ii
if uUf}f
tMH-
IBS c
HTT?\Nl
THE BEQUEST OF
EDWARD KAYE KENDALL,
in Holy Orders, M. A., D. C. L., formerly Professor in
this University.
TRINITY UNIVEI.
LIBRARY,
Cttt: X /.
FROM-THE- LIBRARY-OF
rWNITYCOLLEGETORONTO
tnttn
PEEACHED ON THE
EVENING OF EACH WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY
DURING THE SEASON OF LENT, 1858,
of
ST. MARY-THE-VIRGIN, ST. GILES,
AND ST. EBBE, OXFORD.
WITH A PREFACE
BY
SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
OXFORD,
AND 377, STRAND, LONDON:
JOHN HENRY AND JAMES PARKER.
M DCCC LVIII.
ill
L
ftt-
^>
UlIMtD BT MESSRS. tAhKklt < OKN-MAKKtT, OXFORD.
PEEFACE.
IN prefacing with a few words of introduction a
second volume of Lent Sermons preached at Oxford,
I have little more to say than that again I most
heartily thank God for the amount of apparent good
which He has been pleased to vouchsafe to this effort
to spread His truth. The large size and the devout
behaviour of the congregations which have gathered
at Oxford through this Lent, is far from being the
only, I may perhaps say the chief, outward mani
festation of that blessing. I earnestly pray God to
grant that the further circulation of these pages may,
through His grace, produce still further blessings to
many hearts.
In these pages, the various phases of true and false
repentance, as they are set before us in Scripture in
several leading examples of each, are fixed and en
forced by ministers of God s Word, of various gifts
and shades of character. They will, I think, afford
to all the means of furnishing themselves, in one
IV PREPACK.
volume, with a very complete exposition, by way of
example, of the great subject of true Christian re
pentance.
Once more I say, in sending forth this volume,
may God Almighty, for the sake of Jesus Christ our
Lord, bless its influence on His Church.
S. OXON.
CONTENTS.
SERMON I.
The Repentance of David.
BY SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
SERMON II.
The Repentance of David.
BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A.
SERMON III.
The Repentance of Esau.
BY JOHN, LORD BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
SERMON IV.
The Repentance of Esau.
BY JOHN LEIGH HOSKYNS, M.A.
SERMON V.
The Repentance of Esau.
BY SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
SERMON VI.
The Repentance of Judas.
BY WALTER KERR, LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY.
VI CONTENTS.
SERMON VII.
The Repentance of Judas.
BY CHARLES A. HEURTLEY, D.I).
SERMON VIII.
The Repentance of Judas.
BY EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D.D.
SERMON IX.
The Repentance of Ahab.
BY JAMES RUSSELL WOODFORD, M.A.
SERMON X.
The Repentance of Ahab.
BY HENRY PARRY LIDDON, M.A.
SERMON XI.
The Convictions of Balaam.
BY EDWARD B1CKERSTETH, M.A.
SERMON XII.
The Goodness of King Jba-sh.
BY JAMES RANDALL, M.A.
SERMON XII *
The Goodness of King Joash.
BY DANIEL MOORE, M.A.
SERMON XIII.
The Goodness of King Joash.
BY HENRY DRURY, M.A.
CONTENTS.
SERMON XIV.
The Convictions of Pilate.
BY W. W. CHAMPNEYS, M.A.
SERMON XV.
The Convictions of Agrippa.
Br ROBERT, LORD BISHOP OF RIPON.
SERMON XVI.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul.
Br HENRY LINTON, M.A.
SERMON XVII.
The Repentance of King Saul.
BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, LORD BISHOP OP LONDON.
SERMON XVIII.
The Repentance of St. Peter.
Br THOMAS THELLUSSON CARTER, M.A.
SERMON XIX.
The Repentance of St. Peter.
Br ANTHONY W. THOROLD, M.A.
SERMON XX.
The Penitent Thief.
Br THOMAS LEGH CLAUGHTON, M.A.
SERMON I.
THE REPENTANCE OF DAVID.
BY
SAMUEL, LOED BISHOP OF OXPOBD,
CHANCELLOR OF THE MOST NOBLE OBDEE OP THE GABTEB, AND LOED
HIGH ALMONEB TO THE QTTEEN.
A
Ps. li. 2.
" Wash me throughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from
my sin."
WE have come again, my brethren, to the forty days of
Lent; to that season in which the Church of Christ fulfils
her Lord s prediction of what she should do " when the bride
groom should be taken away from" her. We have come to
the season when we are called upon, each one to " search and
try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord." Most blessed
and profitable in their issue are such days as these, when
used with faithfulness. Then they become appeals to our
God against our sins ; cryings for deliverance from th; m,
yea, and receivings from Him, The Cleanser of His people,
of His gifts of cleansing. They are days, the fruit of which
may be traced through a life; which bring balm in their
blessed effects into the agony of the death-struggle, which
reach on into the next world, carrying the brightness of a
soul which God has washed into the terrors of the last judg
ment, and beneath the awful shadows of the great white
throne. Who can tell, beloved in Christ, what; blessings
may not be in store for some of you, through the words you
shall hear and the prayers you may offer up this very Lent.
It may be that God has reserved till now those gifts of grace,
through which He may convert the heart of one, and raise
another out of some deadly fall, and deliver another out of
some careless habit of living which must lead to his destruc-
B 2
4 The Repentance of David.
tion, and confirm another in his Christian course. We know
that He does work these miracles of His grace through the
weakness of our preaching. We know that this setting forth
of His Word, to be brought home to the hearts of the listeners
by His mighty grace, according to the sovereign working of
His blessed will, is, and has been ever since St. Peter preached
at Pentecost, by far the commonest means by which He does
draw souls to conversion and to life. We know not whom He
may mean thus to save by our preaching this very Lent, but
we doubt not that there are many who shall owe much, yea, it
may be all, yea, their very selves, to it; and so, first of all, we
beseech you, pray, pray earnestly for us and with us, pray at
your own homes ; pray daily before these services, and after
them, pray that God by His grace would through these ser
mons convert many, arouse many, confirm many, yea, save
many to the glory of the beloved Name of our only Lord.
Yea, my brethren, pray for this now and here, in a moment s
secret supplication, before we enter on our subject.
The special subjects of these sermons, as you may observe,
are the lessons taught us in certain leading characters of the
Old and New Testament as to repentance true and false,
convictions stifled and ending in destruction and despair, con
victions yielded to and becoming instruments of salvation.
On these subjects I entreat you to ponder at some fixed and
definite times throughout these weeks. To these sermons
which are to be preached upon them, I beseech you not only
to come yourselves, but also to try to lead your brethren.
Let each one resolve, God helping him, to draw, this very
Lent, some one at least of those around him to Christ and
salvation. Let each use, in this blessed endeavour, the in
struments here put into his hands.
Take example, beloved, from the servants of sin and Satan,
and be as active and determined for that dear Lord who has
The Repentance of David. 5
given Himself for you, as they are for the service of their
evil master. What will not they do to draw another into
their own course of sin? How will they suggest, entice,
and draw him on; how will they paint before his imagination
the pleasures of sin; how unresting will they be till they
have persuaded him to taste them ; how will they help him
to drown conviction; how will they coax, and flatter, and
banter, and dress out that life of evil which they call plea
sure ! Learn, I say, from them. Help some soul of thy com
panions or thy friends. It is not half so sweet, if you will
only make the experiment, to sin in company, as to be
saved in company to give yourselves together to the evil
one, as together to serve that blessed Lord whose service is
indeed perfect freedom. Then find thy brother, and bring
him with thee to Christ; draw some of your fellows to at
tend these sermons regularly, draw them on to pray over
them afterwards : and know, O man, that if but one be turned
through thy labours from his life of sin, thou shalt have
saved a soul from death, and won a new jewel for thy
Lord s crown ; one, too, to call thee blessed, and to be thy
joy in that coming hour of the Judge s appearing.
The subject I am to consider with you to-night is the
repentance of that signal pattern of true penitence, King
David. At the facts involved in this subject I need only
glance. Which of us knows not the history of his shameful
fall ; the long deadness of soul into which it brought him ;
the great mercy vouchsafed to him in the sending to him of
Nathan the prophet, and in the gifts of renewing grace,
which with the sound of the prophet s message fell like dew
upon his soul, and woke him up to that true, deep, and godly
repentance, some of the distinctive marks of which I will
proceed to consider with you ?
First, then, amongst these, as bearing on what I have said
already, let me beg you to notice (I.) the means which won
6 The Repentance of Da rid.
him to it. It was the preacher s voice. For months he had
gone on with this great sin, unconfessed, unrepented of,
lying upon his sonl, palsying its very life, threatening its
eternal death : who can measure the coldness, the hard
ness, yea, the misery, of those months of estrangement
from God ! what must his attendance in God s house have
been to him throughout those terrible weeks ! How must
every Psalm which had been the true voice of his earlier
piety, have been now a serpent s tooth gnawing his un
repentant soul ! How wretched, how fearful, how nigh
unto reprobation, was his state ! And now he breaks down
like the snow-wreath when the sun looks full upon it, be
neath the prophet s voice. "Thou art the man" is God s
arrow of conviction striking straight into his heart.
Ah ! beloved in Christ, is there no one here to-night
who needs a like awakening ? Is there no one here who
knows that this case is his ; that he, too, has lain for
months, for years, it may be, under such a burden as this,
dead in trespasses and sins? Oh, then, be like him now
in his awakening : cry, thou sleeper cry unto thy God
that this Word of His may pierce thy heart and awaken
thee, too, unto contrition.
And then, next, when he has thus broken down under the
Word of God, notice (II.) the signs which mark his sincerity :
and of these, first, this, (a.) that the one master-thought which
fills his soul is, " I have sinned against the Lord." This is
the first outburst of his stricken soul under the prophet s
word. This comes out again and again in that 51st Psalm,
in which God has given us at once the spiritual anatomy of
David s heart, and at the same time the true history of deep
repentance, to be the instruction of His Church in all ages.
Mark, then, well this first feature of the case. Hear and
ponder on that cry, " I have sinned against the Lord." For
though, if ever any sin had been committed against man as
The Repentance of David. 7
well as God, this undoubtedly was it, though David had
sinned against his faithful liegeman Uriah, against his own
family, against his people, against his accomplice in guilt,
against Joab, against all, yet so much greater, so much
more awful, so much more terrible was the aspect of his sin
as committed against his God, that for the time, at least, it
filled up the whole field of his view, and seeing that, he could
see nothing else; and falling down before the Holy One with
the bitter consciousness of pollution, casting himself before
Him from whom he had received all things, even the loyalty
of his people, and the love of his friends, and blessings of
his family before Him who had been in days of old closer to
him than a brother, the chiefest amongst ten thousand, the
one stay of his soul in adversity, the one support of his spirit
in extremity, he groans forth from that broken heart his cry
of self-abhorrence, " Against Thee only have I sinned, and
done this evil in Thy sight."
And so, as the next sign, (b.) observe that in seeing his sin
as committed against God, he sees it in all its hugeness and
vileness. There is no diminishing or excusing it, no paring
it down. There is no thought or suggestion of the many
palliations which the manners, customs, and allowances of
his station in that day might easily have discovered, even for
such crimes as his. But no ! there is not the shadow of such
an attempt. There his sin is, as sin in its vastness, in its
utter pollution ; the light of God s countenance falling full
upon it, and manifesting all its hideousness. " My sin is
ever before me," is his cry : look where I will, I see it ; earth
is full of it : every voice I hear, every voice I utter, upbraid
me with it. If I look into my family it is there, polluting it ;
if I look to past prayers and joys, it is there, turning them
into greater shame and deeper provocations of Thy goodness
than others could ever have incurred or committed ; if I
look to heaven, it is there witnessing against me, spread like
8 The Repentance of David.
some scroll of fire and blackness upon the firmament above
me, and shutting out from my darkened spirit the light
of Thy countenance. And so he dwells upon its foulness.
Though it has never broken out before, it has been always
there. " Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin hath
my mother conceived me." In the depth of his contrition, he
wraps the garment of shame around his whole life, in its
every act and along all its course. And then from this follows
yet another mark of true repentance, (c.) he takes willingly
the disgrace of his sin. There is no covering of it up from
men no notion of a secret, inward repentance, which God
shall know, but which the robes of his royalty should hide
from man. No ; God knew it that was his burden ; it was
a light thing that man should know it too : the intensity of
his shame, as he looked upon his sin, in God s sight, made
man s estimate of it a slight and inconsiderable thing. He
was antedating the apostle s declaration " But with me it is
a very small thing to be judged of you, or of man s judgment
. . . He that judgeth me is the Lord." There was no whisper
here, like that of Saul in the hour of his seeming contrition,
" Yet honour me now before the elders of my people, and
before Israel a :" " Turn Thy face from my sins" was the ago
nizing supplication of David ; his very soul cried out aloud,
and instead of shrinking from his shame, he proclaimed it.
Though an Eastern king upon a throne of absolute power,
he weeps forth before all his people and before all time,
"Deliver me from bloodguikiness, O God." He takes his
shame and binds it upon him, if haply, thus bearing it, God
may take it from him, and purge him with hyssop, and make
him indeed clean.
And as he deals with the shame of his sin, so does he also
with its punishment, (d.) There is no shrinking from that either.
David was manifestly a man of the tenderest feelings and
11 1 Sam. xv. 30.
The Repentance of David. 9
the most lively affections. Listen to him, if you would esti
mate their depth and intensity, when he is asking anxiously
of the messenger of victory after the fate of the young man,
even the young man Absalom ; or go with him to his
chamber of mourning when he has learned his end, and hear
his even awful voice of lamentation, " O Absalom, my son,
my son ; would God that I had died for thee, O Absalom, my
son, my son !" and then estimate what that threatened judg
ment must have been to him, " The sword shall never depart
from thy house." And yet there is not a whisper of com
plaint; no cry, that "my punishment is greater than I can
bear ;" no utterance, in the midst of his passionate entreaties,
of one deprecation of the coming chastisement. But there
is a cry a cry which reached the heavens ; a cry which came
out of the very depths of his broken heart; a cry which
brought the answer of his God. And what was it? (e.) it was
a cry for cleansing : " Purge Thou me with hyssop, and I
shall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
This was his master desire, that he might be cleansed;
that the work might be done thoroughly. It was not a little
cleansing that he needed : no ; he would be whiter than
snow ; he would have the very deep foundations, the original
well-spring of his pollutions purified : " Make me," he suppli
cates, " a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me."
O mark well, I pray you, brethren, this characteristic of
his contrition, for it is one of the very utmost importance,
this desire to be cleansed thoroughly ; this state of soul which
will have no league with sin ; which will keep no sweet
morsel of it will bear no remaining portion of it will
retain none of its lesser allowances ; which, in the fervour
of his spirit, will not hear of ever going nigh to it again,
which will be cleansed from it altogether and for ever. And
then see how he hopes to be thus parted from iniquity.
(/.) He turns straight to his God even in this hour of
10 The Repentance of David.
shame and of rebuke even when that awful countenance
is bent most sternly on him, and with its lightning glance has
just broken through the nine months slumber of his soul,
even when the sentence of coming judgment has fallen heavily
upon him. Even then, with his whole soul full of the shame
of having sinned against the Lord, he yet turns to Him for
all he needs; it is, Purge Thou me wash Thou me; I pro
mise nothing I can do nothing ; I cannot find in myself or
in any other Thy creature what I need. No; to Thee, to
Thee only to Thee, against Whom I have sinned ; to Thee,
who art my Judge; to Thee, before Whom my very bones
quake ; it is to Thee I turn : Thou art the God of my health
Thou shalt open my mouth. And with this turning to God,
as his only Deliverer from his sin, there is yet another mark
of his sincerity (g.} in the way in which he clings to God as his
portion. Even though he be yet afar off; though his bones
are broken, yet has he even in his terror, his shame, the re
membrance of his Father s countenance, and the deep, ir
resistible, overwhelming longing for its restoration to himself.
" Cast me not away," he sobs forth, " from Thy presence :"
that I could not bear. I can lose all else and cling to Thee,
but oh ! cast me not away from Thy presence, take not Thy
Holy Spirit from me. O give me the comfort of Thy help
again, and stablish me with Thy free Spirit, " Make me
to hear of joy and gladness/ And then, mingling with this,
lastly, (h.) there is the devotion of all his after life to God s
service. It is one reason for which he longs for his own de
liverance, that he may indeed be God s witness to others :
" So shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked : and sinners
shall be converted unto Thee." Thou shalt open my lips,
O Lord, and my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise. It is
as though he had heard the words of Christ to the too con
fident apostle, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy
brethren."
The Repentance of iJacid, 1 1
Here then, my brethren, are some of the marks of true
and godly repentance, as we may see them in this great
example of this great penitent. Oh, I pray you, for your
souls sake, pass them not by lightly, but take them as matters
for deep, searching self-examination as to the reality of your
repentance. Is it so in any real degree with you ? You, de
pend upon it, have on some side or other too certainly the
likeness of David s great sin about you : do you know any
thing of that deep repentance of his through which alone
God works the sinner s cure?
Have you ever (I.) trembled under the Word of God ? has
its sharp edge entered your soul, piercing it through and
through, yea, dividing asunder soul and spirit? has it stripped
you of all your vain excuses ; has it (II.) shewn you your sin
(a.) as committed against God, against your Lord, your Maker,
your Redeemer, your Sanctifier; and has this shewn you some
thing of its evil and its curse ? (b.) has it grown great and ter
rible in your eyes, as you gazed upon it in its naked reality,
yet with all its aggravations, and, above all, as you came to
see how God looks upon it ; aud so, seeing your sin as great and
terrible, because committed against God, have you (c.) taken
willingly the shame which He may have appointed for you
before men as its fitting portion, or have you tried to cheat
yourself by confessing it secretly to God, and then denying
it openly before man ? and have you (d.) dealt so also with its
punishment ; have you rebelled against that, or bowed your
head to it; have you thought it hard that, whilst so many
escape, you should have been singled out for punishment ; or
have you indeed felt that, heavy as it may be, it is less than
your deserts, and, instead of fretting under it, has your cry (e.)
been for cleansing? have you cared comparatively little for
the chastisement, so that only it can be made God s instru
ment in purging you from the stain of sin which awoke it
against you; and have you indeed left it off, in all its de-
12 The Repentance of David.
grees, accidents, circumstances, lesser instances, pleasant re
collections ? Do you still linger on the thought of the plea
sure with which it was baited, or is it all hateful to you,
abominable in your sight as the rottenness of a loathsome
carcass ; and have you (/.) sought to God to cleanse you ; have
you gone to the Cross of your Lord, to His precious blood,
to the working of His Spirit, to Him the Refiner, to Him
the Purifier, and there, and from Him, from His purging hand,
have you too sought the cleansing that you need ; and (g.} has
the desire of your soul been to Him ? Is this what makes
pardon, yea, cleansing itself, so desirable in your eyes
that He may be yours and you may be His; that there
may be no wall of transgression parting you from Him,
no veil of corruption hiding Him from you? And has He
heard you, and given you deliverance, and have (h.} you
magnified His Name, and spoken of Him to others, and
brought them, too, to the foot of His Cross, and to the foun
tain opened for sin and for uncleanness? Yea, have you
taught His ways unto the wicked, and through your witness
have sinners been converted unto Him ?
Oh, beloved in the Lord, search, I beseech you, and try
your ways. As I witnessed to some of you, at the beginning
of last Lent, in this very church, there is, depend upon it, a
vast amount of self-deception everywhere current as to this
great matter. Yea, half-repentance abounds : the miserable
counterfeit which ruins souls is everywhere abroad, and un
less we watch and pray, and search diligently into ourselves,
it will befool and destroy us.
Would you then, my brethren, obtain the blessedness of
a true and deep repentance, let me give you, before I close,
a few simple hints for your practical assistance in this most
weighty matter.
And first, (1.) pray earnestly to God to give you the gift.
It is His gift : it is to be won by prayer. Christ is exalted
The Repentance of Dai id. 13
to give repentance. It is the work of that "free Spirit"
which is His special gift. Until that heavenly dew falls upon
thy soul, it will be, it must be, dry, and cold, and bare. Thou
canst not work thyself into penitence. But when that gra
cious shower is poured upon the heart, all is done. Then the
voice of the turtle is heard. Then the heart mourns apart.
It is like the breaking-up of some mighty northern frost,
which has bound the swelling sea fast beneath its iron band,
when the western gale has breathed upon it, and the hard,
thick-ribbed ice-crust has broken up as a cobweb under the
grasp of a giant. And then all is changed : on the ocean s
breast the mighty currents wake again into life, bearing on
and on to the frozen north the life-giving streams of southern
waters ; and as the warm gales breathe on the snowy plains
of the neighbouring shore, the long-banished verdure flashes
again into colour and beauty, and the sweet spring comes on
apace, the birds begin their songs, the fountains awake ;
and every blade and leaf, with all the tribes of life around
them, rejoice before God in the blessed sunlight. And yet
what is all this to the breaking-up of the ice-crust which has
bound down a living soul, for which Christ died ! Oh, weigh
well its unspeakable value. See how all the irrational creation
weighs light in the balance against its unspeakable worth,
and think what must be the blessedness of the true breaking-
up, by the breath of God, of the fetters of that spirit s
coldness !
Oh, then, mark this first. Pray for that breath of God ;
seek from Him the gift of the Spirit ; wait for His grace ;
cry to Him, as thou art, cold, and dry, and impenitent cry
unto Him for the awakening, convincing, softening, convert
ing, renewing Spirit; for contrition and penitence; for the
opened eye, and the feeling heart, and the gift of tears, and
the blessing of self-abasement. Cry, and thou shalt be heard ;
call, and He shall answer thee.
14 The Repentance <\
And then next only after this, let me say, (2.) He-
member thy sins. There can be no true penitence with
out this: a mere general, hazy impression that we are
all sinners will not do. Thou must know thine own sin,
if thou wouldst repent of it; and so take time for self-
examination yea, and spend care and trouble about it.
Take, for instance, one or more of God s Commandments,
and after prayer for the Spirit s aid, before beginning the
work of self-examination, question thyself closely about
them. See where, and when, and how thou hast thyself
broken them, in thought, in word, and in deed ; and dare,
and force thyself, to see their aggravation : the love against
which they were committed ; the restraints thou hadst to
break through; the mercies thou spurnedst before thou
didst fall; the compunctions, after sinning, thou hast set
aside ; and go, in this way, through the Commandments,
till thou canst see thy sin ; stopping often, in the midst,
to pray again and again that God, by His Spirit, will shew
thee the truth of thy transgressions.
For this is essential not only to the perfectness, but even
to the safety, of such a searching into thine heart, that thou
shouldest keep ever before thee the thought of what thy sin
is in God s sight. For without this, the gazing upon old
sins, even to repent of them, is dangerous for such as we are :
for we may thus stir amongst the ashes of an old sin until
we kindle the flame of a new desire ; and from this the con
stant sense of what that sin is in God s sight is the true
preservative.
And with, once more, (3.) all thy self-examination mingle
acts of revenge against thy fault. Force thy sluggish soul into
some direct action against thy besetting temptation, what
ever it is. This is the apostle s mark, remember, of a real
penitence : " For, behold, this selfsame thing that ye sor
rowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you,
The Repentance of Da rid. 15
yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea,
what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea,
what revenge b !"
And once again, (4.) and I had almost said, above all, as thou
gazest upon thy sin, gaze yet more earnestly upon the face
of that dear Lord who, by His own bitter passion, delivers
thee from sin. For this, and this only, can at once melt thy
soul in contrition, and soften and cleanse it. The sight of sin,
without the sight of His cross, is a polluting and a hardening
sight. It may tempt thee back to old indulgence, it may drive
thee to the despair of devils and the wilfulness of hell.
Think how St. Peter was saved from this, after his deep and
deadly fall : " The Lord turned and looked upon Peter ;" and
in that look was life. The crust was broken up ; his heart
was melted, and he went out and wept bitterly. Oh, the
exceeding sweetness of those bitter tears ! what on earth
can equal it ? And so shall it be with thee, too, when the
Lord turns and looks upon thee. That hard heart of thine
shall be molten down beneath that look, as the molten iron
in the fiery furnace; that dryness, that cold insensibility for
which thou mournest, that disregard of sin all shall go, and
the flesh of thy long-leprous soul come again to thee pure and
sweet as the flesh of a little child. It was for this, so far as
in that old dispensation was possible, that holy David longed.
Hear how he cries, even when his crimson sins shew the most
clearly before his weeping eyes : " Hide Thy face from my
sins ; blot out mine iniquities." " Thou desirest not sacrifice,
else would I give it Thee ; the sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, God, Thou wilt not
despise/ And even as he dwells on the thought of God s
redeeming mercy triumphing over the greatness of his sin,
how does the distant sound of returning joy begin, even in
his uttermost anguish, to wake upon his listening ear :
b 2 Cor. vii. 11.
16 The Repentance of David.
" Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation ; uphold me with
Thy free Spirit ; make me to hear joy and gladness, that the
bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice." And so it
may be with thee. No sin is strong enough to hold thee, if
thou see at once its hatefulness, and the face of thy Lord,
sin s Conqueror and man s Deliverer, bent on thee, with the
upbraiding of His love. And to whom canst thou go ; who
can love thy soul as He can who died for it ? who even in
its corruption yearns over it that He may save it ; to whom
it was precious enough to be bought by His own blood ! Oh,
let this Lenten penitence, and thy many sins, bring thee closer
to Him than thou hast ever yet been drawn ; yea, cast thy
self down trembling and astonished underneath His Cross ;
bring thy fettered soul before Him, as the palsied man was
borne of old of four ; and doubt not that to thee, too, in thy
day of grace, that same Lord of love and power shall speak
with the voice of love thy marvellous enfranchisement,
"Man, thy sins are forgiven thee;" " arise and walk.
SERMON II.
THE REPENTANCE OP DAVID.
BY
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A.,
BEGUTJ8 PBOFESSOB OP ECCLESIASTICAL HISTOET,
AND CANON OF CANTEBBTTBY.
A SERMON,
2 SAM. xii. 7, 13.
" And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man. .... And
David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.
And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away
thy sin ; thou shalt not die. "
IF we wish to draw any lessons from the repentance of
any one, dead or living, it is a great assistance to us to know
something of the character of the man, something of the sin
from which he repented, something of the mode by which
he was roused to repentance, something of the nature of the
repentance itself. All these we have given to us in the case
of David. There is no one in the Old Testament of whose
character we know so much, both from his history, as told
by others, and his Psalms, as sung by himself. His repent
ance is set before us especially, not only in the history, but
in the two Psalms which occur in this day s service, and
which in all probability were composed on this very occasion,
the 32nd and the 51st.
I. First, then, let us look at his general character. It is a
character difficult, perhaps, to understand, but its very diffi
culty makes it instructive. It is full of variety, full of im
pulse, full of genius; it is like the characters of our own
later times, complicated, intricate, vast; it covers a great
range of characters amongst ourselves ; it is not like one
class or character only, but like many ; it is like you, it is
B 2
4 The Repentance of Da rid.
like me; it is like this class and that class; it is like" this
man and that man. He is the shepherd, and the student,
and the poet, and the soldier, and the King. He is the
adventurous wanderer, strong and muscular, "his feet like
the feet of harts, his arms strong to break even a bow of
steel a ." He is the silent observer of the heavens by night,
"the moon and the stars which God has ordained V He is
the devoted friend, the first example of youthful friendship,
loving Jonathan " with a love passing the love of women c ."
He has the touching, tender sentiment of home and home
like recollections, that makes him long and say, " Oh that
one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethle
hem d !" He has the true chivalrous spirit of times and coun
tries not his own, when he dashes the hard- won water on " the
ground, and refuses to drink the blood of the men that have
put their lives in jeopardy for him e ." He is the generous
enemy, sparing his rival f . He is the father mourning with
passionate grief the loss of his favourite child : "O my son
Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom ! would God I had died
for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son 8 !" Again and again
we feel that he is one of us that his feelings, his pleasures,
his sympathies, are such as we outwardly love and admire,
even if we do not enter into them. But yet more than this,
he is exactly that mixture of good and evil which is in our
selves ; not all good nor all evil, but a mixture of both of a
higher good, and of a deeper evil, yet still both together.
Scripture sets them both before us : in him, as in ourselves,
in him, as in the world at large, we must make out their
lesson as best we can. He is the man after God s own
heart. He has attained a nearer vision of God than any
patriarch or prophet before him. He has within him a love
* Ps. xviii. 33. b Ps. viii. 3. c 2 Sam. i. 26. d 1 Chron. xi. 17.
1 Chron. xi. 18. 1 Sam. xxiv. 18. 2 Sam. xviii. 33.
The Repentance of David. 5
of the Eternal, a panting and craving for God s presence,
such as we have hardly seen before or since. In his im
passioned hymns of prayer and praise, all the ardour of his
human tenderness for his friends, for his enemies, for his
children and his people, for the heavens and the earth, seems
to have reached its highest, or, if one may so use the word,
its natural pitch ; and, however much more clearly God has
revealed Himself in later times, yet no language, no feelings
have ever been found better fitted to express the devotions
of the regenerate soul than the language and the feelings
of the Psalms of David. His history tells us how many gene
rations passed away before, even in the chosen people, such
a gift could be produced ; therefore let us be patient of its
growth in any individual soul. It shews us also how this one
fire of Divine love lights up every chamber of that various
and intricate house of the human soul various and intricate
in every one, but in none more than in the wide and mighty
heart of the son of Jesse.
But it is the other side of his character that we are now
called to consider ; and yet it is only by considering both sides
together that we can draw its true lesson from either. It was
to this tender, and brave, and loving character that the
Prophet Nathan came, with the story of the hard-hearted,
mean-spirited man who took from his poorer neighbour 11
" the one little ewe-lamb that he had brought and nourished
up, which had grown up together with him and with his
children, which ate of his own meat and drank of his own
cup, and was to him as a daughter." Every just and gene
rous feeling in David s heart was roused by the story : its
simple pathos, now worn through and through by much
repetition, was then felt in all the freshness of its first utter
ance : his anger was kindled against the man ; and he said,
k 2 Sam. xii. 14.
6 The Repentance of David.
" As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall
surely die : and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because
he did this thing, and because he had no pity." Every one
who has read the history of David, who has felt the beauty
of his character as revealed in his life and in his writings,
must feel something of the same shock of astonishment
which the King himself experienced when the dreadful an
swer was made, "Thou art the man." No lengthened com
ment can add anything to the startling effect of the dis
closure of this sudden descent from all that was high and
good to all that was base and miserable.
II. Let us now see how, from this union of glory and
shame, of holiness and sin, we can draw the fitting lesson of
David s repentance and our own. First, let us observe how
the Scripture narrative deals with the case. It does not ex
aggerate it does not extenuate. David s goodness is not
denied because of his sin, nor his sin because of his good
ness. The fact that he was the man after God s own heart
is not thrust out of sight because he was the man of
Nathan s parable. The fact of his sin is not denied, lest it
should give occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme. This
is the first lesson that we learn. Whatever else we do, in
urging others or in urging ourselves to repentance, let us be
true to facts, true to ourselves, true to God. Compare the
judgment on David with the judgments which we often pass
on others, on ourselves, on the dead, and on the living.
Think how we are inclined to excuse the sins of those with
whom we agree, and to make much of the sins of those with
whom we differ; think of the narrow and hasty divisions
which, in the pulpit or in our own thoughts, we make of all
classes into good or bad, without taking account of that
much larger class of good and bad, of which we and the
great mass of men are made up. And what a contrast do
these human judgments present to that wise and impar-
The Repentance of David. 7
tial history which sets before us, without fear or favour,
in all its brightness and in all its darkness, the life of David.
Scripture is fearless and true in its narrative ; Nathan was
fearless and true in his rebuke and in his consolation. Let
us endeavour, teachers and taught, to be true no less in our
dealings with others, in our dealings with ourselves; so, and
so only, shall we get the grace for which we daily pray, of
" true repentance."
Secondly, the sin of David, and his unconsciousness of his
own sin, and so also his repentance through the disclosure
to him of his own sin, are exactly what are most likely to
take place in characters like his, like ours, made up of mixed
forms of good and of evil. The hardened, depraved, worldly
man is not ignorant of his sin, he knows it, he defends it,
he is accustomed to it. But the good man, or the man who
is half good, and half bad, he overlooks his sin. His good
deeds conceal his bad deeds, often even from others, more
often still from himself. Even out of those very gifts which
are most noble, most excellent in themselves, may come our
chief temptations.
It has been sometimes said and believed that every man,
even the worst, is attended by a guardian angel to watch over
and foster whatever there is of good in his heart and in his life.
It might almost be said and believed in like manner, that
there is an attendant demon who besets every man, even the
best, an evil spirit that seems to grow even out of his good
qualities, and under their cover from time to time completely
to master and overpower him. Unconsciously, unwillingly,
a man is seized as by some irresistible enemy ; he ceases to
be himself, he does and says what, like David, he can
hardly believe to be his own acts or words when they are
laid fairly before him. So was it with David so it may be
with us. . How out of this state can we be roused to re
pentance ? In many ways, doubtless ; but often, most often,
8 The Repentance of David.
as he was; by some friendly hand, by some faithful rebuke,
by some sudden remonstrance ; nay, it may be, as in David s
case, by some striking fiction or parable, which fixes our
gaze upon ourselves, which tears the mask from our self-
ignorance, which makes us "see ourselves as others see us."
"Thou" who thinkest thyself religious, and all the while
by thy untruthfulness, or by thy unfairness, " dishonourest
God 1 ," "Thou" who thinkest thyself enlightened, and
liberal, and art all the while exclusive and narrow against
those who do not agree with thyself, "Thou" who thinkest
thyself generous, and free, and manly, and art all the while
unfeeling, and base, and childish, destroying the happiness
of thine own home, and the homes of others, " Thou" who
thiukest thyself humble and submissive, and art all the while
inflated with the vanity of knowledge, or influence, or rank,
or attainments, " Thou," and such as thou, " art the man"
who needest the warning voice of Nathan to lead thee to
know thyself, and to repent of thy sin. And oh ! if thou hast
such an adviser, faithful and true, who will be to thee as Nathan
was to David a friend who will not fear to tell thee of thy
faults, who will not fear to sacrifice thy regard in doing so,
who will lay his finger here, and here, and here, on thy secret
faults, put him not from thee as an unwelcome intruder;
thank God that thou hast such a friend ; treasure his coun
sels as rare gifts, rare indeed, most rare, in this cowardly,
smooth, and faithless world; beware lest thou despise his
lightest word, " not knowing" that through him " the good
ness of God leadeth thee to repentance J."
Thirdly, let us observe both the exact point of Nathan s
warning, and the exact point of David s repentance. It is
most instructive to observe that Nathan in his parable
calls attention, not to the sensuality and cruelty of David s
crime, but simply to its intense and brutal selfishness.
1 Rom. ii. 23. > Rom. ii. 4.
The Repentance of David. 9
Think of this, any whom it concerns ; remember this, even
as regards the special sin of which David was guilty. Many,
perhaps, who would excuse themselves on other grounds for
the ruin which, by the indulgence of their own passions, they
help to bring upon the bodies and souls of their fellow-crea
tures, might be startled, as was David, if once they could be
convinced of its mean and selfish baseness.
" There were two men in one city, the one rich and the
other poor." " The rich " young " man " had all that he
needed ; " the poor" old " man" had nothing save " one little
ewe lamb, which he had brought and nourished up ... which
was unto him as a daughter." Have there been ever, are
there at this moment, any such two men in this city? If
there have been, or if there are, the parable of Nathan still
lives for the warning, and for the repentance, of " him who did
this thing," not merely because he gave way to passion, not
merely because he did dishonour to himself, but " because
he had no pity k ."
It is remarkable, again, that even deeper than David s
sense, when once aroused, of his injustice to man, was his
sense of his guilt and shame before God : " Against Thee,
Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight 1 ."
Dark as is the shade of the dark sin done to man, a yet
darker shade falls over it when viewed in the unchanging
light of the All-Pure and the All-Merciful. This is perhaps
especially the case, with these grosser sins. But the language
respecting David s sin and repentance is instructive to a
general congregation, because what was true of his sin is in its
measure true of the sins of every one. David is driven by the
very fervour of his penitence to speak of this one sin as he
would have spoken of all sins. Of crimes, in all their magni
tude, like his crimes, no member of any Christian congregation
k 2 Sam. xii. 6. . **. li. 4.
10 The Repentance of David.
is ever likely to be guilty. But every one of us is in danger of
falling into sins of which we have no expectation beforehand,
of which, like David, we are ignorant even after we have com
mitted them. Whatever be our special failing, self-indul
gence, vanity, untruth, uncharitableness, and however it be
made known to us, by friends, by preachers, by reflection, by
sorrow, by the death of our first-born, by the ruin of our
house, let David s feeling respecting it be ours. Every griev
ous sin is a wound to our consciences, is a stain upon our souls,
in the sight, not, it may be, of man, but of God. The character
is shaken by it. Others may see, though we do not, God
sees, though others do not, a point where we have changed
from better to worse; where good-nature has passed into
weakness, or policy and prudence into craft and dishonesty,
or philanthropy and zeal into acrimonious partisanship, or
independence and activity into hardness and self-sufficiency.
What we want if we are truly penitent what we want if
we are penitent as David was penitent, is that our down
ward course may be arrested, that a new, upward course
may be given to our whole character. " Wash me throughly
from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sins. . . . Thou
requirest truth in the inward parts. . . . Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter
than snow. . . . O give me the comfort of Thy help again,
and stablish me with Thy free spirit."
These are not the words of unavailing remorse; they are
not general confessions of general depravity, which belongs
to all the rest of mankind as well as to us ; nor minute con
fessions of minute sins, dragged out of their dark places by a
too scrupulous casuistry. They are truly the desires for " re
pentance;" that is, for "a change of mind," for a change,
an elevation of character. They are the honest and simple
Ps. li. 212.
The Repentance of David. 1 1
expressions of one who longs, as in the presence of God, to
be delivered from the burden of his own faults and crimes ;
who loathes sin, because he has become acquainted with it ;
who is earnestly hoping and seeking to be made wiser, and
better, and purer in his innermost self, that he may never
again fall into the deep calamity which he "acknowledges"
with his whole heart, and which "is ever before him n ,"
staring him in the face. To have clean hands and a pure
heart, to make a fresh start in life, with a new spirit within
him, this was David s repentance, this alone is " repentance"
in its ancient, Scriptural, Evangelical sense. All else may be
emotion, or regret, or confession, or remorse, but it falls short
of repentance. "Repentance" is not sorrow; it is the joy
ful, cheerful, manly endeavour " to walk henceforth in the
ways of Christ, taking his easy yoke and light burden upon
us; following Him in lowliness, patience, and charity; or
dered by the governance of His Holy Spirit ; seeking always
His glory, and serving Him duly in our vocation with thanks
giving ."
Fourthly, this leads us to see what is the door which God
opens, in such cases as David s, for repentance and restora
tion. There is the general lesson, taught by this, as by a
thousand other passages both of the Old and the New Testa
ments that, as far as human eye can judge, no case is too
late or too bad to return, if only the heart can be truly
roused to a sense of its own guilt and of God s holiness.
"Thou desirest no sacrifice;" consider the immense force
of the words; how wise, how consoling, how vast in their
reach of meaning, " Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would
I give it Thee ; Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings. The
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite
heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise?." So spoke David in
n Ps. li. 3. Commination Service. f Ps. 1L 16, 17.
12 The Repentance of David.
the fulness of his penitence. So taught the Son of David in
the fulness of His grace and truths
But there is over and above this a special instruction
in David s repentance, as viewed in connection with his
whole character. " What advantage/ it may be asked both
by scoffers and by serious inquirers " what advantage was
there in David s generous and tender heart ? what advantage
in his devout and earnest aspirations? what advantage in
his close communion with God, if he could thus fall away ?"
There was this advantage that, great as was his fall, there
was yet a hope one may almost say, a certainty of restora
tion, which in another would not have been. The good of
his former character was still there. It was overpowered,
lost, stifled for the time, but it was capable of being roused
again. There was still an eye to see, there was still an ear
to hear ; his indignation, unconscious as it was, against the
rich man of the prophet s parable, shewed that the moral
sense was not extinguished within him : his instant recog
nition of his guilt, " I have sinned against the Lord," shews
that the conscience was not dead, but sleeping; that the
lamp was not gone out beyond the means of rekindling its
expiring light. Unlike Saul, there was no settled hardness
of heart, which made even repentance but a gloomy remorse.
He had but to return to himself, and that self, that better
self, was at one with God. " And therefore Nathan said
unto David, The Lord hath put away thy sin; thou shalt
not die 1 ."
The consequences of his crime indeed still remained, work
ing out its own terrible retribution. His earthly career was
never afterwards what it had been before ; the sword never
again departed from his house ; his own sin was repeated
over again in the lives of his sons : the loss of one child, the
murder of another, the rebellion and death of a third and
i Luke xv. 20. 2 Sam. xii. 13.
The Repentance of David. 13
fourth ; another exile, more grievous than that when in early
and innocent youth he fled from the face of Saul, all these
calamities sufficiently justify the ways of God to man, and
shew that sin, even in this world, even when pardoned and
put away, leaves a long train of misery and shame behind.
But still he was restored ; " his transgression was forgiven ;
his sin was covered 8 ;" " a clean heart was created in him ;
a right spirit was renewed within him*." Once more in
his Psalms in these very Psalms of his penitence he has
been enabled to "teach transgressors the ways of God ;" his
" lips were opened" again ; " and his mouth has shewn forth
the praise of God, and his tongue has sung aloud the righte
ousness of God u " for all future generations of mankind.
Two final lessons we may learn from this last aspect of
David s repentance. For others, it teaches us to regard with
tenderness the faults, the sins, the crimes of those who, gifted
with great and noble qualities, are, by that strange union
of strength and weakness which we so often see, betrayed
into acts which more ordinary, commonplace characters avoid
or escape. We need not, nor dare, deny their sin : the sins of
good men are in one sense worse than the sins of other men,
because they are against greater light, because they cause
greater scandal, because they cast a heavy discouragement
on the lovers of goodness. But in another sense we must
thankfully acknowledge the background, the atmosphere, so
to speak, of excellence which renders a return from such sins
possible. Our reverence for David is shaken, but not de
stroyed. He is not what he was before, but he is still far
nobler and greater than many and many a just man who
never fell and who never repented.
And for ourselves, let us remember the still more impor
tant lesson, that such a foundation of good as that which
there was in David s character is never thrown away. If it is
Ps. xxxii. 1. Ps. li. 10. Ps. li. 1315.
14 The Repentance of David.
not able to resist the trial altogether, it will at least be best
able to recover from it. David s fall sufficiently teaches us not
to rely on our religious principle however sound, nor to trust
in our religious zeal, however fervent : but his repentance bids
us humbly hope that whatever good purposes, and sincere
prayers, and faith in God, and love of Christ, we have been
able to retain amidst the changes and chances of the world,
will stand in the evil day, and do us good service still ; there
will be something to which we can appeal with the cer
tainty of some response when the first flush of passion, the
first cloud of self-deceit has passed away. Who knows what
temptations, what trials, may come upon him this year, this
week, this night? Who knows but what the resolutions
formed in his heart years ago, or now, or at this moment, may
enable him to resist the temptation when it comes, or to
recover from it if it has come ? " For this" so we may ap
ply to ourselves the very words of David in the 32nd Psalm
" For this shall every one that is godly make his prayer
unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest be found ; and in
the great waterfloods they shall not come nigh unto him. . . .
Thou art my hiding-place; Thou shalt preserve me from
trouble : Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliver
ance. ... Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O ye righteous ; be
joyful, all ye that are true of heart*"
* Ps. xxxii. 6, 7, 11.
SERMON III.
THE EEPENTANCE OF ESAU.
JOHN, LOED BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
A SEEMON,
HEB. xii 16, 17.
"Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for
one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that
afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was re
jected : for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it
carefully with tears."
I NEED not detain you with this history. You all
know how the hunter came weary and faint from the field,
and how the wary Jacob asked his birthright as the price of
the food which a brother should have given unbought. You
remember how appetite prevailed over a weak and unin
terested faith ; and how conscience, as usual, was silenced by
the plea of necessity : " Behold, I am at the point to die : and
what profit shall this birthright do to me a ?" You will recol
lect, too, that the penalty followed, even though hastened
by sinful means; and that God permitted the duplicity of
Rebekah and Isaac to deprive Esau unjustly of the blessing
he had justly forfeited. Then, for the first time, apparently,
his sin found him out. Forty years ago he had bartered
God s gift for the brief gratification of appetite. He had for
gotten the fact, perhaps, or had fancied it forgotten. But
it was recorded in God s book; and the punishment the Divine
decree had linked to it, was silently, but surely, drawing on.
m Gen. xxv. 32.
B 2
4 The Repentance of Esau.
He had sold his birthright; he had lost his blessing. In
vain he would recal the words which had been spoken, and
the deed which was done. In vain " he cried with a great
and exceeding bitter cry b ." " For ye know how that after
ward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was
rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he
sought it carefully with tears."
We are not led by this history to treat of the efficacy of
a death-bed repentance. Esau s trial was in this life; and
the blessings he forfeited, notwithstanding their spiritual
relation and import, were themselves temporal. His case
could but lend an imperfect and uncertain analogy. And
in general, the question itself requires to be shifted from the
point on which men usually place it. It is not the efficacy
of death-bed repentance ; it is the probability of death -bed
repentance. There is no doubt that, for Christ s merits, true
penitence will obtain mercy at the last hour ; there is great
doubt how far sorrow at the last hour is true penitence.
"We have every assurance that God will give pardon even to
the latest repentance ; but we have no assurance that He
will give repentance to those who for a life-time have re
fused to repent.
We are thus led nearer to the true lesson of the history
before us, and a very solemn one it is, that the tendency of
sensuality indulged is to bring a late remorse, but to prevent
a timely penitence ; to cause suffering, may be, but not contri
tion ; the sorrow of the world that worketh death, not godly
sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation. There is not a
word to shew that, keenly though he felt his disappointment,
Esau had any sense of his sin. It was his lost blessing which
afflicted him, not his faithless self-indulgence; his forfeit,
not his fault. There was no God-ward prayer for pardon in
all that " great and exceeding bitter cry." The fruits shew
Gen. xxvii. 34.
The Repentance of Esau. 5
this. His sorrow inflamed him to hatred, and hatred gave
him the heart of a murderer. His sin and its punishment
alike led him further from God. " He found no place of
repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."
It will, of course, be necessary, as we pursue our subject,
to bear in mind the distinction thus exemplified between " the
sorrow of the world which worketh death, and godly sorrow
which worketh repentance to salvation ." The one sorrow
for sin s consequences, the other sorrow for sin s guilt ; the
one for having injured ourselves, the other for having of
fended God ; the one for the disgrace, the worldly loss, the
enfeebled body or the unquiet mind ; the other for the loss
of God s favour and the sense of alienation from Him; the
one dreading His punishment, the other longing for the re
storation of His love; the one satisfied with impunity, the
other thirsting for holiness ; the one barren in all but feeble
resolutions, the other working a thorough change of the
inner and outer life; the one the natural product of the
unregenerate heart, the other the gift of God by the opera
tion of the Holy Spirit; the one the remorse of Esau and
of Judas, the other the repentance of David and of Peter.
Now the proposition before us is, that the former of
these an ineffectual remorse is the natural tendency of
sensuality indulged, which, at the same time, tends to pre
vent the latter a timely repentance unto salvation.
And here first (for practical lessons require and justify
plain words) let us clearly understand what we mean by
sensuality. We mean, of course, the yielding to the grosser
sins of the flesh, whether dared openly or indulged in secret,
adultery, fornication, and lasciviousness ; intemperance
and gluttonous excess, whether encouraged and, as the world
thinks, excused by the genial licence of society, or admitted,
half-ashamed, in guilty solitude. We mean also the same
e 2 Cor. vii. 10.
6 The Repentance of Esau.
sins transacted mentally in the chambers of the imagination, .
even though want of opportunity, or shame, or timidity, or
even some better motive, have restrained from the outward
act. But we must include, besides, both those more reput
able forms of self-indulgence which, stopping short of the
excess which tarnishes character or injures health, are yet
a daily slavery to appetite, an habitual submission of the
spirit to the flesh ; and that negative self-indulgence which,
resigned to what is thought innocent ease, never makes a
sacrifice for another s sake or God s, and will not be roused
to an effort even for what is great and good. In all these
cases, though in different degrees, and with different shades
of guilt, sensuality is the opposite to self-denial, and conse
quently to the following of Jesus, and the service of God.
1. Now the soul knows this. The most reckless knows
that intemperance and impurity outrage God s law; the
most tranquil and respectable lover of self feels, at least at
times, that he is living below the better instincts of his own
being, and at variance with the requirements of the Gospel.
And hence the first fatal effect of sensuality indulged is the
overlaying and stifling conscience. Sometimes this is done
with a strong hand; and the headlong sinner thrusts the
monitor by, as he rushes to indulgence, or drowns the un
welcome voice in excitement and the din of merriment.
Sometimes it is effected more slowly, perhaps, but not less
surely by the special pleading of a will determined to dis
obey, and the plausible lies which Satan has ever ready to
suggest to the self-deceiver : and conscience is told that it
is a morbid strictness which she is recommending; that
natural pleasures are not forbidden by Nature s God; that
the prohibitions of the New Testament had reference to
heathen licentiousness, which has scarcely its parallel in the
present day ; that habitual intemperance and debauchery are
indeed disgusting and wicked, but that an occasional indulg-
The Repentance of Esau. 7
ence, especially under the peculiar circumstances of the case,
is very different and very venial; that youth, at any rate,
must not be strictly judged, nor restrained too severely, and
may be better guarded against the temptations of manhood
by some experience of the world ; or even (it is a common
plea, notwithstanding its impiety) that this one indulgence
of appetite shall be the last, and will be followed by a sharp
penitence and a lasting reformation.
Fallacies these all, and fictions, and the heart knows them
to be such, even while admitting them ; and therefore con
science is violated, cheated, if not forced, into silence. The
sad consequence slowly, may be, but surely, follows. The
disregarded voice within is heard more rarely and feebly.
The sense of evil is dulled and blunted. What shocked at
first shocks no longer; it is endured, loved, craved after.
The seared conscience grows callous to the touch of impurity,
and its sensitive shrinkings and keen stings are felt no more
to prompt the beginnings or to aid the struggles of repent
ance to salvation.
2. Together with this process is going on another no less
perilous, the gradual strengthening of the passions and
appetites. This is a fact of common experience, and most of
us, perhaps, can recall miserable examples, the Helots, as
it were, of the world s moral government, of men enslaved
by a passion whose tyranny they loathe, and compelled by
the cravings of appetite to sins which have ceased to please.
But it is too often forgotten that this wretched bondage is
the tendency of each single act of unlawful self-indulgence,
which drives another rivet into habit s chain, and feeds the
imperceptible but certain growth of a gigantic power of evil.
And it is a tendency, be it observed, arising not merely from
the laws of mind, which we are apt to think are easily modi
fied by the will, but from the laws of matter also, which we
cannot alter, however much we can employ them. Those
8 The Repentance of Esau.
appetites which have the body for their instrument, affect
the body by their indulgence. They irritate its suscepti
bilities, and act on its nervous organization. They foster
morbid cravings for gratification, terrible sometimes in their
painfulness and power. And these no effort of will, no re
solutions even of the sincerest, sharpest penitence, can eradi
cate or allay. They may be loathed, struggled with, by
God s grace denied and mortified, but there they are the
sad consequences of the guilty past to tempt, to torment,
and to add a hundredfold to the difficulty, and therefore to
the improbability, of a real repentance.
3. It is a kindred consequence of sensuality indulged, that
it fills the mind with reminiscences and thoughts of evil.
For it is a law of the mind, no less certain in its operation
than those of the body, just now alluded to, that ideas, once
associated, have a tendency to suggest each other in future,
and, when associated often, become linked in a mutual bond
which is well-nigh indissoluble. Hence it is that sights, and
sounds, and thoughts circumstances in themselves the most
trivial and irrelevant have become associated in the sin
ner s mind with images of impurity and recollections of un
lawful pleasure : and ever and anon, through his whole future
life, without the concurrence of his will, contrary, may be, to
his desires and his prayers, in company alike or in solitude,
aye, in the saddest, sometimes, and most sacred scenes, this
terrible power of the past will thrill along the chord of asso
ciation, and. wake up reminiscences and forms of evil which
pollute the soul, even though it may not entertain them, and
tempt, although they may be overcome. A fearful engine for
ill, brethren, in the hands of our spiritual foe, are these sug
gestions of the guilty past. To the sincere penitent they are
a penalty, well merited, indeed, but very bitter ; " a body of
death" which he prays and strives against, but which clings
to him still ; a penance more humbling than sackcloth, more
The Repentance of Esau. 9
painful than the macerating scourge. To the impenitent
they are ever-recurring monitors of ill, and ministers of
temptation, blighting the growth of better thoughts, and
withering the very life of prayer; polluting the soul with
their presence, while they debilitate its perception of sin, and
unfit and enfeeble it for repentance.
4. Together with these results of sensuality indulged, and
partly in consequence of them, is the gradual deadening of
the soul to the perception of spiritual things. " This people s
heart hath waxed gross 6 ," said both the Prophet and the
Saviour, though^an interval of eight hundred years was be
tween; and such will ever be the effect of similar causes.
In the earliest steps of the downward course, it will often be,
and particularly where there has been the careful training of
parents or sponsors, or the atmosphere of a religious home,
that the sense of spiritual things is sufficiently acute. The
first sins bring often their immediate and severe punish
ment. God is felt to be displeased, and His face to be
turned away ; and the polluted soul is steeped in an agony
of shame, and even entreats in an agony of prayer. It is
well if it is so; that prayer may be the turning-point of
present or the seed of future repentance. But often the
stricken soul sullenly turns away from God, and seeks to
hide from His displeasure, and to divert the pain of its self-
dissatisfaction in employment or amusement ; or, at any rate,
the sin repeated takes off the edge of the shame, and enfeebles
the earnestness of the prayer. God s presence, when feared,
comes to be shunned, and is shunned till it is forgotten.
The soul no longer communes with Him. There is no con
tact *with Him, no spiritual union with Him in private or
public prayer, in the reading of His Word, or in the Holy
Communion. The forms are often continued long, some
times through a whole life; but they are forms only: and,
Cf. Isa. vii. 10 ; Matt. xiii. 5.
10 The Repentance of Esau.
like all forms from which the spirit has departed, they only
harden when they have ceased to aid. And especially is this
the case if he, from whose religion self-indulgence has thus
sucked out the life-blood, is himself set apart to minister in
spiritual things. That unhappy man, preaching what he
does not feel, saying prayers which he does not pray, ad
ministering ordinances and life-giving Sacraments which
have no life or felt purpose to himself, is exposed to the
daily growth, under the petrifying influence of habit, of
hardness of heart and contempt of God s Word and Com
mandments.
But in all cases alike, where sensuality is indulged, the
eye of faith grows dim. Truths once believed and still
not disbelieved cease to have reality and power. The
motives of the Gospel no longer move. Hope and fear,
obligation, gratitude, and love, whose objects are things not
seen, are overborne and lost in the rush and eagerness of the
passions and appetites for things seen and earthy. The heart
waxes gross. Warnings, chastisements, invitations, the plead
ings of God s Word and ministers, fall on the soul heavily,
may be, but without impression, or waken but a feeble and
ineffectual response. And even when these agencies of the
Divine long-suffering, or the approach of the last great crisis,
has roused the soul and alarmed it, it finds too often that its
strength has departed from it. It cannot grieve for sins
which it knows it ought to grieve for ; it cannot clasp again
by faith the Saviour it has neglected and dishonoured; it
would pray now, but, alas ! it cannot pray. As far as human
eye can trace, (but its real history is known to God alone,)
that wretched heart which sensuality has made gross, *" has
found no place of repentance, though it sought it carefully
\vith tears."
5. But the great and solemn truth which underlies all
this, and of which the effects of sensuality at which we have
The Repentance of E&uit. 11
glanced are the outward manifestations, is this that the
Holy Spirit will not abide with the sensual and self-indulgent.
" If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
... If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye, through the
Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live f ." But
" the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the
flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other g ." When,
therefore, the young Christian has, in baptism, the promise
of God s Spirit visibly signed and sealed to him, and is set
apart as a temple of the Holy Ghost, he has that presence
and power covenanted to him by which alone he can fight
the good fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and
become conqueror over the fleshly lusts which war against
the soul.
But if, notwithstanding this presence and power, he gives
rein to the wandering thought and wandering eye, parleys with
temptation, instead of fleeing or resisting it, and pollutes soul
and body with sensual sin; if his first remorse is soothed
or stifled, his first resolutions broken or forgotten, and the
pleading voice within disregarded or silenced by some poor
sophistry ; if the sin is indulged either in act or imagina
tion, and the sensual habit forms and gathers strength, the
Spirit, resisted and grieved, will not always strive. Its voice
is heard less often ; its light burns dimmer. It leaves
by degrees, may be, and as it were unwillingly its polluted
temple; as did the visible presence, the cherub-borne glory
of Jehovah in Ezekiel s vision, first lingering on the thres
hold of the house, then at the door of the east gate, and then
on the mountain on the east of the city h . But it departed,
and for ever ; and so does God s Spirit from the sensual soul.
There are many trials, doubtless, many a solemn warning
f Rom. viii. 9, 13. * Gal. v. 17. h Ezek. x. 11.
12 The Repentance of Emu.
and earnest pleading with the better mind ; but at length
is spoken that most fearful sentence of the justice of a
long-suffering God, " Ephraim is joined to idols ; let him
alone \"
Such, therefore, brethren, is the tendency of sensuality
indulged, to beget a late remorse, but to prevent a
timely penitence. There are degrees, doubtless, in its con
sequences, as there are degrees in its guilt ; but in all cases
they are sufficiently sad. There is that self- dissatisfaction
which is never wanting to him who yields to his lower appe
tites, degrading him in the judgment of his own conscience ;
there are cravings and tyrant desires, which it is disappoint
ment to indulge, but pain to deny ; there are ineffectual
resolutions and efforts for amendment, which the impotent
will makes feebly from time to time, expecting, and almost
half hoping, not to be able to perform ; there is the deadening
of the soul to spiritual truth, when faith is concerned about
notions, not realities, words, not things, and prayer has lost
its desires, and almost its meaning, and the forms of reli
gion are maintained without any sentiment or life, or thrown
away, perhaps, themselves, as a weariness ; and there are
tremors, from time to time, and paroxysms of remorse, which
will catch at false succour on the right hand or the left,
(instead of leading straight on to the Cross and the Saviour) :
on the one side, at the human mediators of the Church of
Rome, and its machinery of pardon without true penitence ;
on the other, at the lie of the Antinomian, which proffers
safety without holiness, a cross which may be trusted in,
but need not be borne : and there is, alas ! sometimes, as a
warning, probably, to others, even on this side the grave, a
blank and terrible despair.
Within this city is a nameless grave; the earth has
1 Hos. iv. 17.
The Repentance of Esau. 13
hardened over it for twenty years and more. She whose
dust moulders there had been baptized/ doubtless, into the
Church of Christ, had received God s promises, and had
lisped the truths of the Gospel. Warnings, no doubt, too,
there had been, in the probation of a long life, and plead
ings, and opportunities for repentance. What had been
her peculiar temptations, what her misfortunes, what the
history of her inner life, I know not ; the great Judge of
all the earth will weigh them in His righteous balance.
But this I know, that when the last hour came, it came
without one feeble ray of peace or hope. There was pain on
that death-bed ; there was terror ; there was remorse for
the past, there was despair for the future. The glazed eyes
glared wildly at unseen shapes around ; the hands were
waved convulsively to drive them off ; the moans which broke
from the trembling frame were the very accents of hopeless
fear. And though for a while, as some prayer was read, or
some sentence of Holy Writ, there would be a brief respite,
as though the sacred words could hold in check the present
power of evil, yet soon the agony of terror set in again, till
the last struggle closed the fearful but instructive scene.
May God in His mercy deliver each one here from the
drunkard s death ! But remember, brethren, I speak to each
man and woman present, that every sensual sin committed,
every appetite unlawfully indulged, every act of impurity, or
intemperance, or selfish gratification nay, every thought of
evil cherished in secret, every morbid day-dream of the guilty
mind, may be a step onward in the path to such a death, or
to that second death of which this is but the faint terres
trial shadow.
O how much happier, even in this life, is the path of timely
self-denial ; the taking up the cross to follow Christ ! He too
has a yoke, no doubt, and a burden ; but " His yoke is easy
14 The Repentance of Esau.
and His burden is light V Maintained in His strength,
the struggle against sin invigorates, and the warfare itself
is peace. There is the glow of conscious rectitude, that
remnant of a happier, holier state, which. God s mercy has
preserved to us from the wreck of Paradise. There are the
passions calmed, and the chastened appetites, more sensible
of their healthy and lawful enjoyments. There are pure
thoughts, and an unpolluted memory, and a mind undis-
tracted and unenfeebled by the haunting forms of evil.
There is conscience, tender and sensitive, shrinking from
the approach of sin, and, when sin is admitted, (and who
does not sin?) bringing the soul at once to God through
Christ, ashamed and sorrowing, seeking and finding par
don, and peace, and strength. There is faith which sees
the invisible, with eye undimmed by the film which self-
indulgence spreads; and love which cannot abide with the
lust of the flesh, "shed abroad in the heart by the Holy
Ghost which is given unto us 1 ." And above all, there is
the genial happiness of a heart at peace with. God, and bear
ing in itself, in the work which God has wrought there, the
witness of the Spirit that we are the sons of God, "the
earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the pur-
chased possession." Such, at least, is the tendency of timely
self-denial; realised, for the most part, as God grants His
grace, in proportion to the simplicity of our faith, the hu
mility of our spirit, the fervency of our prayers, and the
earnestness of our endeavours.
But if any hear me to whom such words seem to come
too late; who have the stain on their soul, and feel the
chain of habit round them, what shall I say to you, bre
thren? that there is no "place of repentance" for you? God
forbid. There is "a fountain opened for sin and for un-
k Matt. xi. 30. Rom. v. 5. m Eph. i. 14.
The Repentance of Esau. 15
cleanness";" and you, even you, may wash and be clean.
I point you to Him who touched the leper and healed him ;
who shrank not from the poor fallen penitent who kissed His
feet, but dismissed her with pardon and a blessing ; and for
whose merits (though dimly shadowed then in typical rites)
the polluted king of Israel was washed whiter than snow,
restored and upheld by God s free Spirit. " Him that cometh
unto Him, He will in no wise cast out ." He is ready to
give you repentance and remission of your sins ; to restore
you to your reconciled Father ; to prompt your resolutions,
aid and preserve your prayers, make your endeavours per
severing, and crown your struggles with success. But you
must go to Him now. The preacher of the Gospel, with
the Bible in his hand, may promise present pardon; but
he may not promise future penitence. Now you must ex
amine and humble yourself, confess, resolve, pray, earnestly
pray, trust in God s mercy and your Saviour s merits, and
proclaim from this moment a life-long war against self and
your besetting sins. Do this now, sincerely, heartily, and
counting the whole cost, and there is many a struggle
doubtless before you, and many a perilous temptation, many
a wrestling prayer and painful lusting of the flesh against
the Spirit; and some falls, may be, with their shame and
bitter sorrow, but there is God s pardon covenanted to you,
and Christ s blood cleansing you, and the ordinances of His
Church aiding you, and the Almighty Spirit striving with
you and for you; and though the body of this death may
cling close, yet God will deliver you through Jesus Christ
our Lord P. But if you delay, the Gospel has no promises,
and the preacher can only warn. Each sin committed, each
evil thought indulged, each pleading of conscience (such as
is, may be, stirring in you now,) neglected or put off to " a
" Zech. xiii. 1. John vi. 37. p Rom. vii. 24, 25.
16 The Repentance of Esau.
more convenient season/ nay, each day and hour of this
ebbing life, is bringing on the inevitable time, when "the
exceeding bitter cry" will be too late, when the sinner must
be rejected when he would inherit the blessing, and will
find no place of repentance, though he seek it carefully
with tears.
SERMON IV.
THE REPENTANCE OE ESAU.
BY
JOHN LEIGH HOSKYNS, M.A.,
SECTOR Of ASTON XiBKOH), BERKS.
A SERMON,
HEB. xii. 16, 17.
" Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for
one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that
afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was
rejected : for he found no place of repentance, though he sought
it carefully with tears."
THIS chapter, following upon the eleventh, which enume
rates so many who had suffered and died for the faith, is a
continuation of the same subject, and an exhortation against
apostacy, or falling away from Christ through persecution.
The apostle points, in the last instance, to Jesus, the chief
martyr of all, and bids the Hebrews, for their encourage
ment, look unto Him, who, " for the joy that was set before
Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down
at the right hand of the throne of God." " Consider Him/
says the apostle, " lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
Wherefore, lift up the hands which hang down, and the
feeble knees." Then, in the verse immediately before my
text, which still pursues the same idea, he says, " Look dili
gently, lest any man fail of (or fall from) the grace of God,
lest any root of bitterness, springing up, trouble you/ i. e. lest
there be any turning away from the Lord; for in Deut.
xxix. 19, such turning from the Lord is called "a root that
beareth gall and wormwood." Then the apostle continues,
" Lest there be any fornicator," (in a spiritual sense, a person
unfaithful to his religious vows and baptismal obligations,
4 The Repentance of Esau.
and polluting himself by idolatry), " or profane person, as
Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright." So be
watchful, the Apostle seems to urge, lest ye are seduced and
allured by some sudden temptation presented to you, perhaps,
in a moment of extremity, when nature is wearied and ex
hausted by suffering ; do not for any earthly advantage sell
your birthright, and barter your eternal salvation and your
hopes of glory for transitory ease or pleasure. Oh ! sell not
your birthright, which reaches through eternity, for anything
temporal. Remember how bitterly Esau afterwards regretted
his foolish, his mad exchange, and would have inherited the
blessing ; but Isaac s words could not be reversed, and vainly
Esau sought to charfge his father s mind. " He found there
no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with
tears."
It is true that in its first and most obvious meaning the
warning of the text is not immediately applicable to us. We
are not likely to fall away from Christ through persecution,
but this is the very reason why we are in greater danger of
falling away through the allurements of the world and the
flesh. Just in proportion as the Church is freed from enemies
without, it is more endangered by enemies within. Persecu
tion makes apostates, and security and peace make apostates ;
and the only difference is that the danger of apostacy is far
greater in times of the Church s peace, because men may fall
away then from all real religion, and faith, and trust in Christ,
without attracting public notice, or incurring shame and dis
honour; and also because they may fall away inwardly, and
still keep up the forms of religion join in the assemblies
of the saints, attend the ministry of the Word, and even par
take of the Holy Communion. Nay, they may be quite un
conscious themselves of their real state before God, and while
they have a name that they live, they may be dead.
My brethren, I apprehend it was with the view of pro
viding some remedy for this danger which surrounds a
Church in times of peace and security, that these special
services have been set on foot. We are in danger, in times
like these, of a secret, silent, gradual decay of faith and
practice ; of falling away from grace through love of ease,
The Repentance of Esau. 5
business, or pleasure, or care ; we are in danger of losing
hold of a deep sense of the superiority of spiritual and
eternal things over those which are present and temporal ;
of being swallowed up by worldly and carnal interests, or
of being swept away, by the flood of present fashion and
opinion round us, from our footing on the eternal realities
of an unseen world. Fallen man is ever prone to degene
rate ; and even among the children of God, every effort
is required to stem the mighty tide of opposition to good,
and tendency to evil and corruption, which we see around
us, and feel within us. It was therefore a wise and far-
sighted provision of the early Church, which set apart a
certain season before Easter for bodily discipline, greater
separation from the world, and more diligent prayer and
self-examination ; and it is instructive to observe that the
season of Lent which was much shorter in times of the
Church s danger and persecution was lengthened in times
of her worldly prosperity. The need of such a season of
mortification was far greater when the Church was honoured
and caressed, and when wealth and dignity were lavished
upon her, than in the times of her poverty, her suffering,
and her humiliation.
Let those who may think slightingly of this sacred season,
apostolic in its origin, consecrated by the authority of so
many ages, and the clear voice of our own reformed Church,
look round the world look at the general tone of society, at
the general standard of morality, look, lastly, into their
own hearts, and their own, real state before God, and ask
whether we do not need some such season to call us awhile
from this vain world, that we may ask ourselves whether
there be in us no symptoms of decay in grace, and faith, and
love, through the fraud and malice of the devil, or our own
carnal will and frailness ; no danger of, Demas-like, forsaking
Christ, having loved this present world; or becoming, like
Esau in my text, profane, and thinking lightly of the hopes
and promises of a future inheritance in comparison with
carnal ease and earthly gratifications.
It may assist such reflections as these, and lead us "to a
closer self-examination, and a deeper and truer repentance,
6 The Repentance of Esau.
if, in a humble dependence on the teaching of the Holy Spirit,
we endeavour to understand, 1 . Wherein Esau s profaneness
consisted ; and, 2. Why his prayers and tears, when he would
afterwards have inherited the blessing, were rejected.
You all remember the brief account of Esau selling his
birthright. How he came in from the field faint with weari
ness and hunger; how Jacob, his brother, made pottage of
lentiles, and Esau cast his eyes upon it, and said, Feed me,
I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint."
And Jacob said, " Sell me this day thy birthright; and Esau
said, Behold I am at the point to die : and what profit shall
this birthright do to me ? And he sold his birthright to Jacob,
confirming it with an oath. Then Jacob gave Esau bread
and pottage of lentiles, and he did eat and drink, and rose up
and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright"
His birthright, as the eldest born, gave him a double por
tion of the paternal inheritance, a right of rule and govern
ment over the family ; but the chief advantages of it were
spiritual ; the priesthood, and the blessing which ran from
Abraham, and was communicated from father to son, and
contained the promise of the Saviour, " in Whom all families
of the earth should be blessed," were comprehended in it;
all the spiritual privileges belonging to Abraham s line, as
God s family chosen out of all the earth; these belonged
by birth to Esau as the firstborn, and these things, partly
temporal, chiefly spiritual, but all future, he despised, and
sold for a present and momentary enjoyment.
We may observe.that Esau was not what is generally meant
by an ungodly man; no great sins are laid to his charge:
but he was what God abhors a self-indulgent, easy, thought
less man of the world, bent on present enjoyment, and in his
heart despising, or disbelieving, the promises of God, which
are objects of faith, and not of sight. He is the representa
tion of an immense class of persons who are called Chris
tians, and may be outwardly decent and moral, but who do
not live, or attempt to live, as if the promises of the .Gospel
were realities, and heaven an object worthy of man s highest
desires and most strenuous efforts. No ; they believe in the
world, they believe in wealth, in respectability, in a good
The Repentance of Esau. 7
position in society, in personal ease and comfort, in a fall
purse, in a well-furnished table, these things they believe
in as realities worth a man s aiming at, but they believe
really in nothing beyond this world ; at least, their belief is a
mere name, and they will never sacrifice any present gain or
pleasure for all the glories of a heavenly crown. The text fur
nishes us with a name for this state of mind and heart so dis
pleasing to the Almighty, it is profaneness : "Lest there
be any profane person, like Esau, who for one morsel of meat
sold his birthright." He is profane, then, who without being
guilty, perhaps, of gross outward offence, thinks so little of all
the promises of God revealed to us in His Word, thinks all
so uncertain, and has so little care and concern for things
spiritual, that he is willing to exchange heaven for earth, the
things of eternity for the things of time, future glory for
present pleasure. Yes, and even for the mere transitory
gratification of a bodily appetite. The apostle seems to mark
this with an especial emphasis that for one morsel of meat
Esau sold his birthright. It was not even for honour, not
for gain, not for glory, but for a morsel of meat, a mess of
pottage ; that he would not allow even all the privileges and
dignity of his birthright to interfere with the gratification of
his appetite. He was so lost to any real value or regard for
his birthright, so entirely the slave of the flesh, that he was
willing to purchase the satisfying of his hunger, or rather the
indulgence of his fancy, at the price of all the peculiar pri
vileges of the first-born. We might think such an act of
madness, such an act of extravagant folly, almost impossible,
were not the same profaneness to be witnessed every day and
in every place.
How many thousand nay, millions are at the present
time forfeiting eternal life, and all its unspeakable bliss, for
the sake of mere bodily pleasures for the sake of the poor,
paltry gratification of the appetites and passions of the body.
Look at the drunkard and intemperate man : he for one
morsel of meat sells the birthright he barters heaven for
the brutal pleasures of intoxication he sells to the devil all
the privileges of Church-membership here, all the peace, and
happiness, and security of God s elect in this world, and the
8 The Repentance of Emu.
blessings of the life to come, that he may indulge his lust for
the intoxicating draught.
Look at the unclean and licentious man the whoremonger,
the frequenter of houses of infamy, the seducer of virtue,
the artful miner of youthful innocence and unsuspecting
confidence : he, too, is a profane person ; he sells his true
dignity as a Christian, his birthright, his character here, his
hopes hereafter, for the pleasure of this vile body, he sells
himself to the devil for lust.
But, as I have before observed, we must not confine
our idea of profaneness to the grosser forms of sensuality.
These are the most obvious ; but what shall we say to that
larger class of persons, respectable and decent, perhaps, but
entirely worldly and self-indulgent ; moral, for character, not
conscience sake ; honest, not from fear of God, but of man ;
regular, it may be, in the outward forms of devotion, but
offering God only the tribute of their lips, not of the heart ;
who act always from worldly, not religious principles; who
would not scruple at unjust gains, if they could be done
secretly ; or even at immoralities, if only they could be kept
hid; who, with all their professions of religion, never shew
any earnestness about it, as if heaven were indeed a truth,
and the promises of God to be believed. And do not those
persons come under the class ofprofane who will never allow
religion, and its duties and worship, to interfere in any way
with their personal ease? who are religious only so far as
it interferes with no formed habits of self-indulgence and com
fort ; who never rise early to watch and pray ; never attend
God s house when it involves trouble or any inconvenience ;
never exercise any discipline of the body by fasting or ab
stinence, because it is attended with self-denial ; who sacri
fice neither time nor trouble for their soul s sake ; who will
be at no real pains to gain heaven ?
What does this mean, but that either they disbelieve God s
promises of eternal life, or else that they do not think them
worth any earnest, laborious, self-denying and persevering
efforts !
Surely their sin is that of the Israelites who in the wilder
ness, though told repeatedly of the glories of Canaan, its
The Repentance of Esau. 9
blessedness, its beauty, and fertility, "thought scorn"" of it,
and still looked longingly back to Egypt, or faintly and
doubtingly towards the Promised Land, and so never beheld
and never set foot on that "land which floweth with milk
and honey, the glory of all lands."
Or it is like the cool contempt of those who, in the Gospel,
were bidden to the great supper, " but they made light
of it b ."
It is doubtless true that in Esau, as in all whom he repre
sents, the profane contempt of his birthright arose chiefly
from inconsideration, from want of having ever seriously
considered all that it entailed and comprehended ; for the
immensity of his loss, and what he had forfeited, seems at last
to have burst upon his mind with an intense agony, as that
of a man when too late aroused to a sense of what he had
before little esteemed or understood. But was there not a
profaneness in his ignorance, blindness, and inconsideration ?
And will it be any excuse for the worldly or careless man at
the Day of Judgment, that he sold his birthright of heaven
through inconsideration or through ignorance ? Let us be
assured such a plea will be unavailing. Were not the pro
mises, the hopes, the blessings, present and future, to be
found in Christ worth consideration ? There were the Scrip,
tures there were Christ s ministers there were the services
of His Church : were not these enough to teach and guide to
heaven, if a. profane contempt of things spiritual had not stop
ped the ear and hardened the heart ? Shall ignorance and
inconsideration be pleaded ? But why ignorant, why incon
siderate, but through profaneness? Earthly interests were
not sacrificed through inconsideration ; and why heavenly ?
The intricacies of earthly gain and loss could be mastered
every earthly prospect and hope could be nicely calculated,
and diligently laboured for, and patiently waited for matters
of business could be distinctly understood : here was no in
consideration ; here was no ignorance. And shall we say at
God s bar, I sold my birthright of heaven and glory through
inconsideration ?
Would we bring our minds steadily and fixedly to con-
* Psalm cvi. 24, Prayer-book version. b Matt. xxii. 5.
] The Repentance of Esau.
template what our birthright and our blessing as Christians
really are, here and hereafter, we could not lightly value or
regard them" The miser counts and counts again his hoarded
treasure, the man of business knows his present means and
his future expectations. Do Christians search God s Word
to ascertain what He has promised to His saints ?
Look at some parts of the believer s birthright here in this
life. Reconciliation and peace with God, through our Lord
Jesus Christ; a sense of His" pardoning love and favour; the
enjoyment of sonship and adoption ; the removal of the spirit
of fear, and in its place love as towards a heavenly Father ;
the assurance of His guiding and supporting Providence, that
" all things shall work together for good to them that love
Him;" access to the throne of grace in prayer, with a certainty
that we are heard ; the privilege of carrying every care to
Him, and making our requests known unto Him, and en
joying in consequence " the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding." Then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the
Comforter, in our hearts, as an earnest of the future inherit
ance our bodies made members of Christ and temples of
the Holy Ghost all the fruits of the Spirit gradually being
formed in us, and gilding life with a continual inward sun
shine of "love, joy, peace, longs uffering, gentleness, good
ness, faith, meekness, temperance."
Especially consider the happiness arising from the exercise
of Christian charity and benevolence. The blessings of the
poor, the grateful tribute of warm and thankful hearts, the
inexpressible joy following acts of kindness and Christian
sympathy. Think of the holy happiness of Christian friend
ship, of heart bound to heart by the highest of all bonds
union in Christ. Think of all the calm and deep joy which
follows holiness : a mind at rest, a heart at ease, a conscience
void of offence towards God and towards man ; a body kept
in subjection to soberness, temperance, and chastity; a temper
subdued ; thoughts brought under captivity to Christ. Think
of the pure and satisfying pleasures arising from the devout
study of the "Word of God, from the services of God s house,
the holy Table of Christ s Body and Blood, the communion of
saints, a tranquil death-bed, full of the hope of the resur-
The Repentance of Esau. 11
rection and life everlasting ! Verily " godliness hath the
promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to
come." Surely " her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all
her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay
hold of her, and happy is every one that retaineth her."
Such is a most imperfect sketch of the Christian s birth
right and blessing, even in this life ; but what is it to that
which follows in the next ? Who shall say what is compre
hended under that familiar term, Eternal Life? ETERNAL
LIFE ! Oh ! what highest effort of the imagination can reach
even to the faintest conception of such a word as this ? We
read of those "many mansions" which Christ is preparing
for His people, "of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled,
and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven" for us; we
read that if we are children of God now, we shall be "heirs
of God and joint-heirs with Christ" hereafter. That "our
light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." That "our
vile body will be fashioned like unto Christ s glorious Body ;"
that " sown in corruption, it shall be raised in incorruption ;
sown in weakness, it shall be raised in power; sown a natural
body, it shall be raised a spiritual body :" or, that if we are alive
when Christ comes in His glory with all His holy angels,
we shall " be caught up together in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, and so we shall be ever with the Lord."
Brethren, which ever of us shall be among the joyful com
pany of the redeemed will say, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him." We shall
exclaim, as the Queen of Sheba did on beholding the glory
of Solomon , " It was a true report that I heard in mine own
land of thy acts and of thy wisdom, howbeit, I believed not
the words until I came, and mine eyes had seen it, and behold
the half was not told me."
Oh ! with such things promised and secured to us on the
unfailing Word of God, " God who cannot lie ;" of Christ,
who, " if it were not so would have told us ;" such things
present and future, part to be possessed now as an earnest
c 1 Kings x. 6, 7.
12 The Repentance of Esau.
and foretaste of what is to come ; shall there be among us any
"profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold
his birthright?"
2. " For ye know that how afterward, when he would have
inherited the blessing, he was rejected : for he found no place
for his repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."
Words how unspeakably solemn! Why did Esau weep,
why did he pray, and seek carefully for a reversal of his
father s words, and all in vain ? Because in all his tears and
prayers there was no genuine repentance, and because, even
such as they were, they were too late. How many deceive
themselves by a seeming repentance ! How many never dis
tinguish between sorrow and tears for the consequences of
sin, and deep penitence for the sin itself ; between the tears
of nature and the tears of grace. Esau s tears were shed,
not because he felt his profaneness and his sin in despising
his birthright, but because he now saw the temporal and
worldly loss which that act had occasioned. He grieved that
Jacob was made his superior and his lord; of this he re
pented, and sought " carefully with tears" the reversal of
his sentence from his father Isaac : and hence he cried with
an exceeding bitter cry, and said, " Hast thou but one
blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.
And Esau lifted up his voice and wept."
Observe that only natural feelings are at work here : he
only grieves at the temporal consequences of his sin. It is
" the sorrow of the world that worketh death ;" we recog
nise nothing of the " godly sorrow which worketh repent
ance not to be repented of." Esau s sorrow was from nature,
and wholly concerning earthly things; but godly sorrow is
from grace, and is the Lord s work in the heart, and wholly
refers to heavenly things. How important is it that we
should carefully distinguish between these two kinds of sor
row after sin. Is it true godly sorrow for the guilt and sin,
for the offence against God ? or is it the. sorrow of the world
the tears and regret which may often arise from loss of
prospects, failure of earthly plans, shame at public exposure
of ill conduct, failure of health, approach of death ?
True repentance, my brethren, will make a man hate, and
V
\
The Repentance of Esau. 13
abhor, and loathe himself on account of his sin against God,
and not only mourn and weep over its temporal conse
quences, and the suffering and sorrow it has occasioned. It
is the sin, the guilt, the shameful ingratitude towards a mer
ciful God and Saviour, the pollution, the degradation, the
violation of vows, the dishonour done to His Holy Name,
the crucifying Christ afresh, the grieving of the Holy Spirit.
These things (apart from the mere temporal consequences of
his sin) press upon the penitent s heart, and bow him to
the dust ; and make him cry with David, " Against Thee, Thee
only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight." And
thus true repentance will ever be accompanied and recog
nised by profound humility. There is not a trace of humility
in Esau s conduct, in his bitter cry, his prayers or his tears ;
they are only the outward expression of vexation and disap
pointment. There is no brokenness of spirit, no contrition
visible in him ; nothing of the returning prodigal s spirit
" Father, / have sinned against heaven and before thee, and
am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one
of thy hired servants." We see not in him the bowed head
and beaten breast of the publican, and we hear not the
short yet comprehensive prayer, " God be merciful to me
a sinner"
Nor do we see in him any effort towards & forsaking of sin
and reformation of life, another sure mark of a genuine re
pentance. When a man truly repents he will bend all his
strength, and make this the burden of his daily prayers, that
he mortify and crucify sin within him. This is one sure mark
of godly sorrow, as distinguished from the sorrow of the world.
" Behold," says the apostle, " that ye sorrowed after a godly
sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea what clearing of
yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what
vehement desire, yea what zeal, yea what revenge d ." Espe
cially we shall see a true penitent softened in temper, gentler
in disposition, forgiving toward enemies, patient under in
juries, more loving, more charitable, more considerate. Was
it so with Esau ? No sooner had he gone from his father s
presence than he fostered revenge, vowed, and plotted his
d 2 Cor. vii. 11.
14 The Repentance of Esau.
brother Jacob s death, and said in his heart, "The days of
mourning for my father are at hand, then will I slay my
brother Jacob." This was not the spirit of a penitent.
Could a true penitent dry his tears of sorrow, and imme
diately harbour feelings of deadly hatred ^and revenge ?
Surely, if humility is a sure mark of genuine repentance, no
less so is charity. Let us be very suspicious of the reality
and sincerity of our repentance toward God, unless it is ac
companied with love and good will toward man.
Besides, his tears and cries all came too late. The irre
vocable words had passed Isaac s lips ; the blessing, like the
birthright, had been given to Jacob. There is a day of grace
given to each of us in this life, and that allowed to pass un
improved, can never return. We have shadowings forth of
this solemn truth in earthly things. In vain men would, if
they could, recal a misspent youth, nay, a misspent hour,
and employ it better; but it cannot be recalled. How many
opportunities of advancement or of usefulness are once given
to man, and if not seized are never repeated. How often do
we hear of the death of some person for whom conscience tells
us that we might have in some way done more temporally or
spiritually than we did, been kinder, or more serviceable than
we were ; but the opportunity will never be given us again.
How often would the once rebellious and undutiful child give
all he has to recall past acts of ingratitude to a loving and
tender parent how has he wept over that parent s grave
how does he long for only one opportunity of expressing and
manifesting his contrition, but it cannot be, the past can
not be recalled. And so there is but this short, uncertain
life given us as a time for repentance; it is once, and only
once. This is our day of grace.
Doubtless it will be one of the miseries of the lost, that
there will be an awakening, when too late, to a true sense of
what they have forfeited for ever ; it will burst upon them as
the sense of his loss drew from Esau that exceeding bitter
and piteous cry, and those agonizing tears. He only saw
the folly and madness of his conduct when there was no
remedy. Yes : and the misery of hell will be the piercing
anguish of remorse with which lost souls will curse and
T/ie Repentance of Esau. 15
execrate their own unpardonable rejection of the proffered
mercies of the Gospel; persons who will not see now, and
will not understand, will then see and understand only too
fully. Yes ; " there," says our Lord, " shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth : when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and
Jacob, in the kingdom, and ye yourselves thrust out 6 ." But
then, in vain those tears, in vain those prayers wrung from
hearts only when too late. " Many," says our Saviour, " will
seek to enter in, and shall not be able ; when once the Master
of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye
begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying,
Lord, Lord, open to us, and He shall answer and say, I
know you not whence ye are f ." Then they shall find no
place of repentance ; no way to change the Almighty mind
and purpose, though they seek it carefully with tears. Isaac
was unmoveable at Esau s tears, though " he trembled very
exceedingly;" and God shall be inflexible; and sin unre-
pented of and unforsaken here must meet its eternal doom,
" where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."
Let me entreat you, then, my brethren, to fly from the
sin of profaneness. Think not lightly of the birthright and
the blessing of the Christian ; despise them not ; never allow
the pleasures and interests of this world, or the comfort and
ease of this perishing body, to rob you of a Christian s peace
and happiness here, and everlasting glory hereafter. Learn
rather to despise and disregard the world and the flesh. Re
member our Lord s words : " He that loveth his life shall
lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal." Instead of despising heaven for the sake
of earth, learn to despise earth for the sake of heaven. Con
sider often what a contempt our Saviour puts upon this life,
its interests, and its pleasures, when put in comparison with
that life which is to come. Esau despised his birthright for
a passing satisfaction ; learn you to disregard everything here
in comparison with the glory promised to us hereafter. Walk
not as those enemies of the cross of Christ, of whom the
apostle tells us, even weeping, " whose end is destruction,
whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame,
Luke xiii. 28. Luke xiii. 25.
16 The Repentance of Esau.
who mind earthly things s." Let our " conversation be in
heaven," let us " walk by faith, and not by sight/
Let me beseech you, see that your repentance js sincere
and genuine, the work of grace, the effect of the Holy Spirit
upon the heart in answer to prayer, true penitence for the
sin, and not only sorrow for its consequences ; see that it be
accompanied with a hearty forsaking of sin, bring forth fruits
meet for repentance, and let it work in you deep humility
and fervent charity.
And lastly, I beseech you repent in time. Defer it not
till it is too late. God is now on His mercy-seat. He is
nigh unto all them that call upon Him. Seek Him now
" carefully," and most assuredly you shall find Him ; " Walk
while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you."
Christ is now able and willing to pardon and save you. He
will wash every one of you from your sins, who will now
come to Him with true repentance. " The blood of Jesus
Christ can cleanse from all sinV Oh, repent and believe,
while the door of mercy, and love, and reconciliation is open
to you. Remember that, once closed, no tears, no prayers,
can ever reopen it.
t Philip, iii. 18, 19. h 1 John i. 7.
SEKMON V.
THE REPENTANCE OF ESAU.
BY
SAMUEL, LOKD BISHOP OF OXFOBD,
CHANCEL10E OP THE MOST NOBLE OBDEB OF THE GABTEB, AND LOED
HIGH ALMONEE TO THE QTTEEN-
A SEBMON,
Sfc.
GENESIS xxv. 34.
" Thus Esau despised his birthright."
IF we viewed this history of Esau s contempt of his birth
right as nothing more than an allegory, woven out of the simple
staple of family life as it existed in the world s youth amidst
the pastures of the mountains of the East, and written to
illustrate to us certain great spiritual truths it would, from
its beauty and its appositeness, well deserve our most careful
study. But there is far more about it than mere appropri
ateness and power of a well-sustained similitude. In read
ing it, we must never forget that Esau is selected by God
the Holy Ghost Himself, and set before us as the fearful
example of a fruitless repentance; that we are distinctly
and awfully warned that we Christians are directly ex
posed to the temptations under which, so far as concerns
losing for ever his birthright, he hopelessly fell : and that
if we be careless in our use of God s grace, his ruin will
but foreshadow ours; his great and exceeding bitter cry
in the day of his rejection be echoed by the far more ter
rible shriek of anguish which the more terrible rejection
of a living soul from its true birthright will force from
our hearts. Let us then see what it is that the Holy
Ghost would teach us by this narrative : and to do this, let
us see what the loss was which Esau incurred; how this
came upon him, and what it was in his previous character
B 2
4 The Repentance of Esau.
which prepared the way for that great disaster. " Ye know,"
says the Apostle, " how that when he would have inherited
the blessing, he was rejected." This was his loss. It was
when Esau heard that another had come before him and re
ceived the blessing, that he cried with a great and exceeding
bitter cry, and lifted up his voice and wept. This, then, was
his loss. The blessing of the first-born, with all that be
longed to it, of rule over his brethren, and spiritual pre
eminence ; this was what he lost ; and it was an irreparable
loss. For he "was rejected." He " found no place of re
pentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." There
is nothing said here one way or the other as to his final con
dition. That is not in this narrative the point in question.
That of which the Holy Ghost is. here speaking is his right
of birth in the family of the Patriarch ; and that he had novr
lost finally and for ever. The opportunity of securing it had
passed by ; passed by unused by him and it had passed for
ever. This had been his by right of birth, and it was his no
longer ; it was gone from him, gone from him to another.
" I have blessed him ; yea, and he shall be blessed." This
was his loss ; and it was by his own act that it came upon
him. "Thus Esau despised his birthright."
For remember how it came upon him : he sold the birth
right for a passing, sensual pleasure. The tale is told in
the Book of Genesis with all that extreme simplicity which
marks the earlier narrative of the world s youth and the
patriarchal dispensation. The characters of the two sons of
Isaac, as they ripened into manhood, differed broadly and
openly. Jacob was "a plain man, living in tents;" the in
heritor in disposition of the quiet, meditative, musing cha
racter which, as we see him in the few incidents recorded in
his life, is stamped so plainly upon the shepherd-prince,
his father Isaac. Esau has far more of the dash and activity
which catches with interest the natural eye. Leaving the
The Repentance of Esau. 5
charge of the flocks and herds of the upland pastures,
and with them the altar and the tent of Abraham, and the
company and the teaching of the great father of the faith
ful, now an " old man, and full of years/ he gives himself
up to the sport of the chase, and becomes a cunning hunter,
a man of the field. Coming in from one of these excursions,
hungry and faint, he lights upon his brother just as he has
prepared in the tent his vegetable meal, and, impetuous,
sensual, and unrestrained, under the urgency of the desire
of the food he sees and longs for, he scornfully barters, to
obtain it, the rights of the first-born. "Behold," he says, " I
am at the point to die : and what profit shall this birthright
do to me ?" The craving of desire, that is, was strong upon
him, and in comparison with its gratification, the future and
the spiritual seemed to him nothing worth. For there was
this twofold surrender. Though one part of the birthright
was a double portion of the father s inheritance, yet, plainly,
the higher part was a mere spiritual blessing. The promise
of the coming Messiah had, ever since the first sentence of
man s woe was spoken by his God, been the light of hope
by which his sky was brightened. To be the father of that
promised seed, in whom " all the families of the earth should
be " blessed," had been the greatest of all the promises which
God had given to Abraham. The inheritance of this specific
promise was the special blessing of the first-born ; and the
mysterious destiny which had hung round their father since
the promise was uttered, that in " Isaac shall thy seed be
called," was now to descend as the peculiar spiritual in
heritance through one of his children. This, doubtless,
it was that, in spite of all the faults of her character, Re-
bekah s faith apprehended as the special blessing of her
youngest son, and for this she taught him, as her favour
ite, most .rightly to long, but also to endeavour by far too
human an interference with the purposes of God, prema-
6 The Repentance of Esau.
turely to secure. This it was that Esau contemned
when he " despised his birthright ;" and it is this con
tempt which is fixed upon his character by the apostle s
words, that he was a "profane person;" one with no supreme
regard for unseen verities, but who for the sweetness of a
passing morsel of the food he longed for, was willing to barter
his spiritual inheritance : and so for the instant gratification
of an appetite, the mortification of which, his sensual fancy
painted to him as death, he sold the inheritance of Abraham
and the blessing of Isaac. Nor could the thought of God
Himself stay for the time the turbulent flood of his animal
desire, for he confirmed the bargain of his profanity by an
appeal to "the God of Abraham," and " the fear of Isaac :" for
Jacob said unto him, " Swear now unto me : and he sware ;"
and the God whose Name he thus profaned confirmed his
evil choice. The contempt was written down on high, and
the birthright had departed from him. So far as this was
concerned, his day of trial was over, his probation passed,
and his sentence irreversible. Nor, so far as we can see
in the sacred narrative, was there ever in his soul any true
contrition for his evil choice. There was, indeed which
is wholly another thing a passionate sorrow for its conse
quences ; there was " the loud and exceeding bitter cry :"
but even at that moment there is nothing which looks like
true repentance ; there is a craving for the benediction which
was to bring worldly prosperity and abundance, none for the
distinctive blessing which faith would have apprehended, as
connected with the promised. seed and the coming Messiah.
And so there is the supplication, " Hast thou but one blessing,
O my father ? Bless me, even me also, O my father."
Moreover, all his after life is of a piece with this. There
is the marriage of inclinations with the daughters of the
land, the taking to him whom he chose when the gust of
passion swept in that direction, without regard to its being
The Repentance of Esau. 7
" a. grief of heart to Isaac and Rebekah," without fear or
repugnance as to mingling the seed of Abraham with that of
the doomed children of Heth. And even in that brighter hour,
when God turns aside his wrath against his brother, and he
appears before us in the blessed majesty of forgiving might,
there is still the aspect of the same wild, passionate, untu
tored nature, yielding evermore to the passing breath of in
clination. For we find him first going out with hasty Arab
violence to gratify by lawless bloodshed his old grudge of
many years against his twin brother; and then, when stopped
from this by a direct prohibition from the Highest, suddenly
melted by the abjectness of that brother s submission, and
the sight of the unprotected weakness of the women and
their children, until he embraces him whom he had meant
to slay, and weeps, as the uncertainty of the varying tide of
his feelings lords it over him, in a paroxysm of tenderness
upon his neck.
Here, then, is the character, and these are the events, which
are taken by God the Holy Ghost for the especial warning
of us Christians. For this is their application : " Looking
diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any
root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thus many
be defiled ; lest there be amongst you any fornicator or pro
fane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his
birthright 8 ." And now what are our lessons from all this ?
To gather these perfectly, let us first see what certainly is NOT
taught us in them. Certainly, then, we are not to gather
hence that any true penitent can turn to God and be re
jected of Him. This were to contradict every page of God s
Word, every gracious promise of our Lord, every assurance
of His love, every most blessed truth taught us from His
cross. This were to stamp on the Epistle to the Hebrews
the brand of the dark Novatian heresy, and to strike it there-
Heb. xii.
8 The Repentance of Esau.
fore out of the canon of God s truth. No, brethren, there is
no such intimation here : and we must not, to fill up the
terrible picture of final reprobation, with its awful and most
necessary warnings, run the slightest risk of any one drawing
from this history so dangerous an error. Esau s rejection
was no such contradiction of God s love as the rejection of
any one weeping penitent upon earth would surely be. For,
first, as we have seen, there is about Esau s very cry itself,
loud and bitter as it was, no sign of true penitence ; and next,
when he uttered it, so far as that which he had then lost is
concerned, his day of probation was already over, his time of
trial closed, his hour of judgment come. There is, doubtless,
as we shall see hereafter, a true counterpart of this before
every impenitent man, with horrors aggravated above any
which waited upon Esau s sentence, as far as time is exceeded
by eternity, and temporal disadvantage by the death of the
enduring soul. But there is not one word in it to make any
one, who, in this his day of grace, turns to the Lord, and
cries to Him for cleansing and for pardon, doubt the full
certainty of a most gracious acceptance by Him who suf
fered the woman that was a sinner to wash His blessed feet
with her tears, and to wipe them with the hair of her
head.
This, then, certainly is not the lesson which is taught us
here : but just as certainly it is, that we, too, may cast away
God s mercy to us ; that we, the true children of promise,
bred in the family of one greater than Isaac that we, the
inheritors of a birthright greater far than Jacob sought for or
Esau despised that WE, the children of God s grace, may
reject His grace, and cast profanely from us our more blessed
birthright. Such awful cases the experience of every parish
priest has, I suppose, brought before him. I have seen them,
and have trembled. I have seen the fearful paroxysms of a
loud and violent despair. I have seen what is more awful
The Repentance of Esau. 9
still, the obstinate sinner calmly, deliberately, determinately
put from himself the hope of salvation, and declare that in
a few hours he shall be in hell. And so indeed it must
be. For if this were not so, what could the warning mean,
" Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of Christ."
Surely it must mean that the time of hopeless lamentation
will come to every obstinate despiser of God s grace ; that
His Spirit does not always strive with any man that there is
a limit to the trial of every man; that when that awful mo
ment reaches any man, whether it be at death, or whether it
be, as surely it may be, before, though when it does so is known
only to that God who seeth all things, even the secrets of the
hearts which He has made when His free Spirit has been
finally grieved, when He has withdrawn from us His long-
resisted strivings, that then repentance is impossible; that
then the heart is given over to its own wickedness, and that it
is therefore necessarily, and for ever, the prey of its own guilt.
Oh horrible thought, my beloved in Christ, that any one for
whom He died, any one who had a place in His Church,
perhaps a share in His blessed Sacraments, who has been
visited by His grace, upon whom the light of heaven has
once fallen, who has lived in the tent of His chosen ones,
and been borne upon the knee beside His Saints, that such
an one should be given up for ever to the full possession of
evil, and the evil one, with all that such a miserable casting
away implies. For what does not that one thought include ?
Moral and spiritual evil shews, even here upon earth, in
every one whom it has thoroughly possessed, as loathsome
and horrible. The grossness, the brutality, the malice, the
treachery, the falseness, the despair of such a soul, when,
from time to time, it reveals to-day the secrets of the black
abyss which is forming within it, make us absolutely shud
der with disgust and horror ; and yet the worst exhibition of
the worst soul on earth can be as nothing to one thoroughly
10 The Repentance of Esau.
and for ever possessed with and surrounded by unmixed and
unmitigated evil. For we cannot calculate the amount of re
straint exerted on the very worst here, both by the influences
of good around him, by the very marred image of God which
he yet retains, and by the last remaining breath of God s
Spirit, striving, though it may be for the very last time, within
him. The gloom of the obscurest sky is as nothing to the
blackness of that Egyptian night from which every ray of
light was so perfectly banished that it was " a darkness which
could be felt :" and what must be the raging horror, the foul
corruption, the deadly hate, the utter falsehood, the un
utterable loathsomeness, the black despair of that soul from
which every remaining restraint of grace is utterly removed ;
which is steeped in guilt, and which roams for ever in the
hell to which it has condemned itself, in an atmosphere of
perfect wickedness, with no companions save those who,
according to their terrible capacities, fill up each one in their
own spiritual nature the same accomplished measure of per
fected wickedness ! Can we not, as we gaze with awe upon
the fearful picture, see in some measure why this doom is
irreversible ? For must it not of necessity happen that the
very perfection of this miserable wickedness sets the seal of
hopeless continuance upon such spiritual wretchedness? For
such a spiritual being with such a nature must hate the good,
must, above all, hate supremely, God, the All-good ; must see
in Him the highest and most absolute conceivable contra
diction of itself, and so must recoil infinitely from Him, and
in recoiling from Him must choose the evil with an ever-re
newed iteration and ever-increased intensity of choice. Nor
does the perfection of the misery which such a soul endures at
all incline it to any breath of penitence ; it only deepens the
blackness and the malignity of its despair. There is nothing
in itself purifying in suffering. It is only, so to speak, by an
accident of our position here in a world of temptation, under
The Repentance of Esau. 11
the action of God s Spirit, that suffering benefits us, by
turning us from the evil or unworthy objects on which we
are disposed to set our affections, and so by leaving the heart
empty and bare, that the winning influences of God s grace
may enter into it and turn us to Him.
But mere anguish, as a contradiction of the nature God
has given us, is not an elevating, but a deteriorating influence,
and of itself tends to destruction. It naturally stirs up re
sistance; and when that resistance is joined to hopelessness,
to despair; and through despair to hatred, and the blackest
malignity : to hatred to others ; to the wretched round the
lost soul, who remind him of, stir up, and aggravate his own
wretchedness ; to those who are free from his misery, because
they remind him of the lower measures of peace he once
tasted, and of which he, as they do now, might have come to
know and enjoy the full perfection, but have lost it for ever;
and so, through hating the good, the tormented soul passes
on to hate supremely the God who gave it being, who would
have won it to happiness, who loved it, who gave His dear
Son to die for it, who wrought in it, in its day of grace and
trial, of His great love, by His good Spirit, who would have
been its portion, but whom it rejected to make itself the lost,
miserable, hateful, hating devil it has become. And as such
a spirit hates all around it, so too does it come to hate itself;
seeing even distinctly its own hatefulness, and yet not wishing
to be other than it is ; because, hating itself, it hates goodness
more, and gnawing its own tongue in its misery, it yet curses
God with a deeper curse than it curses its own miserable
self. Here is the agony of an "exceeding loud and bitter cry,"
of which the extremest anguish, which found its utterance in
Esau s lamentation, was but the faint forecast and evanescent
shadow. For here is the howling curse of a spirit framed to
comprehend and possess God, which has cast away its birth
right of eternal life, and knows that it has done so. Surely,
12 The Repentance of Esau.
in the sight of this extremest night of suffering, we can
understand something of the energy of this warning which
the Holy Ghost has dictated to us, "Looking diligently,
lest any man fail of the grace of God b ."
But if we would learn one true lesson from this portion of
God s "Word, we must not only note the general warning of
looking diligently lest we fall from God s grace, but we must
see further against what special forms of evil this warning is
peculiarly directed. And indeed, for many here, as every
where, this is a lesson needing very signally to be learned.
For remember what we have already seen to have been Esau s
circumstances and Esau s trial. Born to the inheritance of
a certain birthright, exercising, as to his first title to it, no
volition regarding it; having centred in his own person the
mysterious privileges which ordinarily belonged to the first
born son of the heir of promise, he cast these away ; not
from special or marked depravity of character, but from
yielding to the temptations of appetite ; not, probably, at the
moment, seeing the full amount of what he did, having but
an indistinct perception of the faint murmur of some future
loss, to which the nearness, the loudness, and the importunity
of a present strong desire sufficed wholly to deafen his ear.
This one special attribute of sensuality is clearly shadowed
forth in this example : we see its direct tendency to lead to
delaying repentance until true repentance is impossible. For
its gratifications fill for a season, and occupy the degraded
soul. Thus the first drawings of the blessed Spirit are re
sisted, His first tender motions on the soul are quenched ; and
it is in yielding to these, instead of resisting them, that there
is the only possibility of any true repentance. So it was with
Esau, when, under the overmastering impulse of a sensual
temptation, he was led to cast all good away, for " thus Esau
despised his birthright."
k Heb. xii. 15.
The Repentance of Esau. 13
And now listen once more to the application of this warn
ing made to us by God the Holy Ghost : " Looking diligently
lest any man fail of the grace of God ; lest any root of bitter
ness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled ;
lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who
for one morsel of meat sold his birthright/
Surely the application is too explicit to be missed. Is not
the warning plain against exactly that whole class of sins
of the real guilt of which the world takes least account ? Is
it not as much as saying that indulged sensuality does build
up barriers against true repentance, which are all but im
passable ? Does it not meet the man possessed, by natural
endowment, of high spirits, of frankness, of cheerfulness, of
all that makes him a popular companion, with strong pas
sions, with great powers of enjoyment, who flings himself
freely into life, is the leader of a set, and, from there being
a certain look of generosity about his vices, is lauded perhaps
for his unselfishness ; who has naturally a far more attractive
character than the less courageous, less spirited, less frank,
more self-conscious, more self- watchful man beside him?
does it not meet this man in his hours of sensual temp
tation, and say, Thou hast a birthright, beware of despising
it, beware of bartering it ? Does it not say to him, " Thou,
too, art a son of Abraham j" yea, and more, " Thou art
a son of Christ :" without thy choice, before thy know
ledge, of God s mere love and mercy, that blessed privi
lege was made thine. His love yearned over thine infancy,
His Spirit has striven with thy youth, His care is watching
over thee now, and thou, too, art tempted to barter these
inestimable blessings for the mess of pottage. In thee, too,
appetite craves for indulgence ; before thine eyes a sensuous
fancy paints her glowing pictures of the mad delight of grati
fied desire, of the feast, of the revel, of the impure orgy, of
the satisfied sense. All these she sets before thee, and thy
14 The Repentance of Esau.
spirit, faint often and weary in this struggle, whispers to
thee, Lo, I die in this abstinence ; and what good shall this
birthright do me ? Oh then beware, for then is the tempter
nearest, closest, most dangerous. Then, under the form of
what he whispers to thee, is a common practice, a slight evil,
the yielding to an irresistible temptation ; then is he tempting
thee, too, after this example of the old profaneness of Esau,
to despise thy birthright. For so, indeed, it is. That birth
right is the indwelling in thee, for Christ s sake, into whom
thou hast been baptised, of God the Holy Ghost. Thy birth
right is God s presence with thee, His restraints, His sug
gestions, His divine power working within thee for thy puri
fication and renewal. It is the power which thou mayest daily
win of Him, of walking with Christ here on earth. It is
the certainty of being His for ever. It is the assurance
that He will never leave thee nor forsake thee. It is the
being kept from that hour which is coming upon all the
evil world. It is the having His work of love perfected
within thee, in the brightening hope, the growing purity,
the increasing calm, the ripening graces of a soul which
He is fitting for His heavenly presence. It is the gift
of perseverance, the might of faith, the fire of love. It is
joy in death and rapture in eternity. It is the sight, even
here, through clouds and mists, of that face of His which,
even through clouds and mists, is a more blessed sight than
any which the world can offer thee. It is the full sight of
that face of love, the full knowledge, and enjoyment, and
possession of that love of His which passeth knowledge in
the unveiled presence of thy Lord throughout eternity. This
is thy birthright, and it is this that in very deed thou, too, art
tempted to barter for the miserable morsel of a satisfied ap
petite. For so it is : every separate act of allowed sensuality
clogs thy soul, grieves the Holy Spirit of God, withdraws
thee from Christ, fetters thee to the earth, is a rending
The Repentance of Esau. 15
backward thy redemption; is making thee less a child of
grace, more a child of earth. It is specially hindering thee
in the great work of repentance ; it is leading thee to defer
it ; cheating thee with the promise of present indulgence,
and some future change ; and so persuading thee to put off
repenting till repentance is impossible.
Nor can you tell that in any one of these allowed instances
of sensual indulgence you may not actually sell your birth
right. It is the very secret of the power of the temptation,
that in each separate instance it looks so inconsiderable in
its future consequences, compared with the pressing urgency
of the present desire. It is the gusty impulsiveness of your
nature which exposes you so certainly to the danger. You
become profane without knowing it; you meant but to
gratify appetite, and lo, for appetite you have bartered your
soul. Here, then, is God s warning to you. He sets, from
the beginning, the end before you. He shews you what such
conduct really is, and whither it must lead you. He lets you
hear the loud and bitter cry He reminds you that when
his day of grace was past, he who had profanely sold his
birthright found no place for repentance, though when it
was too late he sought it carefully with tears and He re
minds you wherein is your safety ; it is in looking diligently
not in a passing desire to be better than you are, not in an
indolent, unreal wish to be holy, but in looking diligently.
And what must this imply ? Surely, first, guarding against
the occasions, the provocatives, and the presence of tempta
tion. Who but a madman will scatter sparks within that
magazine, where the lighting down of a single spark may be
death to all around ? And yet do not those who know how
easily the fierceness of appetite is awoke within them, con
tinually allow themselves to read books, and gaze on sights,
and indulge thoughts which tend directly to kindle all into
a destructive explosion. Here, then, must be the beginning
16 The Repentance of Esau.
of diligence. And then, further, will not he who looks dili
gently lest he fail of God s grace, not only keep thus habitually
afar from temptation, but will he not also examine himself
often as to what is indeed the condition of his soul before
his God ? Will he not at such a time as this bring specially
under review the whole course of his life, his habitual in
dulgences, lest haply in any he has unawares given to rebel
lious appetite too loose a rein ? Will he not at such time
anxiously find modes for gaining, by strict self-denial, a firmer
hand, and putting a yoke of more regular observation upon
his own desires? Above all, will he not seek by more earnest
prayer for grace, and increased communion with Christ, the
growing purification of his soul?
My brethren, let these words of warning ring at this season
in our ear, lest any man fail of the grace of God. All our
salvation is of His grace, all conquest of sin is His work
within us ; all good within us is of His great love is in spite
of our resistance ; and yet it is true, also, that His grace will
not save us unless we yield ourselves to it, unless we work
with it, aye, and that diligently ; " to our own security, our
own fidelity is needful." It is God who keeps us; but He
keeps us by giving us diligence, not by upholding us without
it. Oh let us look diligently, lest any of us fail of His mighty
grace. Yea, and if in time past we have not kept watch
against sin, if we have let indolence, or sloth, or sensuality
triumph over us and threaten our destruction, only the more
earnestly let us seek for cleansing in His blood, and renewal
by His grace ; and then, as men in very deed flying for our
lives, let us arise and run the race still set by Him, and it
may be for the last time, before us, lest in the mighty coming
day of judgment, when repentance has become to us im
possible, it be written over us to our eternal condemnation,
as over the sensual son of Isaac, "Thus Esau despised his
birthright."
SERMON VI.
THE REPENTANCE OF JUDAS.
"WALTER KEKR, LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY.
A SEEM ON,
fyc.
St. MATTHEW xi. 28.
" Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest."
WE are this day, my brethren, keeping the festival of one
of whom we know thus much :
St. Matthias had companied with the apostles all the time
that the Lord Jesus had gone in and out among them, and
when Judas had, by transgression, fallen from the ministry
and apostleship, he was specially marked out by God to be
numbered amongst the eleven apostles, and was consequently
ordained to be with them a witness of our Lord s resurrection.
This is indeed a very scanty record of one who is set before
us in such very distinct relief in this most eventful crisis of
the work committed by our Saviour to His Church, and
we seem by the very strangeness of this circumstance to be
carried at once to that general truth which St. Matthias case
illustrates, namely, that oftentimes, or perhaps I might say
generally, God in His Providence places a veil either over
the whole life, or over that portion of it which would be most
interesting to us, of those who have been, as His instruments,
our greatest benefactors.
But I cannot stay to dwell even for a moment on this
reflection to-day. Other thoughts are now filling my heart,
and I would fain endeavour to communicate these to you,
B
4 The Repentance of Judas.
and through them draw your hearts into sympathy with
mine.
The Church of God having selected for the Gospel of this
day that portion of Holy Scripture which contains the words
of my text, seems to have been able to tell us for certain one
more thing about this blessed Saint, and this is, that the bur
den of the new Apostle s teaching was an invitation to come
to Jesus, and a promise that all who came and took the yoke
of Jesus upon them should find rest.
The invitation and promise had been given by Jesus Him
self, and the Apostle, who represented His Lord, and spoke
in His Name, and ministered by His power, carried that all-
gracious invitation and promise to all his hearers ; and when
doing so, must have found in his own special circumstances
that which made his witness the more emphatic and earnest,
and which strengthened his purpose to tell out his message
with all the power of persuasion, and which kindled every
affection of his heart, both with the holy fire of love for his
Saviour, and with pity and compassion for those who were
labouring and heavy laden.
When St. Matthias invited men to come to Jesus, and
promised those who would accept the invitation rest in Jesus,
the figure of that man who, after hanging himself, had fallen
headlong and burst asunder in the midst, and whose bishop
ric St. Matthias had taken, must have risen up before him,
and have supplied him a fresh plea wherewith to persuade his
hearers not to turn aside God s purposes of mercy towards
them. St. Matthias could appeal not only to the misery of
that state in which they were, and to the still greater misery
of that state in which they would be if they came not to
Jesus, and to the blessedness of those who sought to lay
down their burden at the foot of the Cross, and to the future
glory of those who, having found rest in Jesus here, departed
this life in peace and hope, but he could also enforce the
The Repentance of Judas. 5
fear of such misery, and stimulate the desire for these riches
of Christ, by setting before them the example of Judas, and
so gathering words of warning from the sin of Judas, and
the despair of Judas, and the end of Judas, his going to
his own place. " My apostleship," St. Matthias might have
said to his hearers, " carries me up to the scene of my pre
decessor s death, and I would carry you there with me, that
by the sight of the terrors of his end you may learn to accept
that invitation which he rejected."
But I may seem to be speaking as if St. Matthias was no
longer pleading with men to come to Jesus, whereas it is the
very purpose of the appointment of this festival, that though
this Apostle is dead, he should yet, by the record given of
him, speak even to us of this generation : and this purpose
of our Church I would this evening endeavour to carry out.
I would use the despair and death of Judas as a means of
persuading you all, my brethren, to come to Christ, to draw
nigh to Him, however great your present distance may be
from Him, and to draw nigher and nigher to Him, if your
communion with Him has already, by God s great goodness,
become close and enduring. My object is to convince you
that whatever be your labour, whatever be the load which is
oppressing you, you may find rest in your crucified Saviour ;
or rather, not so much to convince you of what you may do
as to stir up your souls to come at once, this very Lent,
this very night, and to seek and receive without delay the
gifts which Jesus offers to you.
There may be some very desperately wicked persons in this
present congregation ; indeed, I trust there are such, because
I am sure that though they may not be within this church,
there are many such not far off without it ; and I would have
such as these hear me place in the very front of my address
the assurance that the terms of the invitation are wide
enough to include their case, and that the grace promised
2
6 The Repentance of Judas.
is of power enough to remedy their condition. Judas did
not stay away from Jesus because he was not invited to come
to Him ; he was not crushed by his burden because Jesus
did not offer to bear it for him. No : Judas had a part and
lot in his Lord s invitation ; and had he accepted it, he might,
maybe, have retained his apostleship, and most surely would
he have found peace in believing. And having said this, I
need not add another word to bear my witness to you all
that I believe no exception is made of any case. Judas case
was not one of exclusion, but of refusal. Though invited,
he did not come : he despaired, and through his despair for
feited all portion in the mercies of his God " Judam per-
ditorern non tarn scelus quod commisit, quam indulgentiae
desperatio fecit penitus interire 8 ."
In acting upon the conviction that God s mercies in Christ
were not for such as he was, he shewed that he had no power
of receiving the witness that the love and mercy of God
knew no limits. He set his own sense of his sin against the
truth of Him who had invited all to come to Him, without
exception. He was prevented by the folly of his own wicked
heart from giving the right answer to the merciful challenge
of his God, " Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked
should die?"
Judas seemed, indeed, to have in his spiritual state one
element of repentance he was full of sorrow; but that sor
row had in it no faith, no hope, no love for Him whom he
had betrayed ; and so, though he was able to lift up the veil
which had hitherto concealed his guilt from the eye of his
soul, he was unable to draw aside the thick curtain which
entirely obscured his Almighty Saviour s gentleness, and
long-suffering and tender mercies. The only powler he stilj
possessed was that of adding sin to sin. Having betrayed
innocent blood, he was able also to deny the virtue of it.
L. Justiniani, p. 38, 2, 70.
The Repentance of Judas. 7
The betrayer of his Master filled up the measure of his ini
quity by the worst of all sins, desperation.
Nor did this malignant sin fail to shew its nature : the
desperation of Judas led him to destroy himself.
And here I must remark, that though the fearful issue of
this sin in suicide is, thanks be to our merciful God, a very
exceptional one, and has even tended to make people con
clude that the offence of Judas his despairing, namely, of
pardon is, like that dreadful act in which it issued, of rare
occurrence ; the truth is, that such loss of faith, and hope
and love such despair is far from being uncommon, and
that so the subject of Judas offence is one which has a
very wide-spread interest and application. All who complain
that when the words of eternal mercy reach them, " Come
unto Me, and I will give you rest," they have no eyes to
discern the lovely features of the Speaker, and no ears to
recognise in His voice the voice of the Son of Mary, (and
is not this the more or less frequent complaint of most of
us ?) know what it is to fear for themselves the state of
Judas, and must feel that any true statement of the causes
and remedies of despair is an answer to questions which they
have themselves often raised.
It is such an answer that I would now give you, my
brethren, in the hope that you may be helped by such teach
ing to be partakers in all the fulness of the grace which is in
Christ Jesus, and that by the comfort, and the peace, and the
joy which you shall thus receive from Him, you may learn
to master any temptations to despair by the exercise of
greater love for Him, your Lord and Saviour.
The question is, how comes it that, in spite of the revela
tions which God has made of His readiness to welcome back
the sinner, and to blot out his transgression, any man can
persuade himself that his case is not within the scope of such
revelations ? In answer to this question, I would say that
8 The Repentance of Judas.
there are many causes which would either singly, or in com
bination with one another, produce such a result. For ex
ample, here is a man who, through moral depravity or
habits of godless indifference, has become utterly alienated
from all communion with God. There is at present no
affinity between his soul and his God. He does not possess
either any ear so fashioned as to hear God s words of mercy,
or any eye so endued with power of vision as to discern his
Saviour, or any hand qualified to reach forth to receive God s
gifts. All power of communion and intercourse between this
sinner and the Saviour is cut off, and so he can but draw one
conclusion in the hour of his need, and that is, that he has
no part or lot in the matter.
He has lost the gift of faith, and so all God s words and
deeds of mercy are to him as if they were not. It is to faith
that God discovers Himself, and that he has not.
But there are many other causes which lead to the same
end, though by a less direct course ; there are many other
states of our moral and spiritual condition, very short of this
utter alienation from God, which unfit a man for the vision
of a God of love and mercy.
But as it is quite impossible for me to give in one sermon
any account of all these causes of despair, I will briefly de
scribe to you a few of them, and will take those first which
the history of Judas seems specially to point out.
Judas, when he came to think of his sin, and to measure
its guilt, must have heard a stern accuser pleading against
him at the bar of his conscience " You did not commit this
act of wickedness without warning."
Those words of his Lord and Master, " Have not I chosen
you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" must have started up
in his soul. And the expression of unquestioning certainty
which marked the countenance of Jesus as He thus revealed
to Judas the secret wickedness of his heart, and which
The Repentance of Judas. 9
should have turned him away in terror from the course on
which he was treading, must, when he repented himself,
have risen up before him, to aggravate and intensify the
sense of the enormity of his guilt, and so to bring him to
despair.
By a law of most righteous retribution, warnings which are
given in mercy become, if neglected, instruments of punish
ment. And so, my brethren, if your conscience ever reproves
you, or if the Word of God, however addressed to you,
" pierces to the dividing asunder of your soul and spirit," or
if God in His providence deals with you by way either of
correction or encouragement, beware, I beseech you, of not
learning those lessons of heavenly wisdom ; for if you do thus
neglect such teaching, then, at that hour at any rate, (if not
before), when the summons from your God reaches you,
" Thy soul is required of thee," the remembrance of all such
gracious communion of your God with your soul, will only
increase the difficulty of believing that there is still mercy
for one who has so oftentimes thought scorn of the offer
of it. You will despair because God has warned you, and
you have slighted His warnings.
And supposing that these warnings have made very special
appeals to your heart ; supposing that they have been clothed
with circumstances which could not but awaken every dor
mant emotion of the inner man ; and that when your heart
has been thus stirred within you, and has been agitated with
hopes, and fears, with the energisings of faith, and the pur
poses of love, you allowed this precious season of excitement
of holy feeling to pass away, and to give place again to the
dull calm of an unimpassioned, unawakened, insensible con
science, it is easy to conclude, even on moral grounds, and
independently of all questions of the judgment of your hea
venly Father, whom you have so slighted, that the heart, the
emotions of which have been thus disregarded, will answer
10 The Repentance of Judas.
less readily to all future appeals, and will yield itself more
reluctantly to any future drawings of God s grace and provi
dence, and will be more likely to resist the quickening and
genial influences of any rays of the Sun of Righteousness
which may in mercy reach it.
Thus the forbearing conduct of our blessed Lord to Judas,
after Judas had learnt from his Master s fearful words, " One
of you is a devil," that Jesus knew what evil thoughts were
taking hold of his heart, must have awakened in the breast of
Judas on each occasion when our Lord thus dealt so con
siderately and tenderly with him, some feelings of admiration
and love for his Lord and his God.
So, too, when, after washing the feet of the rest of His dis
ciples, our Lord said in the hearing of Judas, " ye are clean,
but not all," and then drew nigh to Judas, and washed and
wiped his feet, it is not possible to believe that a question
was not all the while claiming from Judas heart an answer,
" How shall I do this wickedness ?"
And though he silenced the questioner at that moment, it
was only to give him a still more favourable opportunity for
repeating his question, when Jesus prophesied in the deep
sorrows of His heart, " He that eateth bread with Me hath
lifted up his heel against Me. Yerily, verily, I say unto you,
that one of you shall betray Me !" Yea, and the appeal for
an answer was not only thus made to every remains of love
and pity which might still be in the heart of Judas, but
also to his fears ; for our Lord, in the same spirit of meek
forbearance, desiring to warn him against persevering in his
fearful course, and so hardening his heart against all the re
monstrances made to it, said in his hearing, " Woe to that
man, by whom the Son of Man is betrayed ; good were it for
that man if he had never been born/
We may find, then, a sufficient solution of the problem,
why Judas despaired, instead of seeking rest in Jesus from
T)te Repentance of Judas. 1 1
the labour and anguish of his soul, by placing in the balance
against his Lord s all-gracious promise the exceeding weight
of those bitter thoughts which gathered their power from all
that scorn with which he had time after time treated the
exquisite forbearance of Jesus, and from all those stubborn
efforts he had successfully made to resist the repeated appeals
which Jesus had made both to his love and his fears.
But, "my brethren, such a hardening of heart as the no
tices in Holy Scripture of Judas set before us, may not seem
so strange when I have stated to you the whole case thus re
vealed to us.
If you would have a correct view of the position of man as
a moral agent in this world, you must, however fearful may be
the vision, place close to the man a person a spiritual being
one of whose existence, power, and constant interference
the Holy Scriptures plainly speak. The being thus standing
at man s right hand is that tempter of our first mother and
the second Adam, Satan.
When thus standing by Judas, he put it into Judas heart
to betray our Lord, and then afterwards he " entered into
him/ took full possession of him, and by his indwelling put
a constraint on all his heart s affections and fears, and nerved
him to execute his wicked purpose, and then persuaded him to
add sin to sin, the blackest sin of all, the sin of desperation,
to the guilt of having been the betrayer of innocent blood.
But if such is the record of the part which Satan had
in the wickedness of Judas, remember, I beseech you, my
brethren, that this record is written for your learning.
Judas, when Satan, as he stood at his right hand, put evil
thoughts into his heart, warned us of what is our own posi
tion of peril. Judas, when Satan entered into him, and
when the words of Jesus were thus accomplished in him,
" One of you is a devil/ warned us of what even a child
of God may become. Satan is ever about us, in all our
12 The Repentance of Judas.
duties, and in all our interests, and in our whole conversa
tion. We are not cut off from his presence and influence,
even in the house of prayer, or even when we kneel before
the holy Table, and are there in closest communion with the
functions of our High-Priest in heaven. I, for one, know-
not and you would all, I am sure, adopt my confession
whether I, this very night, since I entered this house of God,
have escaped the influence of that poisonous breath of death,
with which Satan destroys the springs of faith, and hope,
and love.
But as we make the confession, we are cheered with the
counsel and promise, " Resist the devil, and he will flee from
you ;" yea, we seem to be carried by the Spirit of our God
into the wilderness, to be schooled by our holy Lord how to
fight as He did, and to master that strong one, Satan. "We
are assured that, though Satan be ever " seeking whom he
may destroy," we may, if " sober and vigilant/ escape the
power of our adversary.
And are you, my brethren, watchful, are you keeping
your bodies in subjection, that you may watch the better?
are you with a sober, well-regulated spirit, watching not only
against Satan, but watching, observing, examining your own
minds and hearts ?
The soldier in this world s warfare, who is well on his
guard against his enemies, not only keeps his eyes on their
approaches, but on his own defences; and so it must be
with the soldier of the Cross.
You who are enlisted under the banners of Jesus must, if
you would receive from Him, the Captain of your Salvation,
the crown of victory, gain a true and accurate knowledge of
your fitness for such warfare. Without such a knowledge of
your spiritual state and condition, you cannot parry the as
saults of the tempter; without it, the means of grace will
not be channels to your souls of your Lord s manifold gifts.
The Repentance of Judas. 13
Or rather, for such language as this does not adequately
represent the necessity of such discipline, those means
which should be so helpful to you, will, if thus abused,
only increase your want of power to escape from the evil
one, and will make your weakness and inability to resist
him the greater.
Judas again says to you, Take in due season, ere it be too
late, warning from me. The Spirit witnesses to you of me,
that " after I took the sop, Satan entered into me."
These are indeed, my brethren, pregnant words, and I
earnestly press upon you all to endeavour to draw out from
them the abundant fulness of their meaning. Remember
that this teaching of Judas refers specially to the blessed
Sacrament of His Body and Blood whom he betrayed.
Quicken also all your attempts at self-examination, and your
practising such other spiritual exercises as may help you to
be meet guests at the holy Table, by well weighing those
words of godly caution with which your Church, with special
^reference to this act of Judas, fences off her great ordin
ance from all profaners, "lest, after the taking of that
holy Sacrament, the devil enter into you, as he entered into
Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to de
struction both of body and soul." There is not, I believe, a
surer road to despair than a careless profaning of the great
mystery of the Sacrament of our Lord s Body and Blood.
And here I would further remind you, that the indulgence
in any one sin may bring you to the profane state of Judas.
If in your self-examination and confession you pass by any
single sin, and so do not try to root it out, that sin will
spread itself over the whole of your spiritual being, and
alienate it altogether from your God. It was, in the case of
Judas, the sin of covetousness, and there is no sin of a more
malignant power than this one : but the indulgence of any
other sin may have the same effect ; it will prepare, as it
14 The Repentance of Judas.
were, a welcome in your heart for Satan ; it will enable its
guilty owner to take the sop, and at the same moment to
cherish the purpose of betraying Him who Himself minis
ters this His greatest gift to His disciples ; and it may do
all this without the cognisance of any eye but that of the
all- seeing God.
The companions of Judas did not discover that there
was a deadly disease eating out his powers of spiritual life.
He certainly professed great regard for those who were, he
knew, dearest to the heart of Jesus, namely, the poor ; and
the loving token which he chose for distinguishing the per
son of his Master when he betrayed Him, almost forces us
to believe that his bearing towards his Master was very like,
in its outward aspect, that of the disciple whom Jesus loved.
I do not for a moment think, my brethren, that hypocrisy
is at all a characteristic sin of this place. In a sense, indeed,
we are all guilty of it, for we all profess more than we do ;
but I am not now speaking of a sin of infirmity, but of
a wilful, habitual sin ; and from this sin the manly, sincere,
open character of Englishmen revolts. And this character,
which is such a safeguard to us, is strengthened and de
veloped by our institutions; and, to speak of this place,
by the great liberty enjoyed by the younger members of it;
and by the sense of responsibility thereby fostered in them.
But still be very careful, I entreat you, that you do not
cherish its very smallest beginnings; and nothing will more
assist you in thus stamping out the first spark of this deadly
fire, than to be very unreserved and open with your tutors.
If they do not all stand to you in the same relation as the
parish priest does to his parishioners, yet many, nay, most
of them, do so, and open relations of confidence with all of
them are good and profitable, and the special aid which
some of them cannot give you, you will, I am sure, easily
obtain (if you seek it) from others in the same college.
The Repentance of Judas. 15
Had Judas exposed the sore and festering wounds to his
Lord and Master, he would (why should we doubt it ?) have
been saved from the betrayal of our Lord, and so from that
crime of despair in which his betrayal of our Lord ended ;
and it is still the agonising cry of many, and many who
have no ears in the hour of death to receive the message of
eternal mercy, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," that it is their
past hypocrisy, and their concealment of their sins, that has
thus deprived them of their hearing.
There is only one other point in which I would have Judas
speak to all of you words of warning against the peril and
sin of despair.
I think it is very probable that Judas fully believed that
our blessed Lord would, after His betrayal, deliver Himself
out of the hands of His enemies, and that so his own evil
deed would not work out the malicious designs of the
Scribes and Pharisees.
Now, if this be so, what is the lesson Judas here teaches
us? The following is one, at any rate, of the shapes in
which this lesson might be addressed to us.
Never stifle the sense of moral responsibility, never sub
stitute for obedience to its plain laws any vague, presump
tuous thought about God s power and will.
Man s responsibility and God s decrees are two classes of
truths which extend themselves in parallel lines. They will
never clash, never disturb one another s course, if you are
content to place yourselves with unquestioning faith on both
these lines ; but the moment you try to make them converge
to one another, or to limit the action of the one by the
other, you will be forced to blot out of God s most holy
Word many of its clearest revelations.
You will, for example, cramp the energies of your love for
the brethren by hard questions about their state as written
in God s decrees ; or, on the other hand, in your works of
16 The Repentance of Judas.
love, in your strivings to serve God, and to do His will, you
will lack that mighty support which St. Paul drew for the
Romans from the truth of God s eternal predestination, and
which confessors and martyrs have found to give them nerve
and consolation both in the prospect and the endurance
of their tortures.
It is sometimes well to look steadily at an extreme abuse
of a true principle, that we may be deterred by the gross-
ness of the caricature from tampering in any way with a
principle of truth, and so I will give you an example of
such abuse.
I read the other day, in a recently published Lecture, that
in the Albigensian crusade, at the storming of a town, where
the number of the slain is set down at fifty thousand, the
command was issued, " Slay them all : God will know His
own." Every one would at once admit that this was a fear
fully presumptuous way of setting aside a clear claim of mercy
by an unwarrantable appeal to God s will and power. But,
my brethren, you yourselves will be often tempted to simi
lar, though, may be, to far less gross violations of the rules
by which God would guide your conduct. If this were not
so, why, when God speaks to the point so plainly in the
Bible, are there any difficulties about man s responsibility
and God s decrees, about sacramental grace, and the power
and sovereignty of God ? Only let us receive God s revela
tions as His, as expressions of an infinite mind to our poor
weak finite understandings ; let us strive to come to Him as
little children, and then we shall avoid all those perplexities
and entanglements of hard questions which so often end iu
weakness of faith, and sometimes, we know, in sheer despair.
There are many more causes of this sad condition, which
I should gladly set before you, but time will not allow me to
go beyond those that seem to me specially connected with
Judas. Were there not this hindrance, I should have en-
The Repentance of Judas. 17
deavoured to connect this state of mind with many infirmi
ties which beset us all ; such, for example, as spiritual dry-
ness, a want of the gushings forth of a feeling and contrite
heart a morbid sense of shortcomings the habit of looking
too much to our own state, and not enough to the work of
our blessed Lord, whether to that part of it which He per
fected on the cross, or to that part which He is carrying
on in heaven some physical weakness and natural gloomi
ness of character, and the pressure of outward trials and
temptations on this enfeebled and low state of the spiritual
condition and physical constitution. These are all circum
stances which require the advice of a good physician of souls,
to prevent their drawing us on to the slough of despond, to
the conviction that when Jesus said, " Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy -laden, and I will give you rest,"
our labours and our burdens were not included, and that
His gift of rest is reserved for other necessities than ours.
And have not these physicians of souls many and many
arguments with which to meet the difficulty, and to set aside
the above conclusion?
Why, the very conduct of any good and merciful man may
be appealed to as a sure token that such a conclusion is not
right. The prodigal son, if he returns home to his father,
has good hope of pardon : and why ? because his father has
still in his nature the remnants of that likeness in which man
was first created; yea, and is, as a Christian father, being
renewed in that very likeness : and so, when this father for
gives his son, his act of forgiveness, as it were, says for him,
I am merciful, because God is merciful.
If this argument is only fairly set forth and pressed upon
a sinner s soul, I believe that there is in it enough to rekin
dle even the last embers of his expiring faith. But should
it fail, there is still left the whole storehouse of God s holy
Word, which contains revelation upon revelation of God s
18 The Repentance of Jntbts.
willingness to pardon, and of the great difficulty that our
God has in giving up any of His people. Even when He
seems to be on the very point of pouring out the vials of His
wrath, His repentings, we are told, are kindled together
He will not make Ephrairn like Admah He will not exe
cute the fierceness of His anger. And why? because " He
is God, and not man."
Or does the thought of the decrees of God harass a be
liever s soul, and make him well-nigh despair ? No revelation
of God s sovereign will can blank the revelation of the over
flowings of His heart of most tender mercy and love for
sinners. God reveals Himself in sundry ways and in divers
manners to meet the several conditions of those whom His
revelations reach, and there is often a marked purpose of
mercy in the very juxtaposition ef these different portions
of truth. Thus the words of my text, and their unlimited
invitation to all sinners, follow immediately after the state
ment which our blessed Lord made of His sovereign will
and power. " Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him."
Another remedy for despair may be found in God s past
dealings with us. The recollection of all these may indeed,
and often does, aggravate the sense that all is lost, and that
there is no longer any ground of hope. But the object of a
wise physician of souls will be to lead his patient to any clear
view of God as a God of mercy, which He may have vouch
safed to him in His past dealings with him. If my spiritual
guide can thus enable me to trace in my past life tokens of
the love of my Saviour for me ; if I can observe, under his
direction, such marks of the loving forbearance of my Lord
as even Judas might have seen ; if I can but trace upon the
countenance of Jesus that same trouble and distress with
which Judas might have seen that his Lord contemplated
his sin and death, I think I shall be within the reach of some
The Repentance of Judas. 19
further discovery of purposes of mercy for me ; I shall feel in
my heart a godly motion, which will soon, I believe, bring
me on my knees before the throne of grace, and will express
itself in words of humility and faith " Father, I have sinned
before heaven and in Thy sight, and am no more worthy to
be called Thy son."
And then will not the thought of these means which have
been used to restore me to faith and hope, of these ministra
tions of the Church of God to my soul, of this aid which I
have, by God s grace, received from a brother-man, also help
me to recognise the mercy of my God in His present dealings
with me, and to see in them sure tokens that He has not
cast me away utterly ?
Of course there is another side to all this. It is as possi
ble to indulge in false hopes as to give way to despair " Et
spes, et desperatio timenda in peccatis b ," but I shall not say
anything about such presumptuous, ungrounded confidence.
My object to-day is to warn you against falling into the last
grievous sin of Judas ; and not only to point out to you the
causes of such sin, but also some of the remedies provided
against it by our all-merciful God.
And at any rate, there are two things which it is quite safe
to say, and which cannot foster these false hopes to which I
have just alluded. The one is a direction to a place of sure
refuge ; the other regards the test and evidence of your hav
ing reached it. " Toties confugiat peccator sub crucis Christi
umbraculum, quoties desperationis jaculo se cognoscit trans -
fixum c ." Whenever, my brethren, you are being tempted,
from whatever cause it may be, to despair of your salvation,
fly to the cross of Jesus. Keep, when there, your eyes fixed
on that outward sign of your Lord s passion for you. Force
upon the eye of your soul a vision of your Saviour s suffer
ings whilst He is hanging before you on that cross, and then,
b Aug., t. iv. 1617. E. c L. Just., p. 82, 2, 73.
20 The Repentance of Judas.
if you feel your heart, when you are standing there, softened
with any feelings of love for Jesus, if but one single tear do
but moisten that ground which is already wet with the blood
and water which flowed from your Saviour s side, the triumph
of despair is well-nigh past : God is merciful, and you have
received grace to know it, and in thus loving Him for it, to
receive the witness in yourself that you may rejoice in His
salvation. " Quisquis divinam propitiam cupit habere muni-
ficentiam, ad ipsam accedat credendo, et de ipsa prsesumat
amando. Nam plenius amore quam timore capitur, et potius
devotione quam mserore mulceturV
Love is, indeed, the sure token that you have cut your
selves off from the company of Judas ; and as you learn more
of Christ, as you take with a more ready and glad mind His
yoke upon you, you will love Him still more and more, and
will realise in your close communion with Him that blessed
state to which this holy season is set apart to lead you a
state of rest and peace a Sabbath from the gnawings of
conscience, and the aches of a burdened heart, and the
fears of such an end of your discipleship as the despair of
Judas.
d L. Just, p. 91,2,1.
SERMON VII.
THE REPENTANCE OF JUDAS.
BY
CHARLES A. HETJRTLEY, D.D.,
MABGAEET PBOFESSOB OF DIVINITY, AND CANON OF CHBIST CHtTRCH.
A SEEMON,
ST. MATT, xxvii. 3 5.
" Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was
condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces
of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in
that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, "What
is that to us ? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces
of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged
himself."
WHAT an appalling instance have we here of the miserable
consequences of sin, such as they are sometimes experienced
even in this world ! Here is a man deliberately " selling
himself to work evil," obtaining the wages of his iniquity, and
those wages no sooner obtained, than they become an in
tolerable curse. Satan, like a skilful angler, has concealed
his hook under an alluring bait; the bait is seized, and
forthwith the wretched prey writhes in agony. Well did
the wise preacher exhort, in reference to one particular vice,
"Look not on the wine when it is red, when it giveth his
colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last
it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder 8 ."
Sooner or later, this is the case with sin of every description.
"It biteth like a serpent," it "stingeth like an adder;" and
that not only in respect of other evil consequences which it
draws after it, but also in respect of the bitter self-reproach,
and anguish, and distress of mind, which necessarily follow
upon it. It may be, indeed, that these are not felt, or not
felt to any great extent, in the present life ; but often they
Prov. xxiii. 31, 32.
B 2
4 TJie Repentance of Judas.
are so felt felt even as Judas felt them; ana wnen they
are, they exhibit a lively and most terrible representation of
the misery which all must suffer in the next life who have
not sought and found forgiveness through the blood of Jesus
Christ. They are hell begun upon earth.
My object this evening will be to draw your attention
pointedly to the state of mind which is set before us in the
passage which I have just read, Judas s Repentance, as it
is called in the title whereby the subject prescribed to me
for this sermon is designated. Yet before I enter upon this,
it may be well to touch upon one or two other points, closely
connected with it, and useful for the illustration of it, and
scarcely less obvious or important, which the narrative brings
before us.
I. Note first, then, the progress of evil in the case of this
miserable man. We are not told, indeed, what passed in
Judas s mind before his deed of treachery was done : but
we know, independently of this part of his history, what was
the weak point in his character. Covetousness was his be
setting sin. There must have been a fair outside ; how else
could he have kept the company which he did? But his
heart was swayed by the love of money, of which the Apostle
says, that it "is the root of all evil." We cannot doubt,
but that the prospect of making a gain by betraying his
Master was a very alluring one. How delightful it would
be to have so much money, as he might surely reckon upon,
in his possession ! How many things it would put within
his reach, which he had long wished for ! Or, what a plea
sant addition it would make to the store already laid by as
a provision against a future day of want ! These thoughts,
or such as these, in all probability, were often recurring to
his mind ; and the oftener they recurred, the stronger grew
the force of the temptation ; till at length Satan had nothing
left to do but to take him, as it were, by the hand, and lead
The Repentance of Judas. 5
him to his factors, the chief priests. Then the bargain is
struck : his gracious and loving Master is bought and sold,
and his own soul withal.
And now the hour agreed upon for his treachery is come.
Does no misgiving cross his mind ? Does not his heart fail
him ? Do not his knees tremble ? Does not his foot falter,
as he leads the way in silence to the place where he expects
to find his Master? Likely enough they do. But the com
pact which he has made is, as it were, another cord drawn
around him. He has now pledged himself to the chief
priests; he has passed his word: it is too late to go back;
he must finish what he has begun. Every step brings him
nearer to the spot. He reaches it : the fatal kiss is given ;
and Satan claims him as his own. All that remains is, to
hold him fast. And Satan has two ready expedients for this :
one, to deliver him over to utter recklessness ; to let him run
on in a bold, dread-nought course of evil; hardening his
heart, searing his conscience, adding sin to sin, and treasur
ing up wrath against the day of wrath : the other, and this
is the one he chooses, to plunge him into the depths of de
spair, to fill his mind with overwhelming horror, to shut
out every gleam of hope, till at length life itself becomes an
insupportable burthen.
Now it is true, my brethren, that this is an extreme case.
The lines are broadly and strongly marked. There can be
no mistake about them. But who can doubt but that it has
many and many a parallel in ordinary life?
Men suffer themselves to be caught by the prospect of
some alluring gratification which falls in with their natural
temper and disposition, whether that incline them to covet-
ousness, as in Judas s case, or to lust and sensual indulgence,
or whatever other form it assumes. They suffer their thoughts
to dwell upon it; they let it fill their imaginations; it be
comes a part of their minds. At length Satan provides a fit-
6 The Repentance of Judas..
ting opportunity, and his wretched victim breaks down all
barriers, fear, shame, regard for character, for worldly pros
pects, what not? and rushes headlong to his ruin. And
then follows, either that hardening process just now referred
to, whereby, through repeated disregard of its voice, con
science becomes utterly seared; or else, as in Judas s case,
horror and remorse ; unless, indeed, by G od s great and un
deserved mercy, the Holy Spirit wakens up the graces of
faith, and hope, and penitence, and unfeigned contrition, and
leads the sinner back to the Saviour, and through Him to
the good and blessed ways of godliness and peace which he
has forsaken.
Temptation, indeed, does not always present itself in the
shape of something to be desired: many times it assumes
an opposite form. Satan and their own evil hearts together
represent their duty in such an unwelcome light, that men
shrink from it, and, if the temptation prevails, actually leave
it undone. This was the temptation by which Peter fell.
Circumstances required him to confess his Master before
men. In prospect, nothing had seemed more easy : but the
hour of trial came : his courage failed him, he shrank from
the sneer, he quailed before the ill opinion, or the imagination
of the ill opinion, of the people among whom he found him
self, or, it may be, he was afraid of graver consequences, and
he denied his Lord. Had it not been for that Lord s gra
cious look, and the quickening, converting influences of His
good Spirit which accompanied it, his last end might have
been like Judas s, as the last end of many who have so
fallen has been.
II. Let me turn for a moment to another lesson which
this sad history brings before us.
When Judas, stricken with remorse, brought back his ill-
gotten gains to the chief priests, vomiting up, as it were, the
bait, but in vain attempting to vomit up the hook with it,
The Repentance of Judas. 7
how was he received? Did he meet with sympathy or pity
at their hands ? Did they try to comfort him ? Did they
acknowledge their own equal share of guilt? No. They
were more hardened in sin than he : they had no misgivings
for themselves, no compassion for him. "What is that to
us? see thou to that/ is their heartless reply. He has
served their purpose, and now they have no more occasion
for him, and they care not what becomes of him.
Such is the treatment which men ordinarily meet with,
who suffer themselves to be made the tools of others, to
minister to their wickedness. And Judas s history ought to
serve as a warning to those who are tempted at any time
to place themselves in like circumstances, to do that for
Others which they know to be wrong; to comply with their
wishes, to gratify their desires, in cases in which they cannot
do so with a safe conscience. It is not the highest motive ;
nevertheless, let it have its just weight : believe not the pro
mises of such men, my brethren, and especially reckon not
upon their gratitude or consideration for you. As long as
you can be of use to them, no doubt they will speak you
fair ; but when you have served their purposes, expect only
to be cast aside. Your repentance or remorse, should either
of these spring up within your hearts, will be treated with
coldness and contempt: "What is that to us?" And no
wonder : sin is essentially selfish, and the more a man gives
himself up to be its slave, the more thoroughly selfish he
becomes.
III. But let us pass on to the close of Judas s history, now
rapidly approaching. The miserable man, finding that the
chief priests would not take back the money, cast it down, in
an agony of distress, in the temple, pressing, it would seem
from the word used, in the recklessness of his desperation,
into the holy place itself, into which it was not lawful for
him to enter b , and departed, and went and hanged himself.
b See Trench s Synonyms of the New Testament, . iii.
8 The Repentatice of Judas.
So doing, he sealed his own condemnation. He delivered him
self over with his own hand to the master to whom he had
sold himself, to be tormented before his time. O how that
master must have exulted when he found how successful his
scheme had been ! Remorse, and horror, and desperation, had
done their work. There was now no longer the possibility of
escape. Judas, the suicide Judas, was his slave for ever.
IV. Thus we have followed the course of this wretched
man s sin to its last dreadful issue in this world. Now let
us turn our attention undividedly to the state of mind which
contributed so materially to bring about that issue, his
Repentance, as it is called by the Evangelist, though, alas !
repentance of a very different kind from that which God will
accept and bless.
i. What had this repentance in common with true repent
ance ? ii. What did it lack, which true repentance has ?
i. It had some very remarkable points in common with
true repentance, and so far might have been mistaken for
it, as a like state of mind, especially if it is not so strongly
marked, and does not issue in consequences so visibly and
unmistakeably inconsistent with religion, often is.
1. First of all, there was real, unfeigned sorrow, and that
most poignant and enduring. " He repented himself," the
Evangelist says. He was grieved for what he had done ;
how sincerely and how bitterly grieved, the dreadful step
which he took in consequence shewed. Surely never did
true penitent mourn more sincerely, more bitterly.
See then, my brethren, that it is not sorrow alone for evil
deeds done, or good deeds left undone, which constitutes
genuine repentance. Sooner or later, every ungodly man
will have sorrow, most unfeigned, most bitter sorrow. The
consequences of sin are such that men cannot help sorrow
ing, if not in the prospect of them, at all events in the en
during of them. Hell will know no other sounds than those
of sorrow.
The Repentance of Judas. 9
Do not let any one conclude, then, that because he is sorry
for his evil deeds, therefore he is a true penitent. He may be
such; but it is not his sorrow only that makes or proves
him such.
2. But I hear some one say, No doubt, it is no sign of
repentance when a man s sorrow has respect only to the evil
consequences which his sin has brought upon him, or is
about to bring upon him : there must be sorrow for the
sin itself.
But Judas had this also, to some extent, as the Evan
gelist s words plainly imply : " When he saw that Jesus was
condemned, he repented himself." His repentance, such as it
was, is distinctly connected with his sin, not in its conse
quences to himself, but in the evil which it had brought
upon the innocent and holy Person who was the victim of it.
Insensible as he had been before, he was now thoroughly
awake to a sense of that evil. Its magnitude, together
with the baseness and ingratitude of his own conduct, and
possibly, too, the recollection of that touching reproof, the
last words which Jesus had ever addressed to him, " Judas,
betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss ?" were present
to his mind with terrible vividness. O, why had he not seen
them in the same light before the fatal deed was done?
It was not, then, merely the apprehension of evil conse
quences to himself that was the cause of Judas s sorrow,
though no doubt his thoughts glanced towards these also :
there was a distinct reference to his sin, and to the evil
which that sin had brought upon Jesus.
And truly a man must be hardened indeed, who has done
some grievous wrong to another, bringing upon him great
suffering, plunging him into deep distress, and can yet think
in his calm moments of what he has done, without keen self-
reproach and sadness of spirit ; and that apart from the pros
pect of evil consequences likely to ensue to himself. No
10 The Repentance of Judas.
doubt some do arrive at such a state of hardness : the chief
priests appear to have done so. But all do not : Judas
did not.
Note again then, my brethren, that a man may be sin
cerely sorry, and his sorrow may have respect, in part, at all
events, to the evil which his sin has brought upon the person
who has suffered by it, and yet, for all that, there may be
no true, genuine repentance.
3. But there is yet another common point at which Judas s
repentance, and the repentance of true penitents, seem to
touch. Judas confesses his sin ; and that not in a general,
unthinking way, as people often do, whose very tone and
manner shew how little they feel the words which they utter,
but particularly, and with most unfeigned seriousness, and
without one word of excuse for himself or palliation. " I
have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood."
It must have cost him much to make such a confession ; and
to make it to the persons to whom he did make it. His
conscience must have been ill at ease, indeed, before he
could bring himself to resort to such a means of lightening
it. However, all barriers are burst : he does not wait for a
Nathan to charge his sin home upon him, and so to draw
forth his acknowledgment; he charges it home upon him
self, and forthwith, of his own accord, acknowledges it before
others. Wherein (some might think) did David, that emi
nent example of penitence, go beyond him here ?
Even the making confession of our sins, then, most neces
sary as that is, is not enough to stamp our repentance with
the mark of genuineness. Some men confess their sins, or
at all events acknowledge themselves in a general way to be
sinners, that they may at least have the credit of not being
blind to their faults, or of not wishing to play the hypocrite
and to blind others. And some men confess their sins, as Judas
did, because they are conscience-stricken, and cannot rest till
The Repentance of Judas. 11
they have done so. But it is not every sort of confession, as
Judas found by sad experience, that brings rest and peace.
4. But we have not yet reached the farthest point to which
our comparison extends.
Judas actually strove to undo the evil which he had
done, to prevent the fatal consequences of his crime. His
Master had, indeed, been condemned by the Jewish council :
but sentence was not yet executed. Nay, He was at that
moment probably undergoing trial before another tribunal.
Pilate had not yet condemned Him. Judas, by bearing wit
ness to His innocency, and by acknowledging his own guilt,
did what in him lay to touch the consciences and soften the
hearts of those who still had it in their power to save Him.
It is true his words were of no avail. The persons to whom
they were spoken were not so easily to be turned aside from
their purpose. But it was something to have made the effort
to turn them aside : not a few would have felt it a relief to
their consciences to have made the effort. The history before
us, however, shews that a man may go even so far, and yet
lack true repentance.
5. One point more : Judas brought again the money
which he had received ; and when the chief priests were un
willing to take it back, he threw it down and left it. Surely
this is a sign of true repentance.
No doubt it is a sign. And no one can be a true penitent
who does not give up his ill-gotten gains, if he have any, and
make restitution and satisfaction to the uttermost of his
power, for whatsoever wrongs he may have done to others.
But it is not a certain sign, as the sad history before us shews.
ii. In all these points, then, which have been mentioned,
there was a marvellous resemblance between the repentance
of Judas and the repentance of a true penitent. What was
lacking in the former, to make it the very same with the
latter ?
12 TJie Repentance of Judas.
To sum up all in one word, Faith. It was Faith that was
lacking. His sorrow for what he had done, his compunction
for the suffering in which he had involved his Master, his
confession of his guilt, his restoration of the money, all were
unavailing, because they did not spring from Faith.
1. There was no eye to God in them. They might have
proceeded equally from an atheist. If there was sorrow, and
sorrow for sin, it was not for sin as committed against God,
against a good, and gracious, and holy God. If there was
confession of guilt, it was confession to man, not to God. If
there was a restoration of the ill-gotten money, it was not
from a hearty abhorrence of covetousness, and with an earnest
desire after conformity to the image and law of God.
Note how different was David s repentance in these re
spects. The very first words in which it finds utterance,
when Nathan, or rather the Holy Spirit by Nathan, con
vinces him of his sin, illustrate what I mean : " I have
sinned against the Lord" Not one word in what Judas
says, of his sin being against the Lord.
But, lest I should seem to be laving too much stress upon
a single expression, turn to the 51st Psalm, (that lasting
record of David s penitence,) and mark how the one un
varying aspect under which he regards his sin, from be
ginning to end, is as committed against God. His confes
sion throughout is made to God : and the language in which
he makes it is, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and
done this evil in Thy sight." Had he not sinned against
man also? Truly he had, and most grievously. And no
doubt he saw and felt his guilt in this respect very sensibly.
Still it was in its reference to God that its enormity was
most apparent. The thought of God swallowed up all other
thoughts.
And mark, too, how intensely he longs for deliver
ance from the dominion of sin. He prays not only for
The Repentance of Judas. 13
forgiveness, but for renewal; not only for peace of con
science, but for holiness : " Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me." What is there
in Judas s case that corresponds to this ?
2. Another point in which Judas s want of faith manifested
itself was, that there was no contrition, no brokenness of
spirit, no humiliation, no self-abasement. There was, indeed,
sullen gloom, dissatisfaction with himself, remorse, the hor
rors of an accusing conscience : but these hardened his heart
instead of softening it ; estranged him from God instead of
bringing him to His footstool; sent him forth, like Cain, a
wanderer from the presence of the Lord, instead of making
him arise and return to Him, like the prodigal to his father.
3. One other great and grievous deficiency there was in
Judas s repentance, and this also, like the last-mentioned,
growing out of his want of faith. There was no confiding
trust in God s mercy. He seemed as it were stunned and para
lyzed by the greatness of his crime. He could not raise his
eyes, or hands, or heart to heaven. And yet we have no rea
son to think, dreadful as his crime was, that it was beyond the
reach of God s mercy. The Jews who had had a hand in cru
cifying our Lord had the offer of forgiveness. To Jerusalem,
with all its accumulated guilt, ripe as it was for vengeance,
were the tidings of salvation first preached. The blood which
Judas, by his treachery, contributed to shed, cleanseth from
all sin, even, may we doubt it? from such sin as his. But the
thought of forgiveness seems never to have entered his mind.
He at once gives himself over as lost ; he looks upon his con
dition as hopeless. When David was in like case, all the waves
and storms of God s righteous indignation rolling over him,
he still kept hold of God s mercy. One moment you see him
overwhelmed beneath the surging flood, and are ready to
think that he has sunk to rise no more; but the billows sweep
on, and the next, you see him still struggling, and gathering
14 The Repentance of Judas.
strength while he struggles. Hear his own words: "Innu
merable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have
taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up ; they
are more than the hairs of my head : therefore my heart
faileth me c ." What could be more sad, and gloomy, and
hopeless, than the state of mind here described ? There is
not a word which Judas might not have used of his own case.
But see how faith stays David up, and keeps him from sinking.
Hark ! he prays, (not one word of prayer appears to have
fallen from Judas s lips,) "Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me:
Lord, make haste to help me. Let them be ashamed and
confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it ; let
them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil.
. . . Let all those that seek Thee rejoice and be glad in Thee :
let such as love Thy salvation say continually, The Lord be
magnified. But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh
upon me. Thou art my help and deliverer ; make no tar
rying, O my God d !" O blessed power of faith, that stays
itself upon God s mercy, and hopes against hope, discerning
still some straggling rays of sunshine in the deepest gloom.
And now does any one ask, Wherein lay the difference
between Judas on the one hand, and such true penitents as
David or Peter on the other, in that the faith of the one
failed, the faith of the others failed not ? I cannot under
take to give a full and complete answer : but thus much
1 may safely say, that the Holy Spirit had been done despite
to, and utterly driven away, in the one case ; in the other,
though grieved, deeply grieved, He still lingered; and His
voice was hearkened to before it was too late.
And herein, though men little think of it, lies the great
peril of departing from the good ways of God, over and above
the actual guilt incurred by so doing. God s Holy Spirit is
grieved, His influence over the soul is diminished, and the
c Ps. xl. 12. * Ibid., 1317. See also Ps. xxxii.
The Repentance of Judas. 15
sinner becomes more and more in danger of one or the other
of these two ruinous and destructive evils, either of being
delivered over to utter recklessness, or else of sinking, as
Judas sank, into hopeless despondency.
O my brethren, take warning, let us all take warning,
by this sad history which we have been considering.
It may be, we think ourselves beyond the reach of any
crime so dreadful as that of which Judas was guilty. Let
us not be high-minded, but fear. Who would have thought it
possible beforehand, that one chosen by the Saviour Himself
to be an apostle, one who had beheld our Lord s miracles,
had heard His teaching, had had constantly before his eyes
His holy example, should have fallen as Judas fell? It is
true, we cannot betray Christ as Judas betrayed Him, in
His person: but we may betray Him in His cause, we may
betray Him in His people, we may betray Him in ourselves,
by delivering over ourselves, whom He purchased with His
blood, to be the bond-slaves of Satan. Let us see, then,
that we walk circumspectly. Let us take heed of grieving
the Holy Spirit. Let us beware of cherishing evil in our
hearts, whether under the form of covetousness, or lust, or
pride, or any other form. Let us guard against the begin
ning of declension. Let us live closely to God in prayer, and
watchfulness, and humility, and holy obedience.
But are there any here who have fallen? Whose con
sciences are even now charging them with grievous declen
sion from the ways of God, (shall I say ?) with some flagrant
and shameful sin? My brethren, there are two courses lying
before you. They seem to lead in different directions at
first, but they meet at last. One is the way of recklessness ;
the other the way which Judas trod, the way of despair.
Take heed of both. Blessed be God, there is yet a third
way, and it is not yet too late for you to enter upon it, the
way of faith, of penitence, of contrition and brokenness of
16 The Rcpeniance of Judas.
spirit, of trust, of hope, and eventually of peace and joy, and
everlasting blessedness. Enter upon this at once, and with
out delay. You will find an admirable guide and directory
for doing so in the 51st Psalm. Take the words of that
Psalm, and make them your own; and cultivate in your
heart the spirit which pervades them, day by day. And doubt
not but that the experience of that great sinner, and yet
eminent saint, by whom they were penned, will be yours also.
God, for Christ s sake, will hide His face from your sins and
blot out your iniquities. He will create in you a clean heart,
and renew a right spirit within you. He will restore unto
you the joy of His salvation, and uphold you with His free
Spirit. The Lord will open your lips, and your mouth shall
shew forth His praise.
SERMON VIII.
THE REPENTANCE OF JUDAS.
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURtf, D.D.,
MINISTER OP QUEBEC CHAPEL, CHAPLAIN TO THE LOED BISHOP
OP OXFOED.
A SERMON,
MATT, xxvii. 3 5.
" Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was
condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces
of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in
that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What
is that to us ? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of
silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself."
THE Festival of St. Matthias connects itself immediately
with the fall of Judas. We cannot think of the " faithful
and true" pastor as on this day set over the Church of God,
without reverting to the false Apostle into whose room
he was elected. And probably it is the Church s design
that our thoughts should travel in this track. The Calendar
brings before us, in a regular cycle, all the great events of
the Evangelical Story. Now it is not likely that, in this
cycle, such an event as the fall of Judas an event connected
with our Lord s Death, as the proximate cause of it, and
withal so pregnant with instruction for the Church of God
should be left unnoticed. Yet, the reprobate having, of
course, no commemoration, it could not otherwise be noticed,
than by consecrating a day to the memory of St. Matthias.
Matthias seats himself in a Chair already prepared once
occupied, but now vacant. How caine it to be vacant ?
Who was it that once sat there ? and why did he vacate it ?
It is scarely possible that the mind should not ask these
4 The Repentance, of Judas.
questions; and if they be asked, this is surely the occa
sion on which to answer them.
But we have another reason for calling your attention this
evening rather to the false than to the true Apostle. The
thoughts connected with the fall of Judas are more in
keeping with the season of Lent than those connected with
the election of Matthias. For the great topic of the season
of Lent is Repentance; and Judas is the great instance,
planted like a beacon of warning upon the highway of the
Evangelical Narrative, of a false repentance.
The fact that there is such a thing as a false repentance
is of itself sufficiently startling and alarming, and should set
us upon a thorough sifting of our consciences, as to the
traits which our repentance exhibits. For Repentance is an
essential grace ; it is one of the conditions on which God
holds out^to us, through Christ s merits, the hope of pardon
and acceptance. If, then, what we fancy to be this grace
is simply a delusive appearance, and nothing more than a
mimicry of its manner and gestures, we shall be building our
hopes upon an insecure foundation, which one day, when
perhaps it may be too late to remedy the evil, will prove in
sufficient to support them.
Judas Iscariot is said in our text to have repented : and,
without curiously seeking to detect virtues in a villainous
character, (a perverse piece of ingenuity, very commonly
practised, indeed, by historians of the day, but very ob
jectionable, as tending to confound the obvious and pal
pable distinctions between right and wrong,) we may cer
tainly say that the external traits of penitence which Judas
exhibited were most hopeful. The inner spirit and operating
principles of this grace were of course utterly absent from him,
but we apprehend that no genuine repentance could have
exhibited more favourable outward phenomena than his.
In bringing forward these phenomena, and shewing from
The Repentance of Judas. 5
this sad instance that they may be hollow and unsound,
merest mocking echoes of true penitence in a quarter where
it never raised its mingled cry of pain and prayer, we hope
to assist you, and to put you on your guard against deceit,
in that sifting of the conscience which is one of the great
duties incumbent upon us at this season. And may God
add His blessing to His Word, for Christ s sake.
I. 1. The first good symptom, then, in Judas s repentance
was his restlessness in his sin. This restlessness has often
been the nucleus in the heart, round which true repentance
has formed. A deep feeling of the dissatisfaction and emp
tiness of sinful courses, absolutely forbidding acquiescence in
them, has lain at the bottom of many a prodigal son s return
to his Father. If there was not this in Judas, there was
something remarkably like it, to judge from what appears on
the face of the narrative. Why could he not carry out his
purpose to the end without flinching? The Holy Scripture
intimates that he was lost eternally, that he was " the son
of perdition," that he was " a devil," that he " went to his
own place," and so forth. This being so, and supposing him
to have felt, with more or less of vague apprehension, that it
was so, why did he not, at all events, live as long as he
might in the enjoyment of his ill-gotten gains ? Why hasten
on his eternal doom by his own act ? Why throw away the
few years of life, and so of tolerable existence, which in the
order of God s Providence remained to him ? Why not go
through the tragedy with a resolute will, linger out his span,
steel himself against the finger of scorn, count his silver
pieces, and hug his money-bag ? The answer is, that he was
not bad enough or hard enough for this. There was a worm
in his conscience which would have made those few years of
life unliveable. He could not sit down and take his ease,
although there seems to have been no outward let or hin
drance why he should not have done so. The disciples, from
B 2
6 The Repentance of Judas.
whom he had seceded, were (as the world accounted them) a
contemptible sect in a very contemptible minority. Judas
had sided with the authorities of the country, and, though
not even those who profit by treachery can ever respect the
tra r tor, those authorities would have been bound to uphold
him, and secure him from disturbance. But as it is said,
" When God giveth quietness, who then can make trouble ?"
so, conversely, it might be said with equal truth, " When
conscience giveth trouble, who then can make quietness ?"
Judas was ill at ease in his mind ; and, under these circum
stances, not all the world could help him to a moment s
repose. Yet the repentance proceeding from this disquie
tude was rotten at the core. The inference is plain, that
mere restlessness of conscience under convictions is of itself
no certain sign that the spirit of penitence is working in us.
2. The next point is and it is a very material one that
Judas makes confession of his sin before men, even when it
must have been evident to him that men would not sym
pathize with that confession. He returns to the chief priests,
says frankly that his conduct had been evil, and implies
thereby that the course, which they were pursuing, and in
which he had aided and abetted them, was evil also: "I
have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood."
Their rude and ungracious retort (a famous utterance of the
worldling s sympathy with conscientious convictions) suffi
ciently shews that they took the implication in dudgeon :
" What is that to us ? see thou to that." It was quite
evident, throughout the transaction, that Judas neither cared
for them nor feared them ; it was patent to him, as to all
the world beside, that they were bad men, thirsting for the
blood of the Innocent One ; and, without a particle of human
respect, the traitor allowed this sentiment freely to transpire.
My brethren, it is one of the most favourable symptoms
of true repentance, that it throws overboard human respect.
The Repentance of Judas. 7
" The fear of man/ it is said, " bringeth a snare." Genuine
repentance kicks the snare out of the way. Hence the con
fession of sins before man, the making bare one s own shame,
the not quailing before a public exposure, is in some respects
the best test of godly sorrow which one can have. For it
shews this, at all events, that the penitent has risen above
that regard to human opinion, which holds us all in thrall.
In many false forms of penitence, sin pains a man simply
because he has forfeited human esteem by it. Say that he
has been going on for a time with a latent consciousness of
acting dishonestly, and fearing to face his accounts, as aware
that his expenditure far exceeds his income. At length
comes the catastrophe, whether he will or no : his dishonesty
is exposed, and his character ruined. The poor soul s refuge
under these circumstances is often like that of Judas sui
cide. But Judas s motive, it would appear, was higher than
his. It is not the consciousness of wrong-doing, but the
shrinking from exposure, which in his case urges on the self-
murderous act, and adjusts the fatal noose. If creditors could
be silenced, and matters hushed up, and character among
men preserved, he would live on in ease, and in the hope
that his affairs might right themselves. Blasted character,
not committed sin, is the evil to which he is sensitive. Judas,
on the other hand, proclaims his own shame. Human opi
nion and human censure seem to have lost their hold upon
him. In dying he defies the world, which had hitherto been
with him, and makes them veer right round and turn against
him. " I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood. And they said, What is that to us ? see thou to that/
Confession of sin before man, then, and the absence from
our sorrow of an element of human respect, though most fa
vourable symptoms, as far as they go, do not in themselves
go far enough to prove conclusively that our repentance is
genuine.
8 The Repentance of Judas.
3. The third favourable symptom in the repentance of
Judas is that he made restitution of the bribe which he had
received, and so, as far as that was possible, undid his own
action. " He threw down the silver pieces in the temple."
He might have enjoyed them ; but he could not find it in
his heart to do so. They had lost their value to him. This
seems indeed to be a very near approach to genuine repent
ance. For the man s besetting sin was covetousness. Little
by little this sin had gained a complete mastery of his moral
nature, making its encroachments rapidly, though stealthily,
by distinct acts, when from time to time he appropriated to
his own use some portion of the money thrown into the com
mon purse of our Lord and His Apostles. " He was a thief/
says St. John expressly. But here is the love of money re
laxing its hold upon the thief; here (apparently) is the
Ethiopian changing his skin, and the leopard his spots. Here
is the covetous man making a voluntary surrender of his ill-
gotten gains, just as the Ephesian magicians, the darkness of
whose deeds was reproved by Christ s Gospel, brought their
books of incantations together, and burned them before all
men, thereby sacrificing to their new convictions the value
of fifty thousand pieces of silver.
My brethren, what shall we say to these things ? We are
compelled to say that it looks favourably for the traitor.
Genuine repentance always involves the undoing of the sin
repented of, so far as man can undo the past. If property
has been stolen, it must be restored. If character has been
injured by us, we must retract the slander as publicly as it
was divulged. If we have influenced others for evil, we
must seek to neutralise and cancel that influence. If we
have withheld from the poor their due, or from the cause of
Religion the maintenance which it requires at our hands, we
must now make it good. Yet it appears from this example,
that although all genuine repentance must have this feature,
The Repentance of Judas. 9
yet not every repentance which has this feature is genuine.
We must look to it that this trait attaches itself to our re
pentance ; yet must we not rest satisfied with the fact that
it does so attach, but probe our hearts more deeply still.
4. The climax of all these favourable symptoms attaching
to the repentance of Judas, is that this unhappy soul con
fessed Christ before men.
It is very observable that another thief came subsequently
in contact with Our Blessed Lord, whose repentance was
by Him graciously accepted and highly honoured ; and that
this thief also evinced his penitence by confessing CHRIST
before men, when the princes of this world sat and spake
against Him. In some respects these two thieves are re
markably contrasted. The first of them, though long asso
ciated with Our Blessed Lord, closed his career with a burst
of worldly sorrow, which wrought despair and death. The
second, who was never thrown across our LORD S path, till
a few hours before his end, and whose previous course had
been in every respect alienated from Christ, exhibited in his
last moments that godly sorrow, which works "repentance
unto salvation not to be repented of/ But, notwithstand
ing these points of strong contrast, there is something very
similar in the confessions of the two thieves. Listen to them.
The one says, " I have sinned in that I have betrayed the
innocent blood." He asserts the innocence of Jesus; and
if His innocence, then also His Messiahship and Divine Sou-
ship : for Jesus claimed these dignities ; and to claim them
without being entitled to them, would be, not innocence,
but blasphemy. The second thief s confession is a close
parallel : he first of all condemns himself, and then vin
dicates the innocence of Jesus. " Dost not thou fear God,
seeing thou art in the same condemnation ? And we indeed
justly ; for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this
Man hath done nothing amiss." Ah ! my brethren, sup-
10 The Repentance of Judas.
posing only the utterances of these two thieves left on record,
without any further notice of their characters, who could have
augured thence the difference of their lot, and the tremen
dous gulf which parts them now, and will part them through
Eternity? What an overwhelming proof have we here, that
in estimating repentance and faith, God regards, and there
fore we too must regard, the heart, and not the utterance of
the lips ; that He looks to the inner spirit only, and is not
mystified or deluded by the bursts of anguish to which the
mouth gives vent ! What an incontrovertible evidence that
two men may pursue the same career outwardly, do the same
actions, say the same words, behave in the same way, and yet
be under the empire of totally opposite principles ! And what
an evidence, moreover, that the faith which merely stands in
the avowal of Jesus, without involving trust in Him, or love
of Him, the faith which distinguishes the professing Chris
tian from the sceptic or the Unitarian, is by itself utterly
insufficient to secure the soul s salvation. Judas had this
faith. Nay, the very devils, though they neither love Him
nor trust in Him, are far too enlightened to refuse acknow
ledgment to Jesus as the Son of God : they also " believe
and tremble."
II. We have thus exhibited the favourable outward symp
toms in the repentance of Judas. And the question which
naturally arises is, Where then did this repentance fall
short ? what were the flaws of it ? This question we shall
attempt to answer, with the same design as before that of
furnishing you with criteria for a close and sifting examina
tion of conscience.
There was one radical flaw, then, in this repentance of
Judas, which pervaded the whole of it, as a crack runs from
the brim to the pedestal of some precious ornamental vase,
and into which all the weak points of it are ultimately re
solvable. There appears to have been in his state of mind
Tht Repentance of Judas. 11
no regard to Almighty God, whether of fear, love, or trust.
His sorrow, though most agonizing, was not the godly sorrow
whose blessed effects St. Paul describes in the Second Epi
stle to the Corinthians; and on the suicide s grave might
be inscribed for an epitaph that pregnant sentence of In
spiration, in which the Apostle delineates with one graphic,
masterly stroke the frightful issue of a career such as his ;
" THE SORROW OF THE WORLD WORKETH DEATH."
1. The first weak point in the repentance of Judas was,
that it had no grasp of another world. A man who com
mits suicide (supposing him. to be not subject to derange
ment of mind while resolving on and perpetrating the deed)
can have no such grasp. To Judas, the eternal world, of
which His Master spoke so often, was all shadowy as the
baseless fabric of a dream, though it might be a beautiful
dream. It was to him impalpable; and he had not the
faith which alone could make it a reality. But there was a
world all around him, in the centre of which he was placed,
very real and very palpable, obtruding its reality upon him
through his senses. Probably he had followed Our Lord all
along in the expectation that He would set up an earthly
kingdom ; and as it dawned upon him, by Christ s predic
tions of His Death, and by the evident drifting of events
in that direction, that this expectation was to be frustrated,
his allegiance to Jesus, which had not been cemented (as
was the case with the other Apostles) by any spiritual bond,
grew more and more unsteady. He followed the Saviour
with this world in his eye, and when he became convinced
that no earthly honours or emoluments would requite his
services, he began to draw off from Him. Now the tangible
advantages of the world all take shape in, and are summarily
represented by, money. Do but get money, and you shall
command anything you wish in this world friends, position,
power, nay, even rank. Accordingly, Judas the worldling,
with a very faint and shadowy conception of the world to
12 The Repentance of Judas.
come, united a very lively appreciation of the hard, solid,
tangible benefits which were at the command of money.
Well would it have been for him, could he have looked with
definite aim into the great eternal future, which is all-ab
sorbing to a spiritual mind, and have said with his brother-
thief, as Jesus was approaching the barriers of another world,
"Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy king
dom." But the kingdom, according to Judas s idea of it,
was to be the kingdom of this present world. Such a king
dom Jesus uniformly disclaimed : implicitly, when He retired
from the multitude who sought to make Him a king; ex
plicitly, when He stood before Pilate.
My dear hearers, is Judas so uncommon a character
among ourselves, that his example yields no warning ? Though
our conceptions of him conceptions which we have nourish
ed from our childhood upwards are those of a monster of
iniquity, does he not turn out, upon a closer examination,
to be a man of flesh and blood like ourselves? Are there
not those among us, whose views of another world are so
hazy and unsubstantial, that they cannot be said to take
hold of the mind at all, or exert the smallest real influence
upon it ? Men whose strong and keen sympathies with the
world-system, in the heart of which they live, exclude alto
gether apprehensions, hopes, and fears in connection with
another system, which cannot be reached either by sense or
by experience? Men in whose mind secularities, I do
not say blameworthy secularities, but merely secularities,
whether of the counter, or of the desk, or of the political
coterie, or of the fashionable circle fill up the whole field
of vision? These persons may not be at all wanting in re
spectability, and a decorous exterior : far from it. They
may not be unfamiliar with holy things. Judas was not un
familiar with them. He walked side by side with Our Lord,
listened to His teaching, witnessed His miracles, partook of
and administered His ordinances. And these men are not
The Repentance of Judas. ] 3
lacking in similar traits of character. Their punctual per
formance of certain religious duties enters as an item on
their side into the account drawn up by their self-esteem.
They come to Church, and the words of truth fall on their
outward ears. Perhaps at stated intervals they communi
cate, and with a feeling that Communion is proper, becom
ing, suitable to their position. Perhaps this familiarity with
things sacred tends, as was no doubt the case with Judas,
to deaden their religious sensibilities. But be it how it
may, those sensibilities are not alive. This world is in
tensely real, the next intensely unreal, to them. No emotion
is stirred within them by the things which are not seen.
Though they live in the midst of religious Ordinances, spiri
tual influence, or what the Apostle calls " the power of the
world to come," has never yet drawn them within its charm
ed circle. Now any vexation for past misdeeds, however
wild and frantic, which does not keep its eye fixed upon
eternity, or pursue sin into the unseen world, must neces
sarily be hollow and unsound, however favourable the other
traits which it wears. The fundamental element of all reli
gion is the realization of the unseen. Where a man does not
realize it where eternal things are to the mind a mere
phantasmagoria of quaint and incongruous images, and not
a real, living power exerting a pressure on the spirit, he
may fret his heart into tatters with sorrow for sin, but he
shall be not one whit nearer to holiness or glory. Without
faith in the invisible world, repentance lacks altogether a
spiritual element. It is of the earth, earthy, and drives the
man away from, instead of towards, the Bosom of God. It
is simply a fruit of nature, not of grace.
2. The next weak point in the repentance of Judas was, that
it turned on the pivot of self. Where self is everything with
a man, and God is banished from the field of view, it must
follow, as a necessary consequence, that if self is destroyed
in its own esteem, the man has nothing to fall back upon.
14 The Repentance of Judas.
This seems to have been the case with Judas; and this hy
pothesis furnishes the true solution of the difficulty, which
some have found in the first verse of our text. " Then Judas
which betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned,
repented himself." How then ? it has been asked, was Judas
not prepared for the result, to which his act of treachery
obviously led? Knowing the malignity of the enemies of
Jesus, he must of course have calculated upon the proba
bility, or rather the almost certainty, of such a result : but
the Evangelist s meaning plainly is, that such a result, when
at last it did come, opened his eyes all of a sudden to his
own meanness. It dashed to pieces, with one deadly blow,
the man s self-respect. So long as he had the prop of self-
esteem, there was something to support him, and to make
life tolerable; but this prop demolished, no more hope re
mained to one who, like Judas, had never learned to lean
upon God.
My brethren, there is a sorrow for sin, the account of
which is simply this, Pride broken in its own conceit, and
put thoroughly out of humour with itself. This sorrow apes
very exactly the garb and language of true repentance,
because in true repentance one main element is profound
distrust of self; and this sorrow is a sincere vexation with
self: not, however, so much a distrust of self, as (what is very
different) a disgust with self. Ah ! Judas s suicide has been
the true type, in this respect, of many a suicide since his
day. The intemperate man, who may have (despite his in
temperance) some fine features of character attaching to him,
is warned again and again of the wreck which the indulgence
of such a sin will make, not only of his higher nature, but of
his health, and perhaps also of his prospects in this world.
He struggles fitfully with his ruling passion, and even holds
out and makes head against it for some considerable period ;
but at last once and again, and again, and yet again the
horrible craving for drink asserts its mastery over him. After
The Repentance of Judas. 15
some very flagrant fall, his eyes seem to be opened, on his
return to consciousness, to the depth of his own degradation.
He has reduced himself to the level, or rather lower than the
level, of the beasts that perish. He once flattered himself that
he had a generous spirit, fine sympathies, a sense of honour ;
but all that proud consciousness is now gone : he has been
wallowing like a sow in the mire of sensuality. He too, like
Judas, has no grasp of another world, the revelation of
things unseen and eternal has never come home to him with
power ; and when he thinks of the state after death, he mut
ters to himself some such heathenish foolery as eternal sleep,
rest from the storms of life for all and every one, and so
forth. He too, like Judas, has never had any realizing ap
prehension of God, or of sin in reference to God, and to
have no such realizing apprehension, is just to have no staff
to lean upon, when the world draws away from us, as the
sparkling tide recedes from stranded seaweed, and when the
heart is fairly beaten out of conceit with itself. In such a
state of mind, the man naturally becomes frantic with him
self. And who shall wonder if, in more ardent and impulsive
temperaments, the strong passion prevails even over the love
of life ? Who shall wonder if he lays violent hands upon that
self of which he now despairs ?
My brethren, suicide is a rare case, Almighty God having
placed in our nature certain securities which make it rare j
but his must be indeed a shallow mind who cannot see in
extreme cases like these, the operation of principles, which
pervade and invalidate the repentance of large numbers of
men, and so cannot draw a lesson from the doom of Judas.
A true penitent, my brethren, when revelations are made
to him of the utter vileness, meanness, baseness of self, can
bear them quietly, and meekly, and without falling into de
spondency ; why ? Because he has the eye of his heart still
fixed upon God. God may be displeased with him for the
present, and may be even now making him painfully con-
16 The Repentance of Judas.
scious of that displeasure; and thus one might imagine at
first sight that even this prospect was dark. But there always
is, and I believe there is always felt by the heart to be (even
in its darkest hours), a background of infinite love in the
Divine Nature, which will one day surely reveal itself to the
waiting, praying penitent. He who knows that God sent
His Son to die for lost mankind, when they were in the
arms of rebellion against Him, cannot really believe, to how
ever many discomforts his soul may be at present subject,
that such a God will wear always an aspect of sternness to
wards a sorrow which has really a reference to Himself, to
His "Will, and Word, and requirements. " Now men see not
the bright light which is in the clouds/ says Solomon ; " but
the wind passeth, and cleanseth them." The firmament of the
soul may be for awhile obscured with clouds ; so that when
the heart looks even to Godward, it shall see no light at pre
sent; but by-and-bye shall pass the cleansing wind, which
clears the souFs atmosphere, and then shall appear the once
shrouded light, full of hope, and joy, and augury. David un
derstood this well, when he sang to his harp that strain so
plaintive and yet so hopeful, " Why art thou cast down, O
my soul ? and why art thou disquieted within me ? Hope in
God; for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my
countenance and my God." Observe, "I shall yet praise
Him;" the soul is conscious that God s present displeasure
is something like the disguise which Joseph wore to his bre
thren, (when he made himself strange to them, and spake
roughly to them,) and that there lurks a heart of love behind
it, which will ere long break through the disguise.
But, apart from the regard to God which the true penitent
has, and the false penitent has not, a regard which is the
source of hope to the one, and the lack of which is the source
of despair to the other, it should be remarked also, that, as
we have already implied, the false penitent s disposition to
wards himself is not of the right description. Hot vexation
The Repentance of Judas. 17
with self, my brethren, is not only of no avail, but is abso
lutely an undesirable feeling, to be checked and repressed, not
fostered. Meekness and gentleness are required from us by
the law of Christ in our dealings with our neighbours ; and
the same law, rightly understood, requires the same dispo
sitions in dealing with ourselves. For if we are to love our
neighbours as ourselves, conversely also we are to love our
selves as our neighbours. Our souls were created by God
for no lower an end than the enjoyment of Communion with
Himself; they have been redeemed at no lower a price than
that of the precious Blood of Christ; we may not treat
them, however low they may fall, with loathing and disgust,
or handle them with irritability and harshness. An expos
tulation with the heart, firm but gentle, in which the sharp
wine of censure shall be tempered with the oil of consolation,
so as not to aggravate the smart which we design to heal,
an expostulation such as that which a tender father uses to
an erring child, this is the duty which a man owes to himself,
when he has fallen low and is humbled in his own conceit,
together with a wistful, hopeful, longing, praying glance to
the Heavenly Father whom he has offended, under the assur
ance that even dogs have crumbs dropt to them from the
great table of His mercy that, in His boundless love and
Almighty grace, there is yet lifting up, even for the most
degraded and abject of His creatures.
Sorrow of this sort restores the soul, whereas a frantic
vexation does but mar and, as it were, tear it into shreds.
The last is impetuous, but transitory ; the first is quiet, but
abidingly influential upon the character. The one is like
the mountain-torrent, which dashes down, swollen with
winter-rains, and spreads devastation far and wide over the
country; but if you seek for it in summer, you shall not
find, in the parched gully which formed its bed, so much
as a drop of water to cool your tongue; the other is like
the quiet, full-fed stream, which without noise or perturba-
18 The Repentance of Judas.
tion glides along its natural channel, to which men and cat
tle come to slake their thirst, and along whose fertile banks
the valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing.
In conclusion, my brethren, let me exhort you to take
the signs of true repentance which have been exhibited to
you in this sermon, and apply them to your own consciences
on your knees before God, in the privacy of your chamber.
Is your repentance the fruit of a godly sorrow, a sorrow
having reference to God, and accordingly, is it lighted up,
as all such sorrow assuredly will be, by an element of hope
and energy for the future? Or does it revolve upon alto
gether another centre, the centre of the world, or the
centre of self? Does it reduce itself, when probed, into
sorrow for loss of character, or sorrow for loss of self-esteem ;
or, in other words, into sorrow not for sin, but for the
suffering which sin entails ? If so, the tendency of that
sorrow, according to the law of its being, is towards despair.
Despair is the great back Maelstrom, in the direction of which
it is silently drifting.
Perhaps this sorrow is even now setting within you, pass
ing out of the state of flux and crystallizing into despair,
yet not into despair in the shape in which Judas exhibited it,
but into the commoner form, the more insidious form, yet
not the less dangerous form, of a dead and motionless acqui
escence in spiritual stagnation. You have made a desperate
struggle or two, it may be, against the evil tendencies of
your nature; you have made honest and earnest efforts to
be religious, rather, however, seeking yourself in all this
than God; rather with reference to your own comfort and
well-being, than to His gracious Word and Will. And you
have failed, or seem to have failed; time after time your
efforts have been beaten back. And at length you are be
ginning to think that the holiness to which you are called,
is an attainment beyond your strength, a hill too steep for
such as you to climb. Accordingly, you are just about to
The Repentance of Judas. 19
resign yourself to the current of your nature, and to collapse
into a dead, prayerless, effortless state of mind, retaining,
however, all the signs and symptoms of Christian profession,
and so keeping up appearances in your own eyes, and in
those of the world. My brethren, this is the subtlest form
which despair takes, the form, not of frantic outrage to
wards oneself, but of smooth-faced, complacent, respectable
indolence, in which spiritual numbness creeps over the facul
ties, and the man becomes, by his own assent and consent,
an utter stranger to the power of godliness. It shall not be
so with thee, my brother, if any soul hears me to-day, upon
whom, by reason of repulsed and disappointed efforts, this
deadly numbness is beginning to creep. In thyself indeed
thou art lost, " wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
and naked." " O Israel/ cries the Lord to thee, " thou hast
destroyed thyself; but in Me is thy help." Aye, "in Me
is thy help." Lift up thine eyes in that quarter, despairing
penitent. There is light for thee there, methinks, struggling
through the prison-bars of thy spiritual captivity. God s
love for thee is such, that He precipitated Himself from
heaven by the Incarnation to pick up, and make whole, the
fragments of thy poor, stumbling, bleeding, broken spirit.
His grace, too, is omnipotent, omnipotent in the realm of
mind no less than in that of matter. Beware that thou
limit not, in thy conceptions, either His love or His power.
He stretches forth His hand to you while you are sinking,
as of old to Peter upon the wave. Take heart, man, and grasp
it. Fasten the mind s eye steadily, not on the boisterous bil
lows, but on Him. The repentance which fastens its eye
upon Christ cannot be cast out. If the repentance of the
thief Judas turned to despair, because there was no element
of spiritual feeling in it, that of the penitent thief, which
referred itself to the Lord, and cast itself into His arms, was
instantly met with a welcome of overflowing mercy. A single
glance of the heart towards His compassion and power, and
20 The Repentance of Judas.
towards "the world to come," over which that power is
specially exercised, unlocked all the treasure-house of Our
Lord s compassion, and fetched down blessings beyond the
power of the tongue to express : " Verily, I say unto thee,
to-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Judas, like a
falling star, dropped from the heaven of Christ s companion
ship into the bottomless pit of perdition. He had been with
Christ in this world, but his awful lot in the future state
was to be eternally severed from the light and joy of that
society. The penitent robber, on the other hand, is lifted
up, by the strong hand of Love, into that light and joy :
" To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." And the same
shall be the case with every penitent who, looking beyond
the barriers of time with a realizing faith, and seeing Jesus
mighty to save, commits his soul to that boundless love, with
a prayer even for the lowest place in His favour: "Lord,
remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom."
Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the
feeble knees. Thine is the Blood of the Atonement, a run
ning stream to discharge all thy guilt. Thine is the Spirit
of Grace, to heal, to restore, to sanctify thee. Under such
auspices, what may not be hoped for? With such powers
enlisted on thy side, what may not be achieved ? Holiness
may seem at present an impossible attainment to one who
has fallen so low, an inaccessible pinnacle towering above
thy head, and defying all thine efforts to scale it. But to
God all things are possible. And to him, too, are all things
possible who believe th believeth in the power and willing
ness of Christ to draw him out of the abyss of sin, and
giving his hand to that Everlasting Father, follows whither
soever He leads, though there be a Red Sea of difficulty
and discouragement before him, still in the might of his
God " going forward."
SERMON IX.
THE REPENTANCE OF AHAB.
BY
JAMES RUSSELL WOODFORD,
VICAR OF KEMPSFOED, G1OTJCESTEBSHIRF.
A SEKMON,
1 KISGS xxi. 25.
" There was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work
wickedness in the sight of the Lord."
THE Bible is essentially a religious history : we do not mean
so much that it records common events in a religious tone,
as that it is the history of the progress of religion amongst
mankind. The whole volume is the development of the brief
words of promise uttered to Adam in Paradise, leading us on
ward from the first Divine mention of the seed of the woman ;
so short, so mystical, as perhaps barely to be grasped by the
ripest saints of the elder dispensations even to the full and
final result, as it shall be seen hereafter in the personal Apo
calypse of God, to which the whole career of humanity seems
working up, as its crown and consummation. Until we dis
tinctly recognise this peculiar character of the Bible, we
shall be very apt to err in assigning the proper weight to its
various statements. In every history, the value of the record
upon a given point increases in proportion to the nearness
of that point to the main subject. On matters subsidiary,
or altogether independent, its testimony is much less impor
tant. What the writer means specifically to treat of is that
upon which his words are to be construed in the utmost
rigour. Now the Bible being, as we have said, the history of
religion, is in this respect the reverse of all other histories.
They, purporting to relate the advance of civilization, the
progress of a kingdom as a kingdom of this world, take in
religion only so far as it has conduced to the development of
the national character. Contrariwise, the Bible, whose object
is to trace through the tangled web of terrestrial affairs the
B 2
4 TJie Repentance of Ahab.
one slender thread of God s revelation, deals with earthly
matters, physical and political events, arts and sciences, only
as they touch upon that mystery of godliness which it is
its grand object to unfold. This will at once explain the
slight notice which contemporaneous occurrences of great
moment, so far as this world is concerned, obtain in the Bible
narrative. It may also go far to account for what has been
so much pressed the scientific incorrectness of the Biblical
description of sundry circumstances. If the Bible is to be
taken as the chronicle of religion, then in all that concerns
what is essentially a part of religion, we may expect fulness,
completeness, accuracy, whilst we shall scarcely be justified
in looking for so much in reference to what is subsidiary.
Now the history of Ahab, to which our attention is to be
directed to-night, suggests thoughts such as these. The reign
of Ahab occupies a considerable portion of the Book of Kings,
but the bulk of the narrative is made up of his conduct in
matters of religion. The gathering of Baal s prophets and
their discomfiture upon Mount Carmel ; the murder of Na-
both, and the appropriation of his vineyard; the vision of
Micaiah, with the doomed monarch s rejection of his warn
ing, these are the events which naturally rise up before us as
we think of Ahab. Nay, it is the dark memorial of the text
which thrills every mind as it recalls the image of the apostate
king : " There was none like unto Ahab, which did sell him
self to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord." It is a
vision of unparalleled sin, of a man bartering his soul for
unrighteous gains, of a mari exceeding all other men in guilt,
the chiefest of ancient transgressors, whom, in the terrible
language of old prophecy, hell from beneath seems moved to
meet at his coming, which the name of Ahab evokes. It is
a name like that of " Judas," which chills us with fear, as
we appear to identify an individual soul lost for ever.
And yet is there another side of the picture. And, if the
reign of Ahab had been written in any book save the Bible, far
less heavy would be the thunder- clouds which gather round his
name. Even the Bible gives a hint of better things : " Now
the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory
house which he made, and all the cities that he built, are
The Repentance of Altai. 5
they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings
of Israel?" It is very striking, this glimpse of sunshine flash
ing through the lurid atmosphere of that rebellious life. We
appear for a moment, as we read, to catch the world s view
of Ahab ; a vigorous, energetic monarch, promoting the pros
perity of his people, improving their habitations, fortifying
them in their possession of the soil, gathering up scattered
lawless hordes into civilized citizenship ; finding time to foster
art, and astonishing his age by the magnificence and costli
ness of his architecture. Even the last expedition, in which
he fell, was such as would read well in a common history.
For Ramoth-Gilead was a town which the Assyrians, when
vanquished by Israel, had stipulated to surrender, and had
afterwards failed to fulfil their compact. Yet of all these
brighter features of Ahab s reign we hear little. The Bible,
as though to make the lesson more emphatic, just alludes to
them, but does not permit our minds to be detained thereby.
It is the history ofreligion in Ahab and under Ahab which
the Bible would teach us ; and so the fairer side, which is
this world s side, only shews itself to render more oppressive
the moral midnight which settles upon his name as one who
sold himself, more than any other, to work evil in the sight
of the Lord. It is the personal character of Ahab which we
have to investigate to-night. To elucidate this, we have two
means: 1. His general conduct ;
2. His temporary repentance.
I. Ahab s general conduct, as revealing the essential cha
racter of his mind.
Now what we would bring before you is the living man
who in his life satisfied the terrible record of the text. It is
with great sinners as with great saints ; we learn to think of
their guilt or their piety in the abstract, rather than to realize
them as breathing men. The shadow of Ahab looms in the
far distance as that of a sinner of almost unequalled magni
tude. With Judas and Pilate, he stands so pre-eminent in
iniquity, that it is hard to represent him to ourselves as an
ordinary man, actuated by the same motives which influence
us, having, like us, his better moments and nobler hopes.
Ahab was not always the Ahab of historic infamy ; and what
6 The Repentance of Ahab.
we would endeavour to do is to delineate him as he was, while
yet upon the earth, before his day went down in utter dark
ness. We shall find, we think, that with all its eternity of
shame, it is a character which is reproduced again and again.
The clue to the career of Ahab is to be discovered, we
believe, in the counter-influences of Jezebel and Elijah.
You will find two distinct stages in the fall of Israel from
the worship of the true God. The first is that called the sin
of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. This was to worship the true
God under an image. He set up calves, (perhaps choosing
that shape in recollection of Aaron s golden calf,) and said,
" These, oh Israel, are the gods which brought thee out of
the land of Egypt/ The second stage of apostasy is called
the way of Ahab a . This was not only to worship the true
God idolatrously, but to worship other gods, to worship
Baalim. This worship of Baalim has been identified with
the worship of departed heroes; and it has been thought
that so much is denoted in the verse, * They joined them
selves unto Baal-peor, and ate the offerings of the dead."
The Baalim, whose worship Ahab introduced, we may, per
haps, most correctly understand to have been deified heroes,
who presided over the powers of nature. Thus it is the
threat of Jeremiah, that the bones of the princes of Israel
shall be spread before the sun, and the moon, and all the
host of heaven ; whom they have loved, and whom they have
served, and whom they have worshipped 1 *. Now this wor
ship of Baal, or Baalim, is traced originally to Phoenicia, the
country of Jezebel, and thus we gather that it was under the
influence of Jezebel that Ahab lost all remembrance of the one
true God. Jeroboam had paved the way for this complete
apostasy. By an unworthy image of the God of Abraham,
he had shaken the faith of his people; Ahab, at his wife s
prompting, brought in an entirely novel system of religion,
such as had prevailed in her native land. The result of this
rapid succession of religious creeds was, naturally, the loosen
ing of the hold of all religion upon the minds of king and
subject. The times were out of joint. The connection with
the temple at Jerusalem had been superseded by a connec-
2 Chron. xxii. 3. b Jer. xxiii. IS.
The Repentance of Ahab. 7
tion with the idols of Tyre. And this power of Jezebel over
Ahab, which is manifested in his adoption of her religious
creed, is further remarkably evinced in the story of the
murder of Naboth. "I," cried Jezebel, "will give thee the
vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite." Throughout that gross
prostitution of royal authority, Jezebel s is the strong will
overruling all objections, making light of all difficulties.
Ahab yearns for the reward of crime, but has little appetite
for the crime itself. He permits wickedness to be done in
his name, but, a coward in his sin, shrinks from soiling his
own hand.
Jezebel s was not, however, the only power abroad in that
evil time. Whilst the king and his followers had abandoned
the last pretence of worshipping the true God, and the ivory
house of his magnificence was filled only with the Baalim of
his wife s idolatry; in the high places of his kingdom, Elijah
was reasserting and vindicating the existence and presence of
the Almighty. We can well imagine the reports which would
reach Ahab s ears of the growing authority of the mysterious
man whose word had shut up heaven, and restored life to
the dead; for whose spiritual training the wilderness had
gleamed with unearthly fire, and the old rocks of Horeb
heaved again with the felt presence of the Creator. Some
what, it may be, of the same awe with which Herod had
been impressed by John the Baptist, had Ahab conceived of
the first Elias. So much we should gather from his suffer
ance of all Elijah s proceedings upon Mount Carmel. Eli
jah did but speak, and Ahab forthwith, we read, sent and
gathered all the prophets of Baal together. From the very
shade of Jezebel s roof they were summoned ; and through
the whole of that stupendous scene in which the fire from
heaven wrung forth the cry, " The Lord, He is the God/
and throughout the after- slaughter of the false prophets, at
Elijah s command, when not one was allowed to escape alive ;
Ahab himself, the founder of Baal-worship, stood by, sanction
ing the work of Elijah, as at other times the impurities of
Jezebel.
And it is in this counter-power of Elijah and Jezebel that
we find the key to unlocking the character of the man whom
8 The Repentance of Ahab.
they alternately swayed. Ahab was no resolute criminal,
who boldly calculated what amount of crime was necessary
for his ends, and perpetrated it without remorse. Ahab was
not a man never visited by compunctions of conscience,
a stranger to all fear and regret. His was no strong heart,
which deliberately set itself to fight against its own con
victions; over which holy words could have no power, and
the presence of righteousness no control. Far otherwise.
Ahab was a man weakly wicked. Alike to evil and to good,
lie was led on by stronger wills than his own. In his ivory
palace, Jezebel bowed him to her false worship, and to a
participation in her enormous crimes; but no sooner did he
meet Elijah, than the great prophet asserted over the un
stable king all the majestic might of holiness. The words of
reproach, "Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" died away
upon the lips of the conscience-stricken ruler, and he who
came to revile, followed, a moral captive, the bidding of the
messenger of heaven. And in Ahab, thus represented, we
have a far more touching lesson than that which would be
furnished by supposing him to be a resolved and desperate
criminal. It is the pitiable spectacle of a weak man letting
others plunge him into everlasting destruction. Ah, sirs !
Is not this exactly the story of many a man s ruin amongst
ourselves? They are comparatively few who start in life
with a fixed purpose to be wicked, to live uncontrolled by
God s laws. That which slays souls now-a-days, as in the
case of Ahab, is the want of deep religious conviction, of a
firm purpose to resist evil, of strength of character to per
severe in what we know to be right. What shall we say of
him who lets his standard of morality, his worship of God,
his prayers, his Communions, to be dictated by the custom of
his contemporaries, not by his own persuasions of what ought
to be ? what of the man who permits dissolute companions to
draw him from his own stedfastness into their riot, because
he has not the moral courage to stand firmly upon his con
science ? Is it not Ahab, led away by the stronger mind of
Jezebel ? And what we would urge is the great truth, which
Ahab s history demonstrates, that there may be intense sin-
fulness before God, without any deliberate design. He who
The Repentance of Ahab. 9
sold himself to work wickedness, so that there was none like
him, only consented to be led by others ; he was not him
self the initiator of the great sins which have procured him a
pre-eminence of shame. There were times, moreover, as we
have seen, when Ahab was susceptible of holier emotions,
times when he could feel the reality of Elijah s mission, and
join in the rooting out the evil his own hands had wrought.
Shall we sketch you an Ahab of the present day ? Fashions
change, shapes of temptation vary, but human nature in
its essence, and temptation in its essence, alter not. Have
you never come in contact with those who, being without
any high Christian principles, are led on, not so much by
viciousness of heart as from mere feebleness of purpose and
gaiety of spirit, into acts of license and godlessness; and
who, nevertheless, when removed out of the sphere of corrupt
influences, can feel the beauty of faith, truth, and purity;
who, whilst in companionship with men of exalted character
and religious faith, gather somewhat of their tone, so that a
momentary fire is kindled within, and their own prayers in
sensibly become more life-like, and their words more guard
ed, and their thoughts more elevated? It is the power of
Elijah upon Ahab ; the gentle force of holiness upon unho-
liness. And then, again, they have to go forth from the little
sanctuary in which, for a short space, they have tasted the
powers of the world to come ; and the tide of this world s strifes
and rivalries, and dissipations, surges around them; and, alas!
their prayers insensibly grow shorter and more hurried, and
their solemn impressions wax fainter; the eternal world, with
its awful verities, which for a moment had come strangely
forward, withdraws into the dim distance, and they are once
more heartless, prayerless, godless. Old temptations recur,
old corrupt habits reassume their ascendancy; Elijah s hour
is gone, it is Jezebel again. Are there any in this congre
gation thus wavering between two opinions, whose conduct
and feelings vary according as they are at home, or in this
University, in the country, or the city, with thinking men
or reckless associates? If so, it is for them that Ahab
speaks with a voice of fear. We would take them back,
those men irresolute alike in good and ill, to the old king of
10 The Repentance of A/tab.
Israel, and bid them mark how a life may be thus dribbled
away without earthly honour or heavenly hope; how a man
may let others lose his soul for him ; how the highest point
of iniquity may be reached, not by a bold step and a stern
heart, but by infirmity of purpose, and weakness of will ;
how a person may never consciously resign his intention of
serving God, or abandon his hope of heaven, and yet equal
far more daring offenders in moral worthlessness, whilst
alternating between religion and irreligion, faith and un
belief between Elijah and Jezebel. Such an one was Ahab,
grand not even in his crimes, a palterer with his conscience,
from very weakness of character selling his soul.
II. But we pass from AhaVs career in general to the par
ticular scene of his repentance.
It is probably true of every great sinner, that there has
been some crisis in his life upon which his after-destiny has
seemed to hang ; some moment when there was a more than
common struggle in his heart, whether to go on in iniquity,
or to draw back ; as though good and evil angels were per
ceptibly contending for his soul, or as if the Spirit of God
within him were making one last effort to reclaim him, before
abandoning for ever its polluted temple. Such a moment,
probably, was that when Felix listened to the reasoning of
St. Paul, and trembled on his judgment-seat, at his prisoner s
solemn words. Such, again, may have been that moment to
Simon Magus when he quailed at the stern denunciation of
St. Peter, and cried, " Pray ye that none of these things of
which ye have spoken may come upon me." Such a gra
cious season also may there have been in the history of the
most tremendous guilt the world ever knew ; when it is re
corded that Judas Iscariot, seeing what was done, repented
himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver. Even
to that lost soul was vouchsafed, we may glean, a brief
interval, when the beginnings of true repentance stirred
within, when even he took the first step towards amendment
in the restitution of the price of his iniquity, but had no
strength to perfect penitence, a moment when even his eter
nity trembled in the balance. And of this critical charac
ter appears to have been to Ahab the hour when Elijah
The Repentance of Ahab. 1 1
met him in the vineyard of Naboth. The prophet, by a divine
instruction, encountered him at the instant when, having
killed, he was taking possession of the land of his victim ;
and poured forth the prediction of the annihilation of him
self and all his house, for the provocation wherewith he
had provoked God. At those words of righteous wrath the
king s heart was for awhile broken ; for a moment he seems
to have caught a glimpse of the greatness of his sin. Per
haps the very atrocity of his last act, the murder of Na
both, startled him, as the mind of many a man long used
to a certain degree of crime recoils when he first finds him
self plunged into still deeper waters. " It came to pass,"
we read, "when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his
clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay
in sackcloth, and went softly."
Now it is doubtless the commencement of penitence which
is here described, dismay, confession of guilt, humiliation of
heart ; yet that Ahab s repentance was incomplete has never
been questioned. In the very last scene of his life, between
two and three years after this event, we find him surrounded
by false prophets, and with difficulty, at Jehoshaphat s re
peated request, suffering Micaiah, a prophet of the Lord, to
prophesy before him. It is remarkable that he is said on that
occasion to have collected " about four hundred" false pro
phets ; the same number which are recorded to have fed at
Jezebel s table, and whom he had permitted Elijah to de
stroy upon Mount Carmel; as though he had again al
lowed an establishment of Baal s prophets to be set up under
his own roof. And thus we are able to answer the question,
wherein consisted the incompleteness of Ahab s repentance?
That repentance comprehended, we have seen, many of the pri
mary steps. There was conviction of guilt, acknowledgment,
and sorrow ; wherein, therefore, was it defective ? It is here
that the lesson of Ahab deepens in its solemnity, for it sug
gests the two main causes of the frequent incompleteness of
repentance among ourselves. First and foremost stands that
infirmity of will which so often leaves a man at the mercy of
whoever will take the trouble to lead him; by which his
resolutions of amendment, like footprints on the sand, are
12 The Repentance of Ahab.
washed out by the first return of the tide of worldly asso
ciations. It was thus with Ahab ; the same infirmity of
purpose, the same yielding to the influence of Elijah or
Jezebel, according as he was with the one in his ivory
house, or with the other by the repaired altar of the Lord,
which rendered his whole career so "halting," clung to him
even at the moment of special grace. When God spake
audibly to his soul, he could hear, but not retain, the Divine
utterances. The good seed fell upon the soil ; it was neither
scattered by the winds nor rejected by the rock ; but there
was not much earth, and therefore, though received, it bare no
fruit. The innate feebleness of Ahab s character prevented
him turning to account that moment of gracious visitation.
And more than this : " Ahab humbled himself before the
Lord !" "We cannot agree with those who consider his hu
miliation to have been simply hypocrisy. We believe that
when they stood face to face, the man of time and the
man of eternity, in that dear-bought vineyard, the voice of
his victim s blood sorely smote the heart of the guilty king.
Ahab was sincere enough in clothing himself with sackcloth
and walking softly. The flaw in his repentance was, that it
was partial, not comprehensive : it had reference to a portion
of his sins, not the whole. He would gladly have undone the
murder of Naboth : he dreamt not of giving up the religion
of Baal. He seems to have vainly endeavoured to couple hu
miliation to the true God with the tacit retention of idol- wor
ship. And similarly, in the vast majority of cases, is it the
secret retention of some one vicious habit which palsies peni
tence. There may be solemn convictions, a desire to be at
peace with God aye, there may be the abandonment of many
evil practices ; but if with all this one single sin be knowingly
permitted to remain, it will render useless the giving up the
rest. Cast out six devils, and keep one, and that one will
bar the operations of God s Spirit, and finally call in to itself
other spirits, and eventually regain entire possession of the
heart. Leave Satan only a single ally within the fortress of
the soul, and sooner or later that fortress will be again his
own. Hence the full meaning of our Lord s command,
" Be ye perfect ;" hence the failure of so many who promise
The Repentance of Ahab. 13
well, and then fall back. Could we trace the secret of their
spiritual declension, we should find some false god still al
lowed within the ivory house some canker not wholly cut out
some corrupt passion still indulged some JBaalyet not cast
down. To the eyes of his fellows, the man s conversion may
have been complete ; but the Eye which never slumbers has
perceived all along that solitary iniquity dogging his steps, and
foreseen the inevitable result. And thus may we make the
partial repentance of Ahab, in every particular, a warning to
ourselves. There are periods in our career, as in his, which,
according as we employ them, affect the whole of our after
existence. It is indeed a fearful thought, yet not less true, that
eternity should thus hang upon time, yea, upon a brief instant
of time. Whether a man be lost or saved will frequently
depend upon the use he makes of a particular crisis. True,
that every hour of our lives is an hour in which good and
ill are set before us ; it is also certain that there are seasons
when God does more specially plead with us. We might
appeal to the consciences of all, whether there have not been
occasions in which you have been strongly moved to adopt
greater strictness of life, and more devotional habits. Those
inward suggestions are not of your own spirits ; they are
the Elijah- utterances which reveal the presence of the Lord
of Hosts the accents of that Voice which discovereth the
foundations of the round world, crying in the very depths
of the inner man, as of old to the shrouded dead, " I say
unto thee, Arise." Just as there are hours of fierce tempta
tion, when Satan is more than usually near, when, it may be,
he does not leave one of his lying spirits to assail, but comes
himself himself, in all the crafty power of his infernal sove
reignty, to make a desperate effort to win us for a prey unto
his teeth ; so are there minutes of ineffable calm, when the
grace of baptism stirs sensibly within when the most world-
hardened man is strangely visited with a gush of tenderness,
as the recollection of days when he believed frankly, and
prayed with simplicity, and shrank from pollution, steals
across him, and he is half-moved to break through his dry
crust of apathy, and fling himself on his knees before God,
as in his childish days, and vow to forsake all evil, and fol
low all good.
14 The Repentance of Ahab.
Now we would not only have you feel, whenever old times,
and old faces, and old words do thus return in their force
upon you, making your heart soft, and checking you in some
idle career or vicious excess, not only that it is verily the
Spirit of God communing with your spirits, but that your
whole future, both here and after death, may depend upon
two things, whether you have firmness of purpose to abide
by the suggestions of those whisperings of the Holy One, or
whether you will permit again the noises of this earth to
drown the celestial voice, and counter-blasts of passion and
folly to drag you back into the slough of worldliness and
indifference ; and whether, secondly, you have strength
to wrench yourself, not from one or two, but from every
sinful practice, to fling every idol to the moles and to the
bats ; not only to put on sackcloth for Naboth, but to cast
away Baal.
Men and brethren, may not such a moment be even now
upon some of you ? This season of Lent meets you as Elijah
met Ahab, telling you, with a prophet s tongue, of God and
judgment, speaking blessed truths of amendment, pardon,
peace. If these solemn litanies, if the word of exhortation
uttered from this place, be the means of awakening any if,
as you gather here week by week, the vision of God and
Christ, the vision of eternity, with its many mansions for
the righteous, and its prison-bars for the unrepentant, rise
up clearer than it has ever done before if there be in any
heart excited the disposition (be it ever so slight) to be
henceforward a religious man, then by the remembrance
of Ahab, driven to and fro like stubble before the wind,
swept back into the roaring surge from the rock of penitence
on which he had just planted his foot, we adjure you not to
be content with having serious thoughts kindled within you,
or with half-measures of amendment, but to rouse every
energy, call up every faculty, to fix, deep and ineffaceable,
the impress of God s hand which is upon you to resist all
those baser influences which wait, like evil angels, round the
portals of this church, to draw you back as soon as you cross
the threshold to cast out every evil spirit which troubles
you. Begin this very night your conflict with the tempter ;
clench the matter, as early as may be, by some decided act
The Repentance of Ahab. 15
which shall commit you, as it were, to the side of Christ
against the world and the flesh. Why do we not look with
the same contempt upon infirmity of purpose and half-mea
sures in religion, as that with which we regard them when
manifested in ordinary life ? To be led by others contrary
to our own judgment, to pretend to put away a portion of
our offences, retaining still some cherished lust or folly, like
a known traitor in the citadel, is to copy exactly the weak
ness of him whose terrible memorial stands imperishably
upon the eternal page a man who sold himself, above all
others, to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord.
We add no more. The drift of our argument has been to
urge you to a resolute choice of Christian holiness, as your
rule of life to reject at once, unreservedly, whatever will not
bear the light of God s countenance, by whomsoever recom
mended, with whatever sanction of custom or rank it may
come. Ye may do this, each and all. The question is, will
ye ? Ye may from this moment be hearty believers, high-
principled men, boldly and openly triumphing over the world,
its idle fashions, and its loose morals. Will ye so do? It
needs but a strong will to make you God s for ever. Awake,
awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ! Even while we speak
the shadows of time are growing more thin ; the ambitions
and affections on which we garner up our souls, the stars
which cheer our earthly path, are fading out; and deeper
and deeper beyond the hills of time waxes the light of the
everlasting morning. Put on thy beautiful garments, O
Christian soul ! thou hast awful scenes to visit, momentous
acts to perform ; to die, to stand before God, one by one to
bear the searching of His eye ! It is high time to awake
out of sleep. Dost thou still ask, as though unwilling yet
to act, " Watchman, what of the night ?" The night com-
eth, and also the morning ; light is sown for the righteous,
but for the weak-minded and half-hearted the blackness of
darkness for ever.
SERMON X.
THE REPENTANCE OF AHAB.
BIT
HENEY PAEEY LIDDON, M.A.,
STUDENT OF CHBIST CHUKCH, AND VICE-PBINCIPAL OF
CUDDI8DON COLLEGE.
A SEEM ON
1 KINGS xxi. 29.
" Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before Me ?"
SINCE these words are not merely to be found in the Book
of God, but were uttered by Him, let us approach them with
deep reverence. They are a Divine summons addressed to the
great prophet Elijah, bidding him consider the measure of that
penitence which had been wrought in the soul of the most sin
ful of the kings of Israel. " Seest thou how Ahab humbleth
himself before Me ?" He has allied himself by marriage with
an idolatrous usurper* ; he has exceeded the sin of Jeroboam,
by substituting for the symbolical worship of the golden calves
the formal idolatry of the Tyrian Sun-god b ; he has given
effect, expression, nay, supremacy to this hateful nature-
worship, by setting up a temple and an altar to it in his
capital ; he has introduced the impure rites of the Phoenician
goddess c ; he has been too weak to avert, if he would, the
persecution of My prophets, too vain to execute My judg
ments on My enemies ; and now " he humbleth himself be-
* 1 Kings xvi. 31 ; cf. Jos. Ant. viii. 13. 1 ; and Contr. Apion. i. 19.
*> The Phoenician and Canaanitish Baal was more probably " the productive
principle in nature" impersonated in the Sun, as Kiel, in loc., Movers, Phcen.
i. p. 169, maintain, than the planet Jupiter, as Gesenius, Comm. on Is. ii. 335 ;
Heb. Lex. s. v. ^y;j. Cf. Winer Kealwcerterbuch i. p. 118, 119, for authorities.
c As implied in the erection of an n"UJ>X not a grove, (Vulg. E. V.) but an
T -;
upright figure of the goddess Astarte. The etymology of the word pointing
either to the qualities or figure of the goddess. Mov., Phrenizier, qu. by Ges. s.
voc. 1 Kings xvi. 33.
B 2
4 The Repentance of Ahab.
fore Me." The three years famine and the miracle of Carmel
were alike lost upon him : he has proved insensible to the
mercy which, on two separate occasions, has delivered him
from Syrian invaders; he has as yet seen nothing to win
him in My warnings, or in My forbearance ; he has lived
consistently, either to insult or to ignore Me ; and now, after
a crime which Gentile morality would have abhorred, " he
humbleth himself before Me." Great and noteworthy spec
tacle of penitence, to which the prophet was invited ; that
he might comprehend the following message of pardon,
so merciful, and yet so measured : "Because he hum
bleth himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his
days; but in his son s days will I bring the evil upon his
house."
And with Elijah, my brethren, each member of the
Church of God in all time is bidden from heaven to ponder
well the subject which has been authoritatively selected for
our prayerful consideration this evening. " Seest thou,"
so runs the divine message to each separate soul, "seest
thou how Ahab humbleth himself before Me?" Mark him
well; for he is akin, both in his sin and in his recovery,
to the mass of mankind. He neither has sinned like Saul,
nor will he mourn like David. He has been pusillanimous
in his sin ; and he will not be other than faint-hearted in
his return to God. He moves on the whole in that middle
sphere of moral life which is, at best, never heroic, and at worst,
something better than detestable, and which is, after all, the
sphere of the mass of human kind ; and if his story be less
likely to lead captive the imagination, than the records of
more finished sin or of deeper penitence, it is not on that
account less calculated to speak home to hearts and con
sciences with which it has so much in common, and to
which it speaks in tones so plain and yet so awful.
1. Let it then, first of all, be observed that the repentance
of Ahab, so far as it went, was a real repentance. He was
not, as some have thought, simply and from the first a
hypocrite 1 . Ahab did really traverse the first few steps of
d Kiel (Comment, in loc.) attributes this opinion to the Fathers generally. But
cf. S. Chrysostom, (Exp. in Ps. vii. 13 ; Ad Theodor. Laps. i. 6 ; Horn. ii.
The Repentance of Ahab. 5
that blessed but bitter path by which the fallen sinner must
return to God. His, I say, was a real act of self-humiliation,
so real as to be recognised in heaven, and to avert a measure
of temporal judgment; it was something more than a garb
of sackcloth, and spare diet, and hard nights, and a subdued
and unkingly bearing. We dare not pronounce it "feign
ed," this penitence of Ahab ; for the " Word of God, who is
quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and
of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart 6 ," has Himself attested its sincerity:
" Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before Me ?"
Now let me ask, what was there in Ahab s conduct and
bearing which justifies the expression, " he humbleth himself
before Me ?" First of all, there is evidently a measure of that
"fear of God" which is the "beginning" of true spiritual
" wisdom f ." Ahab sincerely believed that God s judgments,
as announced to him by Elijah, would overtake him. He
might have remembered the solemn curse in which Ahijah
had, half a century before, predicted the ruin of the house of
Jeroboam; he must have heard, too, how with the same
terrible formulary Jehu had, in later years, prophesied the
extinction of the family of Baasha. And the accomplish
ment of these curses was yet fresh in the memory of Israel.
The same words were now uttered against himself, and by a
greater prophet : as if they had already become liturgical,
and were handed down in the prophetical school, to be pro
duced whenever the utmost penalties of God s wrath were
to be launched against kings of especial wickedness : " Him
that dieth of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat ; and him
that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat g ." Ahab
listened and trembled; he knew that in the cases of his
predecessors this word of God " had not returned unto him
empty, but had accomplished that whereunto He had sent it h ."
de Pcenit. 3j ; S. Ambros. (de Nabuth. 17.) ; S. Jerome, (Ep. 84, de Morte
Fabiolce ; Ep. 90, ad Rusticum de Poenitentia.), etc. It will, however, be found
stated in Calvin, (Instit., lib. iii. c. 3, 25,) with whose conception of grace it
would, perhaps, more naturally harmonize. Heb. i. 12.
Ps. iii. 10. * 1 Kings xxi. 24: cf. xiv. 19; *xi. 4. h Is. liv. 11.
6 The Repentance of Ahab.
But so to believe in and fear God s threatened judgments
is itself a gift of His grace, for which the sinner may well be
thankful. Too often, O my Divine Redeemer, " Thy judg
ments are far above out of his sight, and therefore defieth
he all his enemies. He hath said in his heart, Tush, I shall
never be cast down : there shall no harm happen unto me ."
Too often, like Amos, Thy ministers must mourn over those
who, on the threshold of destruction, say, "The evil shall
not overtake or prevent us k ." Too often do Thy creatures
speak of Thee as if Thou hadst retired from the world which
Thou hast made to rule and to redeem, by asking, as in
the days of Malachi, " Where is the God of judgment l ? "
" Search," brethren, " Jerusalem itself with candles," pene
trate the dark corners of the Church of Jesus by the lig.ht
of His Spirit and His law, and you will still find multitudes
who are "settled on their lees," who say in their hearts,
"The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil."
The sense of sin is often so benumbed, the belief in God
as present, living, and ruling on His own world, so precarious,
the spiritual sight so darkened, that men actually speak of
the age of divine judgments and extraordinary providences
as they would speak of the heroic age, as of a thing past and
gone, along with the poetry and the ignorance of earth s earlier
civilization. They have discovered, forsooth, that God works
ordinarily by laws ; and then they argue as if He could not
supersede them, as if He had forged a chain which should
limit His freedom, or delegated His power to agencies which
forthwith banished Him to heaven. And self-love is but too
ready to avail itself of the aberrations of reason to whisper
that there is " no" certain " promise" of Christ s coming in
judgment ; that what has been still ever will be ; that sins
long unpunished may still be persevered in with impunity,
and that judgments long suspended will never really fall
upon the guilty. How often, dear brethren, have we thus
stifled the word of an Elijah, speaking to conscience with
the authority of heaven, the warning word of Christ s mi
nisters, or of a friend, or of an example of self-devotion,
eloquent in the silent urgency of its reproaches, or of a
1 Ps. x. 5, 6. k Amos ix. 10. Mai. ii. 17. m Zeph. i. 12.
The Repentance of Ahab. 7
severe earthly trial, or of a reverse of circumstances, or of
a sickness, or even of plain tokens of approaching death !
How often, O my Redeemer, have \ve failed to hear Thy
sacred Voice borne on in whispers of mercy to us from amidst
the trees of life s garden, by "hardening our hearts as in
the provocation, as in the day of temptation in the wilder
ness, when our fathers tempted Thee n !" How highly dost
Thou teach us to prize this fear of Thy judgments, which
Ahab truly felt, in bidding us consider the penitence of
Nineveh, repenting at the preaching of Jonah, and escaping
in consequence the wrath of God !
Besides this, we must remark that many who truly fear
the wrath of God, yet fail in their endeavours after penitence,
through their extreme anxiety to justify and exculpate them
selves. They do not breast the question of their personal
sins : they take refuge in the thought of the superior wicked
ness of others, or of their own remaining good points of
character ; and then, more or less reassured, they endeavour*
even in the presence of the All-holy, to palliate that from
which He shrinks with loathing and with hatred. They have
more or less of that temper which is so finished and so hate
ful in the Pharisee. Even on their knees, " they are going
about to establish their own righteousness, not submitting
themselves to the righteousness of God p ." But Ahab is
silent not because he has nothing to acknowledge, but be
cause he knows himself to be so simply and altogether
wicked, that he has nothing to say. He will confess his
consummate wickedness as emphatically as possible, and in
the presence of his court and of his subjects; he will go
abroad as a criminal and a penitent in a garb eloquent as
to the extent of his guilt and the reality of his penitential
agony. "And it came to pass, when Ahab heard these words
(of Elijah), that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon
his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly v."
Say not, dear brethren, that that rough garb, that spare diet^
those nights of hardship, that crushed and broken mien, are
altogether the mere habit of an Eastern clime and a primitive
age, or the hope of the heartless formalist, the refuge of the
" Ps. xcv. 8, 9. St. Matt. xii. 41. Rom. x. 3. 1 Kings xxi. 27.
8 The Repentance of Ahab.
despairing hypocrite. Rather are they the language of hu
man nature, intelligible to all ages, and to all hearts of
nature when grace has touched it, and opened upon it a
vision of the terrible justice of the Supreme Being, and of its
own deformity. Here is all that is recorded of the penitence of
Ahab ; and we dare not underrate it, since we are desired by
Him to whom it was offered, to recognise in it that which
solicited and obtained His mercy. " Seest thou how Ahab hum-
bleth himself before Me ?" he does not deny his sin ; he does
not think himself hardly or unjustly dealt with ; he has not a
word to say against the sentence uttered against him, on the
score of its being too precipitate or too severe : but he crouches
in terror, as he gazes for one moment upon the heights of My
uncreated holiness, as he glances down the abyss of My un-
fathomed judgments, and then he surrenders himself to the
first irresistible instincts of penitence, and " humbleth himself
before Me/
2. My dear brethren, only if you have never sinned deeply
which God grant or if, having sinned, you have never
been true penitents will you have failed to adore that won
der-working grace of your God, which was honoured by the
humiliation of sinful but penitent Ahab. For, indeed, the
question must have already occurred to you, how it was
that where there was so much, there was less than that full
meed .of repentance to which final acceptance is vouchsafed.
Wherein was Ahab s penitence deficient ? At what point does
he cease to be an example, and become a fearful warning?
This is the question.
, :/ , , *
Now, unquestionably, a fear of God s power is the first
instinct of a soul convinced of sin. But where grace is
not resisted, there supervenes at once a deeper and more
absorbing sentiment the perception of His Fatherly cha
racter Whom the sinner has outraged, and consequently of
the hatefulness of that which has offended Him. It now
seems less terrible to have offended the Judge of quick and
dead, than to have wronged the universal Father ; less heavy
to bear the indignation of the Omnipotent, than to face the
wrath of the Lamb. The soul does not merely cry, " If Thou,
Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who
The Repentance of Ahab. 9
may abide it?" but she utters with deeper anguish, "Against
Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight ;"
" There is mercy with Thee : therefore shalt Thou be feared ;"
" Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee,
and am no more worthy to be called Thy son : make me as
one of Thy hired servants."
This, I say, my brethren, is something clearly beyond a fear
of God s judgments, or an acknowledgment of guilt; it is a
broken heart, it is contrition. It is that "worthy lament
ing of our sins, and acknowledging our wickedness," which,
through the Blood of His Son, " obtains from the God of all
mercy perfect remission and forgiveness 1." It is that temper
of the soul which eyes God s neglected love, rather than His
insulted power; which is penetrated with a hatred of its own
ingratitude, rather than with dismay at its own imprudence ;
which conceals nothing, palliates nothing, deprecates nothing
which hates and fears sin the more, if it be unpunished,
and which welcomes punishment as in some sense a minis
ter of mercy. " Behold this selfsame thing," says St. Paul,
"that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it
wrought iu you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what
indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea,
what revenge r !" The sinner " repents in dust and ashes,"
because he " abhors himself 8 ." But there is nothing in Ahab s
subsequent conduct to shew that he had attained to anything
deeper than a fear of God s judgments, and an acknowledg
ment of his own guilt. It would seem that he feared the
consequences of sin; but that by loving God he hated sin
itself, is more than we can venture to suppose. And there
are some very serious reasons for believing the contrary.
(a.) For, first of all, a true hatred of past sins will at all
cost put them away, and cut off the occasions which lead
to them. "Ephraim shall say, what have I to do any more
with idols*?" But do we read of Ahab that he destroyed the
temples of the Sun, or that he discouraged the impure super
stition of Astarte, or that he restored Naboth s vineyard to
his family, or that he banished the impious Jezebel to her
Sidonian home ? The silence of Scripture on these points is
i Collect for Ash- Wednesday. 2Cor.vii.il. Job xlii. 6. * Ho. xiv. 8.
10 The Repentance of Ahab.
emphatic, and taken in connexion with what follows in the
course of the history, as to his judicial blindness and final
impenitence, obliges us to conclude that the repentance of
Ahab was a transient though real paroxysm of the soul,
stimulated, indeed, by terror, to attempt a confession of sin
and deprecation of Divine justice, but wholly uninfluenced by
that love of God which leads men to hate sin because God
hates it, and to loathe "even the garments spotted by the
flesh u ."
(/3.) Again, the contrite sinner is concerned not merely
for the love of God, which he has wronged, but for the glory
of God, which he has obscured. Sin, in its essence, is the
negation of God, for it is the breaking of that law which
reflects His necessary perfections : and therefore all sins,
although in various degrees, rob God of His glory, limit
for a time, although by His own permission, His moral su
premacy; as they would, if we could conceive their being
indefinitely unchecked, ultimately result in His annihilation.
And therefore the truly repentant sinner is always sensi
tively anxious to repair the dishonour which sin has occa
sioned to his insulted God ; and to enthrone Him as a King,
not merety in the sanctuary of his own heart, but far and
wide in the hearts of others, to proclaim Him in the habits
of a family, in the customs of a neighbourhood, aye, if it may
be, in the institutions of a country, that His triumph, and
His glory, even in the eyes of those who do not love Him,
may be as palpable and absolute as possible. We know how
the energy of a penitence like this, burning to make reparation
to that Uncreated Love x which had been so long unknown or
forgotten, has impetuously carried saints to the apostolate
of the world and to the crown of martyrdom. Late in life,
the great St. Paul could never forget how he as it seemed,
the " chief " of "sinners" had been chosen, not for any
merits of his own, but that " iii him," as in a masterpiece
of eternal mercy, " Christ Jesus might shew forth all long-
suffering y." That his affections should have been so long
S. Jude 23.
x Cf. the spirit of the well-known and beautiful passage in S. Aug. Conf. x. 27 :
" Sero Te ainavi, pulchritudo, tarn antiqua et tain nova. . . . Tetigisti me, et
exarsi in pacem Tuam." * 1 Tim. i. 16.
The Repentance of Ahab. 1 1
bestowed elsewhere; that his intellect should have been
matured, yet in ignorance of the Only Truth ; that he should
have lived so many years, and so energetically, yet not for
God, his one end, his everlasting rest, this was to the apo
stle a motive for exertion, in the cause of God, which made
all human rest unquiet, and all sacred labour, rest. " The
life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me :" and
the object of that life was, that " God in all things might
be glorified in Jesus Christ." But in Ahab, alas ! there is
no symptom of the principle of this finished work of such a
measure of it, I mean, as was possible under the law, and as
is found in David. Self not God was Ahab s centre still :
he trembled at judgments which would light upon himself;
and on the same principle he was unequal to sacrifices which
were painful to self, however necessary to his Master s honour.
How could he brave the popular enthusiasm which in de
graded Israel would rally round the Baal-worship, if he at
tempted its suppression ? How could he expose his govern
ment to the charge of inconsistency, by restoring the inherit
ance of Naboth? How could he banish Jezebel, and with
the main incentive to idolatry lose the master-spirit which
had dictated and executed so many measures with consum
mate ability and equal wickedness ? Was he then to make
his palace desolate, to abandon his possessions, to risk his
kingly character and his throne? was he to invest with
honours, and a position, the prophet who had so notoriously
defied and denounced him? Such, indeed, was the sacrifice
which was required for the due maintenance of God s in
terests in Israel, and for the due promotion of His glory.
But it was impossible to Ahab : impossible, because, although
he believed and feared God s justice, as the devils do; al
though he confessed his sins, as sinners will often do when
their sins are already notorious; yet he did not love Him
who is the Object of all sin, as truly as He is the Source of
sanctity, as do penitents when they break their hearts be
neath the Cross of Christ, to rise clothed in His enjewelled
robe of righteousness and in their right mind.
3. And this brings me to the closing enquiry which the
subject invites, viz., whether we can detect in the case of
12 The Repentance of Ahab.
Ahab, how it was that he went so far as he did, but no fur
ther, on the road to penitence and to peace ? In some cases
the master-motive, which warps the will and frustrates the
work of grace, seems plain to us : as was the love of wealth
in the rich young man; or of the world, in Demas; or
of high position, in Agrippa. More frequently, it is al
together hidden among the secrets of our predestination;
and while we know certainly that God "desires not the
death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from
his wickedness and live;" and that we ourselves are ulti
mately answerable for the destinies which He, neverthe
less, foresees to await us severally hereafter ; yet still it
is a solemn thought which must occur to most men who
think seriously at all, what is that hidden cause which
determines this man, and that, to act so differently, when
God speaks, and truth and holiness flash before them ? It
may be a subtle influence, which has never made itself felt
before, will cramp the soul s energies at a time like this ; it
may be a deep fissure in the character never probed before
will suddenly yawn open and reveal its weakness ; it may be
a smothered lie, or a treachery to past guidance, and the
light within us, which at such times seems to strike the
balance of destiny : but these things the Eternal Spirit alone
perfectly searches now, although they will in each instance
be one day proclaimed. But in Ahab s case, it would seem
that we can, at all events, determine thus much that the
paramount influence at the time came from without, and not
from within him. This, indeed, was originally his own fault :
but I am speaking of the state in which he was found at this
the crisis of his probation. Evil had emasculated even his
natural character, and had shaped itself, as is often the case,
into a form of abject moral weakness. Mark his pusillani
mous deference to Benhadad ; see him quail before Elijah;
observe how he disguises himself before the battle of Ramoth-
Gilead, and you will understand why, when the Bible says
that " there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself
to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord," it adds in ex
planation "whom Jezebel his wife stirred up z ." She stands
1 2 Kings xxi. 24.
The Repentance of Ahab. 13
behind him, as an incarnation of the Evil One a being with
a will utterly averse from God, and intensely bent upon ac
complishing the misery of those who yet halt upon the thresh
old of destruction. Not simply the slave of evil, but its pro
pagandist and apostle, she overrules the indecision and the
timidity of her husband by a resolution which is shaken by
no doubts, and to which all the energies of her soul are duly
subordinated. She rivals, in her inflexible and ruthless energy,
those majestic creations of grace who have no will but That
of God, and whose being is consistently devoted to Its ex
pression. Accordingly, hers is the hand which cuts off the
prophets of the Lord*, hers the table which feasted the idola
trous prophets b , hers the threat which banishes Elijah to
Beersheba, above all, hers the intellect which planned and
the will which achieved the foul murder of Naboth. Can we
doubt, though we are not expressly told it, that that same
unfeminine and dauntless will which had so habitually con
trolled the weak and wicked king of Israel once more coiled
itself desperately around him, as at the prophet s words he
was rising from his wretchedness to light and peace, that at
this turning-point of his probation it might assert once and
for ever his subjection to the kingdom of hell and of death ?
Such, at least, would appear to be the judgment of St. Am
brose, who answers the question how it was that God s pro
mise not to bring evil upon the house of Ahab until his son s
days, was to be reconciled with the fact of his violent death
at Ramoth-Gilead, by bidding us " reflect that he had Jeze
bel for a wife, by whose will he was instigated to sin ....
and whose influence extinguished his penitential feelings c ."
Oh ! my brethren, why has the Almighty Creator enabled
us to act as we can upon each other to project upon kin
dred natures those flashes of intellect, that ready wit, that in
terchange of tenderness and sympathy, by which soul binds
and is bound to soul ? Why, but that these avenues of personal
influence may be as the joints and bands of Christ s Body
1 Kings xviii. 4. b 1 Kings xviiL 19.
S. Ambr. de Nabutha, c. 17, ed. Ben. I. 587. Cf. S. Chrys. de Virg., c. 46,
vol. i. p. 373.
14 The Repentance of Ahab.
mystical, drawing up His weaker members through the faith
ful efforts of His true servants to a more perfect service and
an intenser love ?
How terrible, then, the perversion, when the " spirit that
now worketh in the children of disobedience 3 / our great,
our untiring enemy, has intrenched himself in a soul, and
can direct upon the moral world the play of those marvellous
faculties which were formed for God. Satan has indeed been
long at his work, and is not wanting in resources ; he can
enlist recognised disciples or occasional victims in his ser
vice ; he can, as it were, feel the pulse of his antagonist, and
stay his hand, and bide his time ; but, brethren, he never can
rest from his purpose, nor will he fail to make the most of
his earliest opportunity. We may imagine how Jezebel bent
adroitly, almost as if in sympathy, to the first burst of peni
tential agony in her husband s soul how she tenderly cau
tioned him against overwrought feelings and needless anxiety
how she deprecated any extreme religious enthusiasm ; and
then, as she felt her way, how she ventured to rally him with a
slight touch of delicate sarcasm on the sackcloth, and his other
marks of penitence, and then, as his heart gradually closed up
against God, how she launched an invective against the pro
phet perhaps overshot the mark, retracted, yet on the
whole succeeded in deepening some ray of prejudice or of ha
tred ; meanwhile, now strengthening her influence by a protes
tation of passionate affection, now winning his admiration by
a shrewd conjecture, or a playful sally, or an animated criti
cism of the person of her opponent, till at last she could
advance boldly to the assault, and denounce Him by name
before Whom Ahab had bent in terror, and openly deride
her husband s penitence as a weak and worthless supersti
tion. As Leighton observes, "The grace of God in the heart
of man is as a tender plant in an unkindly soil 6 :" and this
is especially the case when the Divine work is in its infancy-
If Ahab ever struggled to maintain his fear of God, and to
continue and deepen the course on which he had entered, it
can have been but for a moment ; he soon sank vanquished
d Eph. ii. 2. Com. on S. Peter, c. i, verse 1.
, The Repentance of Ahab. 15
by the more than human energy of his foe, to await his final
reprobation.
Oh ! my brethren, Jezebel and her victim are not mere
figures of history who have played their sad part in the
drama of life and passed away. Surely at this moment they
are living and conscious spirits, noting, from their place in
God s universe, His slow preparations for judgment, and
anticipating dare we even think with what feelings ? their
everlasting doom. Do they not speak from their eternity to
us, who are yet the sons of time, almost as audibly as if it
were permitted them to pierce the veil and " testify to us,
lest we also come to that place of torment ?" Do they not
warn us, the one lest we use personal influence to the ever
lasting ruin of souls, the other lest we admit the play of such
influence upon ourselves ? Do they not bid us, the one to
fear nothing more than what often passes for the pardonable
license of conversation that quiet sneer at Christ s cause or
at His servants, which may have for ever chilled a soul in the
first fervour of its conversion, and robbed it of its endless
peace; the other to take no counsel as to our religious
course, of those whom we do not in our hearts respect, yet
who may, from past circumstances, have acquired an influence
over us, and to dread nothing less than the looks and words
of men when once for all, as we trust, we have in truth and
deed given our hearts to God ?
And, to glance once more at our text, " Seest thou how
Ahab humbleth himself before Me ?" " If," argues S. Gre
gory, " the penitence of a reprobate king, who was so afraid
of losing this present world, was accepted before God, so far
as to defer an earthly penalty, how must the holy sorrow of
His chosen ones please Him, whose only anxiety is lest they
should lose Him for ever f ?" We cannot but note, even in
this dispensation of judgment, how truly our Almighty Father
" willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should
turn from his sin and be saved." How delicate is His ear,
1 " In quibus verbis Domini pensandum est quomodo ei in electis suis mceror
amaritudinis placeat qui amittere timent Deum, si sic Ei et in reprobo pceniten-
tia pliicuit, qui amittere timebat praeseus saeculum." S. Greg, in Ezek., lib. i.
Horn. x. 44, vol. i. p. 1280, Ed. Ben.
16 The Repentance of Ahab.
how open to the first breathings of sorrow ; how anxious is
He to make the most of what is at best so miserably imper
fect, and to encourage the faintest efforts by the largest pos
sible reward ! How does our Lord on this occasion, as S.
Chrysostom observes, " Himself become the advocate of His
servant, and condescend to plead with man for mans !" He
who was such under the law, is none other than that Infinite
Charity Who has since come in the flesh, that He might die
for sinners. Oh ! my brethren, if He was such even then,
what must He needs be now ? If Jews knew Him to be thus
" long-suffering and of tender mercy," what must He be to
penitent Christians, as He pleads for them and with them
from His Cross, but that Fountain of all mercy, that Stay
and Refuge of the soul, no less than its Centre and its Sun,
Who, as the Church says of the eternal Father, " declareth
His almighty power most chiefly in shewing mercy and
pity b ," and Who had only thus to be "lifted up from the
earth/ that, by an irresistible attraction, He might "draw
all men unto Him * ?"
O Christian brethren, O imperishable spirits, whom Jesus
has Himself created, and for whom He died, rest not, I pray
you, for any fear of man, in your work of penitence, till
He has taught you, not merely to fear, but utterly to love
Him; till you have tasted, in all its preciousness, of that
plenteous redemption" which is the gift of your crucified,
your everlasting Lord.
S. Chrys. De Pcen. Horn. ii. 3, Ed. Gaume, vol. ii. p. 343 : Baai,
$ov\ov ffvvffyopos yivrr<m. xal iiiro\oyftrat ebs
h Collect for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity.
1 S. John xii. 32.
SERMON XI.
THE CONVICTIONS OF BALAAM.
BY
EDWARD BICKERSTETH, M.A.,
VICAE OF AYLESBURY, AND ARCHDEACON OF BUCKINGHAM.
A SEEMON,
xxiii. 10.
" Let me die the death, of the righteous, and let my last end be
like his."
THESE words occur, you will at once remember, in the
midst of that strain of glowing predictions in which Balaam
announced the future triumph and blessedness of Israel : and
I have chosen them for our consideration on this occasion,
because they appear to me to exhibit in a remarkable degree
the convictions of that inconsistent man. But before I enter
upon this subject, it may be well that we remind ourselves of
the leading circumstances of his history, and the more pro
minent features of his character.
The Israelites were now approaching the promised land,
and had reached the country of Moab, over which Balak was
king. Already the kingdoms of Bashan and of the Amorites
had fallen before them ; and as the course of their journey
led them to the borders of Moab, the fame of their successes
amazed and distressed the people. Now it was the custom
of heathen nations solemnly to devote their enemies to de
struction before entering upon war with them. Accordingly,
Balak sent for Balaam, that he might come and curse the
children of Israel. Balaam lived on the banks of the Eu
phrates, where the knowledge of God seems still to have lin-
B2
4 The Convictions of Balaam.
gered, although almost obscured by superstition and idolatry.
We may, I think, fairly conclude that Balaam was a prophet,
however much he may have perverted God s gifts. We find
that he was well acquainted with the name of the God of
Israel; for when Balak s messengers first came to him, he
desired them to lodge with him that night, that he might
enquire of the Lord, that is, Jehovah, the God of Israel.
Moreover, God is represented as having revealed Himself to
Balaam. It must have been generally known that Balaam
had direct communications with Jehovah ; and this will pro
bably explain the anxiety of Balak to secure his services on
this occasion a . For if Balak believed that he was a prophet
of the true God, it was natural that he should wish, through
Balaam s instrumentality, to enlist on his side the favour of
that God whom he knew to be the God of Israel, and whom
even natural religion taught him to dread. Balak s ambas
sadors arrived with the rewards of divination in their hands ;
but when Balaam had received their message, he refused to
answer them until there had been opportunity for a Divine
communication. In the stillness of night the Lord God
came near to him, and solemnly forbad him to go, assuring
him that the people were blessed. With this answer the
messengers were dismissed ; but Balak was not readily dis
couraged, and understanding, probably, the character of Ba
laam, he sent again a more honourable embassy, with larger
offers of reward. For the moment Balaam seems to have
been firm ; but the rewards now proffered were too tempting
to be lightly rejected. Instead, therefore, of taking the only
safe course, and at once remanding Balak s servants, he
pressed them to remain with him another night, that he
might know what more the Lord would say. But what more
could he expect from God ? Jehovah had already in the
clearest terms declared His will, and Balaam knew that He
* See Dr. Waterland on the History and Character of Balaam.
The Convictions of Balaam. 5
was " not a man that He should repent." It was an awful
crisis in the prophet s history, when, professing only to know
more of God s will, but secretly desiring to advance his own
worldly ends, he heard that voice now saying to him, " Go
with them; but yet the word which I shall say unto thee,
that shalt thou do b ." He eagerly caught at this permission,
forgetting that it was given in anger, and hoping that thus he
might even yet, by some indirect means, accomplish Balak s
object, and thus possess himself of the desired reward. But
he was not permitted even now to pursue his error without
warning. God sent an angel to intercept him in his way;
nay, even the very animal on which he rode was endued with
miraculous energy, and with human accents reproved him
for his perverseness. He was rebuked for his iniquity : " the
dumb ass," as St. Peter tells us, " speaking with man s voice,
forbad the madness of the prophet ." The history of that
remarkable occurrence is substantially related in the Book of
Numbers ; and both the manner of the narrative, and the
allusion made to it by St. Peter, forbid us to understand it
otherwise than as a literal occurrence, providentially ordained
by God as a further hindrance to Balaam in his presump
tuous career.
The wilful prophet, however, pursued his journey, and was
eagerly met by Balak, who led him the following day to one
of the highest points of the mountains of Moab. From hence
he could see the tents of Israel, as the people lay encamped
beneath him in the valley of the Jordan ; and here he en
deavoured, by sacrifices and enchantments, to obtain that
permission which had already been refused. But he was con
tinually frustrated by Omnipotence, and constrained to utter
that which was the very opposite to his design. Again and
again did he make the effort; but whether from Baal, or
Pisgah, or Peor, his designs were overruled; and on each
b Numb. xxii. 20. 2 Peter ii. 16.
6 The Convictions of Balaam.
occasion, instead of cursing the people, he poured forth bless
ings, each rising in richness and in grandeur; until at last,
under a plenary influence of the Spirit, he foretold in rapid
succession the future victories of Israel over the nations
around him; and looking far onwards through the vista of
ages, he announced the coming of the Messiah, and the rising
from out of Jacob of that Star which never shall set, and of
that Sceptre which shall never be broken.
"Well would it have been for Balaam if he had yielded up
his affections as well as his understanding to that mighty
power which then wrought within him. But, alas ! though
his eyes were opened, his heart remained unsubdued; and
we soon turn to a yet darker page in his history. Baffled
in these endeavours to secure the bribe of Balak, he now
sought by other means to accomplish his object. He knew
that Israel was in favour with God, and that there was one
thing, and one thing only, which could cause this favour to
be withdrawn. He now, therefore, devised the cruel and
cowardly plan of placing temptations before them, and en
deavouring to seduce them into iniquity, assuring the Moabites
that the only possible way of gaining an advantage over them,
would be to tempt them to sin, and so to make a breach be
tween them and their God. This stratagem was but too
successful; and Israel was seduced into both fleshly and
spiritual sin, which ended in the destruction of 24,000 of the
people by an immediate visitation from God.
But the day of recompense at last reached this guilty
man. He had not been long possessed of "the wages of un
righteousness/ when the order was given to Moses and the
Israelites to go forth against their seducers and smite them.
And we read in the Book of Numbers d that they slew the
kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain;
namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five
d Numb. xxxi. 8.
The Convictions of Balaam. 7
kings of Midian. Salaam also, the son of Beor, they slew
with the sword."
Now the most remarkable point in the character of Balaam
is this that he wanted to do what he knew to be sinful, al
though he would not dare to do it in the face of an express
and positive command. He could not act in direct opposition
to the dictates of conscience, although, through his love of
money, excited by the promised reward, he laboured hard to
accomplish his object by indirect means. He thoroughly knew
what was right, and yet his whole desire was to be permitted
to do what was wrong; so that at one moment he seemed
a conscientious man, and at another utterly abandoned and
depraved. He did not dare openly to transgress the com
mand of God. He felt inward checks and restraints of con
science, which he was afraid altogether to resist; and yet his
whole aim was to devise some indirect means by which he
might reconcile his wickedness with his duty. He was a
highly gifted man, and yet these gifts had no power to sub
due the low and earthly desires of his heart. He was not an
absolutely reckless man, for he evidently weighed carefully
the conflicting motives of interest and duty. Nor was he an
utterly callous and hardened man ; for had he been this, he
would not have taken so much pains to avoid a direct breach
of a positive precept 6 . We may even add, that with eternity
opening before him, and with the full view of the future re
wards and blessedness of the righteous, he could deliberately
strive to oppose the declared will of God. For it was in the
midst of his prophecy, and when he had before him a lively
view of his approaching end, it was then that he uttered the
earnest wish of my text, " Let me die the death of the
righteous, and let my last end be like his."
Such, I think, are the more prominent features of Balaam s
character. But in order that we may make a more profitable
e See Bishop Butler s Seventh Sermon.
8 The Convictions of Balaam.
use of his example, we will consider him (1.) as swayed by
worldly interests; (2.) as the possessor of great and extra
ordinary gifts; and (3.) as acted upon by strong religious
convictions.
I. It is very evident that the ruling passion of Balaam
was covetousness. It is so described by St. Peter f , where
he speaks of certain persons who had forsaken the right way,
and were gone astray, " following the way of Balaam the son
of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness." And
to the same purpose St. Jude * speaks of those who " ran
greedily after the error of Balaam for reward." This, then,
was his prevailing interest; but conscience struggled so
powerfully within him, that in the pursuit of that interest
he did not dare to run counter to a direct and express com
mand of God. And let us not suppose that this character,
strange and paradoxical though it may appear, is an un
common one. For, indeed, is not the world quite full of
men who are urged on by present interest to do what they
know to be wrong, only endeavouring that in the doing of
it they may find some excuse for their disobedience ? Re
member, the case of Balaam is not that of a man who under
the influence of strong and momentary passion allows the
greater and more distant interests to yield to the nearer and
the less ; it is that of one who, with a calm and distinct per
ception of the truth, deliberately casts about for indirect
means of acting contrary to that truth, when it opposes his
interests. And if this be indeed so, how many are the ex
amples of this grievous inconsistency ! Do we not find the
features of this character at every turn ? What ! are there
none who, though they dare not openly take that which does
not belong to them, scruple not, by little dexterous evasions
and subtle trickeries, to overreach and defraud their neigh
bours ? Are there none who hesitate not to use indirect
2 Pet. ii. 15. St. Jude 11.
The Convictions of Balaam. 9
methods for possessing themselves of their neighbour s pro
perty, although they dare not openly rob his person ? Are
there none who, though they dare not utter a direct and
positive falsehood, scruple not to speak with intent to de
ceive? And to follow out the resemblance yet further, are
there not many who, living in the full determination to com
mit sin, are not wholly without the thoughts of death and
judgment; many who, with the gold of Balak in view, are
eager in the pursuit of it, only taking care to invent some
excuse for their guilt, by which they contrive to cheat them
selves, and perhaps half hope to cheat their God ; and who,
therefore, glossing over their iniquity by a religious profes
sion, can exclaim with Balaam, "Let me die the death of
the righteous, and let my last end be like his ?"
And does not this explain in some degree the apparent
calmness and self-control with which many men pursue their
course of sin ? They are not without all sense of God and of
religion. They have felt within themselves, it may be, the
strivings of the Holy Spirit, and God has clearly made
known to them, even as He did to Balaam, the counsels of
His will. But it is quite possible that by some ingenious
process of self-deceit, by some religious equivocation or sub
terfuge, they may quiet conscience, and so commit sin, for a
time, at least, with apparent freedom. We cannot fathom
all the depths of a dishonest heart ; but this I will venture to
say, that the man who, knowing the will of God, has delibe
rately resolved to go against that will, will find some course
open to him by which he may thus gratify his inclination,
and at the same time more than half persuade himself that
he is acting within the scope of the command. There is
scarcely a single moral obligation which might not thus be
evaded : and it frequently happens that where men are thus
resolutely bent upon disobedience, the restraining influence
of the Holy Spirit is gradually though imperceptibly with-
10 The Convictions of Balaam.
drawn, until at length, casting off this flimsy disguise, they
sin presumptuously and with a high hand, and crown all by
becoming, like Balaam, the tempters of others to sin. Oh! bre
thren, if there should be one here present who is conscious to
himself of the secret intention to follow by some circuitous
course that sin against which his conscience warns him, let
him trace thoughtfully the downward progress of Balaam, and
tremble lest in judgment God should allow him to succeed in
that which is the real, though not the avowed, wish of his heart.
God saw and noticed the reigning desire of Balaam ; He saw
that though he pretended to ask counsel of Him, his real aim
was to obtain the "wages of unrighteousness." God read
that aim, and answered it in judgment. Let us beware,
then, how we cherish the secret wish which we know to be
opposed to the will of God. He may give us our desire;
but where shall be the profit of the sinful indulgence, if at
the same time He withdraw His grace, and send "leanness
withal into the soul h ?"
II. But I wish you, further, to consider Balaam as the pos
sessor of extraordinary gifts. We have seen that God had
bestowed upon him the gift of prophecy : but apart from this,
he must have been a man of considerable intellectual power ;
and these natural advantages, combined with his miraculous
endowments, must have given him an almost unbounded
influence over the then Gentile world. We know that he
had a high reputation, spreading far over Mesopotamia, and
reaching even to the distant hills of Moab and of Midian.
But what I pray you to mark is this that these intellectual
endowments had no power to root out of his soul one of the
most sordid of passions, the love of wealth. I think it very
important to notice this, because it warns us solemnly against
the notion that gifts can be in any sense a substitute for
grace. In these days, when the minds of men are upon the
h Ps. cvi. 15.
The Convictions of Balaam. 11
stretch, and men of thought and intellect are almost idolized,
it is easy to fall into the error of supposing that genius may
triumph over human corruption, and that sordid passions
can scarcely co- exist with great mental superiority. If such
be the case, let us mark well the example of Balaam. Here
is a man endowed with rare gifts of God, and yet unable to
withstand the temptations to that sin which the Apostle de
clares to be "the root of all evil 1 ." Who could have sup
posed, as the prophet stood, wrapt in ecstacy, on the heights
of Moab, that the canker-worm of covetousness was even
then eating into his soul ? It must have been a glorious
scene, as he stood on the high peaks of Pisgah or of Peor,
to watch the glances of his keen, prophetic, intellectual eye,
while the Spirit of God came upon him, and he poured forth
those brilliant predictions of the future strength and great
ness of Israel. It is a glorious thing to us to read these
prophecies, and to consider them as having, for the most
part, a still further reference to the Redeemer s kingdom
to know that the Star out of Jacob has indeed appeared, and
that from out of that pilgrim nation there has sprung a do
minion which shall never be destroyed. Glorious indeed
are these truths ! But oh ! how sad and bewildering is the
thought that the mouth which uttered them was the organ
of a sordid and deceitful heart. The true prophetic light
flashed over the seer, unclouded light from the Eternal Mind.
For the moment it lighted up his dark soul ; but, alas ! it
flitted by, and left the darkness more gross than before.
The prophecies have been treasured up, having contracted
no error or imperfection by their passage through an unholy
man ; but where is he who uttered them ? This question
must indeed remain unanswered till the last great day. But
meanwhile let us beware of presuming upon any natural
endowments ; nor let us ever forget, that in proportion to
1 1 Tim. vi. 10.
12 The Convictions of Balaam.
the excellency of the gift, is the necessity of humility, and
watchfulness, and prayer; lest that which, if rightly used,
might have helped to lift the soul to heaven, by being
abused, should only sink it down to a lower depth of in
famy and ruin.
III. But, lastly, we must consider Balaam as influenced by
strong religious convictions. We mark them in his anxiety to
ask counsel of God in his confession of sin when withstood
by the angel in his steady determination to obey the letter
of the command and in the earnest and impassioned wish
of my text, " Let me die the death of the righteous, and let
my last end be like his."
Now we must not suppose that in all this Balaam was
altogether insincere. We have seen, indeed, that his whole
aim was to try to reconcile his wickedness with his duty ;
nevertheless, there were times when the better nature strug
gled hard within him when he was open to good impres
sions, and when he earnestly desired a full participation in
the glory and blessedness of God s saints. And is not this
just the case of thousands in every age? Are there not
many who, when under the influence of an awakened con
science, can melt into tears at the remembrance of past sins
and negligences many who, when the glory and the hap
piness of the future inheritance of God s saints are set be
fore them, feel a momentary desire of attaining to them ?
They are borne away by the fervour of the moment, and
fancy themselves in earnest. The natural man has been
wrought upon, and, for the time, you might fancy him spi
ritual ; but the trance is over, and he is natural still.
Beware then, beloved brethren, how you trust to occasional
religious thoughts and feelings. It is well that you should
know what is right ; it is well that your conscience should
be roused and awakened ; it is well that you should weep
at the remembrance of past days of vanity and sin ; it is
The Convictions of Balaam. 13
well that you should feel some yearnings after those plea
sures which are at God s right hand for evermore. But
what avails all this goodly array of thoughts and feelings,
if they pass away like the morning cloud, and are only
followed by a return to the former habit of self-deceit, and
of dalliance with some cherished sin? It is not well that
you should know what is right, and yet be only intent upon
the pursuit of what is wrong. It is not well that you should
occasionally feel godly desires, and continually commit un
godly actions. It is not well that you should desire to die the
death of the righteous, and yet persist in living the life of the
wicked. Alas ! how many there are who, thoroughly knowing
what is right, still keep the glittering bribe of Balak in view ;
devoting all their real energies to the securing of what they
long for; only attempting some process of self-deceit, by
which they may hide the offence they know they are com
mitting, and persuade themselves that their prospects are
still hopeful, while, in real truth, .they are every moment
drifting further and further from heaven.
I may safely assume that the wish of Balaam, expressed
in the text, is the wish of every one here present. All men,
whatever their present life may be, agree in the desire of
attaining heaven at the last. With many this desire is pro
bably very fluctuating and ill-defined ; nevertheless, no one
has altogether abandoned the hope of everlasting life. You
all wish for this happiness you all hope for it. But if so, why
is this hope held with so uncertain a grasp? Why is this
desire so vague and unsettled ? Ask yourself candidly, and
you will find that there is some lurking evil, some secret sin
still holding you in bondage. The words belie the heart. You
are striving to do that which our Lord has declared to be
impossible : " Ye cannot serve God and Mammon k ." And
here is the deceptive thing that the wish for conversion
k Matt, vi 24.
14 The Convictions of Balaam.
may be mistaken for the act of conversion ; the appearance
of devotion for the reality of devotion ; the elevated thought,
the momentary aspiration, for the real abiding work of the
Spirit of the Lord. It is not enough to have stood, as it
were, upon the mountain-top, and thence to have looked
with passing desire upon the rich portion of God s saints.
It is not enough, under the influence of some earthly en
chantment, to have beheld the fair scenery of heaven float
ing before you like some beautiful panorama. You must
come down into the plain, and be with the people of God
in their trials and temptations, in their warfare and their
strife, if you would share with them hereafter in their
triumph and their rest. Oh ! then, for the grace to make
these impressions permanent, so that they may lead onwards
to greater watchfulness, more earnest prayer, and more
honest strivings against the besetting sin. We shall then
see that without holiness none can see the Lord; and we
shall see also that it is only under the Cross of Christ that
we can obtain real power against sin ; yea ! that it is His
grace alone that can subdue our stubborn will, and draw
our affections to Himself.
Let it not then be in vain, my brethren, that there has
been presented to us for our contemplation this evening the
character of Balaam. We have seen him gradually swerving
from duty under the strong temptation of earthly advantage.
We have seen him the possessor of God s highest gifts, but
failing to employ them to his own spiritual improvement.
We have seen him capable of religious impressions, but with
out the grace to deepen them and make them permanent. -
Beloved brethren, if these, or any of these, represent to you
your own special dangers, let me earnestly counsel you to
shun them while yet you see them, and before you are given
over to a judicial blindness. Let your secret sin be the special
matter of your prayer this night, and throughout this sea-
The Convictions of Balaam. 15
son of Lent. Bring it continually before you in thoughts
of penitence, in the secret chamber, in prayer, in the read
ing of God s Word, in Holy Communion. Try to recognise
God as you must one day behold Him, in dreadful majesty ;
and then look again upon that sin which now hides Him
from you which hinders your prayers which weakens your
religious endeavours, and makes even your seasons of Com
munion unprofitable. Strive to look upon sin even as He
looks upon it, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
Strive to realize the amazing attributes of Deity; His un
spotted holiness, His unbending justice, His infinite, in
exhaustible love. Endeavour to love the holiness, to dread
the justice, to desire the love ; until, through His unspeakable
mercy, you have indeed passed from out of that state of evil,
into the conscious presence of your reconciled Lord. Be
watchful against every path, every interest, every association
which might lead you again into the snare. Aim at perfect
sincerity of heart at simple, trustful faith at manly, straight
forward obedience. Then will the Spirit of light and truth
be your guide through life s weary and dangerous pilgrimage ;
and having, like Israel of old, passed safely through the land
of the Moabite and the Midianite, you shall at length be
established with everlasting security in the land of your hea
venly inheritance.
SERMON XII.
THE GOODNESS OF KING JOASH.
BY
JAMES RANDALL, M.A.,
ABCHDKACON OF BERKS. J CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF OXFOBD ; AND
SECTOR OF BINFIELD, BEBK8.
A SERMON,
2 CHBON. xxiv. 2.
" And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, all
the days of Jehoiada the priest."
THE history of Joash is fruitful of instruction to us, both
as to the great value of pious and faithful counsel, and also
as to the necessity of endeavouring, by God s grace, to be so
firmly fixed in steadiness of religious principle and holiness
of life, that we may not lean upon the staff of man s wisdom,
which may be taken from us, but upon the support of God s
Spirit, which never can fail us.
The early life of Joash was passed under circumstances
seemingly the most favourable to his establishment in god
liness. Snatched in his infancy from the murderous hands
of his wicked grandmother, by what we can scarcely regard
as less than a special providence of God, to keep alive, ac
cording to His promise, a lamp in the house of His servant
David ; hid for six years in the house of the Lord, finding
there an asylum among the priests, who as a garrison in a
besieged fortress kept up the worship of Jehovah, all the
more dear to them, because they only seemed to be the
depositaries of the true faith, while idolatry triumphed
B2
4 The Goodness of King JoaaJt.
throughout the rest of the land ; nourished by the faithful
Jehoiada and his wife with all the care that was due to the
hope of Israel, the destined ancestor, according to the flesh,
of the Son of God, and that at the hazard of their own
lives, which, as well as his, might have been sacrificed at
any moment by an unlucky discovery of his existence to the
queen ; fed with the sacrifices of God s altar, amid the
prayers and tears of those who had no hope of safety from
day to day for him or for themselves, except in their reli
ance upon that unchangeable word, " I have sworn once by
My holiness, that I will not fail David ;" surely one would
have thought that the very mind and body of Joash must
have been a temple, purified and meet for a constant ha
bitation of the Holy Spirit.
And so for a long time it seemed to be. " Joash did that
which was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of
Jehoiada the priest; all the remaining days of that long
life, extended by the mercy of God towards His people, to
the unusual term of a hundred and thirty years, that the
ruins of the temple might be repaired, and still more, that
the breaches of the people s allegiance to their God might
be reconciled. And then Jehoiada died, and then it seemed
as if with him the Spirit of the Lord had departed from
Joash. For, " after the death of Jehoiada, came the princes
of Judah, and made obeisance unto the king. Then the
king hearkened unto them ; and they left the house of the
Lord God of their fathers, and served groves and idols."
Sad change, indeed ! that he who in his childhood had
found his safety only under the shadow of Jehovah s wing,
should in his age have deserted Him, and passed over to the
camp of His enemies. Then followed the usual consequence
of grace rejected, and sin admitted to take possession of the
heart, hatred of the reprover of sin. " The Spirit of God
The Goodness of King Joash. 5
came upon Zechariab, the son of Jehoiada the priest, which
stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God,
Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye
cannot prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord, He
also hath forsaken you. And they conspired against him,
and stoned him with stones, at the commandment of the
king in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash
the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his
father had done to him, but slew his son."
The ingratitude of this act strikes one at the first glance
as monstrous. And yet, my brethren, though I would not
suppose that ingratitude often reaches so high a pitch as
this, I fear the disposition to resent as an injury, not only
the direct reproof in words, but even the indirect reproof of
the continued holy life of former friends, from community
with whom in religious feeling a sinner has cut himself off,
is but too common. Think of this ; for it is a great test of
what may have been, or may be now, your own spiritual
state. If you have formerly lived and walked in the house
of God, as friends, with those whose holiness, once your joy,
is now felt by you to be a reproach to your own profligacy
or worldliness ; if you no longer delight in their company or
conversation, though you know in your conscience, that not
they, but you are changed ; if you can with satisfaction hear
their good evil-spoken of; still more, if you can yourselves
join in ridiculing their weaknesses or peculiarities, suggest
ing that they are probably not so good, and certainly not so
wise, as they would seem to be ; then you are already gone
a great way toward the sin of Joash. It is a happy thing
for you that you are not kings, tempted by wicked courtiers
to put yourselves at the head of a people glad to be en
couraged in casting off the yoke of religious restraint, and
ready and willing to go any lengths to rid themselves of the
6 The Goodness of King Joash.
vexatious interference of those who testify against their un
godliness.
I will add, that this is a sin to which young persons are
especially liable to be tempted at their first entrance into
what we call the world. If they have had the happiness to
live hitherto under religious restraint, and in the society of
good people, they are to a considerable extent in the condi
tion of our first parents in paradise, ignorant of evil : but
the world spreads out evil before them, and the tempter pre
sents it under the most attractive forms, and disguises all
its really repulsive features. Too often they fail under the
temptation. They lose the trusting simplicity of their young
faith, the tender delicacy of their young conscience, and then
they affect to despise and triumph over those who have kept
the jewels that they themselves have suffered to be stolen
away. They would gladly initiate their early friends in the
mystery of the evil which they have learned ; but the friends
who will not yield to their guidance, nor follow their example,
will commonly be treated by them as enemies to their plea
sure, and be made outcasts from their affection.
Consider, then, how you stand disposed towards those
whom you once honoured and loved for their goodness. Do
you love and honour them still, though you know that you
have forfeited, or deserved to forfeit, their esteem ? Cherish
these feelings ; go back to those friends, and walk with them,
as in times past, in the good old ways. But if you feel that
you cannot love them as heretofore ; that you are too far
gone in other paths to turn again into that which they are
treading, remember Joash and Zechariahj remember the
blood of the faithful prophet, and true friend and counsellor,
spilt by the command of his foster-brother ; and know that
you are giving place in your heart to that same choice of
evil rather than good, that same love of the world and the
Thz Goodness of King JoasJt . 7
worldly-minded, in preference to the love of God and the
children of God, which sank Joash to that depth of sin.
But though this is a very important, it is not the most im
portant, lesson to be learned from this history. That lesson
is, as I have already intimated, the duty of training our
selves, and those who are under our guidance, to stand alone,
and not to rest upon the support of others. Alone, I mean,
as to men ; but not alone as to God. Rather, the more we
are alone as to men, the more we shall feel the necessity and
comfort of being always with Him. "The hour cometh,"
said our Lord, " that ye shall be scattered every one to his
own, and shall leave Me alone : and yet I am not alone, be
cause the Father is with Me a ."
Not that we should make small account of the counsel of
wise and religious friends, and especially when those friends
have also the authority which belongs to the ministers of
God. Such counsel is of inestimable value ; it is a precious
gift of God to those whom He has placed in circumstances
enabling them to receive and profit by it. There are two
errors in this matter. On the one hand, there is the reluc
tance to seek religious counsel, especially from the clergy,
who by their office are bound to impart it, and who, I must
say, are generally ready to do so, and are grieved that those
under their charge are so rarely willing to avail themselves
of it, when they might very often, by even a few minutes of
pastoral conversation, have their course of duty made clear
to their minds, and be saved the distress of doubting before
they act, and the fear, after they have acted, of having done
wrong. Instances are but too common, in which, for want
of such previous confidence, people have plunged themselves
irrecoverably into spiritual difficulties, which have beset them
a John xvi. 32.
8 The Goodness of King Joash.
for all their after-lives. The other error, of which the his
tory before us presents so sad an example, is that of always
looking to the opinion of others, and putting aside the re
sponsibility of deciding for ourselves. The perfect use of a
wise adviser is not to determine for us what we shall do in
every particular case that day by day arises ; but to help us to
store our minds with sound principles, such as we may call
up for our own direction when any emergency requires them.
Whether in this respect Jehoiada s management of the early
life of Joash had been defective ; whether he had thought it
sufficient to tell his pupil what he ought to do, and see that
it was done, without training him to discern between good
and evil by the exercise of his own understanding, en
lightened as it should have been, under Jehoiada s teaching,
by the study of the Word of God and prayer ; or whether
the fault was in the constitution of the pupil s mind, easy to
receive any impression from those about him, and too weak
to hold fast that which was good, we cannot tell.
It would rather appear, however, that the latter was
the case. We can hardly suppose that Joash could have
been ignorant of the duty of serving Jehovah only ; or
that he could have failed to perceive that the princes
of Judah were leading him astray from the way in which
he had so long walked safely. But he was pliable, and
ready to be persuaded. He had for many years had the
blessing of a counsellor whose advice he could securely fol
low ; he had profited by that advice ; he had been led by it
in a course happy for himself and for his people ; he had
probably persuaded himself, that as he had so long been
guided for his good, it would be good for him always to be
guided. He had been passive, and it had gone well with
him; and he did not like to undertake the trouble of re
sistance, and the hazard of doing wrong if he did resist.
The Goodness of King Joash. 9
Jehoiada was dead ; the princes of Judah seemed to be his
natural advisers ; he would follow their advice, and cast the
responsibility upon them. Thus he made even the good ser
vice of Jehoiada a snare to himself. He had had reason to
confide in him ; he had confided ; and that with such good
effect, that if he had died before Jehoiada, his name would
have stood high on the roll of the best kings of Judah. But
his very security, so long enjoyed, his success in his govern
ment, all helped his natural disinclination to think and act
for himself, and made him a mere machine in the hands of
others. Do we wonder that a person of such gentle and
yielding qualities could be guilty of such an atrocious act
of violence as the murder of Zechariah ? Daily life is full of
such instances, in which weak but well-meaning persons
have been pushed into wickedness that they would them
selves have abhorred, through want of firmness to oppose the
will of others. Joash was tried, and found wanting ; and
his trial was the removal of his faithful counsellor, and the
access thereby opened to advisers of a contrary disposition ;
men in whom there was an evil heart of unbelief in depart
ing from the living God, and who allured him in like man
ner to renounce his faith, and violate every feeling of justice
and humanity.
Certainly there is a great difference in the natural consti
tution of men s minds. Some are like the creeping plant,
that grows up rapidly, and yields a fair show of luxuriant
leaves, but must always hang for support upon some exter
nal prop, holding fast by its tendrils to a trellis or a pole.
Others are like the oak, slowly developing itself from among
the meaner underwood, but gathering firmness and sub
stance every day till it rears its head alone above the trees of
the forest. When the trellis or the pole decays, the creeper
must necessarily fall to the ground ; the oak abides, seem-
10 The Goodness of King Joash.
ingly immovable in its own strength. Favourable circum
stances may uphold the creeper : it may have attached itself
to a castle or a rock. Unfavourable circumstances may lay
low the oak : it may be blasted by the lightning, or hewn
down by the woodman s axe. But there is the inherent dif
ference of nature to begin with; and all the culture that
man could bestow would never give to the creeper the stur-
diness of the oak. But though man cannot change nature^
God can. He made the waters of the sea to stand on an
heap, that there might be a way through the deep for the
ransomed to pass over. He made the blast of the furnace
like a moist whistling wind upon the faces of the three holy
children, so that there was not a hair of their heads singed,
neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire
passed on them. And so He can change the heart of man,
and impart strength to the weakest character. How else
has it happened that children and women have been proof
against the most subtle and the most violent assaults of
temptation, when men, proud in their reliance upon their
fancied wisdom and resolution, have failed? God it is that
fits the back to the burthen, or the burthen to the back. He
will either guard His feeble ones from temptation, or enable
them to overcome it. He can give wisdom to the simple,
and courage to the faint-hearted ; and manifest His power
the most in helping their most seemingly hopeless in
firmity.
Therefore the way to be firm in what is good, is to take
God for your guide and support, and not man. " Cease ye
from man, whose breath is in his nostrils ; for wherein is he to
be accounted of?" The counsel of good men is most valuable,
and to be esteemed as a precious gift of God, and one of the
chiefest means by which He enables us to discover and work
out His own will. The approbation of good men is one of
The Goodness of King Joash. 11
the most cheering cordials with which God encourages us in
our work for Him. But after all, God s counsel is that by
which we must abide ; His favour that which must be our
desired reward. And that is what we must keep in view, if
we would have consistent stability of purpose, or steadiness
of conduct. No human guide can so enter into our secret
thoughts, or be so acquainted with the exact posture of our
circumstances, and how these work upon our minds, as to be
able always to direct us with certainty. And even if he
could do this while he is with us, what is to be our condition
when he is separated from us by death, or even by absence ?
There is but one unfailing and unerring director, who is able
both to teach us what is good, and to give us power to per
form it. Earnest and frequent are St. Paul s warnings to his
converts on this head. " It is good to be zealous always in
a good thing ; and not only when I am present with you."
" Let every man prove his own work ; and then shall he have
rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man
shall bear his own burthen b ." " Therefore, my beloved, as
ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now
much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling ; for it is God that worketh in you both
to will and to do of His good pleasure c ."
How, then, are we to reconcile these two things, the duty
of seeking, and in due measure following, the counsel of our
good instructors, of our natural or our spiritual elders, and
the duty of standing fast for ourselves in the counsel of God ?
Is there any real contradiction between them ? or can they
be brought into such harmonious relation to each other, that
we may beneficially fulfil both ?
I think we must arrive at the solution of the question in
b Gal. vi. 4, 5. c Phil. ii. 12, 13.
12 The Goodness of King Joash.
this way. All true knowledge, and wisdom, and prudence,
comes from God. Men are in various ways, and in different
degrees, His instruments for the conveyance of it to other
men. The father to his children, the teacher to his scholars,
the priest to his flock, all are, or ought to be, the repre
sentatives of God to those who by birth or condition are
under their instruction. They ought to be listened to as
such ; yet always under this limitation, that their office is, so
to represent God to us, as to bring us to Him, not to keep us
from Him. Just as the office of the moon is to transmit the
reflected light of the sun to the dark side of the earth ; but
if the moon comes between the earth and the sun, it does but
darken the earth, by intercepting from it the rays that beam
from that great light which is the source of light to both : so
the parent, the teacher, or the priest, is to stand for God to
wards the child, the pupil, or the private Christian, so far as
their imperfect knowledge or their spiritual needs require ;
but not so as to eclipse God, or to make them forget, but on
the contrary, to make them anxiously remember that to God,
and not to man, they are answerable in the last resort for
their deeds. If they are not taught this, they will be per
petually shaping their conduct according to what such a man
will think of them ; a dangerous ambition even of a good
man s praise, considering how uncertain must be the judg
ment of the best and wisest man concerning another s heart.
Such excessive confidence must be a snare both to the guide
and to the person guided. To the guide, because it supposes
in him, and requires from him, a perfection of discernment
which is not granted to man; to the person guided, because
it leads him to rest satisfied with approving himself to an in
ferior judgment, when he ought to be looking to the sentence
of the Judge that knoweth all things. Therefore it must be
a matter of most careful watchfulness to all those who by
The Goodness of King Joash. 13
nature or office are the spiritual guides of others, to guard
against any misunderstanding as to the just limits of their
authority, and of the others deference to it : and to the per
sons who are, or might and ought to be, under such guidance,
whether, on the one hand, they have made the most diligent
use of such advantages for knowing the will of God as have
been thereby brought within their reach ; and whether, on
the other hand, they have done what under man s advice has
been rightly done by them with a sincere eye to the service
of God, and not rather in the desire of pleasing men, though
those men should be confessedly wise and good. The more
we advance in years and knowledge, the greater must be our
vigilance upon this point. We shall never be exempt from
the duty of seeking good counsel, as we have opportunity ;
but it will become our duty to sift the counsel, and try it by
the Word of God, and so make it our own, before we commit
ourselves to act upon it. The judgment of good men, and
the opinion that they may form of our conduct, is not by any
means to be disregarded. Their judgment, due allowance
being made for the human infirmity that besets it, is one of
the ways by which God teaches us to estimate His own. But
then we must bear in mind that they are imperfect, and He
the perfect Judge ; and therefore we must, to the utmost of
our power, clear away what is imperfect in their sentence,
though it should be in our favour, and judge ourselves ac
cording to the perfection of His, though it should be against
us. If Jehoiada had been alive, it is not likely that Joash
would have consented to the murder of Zechariah ; it is pro
bable that he would have rejected the counsel of the princes
of Judah, when they would have persuaded him to join with
them in the worship of strange gods; and yet the events
that actually took place shew that there was in him a lurk-
14 The Goodness of King Joa*h.
ing unsteadiness of faith, and indifference of love and duty
towards God, which perhaps Jehoiada never suspected. There
fore we must be always jealous over ourselves with a godly
jealousy ; and judge ourselves, if we would not be judged.
We must examine ourselves, as in the presence of God, and
pray to Him to shew us, in the record of our own conscience,
whether we are pleasing Him or men, whether we are trust
ing in Him or in men. If we have done anything that we
know our wise and good human friend would condemn, we
may generally conclude that we are wrong. We have not
an equally strong presumption of being right, if we have
our human friend s approbation; for there may be secret
sores in our heart, underlying the fair outside, which our
friend s eye cannot reach, but which may be ready to break
out to our ruin, when circumstances of temptation yet un
tried and unforeseen assail us.
And what security have we, or can we have, against these ?
None but the promise of God, that He will never fail them
that seek Him. The fairest show of early life can give no
more than a comfortable hope, not a certain assurance, of
final perseverance. Is, then, the early show of virtue valueless ?
Not so ; it is a gift of grace, and a pledge of grace yet to be
bestowed more abundantly upon those who continue in grace.
Hast thou been carefully trained in youth, and lived hitherto
to the comfort of thy friends, and in earnest seeking of the
glory of God? Give diligence, and pray without ceasing
that thou mayest continue in the things that thou hast
learned, and be found of Him without spot and blameless.
Without His help, thou must still, after all that has been
done for thee, be a castaway. For there is that about thee,
and around thee, that will reach and stir up the motions of
evil within thee to thy ruin. But hold fast by God, and
The Goodness of King Joash. 15
thou shalt not thus fail. For He is faithful, and will not
suffer thee to be tempted above that thou art able ; but will
with the temptation also make a way to escape, that thou
mayest be able to bear it. He will pour upon thee the gift
of His Holy Spirit, whose fruit is in all goodness, and right
eousness, and truth. He will guide thee with His counsel,
and after that receive thee to glory.
SERMON XII.*
THE GOODNESS OF KING JOASH.
BY
DANIEL MOOEE, M.A.,
INCUMBENT OF CAMDEN CHUECH, CAMBEEWELL ; AND LECTUBER AT
ST. MAEGAEET S, LOTHBTTRY, LONDON.
A SEEM ON,
2 KINGS xii. 2.
" And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all
his days wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him."
FOR a right understanding of the character and reign of
Joash, we should consult not only the account given in the
present chapter, but that contained in the parallel chapter
in the Book of Chronicles; the narrative in the Book of
Kings being somewhat fuller on matters pertaining to the
early piety of the monarch, whilst that of the Chronicles
details, with more minuteness, the influences which led to
his declension, and the occasion of his shameful fall. The
leading facts of his history you will recall easily. After the
death of his father Ahaziah, at the hands of Jehu, the queen-
mother Athaliah, influenced partly by revenge, and partly
by her own ungovernable ambition, determined to seize upon
the kingdom ; and, as a means to the accomplishment of her
object, proceeded to the massacre of all the seed royal. By
the pious stratagem of an aunt, however, who was wife to
the high-priest Jehoiada, the infant Joash escaped from the
fangs of this most worthy daughter of Jezebel being hidden
for six years in one of the chambers belonging to the house
of the Lord. In the seventh year, Jehoiada began to think
matters were ripe for putting an end to the base usurpation
B 2
4 The Goodness of King Joash.
of Athaliah, and asserting the young King s right to the
throne. By a bold and well- concerted scheme, he succeeded
in both these objects. Athaliah was slain. Joash was pro
claimed King. And having received at the hands of Je-
hoiada the diadem and the book of the law, the infant
monarch was made to enter into a solemn covenant with
the people, binding both parties to be faithful to the wor
ship of the true God. During the minority of Joash, the
affairs of the kingdom went on comparatively well. His
beginnings were full of promise. And even for several years
after he was of full age, the young King seemed chiefly
anxious to carry out the plans and projects of Jehoiada, not
only on account of the comfort he would naturally feel in
leaning on a stronger arm, but in some degree, no doubt,
from gratitude to one, to whom he felt he was indebted both
for his life and throne ; so that, as both histories inform us,
all the days of Jehoiada, Joash did that which was right in
the sight of the Lord.
But while the King was yet in his prime, his faithful ad
viser died. And very soon, other and far different counsels
were in the ascendant. The princes of Judah, knowing that
a want of self-reliance was the great infirmity of the King s
character, seeing that his strong prop was gone, and per
suaded that he was as much dependent upon that prop for
his religion, as for anything else, plied him with the au
dacious proposal to forsake the temple of the Lord, and to
transfer his worship to the idols of the grove. And he
hearkened to them. From this time his fall was rapid.
Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse. Urged by his
obsequious and unprincipled courtiers, he was led first to
dishonourable compromises with his enemies ; then to a stolid
resistance to Divine warnings ; and, lastly, to the unparalleled
ingratitude of murdering the son of his former benefactor.
His end was as ignominious as his fall had been disastrous.
The Goodness of King Joash. 5
Being smitten of God with grievous disease, his own ser
vants conspired against him, as he lay upon his bed. And,
at the age of forty-seven, he went down to a grave of shame,
buried as mean men are buried, an outcast even from the
sepulchres of his fathers.
Such are the leading facts of a history, on which I have
been asked by your Chief Pastor to found a discourse, tend
ing to shew THE EVIL OF A RELIGION WHICH IS BASED ONLY
UPON THE INFLUENCE OF OTHERS, which has no root in itself,
but which, being unstable as water, and flexible as a reed
shaken with the wind, will neither bear fruit unto holiness,
nor have its end in everlasting life.
I. And first, let us advert to the habit of mind itself,
against which we are to be cautioned, in order that we may
detach from it, for separate consideration, so much as is due
to a constitutional weakness of character, to a natural diffi
dence and dread of having to go alone, a weakness which, as
not coming within the scope of our moral powers entirely to
eradicate, we must believe either the mercy of God will pardon,
or His grace will rectify and render harmless. We cannot
doubt the existence of this as a common form of mental infir
mity. It will ally itself to intellects of the highest reach, and to
wills of the most indomitable and commanding power. That
powerful tyrant, who, at the beginning of the present century,
made more than half the nations of Europe tremble, had as
little of the self-reliant element in his nature, as the lowest
subaltern he ever ordered to the field. True, when he had
resolved upon a step, neither difficulties nor dangers moved
him ; but to make him resolve upon it, he must have the con
sent of some trusted and approving mind, in private life
being as much influenced by his Empress, as, in public mat
ters, he leaned on the counsels of Talleyrand.
And if this practical subjection to the will or counsel of
another this tendency to hang on and hold on by what is
6 The Goodness of King Joash.
felt to be a stronger judgment be found among the higher
and more daring spirits of our race, how much more should
we look for it in humbler and more dependent ranks ? That
power which we see, in some men, of arriving at an instan
taneous, confident, and yet wholly self-suggested decision,
is not necessarily an indication that their judgments are
stronger, or their moral sensibilities more acute, than those
of other men ; but may come of mere temperament, a rude
corporeal energy which compels to prompt action, and settles
the mind down in its first-formed resolve. Exceptions, no
doubt, there are to be found in abundance, but, as a rule,
a strong character will be found allied to a robust material
ism, and a hardy frame will be most favourable to moral de
termination and endurance.
We may not, therefore, shrink from the admission that
some men are born into the world with a soft, pliant, trea
cherous debility of will. They must have somebody to think
after, and speak after, and act after. They hold their will,
as it were by feudal tenure, under other people s wills,
changing both lord and service, if need be, seven times a-
day. Such persons appear, at first sight, to be a good deal at
the mercy of their providential lot, in the power of those
accidents and associations, which shall bring them under the
permanent ascendancy of a better or of a more corrupt
mind, of a Jehoiada, who will lead them in the good and
the right way, or of dissolute princes of Judah, who will be
as oracles to mislead, and as guides to destroy. But we
allow not that their soul s life can be suspended on any such
precarious issues. We may not make a God of tempera
ments, nor a God of circumstances; but must believe of
original tendencies of character, as of any other influence
which might be hazardous to our moral steadfastness, that
there is provided for us, in the economy of grace, a way of
escape, an ordained antidote to our nature s evil, an agency
The Goodness of King Joash. 7
from above, whereby God may get honour upon our infir
mities, and out of weakness may make us strong. At all
events, the practical lesson of our admission that there are
some natures cast in a more pliable and ductile mould than
others, is, that in exact proportion as we discern in ourselves
this constitutional frailness, should be our resolution to cease
from man, to yoke ourselves neither with small nor great,
to determine that we will drink truth only at the spring ; and
obtain light only from the source; and, rising above the
changeful atmosphere of human influences, and human trusts,
will avouch that one is our Master, even Christ.
II. But passing over the case of any constitutional liability
to be influenced by other minds, let us address ourselves to
the evil of the habit itself, when it allows others to think
and act for us in the great concerns of personal religion.
And proceeding upon the example furnished by our text, we
are to take the case, where the influencing or ascendant mind
is, according to our common human estimates, a strong mind,
a good mind, a mind formed to lead, and honestly and ear
nestly bent on leading right. In many cases, no doubt, this
may be a great advantage. It is a happy thing for young
people, setting out in life, to be under the direction and con
trol of one whose only desire is to lead them in the way
to happiness. And yet we are to shew, that if our reli
gion stands only in the power which this mental superior
wields over us, goes no lower down to the depths of our
spiritual being than his example can reach, or his influence
can minister to, such a religion will be vain, will never be
come more than a surface religion, will not get itself fixed and
fastened into the roots of our moral nature, and consequently
that, in time of temptation, we shall fall away. The relation
out of which this subordinating influence arises makes no
difference in the evil of becoming enslaved to it. It may be
that of a parent, exercising a control over the filial conscience,
The Goodness of King Joash.
which belongs to him by the eternal prescriptions of Heaven ;
or that of the husband, drawing the wife into assimilations
of thought and feeling, almost before she is aware of it,
affection yielding to the influence, and the marriage sanctities
giving it the force of law ; or that of the pastor, who, it may
be, having begotten us in Christ Jesus through the Gospel,
having been gentle among us as a nurse cherisheth her chil
dren, having been, the channel through which have come
to us the most sanctified messages that have ever reached
pur souls, has drawn out all our foolish hero-worship,
himself made unto us Church, and Bible, and Creed, and
all. Or, once more, it may be that of the faithful guardian,
or tutor, or friend, the Jehoiada of our infant years, one
to whom, from our earliest youth, we had been accustomed to
look up, with all the docility of trust, with all the submissive-
ness of reverence, with all that absoluteness of self-surrender
which indicates an entirely subjected, and, as it were, en
grafted, mind. Yet, be the relation what it may, or the in
fluence what it may, if our goodness have nothing firmer for
its support, and nothing deeper for its root than any of these,
it is but as a house built on sand, and sooner or later it
must fall. You will ask me why ? I answer,
i. First, because such a religion is essentially fahe and
defective in principle. It originates neither in love to God,
nor gratitude to Christ, nor deep views of the evil of sin, nor
delight in holy service, nor aspirations after the sanctities
and bliss of heaven but chiefly in a desire to approve itself
to some dominant and controlling influence. The man does
not, with the Psalmist, set the Lord always before him. He is
content to have constantly, before his eyes, a great mental
presence. By the light of this divinity he shapes his course.
That which exceeds his requirements is not piety ; and that
which eludes his scrutiny is not sin. Hence a twofold evil
a low standard of practical godliness, and an undue regard to
The Goodness of King Joash. 9
the piety which is seen of men. The religious standard is
low. Water cannot rise above its level. And as Jehoiada,
whether from timidity or policy, had done nothing to remove
the high-places of sacrifice, though confessedly a reproach to
the authorized temple-service, Joash would do nothing either.
And so the eulogium, even upon his early goodness, has to
be qualified by the remark, but the high places were not taken
away. The examples are rare, where, in the race of good
ness, the disciple outstrips his chosen guide. If he does so,
it is because a better guide has taken him in hand ; and the
master s influence has become merged in the mightier power
of the Spirit of God. But, as a rule, the subject-mind will
keep below the religious standards and measures of its supe
rior. All its goodness is derived goodness, and it shines only
in a borrowed light. But they, measuring themselves by them
selves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.
And as the standard of piety is low, so the acts of it are
specious, external, prompted often by a feeble sentimental-
ism, or perhaps with a view to the praise of men. Conspi
cuous among the pious notices of Joash, was his zeal in setting
about the repairs of the temple, injured less by time than by
the sacrilegious spoliations of the sons of Athaliah. It were
easy to account for this zeal on other grounds than those
of personal goodness. That temple was very dear to him.
Under its hallowed and protecting shade had he spent the
first years of his life, a sanctuary from the persecutions of
the foe, and a school where he was taught his first lessons of
God and heaven. How natural that he should address him
self vigorously to a work, so gratifying to Jehoiada, so easily
mistaken by himself for the dictate of pious emotion, and so
calculated to gain him credit with his subjects for a loving
attachment to the truth of God. And so also it may be
with us, while our religion is in others keeping. We may
love the temple, have joy in ordinances, feel a thrill of sacred
10 The Goodness of King Joash.
emotion under the power of the word; yea, and for the
largeness of our alms, be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of the paths to dwell in, while yet, of any prin
ciple of vital godliness we may be as destitute as Joash was.
Rooted and grounded in the depths of the carnal heart, may
be hidden the seeds of an unsuspected idolatry, which wait
but the scorching sun of temptation to develope into per
nicious growths, to turn the repairer of the temple into a
worshipper of the grove, and to lead a lover of faithful teach
ing to slay, between the temple and the altar, the servant of
the living God a .
ii. But, secondly, we say of a religion that owes its being
to any merely human deferences, that it will always be feeble
and languid, and inefficient in itself; that it will leave its pos
sessor unprepared and unequipped for the struggle, and tempt
ation, and rough discipline of life; a prey to the first evil
influence that should try to make a capture of him, or to be
overcome by the first afflictive trial, which should send him to
the foundations of his trust. So weak was the hold which
the religion of Joash had upon his conscience, that it yielded
to the most despicable and transparent lure that ever man s
soul was taken withal ; namely, the fawning sycophancy of
a few unprincipled courtiers, asking, as the bold price of
their servility, that he should oast off the worship of his
fathers, violate the covenant of his God, and bow the knee
with them before the divinities of the grove. And the King
hearkened unto them ! Yes ; for why should he not ? His re
ligion had all along been the creature of influence, and there
fore must change as often as the ascendant influence changed.
Strength of its own such religion has none, either to resist or
to bear. It is impotent as the autumn leaf; now lifted up
in circling eddies by the blast, now awaiting, in passive help
lessness, the first footstep that should crush it in the earth.
Comp. 2 Chron. xxiv. 21 with St. Matt, xxiii. 35.
The Goodness of King Joas/i. 11
And hence I say, that in all this religion obtained at second
hand, this diluted Christianity of another mind, there will
generally be found a sickly irresolution of purpose a sort
of letting out of one s moral principles to the highest or most
powerful bidder. The man who trusts in it, is not his own
master. He is the property of the first strong will that
should deem the appendage worth having. Whatever there
may be in his religion of the graceful, and the courteous,
and the lovely, and the refined, we can never tell how long
it will last. His goodness is the forced nursling of the hot
house, not a plant to brave the storm. There is in it
nothing of the patience that can bear affliction ; nothing of
the fortitude that can brave danger ; nothing of the mag
nanimity which, to maintain its uprightness, would be as
unmoved by the terrors of a threat, as it would turn with
scorn from the meanness of a bribe. But true religion
that which is rooted in a Divine principle, and a Divine
influence is a hardy thing, a manly thing. It is furnished
for the cloudy and dark day, and expects its coming. Deep
in the springs of its unseen life is an element of strength,
which gives dignity to the character, composure to the spi
rit, a settledness and perseverance to the once-formed re
solve, that nothing can daunt, and nothing can turn aside.
Strong in itself, and in the^ever-present succours of its God,
it has the same answer whether to friend or foe, "What
mean ye to weep and to break mine heart ? For I am ready
not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the
name of the Lord Jesus."
iii. But the text suggests a third reason for predicting
the inevitable miscarriage of a religion which is depend
ent for its life on surrounding influences, namely, that the
very friends, who helped to make us as good as we are,
may in the Providence of God be taken away. " Jehoash did
that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days
12 The Goodness of King Joash.
wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him." But Jehoiada
died ; and what did he do then ? Why evil, and evil only.
The morning cloud disperseth not sooner, nor the early dew
when it passeth away, than did that fabric of gossamer and
unsubstantial goodness, which a breath was to destroy, even
as a breath had made. And it seems to be in obedience to
a law as if it were a Nemesis of God on the man who leans
on human trusts that Joash became more impious and pro
fane, for having known something of the semblance of piety
before : just as the Emperor Nero, conspicuous for hu
manity and virtue, while he had the counsels of Seneca to
guide him, went down to the grave a monster, with the
execrations of millions upon his name.
Grave lessons arise from this aspect of our subject, brethren,
whether as applied to those who, consciously and of purpose
have joined themselves to the train of a person of superior mind,
and only to please him keep up a show of goodness, or to
those who, having a loving and leaning affiance in another s
wisdom and piety, have been content to draw from him all
their soul s life and strength, and, unconsciously to themselves,
to let him be to them instead of God. To the former, or Joash
class, the lesson is, that it had been better for them never
to have known good things at all. They are fretting under
a temporary yoke, only to indulgein more unrestrained and
turbulent license as soon as it shall be taken away. The
instant the weight is lifted off, the bent bow will fly back
with more violent rebound. There may be love for a sea
son, zeal for a season, concern for God s holy things for a
season ; but when Jehoiada is dead, the long pent-up ener
gies of evil will burst forth. Like the heir long kept out of
an expected inheritance, the heart plunges into the thick of
its carnal joys ; and, as if to take revenge on himself for his
forced and early goodness, the man endeavours to crowd as
much iniquity as he can into the remainder of his days.
The Goodness of King Joash. 13
But there is a lesson also to those who do not fret under
their mental subjection who, in their hearts, love their Je-
hoiada and, indeed, whose chief danger is that they love him
too much ; and who therefore think within themselves, if he
should be taken away, what good will our life do us ? or what
power shall keep us faithful to our pious troth ? So may
reason the son, who, breathing from his youth the pure
atmosphere of domestic piety, has seen, in the life of his
parents, all that could ennoble godliness, and all that could
make virtue loved. So may reason the husband, who, sym
pathizing but too little, as yet, with the higher thoughts and
joys of his partner, feels that it is only her life of humble
piety which has kept him right, and that he should fall ut
terly, were he no longer to behold her chaste conversation,
coupled with fear. So may reason the humble disciple, as
he sees the teacher whom he has loved, taken from his head,
leaving him, as he gazes into heaven, and thinks of the hal
lowed and happy memories which that whirlwind is bearing
away, to exclaim, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel
and the horsemen thereof ! And yet, brethren, how confi
dently may we affirm, in these cases, that the separation
was one of infinite mercy. How truly might we, with all
reverence, put into the mouth of this dying parent, dying
partner, dying friend, those sacred words, " It is expedient
for you that I go away ;" For you have rested in the
creature, not in the Creator ; you have turned into gods
those whom Heaven sent as guides ; the Great Benefactor
has been slighted and dishonoured in His own gifts ; and
you have been content to find relief in THEM, when it should
have been sought at first hand from HIM. And thus many
a man has learned to bless God for these removals. They
forced him to think and act more for himself; to sound the
depths of his own Christianity ; to bring out more the self-
reliant powers of his character ; and so to turn a piety which
14 The Goodness of King Joash.
had been the sickly growth of influence, and imitation, and
dependence, into a manly and vigorous product, equipped
for noble service, and rooted in the strength of God.
iv. It were pertinent to urge further against a religion,
having no root but in the pious influences and associations
which surround us, that it must fall, and is of God right
eously left to fall, because it wars with the grand design and
object of all revealed religion, which is to make ready a
people prepared for the Lord, to produce an entire conse
cration of the heart to His service, and to magnify those
influences of the Holy Spirit, by which Christ is formed in
the soul, and souls are made meet for heaven.
But I must conclude with one or two practical counsels,
as helpful to keep us from the danger of which the history
of Joash warns us.
1. And first I would say, have a care of being deceived
as to your spiritual state by what may be called the amiabi
lities of religion. Cradled in the sanctuary, nursed by a pious
aunt, his early years watched over by a faithful servant of
God, it had been a wonder if the early outward life of Joash
had not been full of grace and promise. And like family
influences are at work among us now ; and, to the eye of
man, beautiful is the fruit they bear, in the interchange of
gospel charities, in the observance of gospel duties, and in
the sweet play of all those graceful affections, which give such
a dignity and charm to many a Christian home. Still we
might attract, and even deserve, the largest measure of praise
for our social and domestic worth, while, to anything like heart-
religion, we were as utter strangers as was this unhappy King
of Judah. The qualities which gain for us such praise, so
far from evidencing any experience of vital godliness, may,
and often do, consist with a heart unchanged, with a con
science unawakened, with a lurking enmity towards God
and His service in the heart, which waits but its occasion
The Goodness of King Joash. .15
to break out into open rebellion, and to seat an idol of the
grove upon His throne.
2. A second counsel I would offer is, see to it that there
be no halting or undecidedness in your religion. Joash does
not seem to have joined the princes of Judah ; but he heark
ened to them, and from that they knew his mind. He that
wavereth is like a wave of the sea, says St. James, driven with
the wind and tossed. The image denotes the utter unset-
tledness of the divided heart the absence of all serenity
and repose an acute sensitiveness to every disturbing in
fluence a never continuing in one stay. And the truth
of this description some among us, it is likely, can verify.
We can remember the time when the light within us was
just breaking ; when we were beginning to discover that
our whole previous religious life had been a mistake ; that
whoever might have been our chosen types of godliness,
our parents before us, our friends around us, or the multi
tude everywhere, religion meant more, included more, re
quired more than up to that time had satisfied us. And we
began some practical changes. We were less frequent at
this place, and we went no more to that. A hurtful habit
was abandoned, and a long-neglected duty was taken up.
But there was nothing of the Caleb spirit in us all this time.
We did not follow the Lord fully, entirely, as men who had
marked out their line of life with resolved purpose of heart.
The secret was not mastered by us, that religion consisted in
a spiritual and internal influence upon character, leavening
and controlling our whole moral being hopes, principles,
aims, tempers, affections, thoughts. And the consequence
was, that, for a time, we brought forth nothing but a worth
less, hesitating, two-faced godliness being obliged, for con
sistency s sake, to do the bidding of Jehoiada, but, with a
strong hankering desire in our hearts, to cast in our lot with
the princes of Judah.
16 . The Goodness of King Joash.
Lastly, as ye would have a goodness that shall stand, that
shall endure, that shall abide the ordeal of that fire which is
to try every man s work, of what sort it is, see that ye have
an inward experience of the vital realities of religion the re
generate will, the renewed mind, the revival of that spiritual
image upon the conscience, which, after God, is created in
righteousness and true holiness. You cannot be too severe or
searching, in ascertaining your personal participation of these
essentials of the spiritual character. The work of God the
Holy Ghost upon the heart is no vision of enthusiasts; no
mere dogma of schools ; no accident or modal variety of the
religious temperament, but it is a life, an inspiration, a
mighty change wrought upon the converted soul, having
God for its author, sanctification for its fruit, and a happy
immortality for its end. And as it is a real work, so is it
also a necessary, an indispensable work. No man can be
saved without it. Zeal, or the show of it, may set us upon
repairing temples; the counsels of a faithful adviser may
make us for a season do that which is right in the sight of
the Lord; but nothing can alter that qualification for the
heavenly fellowships, nothing exempt us from the operation
of that unchanging rule of God, If any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. AMEN.
SERMON XIII.
THE GOODNESS OP KING JOASH.
BY
HENRY DRURY, M.A.,
VICAE OF BREMH1LL; PBEBENDAKY OF SABUM ; CHAPLAIN TO THE LOKD
BISHOP OF SALISBURY, AND TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
A SERMON,
2 CHBON. xxiv. 20.
" Ye cannot prosper : because ye have forsaken the Lord, He
hath also forsaken you."
THE chronicle of Joash, king of Judah, conveys a re
markable lesson, and preaches to us besides a very humbling
doctrine. It is therefore a theme well adapted for this
solemn season of humiliation. In behalf of those who may
not be familiar with it, I shall first take leave to sketch the
Scriptural record, and then, by God s blessing, I will en
deavour to draw the appropriate instruction from it.
Joash was quite an infant, when "that wicked woman,"
as she is expressly designated, " that wicked woman," Atha-
liah, his fathers mother, to gratify her vaulting ambition,
rose and slaughtered in cold blood all the seed royal of the
house of Judah. In that massacre she had no doubt thought
to include this child also, but Jehoshabeath, his aunt, wife of
Jehoiada the high-priest, stole him from among the slain, and
hid him away with his nurse for six years in a bed-chamber
in the house of God. At the end of that term the tyranny of
the wretched usurper had so utterly alienated the loyalty of
her people, that Jehoiada seized the occasion to organize a
4 The Goodness of King Joash.
conspiracy in favour of the rightful heir to the throne. He
took into covenant with him some trusty captains of hun
dreds, men of authority in the army ; he gathered the chief
fathers of Israel ; he compassed the royal child around
with priests and armed Levites ; he set all the people with
weapons in their hands to line both sides of the temple, and
to secure every avenue to the altar; and then he brought out
the son of Ahaziah, and circled his forehead with the crown,
and gave him the testimony, or copy of the Law, and made
him king. And as he anointed him with holy oil, he lifted
up his voice with his sons, and cried aloud, " God save the
king !" And when Athaliah heard the shout of joy, and the
noise of the people, she forced her way into the temple, and,
behold the boy, whom she had left in the heap for dead,
stood at his pillar, and the princes were gathered round him,
and the trumpets blew their loudest blast, and the singers
poured forth their most jubilant song, and again they cried,
"God save the king !" and Athaliah answered with a scream,
"treason! treason !" and she fled to the outer gate, and
there they slew her with the sword.
Thus enthroned, thus crowned, thus solemnly consecrated
to the service of his country and his God, King Joash was
still in his infancy ; and during the long minority that ensued,
Jehoiada was constituted his guardian, and appointed regent
of the kingdom. It was scarcely possible for a youth to be
subjected to a better tutor, or trained under better auspices.
The regent was manifestly a man of consummate ability, of
rare courage, of inflexible honesty, and, as became a minis
tering servant of the Most High God, of sound and devoted
piety. His first act was to make a covenant between himself
and all the people, that they should be " the Lord s people."
Then they went in a body into the house of Baal, and brake
it down brake all his altars and images, slew Mattan the
The Goodness of King Joash. 5
priest, and hurled idolatry from the land. This done, he
again exacted of the whole nation an oath of fidelity to
Joash; and so we read, "the people of the land rejoiced,
and the city was quiet." There was a faithful ruler over
the house, and peace in all their borders.
In this healthy atmosphere was Joash nerved and quali
fied for the high vocation to which he was called. He was
blessed with a sound religious education, and initiated into
all the mysteries of political science ; and it is the first notice
we have of him, when invested with full power, that he was
minded to repair the house of the Lord ; not his own house,
you observe not the royal palace ; there is not a word about
cedar, or vermilion, or gold to repair the king s courts ; but
the house of the King of kings that was all his thought by
day, and all his dream by night, that there should not be a
crack or a flaw in the walls of that magnificent temple ; that
all things there should be done after the fashion of his an
cestors, and according to the pattern shewn in the Mount;
that with all the splendour wealth could purchase, and all the
circumstance that art could devise, the sanctuary of his God
should be embellished, and the worship of his God celebrated.
And how did he propose to effect that purpose ? By levy
ing a tax, a rate upon the inhabitants of the country ; by
sending into all the cities of Judah, and gathering money of
all Israel " from year to year j" by doing that which our
fathers also have done for centuries in their love of the
Redeemer, and for the maintenance of His more simple
ritual, which, alas ! a confederacy of their sons, from what
ever motives, are now seeking to undo by imposing a national
rate to support the national faith, and by asserting it as
a normal condition of an established Church, that the land
which Heaven blesses with fruits of increase, enriches with
all material wealth, and lavishly* supplies with every luxury
6 The Goodness of King Joash.
that can minister to social enjoyment that such aland, and
the people of such a land, should yield back, and gratefully
acknowledge their obligation to yield back, a portion how
ever small of that substance, and lay it upon the altar not
grudgingly nor of necessity, but as a free-will offering to
their God.
Now we stay not to dwell upon this pleasant picture of a
young ruler thus " beginning in the Spirit ;" there is an
other side, a reverse of it, "an ending in the flesh," to
which we must hasten to call your attention.
Jehoiada waxed old and died. At one hundred and thirty
years of age he gathered up his feet upon his bed, and gave
up the ghost. We may well imagine the distress and anguish
of heart with which the stripling monarch bent over that
dying man : " My father ! my father \" a father ? aye, and
more than a father to him ! We can see him now prostrating
himself, like Joseph upon the livid corpse of Jacob, weeping
over that cold clay, and kissing it, as though he could re
animate it with the tender warmth of his embrace ; and we
can almost hear the solemn pledge and the earnest prayer
with which, standing in the presence of his dead, he bound
himself, by all the sweet memory of the past, to walk in the
ways of that holy priest, to observe all his counsels, to practise
all his precepts ; and, when the angels should bear him to a
loftier throne and a crown of purer gold, to carry with him a
strict account of his sacred trust, and to lay it before Jehoiada
on the bosom of Father Abraham.
Well, what followed ? In ten years from that time Joash
was so utterly another man, that you cannot recognise in
him one feature of that godly disposition we have been de
lineating not one ; not a vestige, not a suspicion remains of
the goodness of Joash. His degenerate heart was now a cage
of unclean birds ; his degraded court a nest of unprincipled
The Goodness of King Joash. 7
nobles, fulsome parasites, and sensual infidels. The temple,
robbed and pillaged to bribe away an invading enemy, was
left to the moles and bats. Baal again reigned paramount in
his filthy groves. In vain God sent His prophets to bring
these backsliders to some sense of shame they gave no ear
to the message. At last He put His Spirit upon Zechariah,
the son of Jehoiada, as though He would say, "Surely he
will reverence the son of his great benefactor !" But Joash
murdered Zechariah, he ordered him to be stoned with
stones. There was no feeling of pity, no compunction of con
science : as the Scripture with its quiet simplicity records it,
" he remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada had done
to him, but slew his son." The sequel is soon told. Vengeance
was on the track of the assassin. At the end of that year
the Syrians had swept into their own place all those mis
creant princes, and had carried away their spoil ; and Joash,
left to chew the cud of his apostasy, tossing to and fro upon
a bed of sickness, agonized with disease, stung with remorse,
deserted by his miserable friends, betrayed by his own ser
vants, saw the flashing steel of the conspirators brandished
over his head felt it plunging fatally into his bosom and
with one cry of terror, one groan of pain, rendered up his
unhappy soul to the tormentors.
This is a sad illustration truly of the deceitfulness of the
human heart ; of the weakness of the natural man ; and of
the perishing nature of that impulsive goodness, which rests
solely for its permanence upon the constraining influence of
others. There are, (thanks be to God for His unspeakable
gift !) there are spiritual agencies now at work, to which the
generation of Joash was a stranger, and we may hope that
so gross and so violent a declension from early righteous
ness is comparatively rare : but we dare not deny that the
son of Ahaziah still represents a very large class of persons
8 The Goodness of King Joadt.
subsisting even in the Church of Christ, persons of warm
and susceptible feelings, acting habitually under impulse, of
a temper of mind volatile, or pliable, or keenly sensitive,
upon which impressions are easily made, and as easily effaced.
You can call up instances of many such amongst your own
acquaintance, perhaps of your own households. I doubt not
there are some such in this congregation ; some, perhaps,
brought hither to-night by an accidental attraction of the
moment, the instigation of some friend, or the visitation of
some Providence some voice that has whispered to them,
" Son, go work to-day in my vineyard," and to which they
have answered readily, " I go, Sir," but of whom it will be
found in the end, that all their compliance evaporated in
the virtuous concession, and that in truth and reality they
" went not."
And indeed, if I may venture to say so in the face of this
audience, in spite of all the inspiration of this place, all the
venerable associations of this queen of academical cities in
spite of the world- wide fame she has achieved in spite of the
vast army, which no man can number, of master-minds here
drilled and disciplined, and furnished unto every good work,
yet we could point to no spot more suggestive than this of the
evanescent quality of that light of the soul which is simply
reflected, of that transient goodness which walks by sight and
not by faith. Here, in the very most critical period of life,
whilst the judgment is raw and inexperienced, when strong
passions are arming themselves for the mastery, and reason is
most easily thrown from its balance here are gathered to
gether, from all parts of the land, a multitude of young men
suddenly emancipated from the careful supervision of home
and the rigorous shackles of school transferred to a new
stage of probation and however amenable to the restrictions
of their College, and the salutary laws of their University,
The Goodness of King Joash. 9
yet virtually left to mould for themselves, out of the plastic
material of the inner man, the form and fashion of the moral
character in which they would play their part in time, and
stand before their God in eternity. Oh ! if the stones could
cry out of these walls, and the beam out of the timber could
answer them ; if your fabled river-god could deliver his pro
phetic soul, as in the poet s dream of old, what a fearful re
velation, what a harrowing tale might they unfold of the hopes
that have here been disappointed, the promises cast to the
wind, the bright prospects marred, the prayers made of none
effect ! How could they startle and scandalize these busy and
contemplative scenes with a recital of the fine talents here
frittered away, the splendid parts given to waste, the vigor
ous intellects dissipated ! What a plaintive dirge might they
weave out of the expectations that have here been blasted,
and the hearts thereby broken, and the grey hairs brought
with sorrow to the grave ! How could they people your halls
and your cloisters, your gardens and your glades, these now
teeming haunts of youth and health and strength and glad
ness, with a generation of gaunt phantoms of men untimely
old, men of worn visage and shattered nerves, who long long
ago buried all their good intentions beneath this sacred soil ;
men who had never prospered in life, who had here matri
culated, here perhaps graduated, but who could not prosper,
because they had here also forsaken the Lord. Here, how
ever, they had been sent in the fullest assurance of con
fidence, to these schools of the prophets, to be nurtured in
holiness, enlarged in understanding, matured in scholarship,
stored with knowledge, confirmed in the courtesies of a gen
tleman, elevated in the conversation of a Christian : sent here
to improve their natural faculties by study, and by intercourse
with great and gifted and chivalrous minds; to trim their
spirits for the encounters of life, to prepare their souls for
10 The Goodness of King Joash.
temptation, and so to ratify the covenant which they had
made with their guardians below, with their God above, that
they would be of the number of the Lord s people. And
here they gathered, a sprightly troop, filled with noble emu
lation, strong in their own resolutions, earnest in their pur
pose to gird up their loins to the task, and to fulfil the purpose
of their coming.
Well, what followed? First, the whisper of the arch-
tempter, more subtle than any beast of the field " What !
hath God said thou shalt not eat of every tree ? Why, man,
you are free ! This is not home ; this is not school : here at
least you are free ; eat, drink, and be merry !" Then the
busy fellow-helpers of that Evil One. The sceptic, intolerant
of a creed, asking contemptuously, What is truth ? The con
troversial humourist, coining his ingenious sophistries, and
commending them with his insidious drollery. The listless
idler, always intruding his unwelcome presence upon the con
ventional hours of study. The voluptuary, who lived for the
cup and the carousal, putting his bottle to his companions,
and filling them with shame for glory. The sinner in the
city, whose house is in the way to hell, going down to the
chambers of death. The tradesman, enticing his customer
to reckless extravagance with the offer of unlimited credit.
The sordid money-lender, weaving his web of usury, simu
lating pity for his victim, and calculating his reversions to
the uttermost farthing. These, and such as these, have
"made their obeisance/ like the princes of Judah; and,
behold, Jehoiada is gone, and Joash has hearkened to them !
Now he has left the God of his fathers ; now he serves groves
and idols ; now he treads daily the downward path, and he
cannot prosper, because God has forsaken him.
You will say then, if the case be so, it is better to have no
counsellors, no guides, no Jehoiadas to employ the mini-
The Goodness of King Joash. 11
mum of controlling direction for the young. Make your
child self-dependent, self-reliant : commit him boldly to his
own instincts, the intuition of his moral sense.
Not so, my brethren. The whole course of God s dealing
with His creatures urges upon us a different lesson. It is
not good for us to be alone. The relations of man with man,
and especially of the elders with the younger, are so close
and complicated, that you cannot spin theories out ojf them,
or force experiments upon them. There they are, and by no
philosophy can you make them other than they are. From
the cradle we throw out tendrils, and grope about for aid,
feeling for something to which we may cling, higher and
stronger than ourselves. God has created us with these
instruments of attachment, with passionate yearnings and
affections, the necessary properties of a beating heart,
with a craving desire for the sympathy and support of those
with whom our lot in life is cast.
To preach the disturbance of such ties, and the substitu
tion of the spirit of absolute self-reliance, what were it, but
to preach licentiousness to pamper the pride and self-suf
ficiency of man s unsanctified will to upheave old founda
tions to destroy the peace of families to dislocate the
framework of society to cancel the charter of the Church ?
Therefore, in some sense and to some extent, the goodness
of one being must rest upon the goodness of another. This
is an imperative law. The question is not whether we shall
admit it, but how we shall administer it ? How shall the
parent train his child, and the tutor admonish his pupil, and
the priest so inform his people, that they may be humble
and dutiful, and yet " have root in themselves," not " during
for awhile," not offended when temptation or tribulation
cometh for the Word s sake, but having root in themselves
striking their roots downwards, as their branches strive up
wards multiplying the fibres thereof, and anchoring them to
12 The Goodness of King Joash.
the soil from which they draw their life, until they come in
themselves to the full stature of perfect men, strong as the
cedars of Lebanon, as trees which the Lord has planted ?
Now so long as the will of man is free, and the infection
of sin remaineth, even in the regenerate, it were idle to talk
of any infallible specific :
" Death only binds us fast
To the bright shore of love :"
but our mother-Church, ever wise, ever anxious, ever true,
has warned us of the one Scriptural remedy that compara
tively bears the test. She refers us to the first principles of
the doctrine of Christ. Tell them, she says, of their respon
sibility. Deal with them as accountable moral agents as
those who, in virtue of their baptism, are become " temples
of the living God ;" not mere possible recipients of spiritual
influences in contingency, but the actual depositories of sa
cramental grace in possession elect vessels, into which the
Spirit has already poured Himself, through the manifestation
of the life of Jesus ; members, therefore, of Christ, children
of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. Let there
be no refining upon this written law of evangelical verity.
Teach them this, and you strip them at once of the excuse,
which has passed into a proverb, that " old Adam is too
strong for young Melancthon." Or contrariwise, hide it
from them, and what then? Why, comforting themselves
with the blind assurance that they are not sinning against
grace that their sin therefore is not deadly they will run,
may be, into every excess of riot ; they will perhaps bargain,
with their Maker, as St. Augustine did, urging the entice
ment of their lust, and praying that their conversion may
be delayed a little longer, presuming upon the mercies of
God with the temerity of that penitent father, and lacking
his humility to confess it.
The Goodness of King Joask. 13
Oh, if I am to send my son to fight the good fight of
faith, to wrestle against the powers and principalities of
darkness, and to stand against the wiles of the devil, above
all things let me stablish him with this fact, as a counter
poise and antidote to the delusions of the world that he is
now a responsible being ; let me brace and gladden his soul
with the contemplation of the sterling dignity of his new
birth of his translation into the kingdom of God s dear
Son and of his completeness in Him, which is the Head
of all power. Let me warn him that he is neither stranger
nor foreigner in the commonwealth of Israel, but a fellow-
citizen with the saints, and of the household of God, having
already come unto Mount Sion being already a member of
the general assembly of the Church of the first-born already
made a partaker, by the blood of sprinkling, in that new
covenant of which Jesus is the blessed Mediator.
With all these gifts in possession, all this futurity in store,
cast your eye, my Child, across the nether valley, and fix it
far away upon the gleaming scarp of yonder everlasting hills,
and pray God that you may keep that good thing that is
committed to you that you may never be tempted for any
morsel of meat profanely to sell your blessed birthright that
you may have a heart that will not quail, and a faith that
cannot be moved, to serve your Lord day by day reverently,
acceptably, and with godly fear.
I believe that if I thus deal honestly with my Charge, I
may not only make him thoughtful and manly and con
scientious and true, but I shall give him a Hope that is pal
pable and tangible, in entire accordance with the will and
word of God, in harmony with the central truth of Chris
tianity, and in obedience to all the teaching and traditions
of the universal Church of Christ.
I believe that, in so training him in the way that he should
14 The Goodness of King
go, I am providing for him the best security, that when he
is old he shall not depart from it. He will prosper, because
he hath not forsaken the Lord. And when in the world s
view, and according to the world s language, I am " dead
and gone," say rather, when I am passed away from this
lower scene, this ante-chamber of the new Jerusalem, into
the upper building, not made with hands then, I believe,
though we be absent in body father and son, Jehoiada and
Joash we shall still be present in spirit ; we shall yet hold a
real, though unseen, communion ; together in some still soli
tude we shall mingle our tears and prayers, our adoration
and praise ; together we shall ponder the great mystery of
godliness ; together we shall dwell upon the blissful certainty
of our future meeting in glory " looking for the resurrection
of the dead, and the life of the world to come."
SERMON XIV.
THE CONVICTIONS OF PILATE.
BY
W. W. CHAMPNEYS, M. A.,
CANON OF ST. PAUL S, AND BECTOB OF ST. MART S, WHITECHAPKT..
ST. MABK xv. 15.
" And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas
unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged Him, to
be crucified."
do not wonder when we see the waiting-room of some
great physician crowded with patients : we expect to see
disease clustering round the healer. We do not wonder
when we see the streets of the city and the fields of the
country changed into hospitals, with their rows of sick wait
ing for the Christ to touch and heal. This was natural, for
it was the sick crowding round the Physician.
We do not wonder that sin should hate goodness. We
know what the old philosopher did not, that Virtue, when it
came on earth, was not worshipped and adored. Incarnate
Goodness had to " endure the contradiction of sinners "
during His sojourn upon this earth. And this, again, was
natural. Christ and Belial have no concord.
Should we wonder, then, that the last scene of the Sa
viour s life should be crowded with characters exhibiting the
most marked and striking varieties of that sin which hated
Christ, and hunted Him to death. This, again, was natural.
It agrees with the nature of sin and goodness. He who
came to destroy sin, and to save us from sin, was surrounded
in the last hours of His life of sorrow by those forms of
moral disease, of inward depravity, of which the bodily sick
nesses and infirmities which had surrounded His footsteps
during His whole life, were but the outward and visible
B -2
4 The Convictions of Pilate.
signs, " the shadows, but not the very image of the
things/
The study of the Redeemer s last hours is, consequently,
the study of man as well as of man s Redeemer. And no
other proof would be required to shew that man needs a
Saviour, and how deeply lost he is without one, than that
proof which the careful study of Christ s last hours will
furnish.
On one of the characters in this scene of human wicked
ness and Heavenly Goodness we desire to concentrate our
thoughts now. That character is THE JUDGE who gave
up the Christ to the death of a Roman slave ; and whose
name, imbedded in the Christian Creed, will never be for
gotten till the hour when this earth shall disappear in the
consuming fire, these heavens pass away with a mighty
noise, and Pilate, the judge, shall stand before the Saviour
whom he crucified.
As it is from the facts recorded in the Gospels that we
shall get at the character of Pilate, we will,
First, CONSIDER THE FACTS, as we gather and arrange them
from the four Gospels.
We have not, then, to sketch the character of the dark be
trayer, who had kept so good a face that none of his fellows
even suspected him ; but whose true character Jesus had read
from the first, and proved that He had read it. " Have not
I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil ?"
We have not to gather the character of the warm-hearted
but hasty Peter, with his ardent spirit and natural courage,
as contrasted with the calm, steady, higher, because moral
courage, of the loving and gentle John.
We have not to remark how nearness to God in His service
and His worship, if it is not joined with love to God and His
holiness, makes men often the persecutors of that goodness
which they of all men should love the best, and opposers of
that truth which they of all the world should both welcome
and protect. Nor is it our present object to shew how, when,
as in the case of the Jewish priests, ceremonial exactness is
substituted for inward purity, the men whose place, power,
station in society, and class-influence depend entirely on
The Convictions of Pilate. 5
the one, should hate the man who clearly shews that the
other is the only thing of weight in the sight of Him with
whom we have to do. Leaving these, we take up the his
tory at that point where Pilate comes upon the scene.
The Sanhedrim had already met : the Prisoner had been
brought in. They had tried to find witnesses to put Him to
death. After much difficulty, two had been found. But,
when examined, their evidence did not hang together. They
did not report what Jesus had actually said, but what they
either supposed Him to have meant, or, at least, said they
supposed. He had said, " Destroy this temple, (you destroy
it,) and I will build it again in three days." They reported
that He had said, " / will destroy the Temple of God."
Therefore they were false witnesses. And when we do not
repeat the very words of another, but words which have a
different meaning, we are false witnesses. On this the high-
priest, in violation of the principles of all justice, forced the
Saviour to condemn Himself. He put Him on His oath.
" I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tell us whether
Thou be the Christ, the Son of God." Jesus, deferring to the
authority of the chief magistrate of His nation, distinctly
avowed that He is " the Christ." For this He was found
guilty of blasphemy by all the Sanhedrim, except Joseph of
Arimathsea and Nicodemus, who protested against the sen
tence, and was declared guilty of death.
But as the power of life and death had been taken away
from the Jews by their Roman conquerors, and it was no
longer " lawful for them to put any man to death," it was
necessary that they should get the Roman governor to con
demn Him; They knew, however, that he would treat
as a matter of indifference that crime which they had de
clared worthy of death. They must, therefore, change their
ground; they must suit their accusation to the court and to
the judge. Having arranged their plans, they proceed in a
body to the Governor s house. It was early in the morning.
They remained in the street, for the house was the house of
a heathen, and they were " of the holy seed," it would
have denied them to go in there, and they were going back
as soon as they had effected their purpose, " to eat the Pass-
6 The Convictions of Pilate.
over." Hypocrites, fools, and blind ! which defiles a man
the most malicious hatred that is not satisfied but by the
blood of the innocent, or contact with the pavement and
atmosphere of a heathen dwelling ? What close friends are
superstition and cruelty ! How well suited is the " silver
dross and the potsherd ;" the worthless glitter of hypocriti
cal profession, and the poor vile earthen vessel that it covers
from the sight !
The crowd is gathered at Pilate s door. He is told who
they are, and why they are come.
As a Roman, he knew what justice meant. He knew what
the duty of a judge is; that it is to see if the accused have
broken law : if he has, to punish ; if he has not, to dis
charge the prisoner. Here, then, duty was clearly plain. It
was to examine, and then decide on the evidence.
But it is all over with duty when men begin to say, " What
will the people think of this ? how will this please men ? "
And Pilate had so acted before this as to make him fear
what the people he governed might think on this occasion.
He had entered on his government with that feeling of con
temptuous superiority, which leads the governing to trample
not only on the prejudices, but to insult even the honest
religious convictions of the governed : whereas the wise and
good will ever respect what is honest, even though mistaken,
and will never insult even where they cannot support. He
had ordered the Roman standards on which the image of
Csesar was hung, to be brought into the holy city. This was
contrary to the laws of the Jews, whose sufferings in Babylon
in seventy years had thoroughly cured them of idolatry. He
had allowed them to be brought in at night, and planted
without the knowledge of the inhabitants. He had laid a
trap to destroy the Jews, who flocked to Csesarea to remon
strate ; and placing his seat in the circus where he could
most conveniently net the people, he ordered his soldiers to
cut the throat of every Jew who did not go away home. And
it was only when he saw those very Jews throw themselves
on the ground and stretch out their necks to receive the
fatal stroke, and prove by this noble act of self-devotion that
their religion was dearer to them than their lives, that he
The Convictions of Pilate. 7
ordered the images to be taken down and carried back to
Caesarea.
He had resolved to build an aqueduct to bring water into
Jerusalem, and ordered that the money for this should be
paid out of the Temple treasury. And when the people were
assembled to protest, and some " lewd fellows of the baser
sort " personally insulted him, he had the folly and the rash
ness to disguise a large body of his soldiers as countrymen,
and disperse them, armed with clubs, among the crowd, and
when the same men who had insulted him before, repeated
the affront, Pilate gave the signal, and all, without distinc
tion, were attacked; many Jews were killed, great numbers
wounded, and the whole body violently dispersed.
These and other acts had made the Jewish nation not
favourably disposed to Pilate. And when men who have to
act as judges, go beyond the law and justice in some matters,
they make it harder to keep the law and justice in others that
may follow ; when men in power have given those who are
under them grounds for justly blaming them already, they
are almost in the hands of those who are under them. The
people and the ruler change places, and the real governor
is he who has the decision virtually in his hands.
Pilate probably cared as little as ever for the Jews. His
feelings of proud, contemptuous superiority had not changed :
but his previous acts had given them matter for accusation,
and he must be careful not to add fresh matter now. He
must not give them a good, or even specious, ground for com
plaining to Rome. Now, then, he was to be put on his trial.
While Jesus seemed the prisoner, Pilate was. While Pilate
appeared to be judging Him, Pilate himself was really at the
bar, for time and for eternity.
He comes to the door of his house : " What accusation do
you bring against this Man ?" They answered, that " If He
had not been a malefactor, they would not have brought
Him." This was no answer to Pilate s question. It was the
shuffling of men who knew in themselves that they were not
seeking justice, and a fair trial, but seeking to obtain a convic
tion against One they wished to have put to death. Pilate
had his reply : " He is a malefactor, you say ; then take Him
8 The Convictions of Pilate.
and judge Him yourselves." " But He deserves death by our
law, and we have no power to put the law in force against
Him. It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." Jesus
had foretold this when He had said by what death He should
die ; not by " stoning/ as He would if the Jews had executed
Him, but "by being lifted up from the earth" upon the
Cross, according to the Roman way of executing atrocious
criminals. It would, however, be of no use to tell Pilate, a
Roman and heathen, about " blasphemy." He would have
dismissed the charge at once : he would have driven them
from the place, as Gallio did in after-time. So now the
charge is "treason," treason against the Roman government:
and this charge made against One who, when some clever
specious emissaries of His enemies tried to throw Him off His
guard by flattering words, and words commending Him for
His fearless honesty and disregard of mere human opinion,
as He held up to their view the silver coin of the tribute, with
Caesar s image stamped upon it, and Cesar s name and titles
written round it, had told them " to render unto Csesar the
things that are Caesar s, and unto God the things that are
God s." And now these very men, who hated Caesar, and
Pilate, and the Roman yoke ; who were always ready to break
it off; who would have hailed as the best friend they had
any one who would have headed them in doing it, have the
base effrontery to bring that falsely as a charge against Jesus,
which might have been brought, with entire truth, against
any of themselves, if their hearts had been read. Still it was
a charge admirably suited to their purpose. They knew their
man : they understood Pilate, and the game they were playing.
Jesus was taken into the judgment-hall: Pilate proceed
ed to examine Him. "Art Thou the King of the Jews?"
His accusers had said that He had " given out that He was
Christ, a King."
Jesus replied by another question : " Dost thou say this
of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me ?"
" Am I a Jew?" said the Governor, (and we can well fancy
the pride of Roman superiority, and the contempt of Jewish
bigotry, which swelled within him as he spoke the words :)
" Your own countrymen have brought you to me as a
The Convictions of Pilate. 9
criminal, what have you done ? Art Thou a King?" " You
say right," said the Saviour, " I am a King, but My kingdom
is not of this world. If it had been, My subjects would have
fought that I should not be delivered to the Jews ; but My
kingdom is not of this world." " Are you then a King ?"
asked Pilate. " I am. To this end I was born, and for this
came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth." " What
is truth ?" asked the Governor : but he had heard and seen
enough. There stood the gentle Saviour, bound, a prisoner :
that meek eye, that lowly face, were not the face and eye of
a political pretender ; of the bold, daring, forward leader of
a revolutionary movement. Innocence was stamped on brow,
and eye, and face, and form ; and His words, too, clearly re
futed all thought of any earthly kingdom, or any effort, or
even wish, to raise a power hostile to imperial Rome. Pilate
had seen and heard enough to shew him that his Prisoner
was innocent of the charge, and so, without waiting for a
reply to his question, " What is truth ?" he went out and told
the crowd outside that he found no fault in Him. Thus far
conscience had done her duty : so far Pilate was right.
But the crowd of accusers were not satisfied with this.
They did not come there to know from Pilate, as a judge,
whether Jesus was innocent or not, nor even to know whether
Pilate thought so. Their object was to get Pilate to sentence
Jesus to death. This was their one purpose ; and they knew
their man. They knew the advantage he had given them in
his previous conduct, and they pressed him with fresh charges
and assurances that Jesus had stirred up all the country, and
taught treason even to Galilee.
Pilate was satisfied that Jesus was an innocent Man. His
clear, plain duty, then, as a judge, was to dismiss the charge,
and release the Prisoner. But, unhappily, he did not dare to
take the straightforward course. He well knew that he had
already given the Jews matter for accusation against him.
If he gave them fresh offence now, and on a charge which
might afford a handle for their accusing him of want of loyalty
to the Emperor, he might lose his place, and become a de
graded or banished man. At that moment Pilate s future
was trembling in the scale. When he took the next step, he
10 The Convictions of Pilate.
placed himself on the edge of a slippery and downward path,
which brought him, at first slowly, afterwards more rapidly,
notwithstanding his efforts to look backward and upward, to
the depth of guilt into which he fell.
" Galilee/ the word caught his ear. " Galilee, that is
Herod s country ; it is under his jurisdiction. The case, then,
does not belong to me, I will send Him to Herod ; he is for
tunately, (a Roman might say fortunately, a Christian can
not,) he is fortunately in Jerusalem now : we have been at
enmity ; he will take it as a compliment, at all events, that I
send on his subject to him to try, and do not interfere with,
but respect, his authority."
And thus Pilate tried to shift off the responsibility, which
was his own, on another; and instead of doing his own duty,
and dismissing Jesus, passes Him on as a prisoner to Herod,
though he knew Him in his heart to be an innocent Man.
But this device did not succeed : Jesus was soon returned
on Pilate s hands. He came back clothed in an old cast-off
white dress, such as the Jewish kings wore, in mockery of
His supposed claim to be King of the Jews.
There stands the Prisoner once more before the judge.
" Clean hands" would have saved Pilate; but Pilate s hands
were not clean. He knew it, and the Jews knew it, and they
made him feel that they knew it, and meant to use it.
"Perhaps," thought Pilate, "if I punish this Man, and
they see it, it will be enough, they will be satisfied."
Punishment, indeed! what right has a judge to punish an
innocent man at all? If He is guilty, if the charge is made
out, then that punishment, whatever it be, which the law
assigns, must be inflicted ; but if the Man be not guilty, any
punishment is gross injustice, and every stroke of the scourge
is a brand of infamy on the judge. Pilate has now stepped
on the smooth, slippery incline ; he has taken the first step
downward.
The chastising did not satisfy the accusers ; they came to
have His life, and nothing short of this would satisfy them.
Pilate had tried a compromise. Duty allows no compromise.
He had tried to get them to accept the Prisoner s chastise
ment for the Prisoner s death.
The Convictions of Pilate. 11
Now he will try again. He bethinks him of the custom of
releasing a prisoner at the Passover. There is now in prison
a notable one, a rioter and a murderer. Surely this will do.
The Jews will not choose him, but Jesus, to be released to
them. No, no. The Man is an innocent Man, Pilate ; you
know that. Is it just to count Him condemned, and then re
lease, as a condemned criminal, one in whom you find no
fault? Release Him. So spake conscience still. But the cry
came up, " Not this Man (we will not have Him released), but
Barabbas. You give us our choice, and we have made it."
"What, then, shall I do with Jesus?" "Crucify Him."
Loud and louder grew the cry, as the crowd swelled and in
creased. Priests, forgetting their rank and station, grey
headed and grey-bearded men, mixed themselves among
the crowd, telling them what to cry, and exciting them to
cry aloud. The loud cries, the furious faces, the uplifted
hands, all shewed that things were near to riot, if not to in
surrection.
Perhaps they will be satisfied with the scourging before
death ; perhaps the rods of the Roman executioners will be
enough, without the cross. He shall be scourged, and they
shall see Him. It may be enough ! Worse and worse.
Each step away from clear duty is a fresh instalment of the
great and crowning crime. They know it who hold the
governor in their power : they see in what he has already
yielded the assurance of what they will make him yield.
The Saviour is scourged. O my soul ! it was for thy sins.
" He was wounded for thy transgressions, He was bruised for
thy iniquities. The chastisement of thy peace was on Him,
and with His stripes thou art healed."
There He stands : the scourge has done its cruel work ;
that torn, and cut, and bleeding Body surely tells its tale.
But does it SATISFY His accusers ? Look at Him. Is He not
an object for pity ? His head pierced with the sharp spines
of the crown of mockery ; the big drops of blood trickling
from among His hair, coursing down His temples ; and the old
scarlet robe of the Roman Governor thrown in derision over
His wealed and bleeding body ; while His hands meekly hold
a staff, thrust into them in derision of His kingly sceptre.
12 The Convictions of Pilate.
Once more Pilate speaks. " I have brought Him forth
to tell you that I find no fault in Him." He is not
guilty.
And yet, Roman judge, you have ordered the innocent
Man to be thus cruelly mangled, because you had not the
courage to do right because you were afraid of those mali
cious men, whom even you could see to be moved by simple
envy to hunt this guiltless One to death.
Will this that you have done satisfy them ? The cry only
comes up the louder, " Crucify Him." They felt that vic
tory was in their hands. He had begun to yield : they
had but to push their efforts a little further, and they
would win.
" He made Himself the Son of God : He ought to die by
our law."
Once more Pilate questions his prisoner. "Whence art
Thou ?" No reply. " Speakest Thou not unto me ? Knowest
Thou not that I have power to crucify Thee, and have power
to release Thee ?" " Thou couldest have no power at all
against Me," was the meek and wise reply, " except it were
given thee from above : therefore he that delivered Me unto
thee hath the greater sin."
The effect of these words was but to make Pilate more
anxious to release Jesus, because more convinced of His en
tire innocence. Words, manner, look, tone, all told of inno
cence. But again the cry came up craftily, cleverly, aptly
timed, skilfully chosen, " If thou let this Man go, thou art
not Caesar s friend : whosoever maketh himself a king speak-
eth against Caesar." And, " We have no king but Caesar."
It sounded in the ears of his selfish soul as if they had said
You well know that we have matter of accusation against
you already : this will crown it all ; this will fill it up. Refuse
to condemn this Man, and we will lay all before your im
perial master : we will accuse you of disloyalty to him we
will prove that conquered foreigners are more loyal than
a native Roman; and your place, your power, your rank,
shall all be lost. Therefore, " Crucify Him." And they
prevailed.
Again declaring his conviction of the Saviour s innocence,
The Convictions of Pilate. 13
by solemnly (and yet it was but a solemn mockery) washing
his hands before the multitude, and by the words, " I am
guiltless of the blood of this just Person : see ye to it;" this
Roman, with his clear intellect, his strong judgment, and a
conscience which to the last gave a true verdict in favour of
innocence and truth this judge, " set to see that those that
were in need and necessity had right," gave up an innocent
Man to a dreadful and disgraceful death not to satisfy ma
licious hatred, for he saw through that not to gratify per
sons whom he respected or regarded, for he despised the men
whom he gratified but because he had done wrong before,
and feared that if he did right now, his past wrong and his
present right might both be wrung into a means of taking
away his rank, and place, and power. And because he would
not give up these, he did give up the Christ to death.
Such are the principal facts, as we gather them from the
Gospels.
Is Pilate s character one seldom met ? Nay, it is a COMMON
one ; his class is a large one. He stands alone, indeed, in
the Creed ; he stands alone in the history of the Redeemer s
last hours ; but there will be many Pilates at that day when
he shall stand before the Saviour when the head that was
pierced with thorns shall be blazing with rays of glory,
and the Body which Pilate gave up to the rod, and the
scourge, and the cross, shall be brighter a million times
than the sun.
Pilate clearly, and to the end, saw what was his duty.
Judgment was not clouded, nor was conscience silenced. He
did not do the wrong because he thought the wrong right :
but he thought he could not do his duty without losing
what he did not like to lose. He had power, rank, place,
wealth, influence : these he loved ; these he did not like to
part with. And as he thought that he should certainly
lose these if he did what he saw to be right, and did not do
what he knew to be wrong, he did the wrong rather than
endanger the loss of these.
Every man who is kept back from duty because he thinks
he shall lose by it, is Pilate ; because he makes a choice be-
14 The Convictions o
tween duty and supposed interest : and whoever decides for
his supposed interest, and against duty, acts like Pilate; and
if he be a Christian in name, he crucifies the Son of God
afresh. Pilate s was a simple struggle between conscience
and sin; and sin conquered. Wherever sin conquers con
science, so far it is Pilate again.
In Pilate s case, the particular influence that prevented was
THE FEAR OF MAN. " What will the Jews say, what will the Jews
do, if I discharge this Prisoner whom they wish me to con
demn?" When once men are governed in their conduct, not by
the sense of right, but by the desire to obtain the world s ap
proval, or the fear of incurring the world s hatred, they are
at the mercy of the winds and waves, without chart or rudder.
They are not rocks against which the waters break, but which
stand unmoved because they are rooted into the solid earth,
but they are things that drift upon the surface, borne hither
and thither as the current sets or the breezes drive them.
The man who owns Christ only when the world tolerates it,
or as far as the world bears it, will deny Christ when the
world frowns. It is impossible to be a lover of Christ and a
lover of the world; it is impossible to fear God and man
too; it is absolutely impossible to please men and be the
servant of Christ. " How can ye believe, who receive honour
one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh of God
only ?" Once let the fear of man rule, and farewell duty
farewell integrity farewell a good conscience farewell God
and Saviour.
If we would take Christ s side, we must make up our minds
to sacrifices. The world never loved Him, and the world
never will. " They have seen and hated both ME and My
FATHER." And " the friendship of the world is enmity with
God." Once let it become a question with us, Shall I do
this which I clearly see is right, or shall I keep from doing it,
or do the opposite, because the WORLD will frown, or sneer, or
persecute, if I do the right ? the very question shews us to be
standing on the edge of danger. We are in Pilate s case,
and his course may be ours. The quiet look towards Christ
for inward strength the stern and prompt refusal to enter-
The Convictions of Pilate. 15
tain the wrong suggestion the shaking of our hand from
touching the bribe the stopping the ear from hearing the
evil the closing the eye from looking after vanity the
clinging close to conscience, will alone save us from Pilate s
course and Pilate s end.
The world, though it will never cease to dislike those who
wholly follow Christ, will not ply those with the frown, the
sneer, the pointed finger, or the threatened loss, on whom it
sees that these things make no impression ; while those who,
like Pilate, have yielded a little, in the vain hope of staving
off further temptations, will find themselves plied thicker and
faster, because by their yielding that little they have shewn
the real direction of their desires, and " given place" to the
tempter. They have suffered the enemy to effect a lodge
ment in the outer line of their defences, and from that line
the fortress will be captured.
But Pilate s sad history teaches another lesson, that they
who seek to save character, or place, or rank, or to gain
them by truckling to the world, often lose what they seek to
keep or gain. He did not secure himself by surrendering
the innocent Saviour. The men that hunted Christ to death
became Pilate s accusers; and stripped of all that he had
loved, degraded, banished, his accusing conscience within
him worse than the fabled furies; stung with remorse, he
flung himself, as it is said, from a rock into the deep below ;
and " Pilate s leap" seems to tell us still that " evil shall hunt
the man" who knowingly and wilfully makes shipwreck of
conscience. Did those Jews who so cleverly, so persever-
ingly, so effectually forced Pilate to commit his great judi
cial murder, not despise him in their hearts for becoming
their tool, and yielding to their wishes ? Did they become
his friends because he had acted as Christ s enemy ? Neither
will the world do anything but despise those whom its smiles
or its frowns either drive or draw into evil. It will make
use of the tool for its own purposes, and fling it away when
those purposes are answered.
Let us then seek grace to be faithful ; let us ask the STRONG
for strength, the WISE for wisdom ; let us pray for the light
16 The Convictions of Pilate.
of His Holy Spirit to shew us clearly what duty is to give
us power to do it ; to enable us " to keep a conscience void
of offence towards God and man ;" to strengthen us to resist
the beginnings of evil ; to enable us to look at the world in
the light of approaching judgment ; to be indifferent alike to
its frowns and to its smiles, that we at the last day may
stand at the right hand of JESUS the JUDGE, not with Pilate,
the Criminal and the Prisoner.
SERMON XV.
THE CONVICTIONS OF AGBIPPA.
ROBERT, LORD BISHOP OF RIPON.
A SEKMON,
ACTS xxvi. 28.
" Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to
be a Christian."
IT will not be needful for me to remind you at any length
of the circumstances under which these words were at first
spoken. Paul the Apostle was at this time a prisoner having
been accused by the Jews of disaffection, sedition, and heresy.
A conspiracy had been secretly formed to assassinate the
man whose zeal in the cause of Christianity had provoked
the enmity of the disbelieving Jews. Tidings of that con
spiracy having come to the chief captain of the Roman
army in Jerusalem, measures were taken to secure the safety
of Paul. He was sent away by night under an escort of
soldiers to Caesarea, the city where Felix the Roman Governor
then resided. He was thus placed under the protection of
the Romans, and, so far, he was safe from the fury of his
enemies amongst the Jews. After awhile the elders and
high-priest of the Jews were invited to come down and lay
their accusation against the Apostle. They did so, but were
unable to support the charge which they made. Yet Paul
was detained a prisoner, and for the space of two years he
continued in captivity, apparently without prospect of re
lease. During this period the opportunity was frequently
afforded to him of preaching before Felix; but although
under the power of his reasoning the Governor was made to
tremble, it does not appear that Felix was ever brought to
4 The Convictions of Agrippa.
a true repentance. At the end of two years the office of
Governor was resigned by Felix into the hands of Festus,
before whom the high- priest and the elders of the Jews
presently renewed their appeal against Paul. Festus de
termined, before pronouncing judgment, to wait for the
arrival of Agrippa, a son of Herod Agrippa, who was still
permitted by the Romans to assume the title, " King of
the Jews."
When Agrippa was come to Caesarea, the next day was
appointed for the trial of the Apostle. The accusation having
been laid against him, Paul was invited to speak in his own
defence. The chapter in which the words of the text occur
contains that defence. It is the answer of the Apostle to the
charge brought against him, of being "a pestilent fellow,
seditious, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." It
was delivered before Festus, the Roman Governor, Agrippa,
king of the Jews, and a concourse of both Jews and Gen
tiles. The defence is a masterpiece of calm and dignified
oratory. Paul the prisoner stood confronted with the accu
sers, who thirsted for his blood before the Roman Governor
and the Jewish King. He reviewed the history of his past
life, how he had been brought up a Jew, and had lived
after the strictest sect of the Jews religion, a Pharisee;
he appealed to the Jews who stood by, whether, as touching
the ceremonial law, he had not been blameless. He put
the charge which had been preferred against him upon its
own proper merits. The accusation really involved the ques
tion, whether the hope and the promise made of God to the
fathers had been, or not, fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. It
was not a charge affecting only the Apostle ; the real point
at issue was this : could it be disproved that Jesus was the
Christ ? Was the Apostle in error in asserting that the cru
cified Jesus had risen from the dead, and was truly the
anointed of God? He next related the marvellous history
of his own conversion of the way in which, from having been
one of its bitter opponents, he had become the staunch de
fender of Christianity. He declared the terms of the com
mission which he had received from the Lord Jesus Himself.
He then proceeded to unfold the substance of the message
The Convictions of Agrippa. 5
which as an apostle he was sent to proclaim, and he enforced
the truth of that message by an appeal to the authority of
Moses and the prophets.
Very different were the effects produced by Paul s address
upon the two men who sat in judgment upon him. The
heathen Festus, utterly unable to comprehend the force of
Paul s reasoning, supposed him to be mad : " Thou art
beside thyself," he exclaimed; "much learning doth make
thee mad." Agrippa, on the other hand, was struck and
convinced by the conclusiveness of the address. And as the
Apostle went forward in his delivery, and laid bare the seve
ral steps by which he had been wonderfully led from the
position of a virulent persecutor to that of an intrepid
champion of Christianity; as he exposed the several links
in that chain of reasoning which at length riveted him
firmly to the conviction that Jesus is the Messiah; and
as he finally appealed to the king himself on the ground
of his own knowledge and belief of the prophets, and from
thence drew the inference, that one who believed the
prophets could scarce fail of believing in Jesus, the
speech of the Apostle told with such power on the mind
and conscience of the listening judge, that at length
he could restrain no longer the pent-up feeling, and he
openly exclaimed, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a
Christian."
It was a fine vantage-ground to which the Apostle had now
fought his way. There is no reason to suppose that Agrippa
was previously inclined to listen favourably to the arguments
of the accused. Doubtless he regarded him with much the
same feeling as the rest of the disbelieving Jews; if anything,
this feeling would be one of stronger than ordinary aversion,
because of the opposition between the doctrine which Paul
preached and the vicious life to which we know that Agrippa
was addicted. It was therefore a signal triumph which the
Apostle gained, when, after advancing from point to point
in the argument for Christianity, and in vindication of his
conduct as one of its heralds, this very King Agrippa him
self interrupted the current of the prisoner s defence not to
contradict, or silence, or rebuke him, but, by an irresistible
6 The Convictions of Agrippa.
impulse, to do homage to the force and conclusiveness of his
appeal, by the open avowal, " Almost thou persuadest me to
be a Christian."
But here the history ends ; the assembly presently broke
up. The two judges, conferring between themselves, agreed
that Paul had done nothing worthy of death or of bonds, but
we read of no further result as regards the half-persuaded
Agrippa. It seems probable that he died as he had lived, an
unbelieving Jew ; whose unbelief, however, assumed a more
guilty complexion by reason of this very fact, that he had
been once so far wrought upon as to own himself " almost,"
though, alas ! not altogether, " persuaded to be a Christian."
Now, in its moral aspect, this narrative of King Agrippa
is highly instructive; the more so, because the character
which it pourtrays is often found, even amongst professing
disciples of Christ. You observe, it is the narrative of one
in whom conscience was awakened; whose views of divine
truth were partially rectified, whose judgment was to a cer
tain extent convinced ; who stood upon the very margin of
Christianity, with a deep impression of its truth and reality,
with a half-formed resolution to resign himself to its pro
fession, but who, nevertheless, halted on the brink, and
never ventured on the decisive step to which for the mo
ment he felt inwardly impelled. In all these features of
the case we find nothing uncommon, nothing but what is
realised from day to day amongst ourselves, in the profess
ing Church of Christ. There are numbers of persons who
advance just so far as Agrippa advanced, but no further.
They have their strong convictions; they are almost per
suaded. It would seem there is but a step further for
them to take in order to become Christians in deed and in
truth ; yet here they pause the half-formed purpose does not
ripen into action ; the consent almost given is withdrawn ;
the door of the heart, which was opening at the Saviour s
call, is again closed against His admission, and they remain
what Agrippa was, " almost " persuaded, and yet practically
very far from being altogether Christians. I shall take occa
sion, then, from this narrative, in humble dependence upon
the help of God s Holy Spirit, to enlarge upon the character
The Convictions of Agrippa. 7
of the almost Christian, with the view, (1.) of pointing out
the features, and (2.) exposing the peril of the case which
answers to that of Agrippa, when he exclaimed, "Almost thou
persuadest me to be a Christian."
I. Now there is need to be reminded of the broad distinc
tion which exists between the external profession of Chris
tianity, and that thorough submission to the revealed will
of God which is the essence of real discipleship to Christ.
It is possible to go great lengths in religious profession,
and yet to know little or nothing of the power of vital godli
ness. It is easy to confound an external profession with
a real change of heart, a living union with the Saviour.
More especially is this a snare of the present times, when
toleration in religious opinions is so largely exercised, when
the manifestation of religious zeal and fervour provokes but
little opposition or rebuke, and when it would almost seem
as though the offence of the Cross had in great measure
ceased. Hence it is the more needful to point out the dif
ference between nominal and vital Christianity between the
semblance of discipleship to the Saviour, and that entire
consecration of heart and service which is the blessed fruit
of faith working by love.
The distinction between the almost and the altogether Chris
tian is similar in kind with that which exists between the
mere professor and the true believer. Hence, in describing
how far a person may go in religious profession without being
a Christian in heart, as well as in name, I shall be virtually
describing the case of the almost Christian, as contrasted with
that of the altogether Christian.
I observe, then, that the almost Christian may have a
very just regard for the outward duties of Christianity.
He may be convinced of the truth of the several doctrines
which compose the scheme of the Gospel. He may acquiesce
in the Scriptural statements as to the depravity of human
nature, the moral corruption and feebleness which have re
sulted from the first man s disobedience. It may be he
will not go the length of admitting that man is as far
gone as possible from original righteousness; yet he will
admit that the nature is depraved, that a moral virus has
8 The ConcidioHx of Agrippa.
tainted the whole of man s being, which of itself deserves
God s wrath and condemnation. He will admit the doc
trine, that salvation is a result for which we are indebted
wholly to Christ; he cannot deny that a stupendous ar
rangement has been made for the recovery of our fallen
nature an arrangement which involved the incarnation and
obedience unto death of the Eternal Word. The slightest
claim to the character of a Christian requires the admission,
that man s salvation has been procured by Christ ; and
therefore it may be assumed that even the almost Christian
will admit that we are saved through none else ; that it is for
His sake alone we can be freed from condemnation, and re
admitted to the favour of God.
Not, indeed, that in his case the view entertained, whether
of the death of the Mediator, or of the benefits which flow
out of that sacrifice to every believer, will be of the same
depth or clearness as in the case of one who is spiritually
enlightened: still the fact stands out so prominently in
Scripture, that no man can gainsay it salvation is the gift of
God, conferred for the sake of Christ.
The almost Christian will readily agree in the represen
tation of that moral rectitude which God requires in those
who will finally enter heaven. It will not jar with any
feeling in his breast to assert that the Christian is required
to be honest, truthful, sober, just, and temperate, unselfish
and benevolent ; for all these excellencies of character he
may have a cordial respect; and readily acknowledge how
agreeable it is with the moral attributes of God, to demand
the exercise of such tempers and dispositions in those upon
whom the Divine favour is to be bestowed in this world, and
everlasting glory in the next.
And to this I must add, the almost Christian may have a
lively taste for devotion ; he may even find pleasure in holy
exercises ; he may regard a religious profession, as exhibited
in the practice of social and public worship, both seemly and
profitable, yea, and justly due from one who is looking for
the approval of Him who sitteth on high : and thus the re
turn of every morning and evening shall witness in his dwell
ing the gathering of his household to join in family worship,
The Convictions of Agrippa. 9
and each recurring opportunity shall find him in his wonted
place in the sanctuary, joining with fervour in the solemnities
of public devotion, or listening with eager attention to the
exposition of the lively oracles, or even frequenting the Table
of the Lord to partake of the consecrated memorials of the
Body and Blood of Christ.
Now it is a painful, but not upon that account a less
certain truth, that in the foregoing sketch nothing is de
lineated but what may be realized in one who is nothing
more than an almost Christian. I well know the kind of
mental recoil with which some persons shrink from the
statement, that so much of religious profession may co
exist with a heart unchanged, a nature unrenewed and un-
sanctified, and therefore not meet for the presence of a
holy God. How shall we bring this truth home to the
conscience? how shall we make you perceive and own its
reality? There is one practical test which might, I think,
serve to make it evident. I will throw out of account, for
the present, other considerations. I will not pause to remind
you what a common thing it is to own the doctrine of human
depravity, without ever having been brought, under an over
powering sense of personal sin, and consequent danger, to
ask, What must I do to be saved ? I will not stay to point
out how common a thing it is to yield a ready assent to
the statement that salvation is of God in Christ, and yet
to be practically leaning all the while upon some hope which
is equally unscriptural and delusive; nor will I linger to ex
hibit how all those various excellencies of conduct, integ-
"rity, benevolence, amiability, a fair religious profession, may
adorn the character of an unrenewed man, of one who vir
tually rejects the Redeemer s propitiation and righteousness
as the only plea for pardon or acceptance with God. But
let me ask, as a matter upon which each man s conscience is
able to give an answer to the question, May there not be
all that I have described, without any real abiding principle
in the heart of love to God ? with no affinity to the temper
of the Psalmist, who exclaimed, " Whom have I in heaven,
but Thee : and there is none upon earth that I desire in
comparison of Thee ?" with no congeniality of feeling to
10 The Convictions of Ayr ippa.
the Apostle who declared, " The love of Christ coustraineth
us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were
all dead ; and that He died for all, that they who live should
not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died
for them and rose again." May there not be all I have
described, while nevertheless there is the most thorough
worldliness practically exhibited in the every-day walk and
conversation ? The world is that for which you mainly live :
eternity is made secondary to time : earth s cares, earth s
pleasures, earthly pursuits, earthly objects, earth s gains,
these are what most engage your thoughts, your studies, your
ambition. Not, indeed, that you are without a religious pro
fession. Nay, you have a religion and a religion, too, which
you value highly, and practise diligently ; but it is not a re
ligion which unites the soul with God, raising its aspirations
to high and holy things, fixing its affections on things above,
weaning its professor from the love of this present world ;
giving a tone of spirituality to all his thoughts, and words,
and actions; and by the influence which it casts on the
whole of his conduct, making it evident to others, as well as
himself, that he has been in deed and truth " born of God,"
and made a new creature in Christ Jesus. Try yourselves by
the ordinary test of thought and conversation : what is it upon
which your desires are principally fixed ? Is it not, with too
many, upon objects which centre and terminate in the pre
sent state of being ? Can you say with sincerity that you
have ever given your heart supremely to the Saviour ? that
you have ever made a decided separation from the world, and
with fixed purpose and resolve determined to count every-
thing but loss, so that you may but win Christ, and be found
in Him ; not having your own righteousness, but that which
is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of
God by faith ? Indeed, till you can say this, I can but warn
you that, whatever your profession of Christianity may be,
whatever your conformity to those precepts which relate to
the outward conduct, whatever the virtues which adorn your
character, and make you an object of admiration amongst
men, you are nothing better than the "almost Christian."
True Christianity captivates the whole being, and subjugates
The Convictions of Agrippa. 11
to the Saviour the entire current of thought, speech, and
action. It leavens the whole man ; it gives a new direction
and a new impulse to all his desires, aims, and affections : and
oh, if there be such a thing as "setting the affections on
things above, and not on things on the earth ;" if there be
such a thing as living above the Avorld, whilst yet living in
it, as an abiding in fellowship with the Father, and with the
Son, by the Spirit ; if there be a " joy unspeakable and full
of glory," the possession of those who believe in Christ Je
sus, then is it not too evident, that where there is little or
no deadness to the world, little or no spirituality of aim and
conversation, little or no real fellowship with the Father and
with His Son Jesus, no constant upturning of the thoughts
to the Saviour, no poising of the affections on Him as the
centre and stay of the soul s life and enjoyment ; whatever
may be the attainments in knowledge, or the manifestations
of zeal, or the participation of outward privileges, there is no
claim to be regarded as in reality anything better than the
only half-persuaded the only " almost Christian."
Before passing on to the second part of my subject, I will
allude in further illustration of the truth which I have
been aiming to establish to what is of frequent occur
rence under the ministry of the Gospel. I have the fullest
confidence in the truth of the inspired statement, that God s
Word shall not return to Him void. That is a statement, in
virtue of which I believe that wheresoever the Word of God
is faithfully preached, effects will certainly follow. It will be
for a savour of life to some, or of death to others. Thus it
comes to pass, that whensoever an ordained ambassador for
Christ delivers himself of the message of divine truth, he will
by the manifestation of that truth commend himself to the
consciences of those to whom he speaks. The message may
be disliked^ by some, ridiculed by others, disbelieved by
others. Nevertheless, the message is not in vain ; the in
corruptible seed cannot be altogether lost. It will fall into
some hearts it may be into many so as to abide and
bring forth fruit.
Thus I believe that whilst a faithful sermon is being
delivered, there is frequently produced a degree of inward
12 The Convictions o
disturbance and emotion, whereof the preacher may be
quite unconscious. As he rebukes indifference, ungodliness,
or vice; as he denounces unbelief, or self-righteousness, or
covetousness, or worldly-mindedness ; as he insists on the abso
lute necessity of conversion of heart, if a man would be saved,
there is an effect produced which, even though it should
prove evanescent, is yet enough to make good the belief,
that the energy of God s own Spirit does always accompany
the faithful proclamation of God s own Word. Nor is it any
over-bold conjecture, that, as the issue of many and many
a moral conflict like this, could the agitated hearer openly
express the state of feeling to which he has been brought, he
would use the very same words which King Agrippa uttered
to Paul, " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."
Are there none of you, my brethren, whom I am addressing at
this moment, whose experience agrees with this representation?
With all your profession of Christianity, baptized though you
have been with Christian baptism, and nurtured amid holy or
dinances, and familiarised with the facts, and the doctrines, and
the precepts, and the warnings of revelation, yet conscience
tells you, you are not a Christian indeed. You have never fled
to Christ as the sinner s only refuge and only hope. You have
never thoroughly felt your need of His atoning blood to
cleanse of His righteousness to justify of His Spirit to
sanctify and save you. You have never yet heartily closed
with the Gospel offer, and resolved to abandon all for Christ s
sake; and yet you have often been brought very near to
this. Under the preaching of the Gospel, it may be, as some
faithful exposure has been made of the guilt of remaining in
an unconverted state ; or as some vivid setting forth of di
vine truth has arrested for awhile your attention ; or as you
have been reminded, "If any man have not the spirit of Christ,
he is none of His/ and " whosoever he be of you that for-
saketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple ;" or
as the preacher has dilated upon the grace and the all-
sufficiency of Christ His ability and readiness to save to the
uttermost all that come unto God by Him ; and as you have
been plied by the glories of heaven or the terrors of hell to
come at once to this Saviour who has promised, " Him that
The Convict ions of Agrippa. 13
cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out/ I ask you if it
lias not often been the case, that the message has penetrated
the innermost recesses of your spirit, and you have felt so
wrought upon by the power of the truth which was being
proclaimed in your hearing, as fully to answer to Agrippa s
state of mind, when he could not refrain the utterance, " Al
most thou persuadest me to be a Christian." Yes, here is
a moral condition which closely corresponds with that of
Agrippa at the period to which the text refers. It is that
state when the citadel of the heart appears all but won for
Christ, and yet, as experience too frequently and too painfully
evidences, the hope is delusive ; the emotion dies away ; the
former moral indifference reasserts its dominion, and there
is no abiding fruit from all that fair appearance which, for
the moment, gave promise of so blessed a result.
II. And now it only remains for me briefly to point out
wherein the special danger consists of resting in the state of
"an almost Christian."
I observe, then, to begin with, it is not the almost Chris
tian who will ever enter heaven.
Take what , definition you will of an almost Christian, he
wants the only title that will avail for admission to heaven.
He is not of the number of those who have freely and un
reservedly surrendered themselves to Christ. He is not de
pending exclusively upon the atoning blood and sanctifying
righteousness of Christ. He is not daily growing in grace,
as the effect of the indwelling in the heart of the Holy Spirit,
and hence, while there may be much that is exemplary in
his walk and conversation, and nothing to challenge the
reproach of his fellow-men, yet forasmuch as he is desti
tute of the Saviour s righteousness, the only raiment in
which any man can stand with acceptance before God, he
would be utterly out of his element in heaven, even were
it possible for him to be transplanted thither. Heaven is not
his prime object of pursuit, and wherefore should he com
plain if he does not reach it. Religion is embraced, but only
so far as its profession will conduce to the attainment of some
present and temporary advantage. Such a religion may an
swer the end for which it is assumed, but it will not do
14 The Convictions of A(j) ip]><i.
more than this. It may secure a standing iu the Church on
earth ; it will not secure a place amongst the Church of the
first-born, whose names are written in heaven.
But I go further yet than this : there is less hope, ordi
narily speaking, of the conversion of an almost Christian,
than of one who has been hitherto utterly careless and un
concerned. In our blessed Lord s parable of the two sons,
you will remember it was the son who almost obeyed at the
first bidding, who actually said, " I go, sir," and yet after
wards he went not ; but the one who gave a flat refusal, after
wards repented and went. Now I dare not attempt to com
pare the relative degrees of grace which may be required to
accomplish in different cases the conversion of a sinner to
God. Conversion is in every case a miracle of Omnipotent
power. But in regard of ordinary experience, it may be safely
affirmed that the grace of God is less frequently seen to take
effect upon those who may be pronounced almost Christians,
than upon those in whom there has never taken place any
religious awakening at all. A formal, self-righteous profes
sion of Christianity presents a more difficult barrier for the
Gospel to surmount than a state of utter indifference, or
even of avowed opposition. And in like manner, when re
ligious emotions have been once kindled, when the feelings
have been powerfully wrought upon, and yet not developed
into consistent practice, the probability is against their being
kindled afresh, or kindled to any good effect : upon this two
fold account, then, the case of the almost Christian is one of
extreme peril. He has religion enough to satisfy the con
science, but not enough to save the soul. At the same time,
the very fact that to some extent religious impressions have
been kindled, renders it the less likely that any abiding im
pression will be hereafter produced. Agrippa was almost
persuaded to be a Christian ; but he perished an unbeliever.
For your own soul s sake, then, I call upon you for resolu
tion on the Lord s side. Religion is too solemn a matter to
be trifled with. If worth anything, it is worth everything. It
is either entitled to our first regard, or not to our regard at
all. It is of infinitely more moment to you and to me to know
what is our real state before God, and what will be our por-
The Convictions of Agrippa. 1 5
tion iu eternity, than to gain the loftiest distinctions which
this world has to offer. Keligion is not a vain thing ; it is
for your life. Neutrality in other matters may be lawful,
nay, desirable : neutrality in religion is moral suicide. It
was neutrality in their religious profession which procured
from the Redeemer against the Laodiceans that severest of all
maledictions " So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and
neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth." Be
decided, then, for Christ ; give to God what He claims the
whole heart ; tarry no longer amongst those who are the
"almost Christians," but no more. Come in faith to the
Saviour. Seek in earnest prayer for the application to your
heart and conscience of that precious blood which cleanseth
from all sin ; ask for a share in that righteousness which is
freely given of God to every believer ; and while you aim at
being " accepted in the Beloved," let the sincerity of your
faith be evidenced by those fruits of righteousness which
are, by Jesus Christ, to the praise and the glory of God.
The possession of the Saviour s character ; His meekness,
His condescension, His gentleness, His zeal, His separa
tion from the world, His compassion for the souls of men
this is the evidence of a justifying faith; this is the mark
of one who is on the march to the heavenly Zion ; this is
the sign of one who is more than the almost yea, who is
the altogether Christian.
SERMON XVI.
THE CHANGE OF SAUL INTO ST. PAUL.
BY
HENRY LINTON, M.A.,
BECTOB OF ST. PETER-LE-BAItEY, OXFOBD.
A SEEMON,
8fc.
ACTS ix. 11.
" Behold, he prayeth !"
GRAYER is the breath of the new creature one of the first
signs of spiritual life.
But why does our Lord use the term "Behold?" Was
there anything unusual or remarkable in Saul of Tarsus
praying? Did he not belong to the Pharisees, the straitest
sect amongst the Jews, who said their prayers with the
greatest regularity? True. But it is one thing, my bre
thren, to say our prayers, and another to pray. For prayer,
to be accepted by God, must arise from a sense of need, a
conviction of sin, and an earnest desire and hope of mercy.
And according to this rule, Saul had never prayed before!
But now it was no longer an unmeaning form, but the sor
rowful sighing of a contrite heart and the sacrifice of a broken
spirit. There was joy in heaven at that sight. And as the
glad tidings spread among the spirits of the just made per
fect, the holy Stephen saw an answer to his dying prayer
" Lord, lay not this sin to their charge a ." No wonder, then,
that the Lord of angels, who beheld in Saul s conversion the
travail of his own soul and was satisfied, announced it to the
faithful Ananias, and through him to the Church at Damascus,
in the short but expressive sentence, " Behold, he prayeth ["
And when Ananias hesitated to go and lay his hands on one
of whom he had heard nothing but evil, the Lord Jesus as
sured him that this late enemy to the Cross of Christ was a
chosen vessel unto Him, to bear his name before the Gentiles,
and kings, and the children of Israel.
But what was the previous history of this remarkable man,
Acts vii. 60.
B 2
4 The Change of Saul into St. Paul.
and what were the steps by which Saul the Pharisee became
Paul the Apostle ? It is a deeply interesting inquiry. O may
God shine upon us with the bright beams of his grace, while
I endeavour, in entire dependence on his Holy Spirit, to set
before you the Scriptural account of this wonderful trans
action.
Now in tracing the previous history of Saul, we must be
careful neither to paint his character in darker colours than
Holy Scripture warrants, nor yet to conceal its deformity.
He was a young man of great promise, descended from pious
parents b , who, being devoted Jews, had him educated by
their most celebrated teacher, Gamaliel, and taught according
to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers . Being
possessed of good talents, and endued with great earnestness
and industry, he profited by his advantages, and carried his
zeal for the traditions of his fathers beyond his fellows d . He
was never addicted to vice : so far from it, that " touching the
righteousness which was in the law he was blameless." He had
strictly observed both the ceremonial and the moral law, and
could fearlessly appeal to all who knew him, that he had
" lived in all good conscience before God from his youth up e ."
Such was the bright part of his character. But it had
also a dark side. It is true that he was full of zeal for
God, but that zeal was not directed by knowledge. It was
blind and misguided. Saul was proud, opinionated, head
strong, impetuous, and impatient of contradiction. Brought
up in an exclusive school, he was a narrow-minded bigot.
"Without examination, he took it for granted that the tenets
in which he had been educated must be right, and everything
opposed to them wrong ; and being of a naturally eager and
overbearing disposition, and formed to lead opinion rather than
to follow it, he was bent upon distinguishing himself in the
persecution which was then arising against the despised sect
of the Nazarenes deluded followers, as he supposed, of one
Jesus of Nazareth, who had been recently crucified for pre
tending to be the Messiah, but who, as they had the hardi
hood to maintain, was risen again from the dead and taken
up into heaven.
Full of these false ideas, he was delighted with the murder
b 2 Tim. i. 3. Acts xxii. 3. d Gal. i. 13, 14. Acts xxiii. 1.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul. 5
of Stephen f , and kept the raiment of those who slew him,.
Like a wild beast which has tasted human blood, he made
havock of the Church ; and " Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf s"
was the character of the individual no less than of his tribe.
At the commencement of the chapter from whence our text
is taken, we find him " yet breathing out threatenings and
slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," or, as he himself
expresses it, "exceedingly mad against them h ," insomuch
that he " persecuted them even unto strange cities," in par
ticular, unto Damascus. But here he was to be arrested in
his course.
It is an old remark, that "man proposes, but God Eposes ;"
and Solomon reminds us that "there are many devices in a
man s heart ; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall
stand ." If any one had told Saul, as he left Jerusalem bent
on his purpose to root out the hated name of Christ, that ere
the sun went down he would be earnestly praying to God to
number him amongst that very sect whom he then most hated
and despised, he would have laughed him to scorn. But God is
almighty, and most merciful. " He bringeth the blind by a
way that they knew not, and leadeth them in paths that they
have not known i." He is a Sovereign, and giveth not an
account of any of his matters. By his counsel, secret to us,
He had separated this very Saul of Tarsus from his mother s
womb to be an illustrious monument of his mercy, and an
apostle to the nations. And in pursuance of that plan, He
now revealed his Son in him, and called him by his grace k .
Where we cannot fathom God s counsels, let us adore them,
and magnify the riches of his grace.
Now as Saul came near Damascus, " suddenly there shined
round about him a light from heaven, a great light, above
the brightness of the sun, and he fell to the earth, and heard
a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
Me ! ?" O how soon can the Lord fling his enemies to the
ground ! What mortal man must not be blinded by the rays
of that light which surrounds Jehovah Jesus ! It was of the
Lord s mercies that Saul was not consumed, and that the
f SaCAos Sf $i> ffvvtvSoKuv Vj? avaipfnti avrov, Acts viii. 1. Compare Matt,
iii. 17. * Gen. xlix. 27. k Acts xxvi. 11. Prov. xix. 21.
i Tsa. xlii. 16. k See Gal. i, 15, 16. Acts ix. 3, 4 ; xxii. 6 ; xxvi. 13.
6 Tfie Change of Saul into St. Paul.
same light which struck him to the earth did not sink him
into hell.
But there was likewise a voice, which, though heard by all,
came with articulate sound to him alone, " Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou Me?" His name was doubled, either to
arrest his attention, as when God cried, "Abraham, Abra
ham;" or rather in tender concern, as when Jesus said,
" Martha, Martha," and " Simon, Simon." It was not, I
think, the voice of upbraiding, but of warning. " Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou Me ?" Every word is emphatic. Why ?
What evil have I done? Is it because I came down from
heaven to die for thee, that thou art in arms against Me?
Why persecutest ? Little did Saul think himself a persecutor !
No persecutor of the saints acknowledges the odious title ;
but, whatever conscience may whisper, calls himself a ser
vant of God, and a righteous avenger. But Jesus said,
" Why persecutest thou ?" Thou too, a Jew, and a man of
education, capable of making enquiry, and ascertaining
truth ! But thou hast allowed thyself to be so blinded by
pride and prejudice, that thou canst not see the fulfilment of
thine own Scriptures in my life and death, resurrection and
ascension, and the outpouring of my Spirit. " Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou Me?" Knowest thou not that my
people are dear^to Me as the apple of mine eye ? Those many
saints of mine whom thou didst shut up in prison; those
martyrs of mine against whom thou didst record thy vote ;
those faithful servants of mine whom thou didst so often
punish in every synagogue, and urge them to blaspheme m ;
the strokes thou didst inflict on them fell on Me, the iron
entered into my soul. Unhappy man ! what hast thou done ?
"And Saul said, Who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord
said, I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest : it is hard for thee
to kick against the pricks." What must have been Saul s
feelings when the truth flashed upon him, that the same
Jesus whom he had been persecuting in his members, whose
claims he had derided, and whose Name he had blasphemed,
was indeed Messiah the Prince, the Seed of Abraham, the
Lord of Glory ! He had been fighting against Christ, and lift
ing up his heel against the Holy One of Israel. And thinkest
m Actsxxvi. 10, 11.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul. 7
thou this, O man, that rebellest against God, and despisest
the riches of his forbearance and long suffering and the
strivings of his Spirit, and ridiculest the hopes of the godly,
and hatest those who bear Christ s image, and deemest them
enthusiasts and fools, thinkest thou that thy sensations
will be less keen in the day of Christ s appearing ? When
thou seest Him on his great white throne, clothed with ma
jesty and honour, in the glory of his Father and the holy
angels, surrounded by his redeemed saints, with their snowy
robes and glorious palms and radiant faces ; and when the
greatness of thy guilt for the first time fastens upon thee,
and the veil of pride and prejudice and self-love is withdrawn ;
when all that thou hast lost, but mightest have won, passes
in swift review before thee, the greatness of the glory, the
vastness of the riches, the eternity of the reward ; when the
great King of heaven and earth, the Fountain of honour, the
Lord of life, turns to those whom thou hast scorned, saying,
" Enter ye into the joy of your Lord : Come, ye blessed of
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world ;" but looks on you with one unmis-
takeable look of displeasure, and enquires why you have de
spised all his counsel, and would none of his reproof; why
you have scorned his love, refused his mercy, hated Him
and his people ? surely in that day you will be able to enter
into the feelings of Saul when he heard the voice of the
Eternal Son of God saying, " I am Jesus, whom thou perse-
cutest." Only there will be this difference, that while Saul
was yet in the land of the living, and within reach of mercy,
thy day of grace will be passed, and this will be the begin
ning of eternal despair and misery. But it has not yet come
to this. As yet the door of mercy is open ; as yet the voice
of the Redeemer cries, " Why wilt thou die ? Him that
cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." Wherefore,
turn and live. O happy soul who obeyest the Divine call,
(for it is not the voice of the poor worm who addresses you,
but the voice of the Master, speaking in his minister, who
calls you from sin to holiness, from death to life,) it may be
that thou art reserved for great things, and that " where sin
hath abounded, grace shall much more abound."
So it was with Saul. "He, trembling and astonished, said,
8 The Change of Saul into St. Paul.
Lord, what wilt thou have me to do n ?" Here, as I believe,
was the turning-point of his life. It was no gradual change,
but instantaneous. It was conviction, it was conversion.
Grace, like an overwhelming tide, carried all before it. He
was no longer like the horse and mule, which have no under
standing, kicking against the goad, but the willing servant in
the day of the Redeemer s power, to be henceforth guided by
the Master s eye. It was no longer, What will the high-
priest have me to do ? what will man have me do ? From this
hour he had done with pleasing men . Christ was his Mas
ter, and Him only would he serve P.
And now that his proud heart was humbled, and his
stubborn will changed, it pleased the Lord to magnify
the riches of his grace by at once revealing to him his
high mission. Such is his own account of the matter to
Agrippa, as recorded in the twenty-sixth chapter. " Rise,
and stand upon thy feet : for I have appeared unto thee
for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness
both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those
things in the which I will appear unto thee ; deliver
ing thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom
now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from
darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God,
that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance
among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me q ."
To say, as some do, that these words were not spoken by
Christ, but that St. Paul has here transferred to Christ words
which Ananias afterwards said to him by Christ s command ;
or, as others, that though spoken by Christ, they were not
actually delivered when Jesus met him near Damascus, but
in the vision he had in the temple some years afterwards,
appears to me to be such a departure from the fairness and
simplicity of Scripture interpretation, that I dare not adopt
it. For the words make part of the sentence in which He bids
him rise from the earth and stand upon his feet ; and in. the
19th and 20th verses we find him obeying the call, and im
mediately preaching Christ to them of Damascus. It is no
objection to this that the Lord bade him " go into the city,
"Actsix.6. Gal. i. 10. P Compare Luke iii. 10 14.
i Acts xxvi. 16 18.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul. 9
and it should be told him what he should do r " for Ananias
might instruct him at much greater length than the narra
tive informs us, during his stay at Damascus. I therefore take
the word of God as I find it, and adore the unsearchable riches
of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, (how must the soul of
this penitent sinner have been melted by it !) who, instead of
casting him out of his sight, or leaving him in the pangs of
suspense, not only put away his sin as instantaneously as He
did that of David, " but even chose him for a witness of his
power over the souls of men, and for a herald of the Gospel
to the heathen world After such an experience, it
naturally became the business of Paul s life to preach the
power of grace, and to shew by his own example how possible
it was for the Lord of Glory to lay down even his bitterest
enemies as a stool for his feet ; that is, to transform them
into the most enthusiastic friends 8 ." It is when men have
themselves tasted that the Lord is gracious, that they are able
to magnify the riches of God s grace ; while those who have
had little forgiven, and think, perhaps, that there is little to
be forgiven, can speak as coldly and accurately about the
length and breadth of Christ s love, as if they were measur
ing a mountain, or solving a problem.
I dare not say that it is a good thing to have been a great
sinner, however God may sometimes overrule it for good ; for
it is an evil thing and a bitter. And if any say, " Let us
do evil that good may come," and sin on, that grace may
abound, their damnation is just *. But this I say, that while
they that seek God early shall find Him, and they that fear
Him" from their youth are commonly the most blessed in
themselves and the most honoured instruments of usefulness
to others, yet God s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor
our ways his ways u . He does, when it pleaseth Him, de
viate from his wonted course, and snatch men from the very
jaws of hell, and make them illustrious monuments of his
power to save, and patterns to those who, in after-times, be
lieve in Jesus to life everlasting 7 . He does employ them in
his blessed service, and while He teaches them how great
things they must suffer for his Name s sake, He bestows on
1 Acts ix. 6. * Olshausen. * Rom. iii. 8.
- Is. Iv. 9. 1 Tim. i. 16.
10 The Change of Saul into St. Paul.
them more grace, more faith, more courage, more hope, more
love than their fellows, avenges them of their cruel enemy,
the devil, gives them souls for their hire, and many crowns
of rejoicing in the day of Christ s appearing.
When Saul entered Damascus, he entered it as a blind
man. For three days he was without sight, and neither did
eat nor drink. What passed in his mind during those three
days we are not told. Some think that he was in an agony
of remorse and bitterness ; others, that he was now favoured
with some of those visions to which he refers in his Epistles.
But all this is mere conjecture. The only thing we know
for certain is that he was engaged in prayer, and that he
saw in a vision a man named Ananias coming in and putting
his hand on him, that he might receive his sight*. And when
that devout man came, instead of upbraiding him for his past
conduct, he addressed him by the endearing title of brother.
" Brother Saul !" O how that word of Christian kindness
thrills through his soul ! Not " Thou persecutor, wretch,
murderer !" but " brother \"
Whatever a man has been aforetime however injurious to
ourselves, or to the Church of God however base and vile,
yet, as soon as ever we have good reason to believe that he
truly repents, we should receive him as a brother, restore
him in a spirit of meekness, and confirm our love to him,
that he be not discouraged, nor swallowed up with over-much
sorrow. " For who maketh thee to differ, and what hast
thou that thou didst not receive ?" Be thou therefore mer
ciful, as thy Father also is merciful; and loving, as thy Sa
viour Christ is loving.
" Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto
thee in the way that thou earnest, hath sent me, that thou
mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy
Ghost."
Saul, as we have already seen, had been called to be an
apostle by the Lord Jesus Himself, and, though born as it
were out of due time?, he must not come a whit behind the
very chiefest apostles 2 , but have all "the signs of an apos
tle/ and be " filled with the Holy Ghost." And it may be
that Ananias was sent to lay his hands on him for this pur-
* Acts ix. II, 12. r 1 Cor. xv. 8. * 2 Cor. xi. 5.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul. 11
pose, rather than one of the apostles, lest he might seem to
derive his authority from them. Nay, it would seem from
the order of the narrative, (though opinion is divided on the
subject,) that, like Cornelius and his company, he received
the Holy Ghost before he was baptized ; and for the same
reason, that there might be no doubt that he who had already
received the gift of the Holy Spirit was, in spite of his recent
persecution of the saints, a fit subject for the rite of baptism.
For God s gifts are not absolutely tied to signs, even though of
his own appointment, but He bestows or withholds them at
pleasure, according to the counsel of his own will ; albeit
that will is ever directed by wisdom and equity.
And no sooner did Ananias lay his hands upon him, than
" immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales,
and he received sight forthwith, and arose and was bap
tized*." He was already a true penitent, a true believer,
and therefore a partaker of the Holy Ghost ; and what was
to hinder him from being baptized? from being grafted
into the Church of Christ, and having the promises of for
giveness of sin, and of his adoption into God s family, visibly
signed and sealed to him ? He now ate his meat with glad
ness of heart b , and was strengthened in body as well as in soul.
" Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were
at Damascus," who no doubt received him with the same
brotherly affection with which Ananias had done. "And
straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He
is the Son of God." Having received his commission from
Christ Himself , he lost no time in fulfilling it. He acted
on the maxim of the inspired king " Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work in
the grave d ." The same eagerness and energy which he had
once shewn in the cause of error, he now displayed in the
service of truth. Believing that Jesus Christ was the Son
of God e , he boldly avowed it. No wonder that all that heard
him were amazed, and said, " Is not this he that destroyed
them which called on this Name in Jerusalem, and came
hither with that intent, that he might bring them bound
Acts ix. 18. b Acts ii. 46 j Eccles. ix. 7.
c Acts xxi. 16 18 ; Gal. i. 1. d Eccles. ix. 10. Acts viii. 37.
12 The Change of Saul into St. Paul.
unto the chief priests ?" " But Saul/ so far from being
disconcerted, "increased the more in strength, and con
founded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that
this is very Christ." " The path of the just is as the
shining light, which shineth more and more unto the per
fect day f ." He had now " clean hands," and waxed " stronger
and stronger *" He was no longer Saul the persecutor, hut
Paul the apostle of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ. The
Lord had shewn him how great things he must suffer for
his sake, and he was willing to suffer them. And though
bonds and afflictions awaited him wherever he went, both
from Jews and Gentiles, none of these things moved him,
neither counted he his own life dear unto himself, so that
he might finish his course with joy, and the ministry which
he had received of the Lord Jesus. From henceforth
we find him " in labours more abundant than the other
apostles, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent,
in deaths oft :" for " the love of Christ constrained him."
Thus he lived, and in this spirit he surrendered life ; and
when he saw his end approaching, and the hour of his mar
tyrdom at hand, he cheered on his dear son in the faith, the
youth Timothy, with such words as these : " But watch thou
in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist,
make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be
offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall
give me at that day : and^ot to me only, but unto all them
also that love his appearing 11 ."
And now, brethren, let us apply to ourselves the subject
we have been considering. Surely it ought to produce in us
all great searchings of heart. We see in the early history of
St. Paul, how easy it is to be deceived as to our real charac
ter in the sight of God. We may not be, like Saul, perse
cutors, blasphemers, injurious, God forbid that we should
be ! but with some good qualities we may be proud, self-
righteous, narrow-minded, bigoted to our own opinions,
1 Prov. iv. 18. * Job xvii. 9. h 2 Tim. iv. 58.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul. 13
self- deceived, with a name to live, and yet dead. Our Saviour
has said, " Except ye be converted and become as little chil
dren, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God ." He said
this to his disciples, to those who thought themselves so
advanced in religion, that they had just been disputing which
of them should be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
But He told them, that except their hearts were changed, and
they acquired the temper of little children, and became
humble and teachable, free from pride, and the love of pre
cedence, and high notions of their own consequence, they
could not so much as enter into the kingdom of heaven. And
in Peter, who had long been his disciple, and thought him
self strong in the faith, and an established Christian, He saw
so much lurking pride, and self-preference, and ignorance of
his own weakness and corruption, that He said to him,
" When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." We
see, then, that it is not having gone the lengths of Saul that
makes conversion necessary, but that the most moral, and
amiable, and warm-hearted, and popular, and in many re
spects praiseworthy characters, may nevertheless have that
corruption lurking in them, which lays them open to the
temptations of Satan ; and that if Jesus did not pray for
them, and shew them to themselves, and convict them of
sin, and lay them low in the dust of self-abasement, and con
vert them, they would be sifted as wheat, and perish ever
lastingly. Ought we not, then, to suspect ourselves, and to
pray, " From all blindness of heart and self-deception ; from
all errors of judgment and education ; from pride, vain-glory,
and uncharitableness ; from self-seeking, boasting of our
selves, and despising of others; from false zeal, impatience
of contradiction, and neglect of honest and impartial enquiry
into truth ; and from all the crafts, and assaults, and siftings
of the devil, good Lord deliver us ?"
My brethren, are we conscious of having experienced a
divine change? I do not ask when it took place, but has
it taken place? Saul the Pharisee was naturally proud,
self-righteous, bold, bigoted, and disdainful : bat Paul the
Apostle was humble and meek, deeply convinced of sin,
1 Matt, xviii. 3.
14 The Change of Saul into St. Paul.
gentle, patient, and loving. In the beautiful description
which he draws of that most excellent gift of charity, he
gives us, though quite unconsciously, a striking likeness of
himself as a successful imitator of his Lord. Has a change
of this kind taken place in you ? By nature we are strangely
ignorant of ourselves, and of our own peculiar faults and
corruptions. We are ignorant of the extent and spirituality
of God s holy law. We do not consider that causeless anger
is a breach of the sixth commandment, and an unchaste look
of the seventh. We are more prone to measure ourselves by
others, than by the Word of God. But by grace we come to
the knowledge of ourselves, we find out the sins which most
easily beset us, we discover our deviations from God s pure
and perfect rule. We are ashamed and confounded at the
sight of our sinfulness and corruption : we did not think it
had been half so great. And, worse than all, we find by pain
ful experience that we have no power of ourselves to help
ourselves, and that all those confessions of depravity and
helplessness in the Bible and Prayer-book which we have
been accustomed to think belonged to others rather than
ourselves, or if to us, in a mitigated sense, and as graceful ex
pressions of humility rather than stern realities, are in truth
the well-selected words which in their plain and obvious
meaning best express the changed feelings of our now con
trite hearts. We see our need of mercy we lie low at the
Cross of Christ we feel that none_ but He can do helpless
sinners good. We begin to see heights, and depths, and
lengths, and breadths in his love which we did not before
perceive. We have done with all idea of merit, and fully
enter into the apostle s statement, that God, who is rich in
mercy for his great love wherewith He loved us, even when
we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ,
and that by grace we are saved through faith, and that not
of ourselves, but the gift of God ; not of works, lest any man
should boast k . And we can "bless the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according us He has
chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that
k Eph. ii. 4, 5. 8, 9.
The Change of Saul into St. Paul. 15
we should be holy and without blame before Him in love 1 :"
and this, we are sure, is our hearts desire, and constant
prayer, and earnest endeavour.
Now, my brethren, has anything of this kind taken place
in your souls, and are you " increasing in spiritual strength,"
and being more and more " transformed by the renewing of
your mind" into the image and likeness of God? Does your
religion expose you to any trials from the world ? If it does
not, it affords grounds for suspecting its reality. Does your
religion enable you to overcome the sins by which you are
most easily beset ? If it does not, it must be sadly wanting
in life and power. Does it gain an answer to your prayers ?
If it does not, those prayers must be very different to those
of Saul, when the Saviour said of him, " Behold, he prayeth!"
Does it bring you inward peace, and a good hope, through
grace, that God is your Father and Friend in Christ Jesus ?
Have you the Spirit bearing witness with your spirit that you
are a child of God and an heir of the kingdom? All this
Paul had, and more. I do not ask whether you have it in
the same degree with him, but is your experience the same
in kind? O do not deceive yourself in a matter of such
deep importance, but seek to know the truth. And if you
have reason to fear that this necessary change has not passed
upon you, O seek it at once, and seek it from Him who
alone is able to reveal his Son in you, to give you the
knowledge of yourself, and the knowledge of Him "whom
to know is life eternal." O that it may be said of you this
very night, " Behold, he prayeth !" for this is one of the
earliest manifestations of spiritual life. And O that each
one of us on whom the Spirit of grace and supplication is
poured, may, like Paul, increase in strength, and be most
useful in his generation, and finish his course with joy, and
at length shout Victory through the blood of the Lamb.
1 Eph. i. 3, 4.
SERMON XVII.
THE REPENTANCE OF KING SAUL.
A SERMON,
1 CHRON. x. 13, 14.
" So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the
Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and
also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire
of it ; and enquired not of the Lord : therefore He slew him, and
turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse."
WE have no right to understand this account of the
causes of King Saul s death in Chronicles, as referring it to
one act of his life. It speaks as well of his general trans
gression against the Lord, as of his particular rebellion in
the matter of the Witch of Endor. Some have complained
that the Book of Chronicles should select the particular act
of turning to the witch in his despair, as if it were King
Saul s most heinous offence; whereas, it is urged, he per
petrated other deeds far more heinous, as, for example, the
atrocious murder of the priests recorded in 1 Samuel xxii.
This murder was indeed so bad, that, as Saul could not per
suade his soldiers to execute it, but was obliged to commit it
to Doeg the Edomite, so the name of Doeg lived for cen
turies on account of it in the abhorrence of all true Israel
ites; and he was mentioned in their traditions with Balaam
and Acliitophel, as excluded for ever from all share in the
blessings of the life to come. But there is no use in ques
tioning what was Saul s worst act. These single acts, indeed,
4 The Repentance of King Saul.
in a bad career are much to be noted, though it may be use
less to compare their degrees of wickedness ; and some one
of them often one which seems no worse than others which
have gone before it proves to be the irrecoverable last step
in the descent from which there is no rising. Think, my
friends, very seriously of the awful responsibility, the fright
ful consequences, of these separate acts of sin. True, it is not
the isolated acts which of themselves exclude from God s
favour. The law indeed says, the man that sinneth in one
single act shall die ; for the want of perfect obedience is the
breaking of the whole law : whereas the covenant of mercy has
respect to the general state of mind, and acts, not in accord
ance with that general state, may spring up from human weak
ness, and bring shame on a career of which they are not the
natural result, but a violent interruption. We are shocked
at times, in the lives of God s faithful servants, to read of
strange acts of great unfaithfulness ; and we are right to be
lieve, according to the gracious Gospel of our Saviour, that for
these acts, not suffered to become habitual, checked, repented
of, there is abundant forgiveness in the merciful atonement
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The separate isolated acts of sin
do not in themselves exclude from God s favour, yet is the
thought of them very awful, whether they be sins of God s
people, alien indeed from the general tone of the heart and
conduct, but shewing such weakness, and such a spring of
wickedness within as makes us tremble, lest the man who
seems hitherto to have prospered by the blessing of God s
grace, may make shipwreck of his faith ; or whether they be
not alien from the general tone, but its natural upgrowth,
the outward proof of a heart within which does not love
God, but loves iniquity. God grant us all to be very watch
ful against these separate sinful acts. It may be an act of
which the world thinks little ; yet if it is a step on the road
to hell, we cannot exaggerate its importance. It may be
making our destruction certain : some one such act will be
the last step downwards, beyond which there is no repentance.
Saul consulted the witch the night before he died; and whether
it was his worst offence or no, it was the immediate precursor
The Repentance of King Saul. 5
of his destruction, the last drop which made the cup of ven
geance overflow : there remained for him no other recorded act
of sin before his self-murder. Look well, my friends, when you
leave this church, to the next sin you are tempted to commit,
be it great or be it small ; check yourselves, pray to God to
give you strength for Christ s sake, that you may resist it, for
if indulged, it may prove a step on the road to destruction
from which there is no receding. God knows whether your
next sin may not be your last act, and leave you hopeless,
notwithstanding all that a merciful God and Saviour has
done to preserve your souls.
We are to consider now King Saul s repentance. This is
our prescribed subject. But was he not a man who lived and
died without repentance? In one sense the highest sense
of repentance he was; in another, he was not. Saul was
not a man who lived all his days without sorrow for his sins,
but he was a man (so far as we can judge) whose heart was
never changed by God the Holy Ghost from evil. What a
picture is that which the narrative of the life and death of
Saul sets before us ! How is this old history full of the
plainest practical teaching for men of every age, however
different may seem their outward circumstances from those
of the gloomy king. A modest, retiring youth called unex
pectedly to a great office and responsibility ; very unwilling
at first to be put forward amongst his brethren, how must
congratulating friends have pressed round him and his father
in that humble home at Gibeah, when it was now the de
clared will of God that the youth hitherto thought little of
should be the ruler and deliverer of his people. Yet when
any one has looked back now with the calm judgment of pos
terity through thirty centuries ; or even if his surviving friends
looked back but forty years, when the news spread of his
death, and the great disaster of Gilboa, must it not have
appeared very doubtful whether what was deemed the aus
picious morning of his being raised from his rude country life
to be a king, was not really the worst morning that had ever
dawned on him ? Had the modest youth lived on in his re
tirement, might he not, whilst following the herds from the
6 The Repentance of Kiny Saul.
field, and living quietly an uneventful life amongst his own
family, have been screened from those many temptations
which afterwards assailed and ruined him ? There are cer
tainly good points noted in his character besides this early
modesty. He does not seem to have taken offence at the re
sistance which his claims met with from those children of
Belial who despised him, as we read 1 Sam. x. 27. He was con
tented to wait quietly for a recognition of his high calling,
till he should be summoned by some great emergency to arise
and shew himself capable of being the defender and avenger
of his brethren. And then he rose at once to meet the
danger, when it did come j yet would he suffer no one to be
punished for any despite done to him a . These things shew
many of the elements of a great and good spirit, even though
we may understand the mocking proverb, " Is Saul also
among the prophets ?" to speak of some known transgressions
of his reckless youth. Might not his good qualities have
been fostered, and his evil propensities restrained, in a quieter
sphere ? We know how through his life he had his fits and
starts of holier impulses ; how, thrown into the company of
the prophets, he was on two separate occasions b strangely
stirred in spirit to join them ; how, even in his most hopeless
days, his heart was moved to pity and returning love towards
the man whom he most intensely hated. Nothing can be
more touching than that gushing forth of Saul s better nature
at the call of David s generous forbearance, when the man he
had so long persecuted is represented as sparing his life for
the second time c in the trench on the hill of Hachilah :
" I have sinned ; return, my son David, for I will no more
do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine eyes
this day : behold I have played the fool, and have erred ex
ceedingly 3 ." He speaks here in his age as you might have
expected from him in youth. How often does the con
trast between the good promise of youth and the miserable
failure of age call up the same thoughts. We recall our re
membrance of the open countenance of the fair boy, and ask
* 1 Sam. xi. 13. b Ibid. x. 10; xix. 23. c Cf. chs. xxiv., xxvi.
d Ibid. xxvi. 21.
The Repentance of King Saul. 7
whether he can be indeed the same as the old man now before
us, whose lines are deeply marked with craft or a sensual life.
But indeed they are but vain dream s, which would make us
think that a man s character is the creature of circumstances ;
that Saul, who failed so miserably as the king, might have
had all that was good within him nurtured and matured, had
he passed his days in his father s quiet farm. Believe this,
that whatever be a man s lot in life, high or lowly, he will find
ample room in it for those temptations to self-will, and head
strong self-indulgence, and envy, which proved so ruinous
to Saul in his kingly power, but which would have been
equally dangerous to him amid the petty details, the mean
tyrannies, and fretfulness of an uneventful country life. The
heart that is really turned to God has as ready opportunities
of cultivating heavenly grace in a shop or farm as in a king
dom. He who does not love God in his heart, and has not his
will subdued to God, rebels and frets against Him in the little
incidents of daily home life, as he would if he were tempted
by the glittering prizes of glory and unrestrained power.
The simple question respecting each of ourselves as respect
ing King Saul is this : Brimfull as my nature is of desires
and tendencies that lead me to set up my own will and my
own longings against the will of God, am I resting in se
curity, as if I repented of what is evil in me, because I know
that here and there a better nature makes itself felt within,
and now and then I do a generous or a self-denying act? Is
this enough to satisfy me ? or do I long for that true repent
ance which is indeed a change of heart ?
Ah, my friends, without this there is no safety ! No pro
mise of youth will bear good fruit in your maturity, unless
the Holy Spirit of God changes your whole hearts. You
may go on and pass some seventy years of a fickle, chequered
life without any great crimes ; there may be impulses of good
gushing back upon your hearts at times, making you deeply
sorry for sins committed, and driving you to better resolu
tions ; but if there be not the real recovery from the natural
state, which is estranged from God, these tossings to and fro
from the changeful gusts of feeling will do you no good.
The repentance which God acknowledges is not momentary
8 The Repentance of King Saul.
sorrow or good resolutions, soon repented of in the wrong
direction ; it is that thorough change of heart which works
in us the steadiness of real Christian principle ; which makes
us, who have been baptised and reared as Christians, to
love the Lord Jesus Christ above all things ; to hold His
favour dearer than life itself; to have no stronger desire than
that our thoughts, and feelings, and life may be conformed
to His holy will ; in a word, which fills us with real, abid
ing Christian faith. Such a change the history leads us to
believe King Saul never knew ; and therefore all his fitful
impulses of repentance but led him at last to the gloom of
despair.
How many calls to repentance, my friends, have sounded
in our ears ? Not to speak of times past this very season,
with its collects, its lessons, and all those special earnest
appeals which have called aloud to each of us shall they not
force us before we sleep to ask and answer this question,
Have I repented by a change of nature? Has God the Holy
Ghost made me a real servant of God in Christ? I know that
the Lord loves me with an everlasting love. Has the spectacle
of His dear Son dying to save me so won my heart that it
is given up to Him ? Then shall I earnestly long and strive
no more to resist or grieve Him. If I fail through the
weakness of my nature, I shall be filled with horror for my
failures; my daily repentance then will be the inevitable
result and proof that I have truly repented through the
change of heart.
And now, that we may estimate how far King Saul s heart
was or was not changed, we must look at his separate acts of
sin. Sins are only the more alarming if they are deliberately
indulged in after the motions of the Spirit of God have been
stirring us to holiness. Now so strong were these impulses
from above in the earlier part of Saul s life, that we even read,
chap. x. 10, that after his first interview with Samuel, " God
gave him another heart." Alas 1 his after-life shews that this
change was not an abiding change ; that he sinned away the
grace God offered him, so that the Spirit of the Lord left
him, and an evil spirit took its seat in his heart. A warning
here for all of us, that true change of heart must be abiding.
The Repentance of King Saul. 9
Sin springing up, reckless self-indulgence, may blight and de
stroy feelings of good which gave such hopeful promise at first
that they seemed to speak of the full abiding change. My
friends, let none of us trust to early religious feelings and re
solves. They may, indeed, make us hopeful ; but hope, to be
secure, must be rooted in watchfulness and prayer ; there
must be no self-reliance in it. God will keep us safe, if we
trust ourselves to Him. But without humble dependence on
Him there is no safety, even if the good stirred up within us
seems for a time to have made us new men.
And now look at the recorded acts by which Saul grieved
God s Spirit. How comparatively trivial does that sin appear
to many which is recorded in the thirteenth chapter. He
was waiting with his people for a conflict with their pow
erful enemies, " and all the people followed him trembling.
And he tarried seven days, according to the set time that
Samuel had appointed : but Samuel came not to Gilgal ; and
the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, Bring
hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he
offered the burnt offering. And it came to pass, that as soon
as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold,
Samuel came : and Saul went out to meet him, that he might
salute him. And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And
Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from
me, and that thou earnest not within the days appointed, and
that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Mich-
mash ; therefore said I, The Philistines will come down now
upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the
Lord : I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offer
ing. And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly :
thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God,
which He commanded thee : for now would the Lord have
established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy
kingdom shall not continue." Was not this a trivial offence ?
Are not Samuel s denunciations somewhat harsh? Might we
not plead that the king even shewed a religious spirit by thus
sacrificing to the Lord God ? But self-will was at the root of
the act that self-will which poisoned all Saul s after-life.
He knew this; his conscience had evidently smitten him
10 The Repentance of King Saul.
when he saw that, after having waited seven days, he had no
sooner impatiently refused to wait longer, than his rashness had
been proved, by the arrival of Samuel, to be as unnecessary
as it was wrong. He seems to shew this in what sounds like
a sort of half-cowardly excuse in ver. 12 : "I forced myself,
and offered a burnt offering/ The outward act may appear
to us trivial, yet in a kingdom, the arrangements of which
were all appointed by God, and carefully fenced round by
His command, it was a serious matter for the king, like the
ancient Pagan kings, to arrogate to himself the priest s office.
And however the act might seem before men, God, reading the
heart, saw in it the risings of a self-willed, dangerous spirit,
which unchecked would be sure to be Saul s ruin. Therefore
Samuel s stern rebuke, and the threatening of punishment,
might have been as useful for the discipline of Saul s soul, as,
five hundred years before, the knowledge of the punishment
God would bring on him by refusing him an entrance into
the promised land, was to the rising impetuosity of Moses.
God reads the heart ; He sees the hidden roots of all our
actions ; He knows, and would ward off, our danger. It is in
mercy that He checks us often by stern reproof, and denying
us the worldly good things on which we have set our affec
tions. Happy those whom His reproofs arouse to earnest
self-examination ! God grant us, my friends, ever to listen to
His voice, \vhether it speaks through a reproving friend, or
by the whispers of the conscience. A fault checked by che
rished hopes defeated, may be the means of saving us. Had
Saul, smarting from the reproof which told him that the
kingdom should not continue to his house, now looked more
carefully within, this unpleasant reproof might have saved
him from a reckless course: the doubts he evidently felt
whether what he had done was right, might have become
true and abiding repentance. But Saul s course from this
point is certainly not one of improvement and growth in
grace.
The rash vow by which he forbade the people to taste any
food, recorded in the next, the fourteenth chapter, which
reduced his army to great straits, and had all but cost the
life of Jonathan, seems to shew the same unchecked im-
The Repentance of King Saul. 11
petuosity, reckless in its self-willed way of honouring God.
Here, however, we read of no reproof following. Dissatisfied,
doubtless, with his rashness, and the evil that sprang from it,
he was left to think the matter over by himself. God does
not always interfere to give us audible warnings, and Saul s
heart was growing too hard to speak very intelligibly in its
upbraidings.
There soon follows, in the fifteenth chapter, what seems
to stand out as the crowning act of self-will in his earlier
years the sparing of the Amalekites. This, whatever else
we may think of it, is certainly set before us as a dis
tinct act of disobedience. It has been often noted also,
that there are other features in Saul s conduct in this matter
besides his disobedience : there is the meanness of a hypo
critical half-obedience, in following out the Lord s purpose
where it could be done with no cost, (ver. 9) " everything that
was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly;" and then
there is in the greeting to Samuel the aggravation of a pre
tence of obedience, when the king knew in his heart that he
had not obeyed: (ver. 13) " Blessed be thou of the Lord: I
have obeyed the commandment of the Lord." No wonder
that Samuel s wrath was kindled, and that his rebuke was
very sharp. It needed this to make Saul acknowledge, or
even understand, his own real motives : (ver. 23) " Rebellion is
as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and
idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord,
He hath also rejected thee from being king." And then
follows the confession in ver. 24, and the meanness is ac
knowledged, so often found in those who forsake plain duty.
If God has spoken, man must obey ; and if we try to escape
from obedience, other motives will insinuate themselves, even
those which are alien to the man s general character. The
reckless Saul had in this matter become the slave of his
own soldiers, unless in thus accusing himself of a cowardly
fear of them while he did not fear to disobey God, he is even
now playing with his conscience, while trying to shift the
greater portion of the blame to them, shewing that the re
pentance he avows is not real : (ver. 24) " Saul said, I have
12 The Repentance of King Saul.
transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words :
because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice."
The agony which followed when the king rushed after the
retiring prophet, and sought to hold him by his mantle,
shews certainly that Saul s conscience was not dead. Yet in
what he says there is perhaps too much desire to save appear
ances : " Honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of
the people." This thought seems almost more prominent
than sorrow for what was wrong. Yet doubtless he was
deeply moved; he speaks the real feelings of his better nature
when he says, "I have sinned." But was this repentance
real ? It would seem not. God knew his heart, and Samuel
knew it ; and we read, ver. 35, that he " mourned for Saul :"
he saw that with all the stirrings of his conscience, he was
not really moved to turn to God. Indeed, these earlier acts
of Saul s rebellion were but the precursors of what was
worse.
This would be proved at once, if we had time to trace his
after career. This solemn reproof in the matter of the Ama-
lekites might have been the turning-point of Saul s life ; but
though Samuel henceforward mourned for Saul, the king does
not seem to have mourned for himself. How alarming is this
lesson ! Warnings disregarded, first sins lightly healed with
out deep repentance, but lead to worse sins. Hitherto Saul s
recorded offences were more or less of a ceremonial charac
ter; henceforward there is no question, even on the most
common worldly principles, of his rapid degeneracy. Hitherto
it is reckless self-will, with a mixture of some meanness which
leads him to think lightly of the letter of God s commands ;
now all gives way to the one master passion of envy. The
man who worships self is an easy prey to envy ; and envy is
a deadly poison working in the soul till, if uncured, it drives
us even to madness. In what immediately follows in the
history, we are introduced to the life of David. The great
exploit of the shepherd-boy must have called forth the full
admiration of every generous soul : but ch. xviii. 7 tells us,
" The women answered one another as they played, Saul
hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.
The Repentance of King Saul. 1 3
And Saul was very wroth." His consciousness that, by
his disobedience, he had himself lost God s favour, fanned the
dangerous flame when he thought of the favoured youth :
" They have ascribed unto David," he says, " ten thousands,
and to me they have ascribed but thousands : and what can
he have more but the kingdom? And Saul eyed David from
that day forward." Oh the misery of a jealous spirit ! there
is no religion where there is jealousy ; self has swallowed up
love to God and love to our neighbour : and Saul indulged
his gloomy passion. There was no repentance now. The
evil spirit, we read, came upon the king, and he sought
David s life. Saved from the sudden cast of the javelin,
David escaped, and behaved himself wisely, and Saul s hatred
was turned into fear. Jealousy is not more miserable than
it is degrading. Alas for Saul now ! this one absorbing pas
sion seems to fill his whole soul. How contemptible are the
devices by which he seeks at first to gratify his malicious
rage ; how true to nature is the outburst against Jonathan,
chap. xx. 30, when the wicked passion, lashed to madness by
being thwarted, bursts forth in an attempt on his own son s
life : " Then Saul s anger was kindled against Jonathan, and
he said unto him, Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman, .
do not I know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to
thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother s
nakedness ? For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the
ground, thou shalt not be established, nor thy kingdom."
And when Jonathan answered, " Saul cast a javelin at him
to smite him : whereby Jonathan knew that it was deter
mined of his father to slay David."
The king obviously is lost now, and there is no compunc
tion, for he cherishes his sin. Soon after follows the atrocious
massacre of the priests, (chap, xxii.) ; four score and five per
sons that did wear a linen ephod, besides their women and
children, ministers of God, all murdered in cold blood from
the same cause, the one absorbing madness of jealous
hatred against David; and Saul seeks David s life now in
arms, as he had sought it before by treachery. And now
his own life hurries to its miserable close. He feels that he
14 The Repentance of King Saul.
is deserted of God, and that nothing prospers with him.
How pitiable is the spectacle of his latter days ! Forsaken of
God. Why ? There can be no doubt, because of unrepented
sin; and now, though at times, as we have seen, moved to
sorrow, not able to return, and God s face hidden from him.
Is there anywhere a more melancholy picture than that of
the deserted and despairing king in the witch s house, try
ing vainly to gain from evil spirits what he felt he could not
hope from God. And is not his turning to the vain devices
of necromancy a standing proof to the last that his heart
was estranged from God. So estranged that it seemed as if
now he could not turn. Read the details of that sad night
in the 28th chapter, vers. 2023 : " Then Saul fell straight
way all along on the earth, and was sore afraid : . . . and
there was no strength in him ; for he had eaten no bread all
the day, nor all the night. And the woman came unto Saul,
and saw that he was sore troubled, and said unto him, Be
hold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice, and I have put
my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words
which thou spakest unto me. Now therefore, I pray thee,
hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and
let me set a morsel of bread before thee ; and eat, that thou
mayest have strength, when thou goest on thy way. But he
refused, and said, I will not eat. But his servants, together
with the woman, compelled him ; and he hearkened unto
their voice. So he arose from the earth, and sat upon the
bed/ The events of that wretched night are a fit introduc
tion to the melancholy morning of Gilboa. How are the
mighty fallen ! How have the early hopes and returning
longings after good all ended miserably ! No wonder that
the degraded king seeks death by his own hand, when
life has become intolerable. Bead here, my friends, all of
you, the melancholy end of self-will and evil passions long
indulged, till the soul becomes their slave, and all hope is
gone, and God with it. There is not one of us here present,
before whom the like melancholy course may not lie, if the
mercy of God in the Lord Jesus Christ do not grant to us
a tender conscience, a determination to resist the love of
The Repentance of King Saul. 15
self and every motion of jealousy, a hearty sorrow for every
sin into which we fall, an earnest purpose to repel sin, and a
power of earnestly clinging to God in all our difficulties.
The reckless, self-willed life must lead to a death without
hope.
And here, before we close, Was Saul mad ? On this
question we need say but a very few words. The evil spirit
which entered into him may have shewn its power, as in
many of the possessed of the New Testament, through an
ordinary malady. But whether he were mad or no, he was
certainly not irresponsible. He knew what he was doing,
and he knew that it was wrong; and he knew how he might
have escaped from destruction by humble, hearty repentance.
There is a wonderful resemblance between the infatuation of
indulged evil propensities and common madness. Especially
is a jealous, violent, self-willed nature scarcely master of it
self, as if possessed by common madness. Madman or sane,
in some passages of his life, he knew well all through it what
God loved, and what separates the soul from His favour.
Alas ! my friends, reason itself at times gives way before in
dulged evil desires.
It has often been noted, that Saul stands to David in the
Old Testament as St. Peter to Judas in the New, the two
kings and the two apostles, all partakers of great spiritual
privileges, all bearing about them the marks of human
weakness ; but David and St. Peter clinging to their Lord
through an earnest, faithful repentance, while in Saul and
Judas, a long-continued indulgence, in the one of selfish jea
lousy, in the other of selfish avarice, placed them at last
beyond hope, and each ended his own life by the last act of
desperation. God is a merciful Father, who pardons sinners
through the atoning blood. But it is the watchful, praying,
conscience-stricken sinner who is recovered from the tem
porary dominion of sin, who does not become its slave, who
is saved from utter estrangement from his merciful Father,
and who therefore, though deeply troubled, does not lose his
faith, his good heart and good hope, and his love. God
grant us to be with the repentant David and repentant Peter,
16
The Repentance of King Saul.
clinging to their faith in the Lord they loved, not with the
despairing Saul and Judas, who, though sorry for sin, never
left it. Alas, alas ! this is the fate of most worldly men to
end a life of half-repentance and long-cherished favourite
evil propensities, without God and without hope. God grant
a far better fate to us, through the mercy of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
SERMON XVIII.
THK REPENTANCE OP ST. PETER.
BY
THOMAS THELLUSSON CARTER, M.A.,
BECTOE OF CLEWER.
A SERMON,
ST. LUKE xxii. 61, 62.
" And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remem
bered the word of the Lord, how He had said unto him, Before
the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice. And Peter went out,
and wept bitterly."
ST. PETER S repentance is the only instance recorded in
the New Testament of a perfect recovery after a fall from
grace. The awfulness of his fall was that he fell in the midst
of religion. The full gift of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost
had not, indeed, as yet been poured forth ; but Peter had
passed three years full of moving incidents, replete with
grace ; full of acts of faith, love, self-sacrifice, after special
revelations vouchsafed to himself alone ; after being pro
nounced " blessed ;" after having a personal share in mira
cles and mysteries ; after being washed by our Lord s own
hands ; after feeding on the Body and Blood of God Incar
nate. So mighty must such grace have been, so sweet such
communion, so blissful its inward light, that to fall from it
and need to be converted again is not, indeed, unprovided for
in the New Covenant, God forbid ! but is unlocked for, as it
were, is something out of the ordinary laws of grace. Like
the case of the penitent thief, which is the singular instance
of conversion from deadly sin at the last hour of life ; so
is St. Peter s recovery the singular instance of a return to
God after he had been so found and then lost again.
Yet these are not to be looked upon as isolated cases.
B2
4 The Repentance of St. Peter.
They are types to be over and over again renewed ; samples
of great laws of love ; of infinite outgoings of the grace of
the Atonement repairing its own losses. And St. Peter is an
unfailing witness to the end of time, that penitents may
attain the highest places of the kingdom. The encourage
ment which his recovery gives to penitents of all ages is a
perpetual fulfilment of the blessing which was not limited to
his own lifetime : " When thou art converted, strengthen
thy brethren." That one so great should so fall is humbling
to the highest of the saints; but that having so fallen, he
should be so restored, is the hope of all who have in any
measure " done despite to the Spirit of grace."
For the wonder of St. Peter s repentance is its perfect-
ness ; his more than restoration ; his rise to a far higher
sanctity than he had before attained ; his rapid advance to
perfection from that very hour. St. Augustine has taught
that a perfected repentance is a rarer miracle of mercy
than an uniform faithfulness. But so great was St. Peter s
repentance, that he never lost his distinguished place among
the apostles. He arose almost in the moment of his fall.
The completion of his repentance superseded the necessity of
penance. Even though our Lord s thrice-repeated charge,
" Feed My sheep," be understood as a renewal of a for
feited commission, in compensation for his threefold denial ;
yet those words involved no period of probation to test the
reality of his repentance. Grace had already repaired all
the loss, and clothed him even with yet higher gifts.
St. Peter s was a mixed character. Great strength, and,
as often happens, equally great weaknesses, were mingled in
him. His danger lay in his strength as much as in his
weakness. His fall was not a mere sudden surprise ; it arose
out of very serious faults of character. Let us note some of
the causes of his liability to fall, of which Satan took ad
vantage. One fearful fact in the history of the soul is, that
early sins, though long put away, if not constantly watched
against, break out again, sometimes more violently than
before, under sudden temptations in unexpected forms. St.
Peter is an instance of this. Evidently he had greatly sinned
in his youth. His first shrinking from our Lord s approach,
The Repentance of St. Peter. 5
" Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord," betokens
it. When under his temptation, he " began to curse aud
to swear;" and we cannot suppose such evils to have at that
time first arisen. They must have been a return of the
habits of earlier life, scars of a violent and irregular temper
not wholly healed. There was also in him a presumption
and self-sufficiency which always threatened a fall. Human
temerity could hardly have soared higher, than when he
said, " Though I should die with Thee/ (some of the Fa
thers understood it for Thee,) " yet will I not deny Thee
in any wise." And again, what immediately occasioned his
fall was a moral cowardice strangely mingled with extreme
physical boldness ; for just before his alarm at the notice of a
maid-servant in the judgment-hall, he would have risked his
life single-handed against the whole Roman band in the
garden of Gethsemane. With these serious defects, there
was a variable impetuosity of feeling constantly bringing
out into great prominence the good and evil, the strength
and weakness of his character ; as upon the lake, when one
moment he would walk upon the water with his Lord, and
the next was ready to sink with fear.
The circumstances of his temptation were peculiarly trying
to such a character. His Master in the hand of His enemies,
overpowered, unresisting; the disciples fled, and concealing
themselves ; the traitor successful in his treason ; the very
rabble of the city triumphing ; himself become the jest of a
losing cause ; and no sound, no sign from heaven to justify
the long-cherished faith. How difficult have some here,
perhaps, found it to confess Christ amidst humiliation ; to
resist the jeer; to bear up consistently, when the heart s
faith has sunk in trial or despondency. Let such as have been
thus tested, seek to realize St. Peter s trial before they speak
lightly of his fall. Rather, have not all cause to watch lest
they should give way, and risk in some form or other the
fearful condemnation " Whosoever shall confess Me before
men, him will I also confess before My Father which is iu
heaven ; but whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I
also deny before My Father which is in heaven ?"
Let us now consider the lessons which we may gather for our
6 The Repentance of St. Peter,
own guidance. And first we learn the possibility of perfect
repentance after grace has been forfeited ; of a return to God
from sin committed after special favours and gifts of love. It is
written, " If any man draw back, My Soul shall have no plea
sure in him ;" but here we have a reversal of that terrible sen
tence. Again, it is written, " It is impossible for those who
were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift,
and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted
the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come, \i
they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance ;" but
here we learn that even the denial of the Lord Who bought
us does not involve this utter reprobation. We learn from
Scripture that grace is given to improve and to increase ;
that where it fails of this effect, the covenant of mercy is
broken ; yet here we see how not merely the loss of grace, but
the denial of the Author of grace, calls forth fresh love in
restoring the breach and recovering the fallen.
If, then, some desponding soul here should be mourning in
wardly, and say, " My case is different from that of all others :
not only have I sinned against grace, but none can tell the
warnings that I have neglected the repeated warnings ; or
what I once experienced of the love of God, and have de
spised ; or what sweet communion with Him I once had,
and have lost : none can have sinned away such mercies, and
still live." The answer to such despairing thoughts is easy.
Could there be warnings more frequent, or more striking,
than those given to St. Peter ? Could any one have held
closer or more familiar communion with Jesus? Could
any have received more of the inner light of His love than
one who had seen Him on the Mount of Transfiguration,
and in the chamber of the blessed Sacrament, or during the
Agony in the garden of Gethsemane ? And yet he denied his
Lord, and after his denial was wholly restored. /
Further, there was a wonderful mercy overruling St. Peter s
fall, bringing out of it even greater good. It was made to teach
him what otherwise he seemed unable to learn. He needed
to learn distrust of self. With all his burning zeal, his devoted
love, his entire self-sacrifice, his heart was closed against the
idea of his own helplessness, of his own nature s utter weak-
The Repentance of St. Peter. 7
ness, of its need of a continual stay on God. He prayed
not when he heard of a fierce temptation coming. He did
not watch one hour. He never questioned his own stedfast-
ness. The idea of the utter feebleness of humanity in itself
found no entrance into his soul. He must be left to his own
unassisted nature to learn its liability to fall. His feeling had
been, " / will not deny Thee in any wise ;" " / am ready to
go with Thee both into prison and unto death." And he was
left to this his own personal strength. His trial was as much
as to say, " I take thee at thy word, and now see what thou,
thy own nature, without Me, can do." He must meet Satan,
alone, and unarmed. Thus in his shame, confusion, and
tears of bitterness, he must learn to trust in Christ, and not
in himself.
And thou who despondest at some past fall, hast thou no
similar lesson to learn of deeper humility, of closer depend
ence on God ? Hast thou had no self-trust ? Has thy strength
always been in prayer and watching? Hast thou always
borne in mind the utter feebleness of human nature, and the
perpetual need of casting it upon God as its only stay ? Have
not thy very gifts been a snare, so that thou hast looked on
them as thy own, as what would endure of themselves without
continual grace ? May not, then, the sinking, the despondency
which has followed thy fall, be the very means whereby thou
wilt learn those truer lessons of .thyself? Until his fall,
St. Peter was wanting in some of the very elements of the
religious life, of the very conditions of advancement. He was
wanting in humility, meekness, reverence, fear, and self-dis
trust. He was often contradicting his Lord, " Although all
should be offended, yet will not I;" even reproving Him,
" This be far from Thee, Lord ;" even refusing proffered
grace, " Thou shalt never wash my feet." We see nothing
of this afterwards. How different is his after-tone : " Why
look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or ho
liness we had made this man to walk;" " His Name, through
faith in His Name, has made this man strong;" "Repent
ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted
out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the pre
sence of the Lord." And the key-note of his Epistles is,
8 The Repentance of St. Peter.
" Be clothed with humility." " Be sober, and watch unto
prayer."
May not this be thy case that the foundations of thy life
need to be laid lower, in a more perfect self-abasement; a
deeper humility ; a more entire leaning upon God, a more
complete abandonment of all high thoughts, independence of
will, self-glorying, vanity, spirit of contradiction, and such
like ; that beginning afresh, these hindrances being removed,
thou mayest hide thyself from thyself, hide thyself in a per
petual recollection of the Divine presence and support, as the
only stay and safeguard of thy frail, ever-falling humanity ?
Moreover, St. Peter is not merely the assurance to us of
the possibility of a perfect restoration after falling from God,
he is also the model of all true penitents. God formed His
Church out of the fallen, and He gave an example of the
grace of repentance in one of the foundations of His Church,
the one to whom it had been said, " On this rock I will build
My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it." What could not be exhibited in our Lord, because He
was without sin, was exhibited in His chief Apostle. As
St. John is the true model of the progressive development
of a supernatural life, so St. Peter of a perfected repentance.
Let us study, then, a lesson which most surely more or
less all of us need to read aright. We shall here see the true
elements of character through which the grace of God works
" a repentance unto salvation not to be repented of."
The first main element of St. Peter s recovery was a spirit
of self-accusation, a ready acknowledgment of sin and error.
This disposition he had shewn before. His outburst of remorse
openly before his brethren, at his first call, " Depart from
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord," was a proof of it. He is
the one only Apostle whom at his call we find on his knees in
confession at the feet of his Divine Master. It was in the
same spirit of ready confession that, when he heard our Lord
say, " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me," he in
stantly answered, " Lord, not my feet only, but also my
hands and my head." And thus, in the very instant of his
fall, the spirit of self-accusation deepened into its most
touching form, and could express, itself only in bitter tears
The Repentance of St. Peter. 9
and silent anguish, as he covered his face and hurried out of
the hall into the dark night, to be alone and weep. And
yet, had the tendency of his mind been to catch at excuses,
and extenuate his fault, and withhold the full confession,
there were pleas ready, which, alas ! we can imagine some of
ourselves to have urged at such a time. " Why is my blame
so great ? All the disciples have fled. I have followed Thee
even into the judgment-hall ; I have ventured at the risk of
my life. I did not mean to deny Thee; it was but an
evasion, and it was to save my life ; it was but to quiet the
clamour, to escape the notice : my mind was stedfastly faith
ful all the while. Did I not lately, in the garden, I alone of
all the disciples, take the sword and offer up my life?" How
different is the whole attitude of the fallen apostle ! How
instantly does he rush to the full conclusion to the sight of
his sin, as it appeared in the eye of God ! How entirely free
is his manner from the least appearance of self-justification,
which so slowly lets go one plea after another, clinging hold
to one support for its pride after another, ready to do any
thing rather than acknowledge the guilt, irrespectively of all
its consequences.
Here, then, is one essential element of true repentance
self-accusation at the feet of Jesus. And how needful a
lesson to learn well. The saddest part of our sin is, that we
are so slow to confess it. Sin ever gathers round it an array
of self-defences. Subtleties and evasions, special pleadings,
shrinkings from humiliation, lingerings of pride, all gather
round the consciousness of sin, and rise up instantly to
hinder the only remedy of guilt, the only hope of restoration.
For it is a law of spiritual life, that there can be no release,
no freedom, no return to the pure light and love of God, till
the acknowledged sin is cast out of the soul, and laid at the
foot of the cross. " Wash me throughly from my \vicked-
ness, and cleanse me from my sin : for I acknowledge my
transgression, and my sin is ever before me/ is the great
penitent s inspired thought ; the full acknowledgment, and
then the perfect cleansing. They coincide as by a neces
sary law in the mystery of repentance. The unacknowledged
guilt lies within the soul, a permanent hindrance to the
10 The Repentance of St. Peter.
grace of God, as a blight that settles on the herb, gradually
weakening all the powers of its inward life. Confess the
guilt, let all self-excuses be surrendered, and the soul re
vives, as the green herb from which the gentle rain of
heaven has cleansed all the blight away.
Again, from St. Peter we learn that faith is a main ele
ment of restoration, preserved to him through the inter
cession of His Lord : " I have prayed for thee, that thy
faith fail not." Now faith is not the belief of any particular
dogma ; nor is it the same as a spirit of assurance ; neither
is it any peculiar feeling appropriating some special promise ;
but it is the bent, the aim of the whole soul. It is the pre
vailing direction of all the powers of the man toward God ; it
is the apprehension of the inner man embracing, grasping
the invisible; living in things which are unseen and eternal,
and raising him out of the sphere of sight which lives in things
that are temporal. Faith may lay hold of one particular
promise at one time, of another at another. It has its un
utterable convictions of peace ; it has its own " witness of
the Spirit;" its own "hidden manna;" "its white stone,"
with " the new name written on it, which no man can read
but he who receiveth it." But faith is the posture of the
whole inner man the tenor and essence of his life. " The
just shall live by faith." Through it the invisible affects the
man more than the visible : the unseen stirs him to his
depths, the seen touches only the surface of his life. This
grace was eminently a characteristic of St. Peter. To him
first the Father revealed the Son. He first confessed Christ ;
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." After
wards, when the Lord taught the full doctrine of the Eucha
rist, the Communion of His Flesh and Blood, to be the life
of the world; and many of His disciples went back and
walked no more with Him ; and Judas shewed the first signs
of unbelief, St. Peter was the one who accepted the myste
rious words. " Then Simon Peter answered Him ; Lord, to
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
The same grasping at supernatural things led him to desire
to walk on the water with his Lord. He was ever growing
in the apprehension and realization of great invisible realities.
The Repentance of St. Peter. 1 1
And thus lie had learnt to regard sin in the light of another
world sin abstractedly in itself, as a loss of spiritual life, as a
thing abhorrent to God, as an utter contrariety to all that his
soul was aspiring after. Therefore, when the sense of the
sin he had committed broke upon his soul, the judgment-
hall, the excited scene before his eyes, the fear of death, the
fear of scorn, all disappeared, and before his mental eye rose up
the scenes by the lake of Galilee, and on the Mount of Olives,
and in the journeyings by the way ; the words of warning he
had disbelieved now proved true ; the many other words he
could not understand at the time, now as surely about to be
fulfilled ; and his own promises so basely falsified. In the
crowd of that judgment-hall he felt but the One presence
of the Lord Who stood before him, and the look of that One
Countenance alone, of all that were bent upon him as he
hurried forth, fell on his heart and its floodgates of sorrow
were broken up.
To rise thus above all the worldly consequences of sin, all its
mere temporal effects, to read one s sin in the light of God s
countenance, to view it as we shall view it on our death-bed,
stripped of all accidents, with its awful consequences, as we
pass into eternity, this is the attribute of faith ; and through
the preservation of his faith, as our Lord assures us, St. Peter
arose from his fall. Oh ! how much need have we to pray,
" Lord increase our faith ;" that we may see our sins in their
true form and colour. How much need to pray for increased
inward light, that we may have " senses exercised to discern
between good and evil;" that sins now lurking in us unseen
may be made known to us ; that sins we have long seen and
confessed may be more abhorred ; that we may know our
selves more as God knows us, by a quicker sensitiveness, by
a purer light. The sense of sin depends on our view of
sanctity. As we grow better, we see sin clearer. As we have
more of God, we realize evil more vividly. The greatest
saints are therefore the deepest penitents. The bright light
of purity in which they live sets off more vividly the dark
ness of the spots which stain the field of their souls life.
The more they advance, the more truly they repent. As, e.g.,
we see more the power of truth, the more we are ashamed of
12 The Repentance of St. Peter.
our deceits. As we realize purity, so we shrink from our im
purities. As we perceive love and largeness of heart, so we
despise our selfishness. The more God shines into us, the
more we loathe our own vileness. We judge by the contrast.
Now faith reveals these supernatural sights of better things,
and therefore it becomes an essential condition of a true
repentance, for repentance is a loathing of our sin, as the
vision of God grows within us.
There is one more feature of a true repentance which is
exhibited in St. Peter. His repentance turned upon his love
of the person of Christ. This had been long the moving
principle of his life. His indignation at the idea of his
Master s suffering; his refusing to be washed before the
administration of the blessed Sacrament; his taking the
sword, and then striking with it ; his entering the judgment-
hall, were all impulses of a fervent, though unchastened,
love; a love to our Lord s person. And this was the secret
power of that look which our Lord, when He turned, cast
upon him. The wounded love, the pity, the reproach, the re
newed warning of mercy which that look expressed, caused
his passionate outburst of grief. That piercing look re
vealed the feelings of that most loving Heart, with which
his own heart was so bound up. And as love thus moved
him to repentance, love was the secret principle of his life
ever afterward, and therefore the Lord put to him the thrice-
repeated question, " Lovest thou Me?" It was the secret
grace of his perseverance, as it had been that of his con
version.
It may seem as though St. Peter s love to our Lord were
too human, too much that of a man toward his fellow. It
did indeed need chastening, increased reverence, more of that
deep, adoring awe which St. John earlier learnt ; and which St.
Peter learnt at last in the shame and humiliations of his fall.
But love to our Lord must needs be human, human in its
purest, highest form. The Incarnation of God has made an
essential change in the relations between God and man, and
so in the love that binds us. He took our nature, and abideth
in that nature. He is Man eternal, as He is God eternal. The
whole redeemed world would cease to exist, if He ever ceased
The Repentance of St. Peter. 13
to be Man. He loves, and will evermore love us, in that
nature, and through its sensations, and He draws us to love
Him through the same nature, with the impulse of which
humanity is capable. He loved with a human love, and He
is to be loved in return with a human love. The love of
Mary, of Lazarus, of the Magdalene, of St. John, St. Peter,
above all, of His blessed Mother, were different forms of hu
man love, according to the different dispositions of those differ
ent persons, not ceasing to be human love, though purified,
raised, sublimed, as it mingled with divine love, and became
in them a wondrous mixture of the affections of grace and of
redeemed humanity. As in the sacred Heart of Jesus human
love and divine love exist, each of the highest order, and
unite and beat together in one harmonious pulse, and are
the bond and channel of communion between the blessed
Trinity and a redeemed world, the source of all true life that
flows into the veins of a restored humanity ; even so in the
heart of each one of His elect, formed in His image, accord
ing to the capacity of each, the affections of nature and of
grace, human and divine, join together and combine in a
mystery, which reflects the mystery of His own Heart of
love. He consecrated the human affections to Himself in
His human form as their proper end, so that through His Hu
manity they might centre upon the eternal Godhead. There
fore now and evermore to embrace Him, and cleave to Him
in His deified human love, is the true aspiration of the puri
fied human heart. Therefore penitent love has ever delighted
to dwell on His Wounds, as the marks of His love, and of
His sufferings for our sin; to pay devotion to His sacred
Body; to realize the Agony of His Soul; to dwell on His
human Countenance during His deep sorrows, on His sinking
form, on His thorn-crowned Head, on His exceeding loud cry
of death, in which He bowed beneath the consummated
burden of sin. The sight of His sorrows in the shame of the
judgment-hall touched the deepest chord of remorse in St.
Peter s soul in that night of shame ; the prolonged contem
plation of His Crucifixion has ever since that hour produced
the truest, deepest penitents, of all ages. Love is of the very
essence of repentance, and love is ever associated with a
person, and the true movement of the deepening and en-
14 The Repentance of St. Peter.
during love of penitents circles around the Person of Jesus
Christ and Him crucified.
In conclusion, I would briefly point out two habits of de
votion necessary to be cherished, in order that the grace of
such a repentance as we have been contemplating may be
the more worked in us. One is the habit of meditation on
the Person of Jesus Christ. It is evident from what has been
said, that the realization within the soul of our Divine Master
and His love, is the moving cause of true repentance. But
how can this be realized or impressed, or become an object
of influence, except through habitual contemplation ? " Faith
is the evidence of things not seen ;" but how can faith realize
the object, except by feeding on it, till it become an habitual
vision of the soul? Again, love can be cherished only by
habitual intercourse, or ever-renewed inward feeding on the
beloved object. If there be no converse, or communion of
thought, love must decline and die. And how can an invi
sible person become the object of love, except by inward con
templation. We may continue to use forms of words, and
correct statements of doctrine, or we may have a general awe
on the soul in the consciousness of God s presence and claims
on us ; or we may have instinctive feelings of right and
wrong, which operate and stir the conscience ; so that there
may seem to be a stay for religion within the man. But it
is not in the nature of the human heart to love another, un
less that other become a constant companion, or unless his
beauty and amiableness become strongly impressed on the
soul, and be borne always in remembrance. The grace of
God moves and operates according to the laws of humanity.
Grace is above nature, but it is according to nature. It acts
on nature, and raises nature up to the level of God, but it is
human still. What, then, would stir the heart to love accord
ing to nature, the same will stir the heart to love above
nature. And what is this but the contemplation of the ob
ject, followed by an habitual feeding upon it? And how
otherwise can we love Christ ? How otherwise can He have
such influence over the soul, as to stir its depths, to awaken
the deeper founts of sorrow, and the deeper yearnings after
perfect conformity to Himself?
The second point is this : we must learn to measure the
The Repentance of St. Peter. 1 5
guilt of our sins by the sorrows of God in the Flesh. We have
no proper rule of our own by which to measure the guilt of
sin. It is not an object of earthly barter. It falls under no
earthly merchandise, on which a value has been set. Sin
has a bearing on the world to come, on the condition of
spirits, and the eternal relation between God and the crea
ture. We have no line to fathom these depths. The con
sequences of sin are altogether out of our reach. When
we attempt to trace its consequences, and describe its
effects, we feel ourselves to be at once beyond our compass.
Sin has converted angels into devils. Sin has ruined this
lower creation of God. Sin brought the flood and the fire of
Sodom, and it has in its train disease, and famine, and war.
It has created death, and made death eternal. All these are
as certain rules and proportions by which we can form some
estimate of the guilt of sin. But they are partial and im
perfect measures, after all. The only true and adequate mea
sure is the Blood of God Incarnate and the sorrows of His
sacred Heart. Have we any means whereby to measure the
value of that most precious Blood and of that Agony ? If we
have not, then neither have we any means to measure the
guilt of sin, for that Blood was given in exchange for the
soul, and was the price of the sin. That Blood is the only
price at which we can set it. There is a relation of co
ordinate value between the Blood of God and the sin of
man ; for the one was accepted as an equivalent for the other.
And nothing else could be so accepted. Learn, then, to look
at sin in this connexion ; not sin in the aggregate, but indi
vidual sins. Measure by this price the special besetting sin
of thy nature. Weigh it in the scale against the weight of
that Sacrifice which bowed to the Cross the Incarnate God.
There alone you read its true character, its amount in the esti
mation of eternity. As man learns to measure more truly the
nature of God while he lives on, and time passes into eternity ;
so, as he lives on age after age, when time is no more, he will
learn to measure better^the guilt of sin. View the last sin
which lies freshest on thy conscience by this estimate. The very
next time thou art tempted, before thou sinnest, call up that
awful Vision, the expression of that Face, with its untold
16 The Repentance of St. Peter.
depth of sorrow and reproach, which fell on St. Peter in the
judgment-hall, and the Body on which the Wounds are still
visible in the heavens. Say, shall I add a fresh pang to
that suffering form ? Shall I do a deed which cost such a
price to redeem ? Could I bear the look of that Countenance,
as I sin ?
May there not be many among you to whom, at this mo
ment, if the curtain should uplift its folds, and that Coun
tenance could be revealed J . aid be felt to express some
such words as these ? "1 have somewhat against you,
because you have left your first love. Remember, therefore,
from whence you have fallen, repent and do the first works ;
or else I will come unto you quickly, and will remove your
candlestick out of its place, except you repent." But "to
him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life,
which is in the midst of the Paradise of God."
SERMON XIX.
THE REPENTANCE OP ST. PETER.
BY
ANTHONY W. THOROLD, M.A.,
BECTOB OF ST. GILES-IN-THE-FTELDS, LONDON.
A SEKMON,
MARK xiv. 72.
" And when he thought thereon, he wept."
THIS Divine Word is a volume of biography. It pourtrays
for us, with every variety of outline and colouring, the men
and women who rise on the surface of history as helping or
hindering the planting of the Church in the world. And
just as artists love to paint men in the attitude which shall
best ensure the expression of the countenance and the con
tour of the form, so Holy Scripture delights to set forth to
us this our human nature in that one condition which, as it
is most common to it, so unburies to us its most hidden
depths. Strong emotion uncovers a man to his fellows ; and
in that earthquake of the being which we call repentance,
the coldest and most silent of men lose their reserve and
self-consciousness in the loud and bitter cry, " What must
I do to be saved?" Hence there is hardly a prominent
character in Scripture that is not revealed to us in the
nakedness of his penitent soul ; and one glance at him as he
kneels in his chamber and pours out his heart to God, is
worth ten years of ordinary acquaintance. Now repentance,
define it as you will, is the crisis of a man s life. To some,
as to the jailor at Philippi, it is the very travail-time of their
B2
4 The Repentance of St. Peter.
regeneration ; to others, as to the son of Jesse, it is the
blessed end of a reaction from heaven to earth.; to all of
us who are in Christ, in the ebbings and flowings of our
sanctity, it is the echo of God s voice in us, revealing to us
our garments soiled, or our first love forgotten, or our works
not finished ; and therefore, not unreasonably, we may look
to find it again and again described in this wonderful book
which contains the deepest philosophy without a system, and
the most accurate history without a plan. We have the false
repentances as well as the true. There is Esau by the tent-
door at Beersheba, lifting up his voice and weeping over his
lost blessing, but turning away to hate his brother Jacob,
and to count the days till he may slay him ; there is the weak
Ahab, hopeful with Elijah, and wicked with Jezebel; there
is Balaam trying to snatch two heavens, and missing both
of them ; there are Felix and Agrippa, startled to the very
depths of their polluted souls but struck by lightning, not
softened with the dew and the rain. There is also David,
fasting, and lying all night upon the earth; who as the
weary wailing of a dying child comes to his ear, and tears
his heart, sobs out his prayer for mercy. There is the
thief on the cross, in the dim desire of his awakened soul for
pardon, casting himself on the dying Galilean at His side ;
and the Apostle, in the grey dawn of that April morning^
goes out to weep as if his heart would break, for the sin
which yesterday he had thought impossible. To this re
pentance of St. Peter I have to draw your attention now.
I have to ask you, with all the holy delicacy wherewith we
should ever contemplate the sins of the just made perfect, to
see why he fell, how he repented. But fully to do this, we
must go one step back. To judge of the repentance, we
must know the sin repented of; to measure the sin, we must
behold the sinner. For each single act is the act of the
whole man. Our past marks our present, and we can
The Repentance of St. Peter. 5
never act with a part of our being ; and however much the
will may have oscillated before it finally decided, it was no
otherwise than entirely consenting to the act when done.
And in the words of St. Peter himself, may He whose Divine
power hath given us " all things that pertain unto life and
godliness," multiply grace and peace to us through the know
ledge of God, humility through the knowledge of ourselves.
The Man, the Sin, the Repentance. First, the Man. A
multitude of things modify character over and above the ori
ginal mind and heart given by God. A man s race, his birth
place and home, his early associates, his bringing-up, his means
of living, are all to be ascertained, if we would fully carry out
the inductive method in this matter; are all to be allowed
for, if we would rightly estimate any one. Simon, the son
of Jonas, was a Hebrew, living in a town of some conse
quence on the shores of a remote lake in Galilee, " unlearned
and ignorant," and earning his bread by the rough excite
ments of the fishing trade. His character on the whole, a
very noble one had all those inferior qualities which in
variably balance eminent virtues. Full of high passionate
feeling, fervid in heart, impetuous in action, and impatient
of delay, he found reflection painful ; to pause before acting
was intolerable. Singularly ignorant of his own heart,
and equally ignorant of that human nature of which most
men at thirty years old have been compelled at their
cost tp learn so much, he mistook impulse for principle;
he confounded doing with intending to do. Self-confi
dent, talkative, always in front, setting every one right in
turn : yet active, faithful, affectionate, brave ; he was the first
among the Twelve to discover Christ s Godhead, and it was
he who came forth to say before them all, " Lord, to whom
shall we go? Thou hast the words of Eternal life." There
never was a man whose sincerity was less to be suspected, or
whose inconsistencies are more easily accounted for; never
6 Tlie Repentance of St. Peter.
a man better fitted to govern an infant Church, when hum
bled and filled with the Spirit. We love him, if only for his
love to Christ; nay, we are almost tempted to love his
faults, for most of them were but the exaggeration of manly
virtues; and the Rock of the Church is one of the twelve
foundation-stones of the New Jerusalem, on which the living
stones of God s spiritual house rejoice to think that they are
reared. Such was the man ; and now, considering ourselves
lest we also be tempted, let us gravely and tenderly look
into his Sin.
It was the eve of the crucifixion. The Paschal Lamb
had been eaten. The sacerdotal prayer had been offered
up, and the Lord, with the eleven, went out to Geth-
semane. The rest of the Apostles left at a little distance,
the three familiar friends in whom He chiefly trusted, the
Lord took apart to be with Himself in His coming passion.
The bitterest storm of sorrow that ever burst yet over the
head of human creature, was now to spend its fury on the
Lamb of God ; and He who, a year before, in anticipation of
this agony, had on the mount of glory received blessed con
solation from Moses and Elias, now that He was to tread
the winepress alone, desired to find comfort and sympathy
from the chosen three. The storm came, as you know.
Under the shade of the olive-trees, wrestled face to face
with the tempter, He who had conquered him in the wilder
ness, who was about to destroy him on the Cross ; and in the
weary restlessness of His suffering, for " His sweat last night
was as great drops of blood/ He went to and fro to His
friends. Peter s denial was beginning. He slept ; and that
the Lord keenly felt the selfishness of his slumber, is
sufficiently apparent from His addressing Himself to him :
" Simon, couldest not thou watch with Me one hour ?"
Again He came still he slept heavily. For the last time He
came. He had seen the lights twinkling down the hill ; the
The Repentance of St. Peter. 7
oaths and jests of the soldiers hunting for their prey fell on
the ear of Jesus, and told Him that His hour was come ; still
the three slept, but it mattered not : the Son of Man was be
trayed into the hands of sinners. The sinners came, pre
destined in the counsels of God to slay His Son; some
sleek and cunning, some rough and cruel, all bent alike on
securing their prey, and doing surely their deed of blood.
The second act of Peter s denial began. "Then Simon Peter
having a sword drew it, and smote the high-priest s servant,
and cut off his right ear." We see what the Lord thought
of that deed by the rebuke He gave him. We see why
St. Peter did it, in his vain-glorious desire to redeem his lost
character, and to prove, even by blood, his love for the
Lord. We also see what mischiefs came out of it ; for not
only was he now a marked man, but his first rashness led
necessarily to a second rashness ; and this spasmodic energy
resulted in a reaction, which caused his fall. When the
disciples fled, the apostle seems to have fled with them, but
presently to have recovered himself. Whatever were his
motives, it is clear that he retraced his steps ; and coming up
with the rear of the party, followed them until the Lord and
His enemies passed into the high-priest s house, and he was
shut out. It was God s will, however, that he should not
escape the fiery trial. A face in the crowd had recognised
him ; the face, if not of Nicodemus, at least of some friendly
Pharisee, who may have come to Jesus by night, and who
would thus have fallen in with the apostle ; and on the dam
sel at the door being spoken to St. Peter was permitted to pass
through. He was now in the open court that was between
the gate leading into the street and the hall of the house
where the Lord was being examined before Annas. Had he
wished it ever so, he would hardly have been permitted to
pass on into the house. It is quite possible, that not from
any ignoble desire of personal comfort, but from a mere in-
8 The Repentance of St. Peter.
stinct of self-preservation, he sought the fire as the safest
place, where he might be hidden in the crowd. But the
trial of his faith was not to be long deferred. The servant
at the gate, who had keenly watched him as he came in,
instantly detected him standing by the fire and towards the
light. She came and said, "Thou also wast with Jesus of
Nazareth." He was thrown off his guard. Gathering from
her remark that he was discovered, and, it may be, justifying
himself by the plausible excuse that it was no business of
hers to ask him, he put her off by affecting not to under
stand her, " I know not what thou sayest." But he was not
happy. He had silenced her; it was not quite so easy
to silence conscience. Leaving the fire, he went into the
porch, to seek an opportunity of slipping away. The cock
crew. Did he hear it ? He could hardly anticipate all that
was to happen before it would crow again. In the porch he
was no safer than by the fire. Where one had asked him
before, three asked him now. The same maidservant who
was so satisfied of his identity that she would not leave
him alone, said to the other, " This man is one of them."
Another maidservant, who may have taken the clue from
her said, "This man was also with Jesus of Nazareth."
A man-servant said the same thing. St. Peter was in ter
ror. Attacked on all sides, and not knowing what they
would do with him, he no longer hesitated to deny altoge
ther his connexion with Jesus. He said with an oath, and
his words have a bitter contempt in them, " I know not the
man." For the next hour his sufferings must have been
intense. Lost to himself, lost to Christ, lost to his bre
thren; longing to escape and hide his shame; yet fearing
to make bad worse if he provoked observation by retiring
too abruptly he must have drunk deeply in the next
hour of the gall and wormwood of his sin. And then his
denial reached its climax. Evidently he had been conversing
The Repentance of St. Peter. 9
with those that stood by ; and whether in downright hardi
hood, or again, as a cloak to hide himself, or, possibly, in sheer
desperateness, he had been making common cause with the
Lord s foes. What happened was likely enough. His rough
country accent was at once detected by the inhabitants of the
metropolis ; his speech betrayed him to be a Galilean ; and
if a Galilean, the probabilities were all in favour of his being
a disciple of Jesus. So first one and then another said it,
and for the crowning proof, one of the servants of the high-
priest, whose kinsman Peter had wounded, said to him, " Did
not I see thee in the garden with Him ?" " He began to
curse and to swear, saying, I know not the Man."
Such, my brethren, was the sin of the great St. Peter.
The nature of it involved the essential elements of a real
apostacy from God. The aggravations of it lay in the swell
ing words of vanity wherein he had so vaunted his con
stancy ; in his openly joining fellowship with the enemies of
the Lord ; in his presumptuously rushing into needless peril ;
in his adding cursing to lying, contempt of Christ to his
denial of Him. The wound to the Lord s heart we can
not guess, whose notions of the sinfulness of sin, and of
the tenderness of the Saviour s love, are so poor and shal
low. The scandal to the Church has never ceased from that
hour to this.
^v
Lastly, let us consider his Repentance, which I will first
give you in the inspired words : " Immediately, while he yet
spake the cock crew. And the Lord turned and looked upon
Peter. And Peter remembered the words of the Lord ; and
he went out and wept bitterly." "And when he thought
thereon, he wept."
Rightly to estimate this repentance, we must glance at
the causes of it, the signs of it, the continuance of it, and
the genuineness of it. The causes of it. It was the cock
crowing that recalled him to himself; it was the look of
10 The Repentance of St. Peter.
Christ that restored him to the Saviour. As has been well
said, " An awakener of some kind or other is appointed to
every man." Some are brought back by the sound of village
bells ; some softened by the strains of music heard and loved
in the days of innocence. An open grave, or the news of a
friend s death, or a letter, or a look, or silence, are among
the various methods by which the love of God draws to
Himself the hearts of His elect. And so the cock crowing
made Peter think ; but the Lord s look made him love.
There fell on his abashed and stricken soul the full gaze of
the Saviour. Can you picture to yourself the glance of that eye?
You cannot. We have never seen Christ in the flesh. We know
not, and no genius in the world can paint for us, the marvel
lous countenance of the Incarnate Son. Bound with cords,
condemned, fresh from the buffeting, coming forth from the
hall into the courtyard, to be sent to Pilate, then to Herod,
then to Pilate, then to His cross, the Lamb of God was not
so overwhelmed with His own sorrows that He could not feel
for His apostle s misery ; and He looked on him with pained
surprise, with holy anger, with calm majesty, with yearning
love. He, of whom the sinner says, " I shall perish at His
presence;" He, before whose face the heavens and earth
shall flee away ; Whose eyes are a flame of fire, and Whose
Countenance is as the sun shining in his strength to Peter
was not the Judge, but the Spouse : " His eyes were as the
eyes of doves by the rivers of water, washed with milk, and
fitly set." That look saved Peter from the fate of Judas.
" That gracious chiding look, Thy call
To win him to himself and Thee,
Sweetening the sorrow of his fall,
Which else were ru d too bitterly."
He wept. No small sign of repentance that ! Tears are
not so cheap with men. Most men will do anything
rather than shed them. Ah, my brethren, what that grief
must have been, who shall say? Let us not rudely look
The Repentance of St. Peter. 11
into it, but leave him in his sorrow with his pitiful Lord.
Again, his repentance was not a transient thing. " When he
thought thereon, he wept." Tradition tells us that the Apo
stle never afterwards heard a cock crow without shedding
tears. In the text we have the authority of St. Peter him
self for stating that his sin never came up before his memory
without renewing his repentance. How genuine it was his
whole after-life will shew us. Is it not the greatest penitence
to carry our present cross just as God sends it? to do each
day and each hour, notwithstanding our own repugnance
and weariness, His will rather than our own? Learn this
here. Behold the Apostle hastening to the tomb of the risen
Lord ; uniting in fellowship with the other apostles ; plung
ing into the sea to meet the Lord, who on His resurrection-
day had forgiven him ; passionately appealing to the Lord in
those words which all Christ s people love to use after him
"Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love
Thee ;" living to Him and dying to Him in all the chequered
history of his future life ; and at last, in the touching humi
lity of his great and noble soul, determined, if he were per
mitted to drink the cup of his Christ, he would be crucified,
not as his Lord was, but with his head downwards. My
brethren, if he be an instance of human frailty in his fall,_he
is also a noble monument of Divine grace in his restored and
completed integrity : and, with Mary Magdalene, he may shew
the timid hearts of all whom God hath touched for sin, that
there is no height of saintliness forfeited to the penitent.
And now, in a few concluding words, suffer me to gather up
for you some of the great lessons this narrative contains,
and to open out to you the precepts and verities that lie en
shrined here for us, the " heirs of all the ages."
Remember, this sin of Peter is not as a single and mon
strous phenomenon, happening but once and for ever; but
that the history of the Cross, in which this is but an iiidi-
12 The Repentance of St. Peter.
vidual act, is iii the hearts and minds of sinners repeated
daily. The Lord Jesus is daily nailed to His Cross. Daily
is He betrayed for thirty pieces of silver; daily is He
denied by Peter, and surrendered to Pilate, and mocked by
Herod, and slain by the world.
" To hate is to slay :" and sin rests in the will ; and though
the Lord is not on earth, His Church is ; and this greatest
of crimes is incorporated in the very nature of humanity.
Could that Holy Life be lived over again, even to fifty times,
it would ever have the same ghastly ending in the Cross
and Passion. It is no idle warning to us, " that we crucify
not the Son of God afresh, nor put Him to an open shame."
And the question of questions is, On whose side are ye ? For,
O men and brethren, ye must be on the one or the other ;
ye must be either consenting to His death, and casting
lots on His raiment, or, with the Virgin and St. John, weep
ing for Him under His Cross. Every single act we do, with
a moral complexion to it, either confesses or denies Him.
" He that is not with Me is against Me : and he that gather-
eth not with Me scattereth."
Yes, wherever we are in our quiet home-life, in our smooth
conventional life, in the market-place, aye, even in this House
of God, we are ever either saying, " So let Thine enemies
perish, O Lord," or hoarsely shouting out " Crucify Him,
crucify Him." But which is it? For recollect again, that
though we have all denied with St. Peter s denial, we have
not all repented with his repentance. You have wandered with
him have you wept with him ? Has your whole life since
you found out that you betrayed and crucified Him (if you
have found it out) been like his, a devout and loyal service ?
We who wonder at St. Peter, had better ten times over
wonder at ourselves. His denial of the Lord lasted but an
hour ; ours may have lasted a life.
But it may be, that as you have followed Peter in his sin,
The Repentance of St. Peter. 13
so you have imitated him in his repentance : that such were
some of you; but ye are washed, ye are justified, ye are
sanctified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the
Spirit of our God. Then, be "living epistles, to be known
and read of all men." No one who saw St. Peter after his
repentance could doubt his sorrow : let no one who sees you
doubt yours. Not from your talking about it, not from
your visible tears ; but from your life. " Christianity, to the
bulk of meji, is a book written in a foreign tongue ;" and you
who are Christians are its translation. From your life they
will judge of the religion you profess; and according to the
men you are, you will be either a scandal or a blessing. O
you who are in Christ, if you but knew your power; O if
you who mourn over the little that you do, and that you
love, could but first see what are your possibilities of useful
ness, and then by faith in God rise and enter into them, the
face of the world would be changed. Finally, remember that
courage comes from love, and that the foot of the Cross is
the safest place for you. "Impetuous nature thinks and
speaks much ; grace speaks and thinks little, because it is
simple, peaceable, and gathered up into itself." Religious
feeling is not an end, but a mean to an end; not to be
sought and rested in for itself, but to be instantly used as a
help to action. Nay, the very noblest human sentiments,
without the presence of Christ, will be no help to you in the
hour of trial. The recollection of past stedfastness, the mur
mur of past prayers, will be as stubble before fire in the face
of the tempter, unless you have committed yourselves to
Him who " walketh in the midst of the seven golden candle
sticks," and in the hollow of whose hand His people be. O
ye who are " called to be saints," cling to Christ. Rest, and
love to rest, under the gaze of His sleepless eye. It looks you
through and through ; but it is a brother s eye, and it con
sumes not. While it looks at you it loves you, for you are
14 The Repentance of St. Peter.
" complete in Him." Are you weak ? then ask Him to pray
for you. He prayed for Peter. When you stumble, rise up
again : and in humility and faith strengthen your brethren.
For if you will but cling to Him, He will preserve you from
" the stormy wind and tempest," and " no man shall pluck
you out of the Father s hand."
SERMON XX.
THE PENITENT THIEF.
BY
THOMAS LEGH CLAUGHTOtf, M.A.,
HONOBABY CANON OF WOBCESTEB, AND VICAB OF KIDDEBMINSTEB.
A SERM ON,
LTJKE xxiii. 42.
" And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest
into Thy kingdom."
WITHOUT this prayer, the testimony of Scripture to the
converting power of the Cross would not have been com
plete. Its remedial effect upon the heart was more fully
exemplified by this petition than by any other instance in
which it is recorded to have softened, or taught, or trans
formed a soul. Within how short a space had this same
malefactor reviled the blessed Jesus, if, at least, we are to
believe with the older fathers that he, as well as his com
panion, took up the cry of the standers by "If Thou be the
Son of God, come down from the cross." But even if it
should not be so, if thoughts of Christ s possible greatness
and glory had been passing through the mind of this man
during his imprisonment, or if, while he was yet at liberty,
going to and fro in Jerusalem, he had heard or seen any
thing which had struck his guilty soul with awe and com
punction, what can explain so great maturity of conviction,
attained under such circumstances, but that power of the
Cross of which our Lord spake, when He said, " I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me ?" For,
first, so soon as any motion of repentance had stirred the
depths of his own soul, this poor suffering wretch had done
what he could to reprove his fellow-sufferer for his hardness.
B 2
4 The Penitent TJiief.
and impenitence : " Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art
in the same condemnation ?" Likewise, lie had confessed their
common guilt : " We indeed justly ; for we receive the due
reward of our deeds." And he had acknowledged the ma
jesty of innocence in Christ : " This man hath done nothing
amiss." And now he professed belief in His kingly power,
in the spiritual nature of His kingdom, and, as though he
had heard that " faithful saying, and worthy of all men to be
received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners," begged for himself, sinner as he was and abject, to
be remembered, in the day of His power, by One who was
now like himself, " a very scorn of men, and the outcast
of the people." Whence came this faith, and hope, and
love, than which the greatest saints could have expressed or
shewn no greater yea, the very apostles themselves at that
time fell far short of it Whence came this, but from the
Cross? Was not this the beginning of that triumph over
the principalities and powers of darkness, concerning which
St. Paul saith, " He made a show of them openly, triumphing
over them in it," i. e. in His Cross ?
Flushed with his recent victory over the caitiff Judas,
Satan, it may be, forgot how the strong man should soon be
bound, and his house spoiled by a power surpassing his
strength or device to resist. He thought not that the first
trophy of his overthrow would be in the person of a con
demned thief, who, when apparently past hope, should not
only himself be converted by this spectacle, which he had
been busily preparing for far different ends, but should also
be a beacon of hope, a strong preservative against despair
for ever afterwards, to sinners hanging over the very abyss
of destruction ; insomuch that wherever the Gospel should be
preached in all the world, the record of that thief s repent
ance and conversion should fan the expiring embers of faith
and hope in breasts which but for this must have been
The Penitent Thief. 5
sunk in the blackness of darkness for ever ! What was it
that so turned the man s thoughts out of the channels of
lifelong impurity, dishonesty, and violence, and blasphemy ?
Why, it was the very excess of persecution which Satan, in
the impotence of his malice, had raised against the Blessed
One ! Herod s soldiers had done their work too well : that
crown of thorns, so fiercely thrust into His temples, con
trasted too marvellously with the mildness of His aspect,
and His gentle, loving words. He looked a King, albeit
His kingdom was not, could not be, of this world! His
kingdom must be far hence far from this scene of conflict,
and hatred, and brutality ! in some unknown, unheard of
region, where there is neither death, nor sorrow, nor crying,
nor pain ! where the wolf and the lamb do feed together,
and the lion doth eat straw like the ox ! Stay ; did not an
ancient word of prophecy, that his father or his mother had
taught him in his childhood, recur to the confused mind of
the suffering malefactor, concerning a holy mountain where
they should not hurt nor destroy; within whose borders
violence and wasting should be heard no more, concerning
a city whose walls were salvation, and whose gates, praise.
He looked again at the agonized yet serene countenance of
the crucified King : he beheld the superscription written
over; he heard the blasphemy of the multitude. Again
the recollections of his childhood, and whatever religious im
pressions he had ever felt, rushed back upon his soul : " Can
this indeed be the King my nation was taught to look for ?
Can this Man of sorrows, this despised and rejected one, be
He?" These thoughts issued in the prayer we are con-
sidering to-night: "Lord, think of me when Thou comest
into Thy kingdom !" Think of thee? aye, thou poor thief !
" Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in
paradise."
Aye, brethren, did the word paradise correspond with
6 The Penitent Thief.
thoughts in the dying malefactor s breast which the Lord
knew him to be cherishing, so as to confirm his hope, and per
fect in the short space which yet remained of life and thought,
the faith new planted there? The darkness which super
vened almost as soon as this word of promise was spoken,
and continued thick and terrible for three hours, might have
been designed by Him who ordained it for the special hu
miliation and abasement of this sinful soul. He was, as it
were, in the belly of hell, suffering God s terrors for his sins,
which were now set in array before him. Tearfulness and
trembling were come upon him, and a horrible dread had
overwhelmed him, to think what he had done, and how
utterly unworthy he was of the goodness which seemed to be
compassing him about. And how mysterious, yea, dark and
impenetrable as the overhanging cloud, must have been
goodness, at such a time, from such a source, to such a man
as he had been !
The darkness passing away at the ninth hour revealed
again to his eyes the great Sufferer; and just then the silence
was suddenly broken by that loud and piercing cry, "My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ?" He heard it,
and no doubt of this there can be doubt as he heard it,
he felt drawn yet closer unto the new Lord of his heart, by
the cords of a man and by bonds of love, through their
common humanity ! The work of conversion was going on
rapidly ; this was an exception to all rule. In general, " the
kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed into the
ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed
should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how." But this
work the Lord hastened in His time. The fellowship of his
Master s sufferings prevented days and nights in this man s
spiritual growth. He above all that ever were born, or shall
be, "being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long
time."
The Penitent Thief. 7
And now the work which the Cross, and the Cross alone,
had begun, was about to be perfected by the Cross. The
strength of the blessed Jesus was dried up like a potsherd.
His tongue clave to His gums. All His bones were out of
joint. His heart in the midst of His Body was even like
melting wax. God was bringing Him into the dust of death.
Fierce dogs had compassed Him. The assembly of the wicked
had enclosed Him quite. His own familiar friends could
probably bear the sight no longer. He looked for some to
have pity, but there was none ; and for comforters, but found
none. But from that almost expiring body from that loving
heart, broken as it was with the rebukes of God for sin, just
then came forth that utterance on which all ages since, and
yet to come, have pondered and shall ponder, wherever the
record of it shall enter into their ears " It is finished." And
having thus said, He cried with a loud voice as a conqueror,
" Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit," and gave
up the Ghost.
But if ages have pondered this voice, what must it have
been to him who heard it to whom it was the sign of re
demption accomplished, of the near-at-hand fulfilment of the
promise just given, " To-day shalt thou be with Me in para
dise !" For it was not the voice of one powerless in death.
He that had strength thus to cry out in dying, must have
had some inner source of power which men knew not of!
When the centurion who had oversight of the execution saw
that He so cried out and gave up the ghost, he said, " Truly
this man was the Son of God !" And altogether He seemed
to commend His Spirit unto God at His own time, insomuch
that when Pilate heard of it he marvelled, and again asked
the officer who brought the report, how long He had been
dead? Now that which so attracted the notice of others
must have been to the new convert, who was looking unto
Jesus with such intensity of faith and love, as the very open-
8 The Penitent Thief.
ing of the gates of paradise. Welcome the last indignity and
cruelty which those savage executioners shall wreak on his
mangled body, so it hasten his reunion with Him, with
whose baptism of suffering he was being baptized. For the
spirit of martyrdom had entered into the heart of the ex
piring malefactor. He could have died for Him with whom
it was his privilege to die, and dying, to have this hope
that he should be glorified together with Him, as He had
promised. With great faith had come great love, and
hope being joined thereto, here .was that "threefold cord
which is not quickly broken." God, that began the work,
did in this case cut it short in righteousness. Perhaps the
very first words uttered by our blessed Lord upon the Cross,
when His murderers were nailing His hands and feet to the
accursed tree, "Father, forgive them; they know not what
they do ;" perhaps these words being foreign to the prin
ciples and feelings by which the thief had ever seen men
actuated made the first impression upon this hard, impeni
tent heart. "Who is this," he may have thought within
himself, " that gives blessing for cursing, and repayeth injury
with love ?" And when he beheld in Him who thus spake
such divine patience, and courage, and fortitude such mani
fest tokens of strength and power in the midst of prevailing
weakness these first impressions ripened rapidly into solid
convictions. Sensations which he had never before expe
rienced took possession of his soul. He felt the breathings of
God s Spirit within him ; and the tears of repentance flowed
forth freely, as we read it this day in the Psalm : " He send-
eth out His word and melteth them : He bloweth with His
wind, and the waters flow."
There is no room in the history of mankind for another
such conversion. There could be no other such victory of
faith, no other such triumph of the Cross. Here was no
light from heaven above the brightness of the midday sun,
The Penitent Thief. 9
no voice as of a trumpet sounding in the ears, no appeal by
name to the person assuring him of some gracious design
which God entertained towards him, no expostulation bring
ing his past sin to remembrance, and reminding him of a
warfare within, which conscience had long waged with the
passion that absorbed his soul. " Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou Me ? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."
On the contrary, it was the hour of evil men, and the power
of darkness. The prince of this world was in the ascendant.
There was no sign of his approaching downfall. Every token
was a token of wrath, and malice, and hatred, and revenge,
and cruelty save only the love which shone forth in the
blessed Jesus, and which shining in upon the dreary dark
ness of one soul, already past hope, as it seemed, and con
demned to the pit, effected its conversion, and rescued it from
everlasting woe !
Now he who goes about to establish upon this basis the
efficacy of what is called a death-bed repentance in general,
would clearly build a very broad superstructure upon a nar
row and insufficient foundation. For there is no evidence,
not the least, that this man had ever heard of Christ, or in
any way disregarded Him after such warning as most of
those who put off repentance to the bed of sickness and of
death have received during their lifetime. The utmost we
could hope, or reasonably build upon the acceptance of the
penitent thief, would be, that if indeed one had never heard
or realized to himself the sufferings of Jesus Christ for sin,
and should have the rare privilege of seeing in this case how
they were applied to the conscience, even at the last, and
being applied, were effectual under such marvellous and un
usual circumstances, (circumstances which can never occur
again,) to the justification of a sinful soul : if a dying heathen,
for instance, could be made aware then, for the first time, of
the doctrine of faith and repentance, and be taught by this
10 The Penitent Thief.
example, that " though we have sinned, we have an Advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and that He is
the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world," in that case, the record of
the conversion of the penitent thief upon the cross would
have a legitimate and most comforting application. But that
which is chiefly to be gathered from the record is the sove
reign efficacy of the one grand remedy for all the diseases of
our souls the Cross of Christ ; seeing that it availed in the
most hopeless case that ever occurred or can occur ; seeing
that the spectacle which the Cross exhibited of self-emptying,
or by whatever word we can express the most entire abne
gation of self, or self-abasement, which is to any mind con
ceivable ; seeing, I say, that this spectacle of self-abasement,
gentleness, meekness, patience, love, tenderness, extreme
considerateness, mercifulness, endurance of hardness words
fail us to express all the virtue and all the loveliness that
shone forth in the crucifixion of the blessed Jesus but that
it was effectual to convert a heart so hard, that no other con
ceivable power could have touched it the lesson which the
dying malefactor bequeathed to mankind was this : " By grace
ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves : it is
the gift of God."
It worketh in a manner wholly inscrutable, wholly un
accountable, as it did in this case. One was taken, the other
left. Both were in the same condemnation ; both (it is pro
bable, though not certain,) exhibited the same impenitence
and hardness of heart. It is idle to conjecture previous im
pressions, early preparations. They will not solve the diffi
culty ; they will only carry the mystery into depths on which
the light of revelation has not shined, as it has on these. Let
us walk where we are sure, and confess that the Cross of
Jesus Christ wrought a miracle I do not say of mercy so
much as of power at which all ages shall marvel; which,
The Penitent Thief. 11
when days and years shall cease, when the everlasting choir
shall praise the Lord in holy songs of joy, shall still be
hymned and hymned again ; and the spirit of him that was
saved that crucified malefactor ever rejoice, with increas
ing and enlarging consciousness of the glory of such in
effable salvation, in the worthiness of the Lamb that was
slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength,
and honour, and glory, and blessing.
Is there in all this assembly one heart which, having me
ditated in truth and earnestness on all or any of those great
lessons which have lately been delivered in this place,
having conceived more definitely than ever before what the
necessity and what the nature of repentance is is melted by
the fire of the Word, or stirred by the breath of the Spirit,
let him pour forth this earnest humble prayer to-night,
" Lord ! remember me when Thou comest into Thy king
dom." No qualification needed for such a prayer, save only
sincerity in the desire, faith in the power and love of the
King that reigneth and shall reign ! You may receive, as the
dying penitent received, exceeding abundantly above all that
you ask or think ! Or is there here one on whose heart
not one of the exhortations he has heard has made a seri
ous, deep, or lasting impression ; who has gone to hear the
Word in the spirit of some in Ezekiel s time, who said rather
lightly one to another, " Come, I pray you, and hear what
is the word that cometh forth?" or who has gone, not
lightly, but because others went, or wishing to stand well
with serious men? or who has gone hardly and critically,
distrusting this or that preacher? let such a one forget
himself, the preacher, his companions, tear himself away
from every earthly association and influence, and endeavour
to realise the power of the crucifixion of the blessed Jesus
on the heart of an habitual evil liver, then for the first time
brought in contact with incarnate Deity then for the first
12 The Penitent Thief.
time feeling a participation with the suffering humanity of
the Son of God then for the first time recalling the past
in its real connection with the interminable future ; taught
during those three hours of silence and darkness things
which a lifetime had not sufficed to bring within the range
of his apprehension ; learning by the sufferings of Christ
somewhat of that love which passeth knowledge, which shall
be the glory of His saints for ever. Let such a one come
near and understand the marvellous virtue of the Cross.
Let him ponder it this night in its length, and depth, and
breadth, and height ; how, in regard of duration, it stretcheth
far back into the ever-lengthening vistas of the remotest
eternity, having been ordained before the worlds by the de
terminate counsel and foreknowledge of God ; in regard of
wideness how, having embraced in its scope all ages and
generations of mankind, it hath come down to us also ; so
that if we were to take the wings of the morning, if we were
able to fly as swift as light, which in an instant overruns the
whole horizon, and carries day to the most distant regions
of the world, even there we should find the same Power
which sustained the dying malefactor, upholding all things.
And then, how deep it is, as saith the Psalmist : " If I make
my bed in hell, Thou art there !" how high, " If I ascend
to heaven, Thou art there also \" Oh ! why does any doubt
ever perplex our souls ? It is because we attempt to measure
infinite compassion by the finite compass of our understand
ing. It is because we set our sins in the balance against
God s love, when the Apostle has so plainly taught us, that
though our sins are indeed more in number than the hairs
of our head, and our hearts fail us because of them, yet this
abounding iniquity is covered by superabounding grace, that
as sin had reigned unto death, even so might grace reign
through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord.
The Penitent Thief. 13
And we, my brethren, to whom the handling of these
mysteries of life and salvation is committed for our brethren s
sake, we, to whom it is entrusted to preach the Word of
God to the people, to give to every man his portion of meat
in due season, have need to be careful lest we handle such
things deceitfully, or with any aim but the one single aim
to convert souls to God by the power of the Cross, and
to build them up and edify them by the same. " He that
hath my word," saith the Prophet Jeremy, " let him preach
my word faithfully ;" i. e. let him be careful not to suffer
the imaginations of his own heart to mislead him in the
application, as some in Jeremiah s time stole God s words
every one from his neighbour ; gathered here and there some
ideas that might be striking and beautiful, so as to excite a
pleasurable sensation in the hearer, but which might have
the effect in the end of making the heart of the righteous
sad, whom God had not made sad, or of strengthening the
hands of the wicked by promising him life, because they
were not delivered to the people according to the true pro
portion of faith : a snare which, it is needless to say, doth
much beset the preachers of God s Word in this very age
and nation, and which, unless we watch unto prayer, will
draw us off from our true and only object, which is by the
preaching of the Cross to endeavour to turn men from dark
ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.
Provided we keep this in view, we need not fear the
insinuations of the careless and indifferent, that no good is
done by these efforts to stir up the people. It is amazing and
incredible with what coldness men do stand by and look on,
and speak one to another about the preaching of the Gospel
in their streets, apparently without at all recollecting that to
them is the Word of His salvation sent ; that this call may
be the last that God will ever vouchsafe to them ; that be-
because they have hitherto neglected all ordinary opportu-
14 The Penitent Uicf.
nities and means of grace, He has once more sent His ser
vants to compel them, as it were, to come in. But provided,
I say, we go forth to our work and our labour determined
to know nothing among those to whom we are sent but
Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we need neither be dis
heartened by their indifference, nor yet by the shameful im
putations that have been cast upon these very efforts in some
quarters, that they are purposely designed to narrow, and
limit, and circumscribe the fulness and the free revelation of
the glorious Gospel of our God. If such, indeed, should be
the effect of this or any other discourse you have heard in
this place, you will do well to prove your own selves, and to
pray God for the help of His Holy Spirit, to aid you in
searching your hearts, as David prayed in the 139th Psalm :
" Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know
my thoughts ; and see if there be any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting." But if our words have
comforted you, or reproved some evil thing in any of you, or
stirred you up to fresh zeal and love toward God and His
Christ, and to greater constancy and fervour in prayer,
then, brethren, be not shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither
by spirit nor by word, as that the word of the Gospel hath
been spoken in vain : but gird up the loins of your mind ;
be sober; and hope to the end for the grace that is to be
brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
LENTEN SERMONS
1 liilll Bi 1 i 1 111
P if
mil
illllll
Ml llllll :
iHiiSHifiWi IM H f
lilll !!l!li ! llu
II I jiii
I lliriil
