, that
are said to be minor matters, and that are small things ; there
are little unjust judgments and detractions ; there are slight
indulgences of the appetites ; there are petty violations of con-
science ; there are ten thousand of these plays of the passions
in men, which are called foibles or weaknesses, but which eat
like moths. They take away the temper ; they take awaj"
magnanimity and generosity; they take from the soul its
enamel and its polish, ]\Ien palHate and excuse them ; but
that has nothing to do with their natural effect upon us. They
waste and destroy us, and that, too, in the soul's silent and
hidden parts.

The same may be said of other destroyers. The world is
full of things that are dangerous and that are overt, and moths
are not the only destroyers. They are the type of a whole class
of destroyers ; but none are more dangerous than they. The
waves that beat against the ship are not so dangerous to it
as plank-boring worms. Head-winds do not drag ships back
any more than the seeds and shells that collect upon their
bottoms. Posts driven into the water seem fair and strong
while being honey-combed by the worm that eats. In silence
and secrecy treasures are thus being consumed.

So it is with man the world over. While he has his obvious

MOTH-EATEN GARMENTS. 203

and open enemies, he has his enemies under water, unseen,
silent, excoriating, and piercing.

I beg of you, therefore, when you lay out the paths of duty,
and make an inventory of things to be examined, to be weighed,
and to be tested, not only carefully to enumerate all obvious
dangers, but to remember when the thief is guarded against,
when the roof is proof against the elements, when the walls and
windows are sufficient to keep out the wind and the rain, and
when the hand of greed and of ruthless destruction are fortified
against, there is still lurking in the house a victorious insect —
the destroying moth—the ravages of which only ceaseless care
and vigilance can prevent. And as it is with the dwelling out-
side, so, more, it is with the dwelling of the soul. Beware of
robber passions, of intrusive temptations, of those sympathetic
sins which draw men by their better affections to their worst
ends. Beware of the wind, of the rain, of the sea, of savage
beasts, and of summer and winter in the soul. Beware also of
moths, of foibles, of faults, of little, mean, sharp-toothed sins,
that cut, and eat, and destroy the garment. And when God shall
bring us to judgment, may He grant that we be not as are
summer-kept garments which were hung in supposed safety and
fnncied security, waiting for the coming of the winter, to protect
our limbs from the severity of the weather, but which, when the
housewife brings them out, to her horror fall to the ground as
beggar's trash, unfit to be used — ruined, and full of the seeds of
mischief, and good for nothing but to be gathered up and given
to the flames. Many a man keeps the fair proportions of man-
hood in life, and seems to be without crime, or vice, or great
fault, who is pierced, and channeled, and granulated, and eaten
by petty faults, that when he is lifted up in the eternal world,
like a garment that is moth eaten, he vv'ill fall to pieces and be
fit only for eternal burning. "Your garments are moth-eaten."
There is in that a declaration as terrible as in that other sentence
which God shall pronounce upon those who reject Him, and
with effrontery of wickedness array themselves on the side of His
open enemies. May God keep us from secret sins !

XVI.
SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

^' For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear
on the earth ; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of
the turtle is heard in our land ; the hg-tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good smell. Arise, my
love, my fair one, and come away." — Solomon's Song, ii. ii — 13.

Almost all of every degree of sensibility are conscious of re-
ceiving some influence from nature at two periods of the year —
autumn and spring. The shortening of the days is the first token
that acts seriously upon the mind. The early morning hour, that
used to be full of sun, at length comes ; but no sun is in it : he
is not yet risen. The cars that brought you in June from the
city to the distant station left you yet a full half-hour of evening
sunshine ; but now, in September, at the same hour, the sun has
gone down, and the very twilight is fading out. The days are
going ; and every day, with a gentle sigh, we say, " The days
are shortening ; the year is closing ! " The days lose at both
ends : they are clipped in the morning, and sheared in the
evening. Something of exhilaration goes with them. The
full and overflowing day, that was like a wine-cup put to the
lips, is gone, and smaller ones are coming. If days are goblets
sent to us with the water of life, with the wine of light and
warmth, then they are no longer those great festal beakers, but
less of rim, of depth, of contents, till that which in July filled
the double hand, in November is like a tapering glass held with
two fingers. And this sense of departure is so indissolubly
associated with the decrease of human life, the passing away of
our years, the shortening of our days, the ending of pleasures
and ambitions, that no one can help feeling a certain sadness,
though it be a sweet sadness ; a certain gladness, though it be
a solemn gladness.

Then, too, along with these changes in the heavens, are others
upon the earth. The first colour of red in the maples upon some
single branch, set like a lamp in the whole topful of green leaves,
is the earliest hint of autumn ; and we parry the thought. We
say, " Ah ! it is only a sickly limb, prematurely ripe; it is not
autumn yet." So, in consumptions, men find reasons for the

SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE. 205

hectic blush ; but death is under it. Soon come the crimsons
and scarlets of the forest edges — the sumach, the vines. We
find no more flowers when never a day refused us one all
summer long. The asters flourish — the asters, that are fitly
called star-flowers, not only from their rayed disk, but because,
when the day is gone, stars redeem the night from utter
darkness; and asters are the latest flowers of autumn, and are
bright though the golden-rod is dim, and trees are sear, and
russet leaves are rustling around their stems. They blossom
bravely on till the very frost comes.

And so, as fires go out, the blaze growing less, the great
sticks turning to coals, the coals to ashes and embers, and
these, little by little, dying silently away, until only sparks are
left, which one by one fly up or become extinguished, so is it
with the summer, that blazes in August, that turns to coals all
ruddy in September and October, which pale and hide them-
selves in November, and whose last sparks are quenched in
December.

The spirit goes with the seasons. Our thoughts may not be
expressly busy with all these signs in the heaven and on the
earth, but we sigh oftener ; we sit silent more frequently ; our
walks are shortened ; we remember the absent ; we muse upon
the worth of life, upon its course and issues. We are not
sombre exactly, but we are sweetly sad.

There is something even more touching than this ; it is the
flight of birds. All summer they have filled the woods. They
sing from the trees. They rise from thickets and weed-muffled
fences as in our wanderings we scale them. They sing in the
air. They wake us with their matins. They chant vespers
with glorious discordance of sweet medley. They flit across
the lawn, rise and fall on the swinging twig, or rock to the
wind on their aerial grass-perch.

But after August they become mute, and in October days
they begin to recede from the dwellings. No more twittering
wrens ; no more circling swallows ; no more grotesque bobo-
links ; no more meadow-larks, singing as if they were broken-
hearted. They begin now to come in troops in the distant
flelds. At sunset the pasture is full of flocks — hundreds and
thousands of birds ! At morning they are gone. And every
day brings its feathery caravan. Every day they pass on.
Long flocks of fowl silently move far up against the sky, and
always going away from the north. At evening the weary
string of water-fowls, flying low, and wistful of some pond for
rest and food, fill the air with hoarse trumpeting and clangour.

206 SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

They are going— the last are going. Winter is behind them ;
summer is before them ; we are left. The season is bereft.
Light is short ; darkness is long. Flowers are sunken to rest.
The birds have flown away. Winter, wiiite?'^ winter is upon
earth !

At last come the December days. The shortest is reached.
Then a few days stand alike. Then the solar blaze creeps for-
ward a minute in the evening ; a little more ; again more, till
half -hours swing round the horizon — till hours are strung
upon the days — till noons grow warm — till storms are full of
melted snow— till the earth comes back — till ponds unlock
themselves. The forests grow purple-twigged ; the great winds
sigh and rage. March blusters and smiles by turns — a giant
that now is cross, and now kind. The calves begin to come ;
lambs bleat ; the warm hills are ploughed. At last the nights
are without frost.

At length we wake, some unexpected morning, and the blue-
bird's call is in the tree. We throw up the sash. The sun
lies flush on all the landscape. There is a smell of soil and
leaf in the air. The poplar buds are fragrant as balm. The
air is warm and moist. The birds are surely here ; they
answer each other — the sparrow, the bluebird, the robin, and
afar off, on the edges of the swamp, the harsh twanging notes
of the blackbird. It is spring ! It is the time of the singing
of birds. No one forgets the wild thrill of the heart at the
first sound of birds in spring.

Oh ! with what a sense of emancipation do we hear the
birds sing again. God sends His choirs to sing victory over
night and death for us. Winter, that buried all, is herself put
away. Death is swallowed up in victory, and nature chants
the requiem of the past and the joy of the future. Now days
shall grow longer and warmer. Now industry shall move more
freely. Now flowers shall come up ; seed shall be sown ;
doors and windows shall stand open all day long. Round
about the barn the hens shall cackle. Children shall shout.
Spring has come, and all things rejoice at their release. No
more locking ice : no more inhospitable snow ; no more blight
of cold. All is promise. Men go forth with seed, and roots,
and scions. The orchard, and gardeuj and field are full of life.
"The winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the llowers
appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

Is this, now, a mere ornamental passage of Scripture?
Scripture has no passages that are mere ornaments. Unlike

SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE. 207

all Other literature, Scripture never merely decorates. If there
is a figure, it is always for some errand of moral meaning,
there is no description for description's sake. There is no
poetry for mere cesthetical pleasure. There is always profit
withal.

Nature, then, teaches that to every season of trouble and
overthrow there comes resurrection. In the deepest January
of the year there is a nerve that runs forward to June. Life is
never extinguished. That which seems to be death reaches for-
ward and touches that which is vital.

The year breaks cloudily, with many slips and many retroces-
sions. To day open, to-morrow shut. Birds too early tempted
are driven away by bleak winds. And yet spring, once coaie
upon the earth, is never banished again until it has reaped a
victory. All checks, and haUings, and struggles, and storms
cannot alter the inevitable year. So it is in human affairs.
There are cold and dark December days. Bat be patient;
they too have a June waiting for them. To the earlier open-
ings which come among men in darkness aad trouble there are
retrocessions, there are promises suddenly blighted; but every
spring has its March, and March never killed a spring. Men
that have early hopes beginning may have them checked and
driven back ; but this is not a sign that summer has not come
to them, or begun to come. The time of the singing of birds
is the time of hope.

The year lies open before us. We open the furrow. We
hide therein our seed. We sow in hope, with eager industry,
and rejoice beforehand. Oar seed is not sprouted, our flowers
are not blossomed, our fruits are not ripe, and yet by faith we
rejoice in them, foreseeing the future. If we let the seed time
go past, we lose the year. And so it is in human life. In the
state, in the church, in the household, and in the individual
heart, there is a time for the sowing of seed. We sow amid
hopes and expectations. The result is not yet. We wait for
it, and are sure it will come.

But we may make a more full and particular moral applica-
cation of the change of seasons. Nations have their autmun,
their leaf-falUng, their winter, and their spring. So do commu-
nities, churches, families, individuals.

I. Nations seem to have their periods like the year. Neither
in civilisation nor in Christian elements do they seem to mount
up with steady growth. They move, rather, as it were, in
spirals. They often return as if falling back, and yet their pro-
gress, on the whole, is onward. There are times of struggle.

208 SPRIKG-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

of darkness, and of disaster in the history of every nation.
And we have had our hours in this nation, young as we are, of
winter. But, God be thanked, though it be this blowing,
blustering, March of our affairs, the winter has gone, the spring
has come, and the sound of birds is in the air. Summer is
not yet. Now is the time for sowing seeds; now is a time of
expectation. The past — let it not be forgotten j but let us not
take our lessons of joy from that. The autumn is ended, the
winter is gone, the spring is come ; and virtue, religion, justice,
liberty, truth, and the freedom that truth gives to its children
are ours.

Tell me where the wheat is, farmer ! You will point to the
side-hill, where it lies covered with snow, and say, " JNIy harvest
is there." No yellow stems are to be seen rockmg in the wind.
Nothing is visible of the grain but the blades just springing
from the earth. And yet the farmer says, " My harvest is
there; and when the summer shall have brought it forth and
ripened it, I will gather it, and it will be mine in the granary
and in the hand." And if you say to me, " Where are your fair
days of liberty and hope ?" I point to the side-hills. Though
they are yet clasped in ice, or covered with snow, I have heard
the sound of the trumpet ; and that is God's bird that sings in
the air to his nation. I have heard the rushing sounds of
battle. * March winds are they that God blows across the
continent. Though the earth is still unlocked, and the edges
of winter are so near that we feel chilled, yet the time of the
singing of birds has come to this land, and we shall never again
go so far back into winter and death as we have been. Our
course is onward, now, toward summer, and every month, will
grow warmer and warmer.

II. Deep convulsions and embarrassments of all industrial
pursuits are wont to go along with national trials. So it has
been with us. As though it were not enough that our govern-
ment should be almost paralysed, and that so many hundreds

* This sermon was preached in the midst of the civil war. The disas-
trous battle of ]5ull Run had been followed by a loni; inactivity in the East,
not yet broken in upon by the advance on Yorktown. General P'reemont
had been called back from Springfield, and lower Missouri had not yet been
redeemed by the battle of Pea Ridge. Commodore Foote had not yet
passed Island No. lo, the northern gate of the Mississippi ; and New
Orleans had not surrendered to Commodore Farragut. On the other hand,
the capture of Forts IJonelson and Henry in the West, and the occupation
of Roanoke and Newburn in the East, had given the loyal heart the first
real gleams of light and inspiration of hope since the gloom which the defeat
at Bull Run had cast over the nation.

SPRING-TniE IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE. 209

of thousands of our most able-bodied men should be sent to
the tented field, all home industries have suffered. Nor is it
merely that the harbours are choked, as it were, the loom has
ceased to clank, and the shop has become silent. Human life
itself is connected with all industrial pursuits ; that which
disturbs the loom disturbs the cradle ; that which disturbs the
-counting-room disturbs the parlour ; that which disturbs
business disturbs the family. All the North and South have
felt the burden, the grief, the trouble, the anxiety, the difficulty,
which has come from the universal derangement of commercial
affairs consequent upon war, rebellion, and revolution. Never-
theless, I stand upon the second day of spring-. This is the
•second of March. All day yesterday I walked conqueror. I
said to myself, *' It is the first day of spring;" and I stood
triumphing over the past, and rejoicing in the coming future.
And to-day is the second day of spring. I send words of
cheer to our beloved land. I send words of cheer to those
that are enduring hardships on the field of battle, and to those
that at home are struggling with embarrassments and diffi-
•culties. To all those whose wheels of enterprise are blocked ;
to all those whose past growths are withering; to all whose
roots are locked in the icy soil ; to all whose leaves are touched
by the frost of disappointment — to them I say, the winter is
past ; the time of the singing of birds has come. Wait a little :
some more snows may fall, and there may be some more
frosts ; but the time of the singing of birds has come, and the
voice of the turtle is heard in your affairs.

III. There are the same experiences in families as in nations
and industrial communities. There are some families that
seem compelled to go to the promised land, as the Israelites
did, through a desert. There are many that, having expe-
rienced long years of toil and suffering, come out only at last.
Bat there are many that, having been prospered and happy,
lapse into a state of want and trouble. The streams that
swelled with prosperity, swell no more ; the birds that sang of
prosperity sing no more. They come from wealth and comfort
into distress and poverty.

It is hard to go down into the winter of trouble. It is hard
to find one's-self beset with all the difficulties that oftentimes
attend the household. But when a family has through trouble
and affliction found the way to God ; when through trials and
sufferings a family has come to the knowledge of an ever-
present Saviour, who is afflicted in all our afflictions, who bears
our sins, and who carries our sorrows, to that family, though it

p

2IO SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

be in its darkest January days, has come the time of the sing-
ing of birds. It is not so much matter that you should be
lifted out of your want, as that you should have peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost. Are there not some households upon
whose walls first fell the pale light of spring, and then arose
the Sun of Righteousness in their deep distress ? Are there
not some here that can say this morning, " The time of the
singing of birds is come to us ?"

There are times of great sickness, bereavement, and sorrow
that befall our families. There are days that, though they are
very short and mid-winter days, are, oh ! how long ; for, as a
short distance is long to one that carries a heavy burden, so
days that are sorrow-clad, and that measure the minutes by the
tick and fall of tears, are long days, though they are short ones.
How many wade the sea of troubles ! How many that seek
to ford the stream of grief are unable to go from bank to
bank, and are caught when but half-way across, and carried
down; and you cannot ford a stream by going lengthwise in it.
How many seem to be going down in sickness ; and yet, either
the sickness departs, or the spirit departs. How many are
borne down by bereavements ; and yet consolations come, or
the prayer asking that the trouble may be removed is answered
by the voice that says, •' Let it abide, that my grace may be
sufficient for you." There is great joy of prosperity, of love,
of victory; but there is a joy that belongs to the experience of
suffering and sorrow which is more divine and exquisite than
any joy the heart ever knows outside of trouble. When a soul
is afflicted till it is driven into the very pavilion of God ; till
Christ, as it were, wraps his arms about it, and says, Rest here
till the storm be overpast, that soul experiences an exquisite-
ness of joy which only those who have felt it can understand.

There are times of anguish in those nameless sorrows which
belong to the sacredness of households. The best parts of the
history of households are never written. What is it to us that
kings go out with armies, and trample each other under foot,
and produce great revolutions on the surface of the earth ?
What is it that all these external and more obvious events are
occurring in the world? The real life is, after all, going on
behind these things. You see a few leaves, but all those
myriad drops of vital sap that, beginning with the root, work
up through the tree, and minister to those leaves, are never
seen. The sap of life is the invisible life of the household.
The nameless experiences of the hearts of parents and children,,
which have no expression, these are the sap of life.

SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE. 211

How many men there are prospered outwardly; whose
account at the bank is ample ; whose credit is abundant ; who
are envied by all that know them ; and who are congratulated
on every hand upon their supposed good fortune, but who say
of the little boy that springs ragged and buoyant into their
path, " All I have in the world I would give if I could be as
merry as that little child ! " How many men there are that
have honour such that thousands would be willing to give life
itself if they might obtain it, but who have behind that a son, a
daughter, or a companion that is a source of unutterable grief.
It is an old saying that every house has its skeleton. You may
sit in the portico and never suspect it. You may go through
the hall and never suspect it. You may enter the parlour of
festivity, and it is not there. You may go into the sitting-room,
and it is not there. 'You may trace it to the room where it is,
and then not see it. But if, at last, you touch some hidden
spring in the wainscoting, all unsuspected, open flies a door,
and there is some ghastly sorrow or trouble uphung. Every
household has its skeleton. Blessed be God that there is such
a household. What would become of this world if our griefs
and sorrows were hung, as in some ages and countries criminals
have been, at the corners of the streets, so that they could be
seen by every passer-by ? The family, like old Noah's ark,
carries over the heart from the old world to the new, while guilt,
and shame, and disgrace sink under the flood and are drowned.

But are there no spring-like days that come upon the winter
of troubles in the household ? Is it all blast, all blight, all bury-
ing ? Is there nothing but pale, white, enwrapping snow ? Are
there no birds that ever fly athwart the sky of the bereaved
family ? Is there an utter absence of everything like comfort
and cheer ? Blessed be God, even though trouble may abide,
joy comes too.

I sometimes think that it is in the household as it is in those
matchless Miltonic symphonies of Beethoven, or of Weber's
overture to Z>er Freischutz. There seems to be the discord, the
wail, the fierce fight, the struggle of spirits that come together
and blend in terrific clash and controversy ; and yet some ex-
quisite strain of melody begins here, and flashes out there again,
and grows louder and louder, till at last it seems to predomi-
nate over all the rush of other sounds, and they become an
undertone of harmonious bass, while high above them, filling
the air with ecstasy and joy, rises the descant and song of
triumph. And above the wail of sorrow and trouble in many a
household rises a song of rejoicing. Aspirations and longings,

p — 2

212 SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

and yearnings, and prayers, and anxiety, and discontent throng
together, and mingle in harsh discord ; but by-and-bye hope,
faith, gleams of expectation, take possession of the soul, and at
last, ransomed, it begins, with victory, to rise above all these
struggles, and its very sorrows roll beneath it as only a kind of
foundation thunder on which to lift up its notes of joy and
triumph.

IV. The same is eminently true of individuals. There are
those who have broken away from the thralls of life. There
are some here (excuse me if I am personal) who were born
to better things than they have seen ; to truer companions than
they have found; to holier thoughts, higher purposes, and
nobler aspirations, than they have had. They have been caught;
been snared; been swept part way down — almost quite down,
perhaps. But a brighter day has begun to dawn for them. A
loftier ambition has inspired them. They have begun to feel
that the evil influences that have surrounded them and thralled
them are withdrawing from them. They have formed worthier
purposes. They have entered upon a more honourable life.
The winter has gone from their soul. Some rude storms may
yet beat upon them, but a new spring has come to them ; a new
light has dawned upon them ; a new summer is just before
them ; a new hope is theirs.

There is the exclamation of the Psalmist, '' Our soul is
escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler." There are
those who have been going through transitions of life in which
great ambitions, of pride, of vanity, of love, of various descrip-
tions, have been overthrown. They know not why things have
gone against them. If you were to hear some men's expe-
rience, you would think that they grow as the white pine grows,
v/ith straight grain, and easily split — for I notice that all that
grow easy split easy. But there are some that grow as the
mahogany grows, with veneering knots, and all quirls and con-
tortions of grain. That is the best timber of the forest which
has the most knots. Everybody seeks it, because, being hard
to grow, it is hard to wear out. And when knots have been
sawn and polished, how beautiful they are !

There are many who are content to grow straight like weeds
on a dunghill; but there are many others who want to be stal-
wart and strong like the monarchs of the forest ; and yet, when
God sends winds of adversity to sing a lullaby in their branches,
they do not like to grow in that way. They dread the culture
that is really giving toughness to their soul, strength to its fibre.
But the moment a man submits to the discipline and affliction

SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE. 213

that he is called to pass through in the providence of God, that
moment he sees that the way against which his pride and vanity-
have rebelled is the right way. Nine parts out of ten of your
griefs are cured the moment you accept with cheerfulness the
lot to which God has appointed you in this life. Nine hundred
and ninety-nine parts of a thousand of human trouble are only
rebellion ; and the moment a soul says, " Lord, Thy will be
done," that moment its trouble is over, and the time of the
singing of the birds has come. There will still be wind in the
pine and winter in the field, but when birds have once sung
they will sing again.

There are those who have fought the fight of great trouble in
sickness. Not all the soldiers of God are in the battle-field.
There are those there who are strong-backed, whose muscles
are like brawn, whose bones are like flint, and whose faces, for
zeal, are like the face of January, and for enthusiasm are like
the face of July. But these are not God's only soldiers, nor
his strongest soldiers. Some of God's most heroic soldiers are
the bedridden. Look at that sweet child of eighteen, full of
aspiration and hope, to whom has been denied, not loving
father, not loving mother, not sisters, and more than anxious
brothers, but health. She has made a weary fight for one year,
for two years, for three years, and at last she says, "If God has
planted me to grow as a nightshade here ; if I am to be a
flower in the forest, that knows no sun ; if it is here that God
wants me to show patience and zeal, — then I am content with
my lot ; I accept it, and I will ask and expect nothing more.
Let this be my sphere of duty, and let my life be spent on the
bed, the couch, the cot, if God wishes it. If sickness be God's
will, even so. His will be done, not mine. The time of the
singing of birds has come to such a heart. To such a heart
spring has come, and summer is not far off. Such I have seen.

V. There are applications innumerable to spiritual condi-
tions. There are persons in this church who have seen the
days of summer. Many of you, three or four years ago, you
recollect, stood here, on this anniversary, and yielded up your
vows and covenants, and plighted your troth to God. The
spectacle was touching and sublime. You have known a truce
and a vacation. You have had your summer. Many of you
have cast your leaves. You have seen November, and gone
wading through the cold winter of backsliding. But March has
come round to you. A little bird began to sing right in your
family. Before you thought of such a thing, you heard the
singing of birds. It was your daughter that sung ; or, it was

214 SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

the little child of your next-door neighbour. There is beginning
to be a warmth in your heart. You are beginning to think of
your declining days. You are beginning to yearn for the old
love. You are beginning to say, " Is it not time for the winter
to be gone, and for the spring to have come in my heart ?" The
time, oh ! backsliding Christian ; oh, wandering professor of re-
ligion ; oh ! child of God, beloved of Him, and yet forgetful of
your Father and your Saviour — the time of the singing of birds
has come to you. Rise up and rejoice !

And as it is to individuals in the Church, so it is to the whole
Church itself ; so it is to us. Although, as a Church, we have
been having many blessings, and have not been without wit-
nesses of His Spirit, yet, owing partly to our sympathy with
human affairs, and with the affairs of our nation and our time,
and partly to other causes, as regards the peculiar blessing of
the sanctuary — the awakening and the conversion of sinners —
we have come to autumn and to winter ; and behold ! word
comes from our Sabbath- school, and from many famiUes that
are related to us, that the time of the singing of birds has come.
Birds and children — God be blessed for them. How much I
thank God that He did not let men come into the world as
soldiers go into the battle-field, full-grown, but that they come
in children. Give me children in the house. Give me children
in the school. Give me children in the street. If I am sick,
let me hear their voices through the open window. The
sweetest birds that ever sang in the air are these birds of the
house, and school, and street — children. And there are many
that have just begun to sing in the air. Some are here to-day
that have just flown up into the branches of the tree of Hfe.
There may they find protection from heat and storm, and food
for their everlasting want.

And some are singing outside yet. In the Sabbath-school
there is a singing of birds. In this Church, God be thanked,
birds are singing. Oh ! father, could God roll such a burden
off my heart as to let you know that your children are truly
converted to Christ ? When a Christian man's child is con-
verted, he says to himself, " I have a policy for that child; that
child is insured." You have done up your work of life ; it is
completed when you can put your children into the bosom of
the Saviour.

Covenant-believing parents, are your children among those
who are yearning for Jesus Christ, and hoping and singing?
Have you done anything? Have you thought? Have you
prayed ? Have you asked before the open heart of God, that

SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE. 215

sounds out louder than the ocean in your presence, saying,
" Whatever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive"?
Have you asked that your children might be gathered into the
kingdom of Christ ?

There are many classes and many schools that are very happy
now. I congratulate you, dear teacher. You see of the travail of
your soul, and are satisfied. Now you know something of Jesus
that you did not know before ; for when word came to you of
the conversion of such and such a one, what a thrill of joy did
it give you, that God should bring your dear pupils to a know-
ledge of the truth as it is in Jesus ! How sweet was the ecstasy
and gladness of your soul ! Now take what you feel and transfer
it to Christ, remembering that there is joy in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just
persons that need no repentance. This is the way Christ feels
respecting us. Take that thought, and when you experience
the feeling of joy and gladness, use it as an interpretation of
your God and Father. Make more of Him ; for we grow in
grace in proportion as we grow in the knowledge of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ.

There are many families that are now strangely united. In
times of flood, at the West, it sometimes happens that families
are surprised. In the morning they rise up, and find their
dwelling surrounded by water. I recollect an incident that
occurred on the Miami Bottoms when the Ohio overflowed, and
the country for four or five miles about was submerged. To
one dwelling, in which the water had driven the family from the
bottom of the house to the roof, which was then crumbling,
boats came, and the father and mother, and two or three
children, were taken off", and it was supposed that all were
rescued ; but after they had gone a little distance, it was found
out that one of the children had been left behind. Great con-
sternation and alarm was occasioned by the discovery, and a
boat was instantly sent to secure the child. The house was
already disjointing, and the timbers from it were floating off;
but the child was found, and taken into the boat. Thus the
last child was saved. Then suddenly the flood swelled, and in
a short time the fragments of the building were swept down.

Oh ! what joy, what gladness is there in families whose last
child is finally converted to Clirist ! The floods of temptation
and sin swell and surge, and threaten the household, and one
is rescued from danger, and another, and at last the ark of life
is sent to take the last child, and it is saved. Is it not time to
bring in the whole of your household? Can you imagine any

2l6 SPRING-TIME IN NATURE AND IN EXPERIENCE.

happiness greater than that of the parent who can say, '' Christ
has twice given me my children : once for this w^orld,and once
for the w^orld to come. Now, happen what may, nothing can
befall me or mine, whether poverty or riches, joy or sorrow.
Pledges of immortality God has given me in my children ! "
Sing ! sing ! break forth into rejoicing ! There are seldom places
in this world for such triumphs as there are in such experiences
— experiences of souls renewed and sins forgiven ; in these
victories of grace, and, above all, these victories of grace in the
family, where God sanctifies the father's and the mother's heart,
and brings in, one by one, the children.

But the prodigals, that seem sometim.es sent away from hope :,
that seem sometimes sent down the broad way, almost to the
lurid gate, that at last God might snatch them as brands from
the burning, with amazing grace — the return of these is a source
of unspeakable joy in the household that shall go on sounding
to eternity.

VI. We are all of us going through life as a kind of winter.
We are, as we go toward age, dropping our hair, and losing,.
one by one, our senses. We are drifting toward autumn. Then
come the vacuous days of the winter of seeming uselessness —
declines which men dread. How many hate age ! This is the
winter of human life, to be sure : but just beyond is the rising
of that bright, immortal spring where the birds of heaven sing,
and which, when it has once begun, shall never be followed by
winter, and shall never be visited by storms. We are all of us
drawing near to the sweet spring of resurrection. Some have
gone. Methinks I hear, to-day, strange sounds. ]\Iy mother,
my brother, my children, and my friends many, have gone
before ; but their voices come back, and I hear them to-day.
The time of the singing of the birds is come. Our spring is
not far away. Our summer is near. Let every one lookup, and;
in the light and glory of the eternal world, take cheer. With a
holier faith and a truer consecration, let us to-day march on in
our Christian life, believing that He that hath pledged His word
will never leave us nor forsake us. Wherever you may be,
whether in battle, in the hospitals, among enemies, or in
business ; whatever may befall you, whether you be wounded,
or captive, or sick, or maligned and traduced, or tossed hither
and thither, sweet spring is coming on, and the summer of
heaven is just before you. Be patient to the end, and finally
you shall be saved.

XVII.
THREE ERAS IN LIFE: GOD-LOVE— GRIEF ;

AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE EXPERIENCE OF JaCOB.

*' And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold, thy
father is sick : and he took with him his two sons, ^lanasseh and

U- Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph
Cometh unto thee. And Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the
bed. And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me
at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me,
Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make
of thee a multitude of people ; and will give this land to thy seed after
thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, Ephraim
and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt,
before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine : as Reuben and Simeon,
they shall be mine. And thy issue, which thou begettest after them,
shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in
their inheritance. And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel
died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but
a little way to come unto Ephrath : and I buried her there in the way
of Ephrath; the same is Beth-lehem." — Genesis xlviii. i — 7.

How Strange human life appears to us in these remote ages ?
Society, customs, occupations, in the earliest antiquity, seem
scarcely recognisable. Patriarchs of that far-off day are clothed
with the romance of a thousand years. As, when a village
stands on a summer afternoon flooded with a golden haze, we
see it through the dust and the vapour which rise from the in-
dustry of the village itself, so we look at these old men of a
distant time through an atmosphere which the minds of millions
of men has created. It seems irreverent, if not wicked, to
dissolve this golden mist, and to lay bare literal realities.

Esau and Jacob were brothers. They could not have been
better contrasted had their characters been merely dramatic.
Esau, the eldest, was bold, abrupt, heedless, yet with much in
his nature that was generous and loveable. He united a kind
of rashness, which produces the effect of wickedness, with
qualities which still draw the heart toward him. He had no
settled plan of life, no governing principle. He was a man of
impulses — capable of generous ones, yet more habitually act-
ing under others. He acted resolutely, but thoughtlessly,
along the line of impulse. When his worse nature prevailed,

2l8 THREE ERAS IN LIFE:

he seemed hateful and cruel, though when his better nature
was touched, he seemed far more noble than his brother Jacob.

Jacob was a man of deep nature, but his depth lay chiefly
in his domestic affections. He was considerate, wise, and
politic. Esau's feelings were first ; his thoughtfulness was
second. Jacob's reason was dominant. Nothing in him acted
that he did not permit. He looked before him. He foresaw
advantages, anticipated evils; secured the one, and avoided
the other.

Now a character that is perfectly round and balanced is
never so interesting in its details as one that is fitful. Not
that landscape which is smoothest is the most taking to the
eye, but the roughest and the rudest. And characters that are
well knit together do not catch men's admiration as those do
that have chasms, and falls, and cliffs — strong qualities. It is
always easier to live with a round and well-balanced mind, but
we admire the other sort, and make heroes of them. So it is
that the young and inexperienced are perpetually tempted to
make heroes of men that are not heroic, and that are unfit to
be imitated. And hence it has come to be a saying that the
faults of strong men are the things that are the easiest copied.

Jacob's feelings were always under the control of his judg-
ment. He indulged them or repressed them as seemed the
best. Such a nature seldom captivates. The imagination
always loves a certain uncontrollable course of feeling. One
loves to see a strong man regulated and good, but regulation
ought not to stand in the place of great natural impulses in the
right direction. We want the heart to think for the head as
well as the head for the heart. Where a man measures every
step, limits every feeling, analyses every motive, controls every
impulse to the scruple, he may seem to us more nearly right,
but neither magnanimous nor strong. We conceive of a nature
to which principle is like the banks of rivers, fixed and
definite ; but within those banks one loves to see the waters
rising with awful freshets, or moving in uncontrollable power,
now wrinkled and swirled, and making headlong haste to over-
come all hindrances, and now spreading wider, and growing
calmer, and flowing deeper, as if victory had subdued all fret
and anger.

But a man whose banks have been laid for him, stone by
stone, smooth and even, is a canal whose waters are economi-
cally regulated, just enough for profitable use, and not a drop
more. Every wave and swell is combed out, every wrinkle is
smoothed, and every drop seemingly is walking down to the

GOD— LOVE — GRIEF. 219

mill with a sense of its duty to turn the wheel round. Canals
are very good, but men do not sing or make poems about
canals.

Esau was not a river, but a torrent, that, when rain fell on
the mountains, roared down the ravines, but in summer was
dry. Jacob was more than a canal. He was a river, but a
stream that had long since forgotten the mountains, and
flowed through level plains smoothly, beautifully, but not
grandly.

This wise and politic nature, however, was suited to the
position of a leader. He was to develop a nation. He was
to found a religious economy. He was fitted to be a states-
man. He had an eventful life and a long one. Yet so
adroitly did he manage circumstances, so discreet was he in
dealing with human nature, that we see, even in the simple
and rude affairs of a shepherd's Hfe, a statesman, and one
able to control himself (an ability which constitutes the first
element of statesmanship), and then able to control other men,
and, last of all, able to seek human ends by the use of princi-
ples rather than by expedients. Such was Jacob's gift.

As he became old, time seemed to make him, if not nobler,
yet more dignified. The unconscious grandeur of the contrast
between him and Pharaoh, when they met, ought long ago to
have inspired some brush. In the land of Pyramids, then
second to none on earth in civilisation, with cities whose mere
ruins now fill us with wonder, with an educated priesthood,
and a nobility far above any other on earth, the seat of
learning, and the bright centre of art, the king called for this
shepherd, this leader of a tribe, this patriarch of a kingdom.
The scene is recorded in the chapter preceding that from
which our text is borrowed. I will read a few verses of it to
you : —

" And Joseph brought in Jacob, his father, and set him
before Pharaoh : and Jacob blessed Pharaoh."

He took the position of a superior instinctively. There sat
the glittering old king, on his jewelled throne, surrounded by
his satraps ; and there sat altogether the king, as between the
two, and blessed him.

"And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And
Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pil-
grimage are an hundred and thirty years : few and evil have
the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained
unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days
of their pilgrimage."

2 20 THREE ERAS IN LIFE I

Which of those two came out best in conversation ? Pharaoh,
■who said, How old art thou ? or Jacob, who made this most
exquisite answer ?

"And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before
Pharaoh."

And it was dark when he had gone out ; for all the light of
that court was not equal to his face.

The natural monarch was apparent. It was the old shepherd
that stood up grandest, and looked down on the king and
blessed him. Mark the simple summing up of his life. How
strangely such words must have sounded to the monarch in
his palace, surrounded by all the luxuries of human life !

At length, as his end drew nigh, and he began to fail, Joseph
was informed, and hasted to him. The passage that I have
read gives the result of the first interview. It was in the
nature of a review of his own life— rather a statement of its
results. He looked back on all the long reach of his life, and
there were but three impressions that stood up so high above
all forgetfulness, above all interests, that he saw nothing else.

When I stood upon the Gorner Grat, in Switzerland, right
over above me were IMonts Rosa, Breithorn, and Matterhorn.
A hundred smaller swells, peaks, and mountains there were,
which, if alone, would have been commanding, but which, in
the presence of these grander summits, one did not see. They
were but so many approaches to the higher mountains, and
seemed to serve them, to watch their skirts, and finish off their
lines of grandeur and beauty.

So, in human life, myriads of separate events in our conscious-
ness run together, and report themselves as units in some few
great experiences which swallow up the individuality of those
elements which once had a separate sphere and seemed
important.

Jacob looked up and saw but three things. "God Almighty
appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed
me." "And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel
died by me in the land of Canaan." God, Love, Grief— these
were the sum of his life in retrospect. They were all that he
had to speak of. A trinity of the past they were. They
dwarfed everything else. Had he forgotten his early ambition?
Had he forgotten the heat and fire of his youth ? Had he
forgotten his unrighteous management and supplanting of his
brother ? Had he forgotten his fear and enforced flight ?
Had he forgotten his residence with Laban? Had he for-
gotten his toils and watchings, and the shrewdness by which

GOD — LOVE — GRIEF. 221

he came off at last rich ? Did he forget the return to Palestine,
the dreaded meeting of his brother, his troubles with neio-h-
bouring chiefs, and his wrangling children, deceitful, harsh, and
cruel ? Had he forgotten the horror that spread over him at
Joseph's reported death, his inconsolable grief, or his surprise
afterward at Joseph's glory in Egypt, which was so great that
it could not be spoken in words ?

These experiences had been buried. All time could not
efface them, nor age overgrow them ; yet, in comparison with
other influences, they sank down pulseless and voiceless. As
he looked back across the plain of life, the three summits that
lifted themselves up above all others, and seemed alone worthy
of name, were God, Love, Grief.

" God appeared to me at Luz." This one, first, and great
appearance of God was memorable in all his life, because it was
the first. Others came after, without a doubt. Dreams and
visions, supplementary intimations, he had. But there is some-
thing in a full first experience which nothing can ever rival or
supersede. Many results come so gradually, that we watch their
unfolding as we do that of a flower whose seed we plant, and
all of whose stages we watch and help, and whose blossoming,
though it be a pleasure, is never a surprise. But now and then
a great experience comes unexpected and unsought. It touches
the greater chords of the soul, and lifts it above the common
level of emotion, outruns all former knowledge, and fills the
soul and overflows it, and amazes it with its own capacity of
joy, or love, or grief, or fear, or awe. In the presence of its
own intense and surpassing emotions the soul is conscious of
nothing else in life. It seems to itself to be the height and
centre of the universe, and all other things fall off and grade
away from it. The reality of immortality, the indestructible-
ness of the soul's life, is revealed to it in some of these higher
and transcendent experiences, that seem not to have come
from natural causes, but to have been let down from above by
Divine inspiration.

These memorable moments cannot be renewed. You may
go to the same place, and to the same events, or even to
greater ones, but not with the same result. Knowledge always
ends mystery. A first experience brings its mystery, and its
surprises are very exhilarating. The surprise, the wonder, the
eager expectancy, ihe half-sense of translation, comes but once
in the same faculty.

But what other experience is like that of the personal dis-
closure of God in the soul ? We have read of God in books.

2 22 THREE ERAS IN LIFE:

and believed. We have gazed upon the earth and the sky, and
worshipped. We have yielded faith and feeling to inspirations
of the sanctuary, and rejoiced withal. But there comes an hour
to some, to many, of transfiguration. It may be in grief; it
may be in joy ; it may be the opening of the door of sickness ;
it may be in active duty ; it may be under the roof or under the
sky, where God draws near with such reality, glory, and power,
that the soul is filled, amazed, transported. All before was
nothing ; all afterward will be but as a souvenir. That single
vision, that one hour, is worth the whole of life, and throws back
a light on all that went before. It solves doubts, it glorifies
mysteries which no longer seem abysses beneath us, but golden
floods above us. It shoots radiant arrows through all doubts
and scepticisms, and gives to the soul some such certainty of
invisible spiritual truths as one has of his own personal identity.
When one has had this hour of Divine disclosure, of full and
entrancing vision, it never can be retracted, or effaced, or
reasoned against, or forgotten. The impression remains, and
the soul goes back to it with assurance and trust, from all its
fears, and scruples, and intellectual uncertainties. It fulfils the
words of the Master, " And He shall give you another Com-
forter, that He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him
not, neither knoweth Him ; but ye know Him ; for He dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you.

Such was Jacob's vision of God. That one interview stamped
itself upon his life. As a gold coin receives|under the die one
pressure which stamps upon it the features that it is to bear in
all its rounds of commerce, so the soul of the patriarch received
upon it the image and the superscription of God.

When old age was obscuring his reason, and memory, like a
worn and wasted bag, was scattering all along the road its con-
tents, yet from the dim horizon of his decrepitude that great expe-
rience, " God appeared to me at Luz," was not effaced, or
weakened, or dimmed, or forgotten, but was with him in the
valley of the shadow of death ; and he might say, with Asaph,
" My flesh and heart faileth ; but God is the strength of my
heart, and my portion for ever." If one such vision of God, to
one confused and feeble miOral nature on earth, cross-ploughed
and harrowed by cares and duties, is yet of such wondrous
power, what will the sight of God be in the heavenly land,
where we shall see Him as He is, and face to face ?

Though less august, yet perhaps even more affecting, was the
second of his three remembered experiences of his life — Love.

GOD LOVE— GRIEF. 223.

Of all those whom he had known, only two names remained
to him in that twilight between this life and the other — where
he stood — God and Rachel. There is something in the help-
lessness of former days to express affection that touches every
generous soul. Modern loves have had their literature. Dante
has lifted up his Beatrice, and made her the world's admiration.
Petrarch's Laura will not be forgotten while letters last. Poets
build temples in verse, wherein they enshrine love and give it
immortality. The letters of Abelard and Heloise will make their
names famous to the end of time, which show that they spent
their life in repenting of that which was the noblest thing that
belonged to that life — the fact that they loved each other. In
the days in which they lived, love, under the touch of supersti-
tion, had withered.

But in those far-away days in which the patriarch lived men
were without literature, without the instruments of expression,
and the great heart carried its love unspoken. Yet this simple
scene on the boundary of the other life is a testimony to Rachel
more touching and exquisite, by its very helplessness, than any
man has ever laid at the feet of his beloved. The simple mention
of her name by the side of God, in this last tremulous moment
of his life, is itself a monument to her, to her goodness, to her
loveableness, to the ascendancy which she gained over the
patriarch's heart. I would rather be Rachel than Laura.

Is it not among the things of note and of grandeur to see a
soul walking along life upheld by a full and perfect love ? Others
had been dear to him, but Rachel alone filled his capacity of
love. She left no part of his Hfe unfertiHzed. The outward Hfe
had been full of cares, dangers, business, and change. This
inward life had been silent, and had had little expression.
Persons approaching this chief would not have dreamed of its
depth and power. They would have seen his state, his authority,
his wealth, but not that spring which, though hidden, fed his
joy and made it green.

But in his last hours the flocks were forgotten. The gold and
silver, the raiment and the riches— these external elements sank
out of sight, and left disclosed that deep and hidden source of
his life, a soul-satisfying love.

Next to God, a true human love is the most powerful for
good, and fruitful in joy. Of all human possibilities, whether it
be of father or mother, of wife or child, of friend or hero, no
one has lived to his whole capacity who has not felt the fulness
of an over-mastering love.

To most men love is a kind of well to which they resort when

2 24 THREE ERAS IN LIFE :

they are thirsty, and draw the crystal treasure for their present
need, and then resort again to other satisfying experiences.
But there is a love that, like a fountain, needs no cord or pole
to draw withal, but, full, pulsing night and day, in all seasons,
sparkling, abundant, pours forth its treasure, not by the measure
of a bucket, or by the capacity of a need, but according to the
fulness of its own life. To have had such a vision of God, and
such a love for Rachel, was to connect Him with all that is
highest and noblest in the experience of the human race.

The third of these experiences was that Rachel was buried.
All men know grief, and griefs ; but to be taken possession of;
■filled full ; to have the soul rolled in an abyss of darkness, with
no east for a morning, and hardly a west ; with a memory of
a sun that has gone down apparently into darkness — this is a
great experience. Such to Jacob was the death of Rachel. His
very love was swallowed up in his grief. His whole life, seen in
retrospect, was this : — " I lost her. As I was in the way, she
left me." This man, that stood so high among his own people —
this man, that was admitted to the presence of the king, and
that was full of years, and honours, and wealth, in looking back
upon his life, said, *' I remember God, and I remember Rachel
that died." These were all he had left to remember. The wail
measures the foregoing joy. The loss is the sign of the precious-
ness. What the heart can suffer tells what the heart can enjoy.
It is not the rude and spontaneous outburst that tells what love
is. It certainly is not the exquisite and ecstatic description that
tells what love is. Sorrow is the measure of love. Sorrow is the
true symbol of love. How much we suffer for another tells how
much we love that other. Therefore mother above all others is
the lover, AVhen Rachel died, the whole world had but one
man in it, and he was solitary, and his name v^'as Jacob.

But what are common griefs but a variation of prosperity,
the shadow which joy casts? There is no substance without a
shadow ; there is no joy without a sorrow ; but, after all, both
sorrows and joys are, for the most part, like clouds in summer,
whose fleecy substance in the air, and whose moving shadow on
the fields, are both fleeting and effectless.

But griefs of the heart are as visitations of God. They are
powers in the soul. They rule and endure. Jacob, at the very
ciose of life, looking back across the desert, saw but three great
landmarks in all his life. The first as he looked back, the one
next to him, was grief. That led him still higher, to love. And
that stood up against the background of a higher and the
highest — God.

GOD — LOVE — GRIEF. 225

With this unfolding, and the suggestions which I have
carried with me in the narrative, let me close a few points of
application.

I. See how perfectly we are in unity with the life of this one
of the earliest men. How perfectly we understand him ! How
the simplest experiences touch us to the quick ! Our tears fall
for him that passed away four thousand years ago as if we
stood and heard his voice. The unity of the race of man is
proved, not by monuments, not by the results which he
achieves, but by the common experiences of the soul. The
fundamental affections, the great faculties, which God put into
man at his making — these stand related from the beginning of
the world down to the end, so that wherever you go you find
that which is original and constituent in man. You recognise
in every nation, in every tribe, your fellow-men, your brethren.
Go to Egypt, and stand among the Sphinxes, the Pyramids, the
old and wondrous temples, and you are a stranger in a stransje
land, and it seems scarcely less than a ghastly dream. Go
farther East, behold the ruined architecture, revive the manners
and customs of the Syrian and Babylonian empires, and you
seem still among a strange people. If they should rise and
speak to you, their tongues would be as strange to you as yours
rt'ould be to them. But let a maiden speak her love, and
instantly you know that voice. The works that their hands
wrought are wondrous. The affections that throb in their heart
are familiar. The things that they lived for outwardly — see
how widely you are separated from these. How different are
their laws, their institutions, and their methods of commerce
from ours ! How strange to us are their political economy and
their ecclesiastical system ! Touch that which man fashioned
and formed, and man is disjointed, and split apart by rivers,
and mountains, and times, and ages; but touch the human
•heart, and let that speak, and all men rise up and say, "That
voice is my voice." Reach but the feeling of love, and every
human being says, "It is my brother; it is my sister."
Strike those chords that bring out the experience of grief, and
every man wails with the hoary wallers of antiquity. ]\Ian is
not a unit by virtue of the fruits of his intellect and the works
of his hand, but by virtue of those eternal identities of senti-
ment and affection which are common to all men in all nations
and ages. We stand by the side of Jacob to-day, and are
familiar with every step of his inward life ; whereas, if we go
back to the literature, and customs, and institutions of the age
in which he lived, they are all strange to us. That which

Q

226 THREE ERAS IN LIFE :

comes out of men estranges one from another. That which we
keep in us makes all men kin.

2. The filling up of Hfe, however important in its day, is in
retrospect very insignificant. When the patriarch looked back
through his life, there were but two or three things, as I have
said, that seemed to have happened to him, and yet there were
a million. They grouped themselves into two or three, and it
seemed to him as though his life might be expressed by that
brief formula — God, Rachel, Grief. And with us it will be so.
The frets that come upon us ; the anger that rolls its storms in
our sky ; the jealousies, the envyings, the fears, the hopes, the
petty piques, the burdensome cares, the satisfactions, the
thousand lights and shadows of superficial life — these speck
the hour and clothe the summer of our experience ; but, after
all, when you have gone a little way from them, they are as if
they had not been.

Where is all that gay plumage which the trees lifted up some
six months agone ? Where is all that purple garniture of the
fields that delighted every eye that looked upon it? The
fields are bare and russet, and the trees hold up their branches
against the sky, without leaf, or blossom, or fruit.

Look back upon those ten thousand experiences which you
passed through last year. How many of them can you revive ?
How many of them could you now recite? If narrated to you,
how hke the history in a novel would they be to you ! We are
neither as happy nor as miserable as we think. There are but
few fast colours in human experience. The dyes that seem so
bright to-day wash out to-morrow. The substance of man's
life — how useful and needful it is ; and yet how fragile and
insignificant compared with certain great spiritual features,
certain grand, fundamental elements which shape life and
character, immortality and destiny !

3. The significance of events is not to be judged by their
outward productive force, nor by their power of reporting
themselves to our senses, but by their productiveness in the
inward life. All that a man constructs out of matter, all that
he does as a member of society, must have its importance;
but, after all, these things are temporal, and therefore transient.
It is wise to build up men according to methods that God has
ordained. Human government, human society, industries of
every kind, are ordinances of God — not such ordinances as the
Church has. Men ought to dig, to smelt, to construct, to store;
men ought to be seamen and landsmen ; men ought to be
husbandmer, manufacturers, merchants. The business of life

GOD — LOVE — GRIEF,

227

is of consequence, but it is not of the highest consequence. It
is an instrument, and not the end ; for all that a man accumu-
lates, the matter that makes him powerful here, stays on this
side of the grave. All that he constructs in himself of thought
and feeling he will carry with him.

Now, tell men that those are the strongest that stand yonder,
and they will ask, "What are they worth? " Of bonds, nothing;
of houses and lands, nothing ; of ships and goods, nothing. And
when you tell them this, they say, smiling, " You are given to
poetry, to tell me that those are the men of power. For my
part," say they, "give me a good farm and substantial funds to
manage it with ; give me a bank ; give me ships ; you may have
your inside treasures, but I would rather have material treasures
so long as I live in a physical world." But when men come to
walk the shadowy way; when the great Tax-gatherer calls all
men before Him, to the one he says, " Give me thy ships."
*' O Death, they are thine," saith the man. To others he says,
"Give me thy houses and lands;" and they and their possessions
part company without papers. To another he says, " Give me
thy funds that thou hast toiled for ; " and the man that stood
highest in his day and generation is stripped bare, and shoved
out of the world, with no capital for the life to come.

Then comes another man, a man of dreams, as he is called.
Death says to him, "Yield up thy ships." "I have none."
" Yield up thine acres." "I have none." *' Yield up thy bonds
and funds." " I have none." " Yield up thy thoughts." " Nay,
O Death, my thoughts are mine, and beyond thy power."
" Yield up thy affections." " Nay, Death, thou canst not touch
my affections. And my hope, my immortaUty — these are not
in thy schedule. That which I am by the grace of God, thou
canst not tax or hold. I carry all that with me." The man
that is mightiest in this world leaves his might behind him ; and
the man that is weakest in this world carries his might with
him. When we step into that other world where things are
measured according to their realities, the man that has the most
has the least, and the man that has the least has the most.
And so the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

4. In looking back through the events of life, though they
are innumerable, though they are amazing in their variety and
in their diversity, yet those that remain at last are very few —
not because all the others have perished, but because they
group themselves and assume moral unity in the distance. We
find that the patriarch's Hfe, in looking at it retrospectively,
summed itself up in two or three experiences which had their

Q— 2

228 THREE ERAS IN LIFE I

respective types. He speaks of bis life as being all represented
by these few things. And our life will appear, by-and-bye, in
the same way. It consists not in the abundance of the things
we possess. The things that now seem of the least account
will seem of the most transcendent importance. What you retain
that connects you with God, what you have known in life that
was most generous, and deep, and sweet of love, and what
great cleansing griefs you have suffered— these will stand
highest in the last hours of life. Though they seem to perish,
yet they are more in number and more precious as we draw
near to heaven. And sorrowers and sufferers, when they look
back upon their sorrow and suffering at the close of life, will
see beyond it love, beyond that God, and beyond them all
eternity and blessedness.

Let us, then, not revoke the duties of the day; but let us
remember that there is a higher fruit than that of which man
thinks. And while we are building up the family and the
state, and discharging our functions in the great realm of civi-
lised life, let us remember that these are but instruments ; that
the true life is that which is carried on in man's silent thought
and deeper affections, and that only he lives that day by day
is projecting his life into the other sphere.

And as you look back from your last hours, may it be yours,
joined, as you are, in a common faith with the old patriarch, to
behold, standing clearest in the horizon, these higher experi-
ences of your moral nature. There may they stand, fixed and
radiant, when the fret, and fever, and suffering of the body
have ceased, and have no more record for ever.

PRAYER.

We are drawn, O Thou ascended One, by all the memories
and associations of this day, to look up that bright and shining
way whither Thou hast gone, and to behold Thee where Thou art,
a Friend and a Saviour, exalted far above all human suffering —
far above the weakness that once befell Thee. Thou hast burst
the bonds not only of death, but of human life, that imprisoned
Thee, and now Thou art God over all, blessed for ever. We
rejoice that we are related to Thee. By Thine own grace Thou
hast made us blood kindred, and nothing can be Thine which
shall not also, in measure, be ours ; nor canst Thou ascend in
glory without taking Thine own, that where Thou art, they may

GOD — LOVE — GRIEF. 229

be also. And all that there is of blessedness in heaven, and all
that there is in the coming ages, Thou art holding for Thine
own as much as for Thyself. And we rejoice that Thy abode,
for ever filling, shall never be filled, and that there is to be
room for the incoming of all the generations of time. There is
in Thine heart ample love and provision, and in Thine hand
power inexhaustible. Thou canst not augment the bounds of
Thy kingdom beyond Thy power of care and of love ; and there
is no such thing as weariness with Thee — Thou that art without
shadow of turning, the unslumbering Watchman of Israel !
We rejoice, therefore, and are strong, not in the sources of
human joy and strength, but in Thee. We rejoice this morning,
and acclaim Thee God, Redeemer, Father ; and we call our-
selves Thy children, since it is that sweet name which Thou hast
been pleased to hold forth to us, and to lay upon us, and which,
resting on us, is more than a coronet. We rejoice in all the
fulness and sweetness of its meaning. We mourn that we can
carry it with us so little. We mourn that as by the winds the
leaves of flowers are blown away, so our sweetest thoughts of
Thee are taken away from us ; but as, swift-growing, the leaves
come again, bearing rich perfumes, so these thoughts return,
and, by help obtained of Thee, we continue to be blessed by
thee.

And now we commend ourselves to Thy fatherly care. Thou,
in whose hands is all power ; Thou, that hast all wisdom ; Thou,
that art goodness itself; Thou, that hast taught to love all that
know how to love, be pleased, we beseech of Thee, to accept
the offering of ourselves which we make. Consecrate us to Thy
service. Make us more worthy of Thy taking and of Thy keep-
ing. By Thy providence and by Thy grace, educate us so that
we may rise, step by step, to purity, and spiritual wisdom, and
godliness.

Remember all in this congregation according to their several
wants, and interpret, not as they interpret, but as thou seest
and thou knowest. How much better are Thy thoughts toward
us than our own ? How much better is that way which we
shun, and which God marks out, than that way which we seek,
and which God forbids ! We beseech of Thee, look into the
heart of every one. Are there those that sit under great
trouble ? Thou, that hast been in trouble, dost know how to
succour them. Are there any that are in grief? Thou hast
been a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Are there
any that are heart-sick from hope deferred ? Has not thine
own heart felt the spear? Hast thou not mourned in darkness?

230 THREE ERAS IN LIFE:

Are there those who, with all their losses, have lost the
evidence of Christ's acceptance of them, and their hope of
God? Didst not thou cry out, '' Why hast thou forsaken me?
and dost thou not know their pang and extremity of sorrow?
O God, draw near to all that sit beneath the cloud. Minister
strength and consolation to them. Let the light begin to shine
into their darkness. Grant that they may feel that if God is
for them, none can be against them. May they rise up and put
their trust in Thee.

We beseech Thee that Thou wilt sanctify to every one the
afflictions which Thou art laying upon them. It is a time of
trouble.* All through our land are mourners in unwonted
numbers. We behold Thy providence, the mystery and the
wonder of it; and therefore we lay our hands upon our mouth,
and our mouths in the dust. For our sins Thou art chastising
this people. But, we pray Thee, look upon the individual
mourners. Whilst Thou art doing a fearful and marvellous
work in this great nation, O Lord, forget not to be gracious.
Enter in and comfort the widow, the orphan, and all that in
sorrow drink their daily cup and eat their daily bread.
Remember all that are distressed, and bind up their bruised
and wounded hearts.

And we beseech of Thee that Thou wilt look upon those in
this congregation who are in the midst of cares, and duties,
ana burdens of life, and that are harassed with various
perplexi^'es. Grant to every one whatever he needs, that his
strength may be as his day is. May all have occasion to thank
God for His presence and for the richness of His grace. We
pray Thee, instruct each of us how to take the aftairs of this life
without being overborne by its responsibilities, and without
being led by them away from Thee. Teach us, we beseech
of Thee, how to carry ourselves so that we shall evermore have
the presence of Christ, and the sweet suggestions of the Spirit
of God. And teach us how to bear more and more of the
humanity of the Gospel and of the love of Christ into our
fellowship with each other — into our intercourse with man.
Teach us how to do as thou dost, according to the measure of
our power.

Bless any strangers that may be in our midst ; and if, in the
suggestions of this place and of this worship, they bethink
them of the dear ones that are far from them, and of the house
of God in which they have been accustomed to sit ; and if in
their ears are sounds of melodies remembered long, grant that
■'•' The civil war was in progress at this time.

GOD — LOVE — GRIEF. 231

Still among those who are their brethren, though they be of
strange names, they may feel children's comfort in their
Father's house. Heed their tears. Answer their prayers.
Comfort their hearts. Bless those whom they fain would have
blessed.

Go forth with all our hearts and thoughts to those that are
separated from us, wherever they may be. Remember, we
beseech of Thee, those of our brethren who are in circumstances
of peril and toil. Many yet walk in the battle-field. God
preserve them ! ^Many are wounded and suffering ! God
comfort and heal them ! Many are scattered hither and thither
through this land. Though they be wanderers, let that thread
of faith, which invisibly connects us to Thee, hold them, that
we and they may still be one in Christ Jesus. And we pray
that all who are in distant lands, or in remote portions of our
own land, and who remember us Sabbath by Sabbath, and
sing the songs that we sing, and look to the hours that we
observe, may be blessed of Thee. Give them evermore to
partake of the food of which we partake, and that it may
strengthen them as we are strengthened.

Look upon the poor and sick in our midst, to comfort them,
to cheer them, and to heal them. And grant that our sym-
pathies may be exercised more toward them. Look upon all
the classes round about us that need the Gospel, and have it
not. May there be more light and power in the churches,
whereby to go forth and preach Christ Jesus to those that lack
a knowledge of the Saviour. Bless all eftbrts for the reformation
of morals. Stay the flood of intemperance that threatens us.
Hold back this great people, we beseech of Thee, from sottish
and besotting sins.

Grant, we pray we, a blessing to rest upon this nation.
Remember the President of these United States,* whom Thou
hast placed in a position of great responsibility and of trying
labours. Thou hast been his God. Thou hast given the
spirit of wisdom to rest upon him. Thou hast led him out of
dangerous and difficult places. Still guide him unto the end,
and grant that he may never be without Thy presence and
Thy conscious guidance. May his thoughts be lifted up to
Thee evermore, that not the transient favour of man, but the
abiding wisdom of God, may be his rule. Bless all others
that are in authority about him, and that are his counsellors.
Bless all that are assembled to make laws for this nation.
Remember the generals of our army, and the soldiers, every
* AlDraham Lincoln.

232 THREE ERAS IN LIFE : GOD— LOVE — GRIEF.

one. Grant that victory may be given us for the sake of
humanity, and justice, and liberty. Remember the poor
outcast slaves. Give to them that freedom which is their right.
and with it give them that instruction which shall open to
them that more noble liberty wherewith Thou makest Thy
people free. We thank Thee that Thou hast guided these poor
creatures of Thine, and kept them from imprudence, and
caused them to be praised for their wisdom. Grant that the
day appointed for their deliverance may soon come, and that
at last they may go free. And in their freedom may we too,
at last, be free. And we beseech of Thee, when Thou hast
purged out the sins from this nation, when Thou hast punished
us for our transgressions, that there may be a staying of the
red cloud of war. Some wind may there arise that shall sweep
it away into the wilderness, with all its devastations. In Thy
good time deliver us from chastisement, and suffering, and
peril. Grant that our relief may so come that all nations shall
see the salvation of God therein, that Thy name may be
glorified thereby, and that this people may become a mightier
witness for Christ and for Christianity than has ever before
existed. While so many are watching for our downfall, grant
that they may behold a nation rise, not for the terror of other
nations, but for the consolation of the poor, for the instruction
of the ignorant, and for the hope of the oppressed ; and may
this great people be self-restrained, and tempered in their
ambition ; and may their prosperity, and wealth, and power all
swell and augment the glorious triumphs of Christ in the
world. Hasten that day which has been so long prayed for^
and which so many have died without seeing; let it at last
begin to dawn over the mountains, and all flesh shall see Thy
salvation. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.

XVIII.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

"Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called
Christ?" — Matt, xxvii. 22.

Pilate, a Roman procurator, was for ten years governor of
Judea under the Emperor Tiberius. History represents him
as stern, cruel, stubborn, and avaricious. Nor is there anything
in the Gospels to modify such a characterisation. He acts as if
he were just such a man as he is represented by history to be.

The question which Pilate puts indicates expostulation full
as much as perplexity. An honest man, sitting in his place,
would have found no trouble — would certainly have had no
doubt as to duty ; for Christ had lived and taught during Pilate's
administration, and there is evidence, also, in the text of
Scripture, that Pilate had a general knowledge of the purity of
His doctrine and the integrity of His life. All the allegations
made against Him and the evidences which had been presented
in confirmation of them were so manifestly insufficient for
condemnation, nay, even for blameworthiness, that Pilate's
mind was not affected in the slightest degree with trouble from
conflicting evidence, or the intricacy of principles involved. It
was a case perfectly clear in itself. Pilate sat there as a
supreme arbiter— as a ruler and judge. It was his business to
consider Christ's conduct in relation to the laws of the land,
and in that relation there was not a shadow of evidence against
Him. He stood morally acquitted of every charge upon which
He was arraigned. Nay, Pilate w^as perfectly well acquainted
with the accuseds of Christ. He knew them to be selfish,
ambitious, vindictive men : and he was entirely convinced in
this particular case that Christ was persecuted by them from
reasons of malice ; for it is declared that " he knew that for
envy they had delivered Him."

This, then, was a case which to an honest and a just man
would have had no difficulties whatever. There was but one
plain duty to be performed, and that was to acquit Christ, and
to discharge Plim. But to a politic man, who only regards
men's moods as they affect his own interests, and their moral
qualities only as so many collateral elements of his own welfare

234 WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

— to such a one there may be trouble in such a case ; for the
people had been stirred up by their rulers, and were almost
riotous ; and the chief priests and influential men were hot with
rage. Pilate was satisfied that Christ was innocent, and ought
to be released. But how could he acquit Him, and yet stand
well with the ruling classes? That was the perplexity. He
wanted to do two opposite things ; he wished to reconcile two
irreconcilable courses. He therefore reasons with them per-
suasively—"Wh-^.t evil hath He done?"— hoping to bring them
into a better, juster state of mind. He endeavours to appease
them by offering another victim for their wrath — Barabbas. And
so he tries various expedients to get rid of pronouncing con-
demnation upon Christ — the thing that they wanted him to do,
and that he shrunk from doing.

The most extraordinary part, however, of this scene, and the
one which shows at once the greatest moral sensibility in Pilate,
and the most profound moral ignorance, is that recorded in the
twenty-fourth verse of this narrative. — " When Pilate saw that
he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he
took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying,
I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it."

This man wn/o appointed to administer justice, and in the
clearest possible case he refused to do it. He was appointed
to stand between men and the law, and to secure punishment
for disobedience and safety for obedience, and he utterly refused
to perform this high duty. He denied the instinct of common
humanity. He broke the law he was to administer. He
violated his own knowledge and sense of justice. He delibe-
rately gave an innocent Man over into the hands of His raging
enemies to be put to the most cruel death known to that age,
ingenious in cruelty. And then, having been faithless in every
duty, he coolly puts off all his own responsibility upon the Jews !
for they were conspirators with him. There were two parties to
this crime — the Jews, who demanded Christ's crucifixion, furious
with rage ; and Pilate, who gave Him over to them, cool calcu-
lating, politic, selfish. However impressive, then, it may have
been to the spectators, and however much it may have eased
hmi to wash his hands, it could not touch his guilt, or wash
away the blackness of it from his memory. In this awful
tragedy he was second to none in guilt.

But, my dear friends, is Pilate the only one to whom this
question comes : " What shall I do with this Jesus that is called
Christ ? " He had to meet this question, and to answer it ; and
every man that is before me has Christ upon his hands, and is

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST ? 235

called to answer this question. You have not been born in a
heathen land. Had you been, you would have escaped the
settlement of this question. But, born in a Christian land, amidst
Christian institutions, and especially instructed carefully in
Christian truth, you can scarcely forget for an hour that there
is a Christ who claims authority ; who demands obedience ;
who solicits love; who is declared to be Son of God, Saviour of
the world, your Judge ! He is now your Guide and Governor,
and is by and bye to be your Rewarder or Punisher. And this
august Personage is before you, with claims that reach the very
marrow of your life and the very centre of your nature, and
which include the whole scope of your being.

It makes no difference in this matter whether you adjourn the
settlement of this question or not. You may put it off from one
year to another ; you may adjourn it throughout youth, and from
youth to manhood ; you may neglect it through every period of
manhood, and from manhood to old age ; but there is no such
thing as finally getting rid of it. It must come up for answering,
first or last, by every one of you.

You may seek to forget this question in pleasure ; may thread
its mazes, may drink its ruby cup, dance its gay revel through,
filling the day with laughter, and the night with joyous gaiety,
until one who looks upon you may think that no such thing as
serious trouble can ever reach you ; and yet there will come
pauses when out of all your joys there will rise this question,
*' What shall I do with this Jesus that is called Christ ? " He is
something to you. He has a hold upon you. If, as is the case,
we sprang forth from God, and bear in us something of His
nature and spirit, there are sympathetic cords that bind us to
Him ; and this question will be borne in upon us, in spite of
pleasure, '^ What shall I do with this Jesus that is called Christ ? "

You may overlay this question with business. You may ex-
haust your energies with work ; you may fill up the hours with
zealous industry ; and in this great Babel, amid outcries, and
grinding wheels, and fierce encounters of selfish men, each deter-
mined to secure wealth or honour, you may get rid, for a time,
of this question ; and yet there is leisure in all occupations ; the
busiest business has its pauses; there are still hours and thought-
ful hours to every one ; and in them the question will come up,
*' What shall I do with this Jesus that is called Christ? "

Men may put off and put away the question ; they may
demand that it be let alone, and say, •' What have I to do with
Thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? I will not have Thee to rule
over me ; " but this is a question that will not be silenced, that

236 V/HAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

will not be shaken off. Every time you behold a true Christian
roan with the power of God resting upon him, and wiih a face
shining as if he had been in heaven, this thought will come back
to you, " What shall I do with this Jesus that is called Christ ? "
Every heroic deed done in the name of Christ ; every great grief,
or wrong, or sorrow borne in the name of Christ; every joyful
death made triumphant through Christ, will bring back to you
the question, *' What shall I do with this Jesus that is called
Christ? " Every time you part company with trusted and loved
friends, and they go to the Lord's table, and you turn away and
go otherwheres, the question will come back to you, " What shall
I do with this Jesus that is called Christ?"

It is written on the sanctuary ; it sounds out through every
Sabbath ; it comes from the Bible ; it rises from the lives of
good men ; it meets you in the field ; it questions you sharply
in health ; it dwells with you in sickness ; the chamber of be-
reavement whispers it ; the grave breathes it — " What shall I do
with this Jesus that is called Christ ? " You cannot get rid of
this question. Living or dying, it urges itself upon you.

In dealing with this momentous duty which is thus inevitably
rolled upon you, you may deal with Christ, first, as if you were
merely a historical critic. You may sit in judgment upon Him —
upon His life, His disposition, His deeds, His faith; you may
sit in judgment upon His disciples and upon His crucifiers ;
upon His whole iniluence on the age in which He lived, and on
subsequent ages ; but you cannot in this way dispose of the
question, " What shall I do with this Jesus that is called Christ?"
It is a personal question. It is not historic. You are not for-
bidden to go into historic investigations of it ; but these are
only the husks — the kernel is inside.

Nay, you may bring your reason to bear on Christ, and, on
the one hand, you may, by proofs and arguments, produce con-
victions in your bosom which shall exalt Him into all heavenly
dignity ; you may ascribe to Him all honour ; you may rank
Him as not unequal to His own eternal Father ; you may pro-
nounce, in a most orthodox manner, the very truth needful to
the perfect divinity of Christ, and may even be jealous for this
truth ; or, on the other hand, still using your reason, you may
discrown Him; you may strip Him of the robes of empire; you
may, as some do, rank Him among men, till He stands a fellow-
sinner by your side, erring and fiillible — you may employ your
intellect upon Christ in either of these ways, but you will fail
thus to settle this question, " What shall I do with this Jesus that
is called Christ?" It will not down under any such treatment.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

237

You may bring your passions or your suppositions to bear,
but they will not settle it. You may revile Hmi and buftet Him
in the spirit of a ribald infidelity, or you may surround Him
with a system of formal observance which shall occupy your
external zeal, leaving Him meanwhile in the centre untouched ;
but neither one nor the other of these ways will put to rest this
question, " What shall I do with this Jesus that is called
Christ ? " It will come back in spite of formal observance or
of cold unbelief.

You must meet this question in the very way in which Christ
is presented to you. ..>

Let us, then, look a moment at the way in which Christ is
presented to us.

" Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world." I present jesus to you as the atoning Saviour: as
God's sacrifice for sin ; as that new and living way by which
alone a sinful creature can ascend and meet a pure and a just
God. I bring this question home to you as a sinner. Oh man !
full of transgressions, habitual in iniquities, tainted and tar-
nished, utterly undone before God, what will you do with this
Jesus that comes as God's appointed sacrifice for sin, your only
hope, and your only Saviour ? Will you accept Him ? Will
you, by personal and living faith, accept Him as your Saviour
from sin ? I ask not that you should go with me into a dis-
course upon the relations of Christ's life, of His sufferin2;s, of
His death, to the law of God, or to the government of "Cod.
AVhatever may be the philosophy of those relations, the matter
in hand is one rather of faith than of philosophy; and the
question is, Will you take Christ to be your souls Saviour?
What will you do with Christ ? This question must be met
and answered, either fairly, or by the fact of life itself. You
wi/l setde it in one way or the other. You will decide to do
something with Christ.

" Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest." In the midst of all the burdens and
trials of this mortal life. He presents Himself to you as your
strength and your Redeemer. I ask you what you will do with
this Jesus ? Have you any need of Him ? Have you any-
place for Him ? Have you any desire for Him ? Is He to
you the chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely?
Or do you feel that in your own strength, or skill, or prosperity,
you have provision enough for all that you need, and that He
is an intruder upon your world-plans? He says, "Come to
i\Ie for strength and support." What will you do with this

238 WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

Jesus that thus proffers His aid to you ? Again He says, ^' If
any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." That is,
over and above the wants that pertain to this Hfe, there are
yearnings, and hungerings, and longings for the higher nature,
that some men seek to satisfy in poetry, some in art, and some
in other food adapted to our spiritual being ; and Christ says,
Only I can satisfy the highest nature — the need of the soul."
I present Christ to your reason, to your nobler nature, and say,
What will you do with this Jesus, that places Himself in such
a relation to your wants ?

Nay, He is presented to us as our forerunner, gone to stand
before God for us; as our mediator; as our intercessor. Have
you any business to be transacted in heaven ? Have you any
interests there? Have you sent there any that were as dear to
you as your own life ? Do your children seem to have gone
from this world without a nurse ? Do they seem to have gone
into the great invisible abysm without parentage and without
guidance? Has your own soul any business to be trans-
acted there ? Have you any hope of immortality and of the
glory of another and a better state? Have you anything that
is worth more to you than silver or gold, or honour, or pleasure?
Have you anything invested in the other life ? And do you
need that some one there should think for you, feel for you,
and arrange for you ? Do you need a forerunner, a mediator,
an intercessor ? Christ stands at the right hand of God, and
ofters Himself to every living soul as one that is there to inter-
cede for him. What, then, will ye do with this Jesus that so
offers Himself to you ? Do you need Him ? Will you accept
Him?

But more particularly Christ comes to us, not only as a
Being of infinite love, so loving as willingly to give Himself a
sacrifice for us, but as a Being that needs love, and solicits
human love. There is a way of presenting this offensively, so
that it shall not touch any noble thought or feeling; but, on the
other hand, it may be so represented that it shall be pleasing,
and touch the noblest thoughts and feelings We may con-
ceive of a Divine parental heart that cannot be satisfied
without the love in return of every one of those that it loves.
There is a conception of God bending over men, and awaken-
ing their love, developing it, and then rejoicing in it, even as
we bend over our children and solicit their affection. If such
a thought is not full of beauty and loveliness to us, it is because
we are so low as not to be able to appreciate it. Christ comes
to every man, and demands of him love. He presents Himself

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST? 239

in every aspect in which a greater mind can be presented to a
lower ; He presents Himself as the Son of God, the Saviour
of the world, your personal friend, and your elder brother ; He
embodies in Himself every tender relationship of which we
can conceive ; and He asks, He claims as His right, that you
should love Him. What will you do with this Jesus that so
pleads for and demands your love ?

If love were a sealed fountain, if you had never learned to
love, you would be less to blame for neglecting to love Christ.
But among the things taught earliest is love ; among the
most variously educated in life is love ; and among the things
remembered latest is love. When the child comes into life,
almost the first thing he does is to send out his heart in trust,
and confidence, and love ; and though the objects of his
primal affection are limited and imperfect, they are sufficient
to excite in him the dormant spark of love. But when it is
the infinite Creator ; when it is the glorious God ; when it is
He that for you has laid down His own life ; when it is He,
rather, that has taken it up again, and lives to intercede for
you ; when it is He that sends you, day by day, fresh glories,
and that, night after night, surrounds you with mercies ; when
it is He that through all the periods of your life watches over
you with most tender solicitude and scrupulous fidelity ; that
outvies all other affections, and showers His own upon you
more copiously than clouds ever rained drops, or seasons ever
gave forth fruit — when it is He that comes to you saying,
" My son, give me thine heart," — what will you do with this
Jesus that yearns for your love ? Will you love Him ?

He claims, likewise, from us a filial obedience springing
from the spirit of love. There are inexorable demands of
obedience inwrought into the fibres of creation. There are
laws demanding obedience that take no refusal, and that carry
punishment close behind their demands. Fire, water, poisons,
heat, cold, warmth — these, and ten thousand other agents and
elements of nature, come demanding obedience, and give us
no choice. With them it is do or die ! But it is not so that
God comes to us. He demands that we shall obey Him
because we love Him. He comes to us with this most
reasonable appeal to our conscience through our affections :
'' Because My commandments are holy, and just, and good
— because I am your Father, and because I love you and seek
your welfare, I demand your obedience." I present Christ to
every man here to-night, claiming, not the obedience which
comes from a fear of damnation in case of disobedience, but

240

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

the obedience which comes from a spirit of love. I present
Him to you on grounds of generosity and affection, and say,
What will you do with this Jesus, that comes to ask of you the
obedience of love ?

Nay, Christ demands that there shall be on our part that
appreciation' of divine excellence which breaks forth in rapture
and joy, or, in other words, in worship and adoration.

When a man, standing before a magnificent work of art, or
some wonderful phenomenon of nature — some rugged moun-
tain, some thunderous fall, like that of Niagara, or some
■beautiful landscape — finds his taste so awakened that he loses
command of himself, and breaks forth into an ecstacy of
admiration, his sensations are transcendent.

But when we stand, not before unspeaking canvas, or inert
mountains, or senseless water, but in the presence of some
hero : some man that has stood among men nobler than the
noblest, and truer than the truest, and has carried the fate of
a nation in his hand without betraying it — some Kossuth or
some Garibaldi— then how do we tremble in transports of
delight ! It is a joyful intoxication. It is an ecstacy. We
need now and then to break away from common relations.
We need occasionally to go where our intellect can pour itself
forth unrestrained, where our faith can soar without hindrance,
and our joyous, generous feelings can freely take a holiday.
How grand a thing is a true man, that carries in his life and
conduct something of God ! And who is there that is so
unfortunate as not to know what a glorious thing it is to go out
in admiration, almost in worship, toward such a man?

What, then, ought our feelings to be when we stand, not
before a man, but before the everlasting God; that Being who
created the innumerable orbs of which this earth is but a
specimen ; whose ways generations and ages have sought in
vain to find out; of whose love all the affections of father,
and mother, and husband, and wife, and child, and brother,
and sister, and friend, and lover, are but faint intimations, and
of whose attributes the divine qualities of men are but the
slightest hints? And when He comes as our IMaker and
Preserver, and the Author of the eternal bliss prepared for us,
how blessed ought to be the prerogative and privilege of
making Him the object of our highest worship !

What will you do with this Jesus, that stands before you ask-
ing for your admiration ? He that was discrowned once, but
is crowned now ; He that was once a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief, but is now a Prince and a Saviour ; He

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST? 241

that once walked the weary way of Jerusalem, and climbed the
heights of Olivet, and the steeper heights of Calvary, but now
walks the streets of the New Jerusalem with unclouded glory —
He stands before you. What will you do with Him ? He is
proffered to you ; He is yours by good right ; you were born
for Him, and are to be born again for Him : what will you do
with Him ?

Christ holds up His own beautiful life before you, with all
that majesty, and purity, and justice, and simplicity, and truth,
that has made Him the admiration of ages, and demands that
you shall live as He lived. I present Him to you to-night.
What will you do with this Jesus ?

Such, then, are the claims upon you of your Judge, your
Saviour, your Deliverer, your Friend, your Teacher, your
Prophet, Priest, and King — your God! I present the Lord
Jesus Christ at every single man's door. He stands and
knocks. He claims admission. He lays these claims before
you. What will you do with this Jesus ?

My dear friends, you may think that you can put off this
matter ; you may think that because you forget it, and cover it
down in various ways, it has passed from you ; but this is one
of those cases in which a man's life is itself a judgment and
decision. What you will do with Christ is being determined every
single day you live. " I will neglect Him :" if that is your con-
duct, then that is your decision. *' I will dishonour Him :" if
that is your conduct, then that is your decision. " I will cast Him
off, and tread Him under foot :" if that is your conduct, then
that is your decision ; for it does not need that a man's tongue
should interpret his life. A man's life interprets itself; and
what one does and continues to do, that is what he decides to
do. He that is mean, decides to be mean; he that is a robber,
decides to be a robber ; he that is gross and grovelling, decides
to be gross and grovelling ; he that lives for the world, decides
to live for the world. There is nothing that interprets a man's
decisions as do actions. Now what is your decision in respect
to Christ, whom I bring to you ? What are you now doing
with Him ? Judging from the decisions of your actions and
life, what_ have you done, what are you doing, and what will
you do with Him ?

My dear friends, there is something awful in the contrast
between the scenes that took place in relation to Pilate and
Christ. See that Roman procurator, with barbaric glory calcu-
lated to strike with powerful effect the ignorant masses, with
immense power and wealth in his hands, and with the lives of

R

242 WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST?

men at his disposal — see him, selfish, cold, without moral feel-
ing, issuing judgments simply with reference to his own worldly
interests ! Before him stood Christ, accused of wishing to be
the King of the Jews. Pilate asked him, ''Art thou the King
of the Jews?" He said, "Thou sayest." His enemies made
their accusations against Him, and Pilate said, " Hearest thou
how many things they witness against Thee?" To this question
He answered not a word. He refused to reply to any of the
base charges brought against Him. Pilate knew that this man,
unbefriended, betrayed, deserted, mute, stripped, and about to
be mocked, was innocent, and that He would go forth, if he
gave Him into the hands of the fierce, cruel soldiery, to be
crowned with thorns, and to be spit upon. And Pilate sat
regal on His throne while Christ was despised, rejected, con-
demned, and led forth to the cruel death of the cross. That is
one scene.

After a few years, Pilate, accused of treachery, w^nt to Rome.
The emperor meanwhile dying, his successor banished him.
Afterward he committed suicide. His spirit ascended, and
before the crowned Judge, whom all angels loved and revered,
stood Pilate, the unjust judge ! Behold the change that has
taken place in their relative positions ! See how the once weak,
and despised, and lowly, and down-trodden, and scourged, and
crucified Jesus sits supreme Lord and Head over all, while
before Him Pilate quails and trembles, and calls upon the
mountains and rocks to fall on him, and hide him from the
face of the Lamb ! That is the other scene.

Is there not to be such a contrast in your case ? Now you
live gaily through the days as they pass. Now, when the
question comes, in ten thousand forms, *' What wilt thou do
with this Jesus?" you prorogue it ; you adjourn it ; you cover
it, sometimes with business, sometimes with pleasure j you put
it oft', sometimes in one way and sometimes in another.
Meanwhile your life is settling it. You deny Christ, you reject
Him, you treat Him with contempt ; but the day will come,
and that speedily, when you too will stand before the throne of
God, to give an account of the way in which you have lived.
And then Christ will render that irreversible sentence which
shall control your eternal destiny.

Is it not, then, wise that eveiy one should give heed to this
question, "What wilt thou do with this Jesus?" You were
born of God; you are living upon His bounty in nature; you
are guided and guarded by His Providence ; you are watched
over by His fostering care; you are clothed from His wardrobe ;

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH CHRIST? 243

you are maintained at His table; your very ability to support
yourself is borrowed from Him ; your power to think, and will,
and act, and the power of your heart to throb health for days,
and weeks, and years, comes from Him. And all He asks is
that for the benefits you receive at His hands you shall feel
toward Him a corresponding gratitude. I appeal to your reason ;
I appeal to your honour ; I appeal to every generous feeling,
every devout instinct, every magnanimous sentiment; and I
ask if, in the light of these facts, your life of sins unrepented
of, of disobedience — your life that contemptuously puts Christ
aside, is not base and damnable ? The meanest man on earth,
I think, is he that sins without compunction and without re-
pentance, and buffets Christ with daily contempt.

But the time will soon come when all these things will be
revealed in another life ; and then the excuses which you urge
now will not stand a moment. It will be with men's excuses
in the day of judgment, when God looks upon them, as it is
with the frost-pictures on a window of a winter morning, when
the sun looks upon them— they will be gone with His looking.
The excuses which you paint in this life to justify pride, and
selfishness, and disobedience, and recreancy, will, the moment
you stand before God, melt away. And then it will be too
late to rectify mistakes.

I beseech of you, while it is a day of grace, while there is yet
opportunity, turn from evil^ turn from thoughtlessness, cease to
buffet Christ by your lives, honour Him, trust in Him, and live
by faith in Him, that you may die in His strength, and reign
with Him for evermore.

j^Ji-n R — 2

XIX.

LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE.*

" But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they
that have wives be as though they had none ; and they that weep, as
though they wept not ; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced
not ; and they that buy, as though they possessed not ; and they that
use this world, as not abusing it ; for the fashion of this world passeth
away. But I would have you without carefulness." — i Cor. vii. 29 — 32.

Is it, then, the aim of Christianity to turn this world into a
dream-land ? Are we to strive for an unnatural judgment as if
things were not what they seem to be ? Are we to undervalue
life's sweetest affections and deepest sentiments as if they were
but appearances ? Can that be a sound ethical state which
idealises all realities, and turns all substance into shadow, and
transmutes the most potent verities into abstraction, and
changes fact into fiction ?

What ! to love as if you did ?io/ love ? To have a kind of
hollow-hearted affection? To regard relationship as but a

* Preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Sabbath morning, June 17th,
1866, on occasion of the death of the Hon. James Humphrey, son of Rev.
James Humphrey, President of Amherst College. He graduated at that
institution at the early age of nineteen, and after several years of the prac-
tice of law in Louisville, Ivy., removed to New York in 1S3S, and as one
of the firm of Barney, Humphrey, and Butler, soon took a leading position
at the New York bar. He entered politics early, was for two terms a
member of the Common Council of Brooklyn, where he resided, for one
term, served as Corporation Counsel, and in 1S58, retiring from the law,
was nominated and elected to Congress by the Republican party at the age
of forty-eight. Succeeded by Hon. M. F. Odell during the years 1S60 and
1S62, he was re-elected in 1S64. Throughout his life he had suffered
severely from disease, which did not, however, incapacitate him from
arduous and successful labours. An earnest and uncompromising friend of
freedom, he opposed all compromise with slavery, and all temporising mea-
sures with the rebellion. An earnest and practical Christian, he witnessed a
good profession before many witnesses by his godly life. On Tuesday,
the I2th of June, he started for his place at Washington, found himself too
ill to proceed, and had barely strength to retrace his steps and reach his
home, where he died, Saturday morning, June i6th, 1S66. Universally
beloved, personally popular beyond the limits of his own party, the sorrow
of the community in his death was increased by the fact that it followed
almost immediately upon the death of his predecessor, Hon. M. F. Odell.
The prayer appended to this sermon is one pronounced by Mr. Beecher at
the funeral services.

LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE. 245

dream ? To call by one name, and that name Nothingness, all
variations and inflections of feeling — joy and sorrow, laughter
and tears ? Is this the instruction of God's Word? Has God
established the physical globe, with its vast economy, and
planted us in the middle of it, educating us by its laws, only
that we might not recognise them ? Has He established the
household, the sweet relations of neighbourhood, the complex
structure of society, only that men might be obliged to deny
their sense, and call them grand and glittering negations ?

Sarely no ! If any one from this exhortation is tempted to
such an interpretation, he doubtless misconceives, not the
meaning of this passage alone, but the whole Bible teaching ;
for if there be one thing plainer than another in Scripture, it is
the solemnity and value which it throws upon common life and
the common things in life. No other book is more intensely
realistic than the Word of God. It teaches us to honour
life, men, society, occupation, and the homely virtues which
have their sphere in secular duties ; and surely it cannot be
so inconsistent with itself as then to undervalue all these
things.

Let us therefore look around and recall some of the ex-
periences of our own lives, to see whether we may not find a
clue to this remarkable passage.

When, on some summer afternoon, like the glorious, golden,
hazy yesterday, parents sit, the labour of the day mostly past,
and listen to the sports of their children that are playing beneath
the window, and see their houses made of lines scratched upon
the ground, and hear them talk of their mimic supper, in which
both the dishes and the food are imaginary, and perceive their
wild realization of the game at which they play, do they not feel
that to the child, as a child, and measured by its then capacities,
there is both value and importance in these things ? And would
they, by a word, discountenance the child's sports, or break
their charm, or teach the child that they are but a fantasy and
a folly ? And yet, when the parents consider the after-life of
the child, which they understand, though the child does not,
do they not smile at his dream-land ? It is to the parents as if
it were nor. It is so, not by taking anything away from it, but
simply by placing alongside of it the same essential qualities in
a higher sphere, in larger proportions, in a more gloritied estate.
And when these very children grow up, and come to remember
their childish joys, they do not pour contempt upon them, nor
in anywise diminish what was in them. They recognise that
there was to them value and joy in these things ; yet they feel

246 LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTA^XE.

that, when compared with the larger experience into which they
have entered, that early joy was shadowy and unsubstantial.

In like manner, it is in the power of the ripened mind to take
one look further forward toward a coming state whose glory and
perfectness shall cast all present realizations, not into contempt,
but into such relative inferiority that they shall seem to be but
shadows, while the invisible and the future shall seem to be
the real.

There are two states of mind in which men have an experience
in commercial business which is analagous to this of which I
have been speaking. The reality and importance of business
is not to be denied. It is solemnly to be affirmed. Secular
occupation is a part of religious culture. It is a part of the
systematic and regular moral education which God designs for
the world. It builds up society. It augments the conditions
of happiness. It enlarges the powers of men. It multiplies the
sources of satisfaction. And, not least, it educates the race in
morals. We are not, therefore, in any way to undervalue the
constructive and accumulative forces of society. The making
of wealth and the using of wealth may be corruptly, selfishly,
and arrogantly turned into mischief, but were designed in the
Divine economy to minister to our moral benefit, and to make
us larger and better in our whole being.

And yet there are times when men feel disgust at wealth, and
at all the means by which it is sought. There are times of weari-
ness and disappointment, when men are vexed with rivalries, or
are overtasked, or have mistaken, or come short ; and at such
times there is a species of disgust which not only is not to be
encouraged, but which is positively mischievous. It is without
moral discrimination. It is without just reason. It is the testi-
mony simply of man's weariness, and not of his judgment guided
by his moral sense.

But there are hours given to men — to all, I hope sometimes,
and to many often — clear, high, noble, in which they are con-
vinced, not of the unimportance of these secular things, but of
the transcendently greater importance of a higher class of
realities, of which these are but the shadows and foretokens.
There are times in which men feel, not that earthly treasure is des-
picable, but that there is a kind of treasure with which that which
the earth affords bears no comparison. There are hours when men
toil for the money that perishes, and for those treasures that
feed the secular and physical conditions of life ; and there are
happily other hours in which there is an inlooking into a man's
spiritual state, and the soul feels itself destined to a wealth that

LIFE ; ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE. 247

never can fade — that is subject to no bankruptcy. Out of such
higher musings (they are but for an hour ; they are sometimes
but a glance of the soul) the man looks back upon the lower
state, not to deride it, but to say, " That which I rightly strived
for is all that I thought it to be, but it suggests something yet
better — a higher sphere and a nobler realm of achievement,
compared with which, though it be invisible, the visible is the
shadow, this being the substance."

He who has built a palace for his affections, and cherished
them there as very princes, knows two experience^ of the like
kind in respect to the affections. The earnest reality of heart-
life — nothing can take from its importance. Man's life does
not lie so much in his physical executive forces, nor in that
which he has achieved by wisdom physically applied. Man's
life in this sphere rests far more largely on the diffused action
of his social sentiments than he is wont to think. And no
man that is wise, or humane, or Christian, should undervalue
heart-life — I would scarcely say in its intensities and rap:;ures,
but rather in its milder manifestations and in its distributive
influences.

Yet there are wondrous hours when there rises before the
mind such a sense of the imperfections of human love as to
make it wholly unsatisfactory to the soul. It must be so. It
is not a question of blameworthiness. There is a vision of the
coming love in comparison with which all that we here know
in respect to heart-love is but a germ, or a plant in its early
years. There is such a sense of men's inner and higher life,
that their ordinary daily experience seems like a dream — like a
tale that is told. When we are in a low estate, we call higher
visions reminiscences, and settle back again to that which we
know and feel in its homelier and ruder forms, and say, " This
is substantial. Whatever the body can help me to understand
is real." But there are times when the Spirit asserts its
superiority, and recognises that all those affections which are
expressed by their bodily experiences partake of matter, and
that the real higher life is that which is to be embodied, disen-
thralled, and brought into a liberty, the largeness of which is
not suspected here. There are times when men feel that the
invisible and latent is far more to be received than the visible
and disclosed ; and that those things which are able to make
an impression on the senses must in their nature be coarse and
low, whereas those things that are unable to make any
impression on the senses belong to a higher sphere, and cannot
be reduced to incarnation.

248 LIFE : ITS SHADOW AND ITS SUBSTANCE.

In these hours of musing, of inspiration, of imagination, it
you choose to call it imagination, or of faith, if you choose to
dignify it by caUing it faith — in these hours it is that we look
upon all our relationships on earth, not with indifference, not
as if they were not real, but as if in some sense they were
dreamy and visionary.

Of those who through sorrow and griefs have reached the
high seats of wisdom, some there are who will tell you that in
sorrow there is an experience like to that which I have spoken
of as belonging to love or occupation. The reality, the power,
and the dominion of sorrow no man disputes. In this life, the
sorrows of the moral sentiment are crowned kings. Their
crowns are iron. Midnight is in their eye. Awful sternness
seem.s to be in their hearts. Men lie as victims in dungeons
under the dominion of sorrow, and know not that in this
strange way God prepares men for coronation, and that these
stern-browed kings of misery are, after all, angels of mercy and
of love.

Yet, as in storms, sometimes there are moments when the
clouds part and let through the whole gush of the sun, and
change in a moment the terror to sublime beauty ; so, out of
anguish, often, the soul rises to a vision of the work which
sorrow does for men, and of what is its real interior and after-
nature ; and there comes a comprehension of the apostle's
declaration, *' No chastening for the present seemeth to be
joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless, afterward, it yieldeth the
peaceable fruit of righteousness." And in these higher moods
we look back upon sorrows as if they had been no sorrows.

Who remembers, when once his feet are upon land again,
those weary storms that well-nigh rocked the life out of him
but yesterday ? How soon we forget the darkness and
wretchedness of a life upon the sea when we are again on land,
which God anchored fast so that it should neither swing nor
swell ! While men are in the midst of overflowing sorrows,
those sorrows are more real to them than they deserve to be ;
but when they rise above their sorrows, and look down upon
them, they seem so unimportant as not to be worthy of thought.
Ey sorrow men learn that they need to be fed with higher
food ; that they must rest on stronger supports ; that they
must have other friends and friendships ; that they must live
another life ; that there must be something that neither time,
nor chance, nor accident can undermine and sweep away.
When men have learned this interior lesson of sorrow, they
look upon the trouble not as being less troublous than it was.

LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE. 249

but as, from the higher point to which they have risen, unreal
and dreamy.

Thus in joy we learn to rejoice as though we rejoiced not.
In sorrow we learn to weep as though we wept not. In marriage
relations and the ecstatic enjoyments of social life we learn to
live as though these were not the real things, but rather the
prefiguring of them ; as though we saw but the semblance here
of that which we should realise hereafter. We learn, blessed
and beautiful as is the present, to wait for the more glorious
disclosure that is just beyond. We learn, as we dig, and build,
and accumulate, to feel, not that there is not a reality in what
we are doing, but that there is another reality which far exceeds
what most men know; that what men know is a semblance of
something beyond; that it is a foretoken of other treasures, of
the coming possessions and dominions of the soul. These
present things become shadowy, not because we say to them,
" Be annihilated ! Melt out of sight ! " but because we say to
them, " Ye are prophecies " — and the word of prophecy is
never so much as is the fulfilment itself.

Have we not, then, in these and like experiences, the inter-
pretation of this sublime truth of the sacred Scriptures ? The
realities of life are not degraded by a consideration of their
poorness, their faults, and their mingled sinfulness. But I
doubt whether it is wise to look too often upon human life on
the side of its squalor and misery. I should as soon think of
looking, not at the gallery and library, nor at living men, but
at the sewers of the city, and at the dead and decaying bodies
of men, to know the power, the beauty, and glory of civilisa-
tion, as of looking at society and at individuals on the evil side
to know what belongs to their best estate. There is a strong
attraction of like to like; and when we are ourselves morbid,
bitter, vindictive, we see only how poor and untrustworthy men
are ; in looking upon the household, we see only a want of
virtue and peace. There are those that will tell you that, after
all, men are hollow and untrustworthy ; that the household is
a' sham; that neighbourhoods, and cities, and states are but
decent devices to cover immense and ever-rolling imperfections,
and miseries, and wickednesses.

Now there is enough of shortcoming, and of wrong, and of
positive wickedness and meanness, but it does not follow that
we are to search them out and hold them up for ourselves and
others to gaze at. When a leaf drops and dies, it goes down
to mingle with the ground. When moss falls off, it disappears.
• Everything in nature, as it decays, hides itself. And so it

250 LIFE: ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUESTANCE.

should be in human life. All the ten thousand decaying im-
perfections in society we are as soon as possible to forget and
cast under foot. We are to accustom ourselves to look chiefly
at that which is innocent, and beautiful, and aspiring, and in
which are the possibilities of education. It is a bad thing for
a man, in looking at himself, and at his neighbours, and at
communities, to look at the side of fault and failing, and mean-
ness and imperfection, and wickedness and rottenness. These
things will force themselves upon his notice full enough — more
than enough for his good.

It is, then, no part of the errand of the text to teach you to
undervalue the present relations of life, nor to study those
morbid aspects of its ignorance, its imperfections, or its sins,
which lie so heavy on it. It is, on the contrary, to tell you
that the experiences and joys of life are blessed realities — more
blessed than you think. It comes not to tell you that friend-
ship is not friendship, but to say to you, " Friendship is so
really friendship that you do not begin to know it from what
you have experienced of it." It says to the father and mother,
not that the love which they bear to their children is no love,
or worthless love, but that it is a love of which their experience
is so minute that, when they come to see that that is the feeling
with which God, in the amplitude of His infinite being, looks
as a father upon human weakness, the affection which they bear
to their children will, in this larger interpretation, seem as a
shadow. It is to say to aflianced hearts, not that the love
which draws them together is a passion that burns for an hour
and then goes into ashes ; but to husband and wife, lover and
friend, it says, " Love on : love is truer then men would make
you think ; it is richer ; it is more potent. Your own experi-
ence of it does not tell you what it is, nor what it is to be.
There is more to come. There will be an education and dis-
closure which will make that which men teach you to under-
value seem so divine and so omnipotent for joy, that you will
think the most ecstatic moods in this world are as if you loved
not." This is a different process from undervaluing. It is to
teach men the intense potency of things, to teach them to take
all these elements of human experience as so many symbols,
hints, and prophecies, out of which is to grow, by-and-bye, a
fulfilment so much larger than is implied by the words of pre-
diction, that no man can at present determine what is the
fulness of it.

In another way the apostle John comes at the same truth,
where he says, " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it

LIFE: ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUCSTANXE. 25 1

doth not yet appear what we shall be." As much as if he had
said, "We are the sons of God; but do not imagine that the
common meaning of the word sons can convey to you an idea
of what God means when He calls you His sons. There is such
a thing as being a son of God in a sense so much sweeter, and
nobler, and more blessed than you would suppose there could
be from anything that you see on earth, that it does not appear
by that language what we shall be." That is the argument of
the apostle. It is the same style of reasoning as that which we
find in this passage. You are to live as if all things here below
were transient. You are not to rest in things of this world as
though you were satisfied with them. There is much that is good
in the world, but you are not to seek it as ultimate good.
Friendships and social relationships — these are not to be
quibbled away ; they are not to be stigmatized with sneering
and cynical bitterness. Imperfect as they are, low as they are,
weighed down as they are by human weakness and depravity,
washed as they are by the m.ire as well as by the wave, you are
to see in these things the germs of such glorious and eternal
affections as shall make heaven unspeakably attractive and
desirable to you.

You are to love, then, as though you loved not — as though
the experience of this life was no measure of that to which you
aspire, and to which you are going.

When our boys went forth to the war, how many went never
to return ! and how many hearts were carried with them that
never came back again except broken ! How many a maiden
sat waiting after the battle, long, and long, and long, with tears
that counted the seconds! How many sleepless nights were
passed ! At last hope deferred made the heart of some maiden
sick, and she consigned to darkness and an unknown grave him
who was the light of her life, and who was to have been the
leader and prophet of all her expected joy in the future. When
all hope has gone, and all light with it, on a day that she looked
not for, and by a hand that she knows not, there comes a letter.
Her dimmed eyes will not let her read the superscription. Her
heart is better than her head, and knows that it must be from
him ! It is but a little. " Mary, I have been imprisoned. I am
escaped. This will be borne to you by a prisoner who escaped
with me. I am on my way home. I shall be with you almost
as soon as this." Where is he that can frame language for her
overflowing love and thankfulness ? What angel would not be
glad to bear the thanksgiving of that virgin's heart before the
throne of God, that its sweet perfume might be mingled with

3^2 life: its shadows and its substance.

the praise of the saints ? And how, as she thanks God, and her
heart lives again in a glorious resurrection out of despair, does
her soul look at that letter? The letter is nothing, and yet it
has brought her to life again. That poor paper, that soiled page,
those faint lines of ink — the feeling that they have produced is
ten thousand times more precious than are they ! And yet ofter
her new the diadem of a queen, the richest bracelet that eye
ever rested on, for that letter, and how will she press it to her
heart, and say, *' Never — never." It is sweeter than her life to
her. But, compared with the feelings to which it gave rise, it is
as if it was not. It is poor, low, mean, when measured by the
state of soul which it has excited in the maiden's bosom.

And so of the various experiences and relationships of life.
Out of them are to be unfolded such results, from them is to
come such a higher life, and they are the prophets and foretokens
of such amazing perfectness therein, that we may now, instructed
of faith, well say with the apostle, " Let us live as though all
these symbols of the life to come were but shadows and
■dreams."

The whole globe is but one symbol, and human life is a pro-
phetic literature ; and nothing will so exalt the literal reality as
such a view of the overhanging spiritual truth as shall make
these literal things seem like a dream in comparison with the
exceeding glory which they foretoken. In view of this exposi-
tion and these illustrations, consider how the deepening and
ennobling of human life depends, not on the idolatry of its
present low estate, but on so employing its earthly letter as to
descry what it is going to be.

Take love, the finest feeling, the most generous and self-
sacrificing — for love and selfishness are incompatible. Love is
as gold in the rock. The mountain is but stone, and the gold
is rare and scarce, and is found in veins here and there. So in
this life it is in loving. We are too proud, too coarse, too selfish,
too ungenerous ; we are not magnanimous enough. Love runs
in veins through us ; and we are to take the experiences of love
when it is in its most perfect moments, in its ecstatic state, as
it were purified gold, seven times purified and made clean — we
are to take these as our ideal. Then we are to lift up, by the
imagination, our conceptions to a state in which our character
will turn on this feeling, not occasionally, but as an ordinary
experience. Nay, we should rise up so completely into the
influence of the purity and disinterestedness of this feeling as
that it shall control all the other feelings, and harmonize them,
till the conscience, and the reason, and the moral sentiments all

LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANXE. 253

penetrated with the summer of love, as the whole atmosphere
to-day is penetrated by the warmth, and fragrance, and beauty
of nature. And when we have thus by loving raised the ideal
of loving, that very ideal comes back to rebuke, to correct, ta
restrain. It does not diminish and undervalue love ; it
augments the value of it. It teaches us how small it is ; how
it should be developed ; and how pure, how unselfish, how
generous, how noble it ought to be.

Nothing else is a better guard against immoderation and the
vulgarising tendencies of business than that habit of mind
which the apostle here indicates. We take business too often
as an ultimate end. We do not let it prophesy anything to us.
We see it in its mere letter, and not in its spirit. We do not
consider it in its relations to society, nor as it stands connected
with our future and eternal development. The wickedness
of this world does not consist in this, that men are addicted
to business, but in this, that they follow their business so
incompletely; that they look at it only on the earth side;
that they fail to hear its testimony of higher things; that they
stop on it as a thing sufficient in itself, whereas it is a symbol
of things yet to come, that shall be higher, and nobler, and
better than present things. So soon as a man is satisfied that
there is higher wealth than this world affords ; that his life
consists not of the abundance of the things which he possesses,
he is fitted to acquire wealth and administer it. No man is so
fit to be a merchant, a mechanic, a shipmaster, a husbandman,
an operator in any department of secular life, as that man who
has learned to so look at the things of this world as to see
their higher interpretation, their nobler revelations.

All the experiences which we have in our varied life of this
habit of mind which the apostle enjoins, will tend, not to
destroy our conscious enjoyment in the present sources of
innocent good, but to give us a finer joy. When the world is
spiritually contemplated ; when you connect it with the world
to come ; when you look at it Irom a high point of vision, it
not only is not diminished in its revenues and treasures of joy,
it becomes finer, sweeter, nobler.

jNIen, for the most part, do not know how to find the honey
in the things of this world. You would never suspect where
the honey of a flower is ; or, if you did, too large is your hand
to be thrust in to get it. But the insect buries itself in the
flower, and then, with a prehensile instrument, far-reaching,
searches the cells for the honey, and draws out the hidden
stores. Its very fineness gives to it what your coarseness

254 LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE.

witholds from you. We are not fine enough to discover the
joy that is hidden in many of the relations of this Hfe.

So, too, cares and disappointments, and anxieties, and fears,
and consumings, such as waste hfe by various attrition, are
forestalled and resisted by this habit of mind. And this is the
meaning of that last clause — " they that buy, as though they
possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing
it : for the fashion of this world passeth away. For I would
have you without carefulness." Not without occupation, not
without duties, not without responsibilities, but without goading
cares, without corrosive anxieties, without oppressive burdens,
which come from duties that are hard to be performed. He
that feels that his life here is but transient, and that his true
life is coming to him ; he that is used to looking down on
this world by taking his standpoint above and beyond it, and
is conscious of his power and dignity — he lives above those
troubles and annoyances that one stumbles upon and falls
headlong into who regards this life as all-important, and looks
upon it from a low and earthly stand-point. The higher our
conception of life, of character, of human destiny, the easier
will life become. The purer your ambition, the nobler your
animating motive, the more cheerfully will your lot in life be
borne.

There is only one other application that I shall make of this
view. It lifts us above those fluxes and refluxes of pain and
suffering that come from grief. If you were to mourn every
time that grief strikes out the light of intelligence, then there
would not be one single moment of the round day that you
would not be in tears. There is not an hour in which some
heart is not breaking. As there is not one second in which
there would not be heard the ticking of that clock in the
steeple which is lifted up so far above the stir and bustle of
life if it were not for the din and bustle below, so there is not
one moment in the apportionment of destiny in which some
staff is not broken in the hand that leans on it ; in which some
wife is not made desolate ; in which some mother is not left
childless; in which some sister is not bereft of all that was
dearest to her. There is not a moment in which there are not
hearts charging God falsely, and saying, " Thou art cruel."
There is not a moment in which there are not dark waves
passing over some souls about us, so that they might adopt the
language of inspired writ, and say, '-All Thy waves and Thy
billows are gone over me." There runs a chain of sorrow
through time. The world groans and travails in pain.

life: its shadows and its substance. 255

Such thoughts as these passed through my mind yesterday,
as, walking the sunny street, I pondered upon the departure
of such a man as had just gone — Mr. Humphrey ; upon the
departure of such a man as went just before him — Mr. Odell,
his predecessor in Congress ; and upon the departure of others
that I knew to be lying in the pomp, and state, and darkness
of death.

Shall we then mourn ? What is departing ? What is dying ?
What is death ? Is there any place where we need to stand
more than by the side of the grave? And ought we not to
learn, looking upon the sepulchre, to say, ^' Thou holdest only
the physical body," and to mourn as though we mourned not :
and, looking upon death, to say, "Thou, death, art thyself
dead " ? For is not dying as much a part of God's mercy as
being born? When the apple-tree blossoms you laugh, and
you do not cry when you pick the apple; but when man
blossoms man laughs, and then, when God picks the fruit, he
cries. Fool that understands so little ! When will you re-
cognise that which constitutes your highest good ? Glorious is
the hour when God says, "Come up hither;" and yet you look
upon that hour with fear and dread.

Long before winter would let me plant out of doors, I planted
under glass, and depended upon artificial heat, and waited for
the time when I might remove my early plants. And, as soon
as I dared, I set them in the open air in some sheltered nook
where the frost should not touch them. But now, in these
June days, I have taken them into the broad, exposed garden,
and put them where they are to blossom, and they did not
weep when I put them there.

Now God has raised us under glass, and nurtured us there,
that we might bear transplanting into another and better sphere,
and when He comes, and takes us, and plants us out in His
open garden, is that the time for us to cry ? Beloved, ye are
the sons of God; and when the bell strikes, and the angel,
hearing the sweet sound, flies swiftly to call you to your son-
ship and coronation, is that the time for tears ? Beloved, it
doth not yet appear what ye are to be ; and yet are ye so pure,
and noble, and true, that men cannot bear your going from
them ? And are you lost because all the fragmentary deve-
lopments of your being are taken into that higher sphere where
they are more, not less ?

Why, your child is not your child till you have lost him !
That which you can put your arms about is that which you
cannot afford to love. No bird cries when the shell is broken

256 LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE.

and the birdling comes forth, or when, a little later, it leaves the
nest, and wings its way through the air. Only mothers do that
when their children, released from earth, fly away to a better
world. And yet only they are worthy of immortal love that
escape from the clog of this mortal state.

Now let us thank God, not that men die, but that they live.
So far as it pleases God to develop and endow them, let us be-
glad; but when they go to a better realm, let us say, " Thank
God, they have gone where they shall be perfect ; they have
blossomed and are bearing fruit." Is not this the Christian way?

Ah ! brethren, we are not Christians about dying. We are
taught that we go to heaven through the prison of death.
Everybody feels that to sicken and die is to go into Egypt and
into the wilderness. We are apt to think of sickness and dying
as so many horrible, gloomy stages in our progress toward the
future. But dying is a process as simple as the parting of the
stem from the bough, or as the swinging of the door that lets
one in from the wintry blast outside to the pleasant home inside.
It is not hard to die. It is harder a thousand times to live.
To die is to be a man. To live is only to try to be one. To
live is to see God through a glass darkly. To die is to see
Him face to face. To live is to be in the ore. To die is to be
smelted, and come out pure gold. To live is to be in March and
November. To die is to find midsummer, where there is per-
fect harmony and perfect beauty.

Let us not mourn, then, as other men. Let us mourn as
though we mourned not. Let us rejoice as though we rejoiced
not. Let us work as though we worked not. Let us love as
though we loved not. Let us feel that the life that is above is
the only thing that is worthy of our thought and our striving.
Living for God, for glory, and for immortality — that is life
enough !

PRAYER.^-

Our Father, we render Thee our thanks that life and immor-
tality are brought to light in the Gospel through Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Saviour. No longer need we wander alone in
dust, and darkness, and blindness, longing after and having
aspirations to discern what others have longed for and have
not attained. No longer are we left lingering amid the mys-
teries and ignorance that have bewildered the minds of men

* Offered at the funeral of Hon. James Humphrey.

life: its shadows and its substance. 257

in times past. Thou art the Way, and the Life, and in Thee
and through Thee we behold the glorious realities of the spiri-
tual world — the heaven, the future, the realisation of that for
which we long. And we know that these inward strivings are
of the Spirit, thus uttering things by us imperfectly conceived,
and which alone we could not know until we experienced the
witness of God sent to us through them; and away from home,
and almost ignorant of our Parent or of our needs, Thou dost
by the Holy Ghost awaken in the soul longings again for the
higher and better land; Thou dost teach us to love Thee; Thou
dost teach us how litde estate there is in this life — of how little
worth is everything here ; and dost teach us of the eternal life
beyond, by the Holy Spirit and Word ; and Thou, by Thine
own royal nature, dost love us — a Saviour loving us indeed, and
loving us for ever, not alone according to the power or the
measure of excellence in us, but according to the measure of
our beauty when we shall stand arrayed before Thee in the
fulness of Thy glory. Thou hast made all that which of old
seemed dark or murky, transparent and luminous to us. Joys
are greater with those who walk in this light than with those who
walked without it. Sorrows are no more, now, to us sorrowful.
Thou hast taken away from us the bitter pangs that have
afflicted us, in giving strength to those of us that are weary, and
comfort and consolation to those of us that are sorrowing and
in disappointment. We are enabled to rejoice in infirmities,
and to wear them as a badge of triumph. These things, which
men aforetime have called misfortunes, and grievous burdens,
and calamities, we bear with fortitude through faith in Christ.
We find our life and our faith come up in the presence of
sorrow; all its griefs, mortifications, and self-diffidences are
taken away, and He gives us to feel that we have, wrought in
us, the hope of glory. And now, O Lord Jesus, we thank thee
that there are so many witnesses to this blessed work — to these
truths which Thou hast revealed to us in the Word, and that
Thou hast so far transformed, and art still transforming, the
ordinary course of human experience, that we walk not as other
men — for to us, in our experience, death is not the victor, but
the captive. Sorrows that are around and about the Christian
are no longer victorious. These tears that we shed are but as
dew-drops that fall in the night, and to make all things more
beauteous in the morning. We render Thee thanks, O thou
blessed Saviour, for this power of Thy love and this inspiration
of faith. We are to-day gathered here, O Lord, to weep and
to rejoice, to be glad in sorrow, to speak somewhat of our loss,

s

258 LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE.

but more of our gain. We thank Thee for Thy servant's life and
ministrations ; we thank Thee that Thou hast thus sealed again
Thy covenant with parents, and that Thou hast caused them to
remember that they may rear a child in the way he should go,
and it shall not be in vain. We thank Thee that in him the
virtues of his ancestors have been made manifest and augmented.
The prayers of father and mother have not been in vain, and
the early consecration came early in abundant fruit and blessing
upon him who was the object of it. We thank Thee for his
gentleness, for his meekness, and for his humility. We thank
Thee for all in him that won men to admiration and to love ;
and that he bore these gifts of beauty and grace, not for himself,
but for others. We thank Thee that Thou didst give him
clearness of perception and firmness of conscience, and that in
the midst of political influences, and in commercial connections,
he maintained a generous and disinterested character ; that he
so walked before men as to show them that men could be firm
and not harsh, that one could be full of love and yet strong.
We thank Thee for this testimony that he has borne for Jesus,
and has left for us to profit by. We thank Thee that in public
afi"airs he was a witness and an example for us — that in public
affairs, where men are so carried about by currents of selfishness
and ambition, he discharged all his duties to his friends, his
party, his country, and his God, and maintained a name and
character bright and spotless ; a memory pure in the sight of
men. We thank Thee that Thou hast given our you^g men an
example, showing that a man can succeed, and be true, and
pure, and unselfish ; that manhood in the Lord JesuS Christ is
consistent with worldly prosperity. For all this which Thou
hast presented unto us, we render Thee thanksgiving. And yet
how much more have we to praise Thee for— for that store of
wealth that he has left to the household — for the power and
beauty of that love to those who may speak henceforth, not of
their loss, but rather of his infinite gain — for being assured that
he now enjoys the highest glories around the throne of God.
For his truth, and pureness, and gentleness and love, which
built the house of his affections, we thank Thee ; for that which
Thou didst make him by a discipline of suffering — it is Thy
work, O Lord God of his fathers, and to Thy name be all the
praise. We thank Thee that Thou hast made it to appear in
his life how easy it is to gain the victory over bodily infirmities ;
that Thou hast rebuked our oft-repeated repinings at the voice
and call of disease and pain ; that Thou didst make him stead-
fast and immoveable, always abounding in the work of the

LIFE : ITS SHADOWS AND ITS SUBSTANCE. 259

Lord ; and in the midst of the sea, in the waves that seemed
going over him, in the long period of darkness and suffering,
that Thou didst give him songs in the night, and caused him
to rejoice. This is Thy work, O Lord God of his fathers, and
to Thy name we give the praise. And now Thou hast taken
him to Thyself, and we are glad, and heartily give thanks that
He shall not wear this body in darkness and suffering any more.
Thou hast completed the work for which Thou sentest him
into life, and hast called him back again, after long waiting, to
be blessed, with a crown, and song, and eternal rest. Thou
art glorified; heaven is happier; new victories speak forth,
and new graces, and a new element, in that harmonious love
around Thy throne. The flood is passed; the winds are
behind ; no darkness shall ever know him more ; his day of
triumph has come, his period of probation is ended. For him
is henceforth only the rising of that glory as a star that shall
know no setting in the nobler firmament above. For his trans-
lation to glory. Lord God of his fathers, we thank Thee.

Be pleased to remember those to whom, on earth. Thou
hast given so great a blessing. Remember them still. Thine
handmaiden — Thou didst love, and comfort, and sustain those
women that knew Thee when on earth ; Thou didst remember
them ; Thou didst know the very heart of woman ; Thou didst
knov/ pain, and bore it with all its extremity of suffering ; be
pleased to do Thine office work here, and whatever is meant
for her in this affliction beyond the interpretation of our finite
minds, whatever is meant for her in this affliction, put comfort
and consolation into her heart. Lord, draw near to her, and
let her feel, by day and by night, that Christ thinks of her and
loves her. And be near, O Lord, to his dear children ; and
may they not, in these moments of greatest grief, in the tempest
of affliction, forget how he hath builded up their whole life ;
how rich they are in Christian memories ; how full is that
example of religion that he hath given them in time past, which
is for them for all time to come ! May they by faith and
patience walk in the same path, trusting in the same Saviour,
since every thought wings them nearer to Him, and every day
brings them one step further on. Grant, we beseech Thee, Thy
blessing to those that are connected with his household in
various relations. Grant, we beseech Thee, all that consola-
tion that they need, and all the sanctifying influence which we
so earnestly beseech in their behalf Lord God, draw near to
those that are afflicted as parents, and are full of sorrow. Lift
the whole burden of their sorrow from them. Speak to the

S~2

26o life: its shadows and its substance.

brothers and the sisters. Let them know that it is the voice of
Jesus speaking to them out of the gates of the City of Life.
And grant to all Thy blessing — most to those that need most ;
to all that are in pain. Grant that impression to them of the
Holy Ghost, in which, by faith, they shall see beyond this
earthly experience, and be enabled to rise where he is,
and from that luminous vision behold his departure as he
now beholds it, and show their love by mingling, in a degree,
their sympathy with his, and joining with him in that glorious
realm in which he walks, crowned and royal, in his Father's
kingdom. Blessed Saviour, sanctify this dispensation of afflic-
tion and this triumph of Thy servant — this going forth which
has made his whole life seem blessed to us. Sanctify it to all
those who were his companions in the discharge of public trust,
and all that counselled with him ; to all those that laboured
with him in public affairs. Sanctify it to his Church and its
pastor ; to all the brothers that have prayed and sung with him
in days gone by. May this day be made rich by its gain in
heavenly truth to us. AVe beseech of Thee that everything
which added strength and grace to him, and which made him
fittest for heaven, may be approved to our judgment ; and may
we follow the example left us, waiting for the time when some
time blessed angel shall be commissioned to call for us, and
men shall say, •' He is not, for God took him." Hear us in
these things, and answer us, we beseech Thee, for the sake of
Christ Jesus ; and to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
shall be the praise for evermore. Amen.

XX.

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

*' For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom ; but we
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the
Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." — i COR.
i. 22 — 24.

Whether Christianity has run through its period of power, and
is to fall back, as the Mosaic economy did, is not a question
much pondered and discussed. Was Christianity an interme-
diate stage of development ? Was it an outgrowth of the human
soul in such a sense that it was relative to the times, and the
nations, and the influences which surrounded it ? or was it based
upon absolute truth ? Was it truth in such a sense Divine that
it was interjected into the world long before the period when it
could have been developed out of the human understanding in
the normal course of education, and is it, therefore, permanent
and universal ?

I propose to argue this morning that Christianity is not a
system of relative truths; that in its nature it cannot wane;
that it is destined, not to be supplanted, but to enlarged power,
and to continuous triumphs to the end of time.

Consider, then, the text. " The Jews require a sign, and the
Greeks seek after philosophy ; but we," as distinguished from
both, " preach Christ crucified." A king without a crown is in
symbol no king ; and the apostle felt that, unless cross or crud-
fixion was attached to the name of Christ, He was not King.
It was not merely Christ that he preached, but Christ crucified
— Christ the sufferer. And then he proceeds to say, *'We
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and
unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called "
— unto them which are capable of rising into the true spirit of
it — '^ both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the
philosophy of God."

The last phrase is remarkable. The word is the same that
had been used in the context, and that is used throughout the
New Testament to designate Grecian philosophy — sophia. The
Jews wanted a sign or a wonder — that is, a miracle — and the
Greeks wanted philosophy; but the apostle says, I preach

262 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Christ crucified ; and this, in its full disclosure, is at once the
highest element of Divine power and of Divine philosophy. It
is the succouring God incarnated, that concentrates in Himself
the highest moral energy and the deepest philosophy — the
philosophy which shall prevail when all others shall have passed
away — the true philosophy of the human race, whose develop-
ment is found in the Lord Jesus Christ — God manifest in the
flesh, suffering, and crucified.

There are one or two influences now prevailing which tend
to produce the impression that the power of Christ is waning
in society ; that the system of truth which has clustered about
the name of Christ is a purely human development, and subject
to such curtailment, and modifications, and final suppression as
all relative and partial truth is liable to. Let us consider some
of the influences which have tended, and still are tending, to
produce this impression.

I. Christianity has been confounded with the doctrinal
forms which it has assumed. I find no fault with those that
attempt to throw the facts of Christianity into a doctrinal form.
The process is inevitable. But then, one should not confound
his philosophic rendering or solution of facts with the facts
themselves. One should not confound Christianity with the
purely human process of reasoning npon the facts of Christianity.
This has been largely done, and for a variety of reasons that I
have not time now to consider. But religious doctrinal systems
will change after every great development in the philosophy of
the human mind. They have changed hitherto, they are chang-
ing, and they will continue to change, because they are the
result of mere hum.an reasonings. Controversies that seemed
to good men to threaten the very destruction of Christianity,
we can now see, as we look back upon them in history, only
set Christianity, as a spirit, as a power, as a Divine philosophy,
free from the cerements that had been wrapped around it by
the imperfection of human reason.

Now when, in any age^ careless men, who have confounded
the spirit of Christ and of Christianity with the human doctrines
of religion, see those doctrines attacked and modified, it is not
strange that they should say, ''Religion is passing away." But
the external form that a principle assumes may change without
in the sfightest degree changing the principle itself.

2. Christianity has been confounded with the instruments
through which it has acted on this world. As a pure truth, it
is impossible that Christianity should be universally and con-
tinuously powerful. It raised up for itself, therefore, institutions.

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 263

The Church is one of them. Those institutions were relatively-
adapted to nationalities, to the civilisations of the world, to the
necessities of the times in which they were developed. All
forms of religious associations — the vehicles through which
religious influence has been brought with power upon the
world — are apt to be confounded with religion itself. There
are a great many men who think the Bible is religion, because
it is an instrument through which religion is kept in and made
known to the world. There are many men who think that
Sunday is religion, because it is one of those instruments by
which God brings to bear upon the world the great interior
truths of Christ. Many persons suppose that the ministers
of the Church represent religion, because they are instruments
employed in producing religious effects.

Now, not undervaluing instruments, which are indispensable
in this world, we are never to confound religion itself with the
ordinances and institutions, the books and sermons which it
employs. These are separate from the thing itself, just as
much as my hand is separate from my mind, though it is the
indispensable instrument of the mind in working any manual
craft. My whole body is the instrument which my mind
employs, but my mind is something separable from my body,
interior, and not perishable like the body.

Christianity is a soul-power— an invisible, immutable power
in the world. It employs ordinances and organizations ; and
men properly change and modify them from age to age,
according to the exigencies of the civilisation that exists ; but
religion does not change because its instruments do. Justice
employs at one period of the human race one kind of laws.
At another period, justice changes those old laws and employs
others. Laws change from generation to generation, and from
nation to nation, not for the sake of destroying public welfare,
but for the sake of maintaining it. The vehicles and instru-
ments of religion are changing, but the spirit and the letter are
never to be confounded.

3. Christianity has been incorrectly identified with mere
morality and philanthropy. It has undertaken to inspire
morals, to refine manners, to elevate justice, to purify love, to
ennoble governments, and to civilize the world as well as to
save it. In attempting this, mistakes have been made. Cor-
ruptions have entered in. Men have confounded the Spirit of
Christ with the very imperfect, and often perverse and ruinous
application of religion to civil affairs and to political economy.

Because the wrongs which the people of Europe are resenting

264 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

and correcting have been closely identified with the Church,
they are thought to proceed from religion. Religion is not
hurt, but helped by the revolution of hierarchies and the
destruction of State Churches. Undoubtedly Christianity has
leavened these various elements of civil society, but religion is
not to be identified with the imperfect materials upon which
it works, and still less with the imperfect workers by whom it
is administered. Is the sun identical with all the things which
it does ? The seasons change. Does the sun that produces
them ? Vegetation comes and goes. Is the autumnal perishin,2:
of summer growths the sign of decadence and weakness ?
The sun evokes, and nurses, and matures a whole continent
of growths, but is there no difference between the sun that
produces these effects and the effects themselves ? and may
not all the works of the sun perish, and it not change ?

4. Another element that may perhaps come under this head
is the popular estimate of the Bible. Formerly the Bible was
regarded as an encyclopaedia — as a guide to all knowledge.
Devout men have sought for authority in texts for every phrase
of conduct. The impression has prevailed that there was no
element in life for which there was not some authoritative
direction in the Word of God. It is quite true that indirectly
the Bible touches every human interest ; but it is neither an
encyclopedia, nor a universal text-book of knowledge. By
enlightening the understanding, purifying the conscience, and
changing the heart, truth prepares men for every function and
department of life. But the Bible only attempts to touch the
master-springs of character, and so to set men right with God,
with themselves, and with their fellow-men. Having done
that, it leaves them to work out the details of the various
departments of life themselves.

If men suppose that the Bible is a book of universal instruc-
tion, then the growth of medical science, putting to shame
any knowledge found in the sacred Scriptures on this subject,
will very soon assert itself as its rival j civil treatises will by-and
bye become rivals of its early and artless institutions of justice,
and treatises on sociology will show how meagre and poor is
the form of social economy which it shadows forth. But the
Bible never undertook to teach sociology, or medicine, or
engineering, or political economy, or politics. It undertakes
to reconcile man's soul with his God. It undertakes to put
the spiritual reason on its right plane, that it may exert a right
influence. Its office may be compared to a key which winds
up a machine that has run down. It develops and puts in

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 265

order that of which God gives the creative idea, that it may
more perfectly perform its organic functions. It undertakes
to bring man where he shall be qualified for all the duties of
life. It does not undertake to teach everything that men do
in the light; it merely furnishes them light to do what their
circumstances and necessities require to be done. The Word
of God is bread. Bread does not undertake to reap the harvest,
or plough the field, or blast the rock, or delve in the mine, or
fish in the sea, but it makes a man strong so that he can do it„
The Word of God is light. It gives a man the medium neces-
sary to enable him to exercise his faculties correctly. If men
suppose that the Bible is designed to impart universal know-
ledge, then the growth of science will naturally produce the
impression that it is a worn-out book; and men will say, "What
can the Bible tell us about the important duty of voting? What
can it tell us with regard to electricity, that is playing so great
a part in the economies of society? What can it tell us about
any of the great elements of philosophical research or modern
inquiry?" It does not undertake to touch those subjects. It
implies that moral elements are the master elements of the
human soul; that when they are developed and rightly trained,
the whole mass will go rightly; and the Bible essays simply to
inspire and guide the moral centres of the mind.

" That is narrowing the Bible, and bringing it within a very
small compass." I beg your pardon ; it is not narrowing it at
all. Is not the key that winds the clock the most important
thing that you can bring to the clock ? Is not the clock help-
less without it? It is a little thing, it goes into a small hole,
and in turning it makes but a little noise ; but, after all, it con-
trols the whole economy of the clock. The clock is wound up
by it. Now the Bible is the key that winds up, and sets in
motion, and regulates all human life and conduct.

A man says, "I own all the water that has been brought into
Brooklyn, and distributed through all the mains of the city."
'•'Ah! " says another man, "I own more than that; I own
Ridgewood reservoir, whence you get it all." " Ah ! " says a
third, "I own more than that; I own all the land from which
the water comes that fills Ridgewood reservoir." " Ah ! " says
still another, "I own more than that ; I own all the clouds that
rain down the water." One man more steps in and says, *' I
own more than that ; I own that constitution of nature by which
water is formed in the air, and by which it rains down." Has
not he got behind and beyond them all ? Is not all that
they own comprehended in that great, comprehensive, organ-

2 66 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

ising fact? And so the power of Christ goes back of all
originating and formative powers to their very source. It not
only antecedes and antedates all other power, but surpasses all
other power in quality.

5. There are many who seem to have the impression that
the developments of science in our time, in mental philosophy,
in sociology, in civil government, in political economy, in
natural history, in all those elements which show the Divine
conception in the development of the physical world, are super-
seding Christianity. They speak of religion with respect. They
say that it has done an admirable work ; that it has filled an
interregnum ; that before we could come to these higher know-
ledges, it was an invaluable aid to human development ; that it
deserves all honour ; that there are many elements in it which
ought to be preserved ; but they hold that it is to be dis-
possessed by the developments of science. On the other hand,
my own belief is that science is itself, however reluctantly in its
first strides, ultimately to come round into perfect subjection to
the law that is in Christ Jesus ; and He that has ruled over
priests, over kings, and over nations for ages past, is just as
much in days to come to rule over laboratories, and lecture-
rooms, and professional chairs, and all that belongs to scientific
knowledge. In our day there is apparent collision, seeming
discrepancies ; but they are only apparent. Or, if they are real
discrepancies, it will be found that they lie in that human
element which has been wrapped around the exposition of reli-
gion. Religion itself, set free from imperfect human handling,
is to emerge and be brighter than it ever was before, because
it will be purer.

Let us consider, then, some of those grand elements which
constitute Christianity — inquiring, as we proceed with the
enumeration of them, whether there is any sign of their growing
weak; whether the elements themselves are in the nature of
transient elements; whether there is any token that their function
is exhausted ; whether they can be adjourned, prorogued, or
superseded.

The first grand characteristic element of the Gospel is the
new presentation which is made of the Divine character, and of
God's peculiar relations to the individual soul. This is not
only the first and most striking element of Christianity, but it
is its most important element. At the coming of Christ there had
been developed in the world the conception of God as a God
of justice, and wisdom, and power, and truth, and goodness.
There had been developed the idea of a regnant God, a God

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 267

in dominion, a God to be worshipped and obeyed, to be feared
and to be loved. But there was one peculiar element which,
although it had been foreshadowed, had never been disclosed in
such a manner as to become a universal conception, a working
power — the element of Divine love-suffering. In all the world
outside of the Jewish Church, the conception of suffering in
a God was perfectly abhorrent. I will not say that in the
Jewish idea of the Divine nature the conception of suffering
was abhorrent; but it was obscure, Httle understood, and
scarcely at all felt. Christianity brought into the world the
idea that God, sitting in the centre of perfectness, Himself in
all conceivable elements without bounds, and beyond the possi-
bility of change in order of perfection, was of such a disposition
that He was willing to subject Himself to toil, to trouble, to
sorrow, to suffering for His creatures.

When it is said that God can suffer, and does suffer, thousands
are shocked. One of the most potential arguments that act
upon men's minds in considering the question of the Divinity
of the Lord Jesus Christ is that it was unworthy of the dignity
of a God, who is supposed to be the sum of all perfectness, to
suffer. Now that God should suffer in any way that indicated
moral obliquity ; in any way that indicated that He had violated
laws ; in any way that indicated that He had not the wisdom
and the power to avoid those courses which lead to suffering —
in short, in any such way as impHed weakness, or imperfectness,
or impurity, is abhorrent to our fundamental notions of Deity.
But that One who is the perfect God ; who is without variable-
ness or shadow of turning ; who is the Creator of all sentient
beings that, beginning at the seminal point, work their way up
from weakness to strength ; and who, during the long period in
which they are subject to temptations, and are perpetually
falling into sin, is universal father and universal mother — repre-
sents, in other words, those elements which are m.ore perfectly
shown to us in father and mother than in any other form — that
such a One should be a sufferer; that He should bestow pains-
taking and care upon men, that He should put His experience
in the place of their inexperience, and His love in the place of
their hate ; that He should pour out His soul for them as a
universal inspiration and power; that He should do these things,
notwithstanding men are poor, and mean, and debased, and
wicked, and ungrateful, and proud, and selfish ; and that He
should do it, not by virtue of any arrangement or plan, but on
account of the inherent and everlasting qualities of the Divine
character — this is an astounding revelation ! It revolutionizes

268 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

the former notions of Divine character. It struck at the foun-
dations of Greek reasoning on the subject of perfection in
Deity.

Christianity tells us that there is in God that element which

makes Him self-sacrificing, self-abnegating ; that there is that in

Him which leads Him to suffer, not on account of any relation

of His own obedience or disobedience to law, but that He may

lift up the low, strengthen the weak, enlighten the ignorant,

save the lost. That is the great revelation of the New Testament.

It is what Paul meant when he said : " I will preach Christ and

Him crucified. I will not preach Christ the Son of God ; I will

preach Christ and His cross. I will not preach the crowned

Saviour, unless it be the tho7'n-crowned \ I will not preach Christ

upon the throne, living for ever in the plenitude and beauty of

eternal youth, and pomp, and power infinite : I will preach the

despised, the rejected, the hlood-siveating Christ of Gethsemane,

the cross-dome Christ iipoji Calvary. That is the Christ that I

will preach." He it is that is " the power of God and the

wisdom of God." Why? Because there is a material medicinal

effect produced by Him upon the soul ? No ! but because God

is disclosed in Him as One that, for the poor and needy, for

sinners, for His enemies even, gave for ever and for ever of the

very substance of His being and love, and revealed Himself to

be a nourishing God and Father ! And any man who has once

had his soul penetrated with a conception of the immensity of

God in His aspect of suffering for others has realised what the

apostle preached. It is not only the philosophy of the universe,

but it is the power of God in his soul to salvation. I do not

believe that any man who has had that conception of God ever

lost it. There is an energising moral power produced by it

which, when it is brought upon the soul, can neither be effaced

nor forgotten.

Is that first great element — the suffering of God — burned
out? Has the world drawn out of it all its moral nutriment?
Must that truth lie fallow ? As yet the truth has shined almost
wholly into darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
The amazing power of love developed by the story of love-
suftering in God has yet dawned but as a twilight. The efful-
gence of this great truth, this central orb in the heavens and the
earth, has scarcely yet risen above the horizon. It will be ages,
I think, before it shines full upon the world. Men talk about
the seed having spent itself before it has fairly sprouted. But
I believe this wonderful divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, as
representing God suffering for the creatures under His govern-

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 269

ment, is yet to have its history ; that it is in its initial period,
and that there are vast stages of development through which it
is to pass in long cycles of coming days ; and yet men talk
about Christianity being worn out! You might as well talk
about the acorn that has grown but five years being an almost
spent oak, when you know that hundreds of years of batding
storms will yet thunder against its rugged health.

Look at the next element that is characteristic of Chris-
tianity, namely, its implications or direct teachings in respect
to the character and condition of man. The assumption of the
New Testament is that men by nature are animals. The
scriptural use of the word flesh in the New Testament writings
indicates that men by nature are living in the animal condition.
And it is taught that in that condition it is not possible for
them to understand higher truths, nor to feel higher influences,
nor to enter into the experience of those regal joys which
belong to a man when he is developed in his higher faculties.
It is declared evervvhere in the new Testament — not so much
declared as assumed — that the heart is sinful. The apparent
fact that the whole creation groans and travails in pain is
argument enough on that subject. The tears, the sorrows, the
sufferings of men, which we behold on every hand ; the conflicts
of the whole world, of which we are cognisant — these things
make it evident enough that men are sinfuU When a machine
is out of order, and the various parts grate and grind against
each other, it is not necessary to say to one who hears the
grinding. " It is out of order." Therefore no time is spent
in the New Testament to prove that men are depraved. It is
assumed to be a thing of universal consciousness — as it is.

But there is a declaration that is marvellous, though it is less
remarkable to us than it was to those to whom it was made,
namely, that this state of sinfulness may be reversed, and men
reconstructed — **born again," as it is said. Right after the
declaration of the loving, and self-sacrificing, and suffering
nature of God, comes this declaration in respect to universal
human sinfulness, that it is possible for men to break away
from it utterly immediately. The declaration that although
men in the animal conditions of life tend to go on and repeat
their degrading thoughts, and feelings, and habits, yet that
there comes in a law of the Gospel which traverses this other-
wise natural tendency ; and it is in the power of men, under
the Divine infiuence, to stop bad moral processes, and to rear
a new class of experiences \ that as, where a soil is growing
weeds, and nothing but weeds, if you will prepare the ground.

270 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

and put in good seed, germinant elements will be thrown up
which will supplant the weeds, so the human soul, though if it
be left to its animal conditions will repeat its depravities, yet,
inspired by the Divine mind, has in it the power of sovereign
change ; that men may everywhere, high and low, black and
white, bond and free, savage and civiUsed, ignorant or
enlightened, without regard to class, emerge from their sinful
state ; that such is the universal condition of the human soul
that it can, under the stimulating influence of God's Spirit, be
lifted from the sphere of the brute creation into the realm of
spiritual beings — this is one of the most original and most
potential of all truths. That in this universal race of man,
beggarly, miserable, selfish, proud, hating, and hateful, there is
inherent, under the Divine influence, the power of recreation,
counting the past as nothing, balancing the old bankrupt books,
shutting them up, and laying them aside all settled, without
money and without price, throwing them away where the
memory even shall not find them, with no harassing debt, and
no frowning creditor — is not this a transcendent thing to tell?
Because it is told so often, because it is so frequently repeated,
it does not make much impression upon those who hear it.
Nobody seems to think there are earthquakes and revolutions
in it; but there are. Nobody seems to think it is a part
of the *' power of God and the wisdom of God;" but
it is. Not the thunder that cracks and rolls through the
mountains, not the summer storms that sweep across the
earth, not the volcano and the earthquake, are for prodigious-
ness of power to be compared with this simple enun-
ciation, "Ye must be born again." Must 2 take out that
word, and say, with tears of gratitude, " We can be born again !"

There is no other truth so full of hope as this. Men think
it a hateful truth. Men argue as though it was slandering
human nature. It is slandering human nature, just as it is
slandering human nature when it is said of a drowning man
that some kind hand, placed under him, drew him to the shore.
There is salvation in it !

Now, is that truth worn out ? The truth of the salvation of
men — call it by any name you please — that elasticity, that
constitutional element, by which the soul, when brought under
God's influence, can break away from the animal in him, from
all the clogs which bind him down to lower things, and rise to
higher realms, and become a man in Christ Jesus — is that
worn out ?

Not only is there some room yet for the application of this

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 27 1

sovereign truth of Christianity, and some need of it, but there
is no sign that age or weakness has passed upon it. The
regenerating power of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of sinful
men is a truth neither decrepit nor shrunken. It is as fresh as
rains, as the sun, as the spring after long winters !

Consider, next, some of the grand ideals which are presented
in the Gospel of Christ, and ask yourselves whether those
which are peculiar to it are worn out and passing away. Ask
yourselves whether, instead of being relative, they do not par-
take of the nature of the absolute.

The first is the doctrine of immortality. This truth of life
and immortahty, which were brought to light in Christ Jesus,
had been before believed in a doubting way. It had been in
the world as a suggestion, as a hint, as a rumour, one might say,
but never as a power.

You are a poor man, and ignorant. There is a written docu-
ment lying in a chest in your room. You cannot read writing.
and you do not know what that document contains, but you
have a suspicion that by it you might become the inheritor of
great treasures. You take it out, and look at it, and vainly wish
that you could read it ; you put it back without gaining any
knowledge of its purport. By-and-bye some kind friend comes
to your relief. A light is kindled in your dwelling, and that
document is taken out. He examines it for you. He reads, and
as he reads, grows more and more attentive. He stops to ask
you, " Who was your father ? who was his father ? what was
your uncle's name ? " " Something concerning my uncle, my
father, and my father's father?" you say. You are impatient to
know what it is. But, instead of telling you, he turns the
p per over again, and says, *' Well, well ! " Unable longer to
restrain your eagerness to know what are its contents, you say
to him, " Tell me what it is. Do not hold me in suspense.
What is the news ?" At length he says, "Why, sir, do you know
that that whole estate is yours ? Here is your title. I have
brought it out of its hiding-place. This is the will. The
evidence is unquestionable. You are a millionaire. Your
poverty is gone." *'Read the paper again. Is it so — that I
own that estate ? " The man reads it again ; you are assured
that you are heir to the property. Your neighbours hear the
news, and tell it to others ; presently it is known through the
whole town; great is the rejoicing that you have come to your
rights at last !

The world had heard whispers of immortality. There had
been fables and pictures, cloud-pictures, and fables grotesque

272 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

or fantastic. Christ came, and opened God's will, as it is
revealed in the New Testament, and made known the love —
the suffering love of God. Men iDegan to listen to His glorious
teachings. '' All that is God's is yours. By faith you may
become His sons. You are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
Jesus Christ. All that God owns you shall inherit — of joy,
of power, of nobleness, of dignity, of society, of existence
throughout eternity." Such is the revelation. Sound the mu-
sical word ! Proclaim to all nations and generations the glad
tidings that for ever and for ever man shall live !

Is this doctrine of immortality, of eternal existence, worn out?
Is it passing away ? Has weakness struck through it ? Has
it now no stimulation and hope ? Has the world no longer any
need of it ? Are we to wrap up these great truths of the God-
bead and of human nature as one would wind up a bundle of
raiment worn out, and lay them aside? When your soul is sick,
and you fain would be better, will you turn away the physician
if He comes ? Where will you get your medicines if not from
Him ? And what medicines will reach your case if not this
truth of immortality ? Where, outside of the Gospel, can you
point me to one single ray of hope or joy comparable thereto ?
The revelations of natural science are important, but of what
value compared with the revelation of God's inmost disposition?
AVho is my God ? Where is He ? Where can I find Him ?
What am I myself? What is my destiny? Is the grave the
end of time ? Is the life of the flitting midge of evening, or of
the poor foolish moth that extinguishes himself in my taper, a
symbol of my life, except that mine is a little longer ? Is there
naught of me but dust, that shall return to dust ? Every fibre
in me, all the faculties of my being, and with more and more
emphasis and power as they rise in the scale, declare that I
cannot sleep for ever ! And if it is said on good authority that
I have in Christ Jesus immortality. I clasp that truth as the
very bosom of God, full of milk. The sweetest, the most
nourishing, the most hope-inspiring, the most regenerating
doctine, the doctrine that is most noble in its influences on the
human character, is this doctrine of immortality — the cardinal
truth that the soul lives for ever through Jesus Christ the Lord.

Tell me, then, is truth stricken in years and infirm ? Does
it limp or go on crutches? It is crowned yet; and all the signs
of authority and power are upon it.

The next ideal held up before men in the Word of God is
the great element of Love, which, as it is God's law to Himself,
is made our law too. Love carries in it those elements on

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 273

which man's character is to be reconstructed. It embraces in
itself, in a condensed form, the sum of all the other godlike
qualities in the human soul. It is the perfection of the faculties
that lie below it. It is the fulfilling of the law — not of cere-
monies, but of the human mind. Love is the very harmony of
perfect being. In it will be found, in more perfect condition
than when acting separately, reason, justice, and imagination !
Love is the condition of the whole being when aroused to full
activity, in perfect harmony, and all concentrated and pointing
to the production of happiness in others.

'*None of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself;
for whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we
die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live, therefore, or
die, we are the Lord's." This, and a hundred like golden
sentences, all the way through the New Testament, syllable
this grand truth of love. Love is to be the germinant point of
reconstructed character. And in you, as in your God, love is
to be of such a nature that it will bear with others, and seek
to benefit others.

Is the period drawing near when love is to die as a thing
worn out ? Had science so nourished and fed the human soul
that it has risen to some higher sphere, above and beyond the
need of love ? Or does this very marrow of the New Testament
fill the bones of the world with health and strength ?

But there is a mood of love so peculiar and beautiful, and
in a sense so eminent the product of Christianity, that it
deserves a special mention. It is Self-denial. So indispen-
sable is this virtue, that without it, in some degree, society
would be but a den of ravening beasts. It is an inflection or
mood of love. And as love was provided and designed in the
very structure of the human soul, so in a low and imperfect
way — in a way of germ and rudiment — Nature teaches the
great need of self-denial.

But Christ by His words, and yet more sublimely by His
sufferings, has taught the world a royal lesson of self-denial,
which cannot die out of it until the sun refuses to cheer the
day, and the stars forget to shine upon the night. It constitutes
an integral element of Christianity. If the world has out-
grown Christianity, then it has outgrown love, suffering love,
self-denial !

Has the world seen the ascendancy of self-denial — all men
giving preference to the higher moral elements, all men
denying the fleshly lusts, all men cheerfully suffering that they
might bring good to each other? Do the strong no longer

T

2 74 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

lord it over the weak ? Is wealth a servant of poverty ? Is
refinement the teacher of rudeness ? Is that example of Him
"who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor,
that we through His poverty might be rich," no longer solitary
and peculiar, but become so much a part of universal daily
life that self-denial is a stale and shrivelled thing of the past,
while the young world, having sucked all the wine out of it, is
lustily going on to something higher than Christianity and
beyond it ?

Have individuals, and families, and groups of families, and
communities, and states, and nations so long practised self-
denial, in pleasure, in business, in civil affairs, that nothing
more is to be learned, and the New Testament now become the
horn-book of a primary school, to be thrown aside by a world
that has learned its letters and passed on to a higher literature?

There are men who seclude themselves from the world, and
refuse to go into the active spheres of life, that they may
preserve themselves from contamination and from sin, and they
are pointed out to me as representing the ideal of Christianity.
Why, you might as well bring me a stick twenty years old of
seasoned oak wood, and tell me that that represented a forest I
Where are the leaves? Where is the sap? Where are the
singing birds? Where is there anything that likens it to a
forest ? Away with your stick ! Bring me none of these old
disbranched, leafless, sapless things called INIonks, or Shakers,
or whatever other name you choose to put upon them, nor tell
me that they represent the plenitude, and power, and saliency
of the Divine nature in all the ranges of society, now once
again reaHsed in human experience. I will have none of
those for my ideal ! A man keyed to love, made pure, and
powerful by it, putting himself among men, and under them,
weeping for them, saving their tears by shedding his own,
inspiring and leading the way, seeking, in love and suffering,
for others to follow the Lord Jesus Christ — such a man
represents what I consider to be the Christian ideal.

Now tell me whether this idea has lost power and function
in this world. Is Christianity waning, either in its God, or in
the great facts that disclose Him to men, or in those elements
which are represented in the New Testament as ideals of
reconstructed human character? The spirit of Christianity is
alive yet, though its instruments may be passing away or
changing.

I meant to have presented one other thought under this
head, but I shall merely announce it, namely, that in the

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 275

present condition of the world, it is difficult to find examples
of what is meant by true Christian character. I know it is
said that we are having as good men now as there ever were.
Point out to me a man like Paul. I would make a pilgrimage
around the globe to see him. Point out to me a man like
Christ. I would make a pilgrimage round the universe to see
him — whom I shall see for myself !

Oh ! tell me, has this august purity, this sweet simplicity,
this transcendent wisdom, this wondrous love, this smypa-
thetic mind, that moved among men while not of them ; that
was so connected with them, not by passion, but by sentiment,
and that waked hope in the bosom of corruption, so that
publicans and harlots followed Him, at last saying in their
darkened souls, " A great light hath risen upon us " — tell me,
has this Divine nature no longer any function on the earth ?

Even sceptics bow down before the name of Jesus ; and men
that reason away the authenticity, and authority, and power of
the New Testament begin by confessing that human history has
never set up, nor poetry nor fiction imagined, any character so
perfect as the character of the Lord Jesus Christ; and is that
book likely to die out of the world which has in it the bright
consummation of the highest conceptions of royalty in beauty,
love in suffering, and purity in power?

In view of this exposition thus far, let us make a few applica-
tions. It is a subject difficult to deal with, because there is so
much of it. Christian character in all its relations is so broad,
that the discussion of the entire question would be encyclopedic,
and I can only touch a few salient points, which will serve as
hints to give you some conception of the whole.

I. If you distinguish between the vehicle and the thing v/hich
it conveys, if you distinguish between the embodying element
and the thing embodied, then there is one part of Christianity
that may be said to be growing cJd, namely, that part which
comprises its instruments. I think I shall not be misunderstood.
For instance, there are many parts of the New Testament which
have grown old — the miracles have. They were meant to be
local and temporary. Their power was substantially expended
on the day they were performed. And at every successive
generation, as men have developed in reason and moral sense,
and become able to gain, by the appropriate use of their now
educated faculties, a knowledge of the truths which miracles are
wrought to authenticate, miracles have become less needful.
They were designed to produce certain moral conditions before
men could come to them by a normal process of the under-

T — 2

276 ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

Standing. And no man since the time of Christ has ranked
miracles so low in the moral scale as Christ did. He often
refused to perform them when asked to do so, and strove to lift
men above their desire for such material evidences, preferring
that they should believe Him for His work's sake. If, however,
a man must have a wonder rather than an argument, He wrought
the miracle, but in a way that he should feel that it was an
appeal to the very lowest form of moral sense. IMiracles are
none the less to be believed now than formerly, but their
authority and power wanes with the lapse of time.

There is a large part of the New Testament (for instance,
almost the whole book of Hebrews) devoted to an argument
intended to detach the Jew from the Jewish religion without
detaching him from the core of that religion — immortality in
God. But we are not Jews. We never did believe the Jewish
doctrine. We never worshipped as they did, nor sacrificed, nor
had a priesthood like that of Aaron. We were brought up from,
the cradle in the faith of Christ. To us those arguments are
empty, except as histories of other men's difficulties.

There is much, therefore, in the New Testament that is
relative, but it is only the exterior forms of truth, the vehicles
of it. That which constitutes the essential elements of the
gospel ; that which relates to the nature and government of
God, the character and destiny of man, the ideal of human
conduct, and the great motives that are to inspire it — surely that
is not relative, changeable, or transitory. Of this not one iota^
not one jot or tittle, shall pass away.

2. In view of these statements, you will agree with me when
I say that the formative power of the New Testament, and of
Christianity as represented in it, was never needed more than
now. The amelioration of the condition of society, the eleva-
tion of thousands and millions of human minds — is not this the
work that is set before us ? How immensely selfish and egotisti-
cal we are ! We seem to think that the world is well enough.
So long as we enjoy the blessings of Christian civilisation our-
selves, it does not occur to us that people outside of our circle,
or village, or state, or country, are the victims of ignorance and
heathenism. Eight hundred millions of the human race are
without a knowledge of the true God, or of salvation through
the Lord Jesus Christ. Down through scores and hundreds of
years God has rolled upon men the great question, What will
you do with your fellow-men in your day and generation ? And
if there is to be, not the reconstruction of a few fragments
broken off from this invulnerable nation, but the reconstructioiv

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 2 77

of the miserable heathen that populate and desecrate the islands
of the sea ; of the low, animal, worthless tribes in the interior
of Africa ; of the effete Oriental nations — if the vast world that
lies in darkness is yet to be touched with a sovereign and reviv-
ing power, then there must come a spring for sowing the seed
of regeneration, and a summer to ripen the harvest thereof. Has
philosophy thus far discovered any new principle by which the
work can be done without the gospel ? We know that for
eighteen hundred years, not philosophy, but the gospel, has
marked out the plan of justice, and set up ideals for men to
follow, and raised the scale of social and moral purity in the
world. We are advancing to even a greater work. There is as
much to be done to-day as there was when the apostles left
Jerusalem. The earth is a thousand times more populous now
than it was then. ]\Ien are intrenched behind stronger pre-
judices and better organised laws now than they were then.
The world has but just commenced its march toward universal
emancipation, universal freedom, and universal intelligence.

Just on the eve of battle — is this the time to throw away the
shield and spear, and forge some new contrivance with which
to wage the conflict? Never was there a time when the Bible
was so indispensable. Never was there a time when the know-
ledge derived from it was so valuable. Never was there a time
when its prophecy was so luminous.

3. If there are any that doubt, let it not be the poor. There
is no excuse for a poor man's being an infidel ; for, if there
has been one patron of the poor in all the history of the world,
it has been He who was born in poverty ; He who, though rich,
for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might
become rich. If Christ is not the poor man's guardian, then
then there is for him no guardian on earth. The Gospel is
the charter of the poor man's liberty. Christ is the hope of his
emancipation. Ciirist is his morning star. Let him follow
Him. If the poor cast Christ away, they are indeed without
God and without hope in the world ; for Nature refuses to say
one word of hope to the weak against the strong. Nature says,
in the conflict of forces, " The weaker force must go down as
the stronger comes up; the greater brain must rule the lesser;
the more powerful head must circumvent the weaker ; the
longer arm must take advantage of the shorter; the more
cunning finger must weave its own prosperity out of the lack
and want of those that are less cunning and powerful." In
your need there comes the doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ — •
Yd are brethren ; ye arc to hear one another's burden ; ye arc to

278 ox THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

die for one another^ and so fulfil the law of love. If there is hope
for the poor and struggling, it is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do
not, then, give up the New Testament, while the weak yet
abound, while the strong are arrogant, while wealth is selfish,
while prosperity is heartless, while ignorance afflicts the mass
of men, and blinds them to their own good and to God's
mercy.

4. If these views are correct, there are themes yet for men
to preach about besides the theology of nature. It has been
said that the pulpit ought not to be turned into a lyceum for
the discussion of customs and policies, and such-like topics.
Anything that it is right to talk about at all, it is, or it may be,
right to talk about in the pulpit. Relatively speaking, I do
not know where else you will find such liberty of discussion as
there is in the New Testament. Considering the age he lived
in, Paul taught on a greater breadth of topics than any man does
in this age, or dares to do. And I hold that, in a proper way,
there is no theory or philosophy which relates to the welfare
of states, or communities, or families, or individuals, or to any
part of a man's life, that may not be discussed in the pulpit,
and measured by the law of love, and truth, and justice. But
when a man tells me that the power of the pulpit is to be the
discussion of social questions, and that that is to be the chief
element of the ministry, I look upon him with amazement.
Give me the root of the oak, and I will very soon produce the
leaves ; but if I have only the leaves of the oak, can I with
them produce the root? All these various subjects are but
outgrowths — the branches, the leaves — of the great central
spiritual truths that evolve the nature of God and man, and
reveal man's destiny.

The power of the pulpit lies partly in its breadth, partly in
its versatility and richness, and partly in its faculty for gather-
ing treasure from all nature : but ah ! it lies mainly in this, that
it is inspired by God— by Christ the Son of God — by Jesus, the
atoning Saviour. The atoning sacrifice of Christ — this is the
central power of the pulpit. Do I speak of taste ? The power
with which I speak of it comes from this radiating centre. Do
I speak of intellection ? The power with which I speak of it
is derived from the Divine Spirit. Do I speak of philanthropy ?
It is not from an easy instinct of benevolence, but from the
impulse of the natural faculty of benevolence inspired by the
Holy Ghost. Do I speak of organisation or of society ? I
gain authority to do it because I stand higher than these things,
on the ground of the reconstruction of the universe. It is the

ON THE DECADENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 279

wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died once, but who lives
now, but as much as ever a sacrifice. The Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world, and yet to be a sacrifice to the end
of the world — Christ Jesus, everlasting Model, everlasting
Master, everlasting God — this, with the power of union with
Him and love to Him, is the secret and centre of the power of
the pulpit.

For twenty years I have unfolded the truth among you, and
not without results. Those results, in my judgment, have
been due, not to a good understanding, not to versatility, not
to imagination, not to playing with men's sympathies and
tastes, but to the fact that, down deeper than everything else,
I have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. I have not made
that belief ostensible in words, perhaps, as many do, but it is
that which has constituted the power of my ministry.

It is my solemn conviction that the power of preaching is
not to be found in human elements. It is to range over every
topic of human life, but its power is not to be derived from
secular and natural influences, but from that Divine enthusiasm,
that exaltation of every sentiment and faculty, which results
from an indwelling Saviour and from the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit.

Let science still explore. Let study bring forth God's secret
thoughts buried in the natural world. Let experiments go on,
and civil ameliorations be hastened. There is no antagonism
between that old organic revelation of God's architectural
thoughts and that newer revelation of God's domestic thoughts.
He built the globe as a house for man, and Nature reveals
a God in that. He put man into that builded dwelling, and
the New Testament reveals the will of God in respect to them.
Both revelations are Divine. They are co-ordinate, co-relative,
complementary. Yet one day they will with intersphering rays
shine together : but it will be as the morning star and the
rising sun shine, for Nature is the star, and Christ the Sun of
Righteousness !

XXI.
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

*' For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear ; but ye
have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
Romans viii. 14, 15.

Luther translates the passage Abba Father, " Dear FatJier^"^
In our own language, the expression which perhaps comes
nearer to the original than any other vi My Father. "Abba
Father," means not Father, Father, as some think, but My
own Father. " Ye have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear ; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption,
whereby we " — instinctively and spontaneously — " cry out,
My own Father!" "The Spirit itself beareth witness with
our spirit that we are the children of God; and if children,
then heirs ; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ ; if so be
that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together."
Suffering, then, is not an evidence that God is averse to us,
'but one of the evidences, if it be cheerfully borne, of our
adoption as His children.

The eighth chapter of Romans, and the preceding one, are
the most profound psychological passages in the Bible; and
in the higher spiritual elements, they are more profound than
anything in literature. The seventh chapter is the problem of
conscience. The eighth is the solution of that problem by
the formulas of love. In the seventh, a just man, tender of
conscience and clear of understanding, with an active ideality,
seeks to make a symmetrical life and a perfect character — a
thing which is impossible in this world. Under such circum-
stances every mistake rebounds, and every imperfection is
caught upon the sensitive conscience, and becomes a source of
exquisite suffering and of discouragement; so that, from the
necessary conditions of human life, a just man will be made
miserable in proportion as he seeks more vehemently to be just.
One way out of this trouble would be to lower the standard
character, and to lower the moral value of conduct. But
the ease that comes from lowering our rule of right, and our
lesponsibilities to it, is degrading. Thus to seek ease sends us

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 251

down toward animals ; and that is the true vulgarity. Exquisite
as are the pains of a high ideal, and the penalties of violating
it, the sorrow, the remorse, and even the despair, are more
wholesome than the relief which we gain by lowering our con-
ception of law and character. It is better to die in the prison-
house of the seventh of Romans, than, missing the eighth, to
get relief in other direction.

The problem of the higher moral life is how to maintain a
transcendent ideal of character and conduct above any possible
■realisation by us, and yet have joy and peace, even in the face
of sins and imperfections. How to hold up constantly the ideal
of what man ought to be, and then every day to measure on
that ideal what we are, and yet, seeing how unmatched they
are, and how far the real is below the ideal, still to find a peace
and a comfort which shall be wholesome to the soul, and not
detrimental — that is the problem. And its solution can only
be found in one direction — in the direction of Divine love. A
proper conception of God in the aspect of love, and a habit of
bringing the instruments, and customs, and laws of paternal
love to the consideration of our personal religious life, will go
far to enlighten, stimulate, and comfort us.

There is not a sensitive child that has that most transcendent
of all fortunes, the fortune of a noble parentage, who does not
know the whole of the eighth of Romans before he is eight
years old — practically I mean, although many a child has read
that chapter through without any conception of what it meant.
But where an aspiration after virtue and true nobility of cha-
racter begins early ; where this aspiration is checked, and the
character is scarred and marked with many shortcomings, and
failures, and imperfections ; and where, again, the child is
brought to rest in the bosom of a mother's forgiving love and
father's benedicdon ; where there is in the child a sense of
imperfection and wrong, and, at the same time, a consciousness
of being comforted and built up by the love and forgiveness of
father and mother — there you have the germ of the eighth of
Romans. How to aspire through manifold imperfections
toward perfection ; how, through daily weakness and want, to
look up to the highest ideals of what is right, and to press for-
ward to the realisation of those ideals ; and how to do it by taking
hold of father and mother — that is the Gospel. How a man,
by clinging to the Lord Jesus Christ, and by maintaining his
hold upon the sympathy, and patience, and forgiving love of
God, can strive for an ideal Christian mmhood, and can do it
without lowering his sense of what he ought to be, having all

282 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

the time a consciousness of sin, and yet not giving way to
feelings of remorse and discouragement — that is the lesson
which the New Testament is designed to teach.

Consider, then, a little, our text. I have said that the ex-
perience of the household, the family experience, was itself the
interpretation of this eighth chapter of Romans. Listen to
what is said here. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of
God " — what are they led to ? — " they are the sons of God."
The direction in which God leads them is toward sonship.
And, as if it were not enough to enunciate it, it is said, further,
"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear" —
that is to say, " You have not received such a view of God as
leads you to feel that you have occasion to fear and tremble
because you are in such a thrall of sin and transgression ; "
"but ye have received the Spirit of adoption" — that is, the
sign and token that you are Christians. What is the "Spirit of
adoption"? It is such a state of heart as makes one feel that
he is taken into God's family. It is a child's feeling. And, as if
that were not enough, it is explained still further, " Whereby
we cry, Abba, Father — dear Father." It is not dear God ; it
is not dear King; it is not dear Governor; it is not Majesty
or Universality. It is Father; and not Father alone, but my
Father, or, as Luther would put it, my dear Father. And you
have evidence that you are under God's real teaching when that
feeling breaks out in the soul which leads you to say, " Not-
withstanding sin, and in spite of wickedness, I am God's child,
and He is my Father." That is the token of conversion. "The
Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children —
the children^ the children— of God." Do not put the em-
phasis in the wrong place. It is not, "The Spirit beareth
witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God!' It is
this : " The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, that we are
the children of our God." It is the sense of being children
that is emphatic.

There are a great many ways in which the character of God
is necessarily presented to us. He is the Builder of the natural
world, and in that aspect He manifests chiefly wisdom and
power. He is Lawgiver ; He is King ; He is Warrior ; He is
Judge ; He is Shepherd ; He is Husbandman ; He is House-
holder ; He is Father ; He is Brother ; He is Friend ; He
is Advocate ; and there are many other aspects of the Divine
nature given in the Word of God. And there is something
in each of these aspects which gives us a truer conception
of one element of God's character, probably, than can be

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 283

obtained in any other way. Each one of them interprets some-
thing, through our experience, of the unknown and invisible God.

No one epithet can embody all the aspects in which God has
been presented to us. His titles, therefore, are numerous, and
all of them have a designed use. But all are not alike useful.
Those titles which arise from the relation which God sustains
to the material world are not so important to us as those arising
from His relations to man. The title Creator touches admira-
tion. King, Lord of Lords, Ruler — these react closer, and touch
more chords. But Saviour, Redeemer, Father, bring the Divine
nature to our hearts in those aspects and relations which move
us more deeply than any other.

This is the style and title by which God seems best pleased
to be known. It includes in it whatever there is in Lordship,
but adds a personality, an element of tenderness familiar to
our experience.

In cultivating Christian affections, and especially the senti-
ment of love to God, it is not a matter of indifference what
Divine title is commonly used. Some views of God touch fear,
some reverence, some admiration, some love and trust. It is
these last qualities that we most need to develop. We should
keep our God before our mind, not as Lord, Judge, Governor,
but as a gracious Father. The word Father includes in it all
the elements which we seek to express in the terms Ruler,
Judge, King, but invests them with that highest and most
characteristically Divine element, love — love, too, in action,
helping, bearing, educating, suffering for us !

We cannot love an abstraction. A governor is an abstraction.
It is not the name of a person, but of an executive. It does not
express a sympathetic, loving being, but merely a cluster of
powers held for the common good by one who uses reason and
conscience, but is not at liberty to be biassed by favour, by
like or dislike. It is not a personality, but an artificial character,
a civil creation.

Because we transfer to the Divine nature the elements of
magistracy, it does not follow that all which belongs properly
and necessarily to an earthly magistrate is also found in God.
He may rule, and yet by no such devices as human weakness
requires of earthly governors. He may and does govern by law;
and yet our systems of laws, administered by human hands, are
full of weaknesses — necessary, it may be, but not to be trans-
ferred in our thought to God's administration.

Now you may love the man who is governor, but no man can
love the gcver?ior. Governor is an official title, and not a

2S4 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

personal one; and if you train yourself to think of God as an
official personage, the soul does not go out after him. The heart
does not twine around abstractions. There are many, therefore,
who say, " I desire to love God, and I strive to love Him, but
I cannot." A man cannot compel his own love; and if he
views God in an aspect that does not inspire his love, he cannot
love Him. You look at God ; you believe Him to be great, and
wise, and good : you fear Him and reverence Him, but you
cannot love Him, because you are trying to make the soul love
that which its very nature renders it impossible for the soul to
love — an abstraction — an official character.

This way of looking at God also presents to you a being
acting, not from personal sympathy with you, but from con-
siderations of universal law and government, or, as it is said,
on the principle of seeking the greatest good of the greatest
number. Our conception of a governor is that he is a ruler,
who, being restricted by laws which are designed to secure the
highest benefit to the whole, is not at liberty to follow his own
personal feelings. And with this conception persons go to God
in prayer, and say, "Lord, have mercy on me, provided Thou
canst do it consistently with the greatest good of all Thy sub-
jects." What is a prayer good for that is circumscribed by an
abstract consideration of law? What chance is there for heart-
clasping where there is no freedom for the manifestation of
spontaneous emotions ? Who would make love to a fellow-
being by propounding an abstract theory of mental philosophy
as the basis of it ? And how many persons' prayers are made
to be abstractions, founded on abstract notions of a government
administered by an abstract governor ! It is not to be wondered
at that such persons come back from their devotions and say,
" I cannot love." It would be a miracle if they could, under
such circumstances. It is this that the Word of God declaims
against and rebounds at, where God is represented as saying,
^' I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." It is as if
an objector had said, " God is the God of the Jews, and He
can have mercy on the Jews because it is according to law,"
God resents the imputation, and says, " Am I to be restrained
by this or any other imaginary law or necessity ? My nature is
such that wherever I choose to have mercy I can do it, and
can do it consistently with the greatest good of all ; and
wherever I do not choose to have mercy I can forbear. Whom
I will, I will harden, even if he is a Jew, and it will be just
and right ; and whom I will, I will save, no matter if he be a
Gentile, and it will be just and right. 1 am of a sound con-

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 285

science, and it is just and right for Me, as God, to act accord-
ing to ;My own feelings and judgment. For I am not such a
God as you imagine — an abstraction, administering a machinery
of laws outside of Myself. My thoughts are pure, My law is
true, My sym.pathies all carry rectitude and health; and
wherever I choose to pour out My feelings, it is safe to do it.
I assert My liberty to love where I will love, and to bless
where I will bless."

We need to have that echoed again in our hearing often and
often, for it brings back our lost God, and clothes the abstrac-
tion with sympathies, and volitions, and loves, and personahties,
■which make it possible for us to find our way to Him.

You cannot bring yourself into the posture and the feelings
of a child, as you are commanded to do, if you are all the
time praying to a governor, to a lawgiver, or to a judge. If
you go before a judge, you go before him in some relation of
law; if you go before a lawgiver, you go before him as a
subject ; if you go before a governor or ruler, you go in your
citizen's character, and in a civil relation. If you are going,
to God as a child, you must find a God that shall answer to a
father. There must be that which shall draw the child ; and
hence Christians should accustom themselves to think of God
as paternal, and not as governmental. It makes a great deal
of difference whether you draw your rules for measuring sin,
and the desert of sin, from a government administered over a
state, or from a government administered over a household —
from a government administered by a father, or from a govern-
ment administered by a ruler.

The family, then, and not the state, is the fittest model for
contemplation. The father, and not the governor, is the true
ideal of the Christian's God. All the justice which is needed
in the state exists just as really in a government which is
characterised by fatherhood as in a magisterial government.
The person who administers over a state cannot yield to the
influence of sympathy and love, and can only execute justice;
while in the family, though justice is no less secured, it is
carried out under the influence of love and sympathy. In so
small a circle as the family you may make justice the servant
of love, and make love the true power of administration ; but
if you augment that circle, and take in hundreds, and thousands,
and millions, no 7/ia?i can administer on the same principle.
No man is built large enough to administer over a miUion by
the same process that he would over five, or ten, or fifteen.

The fact to be kept in view is, that God is able to do toward

2 86 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

the race what the father in the family is able to do toward a
few persons. God is able to carry His mind so that love shall
be predominant, and justice shall be but a modification of
love toward all mankind, as easily as father or mother is able
to do it toward four or five little children. The family govern-
ment, with all its imperfection, is the ideal of government in
this world ; and the mode in which father and mother bring
their children up through the spirit of love, not voiding or
setting aside justice, presents the clearest conception of the
way in which God governs the whole realm of any that ever
was presented ; so that, when you measure God by the con-
ceptions which you form outside of the family, you measure
Him by a false standard. You take that which springs from
human weakness and impose it upon the Divine mind, instead
of taking the model which is afforded in the Divine character
and the Divine government.

Let us, then, look at some of the results that may be
expected to flow from the contemplation of God as a parent,
in distinction from God contemplated as the governor of a
state, or empire, or realm.

And, first, Christians will be set free from that endless list of
what may be called questions of spiritual statesmanship. I
will take the most famiUar instance, namely, the ground and
reason of our acceptance with the Lord Jesus Christ. While
there is a great truth of atonement and of its preparation,
constituting the means or plan of salvation, and while, in the
process of religious education, the profound questions at the
root of these truths should be studied, yet when one is seeking
the Saviour, it is unwise to withdraw his mind from the
concrete person and fix it upon the modes by which such
personage was prepared to love and forgive the repentant.
There stands the undimmed and undying picture of our Lord
Jesus Christ, pure, lovely, winning, living for others, and, for
the love He bears, dying for them. He was made a sacrifice
for sin. The atoning w^ork is complete, and forgiveness and
Divine friendship are proferred to all who repent and come to
Him. The act of faith in Christ, an implicit trust springing
from love, is one of the simplest actions possible to the soul.
But the theory of moral government, the nature of Christ's
atoning w^ork, and the ground and reason of it, demand for
their acceptance no inconsiderable power of analysis and of
reasoning. Faith in one's Father is the shadow of that
grander faith in God. To make the faith in Christ wait until
men understand the theory of atonement, is not to help.

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

287

but to hinder the soul. It is true that men sin against law, but
it is equally true, and far more effective, to teach them that
they sin against God. Very different will be the sorrow for
grieving a person from that for breaking a law.

Shall one be obhged to wait for believing till he knows how
an atonement was made? in what it consists? what is its
relation to God's nature, to moral government, and to each
individual under that Government? The question is not
whether such philosophic views may not be fairly deduced
from Scripture facts, but whether Christ is presented to our
minds through such abstractions as a living Saviour, as He was
to those to whom the aposdes preached ? Is it necessary to
bring down the abstract view of God as a Governor, as a
medium through which to exercise towards Him feelings which
a child exercises toward a parent ? The simple conduct of a
child towards its parent when it has done wrong, and when it
is sorry for the wrong, and grieves over it, and throws itself in-
to its mother's bosom — this better epitomises the coming back
to the God of sinners than any possible explanation derived
from governmental policy. And why should you take the
familiar experience that belongs to the family, cloud and
darken it by bringing in a conception of God as a governor,
with a whole train of doctrinal issues ? I hold that you are,
by representing God as a governor instead of a father, em-
barrassing and not helping men in their endeavours to become
Christians. It is said that these views make stronger Christians.
Yes, very much as among Indians children are made strong by
killing the weak ones, and leaving only those that are so tough
that nothing can kill them ! If it is right to destroy twenty
men to get one strong Christian, then these methods are right ;
but if I understand the spirit of the Gospel, it was sent to the
weak. '' Him that is weak to the faith," the apostle says,
"receive ye; but not to doubtful disputations." And any
view that destroys twenty, even if it does make the twenty-first
a stronger man, is not the Gospel view.

Now let no man say that I am preaching against high
doctrines. I am not doing that at all. But, on the other hand,
I assert my liberty. I recognise the liberty of anybody who is
called and moved to enter into such generalisations as these ;
but when a pastor is appointed to bring up a congregation, he
has no right to dwell upon abstract and philosophic views to
the exclusion of views that develop the fatherhood of God, and
represent Christians as children in the household of faith. Such
views are best calculated to meet the average want of men. It

2 88 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

is your liberty to take those other views ; but they are not the
common food of the Christian Church, and they ought not to
be made the common food of the Christian Church. And yet
high doctrines have been made so indispensable that, if a man
did not preach them, his orthodoxy was suspected and he w^as
denounced as a heretic. A man, though he preached the sin-
fulness of the human heart, though he preached Christ as the
Saviour of mankind, though he declared that faith in Christ was
essential to the salvation of the soul, though the whole burden
of his preaching was to develop the highest and sweetest moral
elements, if he did not preach that framework of doctrine from
which it is claimed that Christianity derived its validity, was
thought to be unsound. There is an idolatry of spiritual
mechanism. Philosophy stands in the place of a living person !
We are called to grieve for an abstraction, to yearn for
generic ideas, to love and praise a system ! There is an
abstract piety that is made despotic over the simpler elements
of God in Christ, and these operate to shut out that view of
God which makes Him the father of those who put their trust
in Him.

What is needed, then, is that men should be set free. They
are in a bondage like that spoken of in the Bible. There are
some who are all their lifetime subject to bondage through fear
of death. Many great natures have I seen that all their lifetime
have striven, and prayed, and sought justice and truth, and
effulged on every side the sweetest affections, who, if they had
been in their own conscience at liberty to throw their arms
about God, and said, "Thou art my Father, and I am Thy
child," would have been happier and more cheerful Christians.
But they were reared to feel that there was a way appointed,
not by which they could go to God as a Father because they
were children, but a governmental way by which they must
approach Him as a governor. And so they led a life of unsatis-
fied longing and yearning — a life of bondage.

Oh, sweet-faced death ! that comes with a mask of iron, and
seizes many and many a trembling captive, and drags him to
execution, and that, while he waits for the terrific stroke,
behold it is an angel of deliverance that discloses the glory of
God to him, and brings him at last to see his Creator as He is
— not a Governor, but a Father — thus furnishing him an object
for that struggling affection which should have gone out earlier,
and which did go out earlier, which did not know its own
rights and liberties ! There is many and many a man that has
gone dropping tears of sadness to the grave, and emerged bear-

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 289

ing the beginnings of that choral song which shall roll for ever
in the presence of God !

I remark, next, that the use of this view of God as father
instead of governor, will make our daily life an interpreter of
God's providence, and will bring all our ethical and casuistical
questions to a rule most familiarly understood and most easily
applied.

Not everything that a father would do must be supposed to
be a part of God's government. We all discriminate, naturally,
between things that are weaknesses in a parent and things that
are right; and in the judging of the Divine administration by
that of the family, we are in danger of attributing to the father-
hood of God elements which are found in human parents, but
only because they are imperfect and sinful. But the danger is
not peculiar to this source of our knowledge of God. It is
as great, and even greater, in the case of those whose con-
ceptions are modelled upon the administration of the magistrate
or governor. In forming a judgment of the feelings of God
toward men, and of their relations to Him, a man of an in-
structed conscience and understanding will come nearer to a
right judgment if he take his measures of interpretation from
the experiences of the family than if he takes it from the expe-
riences of the civil state.

Do you suppose that it was an accident that led God to
assume the name of Father, and to give to the Church the
name of that institution into which all mankind are born,
through which they pass, and which colours every thought and
feeling, and gives shape to the whole of human life? It is
declared, *' Except ye be converted and become as little child-
ren, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." And
where we are called sons ; where the Church is called a house-
hold ; where the form of address is " Our Father; " where we
are spoken of as heirs and joint heirs ; where every allusion to
God represents Him as a father, and every allusion to the
Church represents it as a family, is there no meaning in it ?

There are many aspects of Christian experience that are very
difficult, upon which this view throws light. For instance, it is
very difficult to understand how, when we have done wrong,
and are overwhelmed with contrition, God, who is holy, and
just, and true, can look upon us with emotions of sympathy or
affection. We think of some worthy judge, of some worthy
magistrate like Washington ; we turn ourselves everywhither,
and all the models within the range of our comprehension are
able to give us only imperfect light and satisfaction.

u

290 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

A man is asked, " Are you a father? " " Yes," he replies.
" Have you a son ? " " Yes." " Do you love him ? " ** Better
than my own life." " Does he ever do wrong ? " " Yes."
" When he does wrong, how do you feel ?" "I feel indignant,
because I love him so ; for wrong in one that I love is like a
sore in my heart." Now, from such an experience as this, do
you not begin to have an interpretation of what God's feeling
is toward sin ? Do you not have it in your own experience ?
Can you understand how God hates, not the sinner, but the
sin that is a spot upon his beloved child, from the hatred that
you feel toward the vices and wickedness that disfigure your
child, because you so love that child ?

" Well," you say, "if God is so holy, and just, and true, does
He not destroy sinners ? " When your child has been gambling,
and first find it out, do you draw a line, and say to him, " If
you ever transcend that line again, I will exclude you from my
house? " Some persons take this course, and everyone blames
them. They are not true parents. The fatherhood and mother-
hood is not deep in such hearts as theirs. What does a parent
do for a child that goes wrong ? Is there anything that you
have in your house that you would not give to redeem a
wandering son? Is there any property that you would not
willingly part with to get him out of trouble, and to hide his
disgrace ? If to live on a crust, if to drink only water from
the spring, and eat only roots from the ground, would reform
the child of your heart, would you not give all your means, and
think that you had bought him back cheaply ? Nay, more than
that, if for his sake it was necessary that you should bear with
him ; that you should lie awake nights till your whole heart
was like a furnace of fire ; that you should be mortified in your
pride, disappointed in your expectation, or wounded in your
affections, would you not willingly submit to the necessity? If,
in carrying his burden, or bearing his sorrow, there was a
glimmer of hope that in ten or fifteen years you could save
your child, would you not cheerfully suffer on in his behalf?

Now, when it said that God carries our sorrows and bears
our sins, is there no light thrown upon the statement by the
experience of the parent in bringing up his child? And when
it is said that God hates sin, is there no light thrown upon the
statement by the feelings of the parent toward the sin in the
child ? And is it because the parent does not care for the sin
that he bears with it ? Is there any one that realises how hateful
sin is so much as the parent who is bearing it for the sake of
the child ?

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 29 1

And when your child comes back to you, and says, *' Father,
I am reformed, but I may not be able to walk entirely right ; I
understand what you have done for me; I feel it, and I am
taking another course of life, I may stumble in the way ; " oh,
with what inexpressible tenderness do you receive him ! Why,
the child does not know how to be glad. It takes a father or
a mother to be glad.

When I stood in Antwerp, and heard the chime of some fifty
or sixty bells, I could not bear to go anywhither, lest I should
get out of the sound of those exquisite peals that rolled every
hour, and half hour, and quarter hour, filling the air with a
weird and yet wonderful sweetness ; and I thought to myself,
*' There, just such are all the feelings of a father's heart when
it is lifted up with hope, and all things ring, at every hour, and
half hour, and quarter hour, and minute, of the return of some
wandering child." And does the experience of that father
whose child has begun to come back from a career of wrong-
doing give you no conception of God's feelings when the sinner
begins to return to a life of virtue ? How sweet it is ! how deep
it is ! how real it is ! Do not stop at any legal question. Do
not wait till you can reconcile law and grace. Take the idea of
your earthly father and apply that to God, and it will give you
the best view of the gladness of God at the sinner's reformation
which it is possible for the human mind to conceive of.

And when the child who has wandered from the true path
returns, and though he strives earnestly to live aright, after the
first or second day falters, so that the father sees that there is a
relapse, or falls, so that he bears the marks of condemnation,
does the father say, '* If that is your reformation, I am weary
of you ; you made me many fair promises, but you have broken
them, and I will have nothing more to do with you ? " On the
contrary, he says, " My son, I feared that if you mingled with
your old associates you would fall. Now help yourself by me.
I will go with you, and sustain you. I will forget this fall. It
came near taking away all that you had gained ; but do not be
discouraged. You must lean more on me. You must not trust
yourself till you are strong enough to stand alone." The father
thinks almost more of the child than the child does of himself.
From this familiar experience of parental hfe, do you not get a
conception of the Divine patience with men in their helpless-
ness, and of the training and educating force of the love of God
in Christ Jesus ?

And so of every other one of the strains of Christian ex-
perience. I hold that, in the case of those things which are

u— 2

292 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.

peculiarly Christian, and that are elements of personal ex-
perience, you can scarcely measure them by the conception of
God as a governor without darkening counsel. But, on the
other hand, if you measure them by the conception of God as
a loving father, you will get light and consolation.

'' As many as are led by the Spirit of God " — that is, as m.any
as are being truly led, as many as are being led by right things
in the right way — " they are the sons of God."

Then God is father, and all the relations between Him and
them must be judged by the relations which a parent bears to
a child.

" For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear."

Reference is made to the moral principle enunciated in
Galatians, where it is said, " Cast out the bond-woman and her
son ; for the son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with the
son of the free-woman." The posterity of the bond-woman were
held to fear, but the posterity of the free-woman were inheritors
of liberty. And the apostle says, " We are not children of the
bond-woman, but of the free," — that is, *' You are held to God,
not as a governor, but as a father ; and you are not servants
under a governor, but you are children of a father."

" Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear ;
but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry,
my dear Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our
spirit, that we are the children of God : and if children, then
heirs ; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

If you think that the afflictions which you suffer show that
you are not much favoured ones. He nips your doubts and
scepticisms in the very bud, and says, " If so be that we suffer
with Him, that we may be also glorified together." As He
worked out consolation, and became perfect through suffering,
so we must all have our share of the cross which He bore.

My dear Christian brethren, I cannot follow out this subject
into all the details that I meant to. You have your children to
educate, and you have in your feeling toward them an interpre-
tation of the feeling of God toward you. You have your children
to teach, that they, in their turn, may by and bye become edu-
cators. See to it that they do not found their character upon
abstract speculative notions and doctrines. Present to them
that which they can comprehend— the fatherhood of God, and
the love that is every day translated and interpreted to them by
your love. And let your dealings with your child furnish an
idea of God's dealing with His children ; for the notion of

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 293

fatherhood which the child gets from you is that by which
he is to interpret his God, and to form his Christian character.
You are the child's Bible. God made it to be so. In the
earlier years of their life you stand in the place of God to your
children ; and what you are for justice, and truth, and simplicity,
and love, that God will be to their thought. And if you are
narrow, and mean, and hard, and cold, and ungenerous, you
have torn the leaf out of their Bible by which they should know
the highest attributes of the Divine mind.

God grant that you may be able so to live, that your children,
through you, may see God, and inherit life eternal.

XXII.
THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

" Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For
we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling
of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace,
that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.'"' —
Hebrews iv. 14—16.

When it is said that Christ was tempted in all points like as
we are, we are not to understand that He stood in every relation
in which we stand. He sat on no throne. Neither did He, as
some have done, linger from year to year in dungeons. He
was not a husband or a father. He did not trade or traffic.
So that there are special varieties of external history which
befall men that did not come to Christ. It is not therefore
true that He experienced each particular fret, nor each parti-
cular form of external trouble, which comes upon us. But
these external things are only so many occasions and avenues
of internal disturbance. The experiences which men have
through these reach back upon certain sensitive faculties ; they
become soul experiences. It is in this inward respect that
Christ was tried as we are. There is no part of our being,
there is no faculty in our nature, which is ever tried, that was
not tried in Christ; and though He was not tried in the same
way in which we are, though He was not tried by the same
events in His external history by which we are pressed in our
external history, yet the trials which He endured were, in respect
to intensity, greater than they ever could be in us ; and there
is no part of a man's nature which any combination of circum-
stances or conditions, either in the religious, the social, or the
civil departments of life, can meet and disturb, which had not
a corresponding element in Christ. There was not an experi-
ence of this inward sort with which he was not perfectly familiar.
It is not important, therefore, to show the identity of ex-
ternal experience, AVhat we wish, according to the spirit of
this passage, is to be sure that we have a Saviour who is in inti-
mate relations with us, and who is tenderly alive to every stage
of our growth, so that we may freely, unhesitatingly, and in all

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 295

things trust Him ; that we have a Saviour who has been, by
His personal appearance, so conversant with our suffering and
want, that He understands us by understanding Himself.

The second things to be explained in this passage is the idea
of Divine sympathy as arising from the training which is said
elsewhere to be necessary to make Christ the leader of his
brethren ; as in the second chapter of this epistle, at the tenth
verse, where we read, " It became him, for whom are all things,
in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their
salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He that sancti-
fieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which
cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." Out of this
training, this schooling, this experience of suffering on earth,
there has been developed a sympathy of Christ with us. In us,
so far as our knowledge extends, sympathy is the most exquisite
and perfect expression of love. It signifies such an interest,
such a peculiar affection, that the person sympathising receives
another's experience as a part of his own ; whether it be joy or
sorrow, he is so intimately united to another, that he feels with
him ; that whatever feeling, pleasant or painful, trembles on
another's heart, trembles upon his.

We can imagine a being to be helpful in various degrees
without being sympathetic; as when a man, acting from a cold
sense of duty, helps another with a sort of police helpfulness, or
from considerations of general benevolence, without being
greatly moved himself. It is possible for a truly benevolent
man to be entirely serene (as a physician, who bends over a
patient to whom he is giving great pain, may be kind and
gentle), and yet not experience in himself any correspondence
of feeling, and not be, to any considerable degree, in sympathy
with that patient.

But there are relationships in which men are affected by
another's experience, when they come nearer than mere duty or
ordinary benevolence would draw them, as when persons are
connected together by bonds of personal affection. When a
child falls, it hurts the mother a great deal more than it hurts
the child, though nothing touches her except the sound of its
fall. We often suffer more on account of others' troubles. than
they themselves do in those troubles, for both love and sorrow
take their measure as much from the capacity of the nature
that expiences them as from the power of the externally
exciting cause. How much a great nature loves does not
depend wholly upon how much there is to love, but upon how
much there is to love with. In like manner, how much one

296 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

suffers with or for another does not depend altogether upon
how much that offer is suffering, but upon how much that
nature which sympathises has with which to suffer.

Now the teaching here — and it only corroborates what is
abundantly taught elsewhere in the New Testament — the teach-
ing here, in respect to our Saviour, is, that He sympathises
with us as His children. He feels with us, so that our experi-
ences throw their waves upon the shore of His soul. He carries
us so near to His heart that all our feelings, which are of
any moment, reproduce their effects, in some degree, in His
bosom.

It seems very strange that the Maker of all the earth should
permit Himself to be a participant in all the petty experiences
that belong to any human life. No man would have dared to
conceive such an idea of God, and to have believed any such
thing as that, if it had not been revealed in unequivocal terms ;
for men would have said, " It is beneath any true idea of the
majesty of God to suppose that He bends His bosom to all the
rippling waves of human hearts, and feels again what they are
feeling in their lower courses."

A great mountain lifts itself up, with perpendicular face, over
against some quiet valley ; and when summer thunders with
great storms, the cliff echoes the thunder, and rolls it forth a
second time, with majesty increased ; and we think that, to be
sublime, storms should awaken mountain echoes, and that then
cause and effect are worthy of each other. But so, too, an
oriole, or a song-sparrow, singing before it, hears its own little
song sung back again. A little child, lost, and crying, in the
valley, hears the great cliff weeping just as it weeps ; and, in
sooth, the mountain repeats whatever is sounded, from the
sublimest notes of the tempest to the sweetest bird-whisper or
child-weeping ; and it is just as easy to do the little as the
great, and more beautiful. Now God is our rock, and from
His heart is inflected every experience, every feeling of joy or
grief, that any human soul utters or knows.

Consider the nature of the Divine Being, and the condition
of those into whose life He enters by sympathy. Christ, as
God, is possessed of all possible excellence. He is Head over
all. Nothing is so impossible as to conceive the perfections of
God — the symmetry and the beauty of the Divine nature. It
is not merely impossible to understand, with any degree of
perfectness, the kind and quality of the Divine excellence ; but
when we attempt to put one trait with another, and see how
one balances another, and goes to make up the perfect ideal

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 297

of character, we are too small and too sinful to reproduce in
our experience a conception of God that answers to the glory
and the fulness of the reality.

Gold is gold everywhere, and yet imagine a piece of undug
ore in California, under the rocks and dirt, attempting to
conceive of the exquisite forms which art has placed upon
gold elsewhere — in crowns, embroideries, paintings, gildings,
carvings, and what not, the world around. It is not enough
that gold lying in the ore should say, *'A11 gold is like me."
It may be in quality; but when it shall know what art has
done with other gold — that it has dug it out, and smelted it,
and wrought it into beautiful forms — it very soon sees that
mere ore has in itself no test or measure of the gold that has
been dug, and purified, and wrought. So by our love we
understand something of the quality of the love which God
feels, our benevolence interprets something of His benevolence,
and our justice discovers to us something of His justice. But
oh ! how little do we conceive of what is the overflowing
abundance, the majesty, the measure, the applications, the
combinations of the life-history of One dwelling in eternity
from eternity, and bearing, with infinite majesty, all the com-
bined strains of these many-tempered feelings ! How little is
there in our time, how little has there been in any age, by
which men could take any adequate thought of God ! It is
impossible, by searching, to find him out.

Consider, too, that universal government is on the shoulders
of this Being, who is so great in all excellence that He trans-
cends our highest conceptions. The heavens, the earth, the
created universe, are all in His care. And this government of
God includes time — the past and the future ; and includes an
inconceivable number of separate creatures.

We gain some sort of an idea when we say infinite in re-
lation to physical things, but in respect to God infinity relates
to feeling. Although there is an infiniteness in the nature of
His natural attributes, yet it is the administration of His heart
that makes Him God.

Now the teaching of the New Testament is, that this princely
and Divine Being, who is lifted up to an inconceivable height
of excellence, from whom all things that are good or noble did
proceed, epitomizes in Himself all these quahties which, in
fragmentary and scattered states among rare and great souls
on earth, excite our most enthusiastic admiration. He who
unites in Himself all these is One that, of His own nature and
choice, is perpetually bearing us with such tenderness and

298 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

emotion, that our own life is, as it were, re-written, re-registered
in His sympathetic feeling.

When the French Government took steps to adorn the
Academy of Design in Paris, they gave to Delaroche the
painting of that picture which has now become world-renowned,
called " The Hemicycle," in which, in some seventy or eighty
figures, he grouped around an imaginary art-tribunal all the
great architects, sculptors, engravers, and painters both of the
ancient and modern world. Now imagine a larger court than
this, and that in some vast area you had gathered together all
the great souls that have adorned human life, and made the
world rich, from the beginning ; all great thinkers ; all great
legislators, commencing with the greatest — ^Moses ; all great
poets, who stand next to legislators as ordainers of the people's
life j all great diplomatists ; all great philosophers ; all men
who have had a deep insight into nature ; all men of great
bounty, and benevolence, and liberality ; all men of princely
wealth ; all men eminent as artists ; all noted scholars ; all
men of every age and class who have risen so high that their
names have come down to us in history — imxagine that you had
gathered together such an assemby of men, and that each one
was full of exquisite consciousness and susceptibility as regards
the speciality in which he excelled, so that Michael Angelo
had a full consciousness of all those wonderful combinations
which populated his mind; so that Raphael had a full con-
sciousness of all those sweet and exquisite conceptions which
presented themselves to his interior vision ; so that all that
IMurillo saw, and all that Claude fancied, and all that every
other artist who had become eminent had ever conceived,
should stand forth in them with exquisite, living sensibility,
and then bring down from the highest point of heaven this
Christ, and let Him stand in their midst, and let one after
another speak to Him, each of the thing that is most to him ;
and, one by one, as they speak to Him, let them find that all
of thought which they possess is His thought, that all of con-
ception which they have is His conception, that all of sensi-
bility and taste which they are conscious belong to their being
are His sensibility and taste ; let them find that He is familiar
with everything in which they have stood pre-eminent ; let the
poet find that, as compared with Christ, he is but a pratthng
child ; let the sculptor find that, as compared with Christ, he
is but an unbegun artist ; let the orator find that his words, in
comparison with those of Christ, fall paralysed upon his lips,
and they would, every one of them, bow before Him, and say,

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 299

•'Never man spake like this man." The architect, the sculptor,
the painter, the poet, the orator, the philosopher, the scientist
— every man in his own speciality ; he that has ransacked the
world in the line of beauty : he that has explored nature in
the range of colours ; they who have produced works of art
that have challenged the admiration of the world ; they who
have moved masses with their eloquence; they who have
soared anywhither in the fields of knowledge, or science, or
art — these would each say, "I am but a spark, and here is the
great and glowing soul out of which I flew as a mere spark."
They would cry, " Were all of us gathered and tempered into
one great nature, melted into one living being, we should still
be less than nothing in the presence of this majesty of excel-
lence, that includes everything in heaven, and all that can be
on earth, and out of whom sprang everything that is, and
everything that has been." The universal acknowledgment
to Him would be, " In Thee we live, and move, and have our
being."

Now that such a Being should, by reason of His nature,
stoop, with ail these endless excellences, with this weight of
glory upon Him, to bestow His care upon us ; that, having
surrounded Himself with whatever things we might suppose a
godlike mind would want. He should still, on the throne, and
amid the crowns and praises of heaven, never think of luxury,
or leisure, or retirement, or seclusion ; that, fresh as on the
morning of primal creation. He should still make conditions
which require that the hand which struck man into being
should be interposed to nurse, and watch, and care for him ;
that He should carry in His own almighty but infinitely sensi-
tive heart His own creatures for ever, so that all the pulsations
of their endless being should be echoed and reproduced in
Him; that, from His very nature, He should be a sympathising
God, so that it may be said literally that He feels what you
feel, sorrows with your sorrow, and joys with your joy — that
God should be such a Being, and do these things, is calculated
to fill the imagination with astonishment and the heart with
joy.

What is His language to us ? Cast all your care on IMe ;
come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest; I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee;
take no thought even for food or raiment ; your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of; the very hairs of your head are
all numbered; not a sparrow can fall to the ground without
your Father's notice, and ye are better than many sparrows ; I

300 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

am touched with a feeling of your infirmities. These are ex-
pressions indicative of the real nature of God. In His height
of infinite excellence He still addresses Himself to His crea-
tures in such language as this.

Let us now bring home this thought of God in His greatness
and majesty, and yet in His tender sympathy, by detailing
some of the elements in us which are included in this
sympathy.

Firsts Christ's sympathy for us includes our whole state as
physical beings in a material world, and all that belongs to us
in our social and physical relations, and all that befalls us on
that account. I think that God loves the material world just
because it carries us. I think that He administers it just because
He love us.

I see a mother that, as the twilight falls, and the baby sleeps,
and because it sleeps out of her arms, goes about gathering from
the floor its playthings, and carries them to the closet, and
carries away the vestments that have been cast down, and
stirring the fire, sweeping up the hearth, winding the clock, and
gathering up his dispersed books, she hums to herself low
melodies as she moves about the room, until the whole place
is once again neat, and clean, and in order. Why is it that
the room is so precious to her ? Is it because there is such
beautiful paper on the walls ? because there is so goodly a
carpet on the floor? because the furniture in the room is so
pleasing to the eye ? All these are nothing in her estimation
except as servant of that litde creature of hers — the baby in
the cradle. She says, "' All these things serve my heart while
I rock my child." The whole round globe is but a cradle, and
our God rocks it, and regards all things, even the world itself,
as so many instruments for the promotion of our welfare. When
He makes the tempests, the pestilence, or the storm, when He
causes ages in their revolutions to change the world, it is all to
serve His own heart through His children — men. When we
are walking through this world, we are not walking through
long files of laws that have no design ; we are walking through
a world that has natural laws, which we must both know and
observe; yet these must have a master, and Christ is He. And
all of these are made to be our servants because we are God's
children.

I went back last summer to the place where I was born. I
would not go into the house where my mother died — there is
a school kept there now — but I walked around the ground, and
I do not think it required any special poetical imagination to

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

301

feel that I was at my father's old homestead. Here was I born,
and earliest knew what father and mother meant. Although
the whole village was beautiful, there was to me no such spot
of ground there as that little yard where I first learned life,
just because it was my father's. There is something in home,
in the homestead, in paternal acres, that gives a feeling of
ownership.

Thus I feel in walking about the world. I have never seen
a lease or a deed that could wipe out God's ownership in the
things He has created. When I see a rich man's garden, I say,
" You are only a tenant here ; my Father owns it." When I
walk through the fields, I say to myself, "These are God's."
When I move through forests, or climb over mountains, or pass
along sreams that are for ever singing, singing freely, unpaid,
and for the mere joy of singing, I say to myself, "They are my
God's. He is in the world, and the world was made by Him.
Jesus, my Saviour, who made the world, made them." And I
look upon the world more fondly on this account. I say of
the world, '* It is God, my Father, who made it, and shall I
not be safe in my own Father's house, and on my own Father's
homestead ? "

In all the various vicissitudes of this life, amid all the trials
to which you are exposed, you are never in danger of getting
beyond your Father's domain. In Asia, in Africa, in South
America, in North America, on the sea and on the land,
wherever you are, whatever is about you, you are always at
home, if you will only think so.

But, secojidly, all that befalls us on account of our relative
weakness, our ignorance, and our troubles, are within the sym-
pathy of God. There are ten thousand troubles which come
upon us because we do not know how to avoid them. It is
great consolation which men give us when they say, "All sin is
disobedience to natural laws, and if men would only observe
natural laws, there would never be any more suffering nor any
more sin." Well, possibly there would not, but I perceive no
relief in the thought. In the first place, you do not know half
of these laws ; and, in the second place, you do not know how
to fulfil those which are discovered. I think there is nothing
in this world, with all its oscillating tendencies, more dreary
than for a man to attempt to carry all his feelings in obedience
to natural laws.

Here is a man with a great head, a vast volume of sensitive
brain, and a slender body. He had no part in making himself.
He awoke to consciousness in a body prefigured. The scheme

302 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

of material laws is relative to each man. His temperament and
organisation determines what is obedience or disobedience to
natural law. Now suppose you were to shove that man,
organised as he is, out into life, where he is in the midst of men
who are constantly pouring excitement in upon him from every
direction — where influences that come down upon him are like
streams of living fire — and you were to say to him, " You must
not use up your susceptibility, for if you do, you will violate
natural laws." You might as well say to Niagara, " Do not
tumble down so fast," when the whole weight of the mighty
lake is continually forcing it forward. To tell a man who has
a nature which he cannot control, to bear himself in obedience
to natural laws, would be like saying to a child, *'' Keep your
feet," when it was being rolled and whirled about by a fierce
tornado.

The fact is, natural laws are almost as much above our reach
as God Himself is, and they are cold, and stern, and relentless,
and unforgiving. It is exceeding consolation to me to know,
after having violated a natural law, that if I had avoided its
violation, I might have escaped the consequences ! It is a
great comfort to me to be told, " You would not have had this
headache to-day if you had not taken that indigestible dinner
yesterday ! " It is too late to tell me of it now after the dinner
is taken. There is no such thing as observing natural laws
when to-day is but the prophet of yesterday. And when I do
not know the nature of things — when there are so many natural
laws that I cannot know them all — when I am making every
effort, amid all kinds of discouragements, to carry thirty or forty
feelings so as to be in harmony with natural laws, and through
ignorance which I cannot help I fail to accomplish all I could
wish, then to tell me, " Nobody cares for you, nobody pities
you ; you have violated natural laws, and you are receiving the
just penalty of such violation," is heartless — is unfeeling.

Now God says, " I am in this respect just as you are to your
own child that is attempting to walk, but does not know how ;
that does not know the nature of food ; that has no knowledge
of what is good for it and what is not; and whose experience
you are endeavouring to supply by your own experience ; teach-
ing it to help and protect itself as fast as the development of
its faculties will allow." He is a Being of compassion toward
his creatures in respect to those troubles which arise on account
of their ignorance of natural laws.

Thirdly, this sympathy of God is a sympathy which takes in
all our aspirations, all our yearnings, all our unanswered aftec-

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 303

tions. For example, a poor man would be rich, and for the
noblest reasons. I see men who mean to be rich, not because
they want pelf, but because they have a strong desire to make
those who are dependent on them comfortable and happy.
The poor man would place his wife in easier circumstances. It
is love which inspires toil. If avarice speeds some, the affec-
tions awaken more to industry, frugality, and prudence. He
looks upon his sons or daughters, and says, '^ It is but little to
me that they are of humble birth, and that they have to eat
coarse bread ; but oh ! that I could give them the advantages
of learning ; oh ! that I could afford them the opportunity of
travelhng and of seeing what other people's children see, and
of becoming refined in their tastes and manners. For the sake
of my household I am willing to be a drudge all my life." I
have seen men, the burden of whose life was to give their
children the advantages of education, and who have devoted
thirty or forty of the best years of their life to this laudable
object, and who were yet unable to do for their children all
they wished.

Now do you suppose that when such aspirations are locked
up in a man's bosom, God does not know it ? Do you suppose
there is one such aspiration that He does not sympathise with ?
Do you suppose there is one worthy desire which God does
not notice, and which, if disappointed, will not come into the
final account ? Here are hearts made wondrously to love, and
by some strange conjunction of circumstances, which we are not
prepared to understand, they have never had anywhere that
they could bestow their treasures. There are natures that go
palpitating to the end of their earthly existence, who, in the
allotments of a mysterious Providence, seem to have no standing-
place or foundation in life. And do you suppose that when a
heart turns back for ever from aspirations unsatisfied, pained,
and yet not impatient, God does not understand all the feelings
which it experiences, and sympathise with them ?

There are persons to whom God has given sensitive, poetic
natures— silent poets, with hearts overflowing with elevated
thoughts and lofty aspirations, but denied opportunity. They
toil in menial stations. They wear out in uncongenial labours.
Golden thoughts rise like vapours over secluded lakes, and,
like them, condense and fall back unnoticed. Do your suppose
that such great souls are marching in their obscurity unseen of
God, and unthought of and uncared for by Him ? Do you not
frequently see persons who seemed to be possessed of superior
powers, and to be capable of accomplishing wonderful achieve-

304 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

ments in the world, yet who were so beset with difficulties that
it was impossible for them to render their powers available as
they could wish ? I have seen men who, having made one
mistake in life, have toiled thirty years to extricate themselves
from the thraldom into which that mistake had thrust them. I
have seen men who started on the threshold of life with every
prospect of a useful and honourable career, but whose light had
gone down before they touched the age of twenty years, when
they said, *'Now I must navigate the ocean without star or
compass. I have no one to go before me in this troublous way.
I am manacled, I am handcuffed, I am kept down by this
accident, or this allotment of Providence. I have no longer
any power or any place in the world." Do you suppose that
men standing in the midst of such circumstances — and there
are thousands who do ; there are many before me who do — do
you suppose, I say, that men standing in the midst of such
circumstances as I have described are without the notice and
the sympathy of God ?

It is an unspeakable pleasure to know that there is a Being
who has a heart of exquisite susceptibility, and that He knows
you intimately, and what your troubles are, and says, " I
sympathise with you ; I am touched with the feeling of your
infirmities." " Ah ! but," you say, " I could get along with the
infelicities of life if it were not for this consciousness of wicked-
ness— if it were not for these throes of ignominious guilt. If I
was worthy of God, I could bear anything." When we have
the greatest sense of our unworthiness and of our sin, it is the
hardest thing in this world to strive toward God. And yet the
sympathy of Christ includes our sin. He is sorry for us, and
sympathises with us on account of our sin. Calvary, mountain
of blessings, is testimony that God so loved the world that He
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish, but have everlasting life. No trumpet will
ever speak as the death of Christ speaks in evidence that our
woes and sorrows affect the sympathetic heart of God, and make
Him sorrow for us. Living, He gave Himself for us ; dying,
He gave himself for us ; living again, He lives to intercede for
us ; and the further we can remove this idea from all our hearts,
and the nearer we can bring it home to our consciousness of
guilt, the more nearly shall we come to the feelings of Christ
toward those who are sinful. Let me, in this connection, read
a verse or two preceding our text : — '' The word of God " — that
is, God's mind — " is quick and powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 305

and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any
creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are
naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have
to do."

What a tremendous expression of God's insight into, His
familiarity with, and the universality of His knowledge of, every
throb and fluctuation of the wickedness of the human soul !
It is anatomized, dissected, laid open, and God looks upon it,
and He sees the whole of it perfectly. And it is in view of this
knowledge of God of the intensity and the interiorness of our
moral unworth and sinfulness that we have this exhortation :
" Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that
we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in the time of
need."

A man goes to his physician, and says to him, " I have, sir,
very great suffering; I have very sharp pains that shoot through
my breast ; I have very acute pains in my spine ; and my head
s^ems to have abandoned all its uses." The physician interro-
gates him, and says to him, "What has been the course of
your life ? " The man is ashamed to tell ; he says, " Well, sir,
I have been exposed to dampness in various ways, and my
impression is that I am troubled with neuralgia." The phy-
sician proceeds to prescribe for him on the supposition that his
difficulty is neuralgia ; but as he gets no better, but a good
deal worse, he says to himself, " I do not believe my physician
understands my case. I do not believe the medicine he is
giving me is doing me any good." But he has withheld the
truth from his physician. He has not let him into the secret
of his trouble. At length he goes to another physician, and
says, " Can you do me any good ?" This physician knows so
much that he don't know anything; and after putting a few
pompous questions to the man concerning his case, he says,
"Yes, I can cure you," and accordingly gives him a few
remedies. But they afford him no relief. After a few weeks
he says to himself, "I do not believe this physician under-
stands my case either." And by-and-bye, after suffering nights
and suffering days, his strength becomes much reduced, and
there is a prospect of a speedy termination of all his earthly
hopes and expectations, when he says to himself, " What a fool
I am for lying, and hiding the real cause of my difficulty ! '^
He now goes to his physician again, and hangs down his head
— he ought to have hung it down before — and explains the
cause of his disease, which he had so long been concealing.

X

306 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

The physician says, " Why did you not tell me of this before?
Since you have given this explanation, your difficulty is per-
fectly plain to me. It is very late, but I think I know now
just where to put the remedy. Now I will undertake your
case, and I can cure you." It is a world of relief to him that
he has told the physician all he knows about his difficulty.

Now this is the foundation of the comfort of this passage.
The apostle says, "Here is this God, with clear, unblemished
eye, which no darkness can shroud, from which no man's
thoughts can be hid, which can penetrate into the deepest
recesses of man's being. There is no imagination of the mind
or aspiration of the heart which He does not know. The soul
and body are open and naked to His gaze, and He knows
perfectly whatever takes place in connection with either. Now,
then, let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may
obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." God
sees every thought and motive on our part, and He knows
what we need in order to obtain mercy, and find grace, and
live, and, knowing all this, He says to us, " Now come — now
come."

Is there, in the conception presented this morning of the
Lord Jesus Christ, a view of the Divine Person which comes
home to you, and takes hold of your heart by sympathy? I
present this Saviour to you as yo2Lr Saviour. Do not look upon
Christians as having a Saviour while others have not. This is
an entirely false idea. There is not a person in this house
who has not a right to claim the Saviour as his own — who has
not a right to say to Christ, " Thou art mine." If you wish to
do it, your wishing to do it gives you the right to do it. There
is not a man, no matter how bad or wicked he is, who, if he
sincerely desires the Saviour to be his Saviour, may not say,
" Lord Jesus, thou art mine.''

Are there those here who have long been wandering after,
and striving to trust in, a poetic, a transcendental, a vague, a
visionary God of the beautiful, but who have never found food
or rest ? I present to you this morning a personal God — a
Father, a Friend, a sympathising Saviour — who takes you by
the hand, who takes your life into His own, who loves you,
and who offers to give you of His Spirit, and to lead you on
from strength to strength, until you shall stand in His presence.

Ought not confession of sin and repentance before such a
Being as this to be hearty — to be whole-souled ? I think men
sometimes commit more sin in repenting than they do in per-
forming the sins of which they repent. They impute to God

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

307

a character that is unworthy of Him. They seem, from the
way in which they come into His presence, to take it for
granted that He is a Being unworthy of all trust — suspicious,
vengeful, and inexorable. But a right view of the character of
God, and of His love, and kindness, and sympathy for His
creatures, methinks, should bring every honourable nature
straight to Him, with open confession and frank faith. Where
else can you go and be received with such leniency and such
grandeur of love as He feels and manifests toward His children ?

But there are persons who are timid in such matters, because
they are more conscious of their self-pollution or deficiency
than of the riches and glory of God's nature. Now I ask,
ought not this view of God which I have held up before you
this morning to be encouraging to you to come boldly to the
throne of grace, and to obtain mercy, and find grace to help in
the time of need ? Do not wait till you have seen more of your
own heart ; you have seen enough of it already if you have had
one look at it. Do not brood upon your own sinfulness. Look
up and see the glory and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ought it not to be easy for every true and generous nature
to consecrate all his affections, all his powers and faculties, his
friends, his children — everything — to the service of such a
Being as this ? And if His providence in this world is the way
in which God reveals His will to us, ought it not to be easy for
us to be submissive to that providence? Nature is very strong
when we lose our children, our companions, the things in
which our strength stands in this world ; but it ought not to be
difficult for us to give up everything to such a Saviour as I have
presented to you, and say, " Thy will, not mine, be done."

Are there any in this congregation who have hitherto expe-
rienced feelings of attachment for the Saviour, but who are
to-day conscious that they are not in intimate connection with
Him ? What do these flowers on the desk before me make
you think of? Look at them. Do you know that it is a year
to-day since flowers, large and small, beautiful in form and
fragrant in their nature, crowded this platform, before which
those hundreds were to be received into this church ? They
were heralds of joy. This is the anniversary of your bridal
Sabbath. I think there is not one of you that can now look
upon this platform without being reminded of the events of that
day, the blessedness and the joys of which you will never forget.
Twelve months have gone past. Where are you now ? What
has been that year's experience ? I know how some of you
have reeled to and fro, going zigzag in your way of life.

X — 2

308 THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

Now if your year has not been what you meant to have
it ; if you are filled with confusion and shame on account of
your backsliding; if you are obliged to say, *' My love to God
has burned out," or, " It is like a burnt brand by the fireside of
my heart," then is not this the day, and is not this the place,
and is not this the subject that should bring you back again
from your wanderings and infidelity to the love, and sympathy,
and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, your Saviour ? He has
been here every Sabbath waiting for you, and He is here to-day,
especially in these external symbols. He sends me to say to
you, *' Come."

Is there any one here who says, " Lord Jesus, I have not been
to Thy table since the first day I took communion here " ? To
you more than to any others, because you need His sympathy
more, He reaches out His hand, and says, *^ Let Me draw you
back to Me," Are there some here who say, " I have trampled
under foot the blood of the covenant ; I have done despite to
the grace of God, and there is no help for me ! " Oh ! say not
so. Do not despair. The Lord has not permitted you to
wander so far from Him that you have sacrificed your soul's
salvation. If you have been sinful, if you have stumbled and
fallen, I am empowered to invite you, because your are sinful,
and because you are fallen, to come back to Him whose love
for you is so great that it over-measures all thought of your
sinfulness. Your salvation does not stand in your goodness,
but in the power and glory of Him who loves you, and will
love you unto the end.

PRAYER.

We bless Thy name, Thou eternal Father, that Thou has made
known to us, through Thy Son, our Saviour, that there is in
this new and living way full access to Thee. Now all that it is
possible for us to understand of God is made known in Christ.
He is brought near to us, becoming a man ; suffering as we
suffer; tempted in all points like as we are, and yet without
sin ; speaking to us in our own tongue ; doing the deeds that
we must do, and walking the passes through which we must
tread. How strange that Thou hast thus brought down the
love of the Godhead, and interpreted it, translated it, not by
words alone, but by an outflowing life ! Ever-blessed Saviour,
Thou crowned One, now a Prince exalted to the right hand of
the Majesty on high, we hail and bless Thee as our sovereign

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 309

Lord, our heart's rest, our joy, our hope, our all ! When we
were lying dead, Thou didst come to be our life, and to bring
us forth by Thy sovereign touch and reviving power. When
we walked in darkness. Thou didst come over the top of the
hills, and hang as the bright and morning star ; nor didst Thou
change till the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His
wings, pouring daylight on our path. When in the toil of the
day we could not bear the wilting, withering power of the sun,
Thou wert pleased to declare Thyself to be for us the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land. When we are faint with hunger,
and have nowhither to go, then Thou art to us the bread of
life. And when we are sick, and know not how to restore
ourselves, unnursed and untended, Thou drawest near to us to
proclaim that Thou art the Physician, and that in Thee is
healing and remedy. When we are poor and needy, then Thou
tellest us that Thou art wealth for us— our exceeding great
reward. Thou art our raiment, and we are clothed with Thee.
Thou art our road, and we tread along that sacred way to
Divine realms in heaven. Thou art all to all. What need have
we that points heavenward ; what necessity have we in our life ;
what do we lack in body or in soul, for which Thou hast not
made amazing provision in nature or in grace? And we are
beloved of Thee. Revolving as we are amid innumerable
creatures transcending in number all our thought or capacity of
thinking, we are never forgotten. How precious to us are Thy
thoughts, O God !

We rejoice in Thee. What are we when we think of God ?
How small the sum of our life; of how little account do we
seem to ourselves in the great thronged whirl of Divine affairs !
The earth, which is but as a cup in Thy hand, might be emptied,
and none know it but the heart of God. So full of goodness
and love art Thou, that not a sparrow can fall and Thou not
feel it. Not one of all Thy creatures can suffer without Thy
knowing it. Of all the poor and the despised ; of all the
ignorant and the heathen ; of all the outcast ; of all those that
wander amid dreary superstitions and besotted services, there
is not one so wicked, so low, so brutal, that Thou dost not
think of him, and dost not feel in his heart lying against Thine
the throb of beginning immortality. What are the ways through
which Thou wilt lead men, and what are the mysteries of Thy
dealings in providence with them, we do not know. Why should
we expect to know God and His ways ? But we rejoice in that
great disclosure which Thou hast made to us through Jesus
Christ, that man has not come forth separated from Thee, but

3IO THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

that he is Thy child. All men are Thine, and Thou art the un-
forgelting Father. And now we rejoice in this truth of God.
We cling to it. If we take measures of safety from what we see
in ourselves ; if our hope is in our own potency for good ; if it
is because we have attained righteousness that we are to be
saved, if saved at all, then we are of all men most miserable ;
for we are only advanced enough to take a higher rule of con-
demnation, and to feel how obscure are our highest thoughts,
and how impure are our best feelings. In all things we come
short, and in many we entirely fail. We are sinful in character,
in feeling, in deed, in action, and in disposition. And if it was
only ourselves that stood underneath ourselves, we should have
no hope and no courage ; or, if we thought that Thou wert
saving us for the good that is in us, we should fear the daily and
hourly disclosure of our lives before Thee. But Thou knowest
Thine own work, and Thou hast been pleased to take us up
into Thine arms as we take little children, knowing that they
are children ; knowing their weakness, and inexperience, and
faults ; knowing their transgressions, and yet loving them. We
do not expect that they will grow up without sin, but we love
them. We expect that they will vex and harass our lives, but
we love them. We love them all the more as we think they
need us by reason of their delinquency.

O God, is this that is written in our heart a revelation of Thy
truth ? and dost Thou love us as sinful creatures ? Dost Thou
love us because, being sinful, we need Thee ? Dost Thou take
us in our littleness and weakness ? and art Thou making Thy-
self unto us righteousness, sanctification, justification? We
rejoice, we hope, we trust and believe.

And now what can harm us ? If God be for us, who can be
against us ? What arrow can wing its way through Thy shield?
What temptation can spring, lion-like, to crush us, and crush
Thee, thou Lion of the Tribe of Judah ? In Thee we are strong
— in Thy fidelity ; in Thy remembrance; in Thy love ; in Thy
watchful care. Ourselves we commit to Thee. We commit more
than ourselves — we commit our children and our dear friends.
We commit more than our heart — we commit those that are
dearer than our own life. We commend ourselves and ours to
Thee, not for time alone. We trust for prosperity, under Thy
wisdom and guidance ; but, O Lord God, we trust Thy faith-
fulness also for dying. Thou wilt not forsake us in the trying
hour. When heart and flesh shall fail, Thou wilt not fail. And
as in that hour friends recede, and we drift further and further
from their voices on the shore, Thou wilt open the ears of our

THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 3II

spirit to hear unutterable things in heaven. We will trust thee
in the judgment, when Thou shalt appear, with all Thy blessed
angels, to separate between the good and the bad, and when, if
left alone, we should shrink in our inmost parts with fear, and
shrivel before the light of Thy countenance. In that great hour
of division and sentence. Almighty God, we will lay our hand
upon the promise and upon the Saviour, and plead for His sake.
And Thou wilt accept us ; Thou wilt do it for Thine own sake.
Great is the mystery of the love of God to sinful souls. And
when we shall stand gathered out of all our sorrow, and tempta-
tion, and sin, out of all mortal fears and struggles, and out of
death itself having come forth victorious, then in Thy presence,
with all whom we love, we will cast our crowns at Thy feet,
saying, " Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the
praise of our salvation for ever and ever." Amen.

XXIII.

FISHERS OF MEN.

"And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called
Peter, and Andrew his brother,, casting a net in the sea : for they were
fishers. And he saith unto them. Follow me, and I will make you
fishersof men."— Matt. iv. i8, 19.

God's whole work in this world aims at the development of
man. He is not only highest in the scale of earthly creaturess
but all other things have their rank and use by their relation,
to Him. Except for man's development and advancement^
natural laws, seasons, and all the flow of phenomena would be
but as the flowing of the Gulf Stream or the crashing of Polar
ice in the solitary nights of northern winters.

In the Divine economy all influences are labouring together
for him. All science and art, all political economy and good
government, all growth of refinement and of good morals, all
that is involved in civilisation, directly or indirectly, promotes
the welfare and advancement of man. Not only are certain
official persons appointed to affect him by truth, but it is the
whole office of human society to teach him. Not only is the
Church an appointed instrumentality, but time and the world
are instrumentalities. All things workj^r him; all things work
tipon him. In a general sense, it may be said that the whole
globe is an organised institution designed to educate men.
But in this general economy some influences act indirectly and
remotely, some very directly. While great influences are taking
hold of men in masses, there is a provision for special action
also upon individuals ; and in this work of producing individual
impressions on individual men, there is no instrumentaUty that
can compare with the heart of a Christian man. Seasons do
much, directly or indirectly. Natural laws have their ministra-
tions, and should not be overlooked. National economies,
customs, occupations, and providential events of joy or of sorrow
— these are all working mightily and working always. But
there comes that in their midst which is mightier than all of
them, namely, the throb of one heart against another. Of all
earthly things that influence men, God has made the human
heart to be the master influence, that can do what nothing else
can do. And when this special human instrumentality acts

FISHERS OF MEN. 3 1 5;

harmoniously with and within these general influences, man is
brought under the highest conceivable degree of human moral
influence.

The Christian religion differs in this one thing, grandly and
fundamentally, from all other religious systems. It has, indeed,
its system of truth or theology to be beHeved, and its code of
ethics to be obeyed and practised, the value of which cannot
be over-estimated. But over and above any natural laws,
economies, institutions, customs, and ordinances, it is the
distinctive peculiarity of the Christian religion that it has
introduced the heart-power of a personal being as the grand
master influence by which men are to be moved.

It is the personal influence of God in Christ upon the hearts
of men that makes the Gospel the power of God unto salvation.
Its grand and fundamental feature consists in the fact that it
introduces into life, and to the experience of men, a livings
throbbing, personal God of love and power. And as this
personal influence constitutes the characteristic power in Chris-
tianity, so, in accordance with this spirit, all Christians are em-
powered and commanded to exert their own personal influence
for the conversion and edification of men — not as an occasional
duty ; not as an exceptional duty resting only upon profes-
sional priests and ministers, but as one of the constituent
elements of Christian character, one of the signs of Christian
allegiance, and one of the chief of human forces upon which
Christ rehes in building up and extending His kingdom.

Christ Himself, our great exemplar and leader, laboured
with men individually ; for while he preached God to men
publicly, He also influenced them privately and personally. He
not only exerted a professional influence upon them as a prophet
and teacher, but he eminently and most beautifully exerted a
personal influence upon them as a companion and friend. And
He called His disciples to the very same work.

''Follow Me," He says to these fishermen — (and you might
have known, if you waked up in Asia and heard that passage,
that it emanated from Christ. It has internal evidence of
having been uttered by Him ; for He had a peculiar habit of
drawmg instruction and knowledge from the symbolisms of
nature and the events of life. Everything to him thought some-
thing. And, seeing these men in the ship, and perceiving that
they were fishermen, He said) — " Follow Me, and I will make
you fishers of men" — I will enlarge your business. The more
you look at this figure, the more important it becomes.

To fish well, it is necessary to study the peculiarities of fish.

314 FISHERS OF MEN.

It is necessary to know more than the science of ichthyology.
What a book can tell a man about fishes is worth knowing, but
it is little that a book can do toward making a man a true fisher-
man. If a man is going to fish iorjish, he must become their
scholar before he becomes their master ; he must go to school
in the brook, to learn its ways. And to fish for men, a man
must learn their nature, their prejudices, their tendencies, and
their courses. _ A man, to catch fish, must not only know their
habits, but their tastes and their resorts; he must humour them
according to their different natures, and adapt his instruments
to their peculiarities — providing a spear for some, a hook for
others, a net for others, and baits for each one, as each one will.
To sit on a bank or deck, and say to the fishes, "Here I am,
authorised to command you to come to me and to bite what I
give you," is just as ridiculous as it can be, even though it does
resemble some ways of preaching. The Christian's business is
not to stand in an appointed place and say to men, " Here am
I ; come up and take what I give you as you should." The
Christian's business is to find out what men are, and to take
them by that which they will bite at.

You must go to the fish. They certainly will not come to
you. You must note times and seasons. You must be in-
formed as to their caprices. You must creep sometimes, lie
down sometimes, sometimes hide, sit patiently in the leafy
covert at other times, and work frequently without filling your
basket, and await a better time. You must study the sky, and
for their food you must search all manner of insects, and every-
thing that relates to the work in which you are engaged. The
one act of catching fish must determine your whole manner.

Luke adds to the force of this figure very much. Matthew
says, "Ye shall be fishers of men;" but Luke says, "Ye shall
catch men." It is very well to be a fisher, but it is a great deal
better to catch what you fish for.

It will be my object, in further discoursing this morning, first,
to enforce the duty of labours for the edification and conversion
of men ; next, to point out some of the means by which we
should attempt to do it ; and, finally, to direct the whole to
some personal applications.

What, then, is the source of this duty of labouring for men's
conversion, and their education in the Christian life after their
conversion ? The duty begins in this : " Freely ye have re-
ceived, freely give." This applies to every truly Christian man.
God has thought of him personally ; God has given the Holy
Ghost to rest upon him ; Christ has loved him and drawn him

FISHERS OF MEN. 315

unto Himself. And every man that is truly a Christian is one
who has been the object of special personal Divine thought,
and love, and transforming influence. The same that He has
done to us He commands us to do to others. Not that we are
clothed with the same attributes, nor that we have the same
official relations; but as God, according to His sphere and
nature, adapts Himself to the wants of every individual heart,
so we, according to our sphere and nature, are to adapt our-
selves to the wants of the individual hearts that are about us.

Our obligations, then, to Christ for our own salvation, and the
possession of Christ's spirit of sympathy and love — these are
the grounds on which men ought to labour for their fellow men.
Hence, though parents, teachers, and ministers are expected to
labour on account of professional reasons, the root of the obli-
gation is not that we are parents, or teachers, or ministers, but
that we are Christians. If a man, being a Christian, and
acknow^ledging this duty, finds himself possessed either of
opportunities or gifts which make it specially important that he
should devote his life to this one work, that may be a reason
why he should become a minister ; but because he is a minister
is not the reason why he should labour for the individual wel-
fare of men. The reason why we are bound to use our life for
the benefit of our fellow men is that we are in Christ, and that
He says, ^' Freely ye have received from Me, freely give." And
while it is true that every parent, every teacher, everyone that
is put in relations of influence and authority with others, is
bound to accept those relations as providential, and as afford-
ing an opportunity for the exercise of a gift or power in fulfil-
ment of the obhgation growing out of personal faith and love to
Christ Jesus, we ought not to consider this obligation as spring-
ing originally and chiefly from any external or superficial reason,
or from any professional relation. It is because you are a
Christian that the obligation rests upon you.

This reason makes the duty, then, of all Christians substanti-
ally the same. It may be that some have better adaptations
and better opportunities than others. That may be a reason
why some should do more than others, but it is not a reason
why some should not do anything. Every man has some
power, and is under obligations to the Master to exert it. If
you have ten talents, you are responsible for ten ; if you have
five, you are responsible for five ; and cursed be the man that,
having but one, wraps it in a napkin, and digs a hole and
buries it. If a man, being a professional man, can do more
than you, it does not justify you in not doing the little that

3l6 FISHERS OF MEN.

you can do. The obligation is not professional, but moral.
To live days, and months, and years without personal solici-
tude and personal effort for some individual soul is a sign so
bad as to invalidate the evidence of piety. I know many
persons will say, **That is an offensive way of putting this
obligation. Are there not other methods of usefulness ? Is
not teaching important .? I am a teacher of the truth and its
relations to religious conduct ; my habits incline me to build
up the great systems of truth; and I am working for the
welfare of men, not individually indeed, but in the mass." I
do not say a word against this departmental way of working.
Influences that are comprehensive, intricate, and remote, are
good. But the fact that you may be giving yourself mainly to
this form of work does not release you from the duty of per-
forming personal and individual labour. You must have some-
body to love, and watch over, and sympathise with. Every
single heart should have its part in this great, common,
universal, individual, and personal duty of acting upon others
for their religious growth, as God acted on you for yours.

This being the grand duty and its foundation, let us speak,
then, next, of the methods. Do not think that I am going
merely to urge the duty of going out and talking to impenitent
sinners. Talking is only one method of influence. Many of
you might not converse to edification. Talking? Is the tongue
the only servant of the heart ? Must the heart send just that
one servant for all errands ? Wretched heart, if it is so poorly
served as that ! But the ways of the heart are almost infinite.
Its instrumentalities and devices are almost numberless. Let
it speak when it is best to speak ; but I urge upon you per-
sonal influence, not simply the influence of speech. Talking
does not set you free from doing other and mightier things —
things that will tax your attention and your time. Let me
specify.

First. — in the very beginning, as a preparation for any in-
fluence upon our fellow-men, there must be cultivated in us a
sympathy with and a desire for them. The heart is to be a
fountain out of which our thoughts and feelings flow toward
others. Do you say, " I am ready to go out and call men to
come in to the feast ? " But stop ! Do you care yourself for
men? Have you ever been inspired by the Holy Ghost to
feel for them ? Is your heart drawn toward them ? Are they
to you something more than mere secular actors in time and
political society? Do you recognise them as your own kindred?
Do you recognise their immortality ? Do you think of them/

FISHERS OF MEN.

317

as belonging, above all, to Christ ? Does your soul yearn
toward your fellow-men as brethren — as, with you, children of
God?

Honesty, uprightness, kindness, generosity, these are well ;
but they are not equivalents in the sight of God for a loving
heart, for true sympathy with man as a creature of God, an
heir of eternity, imperilled, lost, and to be redeemed by some
power that is to be exerted upon him. This inherent sympathy
is the beginning. You might just as well, when the street-
lamps are burning, and the street is full of light, attempt to
veil that light, as to attempt so to veil a heart full of love and
sympathy for man and for Christ that it shall not show itself
in the gestures and tones, and fill the life full of sweet and
blessed activity. You must feel and pray for men with a kind
— if I may so call it — of maternal instinct. You are to win
them ; to catch them ; to hunt them. They are the true game
of love. You are to find in studying them, even in their per-
versities, something that shall fill you with deep interest.

Not easy places, and not easy men, are the true preacher's
ambition. It should be with us as with true sportsmen, who
rejoice in searching out the shy and cunning fish, in tempting
the most wary to take the hook, and who glory in a fish that
sturdily refuses to be taken, but resists to the last, and is
landed only after long and skilful handling of the tackle. A
sullen mud-fish he may take, if he can do no better. But he
covets difficulty. He searches the country. He knows every
pool and covert. He makes himself acquainted with the very
fancies and whims of his game. He never thinks of standing
upon his dignity. He knows that he must make himself the
servant of trout if he will catch trout — that he must go down
to the sea, and not wait for the waters to come after him. He
lies down. He creeps. He watches and waits. He studies
the wind and weather. He submits himself to every incon-
venience cheerfully if he may thereby win.

There are a great many men that like to preach among good
folks; that like to talk to people that are already in the
kingdom, or that need but a word to be brought in. But the
spirit of our text requires that a man should go among un-
willing and wicked men, pursue them, and catch them. There
ought to be for a man nothing more manly ttlan to attack men ;
to put his eye on them, and study them, as a merchant does
his customer, to see how much he can make out of him not as
an antagonist, to see whether he can match men or overmaster
them, but as a Christian fisherman, saying, " How can I bring to

3l8 FISHERS OF MEN.

them something to check their downward career, and save them
from ruin ? " You put your eye on a man, and study him, and
try one thing, and miss him; you study him again, and try
another thing, and miss him again ; you pray over him, and
carry him home with you, and live and sleep with him con-
stantly in your mind; you w^atch your game; and at length you
begin to make an impression upon him. And then you expe-
rience an ecstasy, a joy that is unutterable. You concentrate
other influences upon him — fail with some, and succeed with
others ; at last you land him, and the thrill of triumph is more
glorious than that experienced by a buffalo-hunter, a lion-killer,
or a fisherman ! To land a man, and land him, not on the
shores of streams that will run out, but on the shores of streams
where there shall be no more lapse and flow, is glorious indeed.

Consider the apostles' method of training for this work.

-' Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself
servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the
Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews ; to them
that are under the law as under the law, that I might gain them
that are under the law; to them that are without law as without
law (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ),
that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak
became I as weak, that I might gain the weak ; I am made all
things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And
this I do for the Gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof
with you."

Can you conceive of a more magnificent description of the
universal adaptation of the total of a man's being to this great
work of saving men ! Sympathy, love, time, talent, official
character and position — these are all mere instruments by which
he is seeking this one most glorious end of which the heart of
man can conceive — the redemption of human souls from death.
Some persons — frivolous natures they must be— have seen in
this passage evidence of a want of principle. They understand
the apostle's declaration to be that he would do anything if he
could gain his ends; that he would do evil that good might
come. It is not so. The apostle says, " I study men under
every circumstance in which I find them. If they are heathen,
I will see if there is not some point of sympathy between them
and me. If I find that they are Jews, there are some points
in which I can sympathise with a Jew, and I will take those
points, and from them I will work to bring him into a higher
and better sphere. Wherever I am, whether among barbarians
or Jews, my first thought is, 'How can I get hold of these men,

FISHERS OF MEN. 519

and draw them out of their evil Hfe into a higher and better
one ? ' All my time, and power, and inspiration, and prophetic
and apostolic office, I use in my endeavours to gain men/'
That was the whole of his life ; and is there anything nobler
than such a Hfe ? No artist that has left gallery or statues, no
builder that has left cathedrals or palaces, can compare with
that man who has filled the heaven so full of redeemed souls as
has the apostle Paul.

Then, next, when we have this deep feeling preparatory to
the work, and this training for it, we are to use every prac-
ticable instrument for carrying it on ; not that which others use,
but that which we find to be pertinent to us.

In some respects laymen can perform this personal labour
better than ministers ; and neighbours can do some things for
children better than parents themselves can. What men are
officially appointed to do they do from mere habit or a sense
of duty. Accordingly, children are often led to feel that their
parents govern them because it is their duty to do it. And
there come exigencies in children's lives when they are im-
patient of authority at home, and when, if they are away from
home to school, they will take the same amount of government
patiently, without resistance. A person outside of the family
can sometimes influence a child when its parent can exert but
little influence upon it. And there are a multitude of instances
where laymen can do what no minister can. The minister is a
professional man, and people say, " His attention to me is not
an evidence of his personal sympathy for me, but a matter of
business." I stand here on Sunday, and preach to men, and
my influence upon them is diminished by the fact that I am
appointed to do it. They say, " He is hired, and the message
which he delivers to us is not his own messsage of love. He
is paid, and he labours among us on that account." A man
at the bank hands you the money for your cheque. It is ten>
thousand dollars, and it is going to save you from bankruptcy.
But you do not account him a benefactor. You express not a
word of gratitude to him. He is the cashier ; you hand him
the cheque, and he pays you the money ; he does not care
for you, and you do not care for him. It is his business to
hand you the money, and he does it, and that is all there is of it.
And so men seem to think of a minister, salaried and appointed
to stand in the pulpit and dispense the Gospel, that he does it
professionally and as a matter of course. A business friend
whose life is consistent, and whom you believe to be a good
man, comes to you and says, <'My friend, I do not believe any-

520 FISHERS OF MEN,

body will tell you what you ought to know ; but the fact is,
you are becoming hard and selfish ; you are becoming sharp
and grasping. I feel it, and your friends all feel it. Probably
nobody would have said this to you if I had not, and I never
told it to a soul but you, and I never would have said it to you
if I had not been your friend. Now do not be angry with me,
but just think about it." He will give heed to Mju. But if I
should go to you with like message, saying, *' Sir, do not you
know that you are getting very worldly and very hard ? " you
would think to yourself, " Oh, yes, my minister gets a good
salary, and feels that he has a duty to perform ; " but what
effect would it have ? When a man who is not paid a salary
to teach you your duty, and whom you do not expect to do it,
comes to you and concerns himself in your welfare, there is a
freshness about it that does not belong to mere professional
service. The general feeling of men is, " Let every one take
care of his own business." It is very hard to tell a disagreeable
truth to a friend ; and when a man makes the self-sacrifice to
do it, you feel it. And so an officer can help an officer as a
minister cannot ; a business man can help a business man as a
professional man cannot ; a poor man can do what a rich man
cannot ; an ignorant man can do what a learned man cannot.
There is not a man, though he is not a minister, that has not
power to accomplish great results in this way. There is an
opening for laymen to do this work that can be filled by none
but such.

This is not all. We are to remember that we have derived
almost all our Church customs from periods previous to the
Reformation in England. Before that time the clergy, as a
body, though they were intelligent compared with their hearers,
were so ignorant that they would not now be considered
worthy to be entrusted with any holy function. And if the
clergy were but little cultured, how much worse must have
been the condition of their parishioners ? At that time, when
the masses of men were in such a low state, a thousand things
were expected to be done by professional men, because
nobody else could do them. But there have been many steps
of progress in Christianity since that time. Intelligence has
spread. In a majority of Christian families parents are better
able to instruct the young, a thousand-fold, than ministers. In
this church there are many persons that are qualified to explain
the Scriptures and disseminate the gospel among their fellow-
men as few ministers in the olden time were qualified to do.
Under such circumstances, for you to wait for professional men

FISHERS OF MEN.

321

to do all the talking and preaching is an abuse of your privi-
leges, and a neglect of the higher duties which belong to you in
the time in which you live.

I roll no burdens off from my own shoulders ; I would fain
work to the end of my life. I live to work, and pray that, as
God's best gift to me, when I cannot work any more, I may die
at once. I desire to fall in the harness. But you are waiting
for ministers and churches to do the work that God has given
you to do, while you are intelligent enough, and have oppor-
tunities and means enough to do it. God's solemn obligation
rests on you, and your whole soul calls out for gratitude which
you can express only by helping those that are in need. You
are to watch and work for men, and ask, " Lord, what wilt
Thou have me to do ? "

But the best of all labour is that which is co-operative.
Where the Church provides all the necessary instrumentalities
of instruction, and the minister works for individuals and the
whole congregation, and his members, co-operating, work with
him, the combined labour of him and them is better than their
working alone, or his working alone.

Christian brethren, I feel at this time as though I needed
help. I need help always, of course — help in ray heart and
disposition, which you cannot give me, but God can. But I
need help from you. I need that while I preach you should
be ready to co-operate. Do you believe that for the last two
months there has been one single sermon preached in this
house, morning or evening, when there have not been men
present v/ho did not gravitate more strongly toward a Christian
life than ever before? Have there not been backsliders power-
fully moved to be restored ? Have there not been young men
that felt, " I ought to turn about ? " Have there not been
scores of men whose eyes were wet with tears? Now I cannot
follow them, and you cannot follow them ; but if your heart
was running over with love to Christ and men, could you not
take one day in the week to labour for others ? We have some
seventeen hundred members in this church, and suppose one
half of them gave a portion of their time to Christian work,
may we not at least calculate, with entire moderation, that
each of them might be the instrument of bringing one soul a
year into the church? According to that estimate, there would
be eight hundred conversions among us annually. But let us
make it smaller, and suppose that one third of the members
did it, and call the membership fifteen hundred, then there
would be five hundred added to the church during every period

Y

322 FISHERS OF MEN,

of twelve months. And do you not believe that, if you were
to go into it as you t'o into your business, you might at least
bring in one, if not more than that?

My dear Christian brethren, by the love that you bear to
Christ, and that He bears to you, are you doing what you ought
to do for the salvation of men round about you ? Bringing it
nearer, are you doing it in your store, and with your employees ?
Are you doing it in friendship ? Let me bring it nearer still.
Parents, are there not children who only want the concentrated
glow of your faith and love to lead them into the fold of Christ ?
Are there not companions who are united in blissful love, and
who yet are separated for ever? And when you clasp your
dearest love, is there not between you a gulf as wide as the
space between heaven and earth — one being Christ's and the
other not ? Is there no call for thought or consideration in this
matter ?

Dearly beloved Christian brethren, I do not ask you to wake
up to a paroxysm of zeal, that shall rush as streams do in the
spring when the snows melt on the mountain, and shall then
subside as streams do in the summer, leaving their beds dry and
barren. I ask you to rise to a higher conception of your duty
in Christ to those that are round about you. I do not say that
you ought to preach ; I do not say that you ought to talk; but
I say that there ought to be something in your Christian life
that shall act as a personal influence on the hearts of those with
whCiU you have to do. It may be that you cannot talk. I have
known persons that could not, who exerted a more powerful
influence than others that could. You may touch persons at
almost any point, so that you inspire them with a confidence
that you are sincere. Do not go as an authoritative man. Every
one of us likes to be pope. Do not go dictatorially. It is not
for us to dictate this, that, or the other duty to men. Our
business is to win men. It is to use love, and gentleness, and
patience, and self-denial, in gaining men. It is to employ our
example in such a manner as to guide them in the right way.
It is to speak when we can do good by speaking, and keep
silence when we cannot. It is not to be ashamed of Christ,
but to stand up for Him. It is to watch your opportunities,
and take the young man the next day after his debauch, while
his conscienc is up in arms against him, and endeavour to con-
vince him of the error of his ways. When rains begin, when
the streams are dark-faced, and the clouds hang low and are
dripping, and the sky is lowering, then is the time, as fishermen
well know, for fishing. And when the clouds of life hang low.

FISHERS OF MEN. 323

and men are sick, and in trouble, and need help, then step in
and be their friend, and soothe them, and help them. Be ye
ready. There are ten thousand opportunities. All that is
wanting is that you should have a heart to improve the oppor-
tunities and make use of the means.

Now Christ says to every one of you, *' Follov/ me, and I
will make you fishers of men." Is there anything worth living
for more than such a mission ? It is good for a man to write a
book. A book will live, and shall have no sexton ; but he him-
self will soon die, and be laid away. A book is an invention
by which men live after they are dead, so far as this world is
concerned. A hymn or song that deserves to live is lifted
above persecution. The tyrant or despot cannot touch it. But
oh ! neither book, nor hymn, nor song, nor any product of the
human mind, is to be compared with the immortal life; and ye
that save one soul, and lift it, by the power of your instru-
mentality, blessed of God, into the sphere of immortality and
glory, shall shine as the stars in the firmament ! Such achieve-
ments will be a source of more joy, when you stand in Zion and
before God, than all the treasures of the world. For when death
comes, not your ships, not your store-houses, not your piles of
gold, not your reputation among your- fellow citizens, not even
the joys of the future state, if you could rise and see them in
the light of eternity, would you value in comparison with the
satisfaction of having been permitted to save one soul.

Some of you are just beginning life. Learn early that to help
others is to bless yourself! Your joy is bound up in others'
benefit. Some of you are in the midst of life. I do not ask
you to lay aside your profession or your trade that you may
preach the gospel. Some men, perhaps, might well become
preachers. One of the most eminent lawyers in Boston, who
was lately converted, has given himself to the work of preaching
the gospel, and he promises to be as useful, if not more useful,
than many of the ministers of that city. I think it is glorious
for men, when they have made enough to live on, to say, " I
am satisfied, and now I will devote all my time to my fellow-
men." I Hke to see men rising from lower to higher spheres
of activity. But most of you will go on in your present spheres.
Go on, then, as you are ; but remember that there is somebody
at your hand that needs succour which you can give. All you
need is consecration ; all you want is God with you ; your
greatest need is a holy heart, a real love, an honest purpose, a
manly disposition to save men. God will give you the oppor-
tunity.

324 FISHERS OF MEN.

Some of you are drawing near to the end of life. Take one
more companion along toward heaven with you. There are
many of you that, if you could look into heaven, would see
waiting for you, a part of that host that shall throng the gate,
and give you a choral entrance into the Celestial City. You
have saved many souls ; but are you satisfied not to save one
more ? No man ever hunted that he did not want to take yet
more game, though his bag was full. No man ever fished in
the brook that he did not want to catch one more fish. You
are coming to the last turn in the brook. Throw again. You
cannot carry up too many souls for Christ.

Brethren, our time is near at hand. Some of you will never
meet here again. Some of you will never hear me preach again.
But in the judgment day, at that hour when we stand before
the throne, one thought, one feeling, will rise above every other
— that which relates to God and eternity. Live, then, as in
that hour you will wish you had lived.

TEXTS AND SCRIPTURE PASSAGES
COMMENTED UPON.

[Those marked with an asterisk (*) are passages quoted and commented on in the
body of the sermon. The others are the texts of the discourses.

Genesis *xlvii. 7 — 10, 219.

xlviii. 1—7, 217.
*Deut. xxxii. 39 — 48, 58.
Sol. Song ii. 11 — 13, 204.
*Isa. xlii. 3, 59, 60.

*Iv. 6 — 12, 155.

Iv. 10, II, 149.
Matt. iv. 18, 19, 311.

*v. 46—48, 21.

vi. 26, 28, 29, 120.

*^xx. 20 — 28, 99.

*xxvi. 6 — 14, 191.

xxvii. 22, 233.

xxvii. 61, 31,
Markx. 46—52, 172.

XV. 15—20, 104.
Luke X. 38—42, 184.

xvi. 10, 160,
John i. 4, 5, 74.

John xii. 24, 25, 90,

*xiv. 8, 9, 47.

xix. 41, 42, 31.
Romans viii. 14, 15, 2S0,

1 Cor. i. 22 — 24, 261,

ii- 2—5, I.

vii. 29—32, 244.

*viii. 19—23, 317.

2 Cor. x. I. 54.
*Gal. iv. 30, 292.
Eph. i. 15—23, 44.
•Hebrews iv. 12, 304.

iv. 14 — 16, 294.

**xii. II, 248.
James v. 2, 194.
*i John iii. 2, 250.

iv. 9— II, 17.
Rev. ii. 17, 134.
*Prov, xxii. 6, 127.

INDEX.

Activity, value of, 190.
Appetite, sins of, 19S.
Atonement, 237.

Belief contrasted with faith,

286—288.
Bible, object of, 264.
Brotherhood of man, 225.

Care, causes of, 126 — 128, 18S.

cure of, 254.
Character, 196.
Christ a present Saviour, 41, 69.

a sublime radical, S6.

as He appeared to the Jews, So,

characteristics of His teachings,
83-86.

contrasted with Greek philo-
sophers, 76.

crucified, true power of preach-
ings I— 5> 99, 277.

cure of the blind man, 1 72 — 1 76.

earthly circumstances, 91 — 96.

God revealed in, 66.

influence on society, 96, 97,

mock coronation described,
104—108.

moral power of His teachings,
76.

object of our allegiance, 46.

object of our love, 238.

object of our obedience, 239.

object of our worship, 8 — 53,
240.

only hope of salvation, 67.

our comfort in sorrow, 39 — 43,
209.

personal claims on us, 235.

relation to the human soul, 45 .

seeming failure and real success,
96—98.

j Christ, source of His power, 77.
I suftering love of, 104.

I sympathy of, 1S5, 294.

trial before Pilate, 233 — 235,

242.
with jNIartha and Mary, 184 —

186.
with the common people, S3.
See Atonement, Divinity, Jn-
j carnation. Suffering.

I Christian experience, necessary to a
I successful ministry, 7.

of God's love, 23.
of God's presence, 221.
Christianity, divine and permanent,
261.
still a vital power, 4.
Church, imperfections in, 9.
Conscience and love contrasted,

108, 110.
Conversion, duty of labouring for,

313-
how to secure, 315.

Death contemplated, 254 — 256, 288.

to the Christian, glorious, 30.
Depravity. See Man.
Divinity of Christ, 44, 66, 296.
Doctrines, not the essence of reli-
gion, 262.
Doctrinal preaching, 12.

Earthly good a symbol of things to
come, 252.

not to be despised, 249, 250.

unsatisfying, 246.
Esau and Jacob, 217.
Ethics, duty of preaching on, 12 —

Everlasting punishment, 69, 70.

INDEX.

327

Faith in Christ contrasted with doc-
trinal belief, 286—288.
Flowers, lessons from, 120.

Garden, sepulchre in, 31.
Genius defined, 18.
God, fatherhood of, 2S0.

gentleness, 54.

greatness, 56.

His care of us, 123 — 126.

in nature, 300.

knows the heart, 302, 305.

our help, 302.

revealed in Christ, 65.

sensitiveness of, 5S.

sovereignty, 2S4.

titles, 282.

unsearchablenes>, 6^'

See Love, Suffering.
Gospel, for the poor, 277.

Happiness, popular id^a of, 35.
Hope in trouble, 208.
Humour in the pulpit, 1 1.
Humphrey, Hon. James, sermon
after the death of, 244.

Immortality, 215.

revealed by Christ, 271.
Incarnation, object of, 109.
Indolence, 197.
Infants, salvation of, 67.
Institutions and ordinances not reli-
gion, 82.

Jacob and Esau, 217.
Jacob's sorrow, 224.

Laws, natural, 301.

Laymen, responsibility of, 31S —

323^
Liberty of the pulpit, 10 — 15.
Little sins, 196.

danger of, 162, 203.

described, 163 — 171.
Lord's Supper, invitations to, 43, 53-
Love and conscience contrasted,
108, no.

the essence of religion, no.
Love of God, 17, 297 — 299.

abuse of, 24.

a reason for faith, 28.

a reason for gratitude, 27.

Love of God, a reason for repent-
ance, 29, 70, 306.

continuous, 22.

curative, 26.

illustrated, 20, 24, 25, 26, 142
—144.

manifested in nature, 29.

spontaneous, 17.

to sinners, 21, 290, 304.

unrecognised, 26.

Man, sinful, 21, 60—63, 269.

spiritually dead, 6.
Manna, spiritual meaning of, 134 —

137.
Marys, at the tomb, 31—34.
Miracles, 275.
Moral, the, its power, 99.

Nature, a manifestation of God's
love, 29.
flowers, 120.
spring, 204 — ^208.
storm, 149.
teachmgs of, 56,
the moth-miller, 194.

Passions, sins of, 200.

Paul at Corinth, 2.

Peace, not obtained by sacrifice of

principle, 88, 89.
Personal experiences of trust, 127.
purpose in preaching, 6 — 16-
Phaiisees and Sadducees described,

77—80.
Plymouth Church, 7, 15.
. Power of Christ's teaching, 76.
of goodness, 155 — 159.
of spiritual truths, 99— lor.
Prayers, 71, 117, 131, 145, 181.
Preaching Christ crucified, true
power of, 1—5, 99, 277.
Christian experience necessary

to, 7.
doctrinal, 12.
humour in, 11.
methods of, 12.
to the poor, 10,
liberty in, 10 — 15.
See Personal Experiences.
Public affairs, duty of preaching on,

12.
Punishment, everlasting, 69, 70.

328

INDEX,

Redemption through sufferhig, io6

— 109.
Reform, love the true instrument

of, 112.
Regeneration, 269.
ReUgion, love the essence of, no.
Revivals among children, 213.
in Plymouth Church, 7.

Sabbath, Christ's estimate of, S5.
Sadducees, description of, 77.
Salvation of infants, 6"].

only through Christ, 67.

present, 40, 69.
Self-denial, 115, 116, 273.
Sepulchre in the garden, 31.
Sinners, spiritually blind, 177 — 181.
Sorrow, always a surprise, 36.

a universal experience, 210.

Christ our comfort in, 39 — 43,
209.

Sorrow, first effect of, 38.

inevitable, 37.

true blessedness of, 39 — 42.

of Jacob, 224.
Special providence, 122.
Spiritual truths, power of, 99 — loi.
Submission, joy of, 212.
Suffering, of Christ, 104.

of God, 266.

ministration of, loi — 103, 21 r,
248.
Sympathy of Christ, 185, 294.

Tomb cf Christ, Marys at the, 31

.--34-
Trust in God, 124.
Truth superior to institutions, 84.

Vision hours, 245 — 247.

Workers and thinkers, 186.

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